BMCR 1996.09.17

1996.9.17, Scott, Musical Design in Sophoclean Theater

, Musical design in Sophoclean theater. Hanover: Dartmouth College, 1996. 1 online resource (xix, 330 pages) : illustrations. ISBN 1611681510. $45.00.

As Scott uses the term, “musical design” is to some extent a metaphor. He means to emphasize that a tragedy is more than just the sum of its episodes, or of the episodes plus the paraphrasable content of the lyrics. He wants us to consider how the sections of a play relate to each other within an overarching framework: the poet speaks through the design of the whole (we could call it “architecture” or “choreographic design”). But his choice of term is also a corrective, emphasizing his attention to the famously neglected contribution of the parts of the plays that were sung. For Scott, the (metaphoric) musicality of design and the (actual) music of lyric coincide in a reading of the plays that puts the chorus and lyrics up front.

In Scott’s earlier book, the Goodwin-Award-winning Musical Design in Aeschylean Theater (1984), the interpretation of the Agamemnon which treated it as a series of lyrics preceded and followed by spoken parts revealed that the experience and activity of the Elders of Argos were central to its structure and effect; the play seemed even more coherent and intense, and the trilogy as a whole better integrated (the treatment of the other four plays was cursory). This sequel takes on all seven plays of Sophocles. A brief “Introduction for Readers in Translation,” describing metrical scansion and analysis, begins with the same epigraph as the corresponding chapter in the earlier book—Kitto’s comparison of the scholarly study of lyric meter to “black magic.” A short chapter on the role of music and form—really on the role of the chorus—is followed by two devoted to an analysis, lyric section by lyric section, of the first six plays. Each lyric is represented by an analytical scansion, but without a text, and the scansion is followed by two to four pages of comments. In the final chapter Scott summarizes his major observations, drawing special attention to Sophocles’ mastery of the lyric dialogue, and by applying his method to the lyric sections of the Oedipus at Colonus tries to demonstrate the poet’s fullest realization of the expressive power of musical design.

The study is grounded in clearly stated assumptions about how the plays should be understood, and in a masterful command of the interpretive scholarship. It is surprising to discover, in contrast, how badly the project of elucidating “musical design” is executed. Although he carries out the same kind of analyses he applied to the Agamemnon, the inadequacies which were inconsequential there can not be overlooked here.

Scott outlines in the first chapter the significant features of Sophoclean drama that form the basis of his interpretations. Strong-willed characters confront a universe that presents them with moral dilemmas and few directions. “The strength of these characters allows them to defend their own self-defined purposes and to die resolutely, although in a world where answers remain unclear” (p. 4). At the end of the plays Sophocles does not provide the audience a clear indication of how they are to judge the protagonists and leaves the fates of some characters unresolved. The perspectives presented in the play have proved to be inadequate to the situation. One perspective, or set of perspectives, was presented by the chorus, who interpret events in a way appropriate to their political and social status, and so tend to represent communal values. But in Sophocles, the community is not the dominant concern. Because its values cannot provide an understanding of the events set in motion by the willful individuals who have taken onto themselves the obligation to act, the role of the chorus usually diminishes as the play moves toward its conclusion. In any song, the chorus may ostensibly be reacting to the immediate occasion, and assert itself confidently, but the formal structures and the indications of the meter (like the web of interconnections created by imagery) may produce another level of meaning which reveals the playwright’s “dramatic concept” (p. 11). In particular, it turns out, the “musical design” tends to indicate how difficult it is for the chorus to maintain a point of view as it responds to events, or how out of touch with the realities they have become.

Scott’s emphasis on the dominance of the heroic individual belongs, of course, to a well-established tradition of interpretation. Within this tradition, he particularly stresses conflict and disproportion, making clear the gulf between the force of the individuals who take their own way and those around them (I am troubled by his admiration for the suicides in Tr. and Ai. as demonstrations of strength of character). This serves his aim of making the drama vivid, recreating the effects of the fully musical performance (one addressee of the book is the director of a modern production). There are many statements one could argue with, and the dogmatic cogency of their presentation, which permits the condensation necessary to get through all seven plays, is provocative. But scholarship gets its due: the last quarter of the volume contains 553 notes in small type. These are occasionally explanatory but primarily bibliographic, and they alone are worth the price of the book. Scott does not cast his net very far over any of the variety of modernist interpretations, but he isolates the points that have been the subject of dispute and refers the reader to a wealth of literary and philological books and articles which address the issues as they arise.

