Greek Drama Short Report

Greek Drama: Further Readings and Short Report Guidelines

Our study of Greek drama will begin with an overview of Greek theater in general and focus on Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (Norton rental text, Vol. A). You will be completing a quiz/worksheet on Agamemnon (open book) and that play will be the focus of our class from March 26 through April 2. After that, each of you will have the opportunity to focus more intensively on one of three other Greek plays, Sophocles’ Philoctetes, Euripides’ Medea, or Aristophanes’ Lysistrata.

I will be asking you to submit a short report that focuses primarily on the play you chose to study in more depth. Your first task, though, is to choose which of the three plays you want to work on. Here are brief overviews of the three plays.

Sophocles’ Philoctetes (available in the Sophocles II purchase text). Philoctetes, an outstanding Greek warrior, was abandoned by Odysseus, Agamemnon and Menelaos on the way to fight in Troy because they could not bear the agonies of his suffering from a poisonous snake bite. The hero, an exceptional archer who wields the bow of Heracles, has been living in isolation on the wild island of Lemnos for nine years. Now the Greek forces have received a prophecy that they cannot conquer Troy without Philoctetes’ help. Odysseus, whom Philoctetes hates, and Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, are sent to lure Philoctetes back to the war, by persuasion, treachery or force.

Euripides’ Medea (available in Norton rental text, Vol. A. Medea, the sorceress who helped the hero Jason find the Golden Fleece and also helped save his life, is living with Jason in exile from her homeland with their two children. She has learned that, in order to advance his fortune and social standing, Jason wants to jilt Medea and marry a younger woman. Out of despair and rage, Medea contrives to take revenge against Jason in the most horrific way she can.

Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (available in Norton rental text, Vol. A). Fed up with the emotional and economic hardships caused by the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC), the Athenian and Spartan women, under the leadership of Lysistrata, unite to undertake two group actions: first, to refuse to have sex with their men until the men agree to stop fighting and, second, to cut off funding for the war by occupying the Athenian treasury. Aristophanes’ comedy still raises questions today about who should wield political power and why, as well as about how much humans really value peace.

NOTE: While I am requiring you to focus on only one of the three plays, I strongly encourage you to read all three. I will be saying something about each of the three plays before the short report is due, after we spend some time with Aeschylus’ Agamemnon.

Guidelines for Short Report on Greek Drama

For the short report on Greek drama, please write complete, incisive responses to each of the following five topics or questions concerning the play —Philoctetes, Medea or Lysistrata—that you have chosen to work on. If you’re working on Philoctetes or Medea, you must respond to all five questions! If you’re working on Lysistrata, you may skip the fourth one (relating to Aristotle’s theory of tragedy.

· For each main character in the play, write down a few key words and phrases that you think describe that character. Do not limit yourself simply to stating the character’s social role or relationships to another character or other characters. Try instead to capture what you think is the essence of the character in a few words or phrases. You should also quote what you think is the most important thing the character says in the play.

· What do you think are the central conflicts in the play? How are those conflicts resolved—or not?

· What do you see as the main themes of the play, ideas or issues that the play seems to return to more than once or twice in the course of the drama. For each theme that you list, remember to refer to passages in the text where that theme is reflected or comes into play. In connection with this, what social issues or questions does the play engage?

· For those working on Philoctetes or Medea: Aristotle said that all effective tragedies involve new learning, awareness or recognition (anagnorisis) by the protagonist (main character) and that that character must experience a reversal of fortune (peripateia) in the course of the action. Do you think that’s true of your play? Why or why not?

· Greek dramas are regularly performed today in a range of new stagings or productions. If you were staging the play today, putting on a new production of it, what would your staging look like? What would be the setting? What type of costumes would you use? Back up your thoughts about how you would stage the play with rationale or justification for your decisions.

Aim for a length of two to three double-spaced pages. Don’t forget to list the play and any other sources you use at the end of your paper in a list of works cited, MLA style!