|
The Origins of
Tragedy A.
‘Drama’ is an ancient Dorian word meaning
‘doing’ or ‘action’. Drama is a mode of artistic expression that works
through action (praxis), not
narration as in the other forms of poetry: epic (like Homer’s Odyssey) and lyric (like the choral
odes in Oedipus Rex). Drama is more
closely related to ritual than the other poetic modes. Action or plot is at
the heart of its purpose. You should think of action not simply as special
effects or martial arts spectacles like in an ‘Arnold Schwarzenegger’ movie.
Action is driven by the plot of a story. A good plot has fascinating twists
and turns, sudden surprises and hopefully an ending that devastates you.
That’s pretty hard to do, especially if everyone in the audience knows the
story, as was the case in Oedipus Rex. Aristotle, the great Athenian philosopher,
defined action as a movement of the
spirit through a whole community. If you have been in the audience at the
end of a terrific play or movie, then you know what that means. In a great
work of art action moves to a catharsis, a moment of sympathy yet terror,
what Aristotle define as the simultaneous evocation of pity and fear. B.
Religion of Dionysus: Drama, and in particular the art form
of tragedy, grew out of the worship of the god Dionysus. His cult spread
throughout the Mediterranean during the eighth or ninth centuries b.c. with
the cultivation of the grape and the discovery of its special properties when
distilled into wine. Dramatic plays developed as part of the worship of
Dionysus. Other religions also had festivals, contests, sacrifices,
processions and music, but the religion of Dionysus had certain peculiarities
that gave rise to the art form of drama. 1)
The cult
became popular in Greece after the epic and lyric forms of poetry had fully
formed and could thus be used in drama. 2)
Dionysus’
story, as you have learned, is very diversified in content. There are many
stories to tell. The dithyramb or
hymn to Dionysus could take many forms. (Dithyramb
literally means ‘double birth’.) 3)
The religion
was ecstatic in nature. The celebrants believed that wine infused mortals
with the spirit of the god in a form of possession. They believed that they
were changed into the thiasus
or sacred herd of Dionysus. The thiasus
would dance to the sound of flutes, clappers and drums, dressed in masks and
skins and tails. The men were transformed into satyrs, the women into bacchae. Here we have the beginning of
the practice of representing someone or something other than oneself, the
mimetic art of acting. Tragedy: Tragos literally means ‘goat’. One who
dressed up and performed as a follower of Dionysus in the parade of costumed
animals became known as a tragedian. Tragedy literally means ‘goat-song’.
That is a pretty grim idea if one realizes that animal sacrifices climaxed
the celebration of the Dionysian revels. Eating the flesh of the goat and
wearing its skin allowed the participant to become the animal itself. In its
origins, tragedy enacted this bloody, intoxicated rite. The teaching of Dionysus was experienced not learned. There was
no study of a sacred text, no guidance from a priest. Dionysus’ wisdom was
communicated through participation in the ecstatic experience: direct union
with the divine. Orphism was a
feature of many ancient religions: “Thou shalt be a god, not a mortal.” Attic Tragedy During the centuries after Homer’s
great epics came to dominate all of Greek culture, the bloody rituals of the
Dionysian revels evolved into the high art of Attic Tragedy. The great
tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides developed out of a religion
featuring orgiastic ritual ceremonies that enacted the myths of
Dionysus. Even though intoxication
and sacrifice ceased to play a part in the actual performance, tragedy
remained a sacred ritual enacted to conjure the spirit of Dionysus himself,
and blood is still shed, even if symbolically, in every tragedy. The form of Attic tragedy developed
from the dithyramb: a spectacle
involving singing, dancing, music and poetry combined, like a half-time
spectacle at a football game. The exarchontes
(leaders of the dithyramb) were the
poets who wrote the hymns to Dionysus and the choreographers who led the
satyr dances that accompanied these songs. A typical performance enacted the
story of Dionysus crossing the sea, taken prisoner by pirates, then freed by
the satyrs. The pirates are thrown into the sea and become dolphins. Then the
satyrs rejoice with Dionysus as he arrives in Greece- just as he does each
spring. The festival of Dionysus at Athens
became the site for theatrical innovations that created the art form of
tragedy. In the sixth century b.c., an exarchonte
named Thespis separated a performer from the thiasus, or chorus, of singers and dancers of the dithyramb. Thespis named this
performer the hypocrites
(answerer). His function was to engage in dialogue with the chorus leader.