Scott’s conception of musical design in each lyric is two-fold. He describes how the poet shapes the lyric sections to integrate them into the play. He calls this “form”; most typically, form concerns the relation of actor’s lyrics to the chorus’, of the spoken parts to the strophic structure, and of the balance, or lack of balance, in the pairing of stanzas. And he explores the use, from song to song within a play, of repeated, shifting, or contrasting types of music. This latter he calls “meter,” for the metrical design is understood to be as much of the music as remains to us, but to be sufficient to show us what the poet was doing. (To clarify form and meter he treats them separately in the analysis of the first two plays, Antigone and Ajax.)

When he is addressing some of the larger issue of form, Scott’s analyses can underscore the dramatic effects. Tecmessa interrupts the parodos of the Ajax with unwelcome news: what would be strophe B has no antistrophe, and the chorus start again. The formal strophic pair divided by a hundred lines in the Philoctetes (391-518) suggests the organized deception behind the chorus’ show of sympathy, just as the strophic framing of the complex and unsatisfying exchange among Oedipus, Jocasta and Chorus ( OT 649-96) hints at the existence of a larger plan unknown to the participants. Others (e.g., Gardiner 1) have noted the active role of the chorus in the OC, but Scott’s careful tracing of the interactions of the chorus and the actors and of the songs and the action establishes it more convincingly. But there is no guiding method here. In Scott’s reading the Sailors from Salamis expect Ajax to be a traditional leader; their viewpoint is narrow, and the course of song is typically directed by others (Tecmessa, Ajax); as the reality overtakes them, they are reduced to escapism. Thus, the chorus’s failure to create balancing strophic stanzas in the parodos (when they seek him but Tecmessa reveals his sickness) was a sign of their weakness; in the parallel second parodos (when they seek him but Tecmessa reveals his body), when they do complete the strophic structure, “the autonomy of this design signals the emergence of new controlling forces” (p. 87).

The formal issues more often involve questions of meter. At best there is a general principle that repetition of similar meters has to do with continuity of thought. That principle is so broad that it can be turned to advantage almost anywhere. Antigone’s ode, in the kommos as she exits, “settles on the precise meters” used by the chorus in the parodos; “she signals her desire to compete against them by using their meters” (p. 53). What would she be doing if she used different meters? The meters in the kommos in which Electra reacts to the false news of her brother’s death “are not used extensively in other odes in this play, a fact suggesting that this conversation is not closely related to the development of the plot” (p. 160). In the next stasimon, the chorus reacts to Electra’s determination to act alone by singing anacreontics in the first strophic pair, which they have not used before: “The women, who have consistently favored a patient and passive attitude, now must bring themselves to approve the active role Electra has chosen, and they literally change their tune.” In the second pair, in which they describe her as an agent of Zeus’s justice, they switch to iambics, a meter used in the parodos and first stasimon “in passages where they insisted that divine powers would take responsibility …” On the next page, however, we learn that because the whole ode is based on the false premise of Orestes’ death, it is irrelevant to the plot—a fact which in this case has no relevance to the metrical choices. On the other hand, “this is the first lyric ode in the play that the chorus has been allowed to complete” (Electra took over the parodos, and Clytemnestra came on stage before they could sing the second antistrophe of the first stasimon). They “are allowed to finish this ode because … they have become unimportant in the developing action” (p. 163-4)—not to indicate the presence of “new controlling forces.”

With rules like these, the study of musical design can serve any interpretation of content. These interpretations of the Electra are contrived to confirm Scott’s understanding of the role of the chorus (they are convinced that there is a divine justice that will bring about the vengeance, yet the drama focuses on Electra’s passion and they have an increasingly difficult time bringing their view to the fore, even though “the characters require the chorus’ justification if they are not going to seem simple murderers” [p. 173]). To become one of the elements that help guide and control our understanding or enrich our awareness, the interpretation of metrical form can be subjective but it cannot be arbitrary. Like the discussions of theme and content, it needs to be built on scholarly discussion of methods and possibilities, and make clear methodological choices. In the area of metrical description, where there are competing methods and no established norms for applying them to the understanding of texts, the literary analyst can hardly proceed without clearly explaining his suppositions and procedures.

