RETEACH

Name: Alanoud Almulhim Date:24/05/2023

THE GREEK CHORUS

In a Greek play, the chorus is a group of performers whose lines are spoken
simultaneously. The chorus functions as a narrator of sorts for the events in the
play. They often voice what the audience may be thinking or feeling as a result of
the action onstage. Their odes can be divided into two parts: a strophe and an
answering antistrophe.
• The strophe is the first stanza of an ode and the first point or argument that the chorus
makes.
• The antistrophe is the second stanza of an ode. It presents a second point, which is
sometimes a counter argument. It can often complicate the conflict in the play.
• The epode is the third and last stanza of an ode.
DIRECTIONS: Read the following lines from the play Antigone and answer the questions
that follow.
CHORUS:
Many a wonder lives and moves, but the wonder of all is man,
That courseth over the grey ocean, carried of Southern gale,
Faring amidst high-swelling seas that rudely surge around,
And Earth, supreme of mighty Gods, eldest, imperishable,
Eternal, he with patient furrow wears and wears away
As year by year the plough-shares turn and turn,—
Subduing her unwearied strength with children of the steed.
And wound in woven coils of nets he seizeth for his prey

The aëry tribe of birds and wilding armies of the chase,

And sea-born millions of the deep—man is so crafty-wise.
And now with engine of his wit he tameth to his will
The mountain-ranging beast whose lair is in the country wild;
And now his yoke hath passed upon the mane
Of horse with proudly crested neck and tireless mountain bull.

1. What idea is expressed in the strophe or first stanza?

man is the greatest wonder, for he dominates the earth, sailing over oceans and
plowing the soil.
2. What idea is expressed in the antistrophe or second stanza?

man dominates animals, catching birds and sea creatures and

taming wild beasts and horses.

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 PRACTICE

Name: Alanoud Almulhim Date: 24/05/2023

THE GREEK CHORUS

DIRECTIONS: Read the following lines from the play Medea and answer the
questions that follow.
CHORUS:
Back streams the wave on the ever running river:
Life, life is changed and the laws of it o'ertrod.
Man shall be the slave, the affrighted, the low-liver!
Man hath forgotten God.
And woman, yea, woman, shall be terrible in story:
The tales too, meseemeth, shall be other than of yore.
For a fear there is that cometh out of Woman and a glory,
And the hard hating voices shall encompass her no more!

The old bards shall cease, and their memory that lingers
Of frail brides and faithless, shall be shrivelled as with fire.
For they loved us not, nor knew us: and our lips were dumb, our fingers
Could wake not the secret of the lyre.
Else, else, O God the Singer, I had sung amid their rages
A long tale of Man and his deeds for good and ill.
But the old World knoweth—'tis the speech of all his ages—
Man's wrong and ours: he knoweth and is still.

1. What important idea is expressed in the strophe or first stanza?

mens dominion over women will change, and women will gain power over man.

2. What important idea is expressed in the antistrophe or second stanza?

no more will poets and writers tell tales of women’s faithlessness; instead,
they will also tell of the faithlessness of men.
3. The play Medea is about a woman who gets revenge on her husband for
abandoning her for another woman. How might the lines of the chorus above
reflect the audience’s feelings about the events in the play?
the audience was likely to sympathize with the woman, and the chorus reflects the sympathy by
noting that women will gain power of men and no loger be considered faithless and powerless
characters in ancient poems stories

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