A Handbook to the Reception of Greek Drama Wiley Blackwell Handbooks to Classical Reception

This series offers comprehensive, thought‐provoking surveys of the reception of major classical authors and themes. These Handbooks will consist of approxi- mately 30 newly written essays by leading scholars in the field, and will map the ways in which the ancient world has been viewed and adapted up to the present day. Essays are meant to be engaging, accessible, and scholarly pieces of writing, and are designed for an audience of advanced undergraduates, graduates, and scholars.

Published: A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid John Miller and Carole E. Newlands

A Handbook to the Reception of Thucydides Christine Lee and Neville Morley

A Handbook to the Reception of Greek Drama Betine van Zyl Smit

Forthcoming: A Handbook to the Reception of Classical Mythology Vanda Zajko

A Handbook to Classical Reception in Eastern and Central Europe Zara Martirosova Torlone, Dana LaCourse Munteanu, and Dorota Dutsch A Handbook to the Reception of Greek Drama

Edited by Betine van Zyl Smit This edition first published 2016 © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc Registered Office John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK Editorial Offices 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148‐5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley‐blackwell. The right of Betine van Zyl Smit to be identified as the author of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services and neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data Names: Smit, Betine van Zyl, editor. Title: A handbook to the reception of Greek drama / edited by Betine van Zyl Smit. Other titles: Wiley Blackwell handbooks to classical reception. Description: Chichester, West Sussex : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2016. | Series: Wiley-Blackwell handbooks to classical reception series Identifiers: LCCN 2015047421 | ISBN 9781118347751 (cloth) Subjects: LCSH: Greek drama–Appreciation. | Greek drama–History and criticism. Classification: LCC PA3133 .H35 2016 | DDC 882/.0109–dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015047421 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Cover image: © Tristram Kenton, by Euripides’ Bacchai at the National. Set in 11/13pt Dante by SPi Global, Pondicherry, India

1 2016 Figure 0.1 Irene Papas and Costa Kazakos as Clytaemnestra and Agamemnon in Iphigenia (1976) directed by Michael Cacoyannis. Source: Greek Film Centre/The Kobal Collection. Courtesy of The Picture Desk.

Contents

Foreword x List of Illustrations xi Notes on Contributors xiii Note on Nomenclature and Spelling xviii Introduction 1 Betine van Zyl Smit Part I The Ancient World 11 1 The Reception of Greek Tragedy from 500 to 323 BC 13 Martin Revermann 2 Greek Comedy and its Reception, c. 500–323 BC 29 Alan H. Sommerstein 3 Greek Drama in the Hellenistic World 45 Sarah Miles 4 Greek Comedy at Rome 63 Peter Brown 5 Roman Tragedy 78 Gesine Manuwald Part II Transition 95 6 Ancient Drama in the Medieval World 97 Carol Symes viii Contents

Part III The Renewal of Ancient Drama 131 7 The Reception of Ancient Drama in Renaissance Italy 133 Francesca Schironi 8 Ancient Drama in the French Renaissance and up to Louis XIV 154 Rosie Wyles 9 The Reception of Greek Drama in Early Modern England 173 Claire Kenward Part IV The Modern and Contemporary World 199 10 Greece: A History of Turns, Traditions, and Transformations 201 Gonda Van Steen 11 The History of Ancient Drama in Modern Italy 221 Martina Treu 12 The Reception of Greek Theater in France since 1700 238 Cécile Dudouyt 13 Germany, Austria, and Switzerland 257 Anton Bierl 14 The Reception of Greek Drama in Belgium and the Netherlands 283 Thomas Crombez 15 The Reception of Greek Drama in England from the Seventeenth to the Twenty‐First Century 304 Betine van Zyl Smit 16 Conquering England: Ireland and Greek Tragedy 323 Fiona Macintosh 17 The Reception of Greek Drama in the Czech Republic 337 Eva Stehlíková 18 Antigone, Medea, and Civilization and Barbarism in Spanish American History 348 Aníbal A. Biglieri 19 Greek Drama in the Arab World 364 Mohammad Almohanna 20 The Reception of Greek Tragedy in Japan 382 Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. 21 Greek Drama in North America 397 Peter Meineck Contents ix

22 Greek Drama in Australia 422 Paul Monaghan 23 The Reception of Greek Drama in Africa: “A Tradition That Intends to Be Established” 446 Barbara Goff 24 Greek Drama in Opera 464 Michael Ewans 25 Filmed Tragedy 486 Kenneth MacKinnon

References 506 Index 552 Foreword

This project has been four years in the making. During that time some of the original contributors have had to withdraw because of illness or personal circum- stances. One tragic loss was the death of Professor Ahmed Etman who was killed in a traffic accident in Cairo two years ago. He leaves a great legacy of scholarship and creative writing. The author who has taken over his chapter on the reception of Greek Drama in Arabic, Mohammad Almohanna, has included a section on Professor Etman’s adaptation of Sophocles’ Ichneutai as The Goats of Oxyrhynchus. The completion of this project would not have been possible without the hard work of all the contributors and the continuous support of Haze Humbert and Allison Kostka at Wiley‐Blackwell. I would like to thank them all for their co‐operation. I am grateful to the Copy-editor, Susan Dunsmore, who smoothed out some inconsistencies. Sincere thanks are also due to the Production editor, Dilip Kizzhakekkara, who was unfailingly courteous and capable in seeing the Handbook through the last stages. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the excellent work of Terry Halliday who compiled the Index.

Betine van Zyl Smit Nottingham 13 August 2015 List of Illustrations

Figure 0.1 Irene Papas and Costa Kazakos as Clytaemnestra and Agamemnon in Iphigenia (1976) directed by Michael Cacoyannis. v Figure 2.1 One of the earliest West Greek vases depicting what must be an Athenian comedy, since the characters are speaking Attic dialect. 34 Figure 3.1 Water‐fountain spout in the shape of the Greek mask of a comic cook from the Hellenistic city of Ai Khanum, modern NE Afghanistan. 45 Figure 6.1 Euripides’ Helen: Ancient Transmission and Medieval Preservation. (a) Fragmentary papyrus scroll. (b) Page from parchment codex. 98 Figure 7.1 Baldassarre Peruzzi (1481–1536): perspective for a theater scene. 137 Figure 8.1 Charles Le Brun’s frontispiece engraving (two men fighting) in Corneille’s Horace 1641 Trinity College Dublin Library. 160 Figure 9.1 A facsimile of the front‐page to John Pickering’s Horestes (1567). 176 Figure 11.1 Vincenzo Pirrotta as Ulysses in ‘U Ciclopu by Luigi Pirandello. 230 Figure 11.2 Chorus of Satyrs from ‘U Ciclopu by Luigi Pirandello. 230 Figure 12.1 Chorus of Les Bacchantes in André Wilms’s staging at the Comédie Française in 2005. 254 Figure 13.1 Mendelssohn sketch of the stage for the Potsdam performance of Sophocles’ Antigone in 1841. 262 Figure 13.2 Photograph of a scene from Klaus Michael Grüber’s staging of Bakchen in Berlin in 1974 at the Schaubühne. 269 xii List of Illustrations

Figure 13.3 The famous trial scene from the Eumenides with the chorus of Erinyes or Furies in diving suits and Jutta Lampe as Athena. 274 Figure 14.1 Translations per ten‐year period. 284 Figure 14.2 Productions per ten‐year period. 285 Figure 14.3 Lysistrata, directed by Walter Tillemans, 1971. Female cast in silk crocheted dresses designed by Ann Salens. 299 Figure 15.1 Steven Berkoff’s Oedipus production of 2011, showing Tiresias and the cast with Oedipus in the background. 315 Figure 15.2 aod’s Helen adapted by Tamsin Shasha and with Tamsin Shasha as Helen. 319 Figure 17.1 Vlastislav Hoffman’s design for the stage set for Oedipus the King. 339 Figure 21.1 Photo of Will Power’s 2007 adaptation of Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes as The Seven. 417 Figure 22.1 Queenie van de Zandt, Natalie Gamsu and Jennifer Vuletic with Robyn Nevin in Sydney Theatre Company’s Women of Troy, 2008. 437 Figure 23.1 From the 2012 performance at the Arts Theatre, University of Ibadan of Women of Owu by Femi Osofisan. 456 Figure 24.1 Astrid Varnay as Klytämnestra and Leonie Rysanek as Elektra in Götz Friedrich’s 1981 film of Richard Strauss’ Elektra. 475 Figure 25.1 Michael Cacoyannis directing Vanessa Redgrave in The Trojan Women (1971). 490 Notes on Contributors