Scott discusses the principles of metrical interpretation on pages 20-24, using the categories of his explanation in the Introduction. Aeschylus, he notes, tended to compose songs out of several short stanzas, each metrically homogeneous. But Sophocles’ songs contain fewer stanzas and they are both larger and metrically heterogeneous. The critic must explain not only shifts between stanzas, but within them, “seek[ing] explanations in the words of the ode” (p. 22). Since Scott also announces (n. 115 to p. 22) that he has decided to ignore period structure within the stanza—”Because I am seeking patterns of construction that go beyond the strophic pair … phrasing of individual stanzas is less important than repeated meters” (for this reason he also marks brevis-in-longo simply as long)—only metrical analysis can provide the material for appreciating “musical design.” So the description of meter is crucial.

Unfortunately, what was sufficient for discussing Aeschylus falls short for Sophocles. In Aeschylus’ compositions, the contrast between anapaestic, dactylic, iambic, trochaic, and dochmiac sections is so straightforward, that the simple rhythmical categorization represented by those “five basic meters” was sufficient for Scott’s purposes (p. xix), and both the principles and the details of his analyses could be safely ignored. The “five basic meters” Scott lists (with their subtypes) for Sophocles do not, in practice, all form obvious, contrasting rhythmic categories: iambic (with cretic and bacchiac), aeolic (including glyconic, pherecratean, telesillean, reizianum and hipponactean), choriambic (usually the dimeter), dactylic (with the spondee and the subcategories of dactylo-epitrite, enoplion, and praxillean) and dochmiac (p. xvi).

I cannot make much sense of Scott’s presentation of metrical analysis. There is a literature on this subject, and one would think that the logical starting place would be A. M. Dale’s The Lyric Meters of Greek Drama. Scott includes this in his page-and-a-half “basic bibliography” for studying the chorus, along with M. L. West’s Greek Metre and D. Korzeniewski’s Griechische Metrik, which use methods of analysis derived from Snell. But Scott’s presentation corresponds to none of these works, nor indeed to anything now current. The listing of choriambic as a separate category parallel to aeolic is particularly odd (it is specifically rejected by Snell, and they are combined by Dale). The relation of tragic “enoplion” to dactylic is treated at length in Dale’s article on dactylic 2 (very much about Sophocles, but unmentioned); she classifies it as a type of aeolic in Lyric Meters. Scott says he has looked to W. Kraus 3, H. A. Pohlsander 4, and R. D. Dawe’s Teubner editions for assistance in “determining “scansion patterns” (p. 261 n. 13); I assume he means colometry, a term he avoids (that list explains, perhaps, why only the first two of the three fascicles of Dale’s invaluable Metrical Analyses of Tragic Choruses (= MA) are in the basic bibliography). In general, he does not seem to recognize that metrical analysis is a discussible subject (given the ex cathedra style in which everyone but Dale presents their views, perhaps he can be forgiven). Yet Pohlsander does offer some limited comment on competing analyses. Scott cites Ditmars’ study of the Antigone 5, yet never notes that it offers a very similarly designed—but more explicit and expanded—discussion of the relation of meter and meaning, nor does he take advantage of her analyses (in his text or notes) to create a dialogue in which he could offer the grounds for his conclusions; nor does he do so with Korzeniewski’s various interpretations (by a very different method), although the latter gets more attention in the bibliography.

Even his adopted metrical categories can give way to opportunistic explanations. In Scott’s reading of the Trachiniae, the young women so romanticize their friend’s marriage that their responses to the real situation are illusory; once they must confront the real Hercules, they stop singing. Scott insists several times that after Heracles enters, there is a “new music” that breaks with the previous lyrics, “the new music of Zeus’ universe” (p. 115). This turns out to be a mixture of dochmiac and dactylic (hexameter). It’s hard to imagine an experienced audience looking for a thematic resonance in the appearance of dochmiacs in a suffering protagonist’s terminal kommos, but the dactylic hexameters are certainly not conventional. However, in his comment on, for example, the third stasimon of OT (1086ff.), he says that its meter, “predominantly dactylo-epitrite, is related to the dactyls of the … parodos” (p. 137). Since dactylo-epitrite figures prominently in the parodos of Tr. and since Scott says of the first stasimon, with its recurrent dactylo-epitrite, that its narrative is linked by “dactylic meter” (p. 104), why in this case are the straight dactyls a “new music” and not a (very poignant) reminder of earlier themes?

