I am reading James Scully's translation of Aias (also known as Ajax), in The Complete Plays of Sophocles, translated by Robert Bagg & James Scully. When Aias enters for the second time, during the scene where he is confronted by fellow Greeks, his speech is quite informal, lacking normal capitalization or sentence structure:
O O
my sailors! friends!
you alone
alone stand by me still—
look
what a storm surge of blood wrack
breaks over & around me!
429-435
His odd diction is called out by the chorus leader:
You were right. Look
how far gone he is.
436-437
As the scene progresses he regains capitalization and starts constructing more proper sentences. For example, here's a paragraph from around a hundred lines later:
One thing for sure—had Achilles himself
lived to present his own arms
to the worthiest warrior here, I alone
would have got my hands on them. But
when the sons of Artreus procured them,
giving them to that schemer who works
every angle there is—they brushed aside
all the victories of Aias!
546-553
The writing here is how I expect people in Proper Old Literature Plays to talk. But it's in sharp contrast to how he originally speaks, all over the place and generally out of control. I assume this is to illustrate how Aias gradually is pulling himself together.
Is this (the odd capitalization & grammar) a product of the translator, or is Aias's informality somehow present in the original text? If so, how is it present?