Mohammad Almohanna is Assistant Professor in the Department of Criticism and Drama at the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in Kuwait. He obtained an MA and PhD in the Classics Department at the University of Nottingham. He teaches Greek and Roman drama at undergraduate level, including elements of reception of ancient drama in contemporary theater, popular media, film, and fiction. His publications include: “Tragedy and Satyr Play: Diversity in ancient Greek Drama.” Classical Papers. Issue XI. Cairo, 2012. Anton Bierl is Professor for Greek Literature at the University of Basel. He served as Senior Fellow at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies (2005–2011) and is a member of the IAS, Princeton (2010/11). He is director and co‐editor of Homer’s Iliad: The Basel Commentary and editor of the series MythosEikonPoiesis. His books include Dionysos und die griechische Tragödie (1991); Die Orestie des Aischylos auf der modernen Bühne (1996); Ritual and Performativity (2009); and the co‐edited volumes Literatur und Religion I‐II (2007); Theater des Fragments (2009); Gewalt und Opfer (2010) and Ästhetik des Opfers (2012). Aníbal A. Biglieri teaches Medieval Spanish literature at the University of Kentucky. He is the author of Medea en la literatura española medieval, and Las ideas geográficas y la imagen del mundo en la literatura española medieval. He also studies the reception of Classical authors in Argentine literature. Peter Brown is an Emeritus Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford University, and a member of the Advisory Board of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama. He has published extensively on Greek and Roman drama, and his translation of Terence’s Comedies appeared in the Oxford World’s Classics series in 2008. He is co‐editor with Suzana Ograjenšek of Ancient Drama in Music for the Modern Stage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, paperback edn. 2013). Thomas Crombez is a lecturer in Philosophy of Art and Theatre History at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp, and at Sint Lucas Antwerp. As a member xiv Notes on Contributors of the research group ArchiVolt, he focuses on the history of avant‐garde and performance art. Further interests are new methodologies for doing research, such as digital text collections and data visualization. Crombez also works as a researcher at the Research Centre for Visual Poetics of the University of Antwerp. At the same institution, he initiated the Platform for Digital Humanities (http:// dighum.uantwerpen.be). Recent books include The Locus of Tragedy (2009) and Mass Theatre in Interwar Europe (2014). Cécile Dudouyt is Assistant Professor at Paris 13 (Villetaneuse) where she teaches French‐English Translation and Translation Studies. Since 2011, she has also been Research Associate at the APGRD, working on the database “French Translations of Greek and Roman Drama”, the first stage of a wider APGRD research project on translations of ancient drama in European vernaculars from the Renaissance onward. Her earlier research focused on the reception of Sophocles in France and England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Michael Ewans is Conjoint Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Science at the University of Newcastle, Australia, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He has published ten books, three of them on opera, and his new book Performing Opera: A Practical Guide for Singers and Directors has recently appeared from Bloomsbury Methuen. Barbara Goff is Professor of Classics at the University of Reading. She has p­ublished extensively in the field of Greek drama and its reception, with particular reference to African rewritings of Greek tragedy. Her most recent book is Your Secret Language: Classics in the British Colonies of West Africa (London: Bloomsbury, 2013). With Michael Simpson, she is currently researching the role of Classics in the British Left for a co‐authored book entitled Working Classics. Claire Kenward is the Archivist and Researcher at the University of Oxford’s Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD). Claire’s forth- coming publications reflect her research interests in the interplay between Classics and early modern drama, and also the reception of Classics in science‐fiction and fantasy. She is currently co‐editing a book on performances inspired by Epic. Fiona Macintosh is Professor of Classical Reception, Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD), and Fellow of St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford. She is the author of Dying Acts (1994), Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre 1660–1914 (2005, with Edith Hall), and Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus (2009). She has edited a number of APGRD volumes, most recently Choruses, Ancient and Modern (2013) and The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas (2015). Kenneth MacKinnon was awarded an MA in Classics by the University of Edinburgh in 1965, a B. Litt. in the same subject by Oxford in 1969. and a B.A. in Film by the University of London in 1978. He became a professor of London Metropolitan University, from which he retired in 2005 after being subject leader Notes on Contributors xv of Classical Civilization and subsequently of Film Studies. His published works include Misogyny in the Movies; The Politics of Popular Representation; Representing Men and several articles on Classical tragedy and epic poetry. Gesine Manuwald is Professor of Latin at University College London. Her research mainly concerns Roman drama, Roman epic, Roman rhetoric and the reception of the Classical world, especially in Neo‐Latin poetry. She has published extensively on Roman drama, including, most recently, Roman Drama: A Reader (Duckworth, 2010), Roman Republican Theatre (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and an edition of Ennius’ tragic fragments (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012). Peter Meineck is a Professor of Classics at New York University and Founding Director of the Aquila Theatre Company. He has held fellowships at USCS, Princeton and the Center for Hellenic Studies and is Honorary Professor of Classics at the University of Nottingham. He studied at University College London and Nottingham, and has published widely on ancient drama, including several volumes of translations with Hackett Publishing. He has also directed and/or p­roduced over 50 professional classical theater pieces at venues as diverse as Carnegie Hall, the Ancient Stadium at Delphi, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Lincoln Center and the White House. He lives in New York and is also a volunteer firefighter and emergency medical technician with the Bedford Fire Department. Sarah Miles lectures and teaches on Greek drama, Greek literature and language at the University of Durham while researching on ancient receptions of Greek drama. She has published on Greek comedy (Old and New Comedy), comic ­fragments and Greek comedy’s engagement with tragedy (paratragedy). She is preparing a book on: Ancient Receptions of Greek Tragedy in Old Comedy: From Paratragedy to Popular Culture. Paul Monaghan is a Theater and Classical Studies academic as well as a professional theater maker, director, and dramaturg. He holds a PhD in Theatre Studies/ Classical Studies, and lectured in Theatre (theory and practice) at the University of Melbourne from 1999 to 2012, including a four‐year period as Head of Postgraduate Studies and Research in that university’s School of Performing Arts. Paul’s teaching and research areas include Greek tragedy in performance (in antiquity and in the modern world), dramaturgy and the dramaturgical intelligence, and philosophy and theatrical practice. He is currently working on a book‐length study of the reception of Greek tragedy in Australia. Martin Revermann is Professor in Classics and Theatre Studies at the University of Toronto. His research interests lie in the area of ancient Greek drama (produc- tion, reception, iconography, sociology), Brecht, theater theory and the history of playgoing. He is the author of Comic Business. Theatricality, Dramatic Technique and Performance Contexts of Aristophanic Comedy (Oxford 2006). He has also edited Performance, Iconography, Reception. Studies in Honour of Oliver Taplin (with xvi Notes on Contributors

