Three plays by Frederic Hebbel

Chapter 25: Scene 6

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About This Book

The volume gathers three intense verse-dramas that probe personal obsession, social pressure, and the costs of moral conviction. One play stages a stark, violent confrontation between a determined woman and overwhelming military or patriarchal force, exploring duty and vengeance. Another presents a domestic tragedy set in a narrow bourgeois milieu, tracing a woman's fall, the father's rigid authority, and the grinding effects of shame and poverty. A third sketches royal passion and political jealousy, where love and honor collide with suspicion and ruin. Across the pieces the prose is austere and compressed, emphasizing psychological torment, moral ambiguity, and a severe realism that foregrounds character over spectacle.

I’ll see you yet, not now alone;

I know for sure, as ever you’ll come back.

Herod.

’Tis not past hope: and therefore one thing more—

[A long pause.

I swore just now an oath that touches you.

[Writes a letter and seals it.

Here ’tis! Receive in charge this letter sealed.

You see the run o’ the title—

Joseph.

To the headsman!

Herod.

I’ll keep what I have therein promised you,

And if, perhaps, you’ve mind to tell a tale

About a King who——

Joseph.

Come! Impose the task,

To hand this note myself unto the headsman.5

[Exit.

Scene 6

Herod alone.

Herod.

Now she lives under sword, and that’s my spur

To do what I ne’er did before, to suffer

What ne’er before I suffered, and find comfort

If all be vain! and now, away!

[Exit.