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Chapter-I
Introduction
A man's character is his fate
Heraclitus
Drama arose out of the fundamental human needs in the dawn of civilization, and has
continued to express them for thousands of years. Drama presents stories to be performed for an
audience. No consensus exists regarding the birth of drama, the origin of drama may be dated
back thousands of years, to a time when all types of literature were oral-were spoken aloud rather
than written down. People have been telling stories for thousands of years, long before writing
was invented, and stories were told around crackling campfires and at family meetings. Story
telling formed a part of community ceremonies and public gatherings. As time passed, these
stories were sung by wandering minstrels who knew them by heart and recited them with
musical accompaniment. The earliest of these stories are called myths.
Myth is a special kind of a story, usually about a country‟s gods and goddesses and their
encounter with the mortals. There are plenty of definitions given for the term „myth‟. According
to Barry B.Powell, “Originally, the Greek word mythos meant “speech” or “story” or “plot...”
(2). A rather funny interpretation of Myth is given by William G.Doty, “Myths are not like
cotton candy at a circus that disappears with the first lick, but they graph fundamental
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psychological realities of everyday life: the family, sibling rivalry, male or female hero worship,
or the respect or disrespect a society affords the aging”(21).
A myth has a threefold plot with a beginning, middle and an end and is classified into
three main types: Divine myth, Legend and Folk tale. Divine myth contains a plot which is
completely woven around the supernatural characters. Unlike the divine myth, the central
characters in a legend are human beings. The heroes and heroines are drawn from the ranks of
the nobility like kings, queens, prince, princess and the other members of the aristocratic origin.
Their stories are exciting and unforgettable. A folk tale, on the other hand, is not easy to define
like the other two types because of the variety of traditional stories grouped under this heading.
The central characters in a folk tale are ordinary men, women and children rather than kings and
queens. Mythology is considered to be the back bone of literature. Thomas Bulfinch comments
on the importance of mythology thus, “For mythology is the handmaid of literature; and
literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness” (3).
Drama is the forerunner of the modern films, but unlike modern movies, drama reflects
only reality, as Marjorie Boulton points out in The Anatomy of Drama:
THERE is an enormous difference between a play and any other form of
literature. A play is not really a piece of literature for reading. A true play is three
dimensional; it is literature that walks and talks before our eyes. It is not intended
that the eyes shall perceive marks on paper and the imagination turn them into
sights, sounds and actions; the text of the play is meant to be translated into
sights, sounds and actions which occur literally and physically on stage (3).
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Watching a play is an exciting event than reading any form of literature. This can be
easily noticed in the present day audience. They are more interested in watching television or a
movie than reading a book. The success of a play basically depends on the performer. There are
so many dramatic clubs and societies which are saving this art from its downfall. Amateur
dramatic societies provide worthwhile experience to many. An element which is necessary to
complete the minimum requirement of the drama is a plot or a story. The plot of the play, like
that of any other form of literature, is the actual story. The plot should be very clear to the
audience so that they can follow it at the necessary speed.
A play must have twists and turns to retain the interest of the audience till the end. There
is a general formula to write a drama, and it involves four steps; the Introduction or Clarificationto learn who the characters are, their roles in the play and the problems faced by them; the First
Crisis-startling development from which arose, new problems to the characters; Complicationcrisis to crisis, knots, twists and turns and untying the knot; Denouement- final action. There are
tragedies, comedies and modern plays which are written following this formula. The plot of a
tragedy, a comedy and a modern drama can be examined briefly in the light of this general
formula. The play Macbeth is briefly examined on the basis of this method in the book The
Anatomy of Drama:
In Macbeth the first two scenes provide most of the Clarification; we learn that
there are three Witches who plot evil with Macbeth as a tool, that a battle has just
taken place and gracious and admired personality, is the King of Scotland. The
first crisis comes in the next scene, when the Witches greet the so far noble
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Macbeth with the promise that he „shall be king hereafter!‟ As he is not the legal
heir to the throne this leaves him, and the audience, wondering how this can be
fulfilled. The prediction works upon the minds of the warrior and his ambitious
wife until it brings about the second crisis, the murder of Duncan, an act setting
Macbeth irrevocably on the path of crime. This leads to the third crisis of the
murder of Banquo, a fourth crisis when the ghost of Banquo appears at the feast
and a fifth crisis when Macbeth, having consulted the Witches again, decides
upon the murder of Macduff and allows the murder of the latter‟s helpless wife
and children… The denouement comes in the last battle, when the Witchess‟
prophecies about Birnam Wood and the nature of the man who should defeat
Macbeth come true and the tyrant is killed (43-44).
The earliest work of literary criticism in western civilization is Aristotle‟s Poetics, an
attempt to define and classify the different literary genres that use rhythm, language, and
harmony. Aristotle identifies four genres of literature in his work namely, the epic poetry, the
dithyrambic poetry, comedy and tragedy that have in common their attempts to mimesis or
imitation of human activity. According to the authorities, drama originated in Greece 2500 years
ago, as an outgrowth of the God Dionysus or Bacchus, son of Jupiter and Semele. The god is
associated with male fertility, agriculture and seasonal survival. This sect was said to have
originated in Asia Minor. They practised rituals which may have included alcoholic intoxication,
human and animal sacrifices, and perhaps even hysterical rampages by women called maenads.
The rituals included uninhibited dancing which created an altered mental state. This altered state
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was known as 'ecstasis', from which the word ecstasy is derived. Ecstasy was an important
religious concept to the Greeks, who used to see theatre as a way of releasing powerful emotions
through its ritual power. The cult spread through the tribes of Greece. In these Dionysian
festivals, a group of fifty citizens of Athens known as Chorus, outfitted and trained by a leader,
or Choragos, performed hymns in praise of the god. These songs were later branded as
dithyrambic poetry. The celebration concluded with the ritual sacrifice of a goat, or tragos. The
two main genres of drama originally took their names from these rituals: Comedy from komos,
the Greek word for festivity and tragedy from tragos, the Greek word for he-goat.
A play does not make the same demand on our visual descriptive imagination as any
fiction or a descriptive poem does. Drama is the form of literary art which is most restricted by
conventions. The conventions are of two kinds: the violent impact and the one that protects the
audience from too violent an experience. Theatre is also a means of communication achieved
through speech, songs, dance and music. There are many kinds of drama other than tragedy.
Some of the important types of drama include: Melodrama, eg: Shakespeare‟s Titus Andronicus,
The Heroic play, eg: Dryden‟s Don Sebastian, The Problem play, eg: The Plays of Henrik Ibsen
such as A Doll’s House, Ghosts etc. Comedy, eg: William Congreve‟s The Way of the World,
Dance drama, eg: Chandalika by Rabindranath Tagore etc.
Tragedy is one of the highest achievements of mankind. The term tragedy as it is given in
"Tragedy." MAX notes to Guide to Literary Terms is, “The term is from the Greek tragoidia
formed by combining tragos, meaning “he-goat,” and oide, meaning “song.” (A tragoidos was a
tragic poet and singer; probably called “a goat singer” because he wore goatskins or because a
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he-goat was the prize in a competition among tragoidos)” <http://www.enotes.com/literaryterms/>.
