Quite apart from these considerations, however, there is still something to be said for the Euripidean type of prologue. Knowing that the spectators had no playbill, whatever the dramatist wished to tell them concerning the antecedents of the dramatic action he had to tell them in the play itself. And though the plots of most tragedies were based upon oft-told myths, yet we have the authority of Aristotle[365] for the statement that even the best-known tales were known to but a few. Furthermore, the Greek practice of attacking the series of dramatic incidents, not at the beginning or in the middle, but only at the end, of excluding everything but the culmination or fifth act (see [pp. 266 f.], above), prevented the earlier events from actually being represented upon the stage. There was, therefore, a considerable body of facts which the poet had either to relate frankly and succinctly in a mass at the beginning or to attempt to weave into the play and disclose gradually as they were needed. Euripides preferred the former method, which he employed in all of his extant plays except possibly the Iphigenia at Aulis. It was borrowed by Sophocles in his Maidens of Trachis, was extensively imitated by Aristophanes despite his caustic criticisms, and was exceedingly popular among the writers of New Comedy. Even in modern times, notwithstanding all that has been said against it both by ancients and moderns, there have always been playwrights to whom this manner of approach has made the stronger appeal. The principle involved is well stated by a contemporaneous student of dramatic technique:[366] “It may not unreasonably be contended, I think, that, when an exposition cannot be thoroughly dramatized—that is, wrung out, in the stress of the action, from the characters primarily concerned—it may best be dismissed, rapidly and even conventionally, by any not too improbable device.”
Frequently the opening soliloquy of the prologue was spoken by a divinity, and in Euripides’ Hecabe it is spoken by a ghost! Their prophetic powers enabled such personages to predict the course of the action. Thus in Euripides’ Hippolytus (vss. 42 ff.), Aphrodite declares that Phaedra’s love for her stepson will be made known to his father, whose curses will bring Hippolytus to destruction, and that Phaedra herself will die, though with name untarnished; and these things actually come to pass in the play. Indeed, an outstanding difference between ancient and modern tragedy, doubtless arising from the fact that the former dealt with traditional material whose outlines were fairly well known to at least some and could be modified only within certain limits, consists in this, that the Greek tragedians usually made little or no attempt to keep their audiences in the dark as to the outcome. It is true that there are occasional exceptions. For example, in Euripides’ Ion, Hermes explains in the prologue that Apollo is Ion’s father by a secret union, but expressly states that the Delphian deity will bring the youth into his just deserts without letting his own misdeed become known. Consequently when Ion’s very life seems to depend upon his parentage transpiring, the hearts of the spectators are harried with fear for his safety until Athena appears in her brother’s stead as deus ex machina and unexpectedly reveals his secret after all. Euripides’ Orestes provides another instance of an attempt to baffle the spectators. The contrast of a few such cases, however, serve only to call attention to the more usual procedure. Here again the Greek practice has not lacked defenders. Lessing wrote:[367] “I am far removed from believing with the majority of those who have written on the dramatic art that the dénouement should be hid from the spectator. I rather think it would not exceed my powers to rouse the very strongest interest in the spectator even if I resolved to make a work where the dénouement was revealed in the first scene. Everything must be clear for the spectator, he is the confidant of each person, he knows everything that occurs, everything that has occurred, and there are hundreds of instances when we cannot do better than to tell him straight out what is going to occur.” A somewhat different point of view is presented by Professor Murray:[368] “But why does the prologue let out the secret of what is coming? Why does it spoil the excitement beforehand? Because, we must answer, there is no secret, and the poet does not aim at that sort of excitement. A certain amount of plot-interest there certainly is: we are never told exactly what will happen but only what sort of thing; or we are told what will happen but not how it will happen. But the enjoyment which the poet aims at is not the enjoyment of reading a detective story for the first time; it is that of reading Hamlet or Paradise Lost for the second or fifth or tenth.”
