Hush, you wild things, for Heaven’s sake!—still as death!Shut your lips tight together!—not a breath!Don’t wink, don’t cough, for fear the beast should wakeEre we twist out his eye with that red stake.[Way’s translation]
Hush, you wild things, for Heaven’s sake!—still as death!Shut your lips tight together!—not a breath!Don’t wink, don’t cough, for fear the beast should wakeEre we twist out his eye with that red stake.[Way’s translation]
Hush, you wild things, for Heaven’s sake!—still as death!Shut your lips tight together!—not a breath!Don’t wink, don’t cough, for fear the beast should wakeEre we twist out his eye with that red stake.
Hush, you wild things, for Heaven’s sake!—still as death!
Shut your lips tight together!—not a breath!
Don’t wink, don’t cough, for fear the beast should wake
Ere we twist out his eye with that red stake.
[Way’s translation]
[Way’s translation]
Yet it is a foregone conclusion that as soon as he leaves the stage they will be at it once more. How can this difficulty be glossed over? The poet makes two suggestions. Odysseus wishes the satyrs to pass in and help gouge out the Cyclops’ eye, but that, of course, was theatrically impossible; they prefer to sing an incantation which will plunge the firebrand, of its own accord, into their victim’s brain (vss. 648 ff.). We have just seen that magic as a motive passed muster with Aeschylus, but it was different with Euripides. Odysseus indignantly ignores their offer, and after a few words of reproach he actually requests them to cheer on himself and his comrades at their dangerous task (vs. 653). A choral song in this tenor immediately follows (vss. 655-62). Thus, within the space of thirty lines, with no essential change in the situation, Odysseus first commands the chorus to be quiet and then urges them to sing!
The history and traditions of the Greek theater, the necessity of delivering songs at frequent intervals, and the difficulty of motivating the withdrawal of the chorus and its later return to the scene almost demanded the uninterrupted presence of the chorus upon the stage. The some half-dozen exceptions that are known to us outside of New Comedy will be discussed later (seepp. 250 f., below). How unnatural this convention would be can be realized from Euripides’Bacchanals, in which Pentheus arrested Dionysus and took active measures against the Bacchantes upon Mt. Cithaeron and yet allowed a chorus of the new god’s devotees (and foreigners at that) to remain practically unmolested before his palace throughout the play. What abaneful effect so rigid and arbitrary a rule had upon any complication of plot can readily be imagined. The situation was racily described by Gray:[266]“How could Macbeth and his wife have laid the design for Duncan’s murder? What could they have said to each other in the hall at midnight, not only if a chorus, but if a single mouse, had been stirring there? Could Hamlet have met the ghost, or taken his mother to task in their company? If Othello had said a harsh word to his wife before them, would they not have danced to the window and called the watch?” In theAgamemnon, Clytemnestra had to address to her returning lord words of loyal greeting the falsity of which she knew the chorus was well aware of. Aeschylus strove to surmount the difficulty by having the queen turn first to the choreutae: “Reverend citizens of Argos, I feel no shame to mention my husband-loving ways before you, for as we mortals grow older we lose such blushing fear” (vss. 855 ff.) We are to suppose that her effrontery in this and other respects intimidated the meticulous elders and prevented their denouncing her to Agamemnon. In Sophocles’Oedipus the King, Creon is bringing an oracular response from Delphi and meets the king before the Theban palace. In reply to Oedipus’ eager question he lets his eyes rest on the choreutae for a moment and says: “If you would hear while these are near, I am ready to speak; or else to go within.” In real life the second alternative probably would have been adopted; on the Greek stage it was impossible (cf.pp. 237-41, below). Accordingly, Oedipus makes answer as follows: “Speak before all, for I bear more sorrow for these than for my own life” (vss. 91-94). In Sophocles’Electra, Orestes discovers himself and his design to his sister in the presence of the chorus, “so that he entrusts a secret, upon which his empire and life depends, in the hands of sixteen women.”[267]The implication is that a body of women cannot keep a secret under any circumstances. Yet Sophocles has done what he could. At vs. 1202 Orestes’ identity is not yet revealed, but his sympathy has begun to makeElectra suspicious. She inquires: “Can it be that you are some unknown kinsman?” And when Orestes, glancing at the chorus, replies: “I would answer, if these as friends were present,” she reassures him by saying: “But they are friends, so that you can speak without mistrust.” This device was borrowed by Euripides in hisOrestes, vss. 1103 f. Pylades says: “Silence now, for I put small trust in women,” meaning the chorus; but Orestes replies: “Fear not, for these are friends to us.”