Confusion begins early. The hapless “reader in translation” is encouraged to learn the Greek alphabet and proceed to write out the scansion of each line in longs and shorts. If he then drums it out on the table top, it will be “immediately apparent how tightly words and rhythm are joined: there is one syllable for each mark” (p. xvi). For a combination of oversimplification and circularity, this is hard to match. The reader is also told to learn the standard abbreviations for the five basic meters mentioned above, as well as “anap” and “ion” (with “anacl(astic)”—the switch to “anacr(eontic)” later on is unannounced). This will prove important because the description of scansion patterns by means of these names will be the only way to distinguish the “meters” that repeat or change. The hapless reader, however, is left on his own to discover that “ch dim” is also “ch d” (p. 90) or “chor d” (p. 97); to figure out when needed whether “pros” and “par,” among others, are new meters or subcategories, and what “less ascl cat” means and that, applied to four units “__ _**_ _**_ _/*” it is one “meter,” although “anc ch sp” (see below) are three names for three units. In other words, this “Introduction” is useless for its addressee, but his ignorance serves as an excuse for Scott to dodge a fuller statement of his principles or methods of metrical analysis.

But there are hints. The learner is also encouraged to write a quarter note and an eighth note under each long and short to clarify the rhythm, although we are warned here and later (p. 19-20, with the example of syncopation) that we really don’t know much about Greek rhythm—that is, the actual time values of the long and short in different meters. And it turns out that he rejects the use of “lekythion” for “_*_*_*_” in any but a clearly trochaic context, because he does not allow iambo-trochaic; he calls that sequence “cr ia” (never “ia dim sync”). In one of the few explicitly metrical notes (p. 294 n. 76, to OT 191=203), he quotes Dale’s acceptance of such a rhythm and rejects it by citing the problems raised by M. Haslam in his review 6 of T. Cole’s Epiploke; readers of either will be surprised that they could be put to this purpose: “it is elementary that iambic trimeter and trochaic tetrameter have fundamentally the same rhythm” (Haslam, p. 232; Scott’s exclusive classification of the lekythion—like his emphasis on the choriambic dimeter—reflects the usage of Wilamowitz, who presents it in terms of his theory of the vierheber as a prototype). I infer from these hints that Scott regards each named “meter” as a reduced representation of the musical rhythm that accompanied it, and that for each name or category the rhythm was different. This is an extreme version of a theory that had some influence on Dale’s presentation (she hesitates over identifying epitrite sequences as iambo-trochaic), and is discussed in a very moderated form in West’s chapter on rhythm, but does not form a basis for his metrical analyses. In neither does it have any effect on the colometry. Scott’s assumption is more in harmony with the rhythmic theory promulgated (in a very simplified form) by Kitto in the article which provides the epigraph I mentioned at the start 7 (that article could also have be the source of his disregard of switches between rising and falling movement, which are put to good use by Ditmars). By adhering to this notion, Scott has no place for what Snell called the “gliding transition,” by which different metrical types emerge from one another, and little room to see how a sequence that can be named can belong in more than one context. He also throws out Snell’s (and West’s and Korzeniewski’s) system of perceiving various longer aeolic cola as expansions or extensions of the variations on the basic, eight-syllable forms with one choriamb (or Dale’s similar treatment), and he loses iambo-choriambic as a category.

Scott’s metrics robs the transitions in heterogeneous stanzas of their subtlety and forces complex structures into Procrustean categories that punish the chorus when they don’t fit. Discussing the fourth stasimon of the Tr., Scott comments: “… the women attempt [in str.-ant. A] to sing their iambic meter … Again they attempt [in str.-ant. B] to organize a steady iambic meter, but the pattern is interrupted by single lines of other meters” (p. 114), and speaks of “the disorganization of their music in the fourth stasimon” and of a “song that violates the normal patterns of form, meter, and character entrance” (p. 121). But Pohlsander simply identifies both pairs as iambo-choriambic with one anapaestic dimeter in the second (p. 144; cf. Dale MA 2.34-35; Scott’s citation of Easterling’s commentary [p. 292 n.52] in defense of his interpretation of the song misreads her). Discussing the parodos of the Tr. Scott says: “the meter in these four stanzas shifts abruptly from dactylo-epitrite to choriambic; the first stanza [ sic ] is totally dactylo-epitrite; the second then begins with this meter, thus linking the two strophic pairs, but changes at 116 = 126 to a block of choriambic” (p. 98, my emphasis). If we turn to the text we see that the last lines of the first pair are pure epitrites; one could call them three iambic dimeters with an extra long to provide a pendant ending to the strophe. The second pair starts with three pendant hemiepes and one blunt, which provides a clear period-end. As elements, these certainly fit in a dactylo-epitritic pattern, but it looks more as if Sophocles had separated the two elements of that meter (just as the first line of the parodos appears to juxtapose an iamb and a hemiepes: *_*__**_**_), first providing an iambic series, then starting the next strophe with a dactylic, turning the blended rhythm into contrasting ones. In any case there is no other reason for the audience to take the purely dactylic opening of the second stanza as dactylo-epitrite, except that the first strophe contained dactylo-epitrite. The three pendant hemiepes are octosyllabic, and nicely prepare the way for the series of octosyllaic choriambic dimeters that follow. Rhythms change here, but it is nothing like the abrupt shift Scott describes (cf. Dale’s succinct note: “First pair: dactylo-epitrite with iambic gambit … Second pair: dactylo-epitrite transitional via hemiepes to aeolo-choriambic”MA 1.24)

