FREE ESSAY ON THE HISTORY OF GREEK THEATRE

THE HISTORY OF GREEK THEATRE

The History of Greek Theater
Theater and drama in Ancient Greece took form in about 5th century BCE, with the
Sopocles, the great writer of tragedy. In his plays and those of the same genre, heroes
and the ideals of life were depicted and glorified. It was believed that man should live
for honor and fame, his action was courageous and glorious and his life would climax in a
great and noble death. Originally, the hero's recognition was created by selfish
behaviors and little thought of service to others. As the Greeks grew toward city-states
and colonization, it became the destiny and ambition of the hero to gain honor by serving
his city. The second major characteristic of the early Greek world was the supernatural.
The two worlds were not separate, as the gods lived in the same world as the men, and
they interfered in the men's lives as they chose to. It was the gods who sent suffering
and evil to men. In the plays of Sophocles, the gods brought about the hero's downfall
because of a tragic flaw in the character of the hero. In Greek tragedy, suffering
brought knowledge of worldly matters and of the individual. Aristotle attempted to
explain how an audience could observe tragic events and still have a pleasurable
experience. Aristotle, by searching the works of writers of Greek tragedy, Aeschulus,
Euripides and Sophocles (whose Oedipus Rex he considered the finest of all Greek
tragedies), arrived at his definition of tragedy. This explanation has a profound
influence for more than twenty centuries on those writing tragedies, most significantly
Shakespeare. Aristotle's analysis of tragedy began with a description of the effect such
a work had on the audience as a "catharsis" or purging of the emotions. He decided that
catharsis was the purging of two specific emotions, pity and fear. The hero has made a
mistake due to ignorance, not because of wickedness or corruption. Aristotle used the
word "hamartia", which is the "tragic flaw" or offense committed in ignorance. For
example, Oedipus is ignorant norant of his true parentage when he commits his fatal deed.
Oedipus Rex is one of the stories in a three-part myth called the Thebian cycle. The
structure of most all-Greek tragedies is similar to Oedipus Rex. Such plays are divided
in to five parts, the prologue or introduction, the "prados" or entrance of the chorus,
four episode or acts separates from one another by "stasimons" or choral odes, and
"exodos", the action after the last stasimon. These odes are lyric poetry, lines chanted
or sung as the chorus moved rhythmically across the orchestra. The lines that accompanied
the movement of the chorus in one direction were called "strophe"; lines called
"antistrophe" accompanied the return movement. The choral ode might contain more than one
strophe or antistrophe. Greek tragedy originated in honor of the god of wine, Dionysus,
the patron god of tragedy. The performance took place in an open-air theater. The word
tragedy is derived from the term "tragedia" or "goat-song", named for the goatskins the
chorus wore in the performance. The plots came from legends of the Heroic Age. Tragedy
grew from a choral lyric, as Aristotle said, tragedy is largely based on life's pity and
splendor. Plays were performed at dramatic festivals, the two main ones being the Feast
of the Winepress in January and the City Dionysia at the end of March. The Proceeding
began with the procession of choruses and actors of the three competing poets. A herald
then announced the poet's names and the titles of their plays. On this day it was likely
that the image of Dionysus was taken in a procession from his temple beside the theater
to a point near the road he had once taken to reach Athens from the north, then it was
brought back by torch light, amid a carnival celebration, to the theater itself, where
his priest occupied the central seat of honor during the performances. On the first day
of the festival there were contests between the choruses, five of men and five of boys.
Each chorus consisted of fifty men or boys. On the next three days, a "tragic tetralogy"
(group made up of four pieces, a trilogy followed by a satyric drama) was performed each
morning. This is compared to the Elizabethan habit of following a tragedy with a jig.
During the Peloponnesian Wars, this was followed by a comedy each afternoon. The Father
of the drama was Thesis of Athens, 535 BC, who created the first actor. The actor
performed in intervals between the dancing of the chorus and conversing at times with the
leader of the chorus. The tragedy was further developed when new myths became part of the
performance, changing the nature of the chorus to a group appropriate to the individual
story. Aeschylus added Sophocles added a second actor and a third actor, and the number
of the chorus was fixed at fifteen. The chorus' part was gradually reduced, and the
dialogue of the actors became increasingly important. The word "chorus" meant "dance or
"dancing ground", which was how dance evolved into the drama. Members of the chorus were
characters in the play that commented on the action. They drew the audience into the play
and reflected the audience's reactions. The Greek plays were performed in open-air
theaters. Nocturnal scenes were performed even in sunlight. The area in front of the
stages was called the "orchestra", the area in that the chorus moved and danced. There
was no curtain and the play was presented as a whole with no act or scene divisions.