Tragedy is a play with a sorrowful ending, usually with at least one death in the end. The
actions and thoughts are treated seriously and with a respect for human personality. An important
feature of a tragedy is that the audience is left with a sense of greatness of man as well as of the
suffering involved in human life. The emotional conflicts in a tragedy are deep and almost
unbearable, but the characters who suffer these agonies are worth the concern of the audience.
The word “Tragedy” is defined thus by Aristotle in his work Poetics:
Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a
certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament,
the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action,
not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation (catharsis) of
these emotions http://www.gutenberg.org/.
According to A Dictionary of Literary terms, the word „Tragedy‟:
is a kind of protest; it is a cry of terror or complaint or rage or anguish to and
against whoever or whatever is responsible for „this harsh rack‟, for suffering, for
death. Be it God, Nature, Fate, Circumstance, Chance, or just something
nameless. It is a „cry‟ about the tragic situation in which the hero or heroine find
themselves (706).
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D.Vanice Smith, in an article, gives his interpretation of tragedy, where he relates tragedy
with place and time. He says, “Tragedy follows the transformation of a place that may be
topographical, political, mnemonic, or psychological into a space that is threatened by and
involved in the flux or oblivion of time” (377). There are six constituents that determine the
quality of tragedy. They are the plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, and song. The most
important element out of these six elements is the plot. Plot is the order of incidents; the
imitation of action. It is the soul of a tragedy. Tragedy is a representation not of people but of
action and life. Plot is the action in a tragedy. A well-constructed plot should, therefore, be single
in its issue, rather than double. The plot in a tragedy is more important than that in a comedy.
The plot of a comedy can be slighter, but it has a happy ending unlike that of a tragedy. There are
many dramatic forms like coincidence, contrast, surprise, silence, shock etc. that play an
important role in heightening the emotional intensity of a drama. Character takes the second
important place in a tragedy. The character must be good and the playwright should see to it that
the character is true to life and consistent. The third important property of tragedy is thought, the
ability to say what is possible and appropriate in the given circumstances. Fourth is the diction,
the expressive use of words and this has the same effect in verse and prose. Song is the
pleasurable element in a tragedy. Spectacle or stage effect is the last element in a tragedy which
gains the immediate attention of the audience.
There are quantitative parts in a tragedy namely the Prologue, Episode, Exode and the
Choric song. The Prologue is the entire part of a tragedy which precedes the parode of the
Chorus. The Episode is the part of a tragedy between the choric songs. The Exode is an exit song
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of the Chorus. The Choric song is divided into Parode and Statismon. The Parode is the first
undivided utterance of the Chorus; the Statismon is a choric ode without anaepaests or trochaic
tetrameters. These are common to all plays; peculiar to some are the songs of actors from the
stage and the commoe.
The Greek drama opens with a prologue by a single character who introduces the
theatrical situation to the spectators, and then the Chorus enters the Orchestra, singing and
dancing to suit the situation. The part of the Chorus in the Greek drama is perhaps equivalent to
the role of the poet in an epic. The Chorus comments on the action and the play and seeks to
reflect the audience‟s opinion. The Chorus stays throughout the play interjecting now and again
to perform such a role and imparts continuity to the narrative element of the play. The play starts
immediately after the Chorus episode. Greek drama comprises three main elements, which may
be observed in the verse form of the plays. First is the lyric element which underlines the moods
and feelings aroused by the consequence of the dramatic events. The lyric element in the Greek
tragedies is confined to the Chorus, and is expressed in various and complex meters. These lyrics
were sung with an instrumental accompaniment. The second element is the scenic or mimetic
element, and the third element is none other than the declamation. The features of these three
elements are briefed by Flora.R.Levin:
The three elements described above, which we may here call speech,
declamation and song, are exemplified in the dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles
and Euripides. The songs, in their turn, may be divided into three types: the
stage songs (aposkênês), in which one or two actors took part; the lamentations
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(commoi) and threnodies (threnoi), in which one or two actors sang in
conjunction with the Chorus (5).
The Chorus is a central feature of the Greek drama. It has its own traditions, habits of
thought and feeling. The Chorus dominated Greek theatre in the fifth century; in a sense the
theatre was derived from it. The Chorus was foremost in the Greek drama because there used to
be only one actor and the actor had to leave the stage to change characters. During such times,
the stage is filled by the presence of the Chorus. The Chorus is a homogeneous, nonindividualized group of performers in the ancient Greek plays that comprised costumed actors
and their place in the theatre was the dancing floor or Orchestra. The Chorus recited or sang the
text and emphasized the words with gestures or dance steps. The dance figures were an essential
part of the Greek theatre. Great care was taken by the actors to impress the audience. They used
colourful costumes and masks to attract the audience. The members of the Chorus used to
entertain the audience by providing advice, opinion, and also would question the audience on
important issues. The Chorus in the very beginning of the Greek drama was a band of persons
who sang a song together in honour of some god or hero. It consisted of fifty members which
was later reduced to twelve by Sophocles, then increased to fifteen by Euripides. The dramatic
role of the Chorus varied from playwright to playwright.
There are four main practical uses for which the Chorus was employed in the tragedies,
says David Grene in Three Greek Tragedies in Translation. Firstly, the Chorus is used as a main
character in addition to the role of an actor. They were given separate scenes which were of
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utmost significance in the play. The Suppliants of Aeschylus and The Bacchae of Euripides are
some examples of this kind of plays. The Second use of the Chorus is to create an emotional
atmosphere necessary for the dramatic effect of the play. The Chorus in Sophocles‟s Oedipus is
an example for this type. And the third use is to act as a narrative of antecedent events necessary
for the proper understanding of the plot. The Chorus here gives a complete picture of events
which in turn helps the audience in understanding the plot well. The first Chorus in the play
Hippolytus by Euripides is an example of this type. Finally, the Chorus is used by the dramatist
as an expression of his own sentiments and opinions and the Chorus in Euripides‟s Hippolytus is
a good example for this use of Chorus. The actors were professionals unlike the members of the
Chorus, no more than three actors were allowed on the stage and the players often had double
roles. Women, although they were allowed to be the members of the Chorus, were not allowed to
act in the play. Female roles were played by men. Men used to wear masks for the female roles.
They also changed the timbre of their voices.
The Greek drama has no act or scene divisions in which the modern drama uses them.
The action is continuous but division of the action is made by the Chorus reciting lyrics or
invocations to the gods between the episodes. The costumes and masks of the actors added
spectacle and their movement and dance heightened the dramatic effect. Music too played a
predominant role in the Greek Tragedies. The fusion of music with poetry was common in those
days. Greek poetry was quantitative and the rhythmic unit was the syllable. The lyric element in
it underlines the moods and feelings aroused by the effect of the dramatic events. This lyric
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element is combined with the Chorus, and is expressed in complex meters. These lyrics were
sung with the accompaniment of an instrument.
