The Role of the Chorus in Euripides Play - Term Paper Example

The role of the Chorus in Euripides plays. The chorus is a staple of ancient Greek drama, especially in earlier works. Kevin Osborn and Dana Burgess (1998) suggested that the classical Greek drama had probably begun as a choral lyric poems – storytelling sung or chanted by a chorus and that gradually the drama started to feature actors that impersonated characters to enact the action of the plot. (p. 43) Whether this is true or not, the fact remains that the chorus has been an irreplaceable element of Greek drama although its role steadily diminished as the part of the actors has expanded through the years. The chorus is consisted of a group of characters, usually cast as a group of elders or young women and that they comment or interpret the events of the story and express an opinion to the audience. This paper will explore the role of the chorus in four of the most famous of Euripides plays - Alcestis, Medea, Electra and the Bacchae – particularly in how they differ and the significance of such differences. Alcestis Alcestis is one of the earliest surviving plays penned by Euripides. The chorus played a significant role. It was instrumental in expressing Euripides’ sympathy for women. The storyline followed the events that started after King Admetus of Thessaly learns from the Fates, goddesses responsible for determining the life span of each individual, that his time has expired. But the king was allowed the opportunity to substitute anyone who will die in his place. It was his wife who agreed to take his place. According to Jacqueline de Romilly (1985), the chorus is in a position to elicit the religious meaning of the action and to punctuate it with prayers at the same time; it is easily used to represent the group – citizenry or army – whose fate is tied to that of the actors. (p. 48) In Alcestis, this became true for Euripides. In the play, the chorus was given the role of announcing Alcestis’ future celebration in song and her coming worship as a heroine. She has already gained the status, the chorus claimed, of a makaira daimon or a blessed spirit and that she will be addressed as potnia but viewed as divine. It was in this play wherein the chorus still took a prominent role. It delivered the play’s central message that of Alcestis’ usurpation of the male role of protecting the reputation of the house while Admetus was alienated from every social role normal for men. Medea The chorus in Medea, wrote Emily McDermott (1985), has frequently come under severe criticisms from scholars on charges ranging from irrelevance to treachery against their native city to moral paralysis in their failure to intercede on the children’s behalf, for instance. (p. 133) This is not surprising because Euripides have assigned the chorus an essentially passive role in the play. No amount of critical wishfulness had made them lift their cudgels for the wrongs done to Medea as the playwright has clearly shaped them not as an actor but a mere sensibility. The chorus, when a sympathetic group of relative outsiders, could only offer some sort of model for the audience in the theater, at least to the extent that they are sorry for Medea and want to know more about her situation, but that they are also women of Corinth in the heroic age, and their dancing, singing masks and costumes marked them out as a distinctive part of this particular fiction. In what would be considered as active involvement in the play, the chorus addressed and acknowledged the presence of Medea’s nurse, Medea herself, Kreon, and Aigeus but it did not acknowledge the comings and goings of Jason nor speak to him until the final scene as they conferred a rebuke. In Medea, the chorus was used as an attitude towards the heroic figures because their silent presence seemed to be an important consideration for the heroes who must endure the chorus’ and the spectators’ witnessing. Electra In the Electra, the chorus was deprived of its entry-song; the first music is given to Electra. This was a significant step towards dilution of the chorus’s role in the succeeding plays by Euripides. The ensuing long lyrical dialogues between Electra and the chorus did not make up for it since it is clear that it was Electra still who dominated the exchange. It appears like the chief function of the chorus in Electra is to subserve Electra, herself and nothing else. The chorus’ lyrical dialogue is characterized by their comfort and counsel that are designed to bring Electra’s determination into higher relief. In addition, the chorus supports Electra by urging action; the chorus names both the killing of Clytemnestra and the dread Erinyes, and then echoes Electra in her incendiary depiction of Agamemnon’s dishonorable burial. (Foley p. 35) Unlike in Medea, however, the role of the chorus in Electra seems to be a little more potent. The chorus and Electra were one