Part 1. Information obtained from the University of Pennsylvania Classics Department. The Greek Theater Evolution and Influence Without a doubt, the Greek theater remains one of the most recognized and distinctive buildings in the world. While we associate many features of modern theaters with their Greek counterparts, the ancient theater was a very different animal. The size, shape, and functions of the various pieces, though analogous to the modern theater, were quite different in ancient times. The Greek theater evolved to fit the changing specifications of tragedy, eventually into the form that survives at hundreds of sites around the Mediterranean. At the same time, the overarching simplicity of the Greek theater, despite the many changes, demanded certain features of the tragedies. As tragedy evolved from choral songs to works such as Oedipus the King, a unique, reciprocal relationship developed with the theater. The earliest Greek theaters recall tragedy's origins in choral songs sung to local heroes and divinities. Choral songs were an early Greek performative art, in which a large group of people, the chorus (in Greek, literally = "dance"), would
dance and sing raucous songs in honor of a god. Choral performances in honor of the god Dionysus evolved into what we know as tragedy, an enduring art form that the Greeks invented in the 6th c. B.C.E. These performances took place in a large, circular orchestra, or dancing area, in which the chorus performed. The orchestra was simply a flattened patch of earth, unpaved, and delimited by a rim of large stones. At the center of the orchestra stood an altar to Dionysus, the patron god of tragedy. The chorus did not use the altar per se during performance; instead, the altar acted as a focal point around which the chorus danced and sang. A simple, undecorated wooden tent, or skene, stood behind the orchestra and provided a place for the chorus to store instruments or other props needed during the dance. Audiences began to attend these performances, and orchestras started to be built against hillsides. The rising earth formed a natural seating area, a theater (in Greek = "watching place"), from which spectators could view the performances. These choral songs evolved into tragedy with the addition of actors. The actors, naturally, needed some way to physically separate themselves from the chorus and the orchestra. The small tent gave way to larger wooden buildings. These new and improved skene provided a degree of separation for the actors, as well as doors through which the actors could enter and exit. These wooden platforms, though still temporary, were painted with architectural features; though our word "scene" comes from the Greek skene, these paintings were purely decorative and in no way influenced the tragedy or its content. During this time, other areas of the theater became more defined. First, the orchestra was sunk just below the level of the audience, thus formalizing the stone rim; the orchestra was also paved with large, flat stones. Second, rows of wooden seats were built on the hillside. These benches wrapped more than halfway around the orchestra and began the Greek theater's distinctive architectural form. Over time, the actors supplanted the chorus as the dominant characters in tragedy, and theater design reflected this important shift. The skene evolved again, this time into a complex and permanent stone structure. This generation of skene allowed the actors to perform on stage level as well on the roof. The building became large and sturdy to accommodate the various machines that became popular in tragic performances; such skene were also higher and elaborately decorated with sculpture and architectural features. The new tragic pattern also had ramifications for the orchestra. As the prominence of the chorus diminished, the orchestra got smaller and smaller; late Greek and Roman theaters often reduced the orchestra to a semi- circle. Further modifications came to the audience: Stone seating replaced the wooden benches, and large walkways partitioned the seats for easy access.
Even in its later form, the Greek theater remained starkly simple, and this heavily influenced the tragedies' performance.
First, the Greek theaters were much larger than their modern counterparts, and some theaters held over 14,000 spectators. On these grand scales, actors' tools for communication with the audience were entirely different than modern ones. Body language, facial gestures, and vocal tones, though very effective in a small, modern theater, would have been lost in the sheer size of an ancient one. Instead, the actor wore a huge tragic mask to roughly depict his state of mind and relied on his speech to do the rest. Lengthy monologues were the only means available for character development. These passages contrast with modern drama, but in ancient times were entirely necessary. Second, the theater provided no special effects, save a crane in the skene capable of raising and lowering characters onto the stage. Lighting, background changes, curtains, and sounds - the staple special effects in modern dramatic performance - were unavailable to the Greeks. Instead, all "special effects" had to be done through the script. Murder, sex, natural disasters, suicide, and battles all took place offstage; messengers then reported the results. Given the practical constraints, this was the only sensible way of doing business. Modern readers often desire to "see" these important actions, as they are often the critical points in the tragedy. They take place off- stage not because of incompetence, but because of the limitations of the theater. Greek tragedy and the Greek theater influenced each other in such a way that the discussion of one necessarily involves the other. As
Greek tragedy developed from hymns of praise to local gods to the complex works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the theater adapted accordingly. All the while, the theater remained an essentially simple building and affected the way the tragic poets developed their works. In the end, the distinctive features of Greek tragedy and the Greek theater resulted from the interaction between the two.
