Introduction to Greek Drama

1. Introduction to Greek Drama

2. Greek Drama • Includes surviving tragedies, satyr plays, and comedies from the fifth century (500-400 B.C.) • The writers were all Athenians • The dramatic festivals for which the plays were composed took place in the same single theater in Athens, dedicated to the god Dionysus

3. The City Dionysia • The festival for which the plays were composed was called the Dionysia, in honor of Dionysus • The plays were presented in dramatic competitions; a magistrate called the archon chose three tragedians to compete each year • For the contest, each playwright would compose three tragedies and one satyr play (a short play of a lighter tone that would have followed the tragedies), all of which would have been performed one after another • Aristotle said tragedy derived from the dithyramb, a poetic composition sung and danced in honor of Dionysus by choruses of fifty men or boys

4. The Dramatists Tragedy: • Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.) • The Oresteia (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides) • Sophocles (496-406 B.C.) • The Thebian Plays (Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus) • Euripides (485-406 B.C.) • Medea • The Bacchae Comedy: • Aristophanes (450-385 B.C.)

5. The Greek Theater • Theatron: “watching place” for the audience • Orchestra: circular dancing space for choral songs and dances • Skene: slightly elevated stage behind the orchestra; for the actors • Mechane: suspended crane from which deus ex machina might appear

6. Structure of Greek Tragedy • Prologue: Usually spoken by individual character, situates the play historically and mythologically • Parados: Song sung by chorus as it first enters the stage • Episodes: Compose the bulk of the action, consist of alternations between dramatic action and stasima (sg. Stasimon), choral songs that reflect on the action • Catastrophe and exodus: The moment in the play when the intrigue is unraveled and when the characters leave the stage.

7. Components of Greek theater • Generally took Greek mythological narratives as their subject • All plays were composed in verse; for actors, in iambic meter, considered close to ordinary speech • Masks: Illustrations of theatrical masks on Athenian vases from the fifth century reveal a full head mask, with no particular distortion , for tragic performance • Actors: Early tragedies were played by two actors; by the mid fifth century there would be three, possibly four • Chorus: Group of 12-15 people who would sing or dance

8. Aeschylus • Wrote an estimated eighty plays in his lifetime, of which seven survive. The Orestia is the only complete three-play cycle still extant. • Won as many as thirteen first-place victories • Was the first playwright to introduce a second actor • Plays tend to be conservative and Religious, in ancient athenian terms • Reported to have been killed by an eagle dropping a turtle on his head