P. Wilson, Oxford, 2008), Beyond the Fifth Century: Interactions with Greek Tragedy from the Fourth Century BCE to the Middle Ages (with I. Gildenhard, Berlin/New York, 2010) and The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy (Cambridge, 2014). Francesca Schironi is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan. Her research interests include Hellenistic scholarship and reception of the Classics. She has published on the contemporary reception of Aristophanes in Italy, on Pasolini’s film Edipo Re and on the servus callidus in Renaissance commedia erudita and commedia dell’arte. She is working on Lodovico Martelli’s Tullia (1533) and on a monograph on the reception of Greek drama in Italy. Alan H. Sommerstein is Emeritus Professor of Greek at the University of Nottingham. He has edited or translated complete and fragmentary plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes and Menander, and has written widely on Greek drama and also on the oath in Greek society. Eva Stehlíková is Professor in the Department for Theater Studies, Masaryk University in Brno. She is the author of books including The Greek Theater of the Classical Period (1991), The Roman Theater (1993), The Theater in the Time of Nero and Seneca (2005), The Ancient Theater (2005, in English 2014), and a book of Czech productions of ancient drama titled What’s Hecuba to Us? (2012). David Stuttard is a freelance writer, Classical historian, dramatist and founder of the theater company, Actors of Dionysus. Carol Symes is Associate Professor of History, Theatre, and Medieval Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign. Educated at Yale and Oxford, she subsequently trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and pursued an acting career while earning the Ph.D at Harvard. She is still a member of Actors’ Equity Association in the United States. Martina Treu is Associate Professor in Greek Language and Literature at the IULM University (www.iulm.it) in Milan, where she teaches Ancient Drama and Classical Reception. She is a member of the Imagines Project (www.imagines‐project.org/) and of the Research Centre on Ancient Drama at the University of Pavia (http:// crimta.unipv.it). She has been Visiting Assistant Professor of Ancient Drama at the University of Venice and at the Catholic University, Brescia. She has worked in European theaters and cooperated as a Dramaturg to adaptations of Classical plays for the stage. Her main research and publications deal with Aristophanes’ Chorus and Satire in ancient and modern performance, the adaptation and reception of Greek drama, and Greek mythology in modern theater and literature. Gonda Van Steen holds the Cassas Chair in Greek Studies at the University of Florida. She is the author of four books: Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece (2000); Liberating Hellenism from the Ottoman Empire (2010); Theatre of the Condemned: Classical Tragedy on Greek Prison Islands (2011) and Stage of Emergency: Theater and Notes on Contributors xvii

Public Performance under the Greek Military Dictatorship of 1967–1974 (2015). Her current book project, tentatively entitled Heirs to Trauma: Adoption, Postmemory and Cold War Greece, is taking her into the new, uncharted terrain of Greek adoption stories that become paradigmatic of Cold War politics and history. Betine van Zyl Smit has been Associate Professor in the Department of Classics at the University of Nottingham since 2006. Her research interests include the tragedies of Seneca and the reception of ancient literature, especially drama. She has published extensively on the reception of Classical drama in South Africa. Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. is Professor and Chair of Theatre Arts at Loyola Marymount University, as well as the author of numerous books including Athenian Sun in an African Sky, Black Dionysus, and Modern Asian Theatre and Performance, 1900–2000. Rosie Wyles studied Classics as Oxford and completed her London doctorate in 2007. She has held posts at Oxford, Maynooth, Nottingham and King’s College, London, and is currently a lecturer at the University of Kent. Her research inter- ests and publications gravitate around ancient Greek drama and its reception. Note on Nomenclature and Spelling

There are very many different spellings for Greek names and titles. Our policy has been to use the names as they appear in the texts, translations and adaptations. Introduction Betine van Zyl Smit

Reception studies has become a central part of the syllabus of Classics departments at both undergraduate and postgraduate level in Anglophone countries. Just as the study of Greek drama is an essential part of the study of traditional Classics, so the study of the reception of Greek drama lies at the heart of most courses on Classical Reception. Although much research on the reception of Greek drama has been published in scholarly journals and various books in the past three decades, there is currently no handbook suitable to introduce students to the area and to give them an overview of the field. The publication in 2003 of Reception Studies, Lorna Hardwick’s overview of the theory of and practice in Classical reception in general, in the series New Surveys in the Classics, was an acknowledgment of the importance of this part of the study of the ancient world in contemporary research and teaching. This Handbook aims to provide an introduction to the study of the reception of Greek drama from antiq­ uity to the present. It also aims to indicate the extraordinarily wide geographical spread and influence of Greek drama. In spite of the Handbook’s wide scope in time and geography, we are aware that we have not been able to cover all aspects of the reception of Greek drama. In a sense, every study of the reception of Classical drama is incomplete. Greek drama is alive and ­continues to change into new works and shapes––therein lies much of its challenge and fascination. Before the term “reception studies” was widely used, it was common to speak of the Classical tradition, as Gilbert Highet called it in his well‐known study, The Classical Tradition, first published in 1949. Highet traced the influence of certain Greek and Roman texts and ideas over the centuries, but did not generally engage in detail with the ways in which those who had been “influenced” interpreted the ancient texts and ideas and what role the new context played.

A Handbook to the Reception of Greek Drama, First Edition. Edited by Betine van Zyl Smit. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2 Betine van Zyl Smit

Highet’s work represented to a certain extent German studies of the Nachleben or “afterlife” of ancient texts. The theoretical underpinning of most contempo­ rary studies of reception is derived from the work of German scholars of the 1960s and the 1970s. An intellectual framework more suitable to the kind of analysis u­tilized in modern reception studies was that developed from the work of Hans‐ Georg Gadamer, and H. R. Jauss, respectively. Gadamer’s (2004) theory that the meaning of a text is constructed by a fusion of horizons between the present and the past implies that later interpretations of Classical texts by subsequent authors will affect one’s understanding of the ancient texts. Jauss’ (1982) esthetics of r­eception explored the interaction of the creator of the new work and its audience. His concept of a “horizon of expectation” suggests that the response of the audience­ or readers will inevitably be guided by their experience and their context. Another theoretical framework for the investigation of ancient texts and their later versions is that of “hypertextuality,” developed by the French scholar, Gérard Genette, especially in Palimpsestes. La literature au second degré (1982). As the title indicates, he uses the notion of the original text, or hypotext, as the underlying manuscript, which is later covered by a subsequent text, or hypertext, but leaves the original text to be partially discerned underneath. Genette examines different types of hypertextuality, such as transposition, which includes translation into a different language, changing a text from poetry to prose, or creating a parody of it. These are some of the tools used by scholars who study the reception of Classical drama. Gender studies have been influential in Classical studies in the last few decades, especially in the discussion of Greek drama. These theories, as well as those applied in the field of theater studies, also underlie the approach of some scholars of Classical reception. Not all authors in this volume subscribe to these theories, but several have been influenced by them. Examples of the reception of Greek drama by authors of the Handbook include translation from one language to another, translation to the stage, and adaptation of the text to create what is in effect a new play. It is sometimes difficult to draw the line between translation and adaptation, as will be evident in the discussion in the different chapters. Other modes of reception include adaptation to a different genre, such as opera or film. Examples of these are discussed in the last two c­hapters. Lynda Hutcheon’s (2012: 8) theory of adaptation, that it is an acknow­ ledged transposition of a recognizable other work, a creative and interpretative act of appropriation and an extended intertextual engagement with the adapted work, seems to describe the process best. She concludes with a statement that echoes aspects of Genette’s theory: “Therefore, an adaptation is a derivation that is not derivative – a work that is second without being secondary. It is its own palimpsestic thing” (2012: 9). Some of the contributors to this volume are Classical scholars, some specialize in theater studies and its practice, some combine the disciplines of Classics and the theater, and others specialize in later and modern history and literature. Inevitably the background of each has shaped their contribution. Introduction 3