Sophocles Sophocles, the son of a wealthy arms manufacturer, was born probably in 496 B.C.E. in the deme Colonus near Athens. Of all the ancient playwrights, he scored the most wins in dramatic competitions, and won the most important dramatic festival, the City Dionysia, an unmatched 18 times. He received an education in music, athletics, and dancing, and as a boy of fifteen was chosen to lead the paean (hymn of praise) sung by the chorus of boys after the victory of Salamis. Like most of the ancient playwrights, he acted in the plays he wrote. He showed his musical skill in public, when he played the blind singer Thamyris in his drama of the same name, and played the cithara with such success that he was painted as Thamyris with the cithara in the famous Stoa Poecile ("painted
colonnade"), a prominent gathering place in ancient Athens. Sophocles was also involved in Athenian political and military affairs. Owing to his practical gifts with language he was involved in negotiations with the allies of Chios and Samos. During the Peloponnesian War he was one of the generals. In 435 B.C.E., fulfilling the office of Hellenotamias, he was at the head of the management of the treasure of the allies, which was kept on the Acropolis; and in 413 B.C.E., when the question arose of giving to the state an oligarchical constitution, he was on the commission of preliminary investigation. He also filled a priestly office. The charm and the refinement of his character seem to have won him many friends. Among them was the historian Herodotus. He was also deemed by antiquity as a man especially beloved by the gods, particularly by Asclepius, god of medicine, whose priest he probably was, and who was said to have granted him health and vigor of mind to extreme old age. By the Athenian Nicostrate he had a son, Iophon, who won some repute as a tragic poet, and by Theoris of Sicyon another son, Ariston, father of another Sophocles who gained fame for himself by writing tragedies of his own, and afterwards by the production of his grandfather's dramas. There was a legend that a quarrel arose between Sophocles and his son Iophon, on account of his preference for this grandson, and that, when summoned by Iophon before the court as weak in mind and unable to manage his affairs, he obtained his own absolute acquittal by reading the chorus on his native place in the Oedipus Coloneus [Plutarch, Moralia, p. 775 B]. The tales of his death, in 405 B.C.E., are also mythical. According to one account, he was choked by a grape. According to others, he died either when publicly reciting the Antigone, or from excessive joy at some dramatic victory. The only fact unanimously attested by his contemporaries is that his death was as dignified as his life. We are also told that the god Dionysus, by repeated apparitions in dreams, prompted the general of the Spartans, who were then attacking Athens, to grant a truce in order to bury the poet in the family grave outside the city. On his tomb stood a Siren as a symbol of the charm of poetry. After his death the Athenians worshipped him as a hero and offered an annual sacrifice in his memory. In later times, on the proposal of the orator Lycurgus, a bronze statue was erected to him, together with Aeschylus and Euripides, in the theatre, and an authorized and standard copy of his dramas was made to preserve them. Even in his lifetime, and indeed through the whole of antiquity, he was held to be the most perfect of tragedians; one of the ancient writers calls him the "pupil of Homer" [Vita Anon., ad fin.]. If Aeschylus is the creator of Greek tragedy, it was Sophocles who brought it to perfection. He extended the dramatic action (1) by the introduction of a third actor, so that three people could be on stage in addition to the chorus, while in his last pieces he even added a fourth; and (2) by a due subordination of the chorus, to which, however, he gave a more artistic development, while he increased its numbers from twelve to fifteen persons. These moves made dialogue all the more important. He also perfected the costumes and decoration. But Sophocles' great mastery of his art appears, above all, in the clearness with which he portrays his characters, which are developed with a scrupulous attention to details, and in which he is not satisfied, like Aeschylus, with mere outlines, nor, as Euripides often did, with copies from common life. His heroes,
