3-071-184 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches at the Lyceum: "The Cup" - the Death of Synorix, 1881. Interior of the Temple of Artemis, a scene from the '...grim catastrophe...when the profligate Galatian Tetrarch Synorix, so powerfully impersonated by Mr. Henry Irving, lies prostrate and writhing in the agonies of death by poison at the foot of the altar of the goddess, where, in his luxurious pride, he vainly hoped that his nuptials with the beauteous relict of the murdered Sinnatus would be celebrated. The Reman General Antonius would raise the gasping, struggling wretch from the ground; but it is too late...the assassin of Sinnatus groans his wretched life out...and lies there, at last, dead, like the carrion that he is. Camma [Ellen Terry], who "Slew the Slayer and shall Herself be Slain," but by her own hand and in the same cup by which she has dealt death to Synorix, looks down, half in exultation, half in horror, at the victim of her vengeance..[The] figures of the moribund Tetrarch, and of the vengeful High Priestess of Artemis, stand out in lurid relief against the dark background of the Temple with its...mysteriously veiled Sanctuary of the goddess..Scenic and dramatic art have rarely produced so magnificent an ensemble as has been achieved in the concluding tableau.' From "Illustrated London News", 1881.