The treatment of Chorus by Euripides is different from the other two master playwrights.
Aeschylus is known for his long choral passages. Sophocles‟s Choruses in a sense, exists as
living entities, which are not found in the plays of Euripides. Euripides is known for his skillful
handling of the Chorus. The members of Chorus too had a part to play in the drama; sometimes
their part with the plot was intimate. They were usually supposed to be friends or servants of the
major characters. The playwright handled his Choruses creatively. In the play Ion, he had
subdivided the Chorus to make a scene more creative. He had also introduced a supplementary
Chorus for dramatic effect in plays like Hippolytus and Iphigenia at Aulis. The Chorus of the
huntsmen in Hippolytus and the Chorus of Argive men in the play Iphigenia at Aulis are
supplementary Choruses. The language used in the Choruses of Euripides is in par with the
language of the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles. The Chorus of Euripides contains beautiful
poetry. Some critics believe that Euripides has corrupted the Chorus by minimizing its part and
dealing with it impatiently and negligently. As Francis Fergusson points out in his article, “The
beautiful lyrics sung by Euripides‟s Choruses are, as I have said, incidental music rather than
organic parts of the action; they are not based upon the feeling that all have a stake in the
common way of life and therefore in the issue of the present action”( 11). But Aristides
Evengelus Phoutrides argues that this is not true:
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Of the twenty-six thousand one hundred and thirty-three verses which are
contained in the nineteen extant plays, five thousand five hundred and twenty-six
are devoted to the Chorus, that is, twenty-one percent of the whole work of
Euripides is choral. If we compare with these figures of those of Sophocles, we
find that the percentage in Euripides is even larger than that of his predecessor
(81).
He argues that Euripides has given importance to Chorus in his plays wherein the dialogue
between the Chorus and the actors in his plays is by no means less important than the plays of
the other two tragedians. He gives the example of the play Ion where the Chorus not only is
effective but also mingles with the action.
Tragedy always revolves around the elemental conflict between a man and a destiny
which he cannot master. Helen Gardner observes this in Religion and Literature:
Tragedy shows man as a social being, involved with his fellow men, doing them
good and evil, ordering his life and the lives of those around him, making
mistakes according to his nature, pursuing his ends, sometimes selfishly,
sometimes unselfishly, receiving good and evil at the hands of his fellows, acting
wisely and unwisely in all relations of life as husband or father or wife or son or
king or citizen. Greek tragedies are unashamedly didactic and deeply concerned
with moral conduct (47).
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According to Aristotle, tragedy originated from the improvisations of the exarchontes
(song leaders) of the dithyramb, while comedy originated with the leaders of the "phallic songs.”
A dithyramb was a religious hymn sung in honor of Dionysus, and the Dionysiac origin of
tragedy was in antiquity taken for granted, being the god of theatre as much as the god of wine,
vegetation, and fertility. However, tragedy lost its Dionysiac associations very early, and only
one of the preserved plays, indeed the very last tragedy of Euripides, Bacchae, has a Dionysiac
content, namely the myth of resistance to the introduction of cult to Thebes, and the god's
devastating revenge upon the city. Dithyramb, too, gradually lost its religious connection to and
developed into choral poetry that drew its subject from mythology like tragedy. Dithyrambs were
also regularly performed in the Dionysiac festivals.
The Archaic period (800 BC – 480 BC) was a period of ancient Greek history that
followed the Dark Ages of Greece. This period saw the rise of the polis, the setting up of
colonies, the growth of classical philosophy and theatre in the form of tragedies. During the
archaic period there occurred an intellectual revolution in Greece. Greek literature was closely
linked to religious belief and moral teaching. Classical Athens in the fifth century BC was a
burgeoning democratic state with a population of about 300,000. The term democracy in the fifth
century Athens differed considerably from the modern term. Only the adult male citizens were
eligible to participate in the decision- making process. This circumstance was responsible for the
class conflict and the perennial struggle between different forms of government. The
philosophies and theories of Aristotle and Plato were integrally shaped by awareness of these
political struggles.
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Athens then was not only a democracy but also an imperial power, head of the so-called
Delian League of more than a hundred city- states, from whom she exacted tribute. By 500 BC,
the ideals of social equality and democratic structure were furthered in Athens by leaders and
law givers such as Solon, who made the law courts democratic. Athens was in the peak of its
supremacy in 479 BC, and these were the most powerful years of Athens, when prosperity and
cultural centrality developed. This year was the time when the famous Pericles dominated the
Athenian politics and the tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles were staged. There were many
important developments that influenced the nature of Literature, Criticism, Philosophy and
Rhetoric. One such development was the evolution of the polis or City-state. The polis is the
place where people could assemble and deal with a problem face to face. Even the internal
structure of drama was influenced by the idea of Polis. The Chorus was the representative of the
community or Polis. Literature and Poetry had a public and even political function. There is
another element that shaped the evolution of literature in archaic and classical Greece and it was
Pan-Hellenism. It is the development of certain literary ideals and standards among the
privileged of the various city- states of Greece.
The ancient Athenians shaped a theatre culture between 600 BC and 200 BC, its form,
technique and terminology have lasted two millennia. They created plays that are still
considered to be the supreme works of world drama. Athens had produced five equally great
playwrights. Greek tragedies and comedies were always performed in the outdoor theatres. Early
Greek theatres were probably little more than open areas in the centre of the city or near the
hillsides where the audience, standing or sitting, could watch the play. The plays were also
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performed under the open sky. The audience seated on semicircular tiers of stone benches,
consisted of many of the citizens of the city. The performance possessed the tensions of an
athletic contest, as well as the aura of the ritual because the plays were judged on performance.
On the day of the performance, various civic ceremonies were performed. Although the three
great dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides often won prizes, they were even failing
most notably when in competition with one another.
The plays were usually given as trilogy and not as individual units. Oedipus Rex of
Sophocles was an exception to this rule, being a single play from the time of its production. The
city government supervised the production of plays, from first to last during the festival. The
playwright who was interested to compete had to first submit the manuscript of his plays to the
archon (leader). The archon also maintained ten choragi, or the leaders of the Chorus, one from
each of the ten tribes of Athens. The Choregus selected the Chorus and flute players and
organized them, bearing the expenses for himself. A few days before the actual performance, the
poet and the actors presented themselves to the public at a small theatre next to the main one.
They gave a selected preview of the play they would be presenting in the competition. Such
performances were called proagon or the fore action. On the day of performance, after a round of
plays, ten judges, chosen by the council and the choregi, voted for the winner of the dramatic
competitions. Five ballots were chosen at random to determine the victor, who was then
proclaimed by the herald. He and the choragus were crowned with ivy on the spot, and the
winning poet was awarded a substantial sum.
