Helena
The plot of Helena with the recognition of husband and wife and their escape from the barbarous country is very much like that of Ipheginia Taurica. The remarkable similarities between the two plays have been pointed out by critics.(13) Accordingly, its Deus ex Machina plays almost the same role as in Ipheginia Taurica. However, some distinctive aspects of the play seem to suggest that with Helena Euripides may have moved even further toward comedy and its happy ending appears to be much enhanced by the Deus ex Machina.
Not only is the abject and undignified Menelaus, shipwrecked on his way back from Troy, the source of the broadest humour in the play; his first appearance in sail-rags (422-24) to have his heroic status completely denied by the gate-keeper (454) could almost be an Aristophanic scene. But also, as a whole, the texture of the play seems somewhat lighter. This is, perhaps, partly because the non-standard version of the story is used that Helen did not go to Troy but was kept hidden in Egypt during the time of the War. In order that he may recognize his wife(14) Menelaus has to admit that all that has happened in Troy was the gods' deception. This gives the drama a peculiar aspect of an easy shift from one reality to another and vice versa. The real Helen is easily taken for Helen's phantom by Menelaus (563-) and others (74, 618). Names are mistaken for substance (490,588 etc.) and thus give rise to confusion which is tortuous for those involved, yet can be fun for the spectators (120-63, 483-621).(15) To adjust themselves to a new "reality" the protagonists have to switch to a different view of life quickly and effortlessly. They are, so to speak, exposed to the danger of losing their identities, but they dare not resist. They yield to and accept whatever Tyche or Chance offers in terms appropriate to the new situation.(16) They readily exchange, for example, heroic codes of shame and honour for the means for survival (420, 792, 805, 808, 841, 845-6, 849-50, 949, 953, 993,1081, 1450, 1603). In such a world words and deeds bear a hint of provisionality and it looks as if the protagonists, accommodating and mutable, have seldom shaped events or controlled action by any weight of their own. Such an absence of determined will or positive self-reliance does not provide a suitable vehicle for solemn tragic substance, but is fit for comedy, in which the primary tone is lightness.(17) On the part of the audience following such potentially-comic sequences, a detached attitude of mind, rather than emotional involvement in the protagonists' passion and pathos would be seen, as is usually the case in comedy. They can enjoy, after the anagnorisis when Helen and Menelaus outwit the Egyptian King whose impertinent courtship poses an obstacle to their escape (1193-1300), the irony of their speech, which attenuates the fear commonly generated by scenes of hazardous intrigue. The audience and the dramatic characters sharing and watching a trick on a weak-minded villain (and a foreigner in this case) is another technique used in comedy.(18) At the end of such a distinctively intellectual play the deus who brings in not only a narrow salvation from crisis but also a summarizing interpretation of the whole action would be most welcome. The Dioscuri who arrive probably on horses (1495) from aether (1496, another key-word of the play and a factor to add to its lightness) just in time to appease the anger of the King offers with privileged knowledge from heaven a reassuring frame of comprehension, which makes sense of all that has happened.
Despite their somewhat ambiguous status announced as Leda's (not Zeus') sons (1644), they convince the King that a marriage with Helen was not fated for him (ou pepromenoisin 1646) and that the King's sister who helped the Greeks in their escape did him no wrong (1648-9, as sophronos 1657). Yet their speech bears a curiously impartial and neutral air. They say that it was proper (echren 1651, cf.1636) for Helen to dwell in the King's house until the present day (1650-51). The acknowledgement of the justice and piety of the King's sister is given not so much in conformation to some providential plan of one particular god as on the grounds of her own virtue (1649 cf.887, 998-1029). They express regret that they could not come sooner to rescue their sister Helen (1658), because they are weaker than both fate (pepromenou) and the gods (ton theon) (1660-61), although they had been deified by Zeus (1659). Their excuse would most probably remind the audience of the strife or discord in heaven so impressively narrated in the prologos (24-41) and right in the middle of the action (878-86): Aphrodite's ambition for the name of beauty; Hera's revengeful jealousy followed by her production of Helen's phantom; Zeus' independent scheme of the Trojan War; Hermes' momentary announcement about Helen's happy return home; and the council of the Olympian gods where Hera and Aphrodite renew their argument. The mysterious lack of any coherent divine purpose which usually motivates the protagonists' vicissitudes of life cannot be missed.(19) Helen's future deification is indeed forecast as the wish of Zeus her father(1669), but Menelaus' happy retirement to Elysium as his portion allotted by the gods (morsimon theon para 1676-7). Their concluding moral is also based on the general way of unspecified gods (1679). The repeated use of impersonal expression or the gods in plurality as the dispensers of individual events would reveal a picture of ever-bustling realm of immortality where the Olympian deities are acting each from personal motives, sometimes emulative with and sometimes indifferent to others. Out of the absence of one single organizer Chance may loom up as an active force. At all events a sort of bird's eye view of both the immortal and mortal worlds would function as a smart touch to wind up the surprises (polla aelptos 1689) and the unexpected (ton adoketon 1691) of Helena which one of the most acute spectators found "new".(20)
