IDS 121.18      INTRO TO GREEK LITERATURE

ANCIENT GREEK DRAMA: Some introductory remarks

Though Aristotle admired poetry, he regarded tragic drama as a higher form of art.  In addition to being read or sung, Greek drama was acted out.  It was, in a sense, theater, involving dancing, pageantry, and spectacle.  Further, it was more concentrated than poetry; its tighter structure gave it superior unity and impact.  Classic tragedy remains an unsurpassed vehicle for placing human affairs under close and sympathetic inspection.  It enables the audience, with a sense of detachment, to see the common destiny of themselves and others.

Greek tragedy grew out of traditional religious ceremonies.  It began in the sixth century BCE as part of the annual spring festivals in honor of the god Dionysos.  On those occasions it was customary for a choral group to sing hymns about the gods and heroes of Greek legend.  As the chorus sang, it danced in dignified fashion around a circular plot of ground, called the orchestra (derived from the Greek word for dance).  Drama was born when the leader of the chorus was permitted to step out from the group and carry on a kind of discourse (in song) with the chorus.

By the beginning of the fifth century BCE, the choral dramas might have several individual characters, though no more than three actors plus the chorus took part at any one time.  Thus, the ancient, repetitive ceremonial became a medium for expressing new ideas.  Gradually the cultic connection with Dionysos faded, and writers of tragedy were allowed to choose whatever themes suited their purpose: themes such as human pain and anguish, crime and punishment, justice and vindication.  The religious origins were not forgotten, however, and tragedy remained serious and moral in purpose and character.

Comedy, the other form of Greek drama, grew from a complementary side of the Dionysiac tradition.  Dionysos personified the annual death and rebirth of plant life, but he was also known as the god of fertility, joy, and mirth.  The periodic rites in his honor (both spring and winter) included not only somber dances and chants but raucous processions and frenzied revels.  It was out of these joyful celebrations that Athenian comedy was born.  The earliest comedies were crude slapstick performances, but gradually they became sophisticated and biting satires.  Aristophanes, the only writer of comedy whose works have come down to us, used his plays to lampoon local politicians, poets, and philosophers with whom he disagreed.  Ridicule was his weapon of criticism.  A good example is The Clouds (423 BCE), a hilarious satire on the reputed teachings of the Sophists.  Another example is the frank Lysistrata (412 BCE), a feminist antiwar comedy.  Its plot revolves around a sex strike by the wives on both sides of a war between Athens and Sparta.  Their warrior-husbands at last give in: they agree to stop fighting in return for an end to the strike.

The comedies and tragedies were presented during the Dionysiac festival season in open-air amphitheaters.  The theater in Athens was located on a slope of the Acropolis.  Rows of seats, arranged in a semicircle, descended from the top of the hill to the orchestra - a level, circular plot where the chorus danced. 

The Greek actors (all men) wore masks that identified their roles and were shaped to help them project their voices.  The performances were rich and colorful, with grand speeches, music, graceful dancing, and singing, and elaborate costumes and headdresses.  The effect was more that of opera than of modern stage-acting.  The author himself wrote the music as well as the text and also trained the cast.

During the standard three-day festival of Dionysos, dramatic performances began each morning and lasted until nightfall.  There was no curtain or lighting and very little scenery.  Usually, three playwrights competed on successive days and a prize of great honor was awarded to the one who was judged the best.

Three of the greatest playwrights of Western history were Greeks.  They all lived in one century, the fifth century BCE, and in one city, Athens.  Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides wrote nearly 300 plays, although only about 30 survive.  The earliest tragic dramatist was Aeschylus, whose plays transform suffering and death into exaltation and the will to live.  That, in fact, is the measure of true tragedy.  A play that merely presents pain and grief with a sense of despair or baseness may be “dramatic” and “pathetic”, but it is not “tragic”.  The Greek play, and its successors in the tragic spirit, generally show a hero of high rank, a great struggle, and intense suffering.  But justice triumphs in the end, and there is reason beneath the suffering.  One leaves Aeschylus with the feeling that individuals pay for their crimes - that the gods and the moral law are hard - but that one can face fate bravely and nobly.

In the Orestes trilogy, Aeschylus central theme is the family crimes of the royal house of Atreus.  The plot, well known in Greek legends, revolves around the murder of King Agamemnon by his wife when he returns from the Trojan War.  Wife, son, and daughter are implicated in the crimes that follow; all of them can justify their acts, but all are nonetheless guilty.  To Aeschylus, these crimes and the suffering they bring are divine retribution for breaches of the moral order.  In the final play, Athena herself intervenes to protect the murderer Orestes, son of Agamemnon, and to stop the awful cycle of crime and punishment.  Primitive retribution is transformed into the justice of the polis, and Orestes is restored to grace.

Because Sophocles reflected the Greek ideal of “nothing in excess”, he has been called the “most Greek” of the three playwrights.  He addressed himself to the consequences of exaggerated pride and self-confidence.  In the tragedy Oedipus the King, Oedipus thinks he can avoid his fate, which has been foretold by the Delphic oracle of Apollo.  A man of good intention, he tries to escape from the shocking prophecy that he will kill his father and marry his mother.  But in the end the truth of his moral crimes, which he has committed unknowingly, is brought to light by his own insistent searching.  He realizes at last the folly of his conceit and savagely blinds himself as punishment for the foulness of his deeds.

Euripides, the youngest of the great Greek tragedians, probably had the deepest insight into human character.  He has been called “poet of the world’s grief”.  He was considered something of a radical, for he challenged the traditional religious and moral values of his time.  He opposed slavery and showed the “other side” of war.  Greek poetry had glorified the exploits of the mighty warriors of the Trojan War, but in Euripides’ The Trojan Women the battle ends with a broken hearted old woman siting on the ground holding a dead child in her arms.  Euripides was keenly sensitive to injustice, whether of the gods or of mortals, and he pleaded for greater understanding, equality, and decency.

Each of our texts contains a good description of the thematic elements of these plays.  I strongly suggest that you examine them, and use these introductions for further insight into each of the individual works.  For our purposes, we will be using these plays to examine the notion of human excellent in both men and women, in order to notice the transformations of these traditional roles and values.  One thing to notice is that the debate concerning the position of women in ancient Greece was a topic of heated debate.  What we can see from this short selection of plays, and there are many more on this topic as well, is that there is no equivocal view about the role of women.  Also, the traditional notion of moral law: written or unwritten law: the very foundation of society, was a topic of consideration.  Some recent scholars have argued that what we are seeing in the tragedies is the movement from primitive notions of justice as a form of reciprocity (eye for an eye) to a state institution.   Notions of justice and revenge run through these works.  In short, these works are highly moving and rich in detail.  Each one deserves far more attention than what we can give them in this short survey, but I will allow these authors to speak for themselves.

* Wagrag Productions 2003