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The classical theatre in the fifth century, (the Theatre of Dionysus) consisted of a semicircular or horse-shoe shaped auditorium or theatron, a circular dancing area or Orchestra for the
Chorus, “The very word „theatre‟ first occurs in the fifth century: theātron means a place where
things are seen, the audience are hoi theātai-those who look on, the spectators. So, too, with the
word drāma: something that is acted out, a communication through action (Taplin 2). From the
late sixth century BC to the fourth and third centuries, there was a steady evolution towards more
intricate theatre structures, but the basic layout of the Greek theatre remained the same. The
architecture of the ancient Greek theatre consists of three major parts: the Orchestra, the Scene
and the main theatre, called Koilon. The Orchestra was situated in front of the scene or Skene
(stage) facing the audience.
At the middle of the Orchestra was situated the Thymeli, which in the early years was
meant to be an altar and later on became the place of the leader of the Chorus (koryphaios). The
scene had one to three entrances for the actors. The sides of the Scene facing the audience served
for background and were decorated as a Palace or a Temple. Later on, the painted panels with
other themes, such as woods, army camps, etc., were placed as background and this method was
called skenographia. Sophocles introduced the skenographia or scene painting. The theatre itself
is centred on the Orchestra or the dancing place, where the Chorus stood during the
performance. It was a level space where the Chorus would dance, sing, and interact with the
actors who were on the stage near the scene. The earliest Orchestras were simply made of hard
earth, but in the Classical period some Orchestras were paved with marble and other materials.
The Orchestra of the theatre of in Athens was about sixty feet in diameter.
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Fig.1. The Ancient Greek Theatre as it may have been
<http://www.greektheatre.gr/constr.html>.
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The Parodoi or Parodos (literally, "passageways") are the paths by which the Chorus and
some actors (such as those representing messengers or people returning from abroad) made their
entrances and exits. The audience also used them to enter and exit the theatre before and after the
performance. People who come from the city or the port enter from the right Parados and those
who come from the fields or abroad enter from the left Parados. The Koilon (or Theatron) was
the auditorium of the Greek theatre, where the audience sat. The shape of the Koilon was semicircular, built around the Orchestra. In the beginning, the spectators were sitting around the
Orchestra; later the Greeks started building the Koilon. It is believed that during the fifth century,
the spectators carried cushions along with them to sit on. Radial stairs separated the Koilon into
wedge shaped sections, in order to make the entrance and exit of the viewers easier.
The front seats were called Proedria and were reserved for officials and priests. The most
honorable spectator of the theatre was the priest of Elefthereos, who would sit in a throne made
of marble. The parts of the theatre were wooden and mobile in the fifth century BC other than
the Orchestra. At the end of the fifth century, the Greeks started building permanent Scenes and
Koilons made of stone. Inside the permanent scene, were kept the machines used during the
performance like- the Aeorema, a crane with which the gods or the dues - ex- machina appeared
on the scene. The indoor theatres were called Odeia and were reserved for musical performances.
The Greeks considered drama as an amusing spectacle. They felt that they gained social
experience and intellectual, moral and aesthetic interpretations of life through drama. The plays
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were considered to be very important during the great religious festivals and the actors were
given due respect. The drama attained a matured state in the classical age of Greece and Rome.
The first masters of the drama are in sense masters of life. John Gassner gives his opinion on the
rise of early drama, “Tragedy, it is true, had acquired more scope in the hands of the playwrights
Choerilus, Pratinas, and Phrynichus who succeeded Thespis. Phrynichus, in particular, made
signal contributions to the early drama by introducing female characters and developing
descriptive and lyrical passages greatly admired by the Greeks”(22-23). The oldest dramatist
poet was known by the name Thespis, but none of his work survives. More evidence remains of
Choerilus, whose career began at the same time as that of Thespis in the sixth century and his
works include a couple of small fragmented and one title, Alopé, which was a satyr play.
Phrynichus, claimed victory in the poetic competitions, during the last decade of the sixth
century. Capture of Miletus is the most interesting tragedy of Phrynichus. The oldest tragedies
consisted of almost exclusively of lyrical Chorus parts that were interrupted now and then by a
single actor.
The Greeks believed Aeschylus as a god-intoxicated man, who achieved his effects by
intoxication. Around sixth century BC, an official spring time festival known as the Greater
Dionysia or city Dionysia, was established in Athens, where prizes were awarded for the best
poems. At about the same time a special Orchestra -dancing place was constructed, a circular
area surrounding the altar, and permanent seats, or the Theatron- seeing place, arranged in a
semicircle around the Orchestra were added. In 1502, seven extant plays of Sophocles were
published by the famous Venetian printer Aldus. A year later Euripides is accorded the same
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honor, and in 1518 Aeschylus, whose older Greek was more difficult to decipher, is printed by
the same press. For years the work of editing and translating the Greek drama absorbs the
energies of scholars and poets to the exclusion of genuinely creative work.
The zenith of Greek tragedy began with the tragedian Aeschylus. He is known as the
father of tragedy and was born in the year 525 BC in Eleusis near Athens. He was one of the first
extant playwrights. He was a soldier, playwright, religious participant, and also an actor.
Aeschylus had created colourful characters, many of them supernatural, oriental and barbaric. It
was the destiny of the theatre‟s first master to be linked with political and cultural history at
almost every point in his exciting and moderately long life. No playwright ever found himself so
frequently at the crossroads. Aeschylus appears to have believed that he stood alone in his
philosophy, and he probably did this at the beginning of his career. But his thought grew
naturally out of a period which witnessed the transformation of Greek Society. Later on, his
intellectual peers expressed the same vision, and one of them, Pericles, even strove to give it
concrete realisation in the Athenian state. John Gassner states that a dramatist is a comprehensive
personality:
Primitive man was an accomplished mimic and a creature of the play. He was
from the beginning an imitator who shared this attribute with the higher animals
but surpassed them in the flexibility of his body and voice, the developed
consciousness of his will, and the ordering capacity of his mind….Wherever the
theatre flourishes, man is again unapologetically a superior animal or child
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imitating the creature world and enjoying the equally fundamental pleasure of
playing with the aid of all his faculties… (3-4).
Aeschylus‟s growth as a playwright was exceedingly gradual. He did not win a prize
until he was forty one. Aeschylus extended the scenes or acted portions of his plays. These
portions were called as the “episodes” by the Greeks. The episodes were not originally the part
of drama but they added to the performance. Before Aeschylus‟s period, there was only one actor
in tragedy, and he was limited to conversing with the Chorus. Aeschylus is credited with having
added a second actor. Only seven of his plays have survived into modern times, and there is a
debate about his authorship of the play Prometheus Bound. Some of his plays include
Agamemnon (458 BC), The Choephori (450 BC) Eumenides (458 BC) etc. Aeschylus fought the
Persians at the battle of Salamis and Marathon. His masterpiece is the Oresteia, the only extant
trilogy from Greek drama.
Aeschylus had won first prize for his play in the annual competitions held in Athens in
484 BC In 472 BC he took first prize with a tetralogy- three tragedies with a connecting theme,
and a comic satyr play. He had later won first prize for another tetralogy: Laius, Oedipus, The
Seven against Thebes, and the satyr play The Sphinx. In 463 BC, he won the first prize with the
tetralogy now known as The Suppliants, The Egyptians, The Danaids, and the satyr play The
Amymone. In 458 BC, he gained his last victory with the trilogy Oresteia. The date of another
trilogy, the Prometheia, is unknown, but it was probably produced sometime between The Seven
against Thebes and The Oresteia. Only seven of the perhaps ninety plays that Aeschylus wrote
are preserved.
