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Syllabus: Greek Drama
Category : Greek Drama
Published by Brian on 2008/11/9
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Greek theater was a political institution, a way of establishing both Greek and Athenian (civic)
identity. The fact that Athens, alone, invented drama, is due to the completely unique experiment in
democracy it had initiated. Though set in mythical and heroic times, Greek Tragedy addresses the
vital and contemporary concerns of this very energetic, aggressive, and articulate community
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Colloquium in Classical Greek Drama Brian Johnston
GREEK DRAMA IS NOT RITUAL
Greek drama will develop dynamically, evolving a very sophisticated theatrical art form. This, more
than anything, separates Drama from Ritual. The chief aspects of ritual are:
(a) The ritual does not significantly change. Each ritual ceremony tries to maintain the original form.
[Greek drama is continually evolving]
(b) The ritual is utilitarian: it seeks to bring about an effect: healing, rain, exorcism. [Drama has no
utilitarian purpose: it is autotelic]
(c) The ritual celebrant does not ask the audience to believe he or she is someone else. Shamans
may claim to be in touch with supernatural agencies: they do not ask you to believe they are the gods
or demons. [Dramatis personae are impersonations]
(d) The ritual celebrant does not compete for audience approval and a prize. [Greek drama festivals
were intensely competitive]
This is the very odd and original thing about dramatic performance: that the performers ask you to
believe they are very different characters than themselves, in a very different situation. That they are
mythical Theban townsfolk terrified that they are about to be annihilated, and desperately seeking
help from another fictional character. Yet they act out this desperate situation in an art form of highly
elaborate poetic and theatric conventions that belong to the theater, not to their ‘fictional’ situation.
That is, with a Prologue, a Parodos, a First Episode, a First Choral Ode, a Second Episode and so
on. The characters will not speak as ‘real life’ characters in real situations would: they dance, sing,
chant, declaim, engage in stichomythia at predetermined moments. This dramatic structure is
something that THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES is evolving.
THE PERSIANS made the Chorus the main character, in which the tragic anagnorisis or painful
knowledge is achieved. The protagonists were more the ‘illustrators’ of the action that the Chorus
absorbed and suffered.
In THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES, we have the creation of the Tragic Hero: the central character at
whom the action of the play is directed, and who comes to understand the tragic process which he
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will bring about.
Note: The plays are best studied in the order in which they
are believed to have appeared in the theater, year by year,
not by each author's oeuvre. In this way we will get an
idea of the development of the Athenian theater over the
major period and the influence, year by year, of the
competing dramatists on each other.
YEAR B.C.E.
534 Tragedy recognized as part of City Dionysia.
Who is Dionysos? Why a civic festival?
The Greek polis (city) and how it was formed.
What is the City Dionysia? How did it begin?
What performance structure did it create?
Greek theater was a political institution, a way of establishing both Greek and Athenian (civic)
identity. The fact that Athens, alone, invented drama, is due to the completely unique experiment in
democracy it had initiated. Though set in mythical and heroic times, Greek Tragedy addresses the
vital and contemporary concerns of this very energetic, aggressive, and articulate community. One of
the best guides to the plays of Sophokles and Euripides is Thukydides contemporary History of the
Peloponnesian War.
499 Aeschylus begins competing in City Dionysia
470 THE PERSIANS
This play (which is a gorgeous costume drama) not only celebrates the victory of the tiny Greek
states over the mighty Persian Empire: it also creates, in Xerxes, the hero as 'pharmakos', or
scapegoat and, at the same time, is an eloquent warning against hubris It shows the criminal
stupidity of mere mortals to set themselves against the gods. ZEUS is the invisible main actor of the
play, as so often in Aeschylean tragedy.
472 Aeschylus(?) Prometheus Bound
468 Sophokles, it is claimed, introduces the third actor.
The three-actor convention now established. It will remain unchanged throughout the entire period.
467 The Seven Against Thebes
(The last play in the Oedipian trilogy)
The hero as heroic and tragic pharmakos. Eteocles finally goes to
his death understanding that this removes the pollution from his
family history and fulfills a pattern, or order, conceived from the beginning in the mind of Zeus
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458 The Oresteia: (Agamemnon) A 3-actor trilogy.
The problem of finding the beginning of the long chain of guilt behind the history of the aristocratic
Palace of Atreus. Is there ‘Zeus’ behind the chaos and darkness? The ‘over-determined’ death of
Agamemnon: the many motives of Clytemnestra; the all-encompassing vision of Cassandra. Orestes
predicted. The protagonists, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus end up as antagonists with the Chorus. The
vendetta-justice of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus only continues the endless pendulum swing of
revenge and counter-revenge.
