The play opens on the shore of the Thracian Chersonese on the eastern side of the Hellespont strait, just opposite Troy, which the Greeks have finally taken after the decade-long Trojan War. The scene shows a tent housing the Trojan women taken captive by the Greeks. The ghost of Polydorus enters, perhaps suspended by a crane above the stage. His monologue comprises the Prologue of the play. The ghost states his identity: He, Polydorus, is the youngest son of Priam and Hecuba, the king and queen of Troy. When the Greeks were preparing for war on Troy, Priam sent Polydorus to the Thracian King Polymestor, an ally of his, along with presents of gold. Priam’s hope was that Polydorus would thus escape the imminent war and that, if Troy should fall, at least one of his sons would be provided for. But after Troy fell to the Greeks, Polymestor treacherously murdered Polydorus and took Priam’s gold for himself, casting Polydorus’s body into the sea to be “unburied and unmourned” (29). Now Polydorus must hover over his unburied body as a ghost.

But the Greeks and the captive Trojan women have been becalmed on the Chersonese and thus cannot sail.