in playing a dominant role to generate revenge through their lament. The women of the chorus, dressed in black robes, visually prefigure the Furies and adopt their role of stimulating vendetta justice. (Foley, p. 35) The Bacchae The Bacchae is the play which most often has prompted classicists to move beyond the confines of their discipline. It is a play that deviates from the usual Euripides material as well. According to Simon Goldhill (1986), the Bacchae has been seen as a text particularly concerned with the theatrical experience above all considerations and, hence, is preoccupied with representation and the performance and performability of the tragic text. (p. 267) Indeed, there are special circumstances surrounding the production of this play, and special characteristics of the drama in terms of stagecraft that make it a particularly interesting example through which to consider the questions of performance. The role of the chorus is an important manifestation of this. The Bacchae provides a special case for Euripidean drama for “in no other extant Greek play since Aeschylus is the chorus so prominent and moreover, their songs are clearly of fundamental importance for an understanding of the play.” (Goldhill, p. 268) Here, a different kind of chorus appears, one that has a more imposing grandeur. The songs performed by the Asiatic Bacchants are the very essence of Dionysiac spirit is fundamental in the play as a unifying element. The chorus sings in lyric meters that cannot be reproduced by English verse, because ancient rhythmic patterns depend on the length of syllable, rather than on emphasis. Sung lyrics were accompanied by the aulos or the flute and that the meters alone evoke feeling, and this was reinforced by drums that are probably carried by the chorus itself. (Euripides 1998, p. xxii) It was the chorus’ instruction that defined the primary function of the ancient director as didaskos ‘teacher’. (Rehm 2002, p. 201) As the role of the chorus waned in the Euripidean drama, it was restored by the Bacchae. This is particularly interesting because the play was one of Euripides’ last and that it has five full, and highly relevant, choral odes. In this respect Euripides, seemed to revert back to the older patterns in the Greek drama. But, of course, there is the fact that the theme had a fundamental need for a chorus. The chorus was useful because the Bacchae is a dark play, requiring a representation in sight and sound of the Dionysiac spirit - the driving force of the Euripidean tragedy. A common ground that characterized Euripides’ choruses is their overwhelming femaleness and their increasing irrelevance. We have seen in the four plays examined by this paper that the protagonists were women and that the chorus have supported their domination in the storyline. Finally, in the Bacchae, the chorus’ fate is closely tied up with the action, but in many others, such as in Alcestis, Medea and Electra, they were reduced into mere spectators. As the Greek tragedies grew more complex, the chorus lost its centrality. As this paper has mentioned, Euripides himself led this trend in Greek drama. When the previous drama involved fewer characters, the chorus’s job was large since obviously the chorus’s chanting was required to entertain the audiences. The emergence of complex plots in plays that gave more dimensions to the actors was spearheaded by Euripides when he reduced the role of the chorus and emphasized more on character to character dialogue to shed light on the play’s scenarios. In general, we have seen from the Euripides’ plays that the individual was emphasized more than the polis or the society, which were represented by the chorus. For instance, in Medea, Athens comes into the thoughts of the chorus because in the preceding episode Aegeus has offered Medea a refuge. The chorus, as a result, lost its central role and became a mere formality in Euripides’ plots that can advance of their own accord. From here, the chorus – from which – in the mists of history, tragedy originated in odes to Dionysius – became a dispensable, all too-irrational appendage to Euripidean tragedy. Gone were the materials wherein a need for chorus was so fundamental in expressing the fears, hopes and judgments, the feelings of the spectator who make up the civic community. Bibliography de Romilly, Jacquiline. A Short History of Greek Literature. University of Chicago Press, 1985. Euripides. Bacchae. Paul Woodruff (trans.) Hackett Publishing, 1998. Foley, Helen. Female Acts in Greek Tragedy. Princeton University Press, 2002. Goldhill, Simon. Reading Greek Tragedy. Cambridge University Press, 1986. McDermott, Emily. Euripides Medea. Penn State Press, 1985. Osborn, Kevin and Burgess, Dana. The Complete Idiots Guide to Classical Mythology. Alpha Books, 1998. Rehm, Rush. The Play of Space: Spatial Transformation in Greek Tragedy. Princeton University Press, 2002. Read More