In general, the constant presence of the chorus bore more heavily upon Euripides than upon either Aeschylus or Sophocles, since his plots were more complicated than theirs. Usually the Euripidean choruses are bound to secrecy by an oath or promise. But this is only to shift the problem, not to solve it. In real life groups of people do not take such oaths without an adequate reason. In hisHippolytus, vss. 710-14, the chorus swear by Artemis to conceal their knowledge of Phaedra’s guilt, and they remain true to their oath, though by their so doing the innocent Hippolytus is brought to ruin and death before their eyes. But their willingness to take such an oath is without motive except as one is implied in their kindly feeling toward the heroine. In Euripides’Iphigenia among the TauriansandHelenthe choruses consist of Greek slaves, who would naturally, because of racial ties, plot against their barbarian masters in order to help their fellow-countrywomen. Other reasons, however, are cited. In both plays the actors promise to rescue the chorus as well as themselves (vss. 1067 f. and 1387 ff., respectively). In theIphigeniaan additional motive for choral secrecy is found in an appeal to sex loyalty: “We are women,” says Iphigenia, “a sex most staunch to one another, most trustworthy in keeping common counsel” (vss. 1061 f.). The same plea recurs, in an intensified form, in Euripides’Medea. Theatrical conditions compelled Medea to take the chorus into her confidence, and she bases her request for their silence not only upon the ground of their common womanhood but also upon the fact that she is alone, sadly wronged, and in distress (vss. 230-66). But this chorus consists of Corinthian women in whose sight Medea mustbe a foreigner, nay worse, a barbarian. It is so utterly improbable that womanly sympathy should cause Greek women to acquiesce in a barbarian’s plans for the assassination of their sovereign and his daughter that Professor Verrall[268]supposed a chorus to have been mechanically added in a subsequent revision (our present text) to a play originally written for private presentation without a chorus. On the other hand, the chorus are occasionally permitted to act as real people would and communicate their secret. Thus, in Euripides’Ion, vss. 666 f., Xuthus threatens his wife’s handmaidens with death if they betray to her the supposed fact that Ion is his son. Nevertheless, this is exactly what they do, declaring to her: “It shall be told, though I die twice over” (vs. 760); and thus they precipitate one of the most thrilling scenes in Greek tragedy. This is a characteristic product of Greek dexterity. Not content to surmount a troublesome obstacle, they actually derive an advantage from it.
We have seen that it was practically impossible for the chorus
to leave the scene of action during the play. This convention
was particularly awkward when circumstances arose which
would naturally demand their presence elsewhere. Such a
situation was most frequently brought about by a murder or
suicide just behind the scenes. Up to some thirty years ago an
explanation of the chorus’ failure to pass through the back scene
under such circumstances might be sought in the physical
conditions, since until then it was supposed that the Greek actors
had stood upon a stage ten or twelve feet above the chorus (seep. 78, above). This interpretation never had more than half
a leg to stand upon, inasmuch as the extant plays prove conclusively
that, whatever the physical conditions, intercourse
between actors and chorus was quite feasible and was often
resorted to (seep. 88, above); but it lost the slightest claim to
acceptance after Dörpfeld’s excavations and a re-examination of
the evidence showed that during the classical period of Greek
drama chorus and actors had stood upon the same level (seep. 117, above). Moreover, it is illuminating to note that the
chorus found it as difficult to leave the scene of action during
the play by the side entrances as by the doors in the background.
By vs. 1070 of Sophocles’Philoctetes, Odysseus and Neoptolemus
have gained possession of Heracles’ bow and are preparing to
return to their ship. As the chorus consists of sailors, these
would naturally leave with their commander. But the play
was not to end at this point, and the poet wished the chorus to
sing at vs. 1095. Accordingly, Philoctetes appeals to the chorus
not to desert him (vss. 1070 f.), and upon their referring the
request to Neoptolemus he replies, very improbably, that at the
risk of his being considered soft-hearted they may tarry until
the ship is ready to sail and that possibly by that time Philoctetes
will have decided to accompany them to Troy (vss. 1074-79).