The Structure of the Book

The Handbook starts with the study of reception of Greek drama within the ancient world. Martin Revermann (Chapter 1) explores the early reception of Greek tragedy from the time of Aeschylus to the death of Alexander, focusing in particular on the kind of insights that are provided if reception is seen as a complex act of ongoing negotiation over cultural value. Four landmark items of reception are discussed in detail: (i) Aristophanes’ Frogs; (ii) Lycurgus’ law court speech, Against Leocrates; (iii) tragedy‐related vase paintings; and (iv) Aristotle’s Poetics. Aristotle’s work on drama was to have a significant influence also in the early modern approach to drama, as is evident in several later chapters. Alan Sommerstein (Chapter 2) shows how comedy became immensely popular, first, in Athens and then across most of the Greek world, in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, as both literary and artistic evidence testify, especially in Italy and Sicily, with a prestige and appeal that nearly equaled those of tragedy. Quite early in the period, at least in Athens, it became both an important part and an important subject of public, civic discourse––in which, however, its status was to some extent ambivalent, at any rate in the eyes of élite intellectuals: it could be seen (sometimes by the same persons) both as a genre whose main characteristics were frivolity, obscenity, and irresponsible slander, and as a highly valued part of Athenian, and later of Hellenic, culture, bringing pleasure to thousands and also serving ethical purposes. Sarah Miles (Chapter 3) presents the reception of Greek drama in the Hellenistic world via two modes: performance‐based reception and textual reception. She focuses on the reception of Greek drama in the textual record through both ancient scholarship and early Hellenistic literature. This is presented as the pivotal moment in the reception of Greek drama during the Hellenistic period. An overview of the changing contexts for performing Greek drama notes the state of modern scholar­ ship and the lack of survival of Hellenistic drama. This provides a vital contextual setting for discussing the textual reception of Greek drama in the Hellenistic world. After an examination of ancient scholarship on Greek drama, and modern scholars’ recent attempts to place this within the reception of Greek drama, Miles discusses the reception of Greek drama in Hellenistic literature, with examples taken from Apollonius, Herodas, Lycophron, and Ezekiel. Peter Brown (Chapter 4) discusses the reception of Greek comedy (particularly Greek New Comedy) at Rome in the form of Latin adaptations. The comedies of Plautus (written c. 205–184 BC) are the earliest surviving works of Latin literature; the other surviving comedies are those of Terence, written in the 160s. The q­ualities of these authors’ works are discussed, as well as the depth of their a­udiences’ interest in Greek drama, and the development of comedy at Rome is traced, together with the evidence for knowledge of Greek comedy in the Latin‐ speaking West until at least the fifth century AD. After playwrights had ceased to adapt Greek comedies for Roman theaters, Menander continued to be a cultural 4 Betine van Zyl Smit reference point for readers, poets, and orators. Brown argues that in providing the stimulus for Roman Comedy, Greek New Comedy played a seminal role in the creation of the European comic tradition. Gesine Manuwald (Chapter 4) assesses the influence of Greek tragedy upon Roman tragedy of the Republican and imperial periods. She shows that Roman tragedy came into existence by building on the available structures, subject matter, and motifs of Greek tragedy. At the same time, Greek plays were not translated word for word, but rather adapted and transformed according to Roman conven­ tions and thereby made relevant for Roman audiences. She compares Seneca’s Oedipus to Sophocles’ Oidipous Tyrannos and concludes that the Roman playwright adapted the Greek tragedy by creatively engaging with it. This illustrates that identity of title, or even basic plot, need not imply more than a superficial similarity. That this is the case becomes clear throughout the Handbook where, time and again, playwrights use familiar titles, but produce plays that reflect their own context and themes. Carol Symes (Chapter 6) argues that the most crucial era in the trajectory of Greek drama’s transmission was the Middle Ages. She maintains that medieval understandings of ancient texts and generic conventions have been misrepresented for hundreds of years, and calls for a new history of the Classics’ creative reception and revival in both Western Europe and Byzantium. She demonstrates the impor­ tance of Terentian comedy as a bridge between Classical antiquity and the early Middle Ages by briefly outlining the history of its manuscript tradition. Francesca Schironi (Chapter 7) surveys the development of neoclassical drama in Renaissance Italy. A brief review of the rediscovery of the Classics by Italian Humanists is followed by an analysis of the sixteenth‐century theoretical debate on tragedy and comedy that developed on the basis of the rediscovery of Aristotle’s Poetics and Donatus’ commentary on Terence. Discussions, first, of tragedy and then of comedy, focus on the different types of reception of Classical drama (trans­ lations, adaptations, and original dramas molded on Classical models) as well as on the main themes of neoclassical tragedy and comedy. The aim is to provide an introduction to Italian Cinquecento neoclassical drama as well as to show the importance that it had for the development of more mature neoclassical dramas in other European countries. Martina Treu (Chapter 11) describes how, after the first performance ever of a Classical drama in modern Europe, Oedipus Rex, at Teatro Olimpico, in Vicenza in 1585, ancient drama was revitalized in eighteenth‐century Italy by Vittorio Alfieri and others, and definitively rediscovered in the twentieth century: Greek tragedy in particular has been regularly performed since 1914 at the Greek theater of Syracuse, and after World War I in archeological sites and historical theaters, either at summer festivals or in regular seasons. After World War II, and particularly since the 1960s, ancient drama gained in popularity and impact, thanks to new interpre­ tations and adaptations by playwrights and directors, such as Vittorio Gassman and Pier Paolo Pasolini, and to adaptation to other forms of entertainment, such Introduction 5 as musicals and movies. Nowadays, Classical plays are frequently staged also in unconventional places, in schools and at fringe festivals, by independent directors, such as Vincenzo Pirrotta, and by research companies such as Teatro delle Albe/ Ravenna Teatro. Gonda Van Steen (Chapter 10) describes how long the reception of ancient Greek theater in modern Greece was in the making: it took until the early years of the nineteenth century for Classical tragedy and until the 1860s for Attic comedy to make their mark. When, after the first discussions and studies of ancient theater,­ the earliest translations and stage adaptations appeared, they supported Greek autonomy and the emergence of the modern Greek nation‐state. The first modern Greek productions, which anticipated the 1821 War of Independence, exemplified the “revolutionary turn” of Classical drama. Nationalism, “philologism,” and didacticism ruled the nineteenth‐century Greek reception of revival tragedy, and these trends made reappearances as late as the 1970s, by which time the Greek “nationalist turn” was perceived as badly out‐of‐date, and postmodernist reappro­ priations of ancient Greek theater set a new tone. The Greek reception of Attic comedy experienced a “democratic turn” far sooner than the tradition of revival tragedy, but the former had also been excluded from the nineteenth‐century nation‐building project and its educational value had long been contested. Aristophanes was, however, at the center of the Greek “modernist turn,” which came to a head in the 1959 Birds of the avant‐garde director Karolos Koun. Koun’s Persians of 1965 broke with the tradition of nationalist‐patriotic performance and with the formalist conventions that had long inhibited the stagings of the Greek National Theater. Van Steen argues that the “performative turn” of Greek theater must be credited to contemporary plays of the early 1970s. The years 1974 and 2009 proved to be decisive turning points, the former toward the “reperformative turn,” whose intensity has been unique to Greece, the latter toward the unknown of a Greece in moral and social, as well as political and economic crisis. Rosie Wyles (Chapter 8) shows that the works of the ancient playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes had a major impact on the development of French literary production and cultural identity from the Renaissance to the early modern period. The rediscovery and response to ancient texts invited the exploration of issues culminating in the famous seventeenth‐ century literary debate between ancients and moderns. The reception of ancient drama depended on influences from Italy, and individual talents, such as those of members of the Pléiade, Buchanan, Muret, Racine, Corneille, and Dacier, literary theory, royal support, religion, and historical circumstances. Tensions in this r­eception can be traced between the original language and the vernacular, performance and the printed page, and playwrights and pedants. Wyles’ chapter invites reflection on the range of responses that engagement with ancient drama created in France from the Renaissance to the seventeenth century. Cécile Dudouyt (Chapter 12) relates how, in 1700, French neoclassical theoreti­ cians had considered that Racine and Molière had won the competition with 6 Betine van Zyl Smit antiquity; but that from the 1860s onward, a joint rediscovery of Shakespeare and the Greeks shattered neoclassical conceptions of Greek drama. Pierre Brumoy’s translations into French prepared the ground for a philological and archeological rediscovery of Greek theater in the nineteenth century, and that led to the restora­ tion of ancient theater venues in the 1860s. Dudouyt notes that, from the early twentieth century, the literary and theatrical scene in France was marked by a significant rise in the number of adaptations, translations, and rewritings of Greek drama. Greek tragedies were used to express concerns about war and peace b­etween 1914 and 1969. Since the 1970s there has been an exponential upsurge in the number of ancient plays and adaptations performed, in the twofold context of an unprecedented expansion of mass entertainment, and the ascendancy of stage directors in contemporary French theaters. Claire Kenward (Chapter 9) asserts that, far from a pristine rebirth, the Renaissance “rediscovery” of ancient Greek drama was more akin to a “return of the repressed,” as well‐known classically‐inspired characters and plots inherited from the traditions of medieval England were forced into dialogue with their long‐ lost textual forbears. The lamenting female voice central to Greek tragedy, epito­ mized by Hecuba, radicalized the medieval tales of Troy, becoming both a spur to theatrical innovation and a pervasive cultural presence. Looking beyond student performances of Aristophanes, Euripides, and Sophocles, in the university towns, her chapter celebrates the elaborate hybrids and dizzyingly complex layers of intertextuality that appear in London’s playhouses. Such dramas are not dismissed as wilful or ignorant “corruptions” of the Classics, but rather essential components in early modern England’s reception of ancient Greek drama. Betine van Zyl Smit (Chapter 15) presents an overview of some trends, plays and productions prominent in the translation and performance of Greek drama in England over the last four centuries. Examples include the Oedipus (1678) of Dryden and Lee, the influence of the Potsdam Antigone in 1841, Classical burlesque in the late nineteenth century and Gilbert Murray’s contribution in the twentieth century. Attention is paid to the poetic translations of Hughes and Harrison as well as Berkoff’s engagement with Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus. She concludes with information on some of the institutions that regularly stage Greek drama and on the Actors of Dionysus theater company. Anton Bierl (Chapter 13) shows how, after a brief prehistory, the modern German staging of ancient drama as a subgenre started with the Antigone in Potsdam in 1841. During the avant‐garde movement around 1900, Oberländer and Reinhardt tried to instil new life into ancient drama. After World War I, the emphasis shifted to portraying the inner life of characters and the role of fate. The Nazi period brought an attempt by Müthel to assert the new ideology, but this was followed post World War II by a phase of existential fusion of horizons, especially by the director Gustav Rudolf Sellner. Bierl locates the origin of the modern style of staging in Brecht’s design for his Antigone in Chur in 1948. Bierl shows that, from the mid‐1960s, there was a search for Dionysian liberation influenced by Brecht Introduction 7 and Hölderlin’s translation work. The two Antikenprojekte in Berlin involved new approaches. In parallel with the performative turn, Grüber created a visual esthetic in his 1974 Bakchen. Stein’s Orestie of 1980 revealed the political dimension of Greek tragedy and put the text back at the center. After 1989, there was a shift to a postdramatic style which also emphasized the role of the chorus. Thomas Crombez (Chapter 14) has compiled a new bibliography of Dutch translations of Greek drama, and a theaterography of performances produced in the Netherlands and Flanders, and uses this as a basis to examine the reception of ancient Greek tragedy and comedy in the Low Countries. The data demonstrate that the cultural presence of Greek drama became established only from 1880 onwards. During the twentieth century, both Dutch‐language translations and theatrical productions become increasingly common. This historical overview indicates how modern writers and directors have time and again used the Greeks, through a five hundred‐year‐old struggle over their legacy, in order to solve the theatrical problems of their own time. Fiona Macintosh (Chapter 16) shows that, since the 1980s, there has been a pro­ liferation of versions and productions of Greek plays by Irish writers, beginning with versions of Antigone that responded in various ways to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. She then traces the pre‐history to these 1980s Greek plays and to the regular twinning of Irish and Greek that persists to this day. Macintosh argues that, however dominant the metropolitan centers remain, the rise in the production of Irish adaptations of Greek plays is no belated attempt to reinstate parochial, national literary traditions in a global cultural economy. In contrast, she offers explanations for the continued cultural contribution of Irish writers to the recep­ tion of Greek tragedy and provides examples of the various ways in which Irish theater itself has been shaped in turn by an engagement with the ancient plays. Eva Stehlíková (Chapter 17) notes that the first Czech performance of a Greek tragedy in the territory of the present Czech Republic took place in 1889 and that since then, ancient drama has become a permanent part of the repertoire of professional and amateur theaters. She argues that Greek drama has always been considered part of the European humanist tradition in her country. This made it possible that, in times when freedom was restricted, ancient drama could be staged instead of modern plays that would be controlled for political reasons. Consequently, the presence or absence of productions of ancient plays, especially tragedies, from Czech theater, has become a sensitive barometer of the political situation. Stehlíková maintains that some of these productions went beyond a utilitarian or merely representative purpose and left a permanent mark on the history of Czech theater. Examples are the work of directors Karel Hugo Hilar and Jiří Frejka in the 1930s. In addition to great acting performances, the distinctive features of their productions included innovative stage design, which more recently has also become a significant factor in the work of Josef Svoboda. Aníbal A. Biglieri (Chapter 18) analyzes the adaptations of Antigone by Sophocles and Medea by Euripides in the works of Argentine dramatists, Leopoldo Marechal 8 Betine van Zyl Smit