But the prologue was not always spoken by a divinity; oftentimes a mortal appeared in this capacity. Sometimes this mortal took no further part in the dramatic action, and sometimes he did. In the latter case he occasionally displayed as prologist a greater knowledge of the situation and of what was going to happen than he afterward seemed to possess as an acting character. This difficulty occurs in Plautus’ Braggart Captain. At vss. 145 ff. (in the prologue) Palaestrio boasts how he will cause his fellow-slave “not to see what he has seen” and even explains the trick which will be used for this purpose. But in the scene following the prologue, when he must make good his braggadocio, he seems as perplexed and confounded as would one who had not foreseen this emergency.
In later times the soliloquy of the prologist was sometimes deferred until after an introductory scene or two. Such “internal” prologues occur in the Casket and the Braggart Captain of Plautus. The meager beginnings of this system can be traced in Aristophanes and Euripides, but there is no evidence for its full development prior to the time of Alexis, a poet of Middle Comedy. His nephew, Menander, who belonged to the New Comedy, employed it in his Hero and Girl with Shorn Locks. In Plautus’ Amphitruo, Mercury speaks an opening prologue (vss. 1-152), then engages in a dialogue with Sosia (vss. 153-462), after which he continues the prologue for some thirty additional verses!
The six comedies of Terence all begin with “dissociated” prologues. These give the name and Greek authorship of the Latin play and bespeak the friendly consideration of the audience. They devote no attention, however, to the dramatic situation in the comedy or to future complications therein, but are employed for polemical purposes against the poet’s detractors. It used to be supposed that this was an absolutely new departure on Terence’s part, but it is now found to be only the last in a series of developments which began in Greek comedy.[369]
Of course monologues were not the invention of the playwrights, being found as early as Homer. Yet true soliloquies, as seen in Shakespeare, are a late development in Greek drama. The epic hero, when alone, may appeal to some divinity or the elements, or he may address his own soul; he never simply thinks his thoughts out loud. So long as the tragedies began with a parodus the choreutae would nearly always be present; and a character who was otherwise alone could address his remarks to them. Consequently no monologues occur in either the Suppliants or the Persians of Aeschylus. But with the introduction of a prologue the way was opened up. It would be interesting to know how the words of the eunuch at the beginning of Phrynichus’ Phoenician Women were motivated, but no evidence is available. In the extant plays of Aeschylus only three soliloquies are found—in the Prometheus Bound (vss. 88 ff.), Agamemnon (vss. 1 ff.), and Eumenides (vss. 1 ff.). The first is addressed to the elements (ether, breezes, rivers, ocean, earth, and sun) and the other two begin with prayer. There are also some other speeches which are delivered in the presence of the chorus or of another character but with little or no reference thereto. If completely detached, however, they are addressed to divinities as before. It must be added that though monologues in Aeschylus and other tragedians may be thus motivated at the beginning, they frequently trail off into expressions which are not strictly appropriate. It is noticeable, then, that of the two types of motivation found in Homer only the first occurs in Aeschylus. In Sophocles the situation is practically the same.
But already in the oldest of Euripides’ extant tragedies, the Alcestis, a development may be detected. Apollo’s monologue at the beginning of this play has just been discussed. It is apparent that when a divinity utters a soliloquy he would rarely address his words to some absent deity or to the elements, as mortal personages did in Aeschylus and Sophocles. This factor helps to account for the fact that dramatic illusion suffers here. For all practical purposes Apollo might just as well have frankly addressed himself to the spectators, as the comic poets sometimes allowed their characters to do. Such prologizing deities are careful to explain the reason for their presence in the place where we find them; but they are absolved from the necessity of accounting for their soliloquizing. Their speeches sometimes degenerate into business-like notices which are almost brusque in their abruptness. For example, Posidon begins Euripides’ Trojan Women:
I come, Posidon I, from briny depths
Of the Aegean Sea, where Nereids dance, etc.
[Way’s translation]