Greek Theatre Modern Scholarship

P. Cartledge

It is possible that plays staged originally in one of the two national festivals subsequently transferred to one or other attic venues such as at thorikos

Roisman

Amid the havoc Pentheus is facing in the city, an incitement to revelry from an esteemed seer might be devastating

Carey

We have the uncanny sense that the god is simultaneously beside him and within him (Pentheus)

T.B Lonsdale

Dionysus, depicted as a choregos and dancer in poetry, is portrayed with great frequency in art, especially on wine vessels

P. Cartledge

The debate as to whether Athenian women might watch, be permitted to watch or were encouraged to watch the plays themselves is a controversial one

S. Goldhill

The theatre was a space in which all the citizens were actors - as the city itself and its leading citizens were put on display

S. Goldhill

Foreigners were certainly present at the Great Dionysia which was also used to honour foreign dignitaries or benefactors of the state

Metics - non-citizen resident aliens were also present, both at the Dionysia and the Lenaea

S. Goldhill

It is often said that slaves could definitely attend the Dionysia (Though it was always assumed that not many did)

E. Hall

Non-Athenians, women and slaves are permitted to the multivocal form of tragedy to address the public in the theatre as they never could in reality

S. Goldhill

The Theoric fund which made payments to the citizens to enable them to attend the theatre, was protected by law: it was a prosecutable offence to even propose changes to the fund. It is easy to infer that attendance at the theatre was regarded as a citizen’s duty, privilege and requirement

F. Garvie

The audience is, as it were, in the position of the gods themselves

Higgins

The dramatization of stories from a shared heritage helped to nurture and preserve a cultural identity through times of hardship and war

C.W. Marshall

The performance space was relatively bare, with a wooden stage, skene and space for the orchestra meaning actors could move across the whole stage. Over the course of the fourth century the stage was raised so that there was a clearer divide between the orchestra and the stage. The shape of the orchestra in the 5th century was unknown, some scholars argue for circular, others for rectangular. Props like the ekkyklema and the mechane were adopted by Comedy, although the mechane was only available at the City Dionysia

P. Cartledge

Masks provided actors and chorus with the alibi and means of alienation required for the dramatic representation of others

P. Cartledge

The tragedians’ exploitation of technical legal language and the ideas underlines the affinity between the theatre and the courts

P. Cartledge

(Theme of war in theatre) War was to a Greek man what marriage was to a Greek woman

P. Cartledge

(Choregoi appointment/Importance)

Organising a festival was on par with organising the state’s war effort - so the Eponymous archon oversaw the financing of the fleet but likewise was responsible for appointing the six choregoi who would fund the choruses for each tragedians and comedians

O. Taplin

Tragedy and Comedy were perceived as part of the political life of Athenians; vase-painters and their public perceived drama as being too close to the day to day political life of the city to be suitable subject matter

O. Taplin

The chorus act as an emotional bridge between the audience and the narrator, telling us how we should be feeling/acting and thus overcoming the limitations of only having 3 on stage

E. Hall

Athenian dependence on recognised membership of the polis was expressed in the recurrence of the themes of exile and loss of civic rights

E. Hall

Every single transgressive woman in tragedy is temporarily or permanently husbandless. This convention can be interpreted as a symptom of the Athenian citizen’s during his absence. For example in Bacchae, the sisters of Semele have been sent maddened to the mountains; Pentheus has been out of town; Echion, Agave’s husband, is either dead or not present

E. Hall

Slave, although formally powerless can wield enormous power in the world of tragedy through their access to dangerous knowledge

E. Hall

The manner in which aristocrats treat their subordinates is an important means by which their characters are tested in tragedy

P.E. Easterling

The Chorus members are physically at the centre of the theatre space, as they perform in the orchestra, and in their movements they can mime past and future events, thus contributing in a radical way to the stage action

P. Burian

Tragedy is much easier to write than Comedy, in which everything has to be invented afresh

C. Carey

As the only vocal group within the play the chorus are the dramatic character which most resembles the theatre audience

