Electra

Long after Queen Clytemnestra and her lover murdered her father Agamemnon, the princess Electra lives on in the palace as a grieving, defiant prisoner, kept low and consumed by the wish for revenge. Her one hope is her exiled brother Orestes, and when a false report of his death arrives she nearly collapses under it. Then Orestes returns in secret, and Electra urges him on to the killing of their own mother. Sophocles gives the old revenge story to Electra herself, holding the whole drama inside her grief, hatred, and endurance rather than the act of vengeance. Thought to be a work of his old age, the play is one of his sharpest portraits of a mind bent by injustice. Available as a free PDF and EPUB edition.