Dramatic Interpretation:  The Contest of the Bow

 Penelope then challenged the suitors:

‘Listen to me, my overbearing guests,

you who plague this palace night and day,

drinking, eating us out of house and home.

I set before you the great bow of King Odysseus now!

The hand that can string this bow with greatest ease,

the hand that can shoot an arrow clean through all twelve of these axes -

he is the man I shall marry, yes, forsaking this house

where I was once a bride, this gracious house

so filled with the best that life can offer!’

Then Antinous, a leader of the suitors, replied:

‘Fellow suitors, this is the crucial test that makes or breaks us all.
It is no easy task, I bet, to string his polished bow.
Not a soul in the crowd can match Odysseus.
So great a man he was ...’
 

Smooth was his speech, but deep in his heart

his hopes were bent on stringing the bow

and shooting through the axes.
Antinous hoped for this,

but he was fated to be the first man to taste
an arrow whipped from great Odysseus' hands,
once the slaughter had begun.

‘Up, friends!  Let’s try the bow,’ Antinous shouted.

So Antinous urged, and all the suitors agreed.

All the young men struggled to bend it back but failed.

It was no use.  They fell far short of the strength the bow required.

Then crafty Odysseus, disguised as a beggar in his own home,

with his heart filled with cunning, said:

‘Listen to me, you lords who court the noble queen.

Give me the polished bow now, won't you?

It will amuse you all, watching me, a beggar, try my hand

at stringing the bow of Odysseus.’

His request sent them all into fits of laughter.

And so Odysseus picked up and held the bow

in his own hands, turning it over, tip to tip,   
testing it, this way, that way.

And all the while, the suitors jeered and mocked him.

But Odysseus, mastermind in action -
once he'd handled the great bow and scanned every inch -
then, with a calm ease, strung his mighty bow.
Quickly his right hand plucked the string to test its pitch,
and, under his touch, it sang out clear and sharp as a swallow's cry.

 

Horror swept through the suitors, faces blanching white,
and Zeus cracked the sky with a lightning bolt, his blazing sign.
Odysseus snatched up one of the winged arrows -
the rest were still bristled deep inside the quiver,

soon to be tasted by all the feasters there.

Setting shaft on the handgrip, drawing the notch

and bowstring back, back . . . right from his stool,

just as he sat, but aiming straight and true, he let it fly.

And it never missed an ax from the first ax-handle

clean on through to the last!

Odysseus now silently looked upon the suitors,

and the bloody slaughter began.