There was a building at the back of the stage called a skene, which represented the front
of a palace or temple. It contained a central doorway and two other stage entrances, one
at the left and the other at the right, representing the country and the city. Sacrifices
were performed at the altar of Dionysus, and the chorus performed in the orchestra, which
surrounded the altar. The theatron, from where the word "theater" is derived, is where
the audience sat, built on a hollowed-out hillside. Seated of honor, found in the front
and center of the theatron, were for public officials and priests. He seating capacity of
the theater was about 17,000. The audience of about 14,000 was lively, noisy, emotional
and unrestrained. They ate, applauded, cheered, hissed, and kicked their wooden seats in
disgust. Small riots were known to break out if the audience was dissatisfied. Women were
allowed to be spectators of tragedy, and probably even comedy. Admission was free or
nominal, and the poor were paid for by the state. The Attic dramatists, like the
Elizabethans, had a public of all classes. Because of the size of the audience, the
actors must also have been physically remote. The sense of remoteness may have been
heightened by masked, statuesque figures of the actors whose acting depended largely on
voice gestures and grouping. Since there were only three actors, the same men in the same
play had to play double parts. At first, the dramatists themselves acted, like
Shakespeare. Gradually, acting became professionalized. Simple scenery began with
Sophocles, but changes of scene were rare and stage properties were also rare, such as an
occasional altar, a tomb or an image of gods. Machinery was used for lightning or thunder
or for lifting celestial persons from heaven and back, or for revealing the interior of
the stage building. This was called "deus ex machina", which means god from the machine,
and was a technical device that used a metal crane on top of the skene building, which
contained the dressing rooms, from which a dummy was suspended to represent a god. This
device was first employed by Euripides to give a miraculous conclusion to a tragedy. In
later romantic literature, this device was no longer used and the miracles supplied by it
were replace by the sudden appearance of a rich uncle, the discovery or new wills, or of
infants changed at birth. Many proprieties of the Greek plays were attached to violence.
Therefore, it was a rule that acts of violence must take place off stage. This carried
through to the Elizabethan Theater, which avoided the horrors of men being flayed alive,
or Glouster's eyes being put out in full view of an audience (King Lear). When Medea went
inside the house to murder her children, the chorus was left outside, chanting in
anguish, to represent the feelings the chorus had and could not act upon, because of
their metaphysical existence. The use of music in the theater began very simply
consisting of a single flute player that accompanied the chorus. Toward the close of the
century, more complicated solo singing was developed by Euripides. There could-then be
large-scale spectacular events, with stage crowds and chariots, particularly in plays by
Aeschylus. Greek comedy was derived from two different sources, the more known being the
choral element, which included ceremonies to stimulate fertility at the festival of
Dionysus or in ribald drunken revel in his honor. The term comedy is actually drawn from
"komos", meaning song of revelry. The second source of Greek comedy was that from the
Sicilian "mimes", who put on very rude performances where they would make satirical
allusions to audience members as they ad-libbed their performances. In the beginning,
comedy was frank, indecent and sexual. The plots were loosely and carelessly structured
and included broad farce and buffoonery. The performers were coarse and obscene while
using satire to depict important contemporary moral, social and political issues of
Athenian life. The comedy included broad satire of well-known persons of that time.
