notes on greek drama 1

NOTES ON GREEK DRAMA

1. What does something so old have to do with me?

The very fact that the drama of the ancient Greeks is so old says much of its importance. It has been around a long time because it has something to say to every generation. In order to appreciate modern drama, movies, or television more fully, one needs to know something of the "roots" of these forms of entertainment, and they all began with the drama of the ancient Greeks. Furthermore, some of the "rules" of Greek drama still apply today and are widely studied. Indeed, the universality of the Greek plays, especially the tragedies, transcends time and culture. The plays were and have been so enduring that it was not for 2,000 years, in the time of Shakespeare, that drama recaptured the grandeur it had attained in ancient Athens.

2. What is the purpose of drama?

Good theater often challenges our lifestyle and causes us to question it. It doesn't necessarily make a comment on whether one lifestyle and values are right or wrong, but it does force us to analyze them. Most great works of art disturb our sense of reality and help us evaluate ourselves and our world.

3. Where does the word drama come from?

The word drama comes into English from the identical word in Latin, which in turn was borrowed from a Greek word meaning "do" or "act."

4. What is drama? How is it different from other forms of literature?

Drama is a literary work written in dialogue and intended for presentation on a stage before an audience by live actors. Drama depends solely on the words and actions of the actors. Unlike a story or novel, drama cannot tell what the characters are thinking unless we are actually shown through the actions and words of the characters.

5. How did drama get started?

Drama arose independently in several other cultures, but no matter where it has evolved, whether in Greece, medieval Europe, India, China, or Japan, it started as religious ritual (ceremony) in the exchange of speech between two choirs or antiphonal choruses, or between a chorus and a choral leader (in Greek drama called the charagos). This drama was something like a responsive reading done in many churches today with the minister reading one part and the congregation reading another.

This form of drama moved very quickly to full-blown plays.

Drama quickly moved away from strictly religious themes and dealt more with secular ("non-religious" or "day-to-day") topics. Almost always it has been sharply criticized by the religious institutions that gave it birth. Throughout its long history drama has been subjected to censorship, violent attacks, and ridicule. Often, theaters have been closed down entirely. One Greek statesman, Solon, insisted that an actor pretending to be someone else was telling lies. He even went so far as to say, "If we honor that sort of thing in a play, some day we will find it happening in our business." Yet, despite its many problems, drama has survived and often flourished for more that two thousand five hundred years in Western culture.

The earliest record we have of a specific participant in a ritual or in theater was an Egyptian named Ikhernofret, who was involved in the Abydos Passion (religious) Play in Egypt about 1860 B.C. Actual evidence is sketchy, but the ritual is apparently about the Egyptian god Osiris. It is generally thought that this was more of a dramatized ritual and was overseen by a priest.

The first formal theater we know of was between 1700 and 1400 B.C. in Crete, an island in the Mediterranean Sea. European drama was born in Greece, during a period of extraordinary theatrical

creativity in Athens that lasted roughly form the sixth to the third century B.C.

In our own culture, tragedy and comedy grew and flowered in Attica, one of the driest, rockiest parts of Greece, with the city of Athens as its capital. It was in Athens, on the slopes of its citadel, the Acropolis, that the first plays of Europe were performed.

Choral song festivals in honor of the various gods were a very early development of Greek civilization. These festivals were of rural origin, but eventually they spread to the cities and achieved their greatest development in urban surroundings. Authorities disagree as to the exact extent to which this primitive song-worship affected the growth of drama, but it is indisputable that Greek tragedy was a direct offshoot of one form of choral festival: that devoted to the fertility myth.

The first plays were hardly more than dithyrambic odes sung in unison by a trained chorus dressed as sartyrs and smeared with wine. The performance would take place on a street corner or in a public square, for theaters were unknown until the fifth century, and the subject matter of the ode would be the trials and earthly sufferings of Dionysus, the youngest of the pantheon of Greek gods, whose cult began to spread in Greece about 700 B.C. Especially favored by the common people, he was the god of wine and, in general, of reproductive forces in life. He was thought to liberate believers from personal trouble and to be himself a suffering god, undergoing death and resurrection. Hence the cycle of lament and rejoicing in the worship of Dionysus, combining sorrow and despair with exaltation, enthusiasm, ecstasy.

6. What are the basic types of drama?

Drama is divided into three major groups: tragedy, comedy, and, less important, farce.

Comedy: from the Greek komus ("merrymaking"), a popular ritual performed by celebrants at the Dionysia as early as 800 B.C. in front of the sloping vineyards. Participants would dance and sing ribald songs, and often appeared in masks or dressed themselves in a kind of animal masquerade, appearing as birds, frogs, or horses. This primitive form of comedy was often vulgar, wanton, sharp, and grotesque by modern standards, with stinging wit. Usually it was richly lyrical (song-like) in nature. The latest gossip of the city was intermixed with material of the most imaginative sort, in which political and philosophical subjects were jostled with buffoonery of the lowest sort. Everything was done to make the occasion of the komus hilarious.

Tragedy: from the Greek tragoidia (tragos, "goat" + oide, "song" = "goat song"). Tragedy possibly evolved from a dithyramb sung by a chorus of men dressed in goat skins who represented satyrs. The dithyramb probably at first was improvised with words and music which issued from the excitement of the occasion. The dithyramb was also probably almost totally narrative in form, telling some legend relating to Dionysus. Any change, that occurred in the presentation of these choral songs was gradual.

7. What are the steps in the development of drama during the classical period?

Greek tragedy during the classical period involved only three playwrights, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, whose works have survived. We know of other playwrights who produced tragedy, but none of their works are extant.

