Chorus

Chorus, in Greek drama a group of actors who stand aside from the main action of the play and comment on it, as in the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles; Euripides made less use of the traditional chorus, concentrating some of its functions in one person who was much more closely concerned with the fate of the protagonists. In the comedies of Aristophanes the chorus performs the same function as in the tragedies, but points the satire of each play by being dressed in some relevant disguise—birds, frogs, wasps—and by being more closely concerned with the intimate and bawdy aspects of the plot.

On the Elizabethan stage the Chorus was the speaker of an introductory prologue, a legacy from Euripides handed down via the Roman closet dramas of Seneca. He spoke either at the beginning of the play, as in Henry VIII, or before two or more acts, as in Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, and, in the person of Gower, in Pericles Prince of Tyre.

In the late 19th-century English theatre the chorus was the troupe supporting singers and dancers. They had always accompanied the principal actors in burlesque, extravaganza, and pantomime, but it was not until about 1870 that the ‘chorus girl’ became a player in her own right. At first she was asked to do no more than wear lovely clothes and move gracefully in unison with her companions, often accompanied by handsome but fairly static ‘chorus boys’. By the 1920s chorus girls were wearing fewer clothes and reached a high standard of precision dancing. The men were often dispensed with at this time, but after the Second World War, under the influence of the American musical, the chorus, both men and women, often took a much larger share in the plot.