aeeeleaaeaa Ee) HELEN: Husband, this young man resembles one you know. In movement, body, and speech, he is the same. The clever Odysseus had a son named Telemachus. MENELAUS: Are you the son of the crafty Odysseus? TELEMACHUS: Yes, I have not looked upon his face for nearly twenty years. I was no more than a babe when he left our home in Ithaka. HELEN: Ithaka is the island kingdom from whence (Odysseus came. What of your mother, the queen? TELEMACHUS: My mother waits patiently for his return, bur I fear time is running out. Suitors are waiting for her to marry again. They stay in our palace and eat our food, and the queen is weary and heartbroken. NARRATOR I: Telemachus tells them all he can of the men who spoiled have his house and worried his mother. NARRATOR 2: Helen, long sorry for her role in such loss, is melted and wishes to help in any way she MENELAUS: How is it we can help you? TELEMACHUS: I come from the house of Nestor, where heard that you saw a great many lands. Pechaps you have heard something of my father. MENELAUS: Yes, I heard many foreign tongues and our return to Sparta was eight years in coming. NARRATOR I: Menelaus tells of their sojourn and of the anger of the gods against them and how they were blown back from advancing, time and again, and how they thought they would never reach home. NARRATOR 2: And he tells of the murder of his brother, Agamemnon, by Aegisthus. And of the involvement of Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's queen, who had taken Aegisthus as a new husband. MENELAUS: These things are terrible to hear. The news you seek is of your father. And I will tell you the last Theard of Odysseus. He was being held captive by she nymph Calypso in her island palace. MACHUS: May greatness continue to be your reward, Menelaus, for you have fired my spit. ‘TOR I: And ‘Telemachus stays not much longer and comes to announce his departure EAetaeaaaaas TELEMACHUS: Menelaus and Helen, your hospitality has fitted me up to continue my search. I leave you with these fine horses, since you have vast and fertile meadows and in my home of Ithaka we have ground only fit for goats and not for the grazing of horses. Please keep them. MENELAUS: And co you I give this parting gift. A great mixing bowl of silver, with a rim of pure gold— forged by Hephaestus himself, god of fire and metal. Blessings on your journey. THE WANDERINGS which Odysseus tries to get home) + SCENE 3- NARRATOR 2: Meanwhile, at that very moment, ‘Odysseus is being tossed on the waves of the sea. NARRATOR I: For Poseidon, angry and biteer toward Odysseus, has long worked to keep 1B | him from his homeland. NARRATOR 2: But the sea goddess Ino saves the cast- away and washes him ashore on the sands of Scheria. NARRATOR I: Here, Nausicaa, daughter of King Alkinoos, is with her handmaids, where the river meets the ocean, at a washing place to launder clothes. NAUSICAA: Take these baskets down to the water's edge. When these linens are washed, lay them out on the rocks in the sunshine to dry. (Handmaids take the baskets) HANDMAID I: This is a good spor for our purposes. Down closer to the reeds. Let us walk to the edge. 43