In Greek comedy, the parabasis (plural parabases; Ancient Greek: παράβασις, plural: παραβάσεις) is a point in the play when all of the actors leave the stage and the chorus is left to address the audience directly.
The first speech, or parabasis proper - generally in anapaest[3] - often ends with a passage which is to be rattled off very quickly (theoretically in one breath - called a πνῖγος – pnigos).
The old view was that Aristophanes is speaking directly to his fellow-Athenians in the parabasis; and that as a result, as Northrop Frye put it, “his opinions on every subject are written all over his plays”.
[8] A postmodern interpretation would see the authorial voice as metatheatrical, offering a parody of rhetorical debating points, rather than unmediated criticism.
[10] Where the diminishment in the role of the chorus was traditionally linked to the financial pressures of wartime,[11] more recently Stephen Halliwell has preferred to see the decline in terms of theatrical evolution.