And now!—there’s not one woman to be seen.
Stay, here comes one, my neighbor Calonice.
Good morning, friend.
[Rogers’ translation]
Perhaps I may be pardoned for digressing here a moment in order to discuss what happens when two characters make a simultaneous introit through the same entrance. In most cases it is natural to suppose that they have been together for some little while and that some talk has already been carried on between them. On the contrary in the fifth-century plays the conversation regularly does not begin until after they have entered the stage. Two instances of this have already been noted on [pages 259 f.], above, Orestes coming all the way from Phocis to Argos before he acquaints his associates with the Delphian oracle or formulates a plan of action with them, and Iris accompanying Madness from Olympus but reserving her instructions until Thebes has been reached. Of course it is easy to see why this convention was employed, but a little thinking enabled the playwrights to secure the same results without violating verisimilitude quite so patently. Only twice in fifth-century drama do characters enter with words which indicate that they have already been engaged in conversation. In Aristophanes’ Frogs (405 B.C.) (vs. 830), Euripides says to Dionysus, as they emerge with Pluto from the latter’s palace: “I would not yield the throne of tragedy to Aeschylus; do not urge me to.” Again in Euripides’ posthumous Iphigenia at Aulis (vss. 303 ff.), Agamemnon’s slave enters in expostulation: “Menelaus, outrageous is your boldness.... You ought not to have unsealed the tablet which I bore.” The former of these quotations clearly implies words off scene, and the latter implies action and presumably words as well. But in New Comedy and the Latin comedies this technique has, not unnaturally, pre-empted the field. Two instances must suffice. In Terence’s version of Menander’s Andrian Girl (vss. 820 f.), Chremes enters complaining: “My friendship for you, Simo, has already been put sufficiently to the test; I have run enough risk. Now make an end of coaxing me.” Again, in Terence’s Brothers (vs. 517), Ctesipho and Syrus enter together, the former saying: “You say my father has gone to the country?” It is characteristic of this technique that the very first words make plain the fact that the stage conversation is a continuation of one already begun off stage and likewise disclose the topic under discussion. It will be remembered that simultaneous entrances of this sort, when made from the abode of one of the characters involved, are generally left unmotivated (see [p. 239], above).
After this digression we may return to the second use which New Comedy made of monologues, viz., as exit speeches. Since there was no drop curtain in the Greek theater, all characters had to go off as well as come on; no tableau effects to terminate a scene were possible. Moreover, in order to avoid the simultaneous exit of all the persons in a scene, it often seemed best to detain one of them beyond the rest and allow him to fill a brief interval with a soliloquy. As already mentioned this technique occurs so frequently in Plautus and Terence that an attempt has been made to utilize it as a criterion for a division of the Roman comedies into acts. Such an exit soliloquy has already been noted in Euripides’ Alcestis, vss. 837 ff. ([p. 306], above).
In the third place, unless a new character is to enter the stage at the very instant that an old one leaves it, the actor who engages in successive dialogue with each of them must cause a slight pause by soliloquizing. Such a soliloquy is technically known as a “link.” One is found in the monologue which Strepsiades utters between the withdrawal of his son and the entrance of Socrates’ pupil (Aristophanes’ Clouds, vss. 126 ff.). Links are often extremely short, sometimes being no more than a cough or hem; they are frequently employed to cover the condensation of time, especially when they occur between the exit and re-entrance of the same character. Furthermore, they occur in playwrights who reject other forms of soliloquy, no less than five instances appearing in Ibsen’s Pillars of Society alone.
So long as the chorus retained its vigor, dramatists found it easier, except in the prologue or during occasional withdrawals of the chorus in the course of the action, to fill gaps by remarks addressed to the coryphaeus than by entrance soliloquies, exit soliloquies, or links. Yet they do occur in choral drama, and I have cited one instance illustrative of each type from fifth-century plays. In comedies of subsequent date, in which the chorus was greatly curtailed or nonexistent, they may be found by the score.