(1900–1970), Alberto de Zavalía (1911–1988), and David Cureses (1935–2006). The plays he examines are situated in different sites and times: La cabeza en la jaula (The Head in the Cage) by Cureses, in Guadas (Colombia) in the eighteenth and nineteenth century; El límite (The Limit) by Zavalía, in Tucumán, Argentina, during the political rule of Rosas; and Antígona Vélez by Marechal and La frontera (The Frontier) by Cureses, in the pampas (or prairies) of the province of Buenos Aires during the decades of 1820 and 1870, respectively. For these authors, the history of Latin America revolves around the opposition between civilization and barbarism, which is a type of megatext or master narrative (métarécit) that serves as its foundation and gives meaning to the past. Mohammad Almohanna (Chapter 19) shows that drama and theater activities were unknown in Arab‐speaking countries for centuries before they were imported from Western culture during the first half of the nineteenth century. He describes how, especially from the early twentieth century, when Arab culture was opening to the Western world, theater was gradually adopted. He maintains that Arabs were interested in exploring Classical drama, especially Greek drama. Almohanna surveys the possible reasons why Arabs, especially Muslims, ignored the theater for centuries. Then he investigates the growing interest in Greek drama among Arabs from the end of the nineteenth century up to recent years. He concludes with an analysis of Ahmed Etman’s adaptation of Sophocles’ fragmentary satyr‐ play, The Trackers (Ichneutai). Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. (Chapter 20) describes how Greek tragedy entered Japan during the Meiji era (1868–1912), alongside the works of Shakespeare, and simul­ taneous to the evolution of naturalism and realism as pioneered by Ibsen and Chekhov. As a result, it remained a presence in university classrooms rather than on the stages of Japan. The second phase of reception of Greek tragedy began in the 1960s when a new generation of artists rejected naturalism, embraced myth, and had experienced democracy under the American Occupation, creating a p­roclivity for using Greek tragedy to critique Japanese society and American cultural dominance. Finally, a third phase emerged in the early 1980s, aimed at a more international audience, in which the presumed underlying universalism of Greek tragedy was combined with experiments in performance techniques to develop contemporary intercultural adaptations that appeal as much to interna­ tional audiences as to Japanese ones, while still maintaining a social critique of Japan through the Greek text. Peter Meineck (Chapter 21) focuses on eight North American productions of Greek tragedy and adaptations of Greek drama spanning more than two h­undred years, and examines their reception in American and Canadian culture. They are the Boston Haymarket’s Medea and Jason in 1798, The Bowery’s Oedipus in 1834, Vandenhoff’s Antigone in 1845, Acharnians in Philadelphia in 1886, Margaret Anglin’s Antigone at Berkeley in 1910, Guthrie’s Oedipus Rex at Stratford, Ontario, in 1954, Richard Schechner’s Dionysus in ‘69 in 1968, and Will Power’s The Seven in 2006. Introduction 9