These dialogues took place between the song and dance numbers and eventually
developed into little scenes or epeisodion.
In essence, Thespis had invented the modern actor as we know it and the art
of playwrighting. In 534 b.c. Thespis brought his
travelling troupe of performers to Athens to participate in the local
Festival of Dionysus held on the Acropolis. You can imagine the procession: a
float, on top of which stands a huge statue of Dionysus, is drawn by a herd
of flute playing satyrs and bacchae
to the holy precinct where performances take place. Eventually this flat site
next to a hill became the site of the great Theatre of Dionysus that stands
to this day on the Acropolis. Thespis’ avant-garde innovation, interspersing
scenes of dialogue in between the great choral dithyrambs, caught on quickly, and within the next fifty years,
Aeschylus and Sophocles had refined tragedy into a timeless art form. It all
happened that quickly! Why is dialogue such an essential
component of tragedy? Why not just stick to the ecstatic songs and dances and
the spectacular special effects (like the pirate attack)? The answer goes to
the heart of what tragedy is all about. First, the early playwrights
discovered that plot was the most powerful way to entertain an audience. The
spectacle of a character in motion toward a terrible climax transfixed the
audience. Dialogue advances the action of tragedy towards a great moment of
revelation about the truth of its central character. The truth revealed by catharsis is deeply ironic. The truth
reveals the nature of what it means to be human in this mysterious and
violent world. Tragedy looks at the deepest and most
disturbing facts of life and discovers in them mysterious double meanings.
Why must we die? Why are humans capable of inflicting such cruelty on one
another? Are we in control of our fates or have they been written for us by
the gods who personify the immutable facts of life? Where can we find justice
in the world? The heroes of Greek tragedy, endowed with our best qualities:
intelligence, strength, courage, perseverance and dedication to principle (or
honor), are placed in situations beyond the limits of their understanding or
control. Their protective covering is stripped from them, and the true nature
of humanity is exposed. Typically, the climax of a tragedy is
terrifying and horrible; catharsis always involves blood. However, there is
another equally important aspect of catharsis
that cannot be extricated from the horror: awe at an insight achieved into
the truth. Tragedy is deeply ironic. It celebrates the facts of life and
allows the actors and audience to participate open-eyed in the horror and
splendor of existence. Tragedy is a ritual in honor of the
great god Dionysus. As in the earliest ecstatic ceremonies, the revels of
tragedy climax with blood, but the spilling of the blood nourishes the earth
and makes the approaching harvest possible. At the climax of Oedipus Rex,
when Oedipus enters blinded and bloody, yet finally in possession of the
truth, we too participate in catharsis,
and for a moment, we too become like gods, truly alive. Aeschylus and
Sophocles Three of the four greatest tragedians
of all time were contemporaries, living in the same city, competing in the
same dramatic festivals. Euripides, who we don’t have time to discuss, was
the third Athenian tragedian. The only other playwright in their league was
Shakespeare. Aeschylus
(525-456 b.c.) was a
general at Marathon, the great victory of the Greeks over the Persians which
ushered in the golden age of Athens. His greatest cycle of tragedies, The Oresteia, tells a story familiar
to you from Homer. Remember Agamemnon’s greeting when he returned home from
Troy? In Homer, it was Clytemnestra’s lover Aegisthus, who murdered him. In
Aeschylus’ version of the myth, Agamemnon,
it is Clytemnestra herself who does the dirty deed, and she is given a much
more palatable motivation for murdering her husband: vengeance. Agamemnon had
sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to free the Greek fleet from off shore
winds so that the warriors could sail for Troy. Clytemnestra waited ten long
years to avenge her daughter’s death. In the second part of the trilogy, Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and
Clytemnestra returns home and meets with his sister Electra. When Orestes
finds out about the murder of his father, the two plot vengeance. It is no
problem for Orestes to kill Aegisthus, but killing his mother is another
story. After a great confrontation with her, Orestes does the deed and is
immediately assailed by three supernatural spirits, the Furies, who pursue
him and torture him as he wanders aimlessly about the earth. In the final
play of the trilogy, The Eumenides,
Orestes arrives in Athens still tortured by the Furies who will not allow him
to forgive himself for the murder of his mother. Orestes pleads his case
before Athena herself. He claims that he has been taught by his suffering and
misery that no crime, even his mother’s, even his own, is beyond atonement.