Scott’s isolation from any discourse on metrical composition has another dimension. He treats tragic lyric as if were a world unto itself. (It is indicative that I noticed no mention of John Herrrington’s Sather lectures, 8 which derive tragedy from a mixture of earlier types of song). Scott regards strophic responsion as the basic form of choral song; throughout, he treats the appearance of an epode as a sign that the chorus was unable to complete its singing (see above, on Electra). But triadic form was well established in Greek choral lyric; Pindar has a couple of single-triad odes (including Py. 7 for an Athenian), and there is no reason to expect that the audience regarded every unpaired stanza as a curtailment. Perhaps some were so staged, and the existence of an epode should alert us to look for confirming indications, but we should also look for contrary indications.

In the discussion of Tecmessa’s interruption of the parodos (pp. 68ff., mentioned above) Scott’s presentation silences the possible contrary evidence by ignoring the impossibility of disentangling metrical and textual problems before interpreting them. In her article on “Lyrical Clausulae in Sophocles” (another odd omission from the basic bibliography) Dale, noting the “twin clausulae” ending three non-antistrophic passages in Sophocles ( Coll. Pap., pp. 7-8; cf. West, p. 100), suggests that they may produce a firmer ending. One of the three is Ajax 192-200. Scott describes line 199 __**__ as a reizianum, and 200 * _**_ __ (his spaces) as “anc ch sp”: thus, no twin clausulae, leaving open the question of finality. This is the new Oxford text, in which 199 is elided; the mss.’ final open vowel produces hiatus and period-end here (which is possible). Dale (in MA), Pohlsander, and West (p. 188) allow the hiatus, so that 199 ends with three longa, like 200, and they give the two the same label (dragged telesilleans). If the sailors did so end their song with twin clausulae, it is much less likely that Tecmessa’s entrance should be staged as an interruption of an impotent chorus.

Scott’s lack of interest in the poetic tradition allows him more room to work the interpretations of the lyrics into conformity with his reading. In the Antigone, he sees the Elders of Thebes as loyalists convinced that their state enjoys the benefits of a divine oversight, and resistant to contrary evidence or argument, until finally they can only abandon themselves to prayer. The metrical motif of the play, Scott holds, is established in the parodos in which seven lines of anapaests follow each stanza; these offer a realistic description to counter the imagistic one in the lyrics. Scott is not the first to see this contrast in the parodos; Ditmars wisely cautions against overreading it (I don’t see that the eagle of the anapaests in 110 ff. is more an image than in the following lyrics, or that description of Capaneus in str. B is less realistic than in the preceding anapaests). But he makes it absolute, invoking bad grammar (he explicitly makes gar a subordinating conjunction, p. 32) and, although he calls it a hymn, missing the adaptation of hymnic constructions: the relative pronoun in 110 introduces a narrative description of the gods’ powers, terminated by a generalization with forms of allos; the following statement of the passing of an immediate grief—much more boldly stated than he allows—is presented as foil to an injunction to celebrate (Pindar’s recollections of loss in war are comparable). Scott’s forced interpretation of the song as an attempt to repress a realistic assessment of the situation is necessary to set up his claim that a contrast of theory and fact will be maintained by the contrast of lyric and anapaest. And for the fifth and final stasimon, compare Scott’s description: “an emotional, hopeful prayer … a fervent hymn … the meter becomes a nightmarish conglomerate of previously used patterns … a simply structured, repeated cry for aid sung to randomly patterned meters” (pp. 58-59) with Ditmars’: “a cletic hymn, a pure example of the genre, with no element missing and nothing extraneous to the form” (p. 155, with detailed demonstration following); she recognizes the “rhythmic complexity,” because of the difficulty of analyzing the various cola, but also the “energy and force” of the rhythm (p. 163). Pohlsander classifies the ode as iambo-choriambic. Scott, ignoring the formal character of the ode and equating the naming of “meters” with the recognition of rhythmic character, has mistaken the intensity of a ritual (which fulfills the summons of the parodos) for the participants’ emotional disorder.