Major steps in the development of tragedy include the following:

Thespis (c. 550-500 B.C.) His name became synonymous with actor (thespian = actor), and it is in his honor that the International Thespian Society is named. Thespis injected the life-blood of opposition or struggle without which no true drama can exist. Considered the "father of drama" because he introduced the first actor as distinct from the chorus leader (choragos). This actor performed in intervals between dancing and chanting of the chorus in the dithyramb and took several parts in which he would often converse with the choragos. Thespis also introduced the use of masks, which were used throughout the classical period of Greek drama. During his time (Sixth Century B.C.) only one actor with a speaking part at a time could appear on stage. Furthermore, the chorus was still very important, consisting of fifty men. There are no extant plays of Thespis.

During this time myths other than those about Dionysus were introduced as subjects for tragedy. This development changed the nature of the chorus from satyrs (associated with Dionysus) to a group appropriate to the individual story.

Pisistratus Established the first dramatic festival in Athens in 534 B.C. These contests soon became very popular. Playwrights would compose plays for consideration of judges who were selected by lot from the citizens of Athens. Thespis won the first dramatic prize.

Aeschylus (c. 525-426 B.C.): Added a second character, meaning that two characters with speaking parts could appear on stage simultaneously. For this innovation, Aristotle named Aeschylus the "true founder of tragedy." Furthermore, Aeschylus diminished the chorus to twelve and assigned the major portion of the action to the two actors. During this time playwrights began to present a tetralogy for consideration by the judges. Aeschylus wrote more than ninety plays of which only seven survive.

Extant Titles

Agamemnon }

Choephoroe } (458 B.C.) (The only extant trilogy; known collectively as The Oresteia) Eumenides }

Prometheus Bound (466 B.C.);

The Seven Against Thebes (467 B.C.);

The Persians (472 B.C.);

The Suppliant Maidens (The Suppliants) (c. 490 B.C.) [the oldest extant Greek play]

Sophocles (c. 495-406 B.C.) Probably the most famous of Greek dramatists, Sophocles added a third actor and fixed the number of the chorus at fifteen. He wrote his plays with certain actors in mind; furthermore, he added scene painting to his productions. Unlike earlier dramatists, Sophocles left the writing of music to accompany the plays to someone else. Also, he left the training of the chorus to others and concentrated on the artistry of his work. In addition, whereas earlier playwrights had written their plays to be "episodes" of the group (trilogy) to which they belonged and were hard to separate from one another, Sophocles wrote plays that were self-inclusive and self-complete. Sophocles is known to have written at least one hundred twenty plays of which only seven are extant.

Extant Titles: Oedipus at Colonus (401 B.C.); Oedipus the King (Oedipus Rex) (430 B.C.); Philoctetes (409 B.C.); Antigone (441 B.C.); Electra (410 B.C.); Ajax (445 B.C.); Trachiniae (413 B.C.)

Euripides (c. 480-406 B.C.) Called the "philosopher of the stage." Euripides began to write at the age of eighteen, and in 45 B.C., when he was twenty-five, he was permitted to compete for the tragic prize. He finally won after thirteen years of trying and then won eight times. Euripides is considered a realist in that he scanned the ancient legends of the gods with a doubting eye and wrote more of the common life of the day instead of presenting the exploits of the traditional heroes. He reduced the chorus to "detached" participants and concentrated on the "philosophizing" of his less familiar characters. Because Euripides dealt with subjects that were less familiar to his audience, he found including explanatory information in a prologue necessary. In addition, he found such explanations necessary at the end of his plays from time to time. In order to accomplish this, he used a device known as deus ex machina ("god from machine"), a hanging of an actor dressed as a god over the stage to instruct the characters in what they should do. Euripides wrote between eighty and ninety plays; nineteen plays survive.

Extant Titles: Alcestas (438 B.C.); Medea (431 B.C.); Hippolytus (428 B.C); Mad Hercules (c. 422 B.C.); Ion (c. 417 B.C.); The Trojan Women (415 B.C.); Electra (c. 413 B.C.); Iphigenia in Tauris (c. 414-412 B.C.); Helen (412 B.C.); The Phoenician Women (c. 409 B.C.); Orestes (408 B.C.); The Devotees of Dionysus (c. 405 B.C., posthumously produced); Iphigenia at Aulis (c. 405 B.C., unfinished); Rhesus (attributed to Euripides, possibly erroneously) ; The Cyclops (c. 423 B.C., only extant satyr play)

Other writers of tragedy: Although all of their works have been lost, other leading fifth century writers of tragedy include the following:

a. Phrynichus of Athens: first dramatic victory in 511 B.C.; earliest writer of tragedy whose works survived into later classical times; first to use female masks, or to introduce female characters; wrote Sack of Miletus; Phoenician Women; Egyptians; Alcestis; Actaeon; Antaeus; Daughters of Danaus; Women of Pleuron; Tanatlus; Troilus

b. Choerilus of Athens (wrote 523-468 B.C.); said to have invented masks [???];wrote Alope and about 160 other plays

c. Pratinus of Phlius (wrote from 500 B.C.); said to have invented satyr plays; wrote Palaestae

d. Agathon of Athens: his choruses were incidental, transferable lyrics between episodes; invented purely fictional plots, not based on myths; his plays were highly rhetorical; wrote The Flower; Fall of Troy

e. Ion of Chios (ca. 490-420 B.C.) wrote about 40 plays, including The Sentinels; Argives; Alcmene; Omphale; Agamemnon; Laertes; Teucer.

f. Neophron of Sicyon (dates unknown); first to use pedagagus in tragedy; wrote about 120 tragedies

g. Aristarchus of Tegea (contemporary of Euripides) wrote about 70 tragedies including Asclepius; Achilles

h. Achaeus of Eretria (born c. 484 B.C.); wrote about 40 plays, including Philoctetes

READING / LITERATURE

INDEX

LITERATURE ON LINE