O. Taplin

There is nothing intrinsically Dionysiac about Greek tragedy

P.E. Easterling

Dionysus was not the only dancing god (Pan, Artemis, Apollo), or the only god of ecstatic possession (Pan and Cybele), and not the only one associated with masks (Artemis) or which the mysteries (Demeter, Persephone)

P.E. Easterling

The plays composed for competition at the drama festivals always took their subjects from a wider range of myths than just stories about Dionysus

J. Herington

Even Aeschylus, who was evidently more interested than any other known dramatist in plots directly relating to Dionysus, devoted only about one-tenth of his out to such stories

S. Goldhill

Dionysus’ role as a god of subversion was essential to Tragedy

P. Cartledge

All Athenian Tragedy was performed within the context of religious rituals to honour of that elusive but compelling god Dionysus

P. Cartledge

The City Dionysia in spring honoured Dionysus Eleutherae, a village on the border between Attica and Boeotia; the Lenaea was held in winter in January/February time; the Rural Dionysia honoured Dionysus ‘in the fields’, a few weeks before the Lenaea

Easterling

Each set of three tragedies was followed by a short Satyr play in which the Chorus was made up of Satyrs, Dionysus’ devoted half-goat followers, who were connected with the god well before the dramatic festivals were established; the same actors and chorus from the three plays beforehand performed this play, thereby establishing a clear link between the art and the god

J.A. Harrison

Ancient audiences knew that the more light-hearted celebratory Satyr play followed the Tragedies; the spirit of celebration in these plays, following the dark solution of tragedy, becomes a release into the worship of Dionysus who presided over the whole dramatic festival

Henrich

Choral dancing in ancient Greek culture always constitutes a form of ritual performance

T.B. Londsdale

Dionysus, depicted as a choregos and dancer in poetry, is portrayed with great frequency in art, especially on wine vessels

Easterling

The ecstatic possession of maenads is of tragic characters and choruses, even in plays with plots in which Dionysus plays no direct part

Easterling

The masks were dedicated to the god after the performance was over and hung from the temple in his sanctuary

Higgins

To attend the theatre was a religious duty and the responsibility of all pious citizens

F. Garvie

Oedipus is perhaps the most celebrated of all sophocles’ plays. It was also evidently the favourite of the fourth-century philospher Aristotle, for whom it illustrates perfectly his theory of the best kind of tragedy, one which presents someone of high reputation and prosperity who falls into misfortune, not because he is wicked, but because of some mistake

Garvie

Much of its appeal for modern readers may derive from its resemblance in some respects to a high detective novel

Garvie

In this play, Sophoclean irony is more prominent than in any other. It spring from Sophocles’ deep conviction that human beings by their very nature are flawed and incapable of fully understanding

Garvie

The gap between seeming and reality is nowhere clearer than here, where the man who thinks that he knows, or can find out, everything is in fact ignorant even of his own identity

Garvie

Oedipus is ignorant but determined to know, whereas Tiresias knows the truth but is determined to suppress it

Garvie

Tiresias is physically blind, while Oedipus, the physically sighted, knows nothing

Garvie

In one sense, Oedipus does not fall at all. He set out to uncover the truth, and by the end of the play he has succeeded in his quest

Garvie

He never says, I wish I had not found out; for he has gained what he values most - knowledge, no matter what it costs

Garvie

He is the only character for whom to live a painless lie is worse than to accept a painful truth

Garvie

It is not so much his crimes as his discovery of them that leads to his fall

Garvie

It is Oedipus, with his relentless search for the truth, whom we admire

Garvie

It seems that both fate and Oedipus’ own character are responsible for his fall

Garvie

Before she goes, she tried unsuccessfully to stop Oedipus from seeking to learn more. But Oedipus is completely preoccupied now with discovering the secret of his birth. His excitement contrasts with her horror, which itself contrasts with the joyous mood with which the episode began

Garvie

As so often in Sophocles, it is the minor characters whose behaviour is more attractive than the hero’s