The Oresteia: The Libation Bearers;
The ‘new hero’ as “pharmakos” who suffers and stones; the gradual evolution of gods, humans and
society. The play as a long ceremony at the sacred Tomb of Agamemnon: ‘psyching up’ Orestes to
be a holy avenger and agent of justice. Orestes and Elektra as two ‘exile’ heroes who unite with the
female slave Chorus.
The Eumenides
The path from savagery to civilization. The scene crosses space and time from Argos to Athens, and
700 years in time! DELPHI, the holy place where Apollo exonerates Orestes was not founded until
centuries after the time of the ealier two plays. Democratic ATHENS came into being even centuries
later. ATHENS, in Greek Tragedy, is always the non-tragic space. In The Eumenides, for the first
time in human history, a jury of a democratic state takes over the question of justice from the gods.
The ‘dialectical’ lesson of the trilogy pathei mathon wisdom emerges only from suffering; and without
Crime there could be no Justice. Laws are forced upon our stubborn natures.
THE DISRUPTIVE DEAD
450? Sophokles; Ajax
The Sophoclean plot and tragic hero/heroine (This establishes a 'norm' for 'Western' tragedy) The
‘uningratiating heroism’ of Sophokles tragic characters. The tragic hero/heroine is a very disturbing
and even ‘unlikable’ figure, whose intransigence creates an uncomfortable close encounter with the
heroic. The grimly heroic, uncompromising spirit of AJAX lives on in the unheroic aftermath of his
suicide.
441? Sophokles; Antigone
ANTIGONE’s intransigence is a disaster for all who surround and love her. This play reverses the
dialectic of The Oresteia. ANTIGONE is the ‘Fury’ whose attachment to the ‘blood line values of the
family lead her to turn against the state, represented by CREON.
GREEK COMEDY
In Greek Tragedy the action is set in remote times, where ATHENS is always non-tragic space,
where characters come to escape tragedy (usually from THEBES). In Greek Comedy, on the
contrary, the action usually is set in contemporary Athens, in its political and street life. It is a totally
un-idealized portrait of Athenian culture, emphasizing political squabbling corruption, physical
grossness, abuses such as lawyers and law-courts, its ‘gender-wars’, etc. and the increasing
resentment by many and the never-ending Peloponnesian War. Aristophanes belonged to the ‘Peace
Party’ and continually attacked the policies of the war faction.
The Lenaian festival of comedy.
Aristophanes' comedy of the polis.
Unlike tragedy, Comedy takes place in contemporary Athens. In
The Clouds he attacks two public nuisances – Euripides, and
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the ‘dangerous’ philosopher, Sokrates; cf. Plato: The Apology, for
Sokrates’ reply.
423. Aristophanes: The Clouds
Aristophanes attacks the new ‘Sophist’ form of education that is encouraging the young in Athens to
question the assumptions upon which their culture is based. He (falsely) charges SOKRATES, with
being a ‘mad scientist’ (a first example of the Frankenstein fear!) who is displacing the traditional
gods with natural and scientific forces, and also with corrupting the morals of the young – charges
that were much later to lead to Sokrates trial and death. For Sokrates defence (and his comments on
this play) read Plato: THE APOLOGY) Aristophanes also takes a couple of swipes at EURIPIDES.
424 Euripides: Alkestis
Enter Euripides, and the start of a long quarrel with Aristophanes. Alkestis is an anomaly: a two-actor
play (some fantastic doubling!) which seems to have filled the place of a Satyr play as the fourth play
in the tetralogy. There are elements of satyr comedy in the play.
425 The transgressive hero: Oedipus/Philosopher
Sophokles: Oedipus tyrannos
Considered, since ARISTOTLE, the masterpiece of Athenian drama and the model by which to judge
all subsequent drama, the play and its hero are in fact daringly anomalous. In this play, human
rationality at its most triumphant (in Oedipus) is brought into collision with the mysterious and
implacable structure of the cosmos. The solver of riddles discovers he himself ‘man’ is the riddle
defying solution.
THE PROBLEM WITH HERAKLES
420? Sophokles: The Women of Trachis
Euripides’ Herakles
Euripides solution to the 'problem of Herakles' is stunningly different to that of Sophokles and is a
theatrical tour de force. Sophokles equally ‘bleak’ version contains one of his most astonishing
‘doubling’ devices, as powerful as in the Elektra. The two plays, like the two Elektra plays that follow,
offer a very telling example of the difference between the two poets’ conceptions of tragedy and
dramatic art. .
417? Euripides: Elektra
414? Sophokles: Elektra
Sophokles and Euripides are competing against each other (and with the dead Aeschylus) for control
of the powerful Orestes myth. This contest is for the right to speak for the traditions that the city of
Athens stands for. Euripides debunks the myth to reveal the revenge as ignoble: Sophokles rescues
the myth as an example of tough, Homeric heroism. The actor-doubling produces one of Sophokles
most stunning theatrical effects: as also does his use of the theatrical ‘prop’.
