Classical Greek Drama

Background informationKNOW THIS PPT

Four Reasons for Theater

• Religion (honor Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and fertility/harvest and drama)

• Displaying loyalty to your city-state• Honoring local heroes• Entertainment

Origins

• Song and dance was a way of worshipping the gods…

Mortals, I commandyou to tell me how

awesome I am!We love you!

Origins

• …and celebrating the harvest.

Origins

• Over the centuries, harvest dances developed into the dithyramb, a religious ritual performed by a chorus of men wearing masks.

Origins

• Eventually, dithyrambs changed into literary compositions on heroic subjects, and choruses began competing for prizes (a bull or a goat).

Tragedy

• Tragodia in Greek (Goat Song)• Derived from the words Tragos,

meaning goat, and oide, meaning song.

• 1. Choruses were dressed in loin-skins of

goats• 2. Prize for best song was a goat

Tragedy (Cont.)

• Stories based on myth or history, but varied interpretations of events

• Focus was on psychological and ethical attributes of characters, rather than physical and sociological.

Origins

• This is Thespis.Hi everyone!

I made the dithyramb better by adding a new character, separate from the chorus.

• He created the first actor. We get the term “thespian” from his name.

Origins

• Aeschylus added a second actor to the stage.

• Sophocles added a third.• The chorus remained, but the

audience became more interested in the actors and their lives and struggles.

Origins

• The 5th Century B.C. was known as the golden age of Greek Drama.

• A four-day festival (City Dionysia) was held in March with competitions and prizes for the best plays.

• Four playwrights emerged as the greatest: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes.

Each presented 3 tragedies followed by a satyr play.The satyr play was short•Chorus- half-man, half- beast- satyrs, companions of Dionysus•Burlesque of mythology ridiculing gods or heroes•Everyday and colloquial language

Origins

• Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound (tragedy)

• Sophocles: Antigone, Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus (tragedies)

• Euripedes: Medea (tragedy)• Aristophanes: The Frogs, The

Clouds (comedies)

Sophocles

• He wrote more than 120 tragedies… only 7 still survive today.

What did he add to plays?• A third actor (originally two- used

masks)• Painted sets• Larger chorus (from 12 to 15

members)

The Theaters

• The first theaters were just hillsides with a few wooden benches for the important spectators (theatron).

• The orchestra was paved with stones, and was where the actors and chorus performed.

• An altar for Dionysis, called the thymele, was in the center of the orchestra

• The skene, a rectangular building made of wood, provided changing rooms for actors and prop storage.

The Theaters

• Theater design continued to evolve.• Stone seats were added for everyone,

not just the most important people.• The wooden skene was replaced by a

permanent stone building with a façade called a proskenion.

• The parados (plural: paradoi) was the entrance/exit used by the Chorus.

The Theaters

• Basic elements of a theater:• Circle for the actors.• Slope for the spectators with

benches.• Open air for a roof.

Structure of Greek Plays

• Prologue, which described the situation and set the scene (exposition)

• Parados, an ode sung by the chorus as it made its entrance

• Scene/Episode where the action/dialogue happens

• Ode lyric poem commenting on the action (uses elevated language)• Scenes 2-4 each followed by an Ode• Scene 5• Paean (prayer of thanksgiving to Dionysus)• Exodus

The Chorus

• Only men could be in the chorus or be actors in the play.

Wait a minute…

But Martin Lawrence pulled it off in “Big Momma’s House!”

You’d never make a convincing woman!

Acting

I’m a BIG fan ofGreek theater!

Function of the Chorus

1. Expressed opinions, gave advice, and occasionally threatened to interfere in the action.

2. Expressed the author’s point of view.3. They served as the ideal spectator,

reacting as the author would want the audience to react.

4. They helped establish the mood and heighten the dramatic effects.

5. They added color, movement, and spectacle.

Acting

• Up to 15,000 spectators could watch a performance.

• Upper seats were more than 55 yards from the action below.

YOUTHE PLAY

Acting

• The actors’ gestures had to be exaggerated and dramatic so people in the back row could see.

Acting

• At first, masks were fairly realistic representations of human faces and expressed emotions such as joy and sorrow.

• Later, they grew in size and became less realistic.

Costumes

• long, flowing robes – colored symbolically

• high boots, often with raised soles (heroic parts)

• larger-than-life masks made of linen, wood, and cork

(1) Allowed for multiple roles, (2) different genders, (3) emotion (4) amplification of voice

The Chorus

• Entered at the beginning of the play.• Remained during the performance.• Announced entrances and exits of characters.• Commented on the action of the play.

Kinda like these guys.

The Chorus

• The chorus embodied the moral ideas of society and admonished characters against breaking these moral laws.

• The choragos was the leader of the chorus.

• Sometimes he participated in the dialogue and represented the responses of a typical citizen.

The Stage

• The violence - murder, suicide, and battles - almost always occurred offstage.

CRASH! BLAM! KAPOW!

Aaargh! I amstabbed! The pain

is horrible!!!

A messenger would appear

after the event and describe

in gory detail what had

just happened.

The Plays

• Greek drama was staged without spectacle

• Scripts were written in a simple, direct manner

• The Unities according to Aristotle: Unity of Action Unity of Time Unity of Place

The Plays

• Unity of Action: should have one overpowering action that moves the play forward (no subplots)

• Unity of Time: only actions that could logically have taken place in 24 hours

• Unity of Place: Action or events being described were limited to one locale.