No; the convention was derived from the fact that by origin the
chorus was an integral part of Greek drama and had a rôle to
play which required its continual presence; that is to say, leaving
the stage is not, with rare exceptions, “the kind of action that
a
But as already intimated, the difficulty arose most frequently and most glaringly when murder was threatened or was actually being committed behind the scenes. In such a case “to say that convention prevented the chorus from entering the palace may be true; but such a convention was of little assistance to a great dramatist who keenly felt the force of cause and effect. Such an artist knows that even convention must be met in a natural way. Does convention prevent the entrance of the chorus into the palace? Then common sense and ordinary conduct must as well, else there is an unreality which is absent in a work of art” (Stephenson,op. cit., p. 44). As successful a solution of the problem as any Greek dramatist ever devised occurs in Aeschylus’Agamemnon. The chorus consists of Argive elders, who must not be represented as cravenly betraying their lord. On the other hand, when Agamemnon’s cry of agony is heard at vs. 1343, they cannot be allowed to rush in and prevent his murder.This would alter the whole course of the story and at the same time would cause an unparalleled lacuna in the action of the play by leaving the stage, for a considerable interval, absolutely bare of performers. As soon as Agamemnon’s voice is heard, the choreutae fall into a wrangle, each declaring his opinion in turn (vss. 1346-71); but before they can reach a decision and act upon it, Clytemnestra and the bodies of her husband and of Cassandra are revealed.
Except that the debate is here so extended, the same device occurs again and again. In Euripides’Hecabe, Polymestor has been enticed within the tents, and cries out that he has been blinded and his children slain but that his enemies will not escape (vss. 1034-40). The chorus of Trojan captive women ask whether they ought not to rush in to help thwart this counter-stroke (vss. 1042 f.), but at once Hecabe appears and obviates the need of their entering (vs. 1044). Similarly, in Euripides’Andromache, vss. 815-19, Hermione’s nurse declares that her strength has given out in trying to prevent her mistress’ suicide, and beseeches the chorus to enter the palace and lend their aid. The slaves acknowledge that they hear the cries of servants from within, which confirm the nurse’s story; but at this moment Hermione herself slips from the restraining clutches of her attendants and darts upon the stage. Less successful is the scene in Euripides’Hippolytus. At vss. 776 ff. a handmaid raises the cry that Phaedra has hanged herself, and begs someone to cut her down. One semi-chorus inquires whether they should not render this service, but the other rejoins that there are attendants nearer at hand to do so and that officious meddlers often endanger their own lives! Immediately thereafter a further cry announces that the queen is dead past recovery (vss. 786 f.). One more illustration will suffice. The failure of the chorus to rescue Medea’s children is doubly motived: first, by the Colchian’s threat to anyone that might interfere (Euripides’Medea, vss. 1053 f.), and secondly, by the fact that the palace doors are barred, so that Jason’s servants have to break them down (vss. 1312 ff.). It has also been conjectured that thechorus’ description of Medea as iron-hearted and like a rock (vss. 1279 ff.) is intended to suggest that they felt unable to cope with so masterful and relentless a creature. This explanation finds some support in the undoubted fact that the necessity of comparative inactivity on the part of the chorus had much to do with the Greek tragedians’ fondness for choruses of women and old men. In speaking of the elders in Aeschylus’AgamemnonCornford[270]says that they “cannot enter the palace; not because the door is locked, nor yet because they are feeble old men. Rather they are old men because an impassible barrier of convention is forming between chorus and actors,and their age gives colour to their powerlessness.” In concluding this paragraph I wish to point out that the chorus’s inability to enter the background during the play existed quite independently of the threat of murder. In Euripides’IonCreusa’s maidservants, by the express permission of their mistress, examine and admire the sculpture on the outer walls of Apollo’s temple at Delphi (vss. 183-218). In real life it would be inevitable that a crowd bent on sight-seeing should soon wish to pass inside and view the omphalus and other objects of interest; and this, of course, the poet cannot allow. Accordingly, when the point is raised (vss. 219 ff.), Ion replies that it is forbidden to enter the inner fane except after the offer of sacrifice.
Finally, even at the very end of the play the chorus could not leave the stage except after the actors or in their company. This convention arose from the same conditions as have already been mentioned, but produced some incongruities of its own. For example, in Euripides’Iphigenia among the TauriansandHelenthe Greek slaves in the choruses are promised, as a reward for their silence and help, a return to Greece (seep. 156, above). But since in the latter play Helen and Menelaus make their final exit nearly five hundred lines before the end of the piece, it is manifestly impossible for the chorus to be spared. Consequently they are most unconscionably left in the lurch without a single word being said of their rescue. In theIphigeniatheyfare no better up to the time when Orestes’ ship is driven back to land; but in the final outcome Athena appears and includes the chorus among those whom King Thoas must allow to depart in peace (vss. 1467 f.). Possibly a desire to keep this promise to the chorus was one of the considerations that induced the poet to have the ship forced back to shore and thus to make a divine apparition unavoidable.
So inextricably is the chorus interwoven with Greek drama that its influence may be detected almost anywhere. I have traced some of the broader effects, however, and in subsequent chapters minor results will be mentioned in connection with other factors.