Transcript Greek Theatre

Greek and Roman
Theatre
Greek Festivals
 Festivals honored Olympian gods
 Ritual Competitions
 Olympics: Apollo
Athletics
 Lyric Poetry
 Drama: Dionysos
– Dithyrambic Choruses
– Tragedy
– Comedy
Greek Theatre
• 6th - 4th century bce
• Originated in festivals honoring Dionysos
• Tragedy:
– Aeschylus (524-456 bce)
– Sophocles (496-406 bce)
– Euripides (480-406 bce)
• Comedy:
– Old Comedy: bawdy and satiric
• Aristophanes (c. 485- c.385 bce)
– New Comedy: social situations:
• Menander (342-292 bce)
Theatre Festivals
• There were two festivals during which dramatic
productions were staged.
• The Greater Dionysia took place at the end of March or
the beginning of April
– Three days were given over to theatrical competition.
– Three playwrights each took part in the contests: Each
tragedian put on a trilogy in the morning and each comic
writer put on one comedy in the afternoon.
• The festival at Lenaes, staged at the end of January or
the beginning of February, placed its emphasis on
comedy
ACTORS
 No play used more than 3 actors
 All actors were male
 Costumes included character masks, and, in
later years, raised boots
 Acting must have more expressive than realistic
ORIGINS of TRAGEDY
 Tragedy, derived from the Greek words tragos (goat) and
ode (song), told a story that was intended to teach religious
lessons
 Arose from dithyrambic choruses: The dithyramb was an
ode to Dionysus. It was usually performed by a chorus of
fifty men dressed as satyrs -- mythological half-human,
half-goat servants of Dionysus.
 In 600 BC, formal lyrics were written for the dithyramb.
 In the 6th c. bce Thespis of Attica added an actor who
interacted with the chorus. This actor was called the
protagonist.
 In 534 BC, the ruler of Athens, Psistratus, changed the
Dionysian Festivals and instituted drama competitions.
Thespis won the first competition in 534 BC.
Tragic Tetralogies
 Each tragic dramatist had to present
a trilogy of tragedies: connected
narratively or dramatically
 The entire trilogy was performed in
one day.
 The trilogy was followed by a satyr
play - mocking and lightening the
seriousness of the tragedies
TRAGIC STRUCTURE
PROLOGOS: Introductory scene
PARADOS: Entry of chorus
EPISODEION
STASIMON
4-5 alternating scenes and
choral odes, including the
PAEAN: a hymn of praise to the gods
EXODOS: final scene
EPODE: final ode.
ARISTOTLE’S
THREE UNITIES
 Aristotle’s On Tragedy is usually
considered the first piece of Western
dramatic criticism. In it, he proclaimed
that tragedy must follow the 3 unities:
 UNITY OF TIME: one day
 UNITY OF PLACE: one setting
 UNITY OF ACTION: one plot
AESCHYLUS
525-456 bce
 General in Persian Wars -- fought at
Marathon, Salamis, Platea
 Fierce proponent of Athenian ideals
 The first of the great Athenian dramatists, was
also the first to express the agony of the
individual caught in conflict.