The Stage

• Continuous presence of the chorus• No intermissions• No scenery or special effects: the

skene served as whatever building the play needed (palace, temple, cave)

• Lighting was natural• Very few props, no subplots, no

more than 3 actors on stage at a time

The Stage

• “Deus Ex Machina”• Literally means “God the machine”• The play ends with the gods

intervening and/or resolving the plot.@#$%&!

The Plays

• Plays retold myths, rewrote history, and ridiculed politicians.

• Aristophanes wrote comic plays and got into trouble for satirizing politicians and even the gods.

The Plays

• The other three masters were tragic poets.

• Tragic plays captured humankind’s timeless struggle to find the purpose of life and to achieve self-understanding.

The Plays

Central to the tragedy is the fall of the great man This person is called the tragic hero. His/her fate is brought about by a flaw within his or her own character. There is a CATASTROPHE: The "turning downward" of the plot in a classical tragedy. By tradition, the catastrophe occurs in the fourth act of the play after the climax.

The Tragic Hero

1. A tragic hero is of noble birth or has high status in their society, meaning that he is royalty or is considered royalty in his society (well respected).

2. Is not all good or all bad (great but not perfect). Downfall is not wholly deserved.

3. However, a tragic hero has a tragic flaw (harmartia), a defect in his character (i.e. hubris) that leads to his downfall.

The Tragic Hero (cont.)

4. A tragic hero suffers a reversal of fortune (peripeteia), meaning that he has everything at one point in the story and then loses it.

5. Exhibits a downfall (from society, status) or is cast out.

6. A tragic hero recognizes the consequences of his actions (anagnorisis).

Tragic Hero Trait 7

Catharsis•Though it arouses solemn emotion, tragedy does not leave its audience in a state of depression. Aristotle argues that one function of tragedy is to arouse the "unhealthy" emotions of pity and fear and purge us of them (catharsis).

The Oedipus Myth

• King Laios and Queen Jacosta of Thebes learn from an oracle (fortune teller) that their son would eventually kill his father and marry his mother.

• They give the baby to a shepherd with orders to kill it.

• The shepherd takes pity on the baby and instead gives it away.

•

• The baby ends up being adopted by the childless king and queen of nearby Corinth.

• Oedipus grows up never knowing he is adopted.

• Oedipus eventually learns that he is supposed to kill his parents, so he runs away to avoid this terrible fate.

• During his travels, he encounters an arrogant old man on the road, they argue and fight, and Oedipus kills him.

• He ends up at Thebes, which is being terrorized by a mythological monster, the Sphinx.

Oedipus Myth (cont.)

• Oedipus defeats the Sphinx and saves Thebes. He is hailed as a hero and savior, and is offered the crown.

• He also gets to marry the queen, and they have two boys, Polynieces and Eteocles, and two girls, Ismene and Antigone.

The Riddle of the Sphinx

• In Greek mythology, the Sphinx sat outside of Thebes and asked this riddle of all travelers who passed by. If the traveler failed to solve the riddle, then the Sphinx killed him/her. And if the traveler answered the riddle correctly, then the Sphinx would destroy herself.

• The riddle: What goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening?

• Oedipus solved the riddle, and the Sphinx destroyed herself.

• The solution: A man, who crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two legs as an adult, and walks with a cane in old age.

• Of course morning, noon, and night are metaphors for the times in a man's (person's) life. Such metaphors are common in riddles. There were two Thebes, apparently this Thebes was the one in Greece. And this Sphinx was apparently not the one at Giza, in Egypt.

Oedipus Myth (cont.)

• Things were fine for many years until a terrible plague struck Thebes.

• Oedipus learns that the plague is a curse from the gods, and will only end when the murderer of old King Laios is caught and punished.

• Oedipus vows to save Thebes again and catch the murderer, who is living among them undetected.

• Oedipus eventually learns the entire truth.• Jocasta, his wife and mother, hangs herself in

horror.• Oedipus gouges out his eyes and is now blind.• Creon, the queen’s brother, temporarily takes

over as acting ruler of Thebes, and banishes Oedipus.

• Oedipus and Antigone wander the countryside as beggars until he dies, and Antigone returns to Thebes.

• King Oedipus’ sons, Polynieces and Eteocles, are now old enough to rule, and agree to rule in alternating years.

• Eteocles goes first, but refuses to relinquish the throne at the end of his turn.

• Polynieces is angered, flees the city, raises an army, and attacks his brother and the city of Thebes.

• Thebes is able to withstand the attack, but the brothers kill one another in battle.

• Creon becomes the ruler of Thebes again, and is left to clean up the mess.

• He decides to give Eteocles a hero’s ceremony and burial.

• He considers Polynieces, who attacked his hometown and family, a traitor, and will not allow anyone to perform the burial ceremony.

• Antigone begins the morning after Thebes’ victory, the brothers’ deaths, and Creon’s decree.

BIG IDEAS IN ANTIGONE

• MOIRA: one’s portion in life; in other words one’s fate, fortune, or destiny: the Moirae are the three sisters who personify Fate in Greek mythology

The End!