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Conventions of the Greek Tragic Theatre

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Conventions of the Greek Tragic Theatre CONVENTIONS OF THE GREEK TRAGIC THEATRE Dionysos Among the unusual (or different) features of Greek theatre is the fact that plays were not written to be played in commercial theatres. Nor were they written in the hope that they would break a record for the run of the performance. It was not every day that one could go to the theatre for an afternoon's or evening's entertainment. All the plays we have were written (in Athens, by Athenians) for single performances and for dramatic festivals, held only on specific days of the year. These festivals were held each year and dedicated to the god Dionysos. The most important festival was the Great Dionysia, held in the spring of the year. The Greeks of classical times were a competitive people (more or less than ourselves is a question for consideration) and the dramas were put on in competition. Each playwright would submit his work to the archons (rulers, chief administrative officers) in a group of three tragedies with a satyr play (a play in tragic diction but using satyrs as the chorus; satyrs are comic figures with horse tails and goat feet who are associated with Dionysos; it is thought that this lighter play would provide a relief from the intensity of tragedy; only one satyr play has survived intact and this is the Cyclops of Euripides, which is the story of the blinding of Polyphemus — not so funny, perhaps, to us or to them). The work of only three playwrights would be chosen for the competition, so that everyone who entered started out as winner of at least the third prize (and possibly it is our own "winner take all" attitude that says only the first prize counts and puts Euripides with his fewer prizes, among the losers). You see, then, that each festival included the three tragedies of three playwrights plus a satyr play by each, making twelve plays in all, four on each day. About the middle of the fifth century B.C. comedies were also added to the celebration (although there were still other festivals primarily for comedies), so that there were fifteen plays, all to be performed in three days. A trip to the theatre was an intense experience in those days. A lot of seat time on the hard, cool stone. The god for whom these plays were put on is Dionysos, also called Bacchus. We know him most familiarly as the god of wine, but that is not all he was, nor probably his most important aspect. He was the god of drama and dance (dithyramb), the god of symposium and wine, the god of mysteries which promised a better after-life to those who were initiated into them. The rites of Dionysos are called orgia which becomes "orgies" in English, but the term "orgy" with its connotation of decadence and promiscuity does not really translate the Greek term which meant acts of devotion and communion with the god (and is related to the Greek word erga, "works"). Of course the association of music, wine and drunkenness with the rites of Dionysos contributes to the modern, degraded sense of the word. The picture we get of Dionysos is ambiguous: he is powerful and masculine, but also pretty and effeminate; he is both the hunter and the hunted; the smiling god and a god of primitive violence; he is the liberating god, but also a god who can take such control of a man or woman that he robs that person of dignity and even identity. One of the most beautiful, wondrous, awesome, plays to have survived is the Bacchae of Euripides which is about Dionysos and his worship and what this unrestrained cult can do to human beings. In the play all the ambiguities of the god are present: this liberating force has compelled the women of Thebes to worship him. We see in the play, when its protagonist is ripped into shreds (and by his own mother and her sisters) what it can do to a man if he refuses to worship Dionysos, if he refuses to admit that this elemental, animal force is part of his nature. As E.R.Dodds writes (in his edition of the Bacchae), "[Dionysos'] domain is...the whole of hugra phusis (the principle of moisture, not only the liquid fire of the grape, but the sap thrusting in a young tree, the blood pounding in the veins of a young animal, all the mysterious and uncontrollable tides that ebb and flow in the life of nature." His worshipers are liberated from the bondage of reason and social custom; they gain a new vitality as they merge their consciousness with that of the god and the group. The frightening part of this (which on the surface may seem beautiful) is that just below the surface violence is always just barely hidden. The Bacchae is the only surviving play that is about Dionysos and his worship and it is our primary source for that worship. What exactly does drama have to do with Dionysos? This is a good question and one that was asked by the ancients as well. What do all the aspects of Dionysos have in common? Mystery, Wine, and Drama: the ecstasy is common to all: the standing outside oneself, the giving up of individual identity. Although, if tragedy developed from the dance as many scholars suggest, the separation of the protagonist (first actor) from the group is a moving away from the Dionysiac spirit. The Three Tragedians When we speak of Greek tragedy we are talking about the plays of only three men ("dead white men") who lived and worked in Athens all in the fifth century B.C., Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Tragedy was added to the festival of the Great Dionysia around 500 B.C. so that the oldest of the three Athenian playwrights was in at the beginning, or very close to it. Of course there were more than just three men writing tragedies (the comedies were written by different authors), but the plays of only three have survived in playable, more or less complete (or to the pessimist, more or less lacunose). The very first named writer of tragedy was the semi-legendary Thespis (from his named we get the word thespian which means "actor"). He is called the inventor of tragedy and as the word thespian implies he also acted in his plays. The traditional account is that the genre originated in dance accompanied by choral song on a mythological theme and that Thespis "invented" the art of acting by stepping out of the chorus as a character of myth or as a messenger to hold dialogue with the chorus who would be the followers of a "hero" or the citizens hearing the "hero's" story and suffering. But many critics would make Aeschylus himself the real father of tragedy because he is credited with "inventing" the second actor. The presence of two actors allows the development of drama as we know it with dramatic conflict, several points of view, dialogue before an audience of interested participants. Sophocles added a third actor and that was the end of that: each play thereafter was written so that it needed only three actors. Aeschylus Aeschylus, the oldest of the three was born about 525 B.C. and died in 456 in Sicily. He was born at Eleusis in Attica, the site of the most famous of the mysteries, the Eleusinian mysteries, where people were initiated in order to gain a better life both in this world and the next. [When we read the Hippolytus we will notice that the title character goes to Athens to be initiated into these mysteries, which stress purity of mind and body, and that while he is there his step-mother sees him and falls hopelessly in love with him.] Aeschylus fought in the battles of Marathon (490) and Salamis (480). His first victory in tragedy was in 484 B.C. In all he wrote eighty-two plays, but only seven have survived, of which the trilogy Oresteia counts as three. His extant plays are Persians (472 B.C.), Seven against Thebes (467), the Suppliant Women (produced in competition with Sophocles) and the Oresteia (a trilogy or three plays 458) and the Prometheus (date unknown, thought by many not to be the work of Aeschylus and, therefore, of someone else so that we would have tragic works by four playwrights). All the playwrights wrote a series of three plays for the competitions, but only Aeschylus wrote connected trilogies, that is his three often present the development of a single story. Only the Oresteia trilogy has survived intact, but there is evidence, from titles and fragments, and from references within the plays that Suppliants and Prometheus were the first parts of connected trilogies and that the Seven against Thebes was the last play in such a series. His earliest play Persians, incidentally the only surviving play about a recent historical event (the battle of Salamis and retreat of the Persian invaders led by Xerxes) which had taken place only eight years before the play was produced — this play is not part of a connected trilogy. Although not the most magnificent of the plays, the Persians is interesting to read because it gives us the feeling of having been written for a time and place, as all the plays were. All the other plays call upon myth and legend for their plots, but we must not forget that they always address contemporary issues (whether moral, intellectual, social, political, or religious); all have to do with living in the city of Athens.
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