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Aeschylus is credited with having introduced many features in the traditional Greek
theatre. Among these were the rich outfit, decorated cothurni – a kind of footwear, sober dances,
and perhaps stage machinery. Aeschylus also added parts for a second and a third actor; before
his time plays were written for only one actor and a Chorus. He is said to have acted in his own
plays and designed his own choral dances. He is the most spectacular dramatist. His use of
language is clever and elaborate. He loves to impress his audience and tried all possible methods
to accomplish it. His death in 456 BC coincided with the beginning of the Periclean age, a period
during which Athens's population grew to 150,000, its government embraced democracy and the
arts flourished.
Sophocles (496-405 BC) enjoyed the comforts of a rich merchant‟s son as well as the
fruits of one of the most civilized epochs in the world history. He is known as the most elusive
and self-conscious writer of the three great tragedians. He started competing with the established
playwrights after twelve years of rigorous study. It is believed that he competed in the dramatic
fest and it was Aeschylus who lost prize to him. He wrote more than one hundred and twenty
three plays in the course of his life. Only seven of his tragedies have survived into modern times
with their text completely known. The most famous of his works are the three tragedies
concerning Oedipus and Antigone: these are often known as the Theban plays or The Oedipus
Cycle, (Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, & Antigone) although they were not originally
written or performed as a single trilogy. Sophocles influenced the development of the drama,
most importantly by adding a third character and thereby reducing the importance of the Chorus
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in the presentation of the plot. He also developed his characters to a greater extent than earlier
playwrights such as Aeschylus.
Characterisation is the prime feature in Sophocles‟s plays and his extant work can be
conveniently divided into, character plays- The Trachiniae, Ajax, and Electra; social dramaAntigone; idyl- Philoctetes and the tragedies of fate –Oedipus the King and the Oedipus at
Colonus. At the time of Sophocles, tragedy had -evolved into an art form with a complex set of
conventions. Each playwright would submit a tetralogy, a set of four plays to the competition.
The first three plays with a common thread were called trilogy and the fourth play satyr-play was
comic one. Only one complete trilogy, the Oresteia by Aeschylus, and one satyr-play, The
Cyclops by Euripides, have survived. The plays of Sophocles on the life of Oedipus- Oedipus
Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone are still performed, but these plays were written at
separate times and the other tragedies that accompanied them were lost.
Sophocles represented human life at its best and most heroic. The focus of his plays is not
on ideas but mainly on the doing and suffering of mortals and the suffering always carries with
it, the serious danger of ruin. The playwright concentrated on physical suffering. His situations
and characters are closer to human experience. Human beings are always live characters in his
world, they are not merely the conventional figures of the tragic stage, but are with feelings and
passions. Female characters are given importance by the playwright. They stand out as
individuals and are treated in par with men. The characterisation of Antigone is a good example
for the playwright‟s characterisation of women. Sophocles, like Euripides, made the characters
and passions of man, his objects. The age of Sophocles was followed by the age of Euripides.
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Euripides began to write his conventional tragedies in his late twenties after the death of
Aeschylus. C.E.Vaughan compares Sophocles to that of his successor Euripides:
Sophocles is the last representative of the purely classical spirit in Greek tragedy.
With Euripides new elements force their way into prominence, the character of
Greek tragedy is profoundly changed, and the classical mould is strained to the
point of breaking. The genius of Euripides was full of originality; his temper was
naturally restless; … he eagerly welcomed the spirit of innovation which was at
work on every side of him, and applied it with feverish activity in the field of
tragedy (61).
Euripides, the perfect surveyor of human psychology has brought the tragic feat down to
reality in his plays. The playwright is known as the precursor of new comedy. He exposed the
follies and immortalities of religion. The speeches in his plays are the pure portrayal of his
characters‟ minds. Euripides‟s characters, both men and women are tragic; they even go to the
extent of destroying each other by their intricate love and hate. He is well-known for his
depiction of the immortals and mortals, including the intelligent serving class. The playwright is
courageous when compared to his contemporaries. He is bold in depicting the supernaturals
putrid. His women characters are the strongest of all the other of its types ever created, they vary
in behaviours, which may range from generous to tightfisted; loving to venomous; and gentle to
ferocious. They are predominant in almost all his plays and have an important part in setting up
the action of the play. Euripides‟s works still remain as a miracle to his critics. Aristides
Evengelus Phoutrides brings out his opinion on Euripides thus:
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PERHAPS no other author of antiquity, with the exception of Aristotle, has
caused more confusion to critics than Euripides. From Aristophanes and
Antiphanes to Schegel and Goethe, he has been praised and satirized with the
warmest admiration and the bitterest invective…
The astonishing versatility of our tragedian makes him the Proteus of Dramatic
Literature. There are passages in his works which rise to Aeschylean grandeur;
others, which are full of Sophoclean serenity; and others, which startle us with the
modern spirit of Shakespeare or Ibsen (77).
Euripides was born of Athenian parents on the island of Salamis. Euripides, says William
Nickerson Bates, “was born on the island of Salamis in the year 480 BC, probably on the very
day of the great battle, as it is stated by Plutarch and other authorities”(5). Euripides‟s father
Mnesarchus was a merchant; his mother Clito, is known to have been of a very high family.
Despite the mockery of the comedians, he was probably neither poor nor of humble origin.
Euripides as a boy poured wine for the dancers and carried a torch in religious festivals. The
boy‟s father is said to have trained him as a professional athlete. Euripides discovered the
dramatic gift in him at a very early stage. He began his career as a dramatist at the age of
eighteen, and in 455 BC he was granted a Chorus, that is, he was permitted to compete for the
tragic prize, but he did not win a victory until 442, thirteen years after his first appearance before
the public.
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Euripides was a fertile writer, but the exact number of his plays cannot be determined
with certainty. According to some, the plays of Euripides are numbered ninety two and many
others say that he has written ninety eight plays. Of the large number of plays which he
composed nineteen have come down to the modern times. The playwright was honored only
towards the end of his life. It was because he was overshadowed by Aeschylus and Sophocles,
the two tragic masters who had preceded him. It took some time for the Athenians to secure a
proper perspective, and to realise that they had among them a third great tragic genius worthy to
rank with the other two. The fame of Euripides did not come to an end with his death; instead it
started to increase as the Greek culture started to grow. Some records portray Euripides as a hater
of women. Even the playwright Aristophanes in his Thesmophoriazusae, produced in 411 BC,
portrays Euripides as a woman-hater. A number of his plays contain detailed and sophisticated
parodies of scenes from Euripedean tragedy:
In the Thesmophoriazusae, produced in 411 BC, Aristophanes portrays Euripides
as a stereotypical woman-hater who has repeatedly slandered the female sex in his
tragedies…
A number of Aristophanes‟ plays contain detailed and sophisticated parodies of
scenes from Euripidean tragedy… (Murray XVI-XVII).
