The title of my paper is intended to emphasize two things. By ‘extra-dramatic’, I want to indicate that the scenes to be considered do not participate in the dramatic action proper of the tragedy in which they appear, and so in some sense can be said to move outside the plot; but, at the same time, I also want to suggest that the dramatic structure of the plays can in each case provide a useful point of reference for a methodical comprehension of the phenomenon I have in mind.

I have chosen the term ‘communication’ because it can signify a close human relationship that finds expression through exchange of words, as for example in dramatic dialogue. ‘Communication’ does not entail any restriction regarding the kind of persons who communicate. In the Euripidean passages the persons involved frequently address each other as philoi, but the common English translation, which is ‘friend’, would unduly limit my reader's expectations. For the observations which follow are in no way tied to a particular word or a particular bond between human beings. Even philos and philia (which, unlike our ‘friendship’, can indicate not only the ties between friends, but the familial relationships of father and son or brother and sister as well) are too narrow terms. With regard to my special subject, I should therefore not use ‘friendship’, or, if at all, in an extended sense, meaning any close human relationship.