 Credited with adding the second actor
 Only extant trilogy: The Oresteia
Agamemnon
The Libation Bearers
The Eumenides
SOPHOCLES
496 - 406 bce
 Wrote over 100 plays, but only seven
survive
 Credited with adding the third actor
 Known as actor as well as dramatist
 Most interested in human dynamics
THEBAN PLAYS:
Oedipus the King
 Oedipus at Colonnus
 Antigone
EURIPIDES
c.480-406 bce
The last of the three great Greek tragic
dramatists -- 17 plays survive
 Explored the theme of personal conflict within
the polis and the depths of the individual
 Disgust with events of Peloponnesian War
brought about disillusionment with Athens
 Men and women bring disaster on themselves
because their passions overwhelm their reason
TRAGIC ACTION
ARETE, ARISTEIA: excellence
HUBRIS: arrogance
HAMARTIA: fatal mistake
PERIPETEIA: reversal of fortune
ANAGNORISIS: understanding
KATHARSIS
ORIGINS of OLD COMEDY
 Arose from komos : songs of revelry,
charms to avert evil, prayers for fertility
sung to Dionysus
 Chorus dressed ludicrously
 Audience responded to choral komos
and were gradually admitted into chorus
 Chorus became two-part group with
antiphonal song
 Invention of comic chorus is attributed
to Susarion
 Dorian and Sicilian farces were
precursors of Old Comedy
CONVENTIONS of OLD COMEDY
 Scene set on Athenian street
 “Events seldom occur – they are
merely talked about”
 Masks and fantastic costumes
 Satiric of contemporary events and
public figures
 Bawdy
COMIC STRUCTURE
Prologos:
introductory scene
Parados:
entry of 24 member chorus dressed in fantastic costume
Agon: argument
“just prior to the agon, the leader of the chorus always asks - in exactly 2 lines one contender to present his argument, and it is this contender who always loses”
Parabasis: chorus’s great song
Episodeion
Stasimon
4-5 alternating scenes and choral
odes illustrating the outcome of the
agon
Komos: final choral song and exit in wild revelry
ARISTOPHANES
c. 448 - 380 BCE
30+ plays; 11 extant; 6 first prizes
Plays include Clouds, Wasps,Birds, Frogs,
Lysistrata
Critique of Euripides & Socrates:
reactionary conservative; social critic
Plato's epitaph for Aristophanes : “The
Graces, seeking a shrine that could not
fall, discovered the soul of
Aristophanes.”
New Comedy
By 317 BC, a new form had evolved that
resembled modern farces: mistaken identities,
ironic situations, ordinary characters and wit.
 Basic plot: Boy meets girl, complications arise,
bot gets girl – ends with betrothal or marriage.
5 act structure: acts divided by interludes
performed by the chorus
 Stock characters: young lovers, parasite,
lecherous old men, clever servants, etc.
 Social rather than political satire
MENANDER
342-292 bce
 1905 a manuscript was discovered in Cairo with pieces of
five of Menander’s plays, and in 1957 a complete play,
Diskolos (The Grouch, 317 BC), was unearthed in Egypt.
 The style of comedy that Menander created, with its
emphasis on mistaken identity, romance and situational
humor, became the model for subsequent comedy, from
the Romans to Shakespeare to Broadway.
 Parts of his comedies found their way into plays by the
Roman playwrights Plautus and Terence, Shakespeare's
Comedy of Errors, Stephen Sondheim's A Funny Thing
Happened on the Way to the Forum.
ROMAN THEATRE
 Drama flourished under the Republic but declined
into variety entertainment under the Empire
 Roman festivals: Held in honor of the gods, but
much less religious than in Greece
Ludi Romani Became theatrical in 364 B.C.
Held in September (the autumn)and honored Jupiter.
By 240 B.C., both comedy and tragedy were performed.
 Five others: Ludi Florales (April), Plebeii (November),
Apollinares (July), Megalenses (April), Cereales
(no particular season).
 Under the Empire, these festivals afforded "bread and
circuses" to the masses – many performances.
—including a series of plays or events. Acting troupes
(perhaps several a day) put on theatre events.
ROMAN THEATRE
Encompassed more than drama :
acrobatics, gladiators, jugglers, athletics,
chariots races, naumachia (sea battles),
boxing, venationes (animal fights)
 Entertainment tended to be grandiose,
sentimental, diversionary
 Actors / performers were
called "histriones"
INFLUENCES
on Roman Theatre
 Greek Drama – borrowed plots and stories: less
philosophical
 Etruscan influences – emphasized circus-like elements
 Fabula Atellana – Atellan farces (town near Naples).
Short improvised farces, with stock characters, similar
costumes and masks
based on domestic life or mythology – burlesqued, parodied
 popular during the 1st century B.C., then declined
 may have influenced commedia dell ‘Arte
Roman Theatre Design
• First permanent Roman theatre built 54 A.D. (100
years after the last surviving comedy)
So permanent structures came from periods after
significant writing
• More that 100 permanent theatre structures by 550
A.D.
