stichomythia

stichomythia, dialogue in alternate lines, a form sometimes used in Classical Greek drama in which two characters alternate speaking single epigrammatic lines of verse. This device, which is found in such plays as Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, is often used as a means to show characters in vigorous contention or to heighten the emotional intensity of a scene. Characters may take turns voicing antithetical positions, or they may take up one another’s words, suggesting other meanings or punning upon them.

Repartee in the form of polished aphorisms was a stylistic feature of the Roman tragedies of Seneca, which were intended for private readings rather than performance. Through the influence of Seneca, stichomythia was adapted to the drama of Elizabethan England, most notably by William Shakespeare in comedies such as Love’s Labour’s Lost and in the memorable exchange between Richard and Queen Elizabeth in Richard III (IV, iv). A similar type of “cut-and-thrust,” or “cut-and-parry,” dialogue figures in the clipped, epigrammatical speech of the prose plays of the 1920s, such as those of Noel Coward.