Throughout the comedic period in Greece, there were three distinctive eras of comedies as
the genre progressed. Old comedy, which lasted from approximately 450 to 400 BCE, was
performed at the festivals of Dionysus following the tragedies. There would be contests
between three poets, each exhibiting one comedy. Each comedy troupe would consist of one
or two actors and a chorus of twenty-four. The actors wore masks and "soccus", or
sandals, and the chorus often wore fantastic costumes. Comedies were constructed in five
parts, the prologue, where the leading character conceived the "happy idea", the parodos
or entrance of the chorus, the agon, a dramatized debate between the proponent and
opponent of the "happy idea" where the opposition was always defeated, the parabasis, the
coming forth of the chorus where they directly addressed the audience and aired the
poet's views on most any matter the poet felt like having expressed, and the episodes,
where the "happy idea" was put into practical application. Aristotle highly criticized
comedy, saying that it was just a ridiculous imitation of lower types of man with eminent
faults emphasized for the audience's pleasure, such as a mask worn to show deformity, or
for the man to do something like slip and fall on a banana peel. Aristophanes, a comic
poet of the old comedy period, wrote comedies, which came to represent old comedy, as his
style was widely copied by other poets. In his most famous works, he used dramatic satire
on some of the most famous philosophers and poets of the era. In "The Frogs" he ridiculed
Euripides, and in "The Clouds" he mocked Socrates. His works followed all the basic
principles of old comedy, but he added a facet of cleverness and depth in feeling to his
lyrics, in an attempt to appeal to both the emotions and intellect of the audience.
Middle comedy, which dominated from 400 to 336 BCE, was very transitional, having aspects
of both old comedy and new comedy. It was more timid than old comedy, having many less
sexual gestures and innuendoes. It was concerned less with people and politics, and more
with myths and tragedies. The chorus began its fade into the background, becoming more of
an interlude than the important component it used to be. Aristophanes wrote a few works
in middle comedy, but the most famous writers of the time were Antiphanes of Athens and
Alexis of Thurii, whose compositions have mostly been lost and only very few of their
found works have been full extant plays. In new comedy that lasted from 336 to 250 BCE,
satire is almost entirely replaced by social comedy involving the family and individual
character development, and the themes of romantic love. A closely-knit plot in new comedy
was based on intrigue, identities, relationships or a combination of these. A subplot was
often utilized as well. The characters in new comedy are very similar in each work,
possibly including a father who is very miser like, a son who is mistreated but
deserving, and other people with stereotypical personas. The chief writer of new comedy
was Menander, and as with the prominent writers of the middle comedic era, most of his
works have been lost, but other dramatists of the time period, like Terence and Platus,
had imitated and adapted his methods. Menander's The Curmudgeon is the only complete
extant play known by him to date, and it served as the basis for the later Latin writers
to adapt. Adventure, brilliance, invention, romance and scenic effect, together with
delightful lyrics and wisdom, were the gifts of the Greek Theater. These conventions
strongly affected subsequent plays and playwrights, having put forth influence on theater
throughout the centuries. 
Bibliography 
1. Lucas, F.L., Greek Tragedy and Comedy, New York: The Viking Press, 1967. 
2. 2. McAvoy, William, Dramatic Tragedy, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1971. 
3. 3. Murray, Gilbert, Euripides and His Age, New York: Oxford University Press, 1955.
4. 4. Reinhold, Meyer, Ph.D., Essentials of Greek and Roman Classics, New York: Barron's
Educational Series, Inc., 1960. 
5. 5. Trawick, Buckner B., World Literature, Volume I: Greek, Roman, Oriental and
Medieval William McAvoy, Dramatic Tragedy, 1971, p. ix Ibid., p. x William McAvoy,
Dramatic Tragedy, 1971, p. xi Ibid., p. vii Meyer Reinhold, Ph.D., Essentials of Greek
and Roman Classics, 1960, p.60 F.L. Lucas, Greek Tragedy and Comedy, 1968, p. 3 Ibid., p.
9 Ibid., p. 10 Ibid., p. 10 Gilbert Murray, Euripides and His Age, 1955, p. 145 F.L.
Lucas, Greek Tragedy and Comedy, 1968, p. 12 Ibid., p.62 Gilbert Murray, Euripides and
His Age, 1955, p.146 Gilbert Murray, Euripides and His Age, 1955, p. 153 F.L. Lucas,
Greek Tragedy and Comedy, 1968, p. 12 Buckner B. Trawick, World Literature, Volume I:
Greek, Roman, Oriental and Medieval Classics, 1958, p. 76 Meyer Reinhold, Ph.D.,
Essentials of Greek and Roman Classics, 1960, p. 114 Ibid., p. 238 Ibid., p. 253 Buckner
B. Trawick, World Literature, Volume I: Greek, Roman, Oriental and Medieval Classics,
1958, p. 76 Meyer Reinhold, Ph.D., Essentials of Greek and Roman Classics, 1960, p. 254