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Abstract. Whereas Euripides' proclivity for manipulating audience expectations has been well-documented, with the exception of his use of silent characters, Aeschylus' has not received the same attention. In this article, I focus on the portrayal of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra in Agamemnon and argue that Aeschylus uses his characters to play with tradition, to manipulate expectations, to generate suspense through deliberate ambiguity, and to orchestrate shocking revelations. I pay particular attention to how Aeschylus achieves these effects and attempt to demonstrate in Agamemnon a more sophisticated approach to character-drawing than has previously been recognized in Aeschylus.
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In the second stasimon of AgAmemnon, the Chorus sings the parable of a lion cub whose outward behavior deceives those around it until time and circumstance reveal in a blood-drenched display the "character it inherited from its parents" (..., 727-28).1 Critics have seen in this parable explorations of violence within the household, inherited guilt, and aristocratic misbehavior.2 But the story also addresses our propensity to be misled by premature judgments based on insufficient information and how we can be surprised, sometimes unpleasantly, when these judgments prove false.3 Situated roughly in the middle of Agamemnon and applicable to all of the major figures in the myth,4 the lion parable serves as a warning that Aeschylus' characters are similarly capable of deceiving and surprising us.
This use of characters to surprise, generate suspense, and "sway the audience's emotions in one direction or another" (Mossman 2010, 28) is frequently associated with Euripides, most famously in Medea.5 Aeschylus was known in antiquity for deriving surprise and suspense from silent characters like Achilles, Niobe, and Cassandra.6 But I contend that his character-driven effects go beyond the use of silent characters and closely resemble those attributed to Euripides. Aeschylus repeatedly shifts how spectators view his principal characters, sometimes echoing and sometimes challenging tradition, to achieve these effects and to keep spectators engaged.7 Suspense and surprises arise through the introduction of untraditional elements, inscrutable actions and utterances, contradictory characterizations, and unexpected reversals.
Previous accounts of Agamemnon have recognized dramatic shifts in the play's portrayal of principal characters.8 I am interested not only in the effect these shifts would have had on spectators, but also in the techniques through which they...