Choice-Rezension

A good and much needed book. Gardiner joins the growing ranks of those who study ancient drama as performance, not as disembodied text, and helps us to a far better understanding of the role of the chorus in shaping dramatic meaning. Readers familiar with R.W.B. Burton's The Chorus in Sophocles' Tragedies (1980) will need to consult this as well. After an excellent introduction describing general principles, Gardiner takes up the seven plays in turn by type, not chronologically. She avoids detailed speculation on movement but offers persuasive analyses of the visual and especially aural impact of the chorus. Gardiner quotes Greek where necessary, analyzing metres for the specialist; Greekless undergraduate performers and students of literature will also profit from this scholarship. Her interpretations of Philoctetes (the chorus joins the deception), Ajax (he betrays the chorus), and Electra (the matricide is justified) may run counter to some views, but her evidence from the choruses is considerable. A little more historical and social background for the chorus performers would be welcome; in particular, this reviewer wishes that she could have taken into account John Winkler's ``The Ephebes' Song,'' (Representations 11, 1985), which argues that all choristers were ephebes (boys in manhood training). Nonetheless, a fine book for undergraduates, and graduate students, and faculty.-N.W. Slater, University of Southern California