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| Sawrey Gilpin Andromache feeding the Horses of Hector before 1807 drawing British Museum |
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| George Romney Lady Hamilton as Andromache escaping from the burning of Troy ca. 1795 drawing Yale Center for British Art |
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| Colin Morison Andromache offering Sacrifice to Hector's Shade ca. 1760 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Bartolomeo Pinelli Andromache between two burning Altars, fainting as Aeneas approaches ca. 1811 etching British Museum |
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| Wenceslaus Hollar after Francis Cleyn Andromache before three Altars addressing Aeneas ca. 1654 etching British Museum |
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| Thomas Burke after Angelica Kauffmann Andromache weeping over the ashes of Hector 1772 mezzotint British Museum |
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| Johan Ludwig Lund Pyrrhus and Andromache before Hector's Tomb ca. 1807-1811 oil on canvas Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen |
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| Pierre-Narcisse Guérin Andromache with Astyanax kneeling before Pyrrhus 1810 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
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| Jean Audran after Louis de Silvestre Andromache pleads for mercy as Ulysses finds Astyanax hidden in Hector's Tomb before 1750 etching British Museum |
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| Louis Desplaces after Jean Jouvenet Andromache shielding Astyanax from Greek Soldiers before 1739 etching and engraving British Museum |
The Reading Club
Is dead serious about this one, having rehearsed it for two weeks
They bring it right into the Odd Fellows Meeting Hall.
Riding the backs of the Trojan Women,
In Euripides' great wake they are swept up,
But the women of the chorus, in black stockings and kerchiefs,
Stand up bravely to it, shawled arms thrash
In a foam of hysterical voices shrieking,
Seaweed on the wet flanks of a whale,
For each town has its Cassandra who is a little crazy,
Wed to some mystery or other and therefore painfully sensitive,
Wiser than anyone but no one listens to her, these days the terror
Reaches its red claws into back ward and living room alike,
For each town has its Andromache who is too young,
With snub nose and children just out of school
Even she cannot escape it, from the bombed city she is led out
Weeping among the ambulances,
And each community has its tart, its magical false Helen
Or at least someone who looks like her, in all the make-up she can muster,
The gorgeous mask of whatever quick-witted lie will keep her alive
At least a little while longer, on the crest of the bloody wave,
That dolorous mountain of wooden ships and water
In whose memory the women bring us this huge gift horse,
This raging animal of a play no one dares to look in the eye
For fear of what's hidden there:
Small ragdoll figures toppling over and over
From every skyscraper and battlement hurtling
Men and women both, mere gristle in the teeth of fate.
Out over the sea of the audience our numb faces
Are stunned by Andromache's, locked up there on the platform
Inside Euripides' machine the women sway and struggle
One foot at a time, up the surging ladder
Of grief piled on grief, strophe on antistrophe,
In every century the same, the master tightens the screws,
Heightens the gloss of each bitter scene
And strikes every key, each word rings out
Over our terrified heads like a brass trumpet,
For this gift is an accordion, the biggest and mightiest of all,
As the glittering lacquered box heaves in and out,
Sigh upon sigh, at the topmost pitch a child
Falls through midnight in his frantically pink skin.
As the anguished queen protests, the citizens in the chorus wail
Louder and louder, the warriors depart
Without a glance backwards, these captains of the world's death
Enslaved as they are enslavers, in a rain of willess atoms
Anonymity takes over utterly: as the flaming city falls
On this bare beach, in the drab pinewood hall
The Reading Club packs up to go; scripts, coffee cups, black stockings,
Husbands and wives pile into the waiting cars
Just as we expect, life picks up and goes on
But not art: crouched back there like a stalled stallion
Stuffed in its gorgeous music box is the one gift
That will not disappear but waits, but bides its time and waits
For the next time we open it, that magical false structure
Inside whose artifice is the lesson, buried alive,
Of the grim machinations of the beautiful that always leads us
To these eternally real lamentations, real sufferings, real cries.
– Patricia Goedicke (1989)
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| Jacob Matthias Schmutzer Ulysses seizing the Son of Andromache 1778 etching and engraving Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Louis de Silvestre Andromache pleads for mercy as Ulysses finds Astyanax hidden in Hector's Tomb 1708 oil on canvas private collection |
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| Frederic Leighton Captive Andromache ca. 1888 oil on canvas Manchester Art Gallery |
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| Agnes Spofford Cook Andromache 1903 book illustration New York Public Library |