Helen

The second major section of the play consists of several sets of interactions between Menelaos, the portress, Helen, and Menelaos’s servant. This sequence resolves one of the major tensions of the play by reuniting Menelaos with his true wife rather than with the phantom Helen, but it also leads into the problem that constitutes the climax of the story: how they will foil King Theoklymenos’s plans to marry Helen and make their escape from Egypt.

Menelaos appears at the doors of the palace just after Helen and the Chorus have left, on their way to see Theonöe. The great king of Sparta, now a castaway, is clothed in rags after a shipwreck that cast him up on the shores of Egypt. His monologue introduces the audience to the tale of his troubles in the seven years since the Trojan War ended, as well as to the fact that some of his servants and sailors have survived, along with the phantom Helen he recaptured at Troy. These other companions he has left behind in a cave while he approaches the palace on his own.