too, are ideal figures, like those of Aeschylus. While they lack the superhuman loftiness of Aeschylus' creations, they have a certain ideal truth of their own. In contrast to Euripides, Sophocles, like Aeschylus, is profoundly religious, and the attitude which he adopts towards popular religion is marked by an instinctive reverence. The grace peculiar to Sophocles' nature makes itself felt in his language, the charm of which was universally praised by the ancients. With his noble simplicity he takes in this respect also a middle place between the weightiness and boldness of the language of Aeschylus, and the smoothness and rhetorical embellishment which distinguish that of Euripides. Sophocles was a very prolific poet. The number of his plays is given as between 123 and 130, of which above 100 are known to us by their titles and by fragments. Only seven have been preserved complete: The Trachinice (so named from the chorus, and its treating of the death of Heracles), the Ajax, the Philoctetes, the Electra, the Oedipus Tyrannus, the Oedipus at Colonus, and the Antigone. The last- mentioned play was produced in the spring of 440 B.C.E.; the Philoctetes in 410 B.C.E.; the Oedipus at Colonus was not put on the stage until 401 B.C.E., after his death, by his grandson Sophocles. Besides tragedies, Sophocles composed paeans, elegies, epigrams, and a work in prose on the chorus. Part 2. Following information obtained from Grand Valley State
Above: Theatre at Epidaurus
Origins: Tragedy's origins are obscure, but it apparently started with the singing of a choral lyric (called the dithyramb) in honor of Dionysus. It was performed in a circular dancing- place (orchestra) by a group of men who may have impersonated satyrs by wearing masks and dressing in goat- skins. (The Greek word tragoedia means "goat- song.") Eventually, the content of the dithyramb was widened to any mythological or heroic story, and an actor was introduced to answer questions posed by the choral group. (The Greek word for actor is hypokrites, which literally means "answerer." It is the source for our English word "hypocrite.") Tragedy was recognized as an official state cult in Athens in 534 BC. According to tradition, the playwright Aeschylus added a second actor and Sophocles added a third. Performance: Greek tragedies were performed in late March/early April at an annual state religious festival in honor of Dionysus. The presentation took the form of a contest between three playwrights, who presented their works on three successive days. Each playwright would prepare a trilogy of three tragedies, plus an unrelated concluding comic piece called a satyr play. Often, the three plays featured linked stories, but later writers like Euripides may have presented three unrelated plays. Only one complete trilogy has survived, the Oresteia of Aeschylus. The Greek theatre was in the open air, on the side of a hill, and performances of a trilogy and satyr play probably lasted most of the day. Performances were apparently open to all citizens, including women, but evidence is scanty. The theatre of Dionysus at Athens probably held around 12,000 people (Ley 33-34). The presentation of the plays probably resembled modern opera more than what we think of as a "play." All of the choral parts were sung (to flute accompaniment) and some of the actors' answers to the chorus were sung as well. The play as a whole was composed in various verse meters. All actors were male and wore masks, which may have had some amplifying capabilities. A Greek chorus danced as well as sang. (The Greek word choros means "a dance in a ring.") No one knows exactly what sorts of steps the chorus performed as it sang. But choral songs in tragedy are often divided into three sections: strophe ("turning, circling"), antistrophe ("counter- turning, counter- circling") and epode ("after- song"). So perhaps the chorus would dance one way around the orchestra ("dancing- floor") while singing the strophe, turn another way during the antistrophe, and then stand still during the epode. Definition: Tragedy depicts the downfall of a noble hero or heroine, usually through some combination of hubris, fate, and the will of the gods. The tragic hero's powerful wish to achieve some goal inevitably encounters limits, usually those of human frailty (flaws in reason, hubris, society), the gods (through oracles, prophets, fate), or nature. Aristotle says that the tragic hero should have a flaw and/or make some mistake (hamartia). The hero need not die at the end, but he / she must undergo a
