I leave untold, for whoso will to guess.
[Way’s translation]
These words, together with certain other phrases, show clearly that the speaker is conscious of an audience.
It will be worth our while to note and comment also upon the other monologues in the Alcestis and the first one in the Medea, these being the oldest of Euripides’ extant tragedies. At vss. 243 ff. the dying Alcestis, in the presence of her husband and the chorus and interrupted by the former at regular intervals, bids a final farewell to sun, earth, palace, etc. This belongs to the type found in Homer and Aeschylus and is paralleled by Sophocles’ Antigone (vss. 806 ff.) and Ajax (vss. 372 ff.). At vs. 746 of the Alcestis occurs one of the few instances of a chorus retiring during the course of a Greek play. Advantage is at once taken of this circumstance. A reason for the servant’s leaving the palace at this point can readily be imagined but none is expressly mentioned. Nor is the bluntness of his monologue softened by any motivation. At vs. 773 Heracles appears and a dialogue ensues between them. At vs. 837 the servant withdraws; Heracles tarries and bursts forth as follows (incidentally obviating in this way the necessity of their departures in opposite directions exactly synchronizing):
O much-enduring heart and hand of mine, etc.
It will be observed that such an introduction for the following soliloquy is a reversion to the second Homeric type, which now makes its first appearance in tragedy. At vs. 861 Admetus re-enters with the chorus and apostrophizes his bereaved palace. His speech at vs. 934 begins with the words “my friends,” referring to the chorus, and closes in the same way at vs. 961. Except for these artificial sutures his words constitute in effect a soliloquy. This play is especially valuable for our present purpose as indicating what a hindrance the chorus was to the unhampered use of monologues outside of the prologue, and how quickly and freely they were called into requisition during its withdrawal. The same deduction may be drawn also from comedy. In the Old Comedy of Aristophanes, the chorus still being active and vigorous, soliloquies were employed hardly more freely than in Aeschylus or Sophocles. But by the time of New Comedy, when the chorus had so far lost its functions as to appear only for entr’actes and when Euripides’ innovations had had time to work their full effect, monologues occur with great frequency and are usually unmotived. In fact, Professor Leo endeavored to use them in the plays of Plautus and Terence, which are taken from originals of the Greek New Comedy, as a criterion to determine the position of act divisions.
From the Medea I wish to cite only the opening monologue, which is spoken by the Colchian’s nurse:
Would God that Argo’s hull had never flown
Through those blue Clashing Rocks to Colchis-land,
... My mistress then,