Paul Monaghan (Chapter 22) describes how Australia was first introduced to the performance of Greek drama by touring productions of Medea in the second half of the nineteenth century. Late‐nineteenth‐century, original‐language productions of both tragedy and comedy in educational settings then set the scene for the d­ominance of university‐based productions of Greek drama in Australia well into the 1970s. But professional productions and––from late in the twentieth century–– adaptations of tragedy (and to a lesser extent comedy) gradually became more frequent until, from the 1970s onwards, professional companies have more and more frequently looked to Greek drama to gain inspiration for contemporary t­heater. Many early productions, especially those in the original Greek, were archaizing, and, throughout the period of reception, the most common p­roduction style has been realism. But more poetic, imaginative, and vigorous styles have increasingly become common. A significant physical trend in the 1990s has been followed in the new century by a strong tendency towards post‐dramatic adapta­ tions of tragedy. Monaghan observes that at the time of writing, the number and variety of productions of Greek drama in Australia are almost too vast to be adequately­ recorded. Barbara Goff (Chapter 23) notes that since the mid‐twentieth century there have been numerous performances and published adaptations of Greek drama by African artists. They generate a paradox whereby the legacy of colonialism offers a cultural resource to the formerly colonized. She looks at the background to the phenomenon of African adaptation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth c­enturies, traces some of the chief characteristics of the adaptations, and surveys critical responses to them. Michael Ewans (Chapter 24) starts with an outline of the circumstances in which opera was first created, and then surveys operas based on Greek tragedy from 1660 to the 1780s. He then discusses major works by Gluck (Iphigénie en Tauride), Cherubini (Médée), Wagner (The Nibelung’s Ring), Strauss (Elektra), Enesco (Oedipe), Szymanowski (King Roger) and Henze (The Bassarids), before concluding with a brief survey of operas from 1966 to the present day. Kenneth MacKinnon (Chapter 25) argues that the tenacity of the belief in realism as cinema’s true destiny clearly affects critical reception, particularly by Classicists, of films of ancient Greek drama. Yet, those films, which are believed to be realist and thus praised for demonstrating fidelity to the spirit of tragedy, may be superficial in their allegiance to the tragic concept, as formulated by Aristotle. MacKinnon’s chapter explores productions, not only cinematic but also theatrical, some of which appear to be realist while others seem to counter aspects of realism. The question is raised whether the former should be regarded as more authentic than versions which do not aim to represent Greek tragedy as originally conceived.

It is noteworthy that the history of the reception of Greek drama reflects not only the history of how the Greek plays were adapted and performed over the 10 Betine van Zyl Smit centuries, but also that they are part of the wider history of the theater of the time. The trend evident in all the contributions is for Greek drama to be initially treated as an elevated genre, which has to be regarded with deference and has no direct links with the everyday life of the audience. However, just as contemporary plays increasingly began to reflect the daily life of audiences in a realistic way, so, too, Greek plays were adapted to embed them in the contemporary world. But this process was not exclusive, and while some modern versions, such as Berkoff’s r­evolutionary rewriting of Sophocles’ Oedipus as Greek in 1980, challenged the t­raditional respect paid to the Classics, other productions, such as Peter Hall’s masked Oresteia at the National Theatre, also in London, in 1981, strove to p­reserve many elements of an authentic ancient Greek production. These different strands of the reception of Greek drama continue to co‐exist and expand: while somewhere in the world a playwright or director is working on a new way of p­resenting an ancient drama to reflect a contemporary theme, another director is attempting to stage as authentic a representation of the performance of ancient drama as possible, based on the latest knowledge derived from scholarship on Greek drama.

References

Gadamer, Hans‐Georg. 2004. Truth and Method. Trans. J. Weinsheimer and D.G. Marshall. 2nd rev. edn. London: Continuum. Genette, Gérard. 1982. Palimpsestes. La literature au second degré. Paris: Seuil. Hardwick, Lorna. 2003. Reception Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Highet, Gilbert. 1949. The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hutcheon, Lynda. 2012. A Theory of Adaptation. 2nd edn. London: Routledge. Jauss, Hans Robert. 1982. Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Trans. Timothy Bahti. Brighton: The Harvester Press. Part I The Ancient World

1 The Reception of Greek Tragedy from 500 to 323 BC Martin Revermann

When Aeschylus, one of the earlier Greek tragic playwrights and the oldest among the three who would achieve canonical status, died in or around 456 BC, he was not buried in Athens, his home‐city in which he had spent all but the last couple of years of his life and where his plays were well known and regularly performed. He died in Sicily, in the city of Gela, as a guest at the court of the local tyrant Hieron, still writing and producing plays. Here, according to his (anonymous) biographer, he was not only sumptuously buried, but his tomb became a site of pilgrimage for the­ ater professionals who “would conduct sacrifices and perform his plays.”1 At the same time, the citizens of his home‐town Athens, the biographer continues, passed a decree in the assembly that anyone who wished to reperform an Aeschylean play should be granted a chorus (the necessary prerequisite for public and competi­ tive theater performance). These strongly favorable and clearly exceptional collective responses, in two rather distinct parts of the Greek cultural continuum, provide ample testimony to the impact Aeschylus had been making on his contemporaries and are strong markers of his incipient iconization and canonization, not just in Athens, but in Greece as a whole. They also bring home three key points about the process of reception itself. First, reception is not only a diachronic process that delineates “after the fact” (in this case, the death of the artist) but also a synchronic cultural dynamic between an artist and his or her contemporaries. After all, Aeschylus had been famous enough during his lifetime to receive a most favorable welcome from those in power far away from his own home‐city. Secondly, reception is a complex cultural phenomenon which manifests itself in many forms and media beyond the literary and performative, thereby generating new forms of symbolic interaction (in this particular case, religious practice and some kind of institutional­ ized reperformance). But other modes of reception could, for instance, include political rhetoric or the visual arts. And, thirdly, reception processes are often both

A Handbook to the Reception of Greek Drama, First Edition. Edited by Betine van Zyl Smit. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 14 Martin Revermann local and trans‐local (or “international”) phenomena, creating cultural geographies in their own right and with their own dynamics. As an ongoing negotiation over cultural value, reception therefore provides significant insights into both the received and the recipient, whose “receptivity” may well change over time in nature, focus, or intensity. The reception of Greek tragedy within the time period under scrutiny in this chapter must be considered a model case of the complexities just outlined. This is not only because the nearly two centuries from the artistic beginnings of the young Aeschylus to the year in which Alexander the Great died (with the philoso­ pher Aristotle following a year later) saw tragedy—a young art form created in Athens during the sixth century which integrated and transformed long‐existing Ionian and Doric traditions of epic, and especially choral, performance to form an entirely novel polyphony of artistic expression—developing rapidly from an (instant?) local success into a major cultural force with pan‐Hellenic appeal. By the end of the fourth century, there are dramatic performances in theaters, some of them seating far more than 10 000 people, all over the Greek world and beyond (as far away as modern Afghanistan);2 people speaking in court liberally quote from or allude to tragedy, assuming that their large and socially diverse audiences will pick this up and respond favorably; tragedy’s rival sibling, comedy, has become much less keen on parodying tragic motifs and techniques, instead using them for a more refined and less aggressive sense of humor; well‐paid star actors are highly mobile celebrities, while the majority of tragic playwrights no longer hail from Athens but from all over Greece (even if Athens retains the role as the epicenter of the art); tragedy has become not one but the vehicle for telling traditional tales (replacing, though certainly not obliterating, epic poetry), with its stories and performances inspiring visual artists (especially in Southern Italy and Sicily); and some of the most celebrated intellectuals of the period engage with tragedy as an important object of reflection. This is not the place for a more detailed account of this remarkable (and remark­ ably successful) 200‐year‐long cultural evolution. Instead I will group my narrative around four landmark items of reception while attempting to situate these individual landmarks within the wider cultural landscape.

