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Theatre of Dionysus, Athens. ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]. The Play’s the Thing: Theatre’s Beginnings
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Theatre of Dionysus, Athens ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
The Play’s the Thing: Theatre’s Beginnings • If you go to a theatre tonight, chances are you will tell friends you plan to see a “play” (in similar fashion you probably don’t go “to the cinema” but “to the movies”). What’s up with that? • Theatre began in ancient Greece as a celebration of Dionysus, a god of wine, ecstasy, and visionary experience. ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
The Play’s the Thing: Theatre’s Beginnings • By the time of Aristotle’s landmark study of Greek theatre, The Poetics, the art had divided into “the tragic” and “the comic.” • Greek culture had increasingly become Apollonian (Apollo was the Greek god of light, rationality, music) ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
The Play’s the Thing: Theatre’s Beginnings • Statuary at sites like Delphi which had celebrated Gaia (the Earth) was replaced by statues of Apollo, sometimes seen pining Python (a serpent being the power of which was felt in earthquakes and volcanos) to the Earth with a lance. • This takeover was a phase in a world-wide palace coup Merlin Stone chronicles in When God Was a Woman in which female power was deposed and rationality was born. ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy Although Nietzsche was a misogynist, he too lamented the triumph of the Apollonian over the Dionysian. ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
So why is theatre “play”? • Remember Housman’s idea of poetry/literature as immunization? Housman probably came by the notion from his role as a professor of Greek and Latin. • For in ancient, democratic Athens, all residents of the city, even women, who were not believed capable of being true citizens (since they were governed by biology and not reason), were required to attend the theatre as essential to their education. • At the theatre, Athenians lived the experience of plays like Oedipus the King or Antigone vicariously—as play. ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
So why is theatre “play”? • According to the Dutch historian Johann Huizinga, “play” is the essence of the human: we are not homo sapiens (man the wise), but “homo ludens” (man the player). • Plays, theatre, are one very important form of the human mind at play. ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
Aristotle [384-322 BC], The Poetics 1. Essentially an observational report on the nature of Greek tragedy and comedy. 2. Became theatre’s “bible” for 2,000 years. 3. Introduced/established such terms as in medias res, hamartia, hubris, deus ex machina, the unities (time, place, action), catharsis. ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
The Unities: • Time • Place • Action ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
Elements of Stagecraft in Greek Tragedy • Orchestra • Chorus • The Personae (masks) • Deus Ex Machina ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
The Greek Mind and Tragedy ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
Irony • Dictionary.com offers the following possible definitions for the complex word “irony”: • The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning • An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning. • A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect. • Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs: “Hyde noted the irony of Ireland's copying the nation she most hated” (Richard Kain). • An occurrence, result, or circumstance notable for such incongruity. • “The Irony Irony of The Daily Show” ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
dramatic or tragic irony: a literary technique, originally used in Greek tragedy, by which the full significance of a character's words or actions are clear to the audience or reader although unknown to the character. Oxford American Dictionary ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
Enantiodromia at Work ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
“The tragic note which we hear in the Iliad and in most of Greek literature was produced by the tension between these two forces, passionate delight in life, and clear apprehension of its unalterable framework: • As is the life of the leaves, so is that of men. The wind scatters the leaves to the ground: the vigorous forest puts forth others, and they grow in the spring-season. Soon one generation of men comes and another ceases. --H. D. F. Kitto, The Greeks ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
“Neither the thought nor the image is peculiar to Homer: the peculiar poignancy is, and it comes from the context. We do not find it in the magnificent Hebrew parallel: • As for man, his days are as grass. As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone, and the place shall know it no more. Psalms 103:1 --H. D. F. Kitto, The Greeks ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
“The note here is one of humility and resignation: Man is no more than grass, in comparison with God. But the Homeric image takes a very different color from its context of heroic striving and achievement. Man is unique; yet for all his high quality and his brilliant variety he must obey the same laws as the innumerable and indistinguishable leaves. There can be no romantic protest—for how can we protest against the first law of our being—nor resigned acceptance such as we find, for example, among the Chinese, to whom the individual is only an ancestor in the making, one crop of leaves on one tree in the forest. There is instead this passionate tension which is the spirit of tragedy.” --H. D. F. Kitto, The Greeks --H. D. F. Kitto, The Greeks ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
Circular Time vs. Linear Time Greek Time: Circular—time modeled on the seasonal round, ------------------------------------------------------------- Judeo-Christian Time ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
Oedipus Tyrannous/Oedipus the King/Oedipus Rex • The First of a Trilogy: • Oedipus Rex • Antigone • Oedipus at Colonus ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
Oedipus’ Influence: A company that demolishes buildings on Rocky and Bullwinkle named “Edifice Wrecks.” ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
Ordinary People (Robert Redford, 1980) ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
What role does prophecy play in the play? The Oracle at Delphi ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
The Oracles were notoriously treacherous and misleading. Socrates believed he knew nothing, and yet the Oracle said he was the wisest man in Athens. “To know what you know and that you do not know what you do not know, that is true knowledge.”—Confucius ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
“Myth” Muriel Rukeyser Long afterward, Oedipus, old and blinded, walked the roads. He smelled a familiar smell. It was the Sphinx. Oedipus said, “I want to ask one question. Why didn’t I recognize my mother?” “You gave the wrong answer,” said the Sphinx. “But that was what made everything possible,” said Oedipus. “No,” she said. “When I asked, What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening, you answered, Man. You didn’t say anything about woman.” “When you say Man,” said Oedipus, “you include women too. Everyone knows that.” She said, “That’s what you think.” ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
The Oedipus Narrative • Laius is warned by Apollo that his son will kill him. • He orders young Oedipus, a spike driven through his ankles, to be left on a mountainside to die. • The servant takes pity on young Oedipus and gives him to a Corinthian shepard, who carries him to Corinth, where he becomes the son of Polybus and Merope. • Growing up at Corinth, Oedipus believes himself to be their natural son. ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
The Oedipus Narrative [cont.] • Accused of not being his real son, he leaves Corinth, consults the Oracles. • Warned that he should avoid his homeland; it is predicted he will murder his father and marry his mother. • He avoids Corinth and heads toward Thebes. • At a crossroads (trivia) he kills his father (without recognizing him) in an act of road rage. ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
The Oedipus Narrative [cont.] • Arrives in Thebes, now without a king and besieged by the Sphinx, a woman/lion/bird monster sent by Hera, who eats anyone not able to answer his riddle (what walks on four legs, then two legs, then three legs?). • Creon, the regent, offers the kingship to anyone who can answer the riddle. • Oedipus solves the riddle. • The Sphinx throws itself off the Theban acropolis. ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
The Oedipus Narrative [cont.] • Oedipus becomes king of Thebes. • Oedipus marries Jocasta and has children to her (Antigone, Ismene, Polynices, Eteocles) • A plague ravages Thebes. • The Oracle at Delphi insists reveals that the plague will continue until Laius’ murderer, now in their midst, is discovered. • Oedipusquestions Tiresias. • Polybusdies; a messenger (the original shepard who saved him) asks Oedipus to return. ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
The Oedipus Narrative [cont.] • Fearing that the prophecy will come true, he is fearful to return. • The shepardsays that can’t be, since he is not their natural son. • Oedipus figures it out. • Jocastakills herself. • Oedipus blinds himself with Jocasta’s brooches. ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]
