277-290. These fourteen lines are an instance of stichomythia, or conversation in alternate lines, which was always popular on the Attic stage.
"Minor Poems by Milton"
John Milton
The dreary tirades of Polyphontes and Merope, and their snip-snap stichomythia, read equally ill in English.
"Matthew Arnold"
George Saintsbury
The play manifests the usual conflict of artificial and natural styles; the elaborate stichomythia and the wailing and cursing queens furnish examples of the common affectations of tragic style; and the rhetorical display appears not infrequently in Richard's speeches.
"Tragedy"
Ashley H. Thorndike