Aristophanes’ Frogs

The first of these, Aristophanes’ comedy Frogs, was first performed in early 405 and is a response to a traumatic experience, the death of Euripides a few months prior in 406.3 The fact that a comedy should extensively interact with tragedy is not surprising but rather an important feature of the genre: there is evidence to suggest­ that as early as the beginning of the fifth century already, in the Sicilian (!) com­ edies of Epicharmus, Aeschylus’ tragic diction was being lampooned.4 Athenian comedy too was deeply invested in exploiting tragedy, its grand and brilliant rival, The Reception of Greek Tragedy, 500–323 BC 15 for its own purposes, in a quite aggressive and parasitical way. This applies in particular to Aristophanes, who appears to have been very interested in para­ tragedy, perhaps exceptionally so.5 Yet, even by the standard of this metric, Frogs is unusual, both in terms of the extent and the depth of comedy’s engagement with tragedy. Dionysus, the god of theater, and more generally of liminality and transgression, crosses the ultimate boundary, that which separates the living from the dead, in order to resurrect Euripides, with whose work he is infatuated. He is in search of a “decent poet” (poiêtês dexios: Frogs 71) in order to save the city of Athens in its constant state of military crisis and threat of defeat by Sparta (during the events which modern ­historians refer to collectively as the Peloponnesian War). While Frogs works on, and fuses, political and religious levels (especially by means of the main chorus of Eleusinian initiates), it is the (meta)poetic dimension that pervades the play from start to finish. This fact in itself is reason to pause: in late fifth‐century Athens we are evidently dealing with a culture in which large mass audiences (at least 7000, if not far more, spectators at that point in time) are willing and able to engage with a comedy that is deeply concerned with the reception of tragedy. Even more than that, a comic playwright could enter a play like Frogs in the competition for the much‐coveted first prize at one of the Athenian dramatic festivals—and win. From ancient scholars we indeed have the information that Frogs won first prize at the Lenaea festival in early 405, and that it was even granted the extraordinary privi­ lege of competitive reperformance, probably at the Lenaea a year later.6 Vase ­evidence strongly suggests the reperformance of Frogs (and another heavily ­paratragic comedy by Aristophanes, the Women at the Thesmophoria) in Southern Italy in the fourth century,7 which indicates that the cultural interest and theatrical competence required from the audience by such works of art were far from being an exclusively Athenian phenomenon. The core of the comedy, its monumental “debate” (agôn) between the charac­ ters “Aeschylus” and “Euripides,” which spans almost half of the entire play, is an entertaining contest over poetic value, blending the light and the serious to form a hilarious mix. “Euripides,” as obnoxious when dead as he (in Aristophanes’ presen­ tation) had been when alive, instantly challenges the position of “Aeschylus” as prime tragic poet in the underworld. Much of the ensuing contest between the two tragic poets revolves around matters of craft (technê), i.e., formal skills of ­diction, versification, or character construction, with either one quoting or refer­ ring to their own poetry or attacking that of the opponent. Approaching the play from the vantage point of Reception Studies, we may justly wonder how many among the large and socially diverse first audience of Frogs in Athens were able to pick up the intricacies that were played out in front of them. Aristophanes in fact anticipated the threat of losing his audience, since he has the chorus address the issue of audience competence head‐on about half‐way through the agôn (1109– 1118). By having the chorus praise the audience in this context as well‐trained, competent, wise, and sophisticated, Aristophanes is “cheer‐leading” them on, 16 Martin Revermann flattering them and boosting their collective self‐esteem. The reality must have been complex and variable, with different audience members operating at differ­ ent levels of competence.8 Because they operated in competitive contexts, comic playwrights had to be adept at creating plays that were simple and complex at the same time, appealing to all levels of taste and sophistication without losing or alienating any segment of playgoers. The huge success of Frogs makes it clear that the right balance had been struck. And it demonstrates just how deeply invested in tragedy the Athenian mass audiences of the late fifth century really were. Frogs marks an important cesura in the history of tragedy reception (as far as we are able to reconstruct it). Not only was it prompted, as cultural responses often are, by a traumatic experience, in this case, the death of Euripides (to whom the play, despite its aggressive humor, is of course a homage). What is more remark­ able is the level of self‐awareness with which Aristophanes, and by implication his mass audiences, reflects on, rationalizes, and even celebrates this very cesura. The era of “classical” tragedy is now felt to be over: only Iophon, Sophocles’ son, might be able to carry on the torch, but the jury on him is still out (Frogs 72–97). The triad of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides as the tragic classics is now canonical already, and one feels that it had been for some time, even while two of those three were still alive. Perhaps most importantly, tragedy is about more than craft. In Dionysus’ view, the decisive criterion for picking the winner is an ethical one, namely a tragedian’s power to save the polis (Frogs 1418–1421). This is why “Aeschylus” is preferred in the end (bearing in mind, of course, that the ultimate savior of the city is Aristophanic comedy: after all, it takes comedy to bring back “Aeschylus” in the first place). Tragedy, therefore, is more than an art form: it is first and foremost a moral institution.

Lycurgus’ Against Leocrates

The use of tragedy as a moral institution is also at the core of the second major item I wish to highlight, Lycurgus’ speech Against Leocrates which was held in the year 330, i.e., towards the end of the period under scrutiny.9 From 338 onwards, Lycurgus was the leading Athenian politician in the last phase of a democratic mode of government before the Macedonian take‐over in 322, so much so that ­historians refer to the city of this period as “Lycurgan Athens.” Against Leocrates is the only preserved speech by Lycurgus. It is targeted against an individual who had left Athens after the battle of Chaironeia in 338, in which Philip II of Macedon decisively defeated an alliance of city‐states which included Thebes and Athens. Leocrates returned to his home‐city several years later, only to be accused of treachery against his homeland in a kind of legal charge (the eisangelia) which meant capital punishment in the case of a conviction (whether or not Leocrates was in fact convicted we do not know, nor do we possess the speech in which he defended himself ). This rather disproportionate relationship between alleged The Reception of Greek Tragedy, 500–323 BC 17 crime and sought‐for penalty, which was noted in antiquity already, in conjunction with the harshly moralistic tone of the speech as a whole earned Lycurgus the unenviable title of “Athenian grand‐inquisitor” (coined by Beloch in the late nineteenth century10). From the viewpoint of tragedy reception, Lycurgus’ discursive style, in particular, his noticeable penchant for digressions involving iconic poets and poetry, make this “textbook in civic virtue”11 an important document for gauging the value of various­ cultural commodities not just with a member of the Athenian ruling elite (Lycurgus’ background) but also the socially stratified and comparatively large court audi­ ences of citizen‐jurors.12 In other words, the general communicative situation is rather similar to that of Aristophanes’ Frogs. The fact that a play by Euripides, the Erechtheus, features prominently in Lycurgus’ speech and argumentative strategy therefore has to be of significance when assessing the standing of tragedy, and of Euripides in particular, in the second half of the fourth century: (Euripidean) tragedy clearly is a known entity with the popular courts and, by implication, the Athenians at large. More than that, it is cultural and political capital. While Lycurgus resorts to other pieces of poetry—Homer, the Spartan (!) poet Tyrtaeus and funeral epigrams—the appropriation of the Euripidean play is the most extensive one. From it, Lycurgus quotes a continuous chunk of 55 iambic trimeters, all spoken by Erechtheus’ wife Praxagora to justify to her (hesitant?) husband Erechtheus the necessity of sacrificing one of their three daughters in order to defend the city of Athens from being taken over by the Thracian invader Eumolpus.13 For Lycurgus, the monologue illustrates what patriotism for the city of Athens is capable of doing, and how miserable by comparison Leocrates’ “betrayal” of the city is. A fairly theatrical in‐court delivery of these lines by Lycurgus is likely: Athenian court speeches, with their customary inserts of witness testimony and quotations of laws and decrees, are highly theatrical and performance‐oriented to begin with.14 It is surely significant that Lycurgus chose to deliver this, and all other poetry in his speech, himself, rather than leave the ­recitation to a clerk as would often happen.15 While this choice meant that he invested some of his own speech time (which was limited and monitored by a water clock), it offered the decisive advantage of helping to authenticate his message. Most interesting is the fact that Lycurgus presents Euripides as a steadfast patriot whose work sought to instill love for the homeland in his audience (100):

This is why one is justified in praising Euripides because he, while being a good poet (agathos poiêtês) in the other aspects, also chose to dramatize this particular story (mythos). For he thought that the actions of those people would be the most beautiful example for the citizens, who by watching and observing those actions could get used in their hearts (sunethizesthai tais psychais) to loving their homeland.

