Greek Drama

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Greek Drama

• The Origins of Roman Drama

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• This project is available at
• V\motesj\World Humanities Greek Theatre
• (on the schools server)

Or on the web at http//www.guilford.k12.ct.us/m
otesj/
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Drama built on religion

• Roman theater, Shakespearean theater, and modern
  theater were heavily influenced by the Greek
  theater of the 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries B.C.
  Yet, how did this Greek theater itself begin?

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Drama built on religion

• By the sixth century B.C., the cult of Dionysus
  had spread across all of Greece with its
  celebrations of wine, women, and song.

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Drama built on religion
DITHYRAMBS
This cult contained groups of nearly naked men
with horses ears and tails chanting rhythmically
with songs celebrating Dionysus for his gifts of
wine, happiness, life after death (according to
some believers), and a host of other extravagant
gifts.
These songs were called
dithyrambs.
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Drama built on religion
TRAGWIDIA (Tragedy)
Originally, songs sung for Dionysus festivals
were usually laments and paeans (serious and
often doleful songs to the gods), with the best
singers winning a he-goat for a prize (a tragoV).

This leads down to our word tragedy for any sad
or wretched story.
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Drama built on religion
THESPIS (543 B.C.)

• Eventually one brave soul felt possessed by the
  god himself and stood up to chant as the
  hypokrites, or answerer to the chorus. This
  created the first character role to play opposite
  the chorus, and thus drama was born.

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Drama built on religion
THEATER CONTESTS

• After this great innovation, playwrights began to
  compete at the yearly festivals in Athens,
  creating tetralogies of three tragedies and one
  satyr play (a farce or crude comedy).

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Drama built on religion
The hypokrites was also known as the
protagonistes (a word which means first
competitor).
Playwrights, producers, and hypokrites were
awarded a crown of ivy (a plant sacred to
Dionysus) and had their names inscribed in marble
slabs called didaskaliai.
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Who were these playwrights?
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Aeschylus
Aeschylean tragedy is, above all, grand, massive,
and dignified. The language is heavy and, even in
the Greek, often difficult to understand, full of
compound forms and complex metaphors. He is
still considered by many (as Aristophanes writes
about in The Frogs) to be the greatest Greek
playwright. Aeschylus' first victory 484
B.C. Number of victories by Aeschylus 13
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Sophocles
The so-called Sophoclean heroes(such as Oedipus
or Creon) dominate six of the plays of Sophocles
that we possess. They are stubborn and
self-willed, and they pursue their own purposes
and fashion their own identities. Athenians had
traditionally identified themselves through
family. Now that democratic society had begun to
focus on the individual, citizens were compelled
to define themselves through what their own
actions. His first play Triptolemos wins 468
B.C. Number of victories by Sophocles 18-24?
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Euripides
Euripides appears to cast tragedy's religious
foundations into question. Some later
playwrights, such as Aristophanes, portray him as
arid in his dialogue, and determined to make
tragedy less elevated by introducing common
people. Others call him a misogynist, an
underminer of received morality, and unorthodox
in his religious views. Yet, no other playwright
from antiquity challenged the status quo in such
a controversial manner. He brought about issues
for the people and for the philosophers, and not
just for the literary figures. Euripides first
victory 442 B.C. Number of victories by
Euripides 5
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Aristophanes
Aristophanes is the only comedian from Greeces
periods of Old and Middle Comedy of whom we
possess any complete plays. His wit and satire
supposedly sparked many debates and angered many
people, especially the politicians he parodied,
but he did win at least six first prizes and four
second prizes in the contests. Number of
victories by Aristophanes 6
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Menander
Very little has survived from this playwright
from Greeces Late Comedy era, other than what
later comedy writers such as Plautus and Terence
adapted from Menander. He is said to have
written more than 100 plays, but only one
survives, Dyscolus, which wasnt printed as a
modern text until 1958. Produced his first play
321 B.C. Menanders first win (Dyscolus) 316
B.C. Number of victories by Menander 6
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Timeline of Ancient Greek Drama

• c. 625 Arion at Corinth produces first
  dithyrambic choruses.
• 540-527 Pisistratus, tyrant of Athens, founds
  the festival of the Greater Dionysia
• 536-533 Thespis puts on tragedy at festival of
  the Greater Dionysia in Athens
• Aeschylus born
• 499-496 Aeschylus' first dramatic competitions
• c. 496 Sophocles born
• Euripides born
• Aeschylus' first dramatic victory
• Aeschylus defeated by Sophocles in dramatic
  competition
• Aeschylus' Oresteia (Agamemnon, Libation
  Bearers, Eumenides)
• 456 Aeschylus dies

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Timeline of Ancient Greek Drama
c. 450 Aristophanes born 441
Sophocles' Antigone 431-404 Peloponnesian War
(Athens and allies vs. Sparta and allies) c. 429
Sophocles' Oedipus the King 406 Euripides
dies Sophocles dies 404 Athens loses
Peloponnesian War to Sparta 399 Trial and
death of Socrates c. 380's Plato's Republic
includes critique of Greek tragedy and
comedy 380 Aristophanes dies 342 Menander
born 291 Menander dies
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Extant Works of Greek Tragedy

• Euripides
• Alcestis (438)
• Medea (431)
• Children of Heracles (ca. 430)
• Hippolytus (428)
• Andromache (ca. 425)
• Hecuba (ca. 424),
• Suppliant Women (ca. 423)
• Electra (ca. 420)
• Heracles (ca. 416)
• Trojan Women (415)
• Iphigenia among the Taurians (ca. 414)
• Ion (ca. 413)
• Helen (412)
• Phoenician Women (ca. 410)
• Orestes (408)
• Bacchae (after 406)
• Iphigenia in Aulis (after 406)
• Cyclops (possibly ca. 410)

