Female Characters, Female Sympathetic Choruses, and the ‘‘Suppression’’ of Antiphonal Lament at the Openings of Euripides’ 'Phaethon', 'Andromeda', and 'Hypsipyle'

Abstract

Female choruses abound in Euripides’ plays. What often distinguishes these choruses is their relationship with the heroes. Female choruses have the inbuilt ability to develop an intimate engagement with both male and female characters. In many Euripidean tragedies, there are ties of sympathy between female characters and the members of female choruses. These sympathetic female choruses are expected to offer consolation to a suffering female character. It has been observed that in Euripides’ tragedies, the chorus’ consolation of the heroine often takes place at the opening of the play. Frequently the parodos turns into a threnodic song and the chorus sings along with the mourning actor. It has even been argued that Euripides sometimes uses the relationship between the heroine and the female chorus to stage the genesis of antiphonal lament. Nonetheless, little attention has been paid to the existence of sympathetic female choruses in Euripides’ fragmentary dramas and their interaction with female characters.

In this article, I focus on the reception of antiphonal lament in Euripides’ fragments. At the openings of Euripides’ Phaethon, Andromeda, and Hypsipyle a series of the conventions of ritual lament as they could have been perceived by the spectators appear, creating expectations of a performance of an antiphonal lament. Nonetheless, at the openings of the Phaethon, Andromeda, and Hypsipyle, the heroines and the sympathetic choruses do not antiphonically sing a lament. For different reasons, antiphonal lament seems to have been ‘‘suppressed’’. Euripides, in these instances, not only toys with the expectation that a joint lament, or at least a shared song of complaint carrying elements of lament, will take place at the opening of his plays, but by letting elements of this genre to resonate through his lyrics, he attempts to engage the spectators’ affective responses to the uncertainties emerging from these lyric performances and involve them in his metapoetic discourse.