Agamemnon at Aulis: A Study in the Oresteia

Aischylos wrote Agamemnon for exhibition in a theatre. A theatre whose conditions of production almost defy our imagining — how, in particular, were the chorus able to convey the verbal richness and complexity of their lyrics, while at the same time singing and dancing? To a music and choreography of which we know little and nothing respectively, but which yet, however stylized, however unobtrusive, added something to the complexity of the drama. We are left with a mere script. But a stage script, designed to be heard, performed with the phrases emerging in a prescribed order. The audience cannot refer back or leaf forward as in a book. They are — as the parodos is performed — witnesses of a lyric narrative. At any one point, they can only know what they remember of what has been heard already. About what is going to happen, immediately or later, they have only conjecture. We presume the majority to have been acquainted with some or many versions of the history of the house of Atreus; they are, then, aware of a range of possibilities. Aischylos can use any or none of the traditional versions, move from one aspect of the story as he imagines it to another as his purpose demands. And so, as the drama unfolds, the audience's range of expectations can be narrowed, or widened, at will by the emphases given to what they are hearing, the ways in which it adds to what they have heard already.