The Chorus and the Choric Function in 'Murder in the Cathedral' DEEP CHAND YADAV College

The role of the chorus and its functions is much debated since antiquity, scholars have worked on several theories to reach the truth of the emergence of the chorus as an essential element of tragedy. Aristotle writes in Chapter 18 of Poetics, “the chorus too should be regarded as an actor, it should be an integral part of the whole, and share in the action” of the play. Although the role of the chorus, before the three famous Greek playwrights, was restricted only to singing and dancing between interludes. Aeschylus added another dimension to drama adding the second actor thus enhancing the role of Chorus which not only sang and danced now but became an active participant in furthering the plot. While Euripides’s choruses “are more often than not merely bystanders” (Weiner), in Sophocles we find the “choruses more relevant to the plot, more integrated to the tragedies” (Weiner) which Aristotle invoked in the Poetics.

T. S. Eliot in his verse drama Murder in the Cathedral introduced Chorus on the line of Aeschylean choruses, who like an interluding agent, stand and witness the scenes unfolding, making observations and commentaries but restrained from participating directly in the action. In The Libation Bearers, the chorus of...