The Furies accuse Orestes, but he claims that he has been cleansed of his
guilt. Athena accepts his plea and persuades the Furies to accept it as well.
With this new law of mercy established (and the precedent of the justice
of legal trial not blood vengeance), the Furies are transformed into the
Eumenides, the protectors of all suppliants. The cycle of vengeance has been
broken. In Aeschylus’ tragic vision, human evil
and Orestes’ terrible fate are subsumed into a profound religious experience.
Compare this catharsis to the one
that occurs at the end of Oedipus Rex. Aeshylus was the true creator
of Greek tragedy. He elevated the theatre from its origins in satyr dances
and orgiastic rituals into a profound philosophical experience without losing
the ecstatic impact of the ritual’s cathartic experience. He joined thought
and emotion into a profound ceremonial experience. Aeschylus’ primary theatrical
innovation was the introduction of a second actor to join Thespis’ hypokrites. Consequently, dialogue
developed much more freely and became the central focus of the action. The
chorus was reduced in size and began to withdraw from the center of the
spectacle. Sophocles
(496-406 b.c.) built
on Aeschylus’ model (a far easier job than Aeschylus’ feat of creating an art
form from a pagan tradition.) Sophocles competed with Aeschylus in several
festivals and won the prize in 468 b.c. His career spanned the period of Athens’ greatest political and cultural
achievements. He was a friend of Pericles and Herodotus; he served as
Treasurer in the government and as a general in the Poloponessian Wars. He
was one of the three commissioners who governed Athens after she was defeated
by Sparta and the great golden age of
Athens came to an end. Sophocles wrote Oedipus Rex in 425 b.c., after Athens had been defeated in war
and when plague was raging in the city. The great Athenian experiment in
democracy was drawing to an inglorious end. In his plays, Sophocles introduced a third actor and reduced the chorus even
further in size (to twelve). Thus the hero was forced to shoulder even more
of the burden of the action. The hero’s attitude in the face of
god-determined destiny becomes the focus. Sophocles created the five act play.
The great philosopher Aristotle saw Oedipus
Rex and declared the play the model tragedy in his Poetics. Nearly two thousand years later, during the Renaissance
in Europe, Oedipus Rex remained the
model tragedy. Shakespeare studied the Classics, and his great tragedies are
written in response to Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some Interesting Websites Associated with Greek Tragedy Perseus Project: The Development of Athenian Tragedy http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0009&query=head%3D%23171 The Ancient City of Athens http://www.indiana.edu/~kglowack/athens/sites.html Recreation of the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens http://didaskalia.berkeley.edu/stagecraft/TDA/index.html Dr. J’s Illustrated Greek Theatre http://nimbus.temple.edu/~jsiegel/lectures/theater/greektheater.htm Ancient Theatre Interactive Mask http://didaskalia.berkeley.edu/stagecraft/mask_mm/rotmask1.html Iliad Game http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~loxias/iliad/iliadstart3.htm The Antigone Game http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~loxias/antigone/antigonegame001.htm |