change in fortune. In addition, the tragic hero may achieve some revelation or recognition (anagnorisis- - "knowing again" or "knowing back" or "knowing throughout" ) about human fate, destiny, and the will of the gods. Aristotle quite nicely terms this sort of recognition "a change from ignorance to awareness of a bond of love or hate." Aristotle on Tragedy (From the Poetics of Aristotle [384-322 BC]) I. Definition of Tragedy "Tragedy, then, is a process of imitating an action which has serious implications, is complete, and possesses magnitude; by means of language which has been made sensuously attractive, with each of its varieties found separately in the parts; enacted by the persons themselves and not presented through narrative; through a course of pity and fear completing the purification catharsis, sometimes translated "purgation") of such emotions." a) "imitation" or mimesis: Contrary to Plato, Aristotle asserts that the artist does not just copy the shifting appearances of the world, but rather imitates or represents Reality itself, and gives form and meaning to that Reality. In so doing, the artist gives shape to the universal, not the accidental. Poetry, Aristotle says, is "a more philosophical and serious business than history; for poetry speaks more of universals, history of particulars." b) "an action with serious implications": serious in the sense that it best raises and purifies pity and fear; serious in a moral, psychological, and social sense. c) "complete and possesses magnitude": not just a series of episodes, but a whole with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The idea of imitation is important here; the artist does not just slavishly copy everything related to an action, but selects (represents) only those aspects which give form to universal truths. d) "language sensuously attractive...in the parts": language must be appropriate for each part of the play: choruses are in a different meter and rhythm and more melodious than spoken parts. e) tragedy (as opposed to epic) relies on an enactment (dramatic performance) not on "narrative" (the author telling a story).
f) "purification" (catharsis): tragedy first raises (it does not create) the emotions of pity and fear, then purifies or purges them. Whether Aristotle means to say that this purification takes place only within the action of the play, or whether he thinks that the audience also undergoes a cathartic experience, is still hotly debated. One scholar, Gerald Else, says that tragedy purifies "whatever is 'filthy' or 'polluted' in the pathos, the tragic act" (98). Others say that the play arouses emotions of pity and fear in the spectator and then purifies them (reduces them to beneficent order and proportion) or purges them (expels them from his/her emotional system). II. The Tragic Hero The tragic hero is "a [great] man who is neither a paragon of virtue and justice nor undergoes the change to misfortune through any real badness or wickedness but because of some mistake." a) a great man: "one of those who stand in great repute and prosperity, like Oedipus and Thyestes: conspicuous men from families of that kind." The hero is neither a villain nor a model of perfection but is basically good and decent. b) "mistake" (hamartia): This Greek word, which Aristotle uses only once in the Poetics, has also been translated as "flaw" or as "error." The great man falls through- - though not entirely because of- - some weakness of character, some moral blindness, or error. We should note that the gods also are in some sense responsible for the hero's fall. III. Plot Aristotle distinguished six elements of tragedy: "plot, characters, verbal expression, thought, visual adornment, and song- composition." Of these, PLOT is the most important. The best tragic plot is single and complex, rather than double ("with opposite endings for good and bad"- - a characteristic of comedy in which the good are rewarded and the wicked punished). All plots have some pathos (suffering), but a complex plot includes reversal and recognition. a) "reversal" (peripeteia): occurs when a situation seems to developing in one direction, then suddenly "reverses" to another. For example, when Oedipus first hears of the death of Polybus (his supposed father), the news at first seems good, but then is revealed to be disastrous.
b) "recognition" (anagnorisis or "knowing again" or "knowing back" or "knowing throughout" ): a change from ignorance to awareness of a bond of love or hate. For example, Oedipus kills his father in ignorance and then learns of his true relationship to the King of Thebes. Recognition scenes in tragedy are of some horrible event or secret, while those in comedy usually reunite long- lost relatives or friends. A plot with tragic reversals and recognitions best arouses pity and fear. c) "suffering" (pathos): Also translated as "a calamity," the third element of plot is "a destructive or painful act." The English words "sympathy," "empathy," and "apathy" (literally, absence of suffering) all stem from this Greek word.