Scott offers three descriptions of the content of the fourth stasimon of OT—a brief summary on p. 140 (the most accurate), an analysis on p. 141-2, and again on pp. 199-200 as part of the general summary of his findings. They are inconsistent, but all are dedicated to demonstrating the chorus’s inability to maintain a train of thought, reflected in the breakdown of the str.-ant. B into three metrical parts (namely: four iambic, three dochmiac [actually hypodochmiac], four choriambic lines), after the uniformity of the “series of aeolic meters” in str.-ant. A. In his third discussion, he finally notes that str.-ant. A is articulated into three sections by a repeating pattern within its one series (in fact, the occurrence of catalectic forms clearly defines three period ends). To achieve the contrasting disunity that he needs in the second pair, he ignores the unity realized either in Korzeniewski’s observation (p. 169) that the lines of the second pair are first decreasing and then increasing lengths that all end with the same five elements _*_*_ (with a sixth, a clausular longum in the last line), the elements of the hypodochmiac that forms the three central cola of the strophe, or in Pohlsander’s suggestion that in this context the hypodochmiac might be considered an iambo-trochaic colarion, continuing the iambic start, nor does he consider the possibility that the single choriamb followed by iambic metra in the last lines might be heard as a reminiscence of the aeolic in the first strophe. In other words, his basic point does not stand up to a detailed demonstration: the strophic pairs are differently constructed, but both have rhythmically unifying features and both have three sections. And he certainly does not notice that the content and argument of the song are entirely coherent and conventional, an assertion of the human insignificance that is a consequence of the variability of fortune (str. A), illustrated by the addressee’s rise (ant. A) and fall (str. B), as a basis for the sympathy they offer (ant. B). (Achilles’ speech to Priam follows the same logic.)

These examples are representative of some of the problems (I have not discussed them all; e.g., the identification of specific meters with specific ideas). Again and again, interpretations that seem plausible or provocative on first reading simply disappear when you look carefully at the text and at the possibilities of metrical analysis. Tendentious argumentation using metrical descriptions that have no method and relying on summary statements about the contents of the odes, in isolation from the rest of Greek poetry, will not bring back the effect of Sophocles’ choral compositions. Metrical analysis need not be strictly follow one or another handbook, but it must show awareness of the problems the handbooks address, if it aims to be more convincing than a set a random comments. Persuasive interpretation begins in a careful description of individual odes (and can scarcely ignore period end, the one structural element that has some empirical basis), and takes account of the kinds of formal patterns that can occur and of their relation to the rhetoric and content, before relating them to any larger design.

Scott’s dramatic, summary readings, with their copious references, are a valuable resource for study and teaching. With regard to his main purpose, I can say this book sent me back to study the metrical designs of the odes, from which I came away with increased admiration for Sophocles; I hope it will also do that for others. But what I learned, I learned because of this book, not from it.

  • [1] In the “Preface” Scott acknowledges his indebtedness throughout to C. P. Gardiner, The Sophoclean Chorus: A Study of Character and Function (1987) and R. W. B. Burton, The Chorus in Sophocles’ Tragedies (1980). [2] “Observations on Dactylic,” in Collected Papers (1969), pp. 185-209 [3] Strophengestaltung in der griechischen Tragödie (1957). [4] Metrical Studies in the Lyrics of Sophocles (1964). [5] E. van Nes Ditmars, Sophocles’ Antigone : Lyric Shape and Meaning (1992). [6] CP 86 (1991) 229-231. Scott’s note is a red herring; I will keep my critique of Scott’s metrics within the scope of the theory of those authors he appears to use, and not consider alternative modes of analysis. [7] “Rhythm, Metre, and Black Magic,”CR 56 (1942) 99-108. [8] Poetry into Drama: Early Tragedy and the Greek Poetic Tradition (1985).