The main tragic characters in the dramas of Euripides are happened to be women.
Several of the women characters of Euripides attain to true tragic heights. There is a scarcity of
tragic heroes in his plays. Nobody knows the truth but may be accounted for in two ways. It may
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be because of the story of his unhappy married life or would have arisen from the fact that
certain of the female characters in his plays were such as to inspire resentment towards them in
the minds of the audience. The comment of William Nickerson Bates on the character of
Euripides is as follows:
The fact is that Euripides seems to have been the first to appreciate the dramatic
possibilities of representing on the stage the passions usually attributed to women.
Thus in the Hippolytus we find vividly portrayed slightly love, fear and revenge;
in the Medea, envy and hate; in the Hecuba, revenge. But this does not indicate
anything at all as to the personal feelings of the poet about women. It is simply
proof of his dramatic genius. Furthermore not all of his heroines are inspired by
evil motives (14).
Euripides has given a dignified role for his characters Alcestis and Iphigenia in the plays
Alcestis and Iphigenia at Aulis respectively. Euripides never would have given importance to his
women characters, if he is a women hater. He does not belong to the category of women haters.
He is called so because of the misinterpretation of the ancient commentators and biographers,
who have been impressed only by his Phaedras and Medeas. These people have thus done a
grave injustice to Euripides by calling him a women hater without understanding the fact clearly.
Euripides is one of the most innovative tragedians who had reshaped the formal structure
of Greek tragedy. He is known for depicting the society completely including the intelligent
serving class. His immortal characters are the strongest and different when compared to all the
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other of their types ever created. They play the important part in many of his plays. They vary in
behaviour, ranging from generous to tight-fisted; loving to venomous, and gentle to ferocious.
Unlike his other contemporaries, Euripides seems to have little part in politics and war. Euripides
is said to have had three sons who survived him. Mnesarchides, the eldest, became a merchant;
the second, Mnesilochus, was an actor; and the youngest Suidas followed his father‟s profession
as a tragic playwright.
Euripides died in 406 BC. Towards the end of his life, he received honors and
distinctions in Macedonia, where like other men of letters; he went at the invitation of King
Archaelaus. He spent his last years at the Macedonian court, high in the favor and confidence of
the King, and when he died, the King cut off his own hair as an expression of his grief for the
greatest dramatist. His death seems to have been caused by an accident in a most tragic manner.
One day he was walking in the woods at some distance from the city when the King was out
hunting. When the party had passed the city gates, the dogs were released and they came upon
Euripides and attacked and killed him while the huntsmen were at some distance. The
playwright‟s lyre, stylus and tablets were brought for a tablet of gold by Dionysus of Syracuse,
who enshrined them in the temple of the muses. Euripides was buried in Macedonia near the
town of Arethusa. The Athenians sent an embassy to bring back his remains, but the
Macedonians declined to give them up. A cenotaph was then erected to his memory on the road
leading from Athens to the Piraeus.
The tragedies of Euripides are different from his contemporaries because of the various
motives found in them, “The tragedy of Euripides then is seen to be tragedy with various
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motives. The plots develop in accordance with the circumstances which the incidents call forth.
The interests are human interests, and they are not dominated by a preordained fate from which
there is no escape” (Bates 41).The motives include tragic sequences, humourous elements,
relationships and sentiments, Supernatural elements etc.There are nineteen extant plays of
Euripides which include The Alcestis, The Andromache, The Bacchae, The Cyclops, The Electra,
The Hecuba, The Helen, The Heracles Furens, The Heraclidae, The Hippolytus, The Ion, the
Iphigenia among the Taurians, the Iphigenia at Aulis, The Medea, The Orestes, The Phoenissae,
The Rheseus, the Suppliants, The Traodes. The dates of some plays are known whereas the dates
of the other plays are not certain.
The age of Euripides was followed by the age of classic tragedies. The fourth century
playwrights were merely successful day-labourers. Tragic contests continued for a long time
with an old play used as an introduction to the new ones, but the latter were comparatively weak,
and the actors became more important than the playwrights. Plays also began to be written at this
time for the closet rather than the theatre. The fourth century was also the age of criticism. It was
the period of the Poetics of Aristotle. Aristotle, in his Poetics described the principles of Greek
dramaturgy as he found them in the works of his contemporaries and their predecessors.
The fifth century Athenians, like all sensible people who could give themselves to
laughter, continued to regard comedy as a sacred function by giving it a place in the sacrosanct
festival held annually in honor of Dionysus. From these rites of obscure times, Mediterranean
civilization began to develop a number of somewhat differentiated performances which were
destined to flower in those two more or less distinct forms, the satyr-play and Aristophanic
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comedy. Social satire became more firmly established when a crude form of farce or mime was
imported from Sicily, where it attained some literary development in the work of the two poets
Epicharmus and Sophron. Southern Italy continued this species of humour for several centuries
and it not only influenced Roman comedy but even outlasted it.
Greek comedy had two periods: Old Comedy, represented by Cratinus and Aristophanes;
and New Comedy, whose main exponent was Menander. Aristophanes‟s plays were as noble as
the tragedies of Aeschylus. Aristophanes was undoubtedly endowed with a disposition for
slashing satire, and if we knew more about his life. Aristophanes no doubt had an aristocratic
bias, and he was not concerned with an abstruse theory of democracy.
After the death of Aristophanes, the playwrights were compelled to confine themselves to
comedies of sentiment and private embroilments. Many writers responded to the new interest and
created the form of domestic comedy or comedy of manners which has held the stage for twenty
two centuries with only minor modifications. The New comedy, unlike the Aristophanic comedy,
employed stereotyped plots, was decidedly less imaginative and ambitious and possessed an
essentially commonplace outlook. Comedy was infused with vivid observation of everyday
details and supplied with a unified plot. Romantic love, long kept out of the comic theatre, was
added to the inventory of dramatic situations and soon dominated the laughter of the stage as it is
done till date. Aristophanes‟s works include The Acharnians-425 BC, The Knights- 424BC, The
Wasps- 422 BC, The Frogs- 405 BC etc. The play The Frogs has a special place in the history of
criticism.
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Menander, a dramatist of the time, constructed the plots which were the wearisome
repetition of young men who are in love with young girls, parents who are disturbed by the
behaviour of their children; and intriguing servants. Menander, not the most popular playwright
of his time, winning only eight prizes, was ultimately accounted the best of them and held this
eminence throughout classic times. The title, father of modern comedy, is properly his, and a list
of his lineal descendants, which would include Shakespeare and Moliere, is long and honorable.
The high water mark of Menander‟s extant work is however, reached not in this facile comedy
but in The Arbitration, which is quite modern in its implications. The work of Menander was
reincarnated in the Latin comedies of Plautus and Terence.
