ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses three Euripidean plays such as Herakles, Trojan Women and Ion in greater detail for illuminating his grammar of dramatic technique. Euripides shows a chorus concerned with the suppliants' welfare, but he has them devote most of the parodos to a description of their own decrepit state. The song embodies the tension that the playwright creates and plays with in the first third of the drama. Herakles' concluding statement on friendship echoes the ending of Amphitryon's opening rhesis and points to what does endure in this play of sudden and violent turns of fortune. Tro., like several other Euripidean plays, commences with a divine prologue speaker: Poseidon enters, explains why he has come, and relates the history and present circumstances of Troy. The drama, dominated by the continuous presence of Hekabe, the symbol of Trojan griefs, concludes when she makes her first, and last, exit. Hermes' prologue speech points to the role of divine providence in Ion.
