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GreekHistoryLecturetragedy.htmlTragedy lecture:
Cultural expression in ancient Greece was defined by competition, glory, and the need to assert superiority and dominance.
- was a ‘Performance culture’: competition whether in oratory, athletics, drama, music, war.
- Athens we need to consider both innovation and conservatism: this includes the impact of change in terms of values and culture: perhaps explains why intellectuals tended to idealise Sparta.
Values: competition, Athenians loved cock fighting, as well as social solidarity.
But also social conservatism: slave society and one that preferred to keep its women out of public view.
When we think of theatre we often think of small venues and an elite activity. It is a divertissement for our leisure hours.
Athenian theatre was the opposite to this. It was a communal activity that involved a large proportion of the population, especially the citizenry but also foreigners and, possibly, women. More citizens would attend performances of plays than meetings of the Assembly. There was a charge to attend but also a subsidy for the poor.
Tragedy developed initially under Pisistratus but came to maturity as part of the Great or City Dionysia, a festival held in honour of Dionysius in spring. After 440 there was also the winter Lenaea festival. Drama was also performed locally in the deme organised Lesser or Rural Dionysia.
Dionysius is the god of wine and intoxication, of release from the constraints of civilisation.
The festival started a few days before the performances and included:
- The procession of the Statue of Dionysius to a temple on the road to Eleutherae where there were sacrifices and hymns.
- A proagon where the playwrights and performers were presented to the people.
- A ceremonial procession, a pompē in which certain a variety of sacred objects and offerings were carried, including a golden basket of offerings by a young girl, ritual loaves of bread and phalluses. The procession culminated in a sacrifice of bulls in the sanctuary of Dionysius.
- Perhaps then a kōmos or celebratory revel.
In the theatre itself a number of things happened:
- The ten generals poured a libation.
- Names of citizens who had benefitted the state were read out.
- Display of tribute from members of the Athenian Empire
- Parade of ephebes or orphans who had lost their fathers fighting for Athens. They would take an oath promising to fight and die for Athens.
Rich would also compete as choregia paying for a tragic chorus, which was 12 or 15 for a tragedy, 50 for a dithyramb and 24 for a comedy.
3 playwrights would compete for a tragedy. They would be allocated a chorus and write a Trilogy of plays.
There would be a performance of a tragedy followed by a satyr play performed by the same actors.
The only satyr play to survive is Euripides Cyclops.
http://www.shafe.co.uk/crystal/images/lshafe/Greek_Vase_Pronomos.jpg
- Audience of 14,000 mainly, but not exclusively, Athenian citizens.
- All writing, performance done by men.
- Perhaps more like Opera than drama: singing, dancing and speaking. Composed of individual actors and a chorus. Wearing of masks. The chorus dances as well as sings. Formal patterns of speech: Choral odes are sung but they are also in the Doric dialect. We are looking more at something like chanting than ordinary speaking. Until recently church services were often chanted.
- • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izGQ42_Tscg
- Themes are violence, suffering, family, war
- This would have been a total experience that would have emotionally involved the audience. Think of how people can be moved by opera.
- 3 major playwrights Aeschylus (525/4-456), Sophocles (496-406), Euripides (485-406) from whom plays survive. Other playwrights, other works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYM65NL5714
- (21) The Greek Chorus Explained (Part 1) - YouTube
- Over time more and more attention is focused on the actors rather than the playwrights. In the 4th century there are revivals of old plays for festivals.
Themes of the plays are drawn largely from Homeric and other mythical stories, including that of Oedipus. They are generally set outside of Athens and in the past. But remember that Shakespeare’s plays are set either in the past or in other countries, especially Italy. Think also about Verdi’s operas such as Aida. It is easier to deal with issues dealing with values when we are at one remove from the events. They often deal with terrible events, such as murder (Medea, Agamemnon) and the total destruction of a city (Trojan Women).
Medea deals with a mother murdering her children in order to get revenge over a husband, Jason, who has discarded her.
I The Bacchae, Pentheus is torn apart by the Maenads, led by his mother Agave for cracking down on Dionysius and his followers. His mother carries his severed head.
But people are rarely murdered on stage. Remember that the Athenians were capable of great cruelty.
- Only contemporary play The Persians by Aeschylus set in the Persian court after the Battle of Salamis. 490 Phrynichus had been fined for his play Capture of Miletus.
- They are set in a mythological past but one which has contemporary significance.
One thing that fascinates me about Aeschylus is the idea of necessity. Agamemnon is driven by necessity to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia that is the starting point for the tragedy of his family.
In Prometheus Bound we have this interesting passage:
CHORUS [507] Do not benefit mortals beyond reason and disregard your own distress; although, I am confident that you will be freed from these bonds and will have power in no way inferior to Zeus.
PROMETHEUS [511] Not in this way is Fate, who brings all to fulfillment, destined to complete this course. Only when I have been bent by pangs and tortures infinite am I to escape my bondage. Skill is weaker by far than Necessity.
CHORUS [515] Who then is the helmsman of Necessity?
PROMETHEUS [516] The three-shaped Fates and mindful Furies.
CHORUS [517] Can it be that Zeus has less power than they do?
PROMETHEUS [518] Yes, in that even he cannot escape what is foretold.
CHORUS [519] Why, what is fated for Zeus except to hold eternal sway?
PROMETHEUS [520] This you must not learn yet; do not be over-eager.
CHORUS [521] It is some solemn secret, surely, that you enshroud in mystery.
Prometheus Bound reminds me in some ways of the 1st book of Milton’s Paradise Lost. Prometheus has overbearing pride and boasts of what he has done for humanity. He denounces Zeus as arbitrary and cruel and defies Zeus despite the agony he is undergoing.
https://www.theoi.com/Text/AeschylusPrometheus.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_u91SjrEOE
http://notesofanidealist.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/medea.jpg
http://www.siue.edu/~ejoy/Clytemnestra_kills_Cassandra%28Red_Figure-c.430BCE%29.jpg
What do these plays tell us about the Athenians and Athenian culture?
- They emerge with democracy and they are a popular art form.
- They deal with ‘mythical’ events and people and are generally set outside Athens itself. So the issues of the plays are not linked to contemporary politics but deal with long standing stories but perhaps in new ways. Not every playwright treats the same story in the same way. They are concerned with universal issues that transcend the day to day politics of a polis. Hence the plays are taken up all over Greece and playwrights are invited to festivals run by other cities.
- Political issues are dealt with in comedies where political figures are satirised and given a hard time. Comedies tend to be very critical of democracy and democratic figures such as Cleon.
- Their themes are not concerned with the polis but with the oikos or household.
- Many of the tragedies have women as their central characters and also women choruses performed, of course, by men.
- Do these plays represent some sort of ‘collective consciousness’ of the Athenian citizenry and have to do with particular issues facing that community?
- Do they provide a means through which certain moral issues can be addressed, or even certain deep fears? Can this only be done through their depiction of universal human themes?
- Why women? Do they evince a sympathy for women as in the case of Antigone or even Medea? Or do they indicate a deep rooted fear of the subversive and transgressive role that women, freed from the control of a man, can assume? (Women in tragedy act badly when they do not have a male protector)
‘If humanity dreamed collectively it would dream Moosbrugger’? (Robert Musil).
Tragedy provides an insight into the pysche of the Athenians and their hopes and fears.
Remember that this is a militarised society and that many of these plays are being written and produced when Athens is at war. The attendees at the great Dionysia want to be moved by what they are watching. They want to be engaged.