• Built on level ground with stadium-style seating
(audience raised)
• Could seat 10-15,000 people
• Awning over the audience to protect them from the
sun
• During the Empire around 78 B.C, cooling system
installed– air blowing over streams of water
Roman Theatre Design
• Skene becomes scaena – joined with audience to
form one architectural unit
– S tages raised to five feet, 20-40 feet deep, 100-300 feet
long,
– 3-5 doors in rear wall and at least one in the wings
– scaena frons – façade of the stage house – had columns,
niches, porticoes, statues – painted
– stage was covered with a roof
– trap doors were common
• Orchestra becomes half-circle
• Paradoi become vomitorium into orchestra and
audience
Theatre of
Marcellus
(drawing)
TYPES
of Roman Theatre
Roman Drama : 2nd c. bc - 4th c. ce
 Livius Andronicus – 240 – 204 B.C. – wrote,
translated, or adapted comedies and tragedies, the
first important works in Latin. Little is known, but
he seems to have been best at tragedy.
Gnaeus Naevius – 270-201 B.C. excelled at comedy,
but wrote both
 Both helped to "Romanize" the drama by
introducing Roman allusions into the Greek
originals and using Roman stories.
ROMAN COMEDY
 Chorus was abandoned
 No act or scene divisions
 Songs
 Everyday domestic affairs: Boy meets girl,
complications, boy gets girl: marriage
 Action placed in the street
 Bawdy
 Stock characters
 Only two playwrights' material survives:
Titus Maccius Plautus (c. 254-184 B.C.)
Publius Terenius Afer [Terence] (195 or 185-159 B.C.)
STOCK CHARACTERS
 Senex: old man in authority
 Pappas: foolish old man
 Bucco: braggart, boisterous
 Miles gloriosus: braggart soldier
 Dossenus: swindler, drunk,
hunchback
 Shrew: sharp-tongued woman
 Courtesan
 Clever servant
 Young Lovers
PLAUTUS
(c. 254-184 B.C.E.)
 21 extant plays including Pot of Gold, The
Menaechmi, Braggart Warrior -- probably between
205-184 B.C.
All based on Greek New Comedies
 Added Roman allusions, Latin dialog, varied
poetic meters, witty jokes
Some techniques:
Stychomythia – dialog with short lines, like a tennis
match
Slapstick
Songs
TERENCE
(195 or 185-159 B.C.E.)
 Born in Carthage, came to Rome as a boy slave, educated
and freed
 The Afer in his name may indicate that he was an African,
and therefore he may have been the first major black
playwright in western theater.
 Six plays, all of which survive
including The Brothers, Mother-in-Law, etc.
 More complex plots – combined stories from Greek
originals.
 Character and double-plots were his forte – contrasts in
human behavior
 Less boisterous than Plautus, less episodic, more elegant
language.
 Less popular than Plautus.
Roman Tragedy
None survive from the early period, and only one
playwright from the later period: Lucius
Annaeus Seneca
 5 act structure – later adopted by Elizabethans
 Elaborate speeches -- rhetorical influence
 Interest in morality – expressed in sententiae
(short pithy generalizations about the human
condition)
SENECA
(5 or 4 B.C.E.– 65 C.E.)
Nine extant tragedies, five adapted from
Euripides:The Trojan Women, Media, Oedipus,
Agamemnon
His popularity declined,
Suicide in 65 A.D.– at the orders of Nero
Seneca had a strong effect on later dramatists.
Probably closet dramas—meant to be read to
an audience rather than performed
Senecan Conventions
• Violence and horror onstage (Jocasta rips open her womb, for
example)
• Characters dominated by a single passion – such as revenge –
drives them to doom: known as Senecan Revenge tragedies
during Renaissance.
• Technical devices:
– Soliloquies and asides
– Confidants take the place of the chorus
– Ghosts: interest in supernatural and human connections
Roman Spectacle
 Gladiatorial combats
 Chariot races
 Naumachia: Naval battles
in a flooded Coliseum
 “Real-life” theatricals
 Decadent, violent and immoral
 All theatrical events banned
by Church when Rome
became Christianized