Chorus
In literature, a chorus refers to a group of characters who serve as a collective voice, often providing commentary or insight into the events of the story. Originating from ancient Greek drama, the chorus typically offers reflections on the themes and actions of the play, serving as a bridge between the audience and the characters.
4 Key excerpts on "Chorus"
eBook - ePubDemocratic Swarms
Ancient Comedy and the Politics of the People
- Page duBois(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- University of Chicago Press(Publisher)
...One is the Chorus, the collective and anonymous presence embodied by an official college of citizens. Its role is to express through its fears, hopes, questions, and judgments the feelings of the spectators who make up the civic community.” 43 Note how Vernant begins with the Chorus, this “collective and anonymous presence” of citizens. Of course, as discussed previously, the Chorus appears in many other contexts in Athenian society, in the performance of hymns, dithyrambs, the songs sung in honor of Dionysos, and in comedy as well as tragedy, and may have represented not only citizens, but also other residents of the city, its foreigners, its slaves, its women, all of whom may have been present in the audience at dramatic festivals and other choral performances. Vernant continues, emphasizing the copresence with the Chorus, of the characters in drama: “The other, played by a professional actor, is the individualized character whose actions form the core of the drama and who appears as a hero from an age gone by, always more or less estranged from the ordinary condition of the citizen.” In the case of comedy, this “character” is not “a hero from an age gone by,” but an invented character who drives forward the plot of the drama, a thinly disguised person familiar in the everyday life of the spectators, or even one of the gods, like the Dionysos of Frogs. Vernant goes on to comment on how the Chorus uses language “that carries on the lyrical tradition of a poetry celebrating the exemplary virtues of the hero of ancient times.” Can we see a similar paradox in the comic Chorus, which at times reaches lyrical heights that refer back to the aristocratic past, but at other times seems to speak directly to the audience in the voice of the playwright himself? I cite this passage at such length because it has had such an impact on the study of ancient tragedy since the essay’s publication...
...When Seneca in Rome wrote his tragedies for recitation before a small group, the choric passages had become only gnomic interludes between the acts. This was, too, the practice in Sackville and Norton’s Gorboduc and in the other Inns of Court plays that followed in England, but Fulke Greville in his closet-play Mustapha could imagine a Chorus in the old sense. When the term ‘Chorus’ was used in the public theatre of that time, it was a label for a single anonymous speaker, the author’s spokesman, as in Romeo and Juliet and Henry V, or, with a degree of ambiguity, the spokesman for a generalized comment that the audience would be expected to share, as in Marlowe’s Faustus. The ancient view of the Chorus’s function is well summarized in Horace’s Ars Poetica : The Chorus must back the good and give sage counsel; must control the passionate and cherish those that fear to do evil; it must praise the thrifty meal, the blessings of justice, the laws, and Peace with her unbarred gates. It will respect confidences and implore heaven that prosperity may revisit the miserable and quit the proud. (Horace on the Art of Poetry, edited by Edward Henry Blakeney, 1928, p. 49) This presents the Chorus as voicing the wisdom that the audience, when it remembers, already has. This makes it, as has commonly been said, a group-representation of the audience and its memories, its fears, its aspirations. Not that it is not capable of special insight, when the dramatist expresses through its words those things that are hard to endure or gives to it a realization, beyond what the characters themselves have, of the oncoming march of events. So it is in the Agamemnon, where we are told by the Chorus that ‘Against one’s will comes wisdom;/The grace of the gods is forced on us/Throned inviolably’ (translated by Louis MacNeice, reprinted 1937, p. 19), or when in Oedipus the King the Chorus is in advance of the king in seeing the coming of disaster...
eBook - ePubA Short Introduction to the Ancient Greek Theater
Revised Edition
- Graham Ley(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- University of Chicago Press(Publisher)
...Chorus The Greek word choros describes a group of people expected to sing and dance. The Chorus for tragedy was apparently increased in number near the middle of the fifth century from twelve to fifteen; the Chorus for comedy numbered twenty-four. There is no clear evidence for the size of the satyr Chorus. The history of the choros in Greek society is a long and complex one, and is bound up firmly with many varieties of Greek poetry, apart from drama. Most simply expressed, it is clear that songs or dances accompanied decisive events in the lives of Greek communities, and that eventually literacy, namely the record offered to us by the reintroduction of writing into Greece before 700 B.C., permits us to glimpse the organization of what originally may have been spontaneous or traditional forms into what we recognize as poetry. Those skilled in composition (verbal and musical) might be required or requested to provide a song for a particular event, such as a marriage, an athletic victory, the funeral of a member of a wealthy family, or a religious festival. This practice continued well into the fifth century and beyond, and many of the songs will have been sung by a Chorus, often acting as representatives of a community. A tragic choros in honor of the god Dionysus is first mentioned in connection with the sixth century, not at Athens; but convincing evidence for the widespread existence of choroi throughout the Greek world (in the western Greek settlements in Sicily and Italy, in Sparta, on the island of Delos in honor of the gods Apollo and Artemis) makes particular explanations for their presence at Athens unnecessary. The use of the mask in Dionysiac worship may well have encouraged representation. The activities of choroi were in any case performances, and the need for a composer as trainer (didaskalos, the later “playwright”) is hardly surprising...
eBook - ePub- Peter D. Arnott(Author)
- 2002(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...It is noticeable that the playwrights do not rely upon the choral lyrics to give information essential to the plot; or, if the lyrics do contain such information, it is repeated elsewhere. The Chorus may enlarge upon information already received; it may reflect on it, and colour it. But it does not originate it. It is noticeable, too, that when the Chorus in comedy addresses its collective harangue (parabasis) to the audience, it shifts into metres closer to the pattern of ordinary speech; and when the Chorus, both in tragedy and comedy, engages in conversation with the actors, it falls into the actors’ common speech pattern of iambic trimeter. The presumption here – though it is unverifiable – is that in such cases a single voice, that of the koryphaios or Chorus leader, engaged in the dialogue, for the sake of clarity. Sometimes – though again this is unverifiable – the Chorus seems to break down into single voices, debating amongst themselves. This almost certainly happens, for example, in Agamemnon, when the Chorus responds individually to the off-stage cries announcing their king’s death: It was the king who cried, the thing is done Let us think, there may be a way – Hear what I propose; send criers out And rouse the people to defend the house No, let us force our way within And catch the murderers with sword in hand. I say so too. Let us do something, This is the time to act, and quickly. 15 To what extent did movement supplement language in conveying meaning? Did the patterns of the dance translate into visual images the metaphors contained within the verse? Or, more concretely, did the Chorus depict in action the subject of their song? Once again, we have no means of knowing, though modern directors have played productively with the idea. Andrei Serban, in his New York production of Agamemnon, illustrated the choral description of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia by a balletic re-enactment of the event...
