Greek Theater

GREEK THEATER WAS VERY DIFFERENT from what we call theater today. It was, first of all, part of a religious festival. To attend a performance of one of these plays was an act of worship, not entertainment or intellectual pastime. But it is difficult for us to even begin to understand this aspect of the Greek theater, because the religion in question was very different from modern religions. The god celebrated by the performances of these plays was Dionysus, a deity who lived in the wild and was known for his subversive revelry. The worship of Dionysus was associated with an ecstasy that bordered on madness.

A second way in which Greek theater was different from modern theater is in its cultural centrality: every citizen attended these plays. Greek plays were put on at annual festivals (at the beginning of spring, the season of Dionysus), often for as many as 15,000 spectators at once. At the end of each year’s festivals, judges would vote to decide which playwright’s play was the best.

In these competitions, Sophocles was king. Sophocles (497-406) is the second of the three great Athenian tragic poets (Aeschylus and Euripides), and the one with whose plays we are most familiar: the names of Ajax, Antigone, and Oedipus are well-known. Of his 118 plays, however, only seven remain, in which people are confronted with extremely difficult situations. It is said that to express his ideas, he had to change the way tragedies were played, by adding a third (and once even a fourth) actor, and enlarging the chorus. Sophocles was also active in Athenian politics. In 441/440, 428, and 423/422 he served as army commander, and after the defeat at Sicily, he was given special responsibilities to lead Athens out of this crisis (413). It is thought that he won the first prize at the Athenian festival eighteen times.

Sophocles lived a long life, but not long enough to witness the downfall of his Athens. Toward the end of his life, Athens became entangled in a war with other city-states jealous of its prosperity and power, a war that would end the glorious century during which Sophocles lived. This political fall also marked an artistic fall, for the unique art of Greek theater began to fade and eventually died. Since then, we have had nothing like it. Nonetheless, we still try to read it, and we often misunderstand it by thinking of it in terms of the categories and assumptions of our own arts. Greek theater still needs to be read, but we must not forget that, because it is so alien to us, reading these plays calls not only for analysis, but also for imagination.

: Aristotle’s Definition of Tragedy

In his Poetics, Aristotle defined tragedy as “an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each king of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its Catharsis of such emotions . . . Every tragedy, therefore, must have six parts, which parts determine is quality—namely, Plot, Character, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, and Melody.