E. Hall

Perhaps the most famous anagnorisis in tragedy, Oedipus’ recognition of himself, is the direct result of the extorted testimony of a slave

Higgins

Watching Oedipus’ fate unfold, the audience identifies with the hero, sharing vicariously in the horror of the reversal he suffers and acknowledging the power of destiny

Higgins

Oedipus seems outwardly the ideal king, revealing his intelligence, responsibility and energy. But his overly eager insistence that Creon announce the oracle’s words publicly betrays a certain arrogance about his abilities

Higgins

The ridicule of the prophet and his prophecy reflects a change in Athens during the fifth century BC, when the proponents of reasons began to challenge the authority of spiritual power

Higgins

the pity and terror aroused by Oedipus’ tragic fall brings about a catharsis, the realisation that the power of fate cannot be overcome by will - even by the will of king

R. Fagles

Oedipus is his own destroyer

S. Goldhill

Oedipus is a paradox in himself - he is both a saviour and a monster

S. Goldhill

Oedipus conquers a monster, the Sphinx, becomes leader of the city yet this leads to a final discovery of Oedipus’ untenable position in order of the city as he has gone against norms of society by killing his father and marrying his mother

C. Bettendorf

The primary function of the play, however, is not literary criticism but political action

D. Kovacs

Euripides appears as a wayward modernist, bent on lowering the tone of tragedy by taking the heroic figures of myth down to the level of ordinary mortals, bringing on adulterous women and other morally dubious characters

Kovacs

The traits given to Aeschylus and Euripides are amusing, and the contrast between them makes comics sense, but they are without value as an index of how either Aristophanes or his contemporaries really regarded them

P. Cartledge

Generally reckoned to be the finest of Aristophanes’ surviving plays

Cartledge

Dionysus is cowardly and effeminate

Dionysus seems naturally servile he has clearly trespassed too far on the human side of the human/divine divide to quality any longer for godhead

K.J. Dover

Frogs is unique among extant plays in providing us with the spectacle of a moving vehicle, charon’s boat, which has to arrive, take on Dionysus, put him off, and disappear again with Charon

Dover

Aeschylus was the poet of the generation which fought off the persians and created the Athenian empire, Euripides the poet of their own more precarious days. This makes it possible for Aristophanes to assimilate the contest between Aeschylus and Euripides to the familiar contrast between the valour, virtue and security of the past and the insecurity of the present, beset by doubts, unhealthy curiosity and irresponsible artistic innovations

D. Macdowell

A saffron-coloured robe and buskins (High boots) were generally women’s rather than men’s attire, but they were also the traditional dress of Dionysus. Dionysus is wearing them because they are his normal clothes, but because they look rather effeminate, they make a ridiculous contrast with the exceedingly virile lion-skin and club

J. Redfield

The victory of Aeschylus is a rejection of the new lifestyle, a return to the old moral centre

D. Stuttard

Bacchae is one of Euripides’ most disturbing plays

Stuttard

Bacchae includes issues of gender and identity, madness and rationality, vengeance and repression, foreignness and fanaticism so extreme that it leads to a young god to gloat in icy triumph over an enemy’s severed head

Stuttard

In the real city of Thebes, the site of Semele’s incineration became increasingly venerated. It forms part of the setting of Bacchae, and in historical times it was considered so sacred that in the second century AD the traveller Pausanias records that no one was allowed to enter Semele’s house

Stuttard

He had won only four times perhaps due to his tendency to reduce the role and impact of the chorus or due to anti-heroic characters, shot through with potentially unpopular or provocate sentiments, especially concerning the gods. However, in Bacchae, he not only significantly reinstates the chorus, elevating it to be one of the key components of the play, but one of his central themes appears to be the importance of worshipping the gods. He even makes a god the protagonist.