409 Sophokles; Philoktetes
Euripides; Orestes;
Athens and the Peloponnesian War. Each of these plays is a despairing account of the corruption of
Athenian culture as a consequence of the long (over 30 years) Peloponnesian War. Sophokles
suggests a lonely, heroic but bitter integrity might still be rescued from the squalor; Euripides depicts
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characters, in a world totally of cynical opportunistic politics, driven by desperation to criminal
violence, to the exasperation of the god, Apollo..
406? Euripides invents a 'Romance' form of drama
Euripides: Ion
Iphigeneia Among the Taurians
Euripides invents a 'Romance' form of drama. Ion anticipates Menandrian COMEDY, whereas
Iphigenia Among the Taurians creates a form that closely resembles Shakespeare’s late Romance
Plays (from Pericles, to The Winter’s Tale) .These are plays where the characters are menaced,
even suffer, but in which tragedy is miraculously (divinely) overcome.
414 Aristophanes The Birds
402: Dionysos invades the theater
(a) As tragic and avenging power
(b) As farcical clown
Euripides: The Bakkhai
Aristophanes: The Frogs
The awesome god now makes two startling appearances in the Athenian Theatre of Dionysos: as a
terrifying power who destroys a whole community for rejecting his truth, and as a buffoon in a
Comedy, who sets out to save a community (Athens) by rescuing its supreme art form – Tragedy.
These two plays were written when Athens was on the brink of destruction.
401
Sophokles: Oedipus at Kolonus
Production of the play: After its defeat, Athens recovers its democracy and reinstates the City
Dionysia. The Greek theater's last major tragedy. Its greatest transgressive hero enters Athens.
Sophokles wrote his tragedy when Athens was about to fall to Sparta. It is Sophokles' last play and
the last great tragedy performed in the Athenian theater.
317 Menander: The Dyskolos
The new theater of sophisticated entertainment, no longer just for Athens, but for the whole
Hellenistic world, which now has numerous elaborate theatre building throughout the empire. . The
3-actor rule stretched to its limits: 3 actors play 16 characters. The New Comedy creates the Western
comedic (5-act) genre.
Select Reading List
HOMER: THE ILIAD; THE ODYSSEY
Margarete Bieber,THE HISTORY OF THE GREEK AND ROMAN THEATER, 2nd Edition (Princeton
1961) 0-691-03521-0
P.E. Easterling, Ed., CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO GREEK TRAGEDY, (Cambridge: 1997)
0-521-42351-1
C. Kerenyi. THE GODS OF THE GREEKS (London: 1980; reprint, 2000) 0-500-27048-1
Jasper Griffin HOMER ON LIFE AND DEATH (Oxford)1980) 0-19-814026-6
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Harold Bloom, ed. Homer, Modern Critical Views.
Albrecht Dihle A HIST0RY 0F GREEK LITERATURE, (London & New York, Routledge) 1994
0-415-08620-5
Jean-Piere Vernant, MORTALS AND IMMORTALS) (Princeton 1991) 0-691-01931-2
Jeam Pierre Vernant/Pierre Vidal-Naquet MYTH AND TRAGEDY (Zone Books 1988)0-942299-18-3
John Herington, POETRY INTO DRAMA (Univ. California 1985)) 0-520-05100-9
Froma Zeitlin, Ed. NOTHING TO DO WITH DIONYSOS, (Prin ceton 1990) 0-691-06814-3
Oliver Taplin, THE STAGECRAFT OF AESCHYLUS, 1977 0-19-814486-5
Thomas G. Rosenmayer THE ART OF AESCHYLUS,(Univ. Cal. 1982) 0-520-04440-1
Jean-Joseph Goux, OEDIPUS, PHILOSOPHER (Stanford Univ. 1993) 0-8047-2171-8
Bernard Knox, OEDIPUS AT THEBES, 1957; 2nd printing 1966
David Seale, VISION AND STAGECRAFT IN SOPHOCLES, (Univ.Chicago 1982) 0-226-74404-3
Anne Pippin Burnett, CATASTROPHE SURVIVED 1971
Erich Segal, ed. EURIPIDES; A COLLECTION OF CRITICAL ESSAYS 1968
Erich Segal, OXFORD READINGS IN ARISTOPHANES (O.U..P 1996) 0-19-872156-0
Cedric H. Whitman, ARISTOPHANES AND THE COMIC HERO) 1964
Douglas MacDowell, ARISTOPHANES AND ATHENS (O.U.P. 1995) 0-19-872158-7
Victor Ehrenberg, THE PEOPLE OF ARISTOPHANES 1962
George Thomson, AESCHYLUS AND ATHENS, 1941
John Herington , AESCHYLUS, 1986
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