This staunchly conservative Euripides who habituates his viewers to “true patriot love” is a far cry from the unruly “Euripides” in Aristophanes’ Frogs, who is at best 18 Martin Revermann an ethically ambiguous and at worst a morally depraving artist. It is not easy to try to explain this shift in perception from trouble‐maker to icon of the conservatives except, perhaps, by invoking genre‐ and author‐specific manipulative agendas as well as the time gap of 75 years: that over time once controversial ­figures morph into mainstream icons is certainly an often‐encountered phenomenon of cultural history across centuries and geographies. One might also wish to argue that Euripidean tragedy is often intrinsically and provocatively bi‐polar, and that it thrives on being both innovative (hence potentially offensive) and traditional at the same time. In addition, the Euripidean Erechtheus (first performed in the late 420s or the 410s) was surely an exceptional play by the standards of the genre. It was one of the apparently extremely few tragedies written in the fifth century that was set in Athens, on its acropolis even, and dramatized an Athenian myth, while ­usually Attic tragedy tends to find and play out its horrors in other Greek locales (often Thebes).16 It is, finally, of interest to note that in his speech Lycurgus suppresses a personal link which he had with Euripides’ play and which may also have compelled him to use it in this context. The Erechtheus concluded, among other things, by specifying the cult of Athena Polias, Poseidon, and Erechtheus, all of which were conducted by priests and priestesses from the genos (= noble clan) of the Eteobutadai.17 Lycurgus in fact hailed from this genos and became its most famous member. When extensively quoting Praxithea, he therefore impersonated not just a tragic character but in fact an ancient kinswoman of his. Explicitly highlighting his illustrious ­pedigree in front of the citizen jurors was hardly an advisable strategy in a speech which aimed to be patriotically inclusive. Yet Lycurgus and his family must have had a special personal rapport with this particular play, as the Erechtheus dealt with the early history of his own aristocratic family in particular, in addition to detailing that of Athens in general. Lycurgus’ speech is strongly anti‐Macedonian: after all, Leocrates had left Athens after its decisive defeat by the Macedonian king Philip II. Euripides, ­however, had spent his last years at the Macedonian court, wrote one play (the Archelaus), in celebration of the mythical ancestors of the Macedonian royal house, and died in the Macedonian capital Pella! Whether or not Lycurgus was aware of this profound irony is impossible to say (although I suspect that at least some of his listeners did pick it up). Macedon and its rulers, to be sure, play a crucial role as a catalyst in the dissemination of Greek tragedy to the very edges of their vast empire.18 Tragedy, we know from papyrus finds and theater archeology, was ­performed in places as distant as Ai Khanoum in Bactria (present‐day Afghanistan), and became one of the key items to define Greekness in an increasingly interna­ tionalized and inter‐connected world. The Macedonian rulers were particularly anxious to latch onto Greek tragedy in order to dispel doubts, regularly activated by their opponents from the mainland, about their own Greekness. Identity formation and desire to belong are extremely strong forces in reception history tout court. Greek tragedy in particular could serve as an ideal, highly respectable, The Reception of Greek Tragedy, 500–323 BC 19 and suitably malleable vehicle here, providing an Athenian like Lycurgus and his fellow‐citizens with a sense of Athenianness while helping others like the Macedonian ruling elite to define Greekness and assert it as their own. Finally, the monolithic use in the speech of Euripides as a cultural icon beyond reproach before a popular court strongly suggests that, in the fourth century, of the three canonical tragedians, it is Euripides, and not Aeschylus or Sophocles, who enjoyed the greatest popularity and respect. This impression is very much corroborated by other evidence: the (quite frequent) use of tragedy in other ­orators, who similarly show a strong preference for Euripides;19 the strong interest of fourth‐century comedy in Euripides, not least in Menander whose dramaturgy is deeply influenced by (Euripidean) tragedy; the fourth‐century reperformances of fifth‐century tragedies, which at the City Dionysia in Athens started in 386 BC and which suggest that in terms of wide popularity Euripides was second to none;20 and tragedy‐related vase paintings, mostly from Southern Italy and Sicily, many of which are certainly or plausibly inspired by Euripides. It is the last type of evidence that, taken as a whole, will serve as my third key item.

Vase Paintings

This discussion, however, needs to be prefaced by a major disclaimer. While the topic of theater‐related art of the fifth and fourth century, especially as far as tragedy‐related vase paintings are concerned, has been a major area of productive and stimulating research over the past 20 years, it is also a notoriously difficult and multi‐faceted one. Here more than elsewhere, then, my discussion is bound to be reductionist and needs to be supplemented by other publications (see the items mentioned under “Guide to Further Reading,” which also provide rich illustra­ tion). The most serious challenge is a methodological one: by which cues does the ancient artifact signal its relation to tragedy, and to what aspect of it (its narratives and/or its performative instantation)? And might there be artifacts which are inspired by, or in some other way related to, tragedy but which do not signal this fact at all, possibly because the broader material context in which the artifact was situated—a dedicatory monument or a sanctuary, for instance—was perfectly sufficient to signal this link with tragedy instead (in which case, the connection would be lost on the modern viewer)? There is a stark contrast here with artifacts related to comedy, which tend to signal that relationship quite overtly (by way of masks, costumes, stages, labels, sometimes even text which would seem to be part of the performance script). A second major challenge is the geographical distribu­ tion: some tragedy‐related art, including vase paintings, comes from Athens (dating from the fifth and fourth century), whereas there is also a significant amount of evidence, almost exclusively vase paintings and from the fourth century BC, from Western Greece, i.e. Southern Italy and Sicily (where Greeks had settled since the eighth century BC). Those two challenges are, of course, inter‐connected 20 Martin Revermann in that the problem of “cues” (challenge 1) will greatly affect the number of ­artifacts considered to be theater‐related from Athens and Western Greece (challenge 2). To illustrate this point: the incisive and wide‐ranging analysis by Csapo (2010) is particularly interested in artifacts that show signs of theatrical “realism,” i.e., attempts to represent performers as performers (instead of mytho­ logical heroes) and plays as plays (instead of mythological narratives). For Athens, this criterion yields four vase paintings (all from the fifth century), and the whole corpus of Attic “theater‐realistic” artwork related to tragedy and comedy consists of 26 vase paintings and eight reliefs.21 Using looser criteria, however, others have considered as many as 140 Attic vase paintings to be tragedy‐related. For Western Greece, the total number of tragedy‐related vase paintings has been estimated to be around four hundred, again using looser criteria than theater “realism,” such as choice of topic, gestures, blocking, or a sense of theatricality.22 Bearing these significant challenges in mind, roughly the following big picture emerges. The Attic evidence shows a clear preference for depicting tragic ­choruses, whereas that from Western Greece shows an equally clear preference for actors. The media chosen to depict tragedy—commemorative reliefs, symposium vessels, and funeral vessels (the last two categories not being mutually exclusive)—tend to be expensive and grand, designed for display of status, wealth, and connoisseurship, by contrast with much of the comedy‐related evidence. Specific interest in the individual actor, as opposed to the choral collective, seems to be a characteristic of the fourth century, especially in Western Greek art. And among those vase paintings that can, with various degrees of plausibility, be considered to be inspired by specific tragedies— in the standard work for this “matching approach,” Taplin’s Pots and Plays (2007), 109 vases are being discussed—the clear majority have a connection with Euripides.23 What the vases are able to tell us, their modern interpreters, is very much ­contingent on the kind of questions that we put to them. For instance, even the comedy‐related vases, which tend to be much more overtly theatrical than the tragedy‐related ones, yield very little help in reconstructing actual staging practices­ in fifth‐ or fourth‐century theaters. Yet they give us an excellent general idea of ­costumes and, to a slightly lesser extent, gestures. Theater‐related vase paintings also provide indispensable evidence for a figure who was central to dramatic performance but who is only rarely mentioned in (comic) texts, the aulos player.24 But it is, rather fortunately, for questions formulated from the viewpoint of Reception Studies that this kind of evidence yields some very interesting and significant insights. The first such question is “Why tragedy‐related artifacts to begin with?,” in other words, the sheer existence of this type of evidence. Clearly, there is some widely‐felt need for pictorial responses to the experience, through performance and possibly reading, of tragedy. This re‐mediation, from ephemeral performative events in a large public space to fixed pictorial representation in a variety of public, semi‐public or private spaces (homes, symposium rooms, streets, funeral sites), is one further indicator of the widespread cultural presence and impact made by tragedy that is similarly ­suggested by the textual evidence discussed in this chapter.