GREEK THEATRE SCHOLARSHIP

Oedipus the King

Garvie

Sophoclean irony its most prevalent in this play, Springs from Sophocles’ deep conviction that human beings by their very nature are flawed and incapable of full understanding
The gap between seeming and reality is nowhere clearer then here, where the man who thinks that he knows, or can find out, everything, is in fact ignorant of even his own identity.
Oedipus is ignorant but determined to know whereas Tiresias knows the truth but is determined to suppress it.
Tiresias is physically blind, while Oedipus, the physically sighted, knows nothing
In one sense, Oedipus does not fall at all, he set out to uncover the truth and by the end of the play has succeeded in his quest
It is no so much his crimes as his discovery of them that leads to his fall.
It seems that both fate and Oedipus’ own character are responsible for his fall
It is Oedipus, with his relentless search for the truth, whom we admire
His excitement contracts with her horror, which itself contrasts with the joyous ood with which the episode began

Higgins

Oedipus seems outwardly the ideal king, revealing his intelligence, responsibiloity and energy. But his overly eager insistance that Creon announces the oracle’s words publicly betrays a certain arrogance about his abilities
The ridicule of the prophet and his prophecy reflects a change in Athens during the fifth century BC, when the proponents of reason began to challenge the authority of spiritual power
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 a king

Fagles

Goldhill

Oedipus is a paradox in himself— he is both the saviour and the monster [conquers the sphinx and becomes leader of the city] has gone against the norms of society by killing his mother and marrying his father

Stuttard

The bacchae is one of Euripides’ most disturbing plays
The bacchae includes issues of gender and identity, madness and rationality, vengeance and repression… so extreme that it leads a young god to golat in icy triumph over an enemy’s severed head.
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

Morwood

the audience finds itself tugged in two different directions by a tragedy which centers on a figure who is both “most terrifying and most gentle to mortals”
dionysus has profoundly disrupted the city’s social structure. The women have abandoned not only their looms but their children too
She is degraded by what she carries since such treatment of a human being is non-greek in its barbarism.
If we feel Dionysus’ treatment of suffering humanity is anything but a sport, we should remember that he may well be wearing a smiling mask

Foley

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

Rosie Wyles

The house is transformed by this scene from a symbol of royal authority to a symbol of dionysus’ power
The appearance of Pentheus cross-dressed and with Bacchis accessories offers a visual representation of dionysus’ full control over him
their ecstatic joy is chilling while heightening the pathos for circumstances of Pentheus’ destruction

Chris Carey

While being the secular and central power in Thebes he becomes within the community of the play the outside, a man whose acts and ideas are alien, shocking and often inexplicable to the… normal collective experience
We have the uncanny sense that the god is simultaneously beside him and within him

Garvie

The most striking paradox of the play is that the god who throughout the play promises joy will at the end produce only suffering and horror
The tragedians usually treat Tiresias with great respect and those characters who question his wisdom usually find cause to regret it
Somehow the despair seems all the darker because of the recurring theme of joy that has preceded it

Roisman

neither completely good nor completely bad, he has enough of the positive in him to arouse our sympathy when he is torn to pieces
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 tryinfg to suppress.
Agave’s recognition scene is one of the most painful and harrowing scenes in Greek tragedy. No parent can watch it and not sympathise

Mills

Dionysus is a god in human form; Pentheus is a human but aspire to be like a god in human form
Pentheus sees Dionysus as a fake and his religion as merely an excuse for women to enjoy untrammelled sex and wine
He is not a remote, spectacular deity but a deity who has deliberately disguised himself in human clothing to deceive a mortal into thhreatening and disrespecting him.
Because Pentheus is manipulated into the mistake of believing that he is dealing with an equal, watching the whole experience because highly uncomfortable.

Cartledge

In comedy, there is an ingrained tendency for the norms of the ordinary life to be suspended, subverted or even turned on their heads
His cowardly and effeminate Dionysus seems naturally servile… he has clearly trespassed to far on the human side of the human/ divine divide to qualify any longer for godhead

Bettendorf

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

Dover

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

Macdowell

A saffron-coloured robe and buskins 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 rthewr effeminate they make a ridiculous contrast with exceedingly virile lion-skin and club.