H. provides a measured examination of a rarely treated entity from Attic drama: that of the ‘off-stage group’. By this H. means a collective or quasi-collective body that is generally not present on stage but rather is only referred to by on-stage characters (although there is some overlap with her groups and the chorus, a tension that H. addresses but never fully resolves). Her interests lie in how such groups influence plot and direct action on stage as well as how the mention of such groups can provoke different reactions in both internal and external audiences. In examining the role of groups, the book engages with broader conversations about democratic processes, civic participation and collective emotion. While this study, based on H.’s doctoral dissertation at Magdalen College, is ambitious in aim, intersecting as it does with so many dynamic areas of inquiry, it would benefit overall from a more robust theoretical framework as well as more assertive argumentation. H.’s primary objectives are modest and twofold: to provide a wide-ranging study of off-stage groups in Attic drama and to demonstrate how careful attention to such groups shifts the understanding of individual plays. In these aims H. is generally successful, in that she demonstrates the prevalence of references to off-stage groups in drama and makes a case for their import.

In a similar mode to E. Visvardi (Emotion in Action [2015]), H. positions analyses of drama against the backdrop of ancient prose thought about groups, as outlined in Chapter 1. Looking to authors such as Thucydides, Plato, Demosthenes and others, H. charts the ways in which classical Athenian prose texts both envision groups as ‘psychological units’ and stereotype such groups. Identified as frequent motifs are the tendency of groups to make poor decisions, their susceptibility to manipulation by ‘unscrupulous’ orators and devices of group communication such as the thorubos and the spread of rumour. I found particularly thought-provoking the discussion of group emotions such as anger and fear, which can drive the collective to move in a way that is ‘against reason’ (p. 35). Prioritising what classical authors say about groups allows H. to largely step aside from modern social psychology, which in recent years has generated many insights into emotion in antiquity, now a robust disciplinary sub-field. While many readers will appreciate her straightforward commitment to the text, nevertheless, such an approach has its limits. This is especially apparent when H. leans on concepts such as ‘emotional contagion’ and ‘psychological collectives’, but eschews deeper engagement with modern psychological frameworks or the scholars who work with them.

The core of the book is devoted to analyses of individual plays grouped according to the type of off-stage group depicted (e.g. ekklêsia, army, female etc.); its strongest chapters are the second and the third, which focus on group decision-making in tragedy and comedy respectively. Turning to the tragic stage (Chapter 2), the main thrust of H.’s argument is that the imagined Argive landscape is ‘a space for developing alternative perspectives on Athenian-style democracy’ (p. 88). As evidence, H. compares responses in Euripides’ Suppliants to the off-stage dêmos and their implied decision-making to representations of the dêmos in Aeschylus’ Suppliants and Euripides’ Orestes. In the latter on-stage discussion and treatment of the dêmos is more extended and more critical (cf., e.g., her reading of the vote of the Argives at Aesch. Supp. 605–24, pp. 74–5); H. suggests that such overt criticism is only possible because these plays are set in Argos. In contrast, Old Comedy, very often set in Athens, depicts off-stage decision-making bodies more directly (Chapter 3). Here H. thoughtfully traces interactions between on-stage individuals and off-stage groups in Aristophanes’ Knights and Assembly Women in order to draw out tensions between individual and collective decision-making and to lend fresh insight into how everyday citizens (e.g. the two unnamed individuals at Eccl. 730–55) may have thought about democratic processes and institutions. In both Chapters 2 and 3 H. consistently demonstrates how groups represented in drama both fulfil and complicate the stereotypes established in prose.

Chapters 4 and 5 are more wide-ranging, considering in turn amorphous city ‘populations’ (e.g. Antigone’s Theban population) and then off-stage armies. In ‘Off-Stage Populations’ (Chapter 4) H. explores how tragedy depicts off-stage populations beyond expected conventions of decision-making. For example, in plays such as Soph. Ant. and OC depictions of off-stage groups force a reckoning with each play’s unreliable narrators, who either misconstrue the interests and desires of the polis (as for Creon in Ant.) or perhaps disingenuously claim popular support (Creon in OC). ‘“Political” Armies in Tragedy’ (Chapter 5) demonstrates the ways in which an off-stage army holds power over on-stage characters and thus drives action and reaction. Much of the chapter is dedicated to Euripides’ IA, where the army is undoubtedly prominent. Interestingly, H. teases out how the same group can elicit different responses from different characters; while Agamemnon feels fear in the face of the Argive army, as H. argues, Iphigenia is inspired by their bravery (Eur. IA 1387–90). While H., drawing on N.S. Rabinowitz (Anxiety Veiled [1993]), agrees that Iphigenia’s sacrificial willingness lacks ‘true agency’ (p. 162), nevertheless, her overall point that disparate responses from various on-stage characters generate interesting questions about the dynamics between individual and group is well made. Less understandable is H.’s insistence that the army’s main capacity for violence against women is to be found in their ‘love of gossip’ (p. 159) and the spread of rumour. Although directed at Iphigenia’s representation in Aesch. Ag., V. Wohl’s careful articulation of the eroticised nature of violence in tragedy suggests that the army’s threat to the women on-stage is also bodily in nature (Wohl, Intimate Commerce [1998], esp. pp. 67–82, not cited by H.).

H. ends her examination by focusing on female groups (Chapter 6), whose representations across drama are varied and routinely blur boundaries imposed by binary notions of gender, citizenship and civic participation, and captivity. While H. introduces several interesting lines of inquiry, it is here that the book’s tendency towards under-theorisation is most strongly felt. For example, while H. gestures towards the generative possibilities of ‘marginality’ to be found in drama (see, e.g., pp. 2, 3, 189), beyond a few comments on the Trojan women’s complex otherness in Euripides’ Hecuba, the chapter goes no further, thus largely neglecting work on race and ethnicity in antiquity as well as intersectional feminist theory and theories of marginalisation. With that said, H.’s interest in the ‘transgressive agency’ (p. 220) of off-stage female groups is appreciated. Critics from outside of Classics have been especially vocal in their critique of the conflation of agency with individual autonomy and free will (e.g. S. Mahmood, Politics of Piety [2005]; L. Thomas, Gender & History 28 [2016]); there is clearly room in the field for H. to bring such work into conversation with her own, thus reinvigorating questions of female agency and the agency of marginalised actors in antiquity.

At the granular level H.’s readings provoke little pushback; however, the book’s narrow focus on the text means that the socially embedded nature of the plays under consideration is largely left aside. For a book about group formation and collective mentalities this is, to my mind, a shortcoming. Additionally, while I am certainly sympathetic to the desire both to maintain scope and to avoid opening oneself up to scholarly rancour – especially given that this is a first book –, nevertheless, H.’s constant articulations of what her study is not (not psychological, not ‘avowedly political’ [p. 10], not historicist) and what her arguments are not (on the ‘middle-ground’ nature of the author’s arguments see e.g., pp. 12, 61, 68, 119) left me unsure of what, ultimately, her study is. To that end, H. presents an impressive collection of evidence that is certainly a springboard for further analysis, and I am eager to see how her work develops in the future.