The First Tweets

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A Greek chorus (Greek: χορός, khoros) is a homogeneous, non-individualised group of performers in the plays of classical Greece, who comment with a collective voice on the dramatic action.^[1] The chorus consisted of between 12 and 50 players, who variously danced, sang or spoke their lines in unison and sometimes wore masks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_chorus

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A loud cry from within.

Voice of Agamemnon:

O I am sped--a deep, a mortal blow.

Chorus:

Listen, listen! who is screaming as in mortal agony?

Voice of Agamemnon:

O! O! again, another, another blow!

Chorus:

The bloody act is over--I have heard the monarch cry--
Let us swiftly take some counsel, lest we too be doomed to die.

One of the Chorus:

'Tis best, I judge, aloud for aid to call,
Ho! loyal Argives! to the palace, all!

Another:

Better, I deem, ourselves to bear the aid,
And drag the deed to light, while drips the blade.

Another:

Such will is mine, and what thou say'st I say:
Swiftly to act! the time brooks no delay.

Another:

Ay, for 'tis plain, this prelude of their song
Foretells its close in tyranny and wrong.

Another:

Behold, we tarry--but thy name, Delay,
They spurn, and press with sleepless hand to slay.

Another:

I know not what 'twere well to counsel now--
Who wills to act, 'tis his to counsel how.

Another:

Thy doubt is mine: for when a man is slain,
I have no words to bring his life again.

Another:

What? e'en for life's sake, bow us to obey
These house-defilers and their tyrant sway?

Another:

Unmanly doom! 'twere better far to die--
Death is a gentler lord than tyranny.

Another:

Think well--must cry or sign of woe or pain
Fix our conclusion that the chief is slain?

Another:

Such talk befits us when the deed we see--
Conjecture dwells afar from certainty.

Leader of the Chorus:

I read one will from many a diverse word,
To know aright, how stands it with our lord!

The scene opens, disclosing Clytemnestra, who comes forward.
The body of Agamemnon lies, muffled in a long robe, within a
silver-sided laver; the corpse of Cassandra is laid beside him.


Title: The Oresteia
Author: Aeschylus
(Translated by E. D. A. Morshead)
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.: 0700021h.html
Language:  English
Date first posted: January 2007
Date most recently updated: September 2011

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks07/0700021h.html

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and here's link to youtube clip about the 'crocodile', my term for the chorus!