There was theatre of the near east which flourished for some years. This is the drama of
the Alexandrian third-century community based on two independent sources of motivation, the
Old Testament and the Athenian drama, particularly on the tragedies of Euripides which had
been transplanted to Egypt and imitated there. The Jews of Alexandria, who assimilated Hellenic
culture to such a degree that the Old Testament had to be translated for them from Hebrew into
Greek, readily turned to the drama. Although the theatre was of course far from the mind of the
authors of the Gospels, they created what is unquestionably the greatest of the Passion Plays
dedicated to the many vegetation and the ancestral gods who die and are resurrected for the for
the benefit of mankind. The pattern and effect are unmistakably dramatic. They were found so by
the numerous playwrights who created the drama of the middle ages.
Western theatre developed and stretched out considerably under the Romans. Romans‟
first theatrical experience started in the fourth century BC, with a performance by Etruscan
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actors. The theatre of ancient Rome was a thriving and diverse art form, ranging from festival
performances of street theatre, nude dancing, and acrobatics, to the staging of Plautus's broadly
appealing situation comedies, to the high-style, verbally elaborate tragedies of Seneca. Although
Rome had a native tradition of performance, the Hellenization of Roman culture in the third
century BC had a profound and energizing effect on Roman theatre and encouraged the
development of Latin literature of the highest quality for the stage.
Unlike the theatres of the west, the theatres of the east started developing slowly. The
Hindus saw a living theatre slowly growing out of their ritual for a time closely associated with
rites of religion, their drama was finally emancipated as a lay form of entertainment. The drama
in India started with the Vedic hymns sung and acted out to some degree by the Brahmin priests.
The great age of Hindu drama first began more than a century later in 320 A.D. after the period
of chaos resembling the dark age of Europe. King Chandragupta II, known as Vikramaditya or
The Sun of Power, inaugurated an epoch of cultural development. There were India‟s ablest
writers, known as the “Nine Gems” at his court. The theatre had a healthy glow till the country
fell into the conquering hands of Huns in 500 A.D. When Kalidasa began to write he had reason
to feel certain humility and apprehension. His plays like Shakuntala, Malavikagnimitra,
Ritusamhara and Megahaduta had won him a lot of fame. Kalidasa‟s successors lived in
troubled times, and no Hindu playwright could quite recapture his grace of expression and
unfailing cheerfulness. The last native King of India, Harsha achieved distinction as a playwright
with three plays ascribed to him. Harsha, who reigned from 607 to 647, was succeeded in the
next century by another royal author bearing the formidable name of Mahendravikramavarmen
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but only single farce of his survived and records say that the scepter suited him better than the
pen.
There were some more playwrights in the east other than the above mentioned ones, who
won fame. Bhavabhuti, Vishakhadatta, Bhatta Narayana, Krishna Mishra were notable
playwrights during the time. In the nineteenth century after the arrival of Rabindranath Tagore
the Hindu theatre experienced a revival. Rabindranath Tagore (1861- 1941), the Nobel Prize
winner became one of the leading writers of the modern poetic drama. Tagore is a versatile
personality. He wrote in all genres and was also a painter and a musician. Tagore‟s plays
reflected all the classes of Indian society. Tagore's major plays are Raja (1910), The King of the
Dark Chamber, Dakghar (1912) The Post Office, Achalayatan (1912) The Immovable,
Muktadhara (1922) The Waterfall, and Raktakaravi (1926) Red Oleanders. Tagore was the ideal
writer to mediate between the east and the west.
The theatres in the west started to flourish after the arrival of the playwrights like
Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, etc. Marlowe is considered to be the symbol of the
theatre‟s second great age because of the way he expressed its romantic strivings more directly
and singularly than others. He was popularly known as the Man of Renaissance. He was also a
lyricist and a poet. His major works include Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta, The Tragical
History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, etc.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was popularly known as the Bard of Avon. His
surviving works include thirty eight plays, one hundred and fifty four sonnets and several poems,
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including two long narrative poems. His plays were divided into three main categories:
Comedies, tragedies Historical plays and Tragicomedies or Romances. His famous comedies
were All's Well That Ends Well, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream etc., His tragedies
include Macbeth, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar etc. and some of his
historical plays are Henry IV- part I and II, Henry V, King John, Richard II and II,I etc.
Tragicomedies are the later plays of William Shakespeare and they include Cymbeline, The
Tempest, and The Winter’s Tale, etc. Most of his works were produced between 1589 and 1613.
K.Chellappan‟s interesting remarks on Shakespeare is as follows:
Theatre, to Shakespeare, was a metaphor and means of discovering the worldwith all its unreal reality, but which is also the only “real” reality which we can
hope to have. “Was it a vision or a dream?” This is a question Shakespeare has
been asking all the time and all criticism has not answered it and the mystery of
the world and Shakespeare are mysteries still (7).
The circumstances in which Shakespearean tragedy appeared were entirely different from
the state of affairs during the time of the Greek tragedy. The Elizabethan theatre or the
Shakespearean theatre, unlike the Greek theatre, was completely under the control of the
government. The officials were feared and the playwrights made it a point not to displease the
authorities in any way. There was an extraordinary unity of tone found in the plays of
Shakespeare. This is pointed out in the book Masters of the drama:
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In his great tragedies Shakespeare is indeed grappling with the whole world on a
scale approximated only by the profound tragedians of Greece. Tragedy in his
work goes beyond individual failure and becomes Weltuntergang- a cosmic
collapse. Nations crumble, and ambition, lust, and ingratitude sear the earth.
Sensitive souls shudder at the scene. They question the chimeras of man and fate,
receiving dusty answers. Love for them turns to mockery, common decency
becomes a jest; they see blood flowing like a torrent; conscience gnaws at the
marrow of their being … (234).
There were notable playwrights even after Shakespeare‟s period. One of the most striking
personalities in the theatre was Ben Johnson. He was also a good companion and a sensible critic
of Shakespeare. Ben Johnson is known as the master of English comedy. He has authored many
interesting plays like Every Man in his Humour, Every Man out of his Humour, Cynthia’s Revels,
The Poetaster, The Alchemist, Volpone or The Foxe etc. Playwrights like Francis Beaumont and
John Fletcher, Henrik Ibsen, Bernard Shaw, Anton Chekov-the Russian playwright, Eugene
O‟Neill, the American playwright etc., had contributed a lot to the genre drama. Eugene
Gladstone O‟Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and a
Nobel laureate in Literature. Almost all his plays were poetically titled. O‟Neill was much
interested in the Greek tragedies and one can find the impression of Greek tragedies in his plays.
The first full-length play in which O'Neill successfully evoked the starkness and inevitability of
Greek tragedy that he felt in his own life was Desire under the Elms. His stories were framed on
the basis of his own family conflicts. The major themes of his works were drawn from the Greek
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tragedies. One of O'Neill's enduring masterpieces, Mourning Becomes Electra, represents the
playwright's most complete use of Greek forms, themes, and characters. Based on the Oresteia
trilogy by Aeschylus, it was itself three plays in one. To give the story contemporary credibility,
O'Neill set the play in the New England of the Civil War period, yet he retained the forms and
the conflicts of the Greek characters: the heroic leader returning from war; his adulterous wife
who murders him; his jealous, repressed daughter, who avenges him through the murder of her
mother; and his weak, incestuous son, who is goaded by his sister first to matricide and then to
suicide. For more than twenty years, both with such masterpieces as Desire under the Elms,
Mourning Becomes Electra, and The Iceman Cometh and by his inspiration to other serious
dramatists, O'Neill set the pace for the blossoming of the Broadway theatre.
