CHORUS When he sees his opponent beside him, the tonguester, the artifice-skilled, Stand, whetting his tusks for the fight! O surely, his eyes rolling-fell Will with terrible madness be fraught! O then will be charging of plume-waving words with their wild-floating mane, And then will be whirling of splinters, and phrases smoothed down with the plane, When the man would the grand-stepping maxims, the language gigantic, repel Of the hero-creator of thought. There will his shaggy-born crest upbristle for anger and woe, Horribly frowning and growling, his fury will launch at the foe Huge-clamped masses of words, with exertion Titanic up-tearing Great ship-timber planks for the fray.
CHORUS But here will the tongue be at work, uncoiling, word-testing, refining, Sophist-creator of phrases, dissecting, detracting, maligning, Shaking the envious bits, and with subtle analysis paring The lung’s large labour away.
EURIPIDES Don’t talk to me; I won’t give up the chair, I say I am better in the art than he.
DIONYSUS You hear him, Aeschylus: why don’t you speak?
EURIPIDES He’ll do the grand at first, the juggling trick He used to play in all his tragedies.
DIONYSUS Come, my fine fellow, pray don’t talk too big.
EURIPIDES I know the man, I’ve scanned him through and through,
EURIPIDES A savage-creating stubborn-pulling fellow, Uncurbed, unfettered, uncontrolled of speech, Unperiphrastic, bombastiloquent.
AESCHYLUS Hah! sayest thou so, child of the garden quean! And this-to me, thou chattery-babble-collector, Thou pauper-creating rags-and-patches-stitcher? Thou shalt abye it dearly!
DIONYSUS Pray, be still; Nor heat thy soul to fury, Aeschylus.
AESCHYLUS Not till I’ve made you see the sort of man This cripple-maker is who crows so loudly.
DIONYSUS Bring out a ewe, a black-fleeced ewe, my boys: Here’s a typhoon about to burst upon us.
AESCHYLUS Thou picker-up of Cretan monodies, Foisting thy tales of incest on the stage—
DIONYSUS Forbear, forbear, most honoured Aeschylus; And you, my poor Euripides, begone If you are wise, out of this pitiless hail, Lest with some heady word he crack your scull And batter out your brain—less Telephus. And not with passion, Aeschylus, but calmly Test and be tested. ’Tis not meet for poets To scold each other, like two baking-girls. But you go roaring like an oak on fire.
EURIPIDES I’m ready, I! I don’t draw back one bit. I’ll lash or, if he will, let him lash first The talk, the lays, the sinews of a play:
EURIPIDES Aye and my Peleus, aye and Aeolus, And Meleager, aye and Telephus.
DIONYSUS And what do you propose? Speak, Aeschylus.
AESCHYLUS I could have wished to meet him otherwhere. We fight not here on equal terms.
DIONYSUS Why not?
AESCHYLUS My poetry survived me: his died with him: He’s got it here, all handy to recite.
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