The History of Greek
Tragedy
The Dionysia: Tragic Festival
Each spring
This was not a business enterprise but rather a central part
of the religious worship of the city and so it was controlled by the State: the
playwrights were chosen by judges and were allocated their actors by lot to
ensure fairness. The tragic poets competed with one another and, during the 5th
Century BC (the ‘Golden Age’ of Greek drama) Aeschylus won thirteen first place
victories, Sophocles, twenty four, and Euripides, five.
The Theatre
The theater of Dionysus was, like all ancient Greek
theaters, an open-air auditorium and, due to the lack of adequate artificial
lighting, performances took place during the day. Scenes set at night had to be
identified as such by the actors or the chorus; the audience, upon receiving
these verbal cues, had to use its imagination. In general, the action of
tragedy was well served by presentation in an open-air theater since interior
scenes, which are common in our typically indoor theaters, are all but
non-existent in tragedy. The action of a tragedy normally takes place in front
of palaces, temples and other outdoor settings. This seemed natural to the
ancient audience because Greek public affairs, whether civic or religious, were
conducted out of doors as was much of Greek private life due to the relatively
mild climate of the Aegean area.
Costume and setting would have been minimal. There was a
central dancing area for the Chorus (called an orchestra) and, in place of a
stage, there would have been a tent (called a skene –
the ancestor of our modern word scene) in which the actors could change. The
side of the skene facing the audience may have had a
relevant picture of a palace or temple painted on it but that would have been the
extent of setting.
An ‘ekkyklema’ (literally ‘wheeled
out thing’) would occasionally have been hidden inside the skene.‘ This device was used to display the results of some
grisly off-stage action to the audience and would have been appropriately
adorned with blood and bodies and ‘wheeled out’ when required. A ‘mechane’ which could be used to hoist characters playing
gods on to the roof of the skene would also
occasionally be used: this is the source of the term ‘deus
ex machina’.
The Actors
By the middle of the fifth century three actors were
required for the performance of a tragedy. In descending order of importance of
the roles they assumed they were called the protagonist 'first actor', (a term
applied in modern literary criticism to the central character of a play not the
actor), deuteragonist 'second actor' and tritagonist 'third actor'. Aeschylus was the first
playwright to have presented more than one character on stage at a time and is
thus credited with the invention of dramatic dialogue. Since most plays
required more than three characters most actors played more than one role and
masks were used to indicate character changes as well as to enable male actors
to more convincingly play female characters as women were not allowed to
perform on stage in Ancient Greece.
The Chorus
The chorus often portrayed the people of the city,
responding to the protagonist as an ideal audience. During the choral odes
their singing and dancing provided variety and spectacle, allowing time for the
actors to change into other costumes for the next scene. The importance of
singing throughout the performance suggests that the modern parallel for
tragedy is actually opera rather than ‘straight’ drama.
The first function of a tragic chorus was to chant an
entrance song called a parados as they marched into
the orchestra. Once the chorus had taken its position in the orchestra, its
duties were twofold: firstly, it engaged in dialogue with characters during the
episodes and secondly it sang or danced during the stasima
(singular = stasimon).
Private reading of tragedy deprives us of the visual and
aural effects created by the Chorus and actors which were important elements of
this genre: we miss the scenery, inflection of actors' voices, gestures and
postures, costumes and masks, singing, dancing, the sounds of the original
language and its various poetic rhythms. This does not render our reading of
tragedy worthless because words are still the most important means of communication, however imagination must be used as much as
possible in order to compensate for those theatrical elements lost in reading
tragedy.