The field of drama survived and flourished from decade to decade. Modern dramatists
made the theatre a total adventure. There developed different forms of theatre because of the
challenge in the long established rules thereof. The different forms of the drama include: The
Realistic theatre, Modern theatre, Political theatre, popular theatre, Musical Theatre,
post- modern Theatre, Global theatre, etc.
The thesis is based on the book Euripides-Ten Plays-A New Translation by Paul Roche.
Paul Roche, the translator here offers an astonishing translation of the ten plays of the great
playwright Euripides. The plays include Alcestis, Hippolytus, Ion, Electra, and Iphigenia at
Aulis, Iphigenia Among the Taurians, Medea, The Bacchae, The Trojan Women, and The
Cyclops.
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Donald Robert Paul Roche was born on September 25, 1916 in the foothills of the
Himalayas at Mussorie, India, where his father was a captain in the Royal Engineers Regiment
in the days of the Raj. But after his mother died of smallpox when he was nine, Paul was sent
with his brother, George, to school in the north of England and did not see India again for sixty
nine years. He was a famous poet, novelist, professor of English and also an acclaimed
translator of Greek and Latin classics, mainly the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides,
Sappho, and Plautus. Roche was an associate of the Bloomsbury group, especially of painter
Duncan Grant, whom he met in the summer of 1946 and who lived with Roche and his family
until Grant's death in 1978. In 1994, at the age of seventy nine, he returned to India for the first
time since his childhood, embarking on a six-month backpacking trip with his daughter Mitey.
The resulting book, A Visit to India, was published by the Calcutta-based Writer's Workshop,
also publishers of his Cooking with a Poet series. Paul Roche's wife predeceased him, and he is
survived by their son and three daughters.
The thesis entitled “The Poetry of Suffering in the Euripidean Macrocosm – A study”
deals with the theme of suffering in the select six plays of Euripides. The word „Poetry‟ has
diverse meanings. The word „Poetry‟ in the above context means „beauty‟. The dissertation
deals with the poetry, i.e. the beauty of suffering in the plays of Euripides. Poetry, according to
the Oxford advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English:
Poetry- noun. 1. [U] a collection of poems; poems in general. Syn- verse, epic/lyric/pastoral
etc.: Maya Angelou’s poetry.2. [U. sing.](approving) a beautiful and elegant quality: There was
poetry in all her gestures(1168).
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The Compact Oxford Dictionary Thesaurus&Wordpower Guide, defines the word „Poetry‟ thus:
Poetry:
1. Poems as a whole or as a form of literature.
2. A quality of beauty or emotional power: Poetry and fire are balanced in the music
(680).
Poetry:
1. The art or work of a poet.
2. a. Poems regarded as forming a division of literature.
b. The poetic works of a given author, group, nation, or kind.
3. a piece of literature written in meter; verse.
4. Prose that resembles a poem in some respect, as in form or sound.
5. The essence or characteristic quality of a poem.
6. A quality that suggests poetry, as in grace, beauty, or harmony: the poetry of the dancer's
movements. <http://www.thefreedictionary.com/poetry>
Family Word finder, A New Thesaurus explains „suffering‟ thus:
1. Sorrow, distress, travail, heartache, heavy heart, grief, misery, dolor, woe, tribulation, care,
anxiety, anguish, trial.
2.
2. Ache, pain, hurt, soar, irritation, torture, affliction, agony, discomfort, pang, misery, twinge,
distress, throe, torment. These definitions give a clear picture for the meaning of the word
‘suffering’ (775).
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Chambers 20th Century Dictionary defines the term „Suffering‟ as:
To undergo; to endure; to be affected; to permit (arch); to inflict pain on (Shakespeare)-vi. to
feel pain or punishment; to be executed or martyred; endurance; forbearance; tacit assent;
permission; toleration (1293).
The mortal beings undergo suffering because of various reasons- Desire, destiny,
diplomacy, follies of war, are significant among them. The theme of suffering is handled by
many playwrights in their own ways. Suffering is the central theme of many of the Greek
plays. Aeschylus‟s Prometheus Bound depicts the suffering of Prometheus. His Libation
Bearers portrays the suffering of Electra and Orestes. Aeschylus in his works, justifies the
ways of gods, on the other hand Sophocles is content to accept them as they are, and treats
them with awe and deference. Euripides is the most direct of the three in his questioning of
established beliefs; whereas Aeschylus and Sophocles merely suggest that old ways may be
wrong, Euripides criticises them boldly. His characters are not any exceptions. The sense of
fate, time and mutability is common in his tragedies and these three elements form the main
part of a human life. Suffering teaches a tragic lesson to mortals, and this leads to their
spiritual transcendence. The characters in Euripides‟s plays too suffer, but there is a beauty in
the portrayal of the sufferings they undergo. The characters suffer surmountable agony, which
in turn leads them to a higher level. The suffering of the characters in Euripides‟s plays serve
as the first step to the highest level, the salvation. Euripides is said to be the most tragic of all
the poets. Aristotle too admits this in his Poetics. He says that it is Euripides who had
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emphasized suffering more in his plays when compared to the other two playwrights. Most of
his plays present unmitigated suffering. Euripides makes his character, the sufferer cruel,
passive and numb at the same time. His tragic vision is more realistic when compared to
Sophocles and Aeschylus. R.R.Khare gives a comparative analysis on the viewpoint of the
three great dramatists:
Euripides has always dealt with the forces that govern human life and destiny
with starkness not found in Aeschylus and Sophocles. They were more
committed to anthropomorphism and did not carry their exploration to the inner
self of the human being with an objective view of the forces which govern him.
Euripides for the first time effected the synthesis of the subjective and the
objective and converged his vision equally on the individual and on the cosmic
forces (26).
The characters‟ suffering is portrayed as the playwright‟s own in his plays. The
characters in his plays were raw and realistic. He has not idealized his characters in any of his
plays. He tries to glorify his characters by giving them suffering in abundance. The poetry or
beauty of suffering in the six select plays of Euripides: Alcestis, Medea, Hippolytus, Ion,
Electra, Iphigenia at Aulis and is discussed in the thesis. The thesis is divided into eight
chapters. Chapter I- Introduction, Chapter II- Alcestis- The best of wives a man could get,
Chapter III- Medea- She is a fierce spirit, Chapter IV- Hippolytus-Death of yours was destiny,
Chapter V-Ion-Slave of the god, Chapter VI-Electra-Nobility however does not cancel
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poverty, Chapter VII-Iphigenia at Aulis- Goodbye, this young bosom, these cheeks, this
golden hair, Chapter VIII- Summing up.
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