• Aeschylus
• Persians (472)
• Seven Against Thebes (468)
• Suppliant Women (463?)
• Oresteia Trilogy (458)
• Agamemnon
• Libation Bearers
• Eumenides
• Prometheus Bound (450-425?)
• Sophocles
• Ajax (450-430)
• Antigone (c. 442?)
• Trachiniai (450-430?)
• Oedipus Tyrannos (429-425?)
• Electra (420-410)
• Philoctetes (409)
• Oedipus at Colonus (401)

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Extant Works of Greek Comedy

• Aristophanes
• Acharnians (425 B.C.)
• Knights (424 B.C.)
• Clouds (423 B.C.)
• Wasps (422 B.C.)
• Peace (421 B.C.)
• Birds (414 B.C.)
• Lysistrata (411 B.C.)
• Women at the Thesmophoria (411 B.C.)
• Frogs (405 B.C.)
• Ecclesiazusae (c. 391 B.C.)
• Plutus (388 B.C.)

• Menander
• Dyscolus (316 B.C.)
• parts of
• Perikeiromene
• Epitrepontes
• Samia

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Actors and Masks in Greek Theater

• Roles in the play

• The main actors (playing multiple characters
  each)
• protagonistes
• deuteragonistes
• tritagonistes

• Chorus
• 12 or 15 choreutes (dancers)
• trained to sing and dance from their youth

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Actors and Masks in Greek Theater

• Who could be an actor?
• Males
• Young males
• Young citizen males
• Young citizen males with some money or authority
  in society
• Young citizen males with some money or authority
  in society, and the approval of the Honorable
  Archon

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Actors and Masks in Greek Theater

• Who could be in the chorus?
• males
• trained by a poet to sing and dance
• twelve or fifteen, depending on when the play was
  written
• the leader was called the coryphaeus (head man
  or leader)

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Actors and Masks in Greek Theater

• Masks were used in Greek drama to portray
  character types or character emotions to the
  entire audience, which could be up to 20,000
  people crowded onto a hillside.
• These masks fit over the head, with a wig
  attached, and had large mouth openings so that
  speech would not be muffled.

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Masks in Greek Theater

• prevented the audience from identifying the face
  of any actor with one specific character
• allowed men to impersonate women without
  confusion
• helped the audience identify the sex, age, and
  social rank of the characters
• were often changed by the actors when they would
  exit after an episode to assume a new role

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Structure of the Play

• Prologos Episode III
• Parodos Stasimon III
• Episode I Episode IV
• Stasimon I Stasimon IV
• Episode II Exodus
• Stasimon II

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Structure of the Play

• Prologos
• The first speech of an actor (hypokrites) or
  actors, usually to set up the plot and explain
  what has happened prior to the plays beginning.

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Structure of the Play

• Parodos
• The first speech of the chorus, usually to
  explain their purpose in being there, or to
  explain the overall purpose and meaning of the
  play.

Be careful! The message can be well hidden!
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Structure of the Play

• Episodes
• Actions between actors or between an actor and
  the chorus
• Their purpose is to present the action or
  dialogue within the play.

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Structure of the Play

• Stasima
• Songs of the chorus addressing an abstract theme
  of the play, or focusing upon the central theme
  of the play. The stasima are not necessarily
  focused on the action of the episodes, but may
  contain similar themes.

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Structure of the Play

• Exodus
• The final resolution of the play, and an
  explanation of the final actions in the play by
  one or more of the hypokriteis.

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Features of Classical Theaters
Theaters (like this one at Ephesus) were in
Outdoor, open spaces
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Features of Classical Theaters
earlier theaters had wooden benches
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Features of Classical Theaters
in later theaters Romans replaced these wooden
benches with marble seating
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Features of Classical Theaters
The skene (from which we get the English word
scene) was originally a wooden-framed tent behind
the staging area used for costume and mask
changing, or for housing actors while off-stage.
Eventually, when theaters became more permanent,
stone skene buildings were constructed and used
as part of the permanent scenery.
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The Theater of Dionysus TodaySituated on the
southern side of the Acropolis in Athens, the
Theater of Dionysus was the major theater used in
Athens and the surrounding country for festivals
and celebrations to Dionysus.
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The Theater of Dionysus in Athens,
Greece Restored by the emperor Nero in 68
A.D. (Computer recreation)
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Theater of Epidauros (built 330 B.C., near
modern day Nauplion, Greece)
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Epidauros
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Epidauros
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Features of Classical Theaters

• Theatron the theater itself

• Kerkis a wedge of wooden seats where the
  audience sat

• Eisodos ramps where entrances were made

• Orchestra the playing space it means place for
  dancing

• Thymele the focal spot acoustically of the
  orchestra (also called the sweet spot), where
  the sacrifices to Dionysus would be made

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Features of Classical Theaters
The fifth-century skene was a single-story
building with one central door, which could be
used to give the skene the identity of a palace,
a temple, a hut, or a cave if necessary.
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Theatrical Machines (mechanai)
The ekkyklema (a wheeled-out thing) was a cart
on wheels which carried a dead body onto the
stage. It was sacrilegious to show a character
actually dying on the stage.
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Theatrical Machines (mechanai)

• The mechane (machine) was a crane-like machine
  that could lift a character up as if flying, or
  could carry an actor, usually in the guise of a
  god, to the top of the skene.

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Greek Drama

• The Origins of Roman Drama