Morwood

In driving the Theban women from the city to worship him on the mountain, Dionysus has profoundly disrupted the city’s social structure. The women have abandoned not only their loom but their children too

Morwood

If we feel that Dionysus’ treatment of suffering humanity is anything but a sport, we should remember that he may well be wearing a smiling mask

E. Hall

One actor play Dionysus and Tiresias, another Pentheus and Agave, the third Cadmus and the two messengers; this continuity of actors, who will not have been able to disguise their voices altogether, must have affected the impact of the performances

R. Wyles

The tomb is capable of heightening the tension as the audience watch Pentheus vehemently refusing to worship Dionysus in the presence of a visual symbol of divine power

Wyles

The house is transformed by this scene from a symbol of royal authority to a symbol of Dionysus’ power

Wyles

there is a clear inter-performative allusion to Aristophanes’ women at the Thesmaphoria, a comedy in which a man is persuaded to cross-dress to spy on a female-only festival. In the comedy, the Kinsman, who is the cross-dressed spy, despite being discovered by the women, will not suffer death. In the tragic frame, the scene is transformed and this perhaps enables the audience to appreciate Euripides’ dramatic mastery: he can even make cross-dressing, which had proven comic potential, tragic

Stuttard

In 53 BC at the wedding of Pacorus, son of the Parthian king, Orodes II when an actor playing Agave brought on the head of Pentheus it was not a prop but the actual head of the Parthians’ bitter enemy, the Roman general Crassus, who had been killed shortly before at the Battle of Carrhae

Wyles

Aristophanes’ Frogs had already appeared on stage at the Lenaea festival (held in January) in 405 BC. Frogs also features Dionysus as a central character, and while Euripides could not have planned Bacchae as a response since he was dead before its production, the performance experience of the audience meant that they would bring the memory of Aristophanes’ comic treatment of Dionysus with them as spectators of Bacchae

D.Kovacs

When Cadmus and the chorus, speaking in defence of Maenadism, offer a defence of religion in general, it is hard not to suppose that this is a reply to contemporary speculation

Garvie

Somehow the despair seems all the darker because of the recurring theme of joy that has preceded it

Roisman

We see the young king lose a struggle with his own irrational impulses, as he had earlier lost the battle with external irrationality. He is both repulsed by sex and at the same time unconsciously desiring it; Dionysus is aware of this weakness and takes advantage of it by releasing in him exactly what Pentheus is trying to suppress

Mills

He is not a remote, spectacular deity but a deity who has deliberately disguised himself in human clothing to deceive a mortal into threatening and disrespecting him

Mills

Bacchae was considered so violent that it was seldom performed before the 1960’s

J. Morwood

The audience finds itself tugged in two directions by a tragedy which centres on a figure who is both terrifying and gentle to mortals

H. Foley

Euripides presents Dionysus as a director who constructs his own play within a play

A. Garvie

The most striking paradox is that the god throughout the play promises joy, at the end produces only suffering and horror

Wyles

The appearance of Pentheus cross-dressed and within bacchic accessories offers a visual representation of Dionysus’ control over him

Mills

Pentheus sees Dionysus as a fake and his religion as an excuse for women to enjoy untrammelled sex and wine

H. Roisman

Neither completely good nor completely bad. He (Pentheus) has enough positive in him to arouse sympathy when he is torn into pieces

C. Carey

While being secular and central power in Thebes, he (Pentheus) becomes within the community of the play the outsider, a man whose acts and ideas are alien, shocking and inexplicable to the other human characters around him, an effect exacerbated by his tyrannical behaviour, which removes him from normal collective experience

Morwood

She (Agave) is degraded by what she carries since such treatment of a human is non-greek in its barbarism

Roisman

Agave’s recognition scene is one of the most painful and harrowing scenes in Greek tragedy. No parent can watch it and not sympathise

Garvie

The tragedians usually treat Tiresias with great respect, and those characters who question his wisdom usually find cause to regret it

S. Goldhill

The Chorus of the Bacchae focuses on the paradoxes and problems of Dionysian worship, uncertain tensions between potentials of human reason and order. The portential for destruction, violence, madness in human society

Carey

The chorus bring the mountains into the theatre space, the choral account of the bacchic ritual which they both remember and crave is the reality for the Theban women in the hills