Since it was not often possible to suspend the audience’s sense of time by removing the chorus, the poets had recourse to the next best expedient, the choral odes. Inasmuch as several of these occurred in every play, this artifice was far more available than the other. In many respects the chorus moved upon a different plane from the actors, and we are now dealing with one of these differences. As Professor Butcher expressed it: “The interval covered by a choral ode is one whose value is just what the poet chooses to make it. While the time occupied by the dialogue has a relation more or less exact to real time, the choral lyrics suspend the outward action of the play and carry us still farther away from the world of reality. What happens in the interval cannot be measured by any ordinary reckoning; it is much or little as the needs of the piece demand. A change of place directly obtrudes itself on the senses, but time is only what it appears to the mind. The imagination travels easily over many hours; and in the Greek drama the time that elapses during the songs of the chorus is entirely idealized” (_op. cit._, p. 293). Thus the choral songs were roughly equivalent to the modern intermission, and after them the action is often farther advanced than the actual time required for chanting them would warrant. For example, during a single stasimon of Aeschylus’ _Suppliants_ (vss. 524-99) the Argive king must leave the scene, summon his subjects to public assembly, state the object of the meeting, and allow discussion before the final vote—all in time for Danaus to report the people’s decision at the beginning of the following episode! An analogy to ancient practice occurs in Shakespeare’s _The Winter’s Tale_, where Time as Chorus announces the passage of sixteen years between Acts III and IV.