GREEK THEATER AND MEDEA
TRAGEDIES
• Began with festivals that honored their gods. Dionysus in particular – “City Dionysia” in Athens.
THREE TYPES OF PLAYS PERFORMED
• Comedy – contemporary figures and problems
- happy ending
- performed only once in competition type atmosphere
• Tragedy – means “goat song” (perhaps referring to goats
sacrificed for the festivals)
- mystic past
- main character suffers downfall
- main character is usually royalty
- tragic flaw: part of their character that leads to the downfall
• Satire – mythological subject handled in comedic manner
GREEK THEATER
• All actors were men.
• Used masks – expression (mournful, smiling, leering), acoustics, character differentiation.
• The Chorus – group of actors who moved and sang together – acted as one character and spoke in unison. Sets the mood, summarizes action, represents point of view, sides with various characters, and warns of disasters.
GREEK THEATER (CONTINUED)
• Incorporated units of time, place, and action, which meant that there was no scene change, and no complicated subplots; the play took place in one day and in one place and focused on one event.
• Violent action took place offstage; messengers told the audience what happened.
• Audience knew the story ahead of time. The emotion of the character is what they came to see.
GREEK THEATER
TERMINOLOGY
• Orchestra: “dancing space”
- circular
- area where chorus could dance and sing and interact
with actors on stage near the skene
• Theatron: “viewing space”
- part of the hill side, wrapped around the orchestra
• Skene: “tent”
- directly behind the stage
- usually decorated like a palace, temple, or other building
- had at least one set of doors
- access to roof
• Parados: “passageways”
- used by chorus and actors to make entrances and exits
EURIPIDES AND HIS TIME (484—406? B.C.)
• Euripides wrote during a time when the Greek city-state of Athens was the center of the civilized world.
• Athenians believed barbarians populated the rest of the world. (When people today discuss the Greek ideal, they refer to ideas and traits valued by the Athenians— reason over passion, order and discipline over chaos, and civic duty and community over individual goals and desires.
THE PLAYWRIGHT AND HIS TIME
• Athenians were disgusted by expressions of excessive emotion or passion; they considered irrational behavior a threat to the social order.
• Euripides’ plays were not always well received by the ancient Athenians, as he strayed from their ideal. He shunned public service, perhaps even lived alone in a cave, and wrote plays that featured deeply flawed characters.
THE PLAYWRIGHT AND HIS TIME (CONTINUED)
• It is important to know, too, that during Euripides’ lifetime, Greece entered into the Peloponnesian Wars. These wars between Athens and Sparta lasted for three decades (431—404 B.C.) and eventually led to the downfall of Greek civilization. War and human passion won out over rational civilization. Euripides’ plays reflected that reality, which is why Athenians were wary of his works and modern audiences continue to read them.
LITERARY TERMS
• TRAGIC HEROES – Characters whose fatal flaw or frailty is the key to their undoing. The lessons they learn alter them forever. Tragic heroes serve as symbols that provide audiences with a chance to experience a sort of moral cleansing. They suffer so the audiences don’t have to.
• ARCHETYPAL CHARACTERS – Characters who embody universal human traits and thus transcend the culturally specific events of their stories. For example, the archetype of the innocent young hero taking a quest and being mentored along the way is found in everything from ancient myths and fairy tales to contemporary films like Star Wars. A reader can easily picture an archetypal character coming to live in an entirely different setting and plot.
MEDEA BY EURIPIDES
• When Medea was first presented in 431 B.C. along with the other dramas at Dionysia, the Athenian festival celebrating the god Dionysus, it came in dead last in the popular vote.
• Critics generally consider Medea an archetypal character rather than a tragic hero. She does not learn anything about herself. In fact, she is just as self-righteous at the end of the play as at the beginning. Medea is the archetype of jealous passion. We don’t identify with her type so much as we hope to avoid it.
MEDEA (CONTINUED)
• The mythical Medea was the: daughter of the king of Colchis, niece of the sorceress Circe, and granddaughter of the sun gold Helios.
• Although not a Greek, she was a powerful and passionate woman who entered Greek mythology through her association with Jason, one of ancient Greece’s greatest heroes.
