women, sooner or later they become transformed.
The problem of the Chorus to Euripides was not how to make it as little objectionable as possible; it was how to get the greatest and highest value out of it. And that resolves itself largely into the problem of handling these two planes of action, using now the lower and now the upper, now keeping them separate, now mingling them, and at times letting one forcibly invade the other. I cannot here go into details of the various effects obtained from the Chorus by Euripides; but I will take a few typical ones, selecting in each case scenes that have been loudly condemned by critics.
The first and most normal effect is to use the Chorus for "relief"; to bring in, as it were, the ideal world to heal the wounds of the real. It is not, of course, "comic relief," as indulged in so freely by the Elizabethans. It is a transition from horror or pain to mere beauty or music, with hardly any change of tension. I mean, that if the pain has brought tears to your eyes, the beauty will be such as to keep them there, while of course changing their character. It is this use of lyrics that enables the Greek playwright
