This week we're moving into tragedy and to
an entirely new genre in which myths are
conveyed in antiquity.
Up till now we've seen epic poetry, on the
one hand, and then we saw some examples of
the Homeric hymns.
All of the things that we've looked at up
till now are long narrative poems, some of
them very extended with Homer and Hesiod
and all of them use this dactylic
hexameter form where we had a specialized
epic diction that was put to use to tell
tales of the past and of the gods in a
certain kind of framework.
We're going to move to something
completely different now, when we get into
tragedy.
We're talking about another way of
presenting mythic material that has it's
own constraints and it's own
possibilities.
Which are very different than what happens
in epic poetry, than what epic poems are
capable of doing.
Tragic poets are dealing with much shorter
time frames.
What's happening up on stage, usually
represents exactly the amount of time that
you and I sit viewing what happens up on
stage.
There's more pressure put on that
particular smaller time frame, to tell
the, the full story in this small bit of
time.
So we have a lot of more elusive kind of
reference to broader mythological
traditions that get brought in and brought
to bear.
Typically we are focusing on very small
window of time and it's chosen as a crux
moment, something pivotal is happening in
a larger mythic strand.
We concentrate on this crux moment and
the, what happens before and after unfolds
as background and forward looking around
this very a tight focus that we have in
the story.
Tragic time is usually now.
What's happening on stage is happening
supposedly in the now time, and you and I
are brought back to some earlier time.
That is meant to be unfolding right in
front of our very arrs, eyes.
The people that we see up on stage are
actual.
Real people that are inhabiting characters
and acting like other people.
I suppose goes without saying.
But casting our mind back across how we've
seen myth being treated in the course up
until now.
We haven't seen that.
We've seen an epic poet who stands up and
recites.
And tells you all the things in the third
person that some other group of people
did.
Now, we'll have people stand up and in the
first person, represent themselves as if
they are Agamemnon or as if they are
Clytemnestra or all the other characters
we've been reading about.
There's a sense of absolute make believe
that's happening here.
This is, again, different than what we see
in epic.
People are standing up, pretending to be
To the other people.
When my, young son walks around and back
in the early days he used to play make
believe and you kind of wonder well that's
sort of interesting and slightly childish
thing to pretend like you're someone else
but this is exactly what's happening in
this genre.
And the strangeness of people walking
around pretending to be other people I
think is by now completely lost on us;
we're used to this genre.
But at the time the Greeks were really
inventing a whole genre of tragedy it was
surely something that was striking and
noteworthy.
Bringing to bear, actually bringing to
life these ancient characters and the
figures up on stage was something that
would have had a bit of a magical
resonance to it.
The actors are all going to be male, they
portray characters that are male or
female.
And they wear masks of different kinds.
So we don't actually get to see their
facial expressions.
Instead, there's a kind of stylized sense,
that's brought into the make believe.
That just they, in their own persona, are
being covered up by an exterior masks.
Which is often, which is typically very
rudimentary.
Doesn't have a lot of elaborate kinds of
decorative items on it.
It's just a way of hiding the normal
person's face and putting a tragic mask on
the outside of it.
Tragedies start in the sixth century BCE.
They start to come to be in ancient
Athens.
They come to a full fruition in the fifth
century BCE.
This is where the most important of our
tragedians show up and we have a major
threesome that survives from antiquity of
Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.
We'll be looking at examples of each of
these figures.
Plays they were shortly after they had a.
Appeared themselves, historically, on the
scene embraced very widely as the
obviously greatest of all these trag
tragic poets from antiquity.
They also happened to survive to us, in
some and a little bit more detail than
others.
Some of them, we have more plays from than
others but these are the three greats
recognized in their own time as such.
Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
The context for a tragedy is quite a bit
different than what we've seen with our
versions of epic poetry.
Remember when we talked about Homer or
Hesiod being sung we talked about a
context of aristocrats having a dinner
party and maybe wanting to have some
entertainment after the dinner party.
When we talked about the Homeric hymns we
talked about festival context and these
hymns being sung in honor of gods at
festivals that were given in the gods'
honor.
For tragedy very different.
We have people that come to an outdoor
theater, a space analogous to the one.
We see here a Roman version of one of
these, that we see in a beautiful form
preserved, in Sicily.
Come to an outdoor space and sit around
in, a large.
Usual, likely to be much more primitive
then what we see here.
These big stone versions of these theaters
are more of them are Roman examples.
The Greek versions would have been less
well of, less monumental of their
architecture.
Seating would have been more rudimentary,
maybe wooden benches maybe just a grassy
hill.
And then the, the, the.
Large stone buildings that we see around
the theaters, would not have been there
for at, at a, at a, in Greek times.
So we have context in which you go to this
outside space.
You come and in doing so, what, you
understand yourself as.
We're engaging in something that's
happening in honor of Dionysus.
Dionysus was the patron god of the
theater.
And he was drawn out, often times very
explicitly as being the focus of what the,
was happening in the theater.
It was meant as a festival in his honor.
The most important of these festivals
happened in Athens and happened very
specifically centered on Dionysus.
So when we talk about the theater we're
gonna talk about this figure of Dionysus.
He's gonna come up at a couple of points
when we deal with the tragedies themselves
and in particular one.
We look at the Bacchi, we'll see that
Dionysus indeed shows up as a character on
our stage.
Think about that.
A festival in honor of Dionysus, in which
Dionysus himself is going to participate.
Now drawing our mind a little bit to how
these plays are staged.
You and I as an audience actually get up,
go to this physical space and watch it
happen.
We go collectively to, the whole groups of
us.
They are watching this thing.
We're not sitting in one small dinner
party and having a, a, an entertainment
that's been hired on for us.
We're actually going to a place where many
100s of us could sit around and watch this
entertainment unfold before us.
We see a couple of features when we walk
in.
There's a very plain stage up front, only
a few only a couple of meters off the
ground.
Not, not high.
And that plain stage, up front, has scene,
scenery behind it.
We're not going to see it here in our
archeological example, but it has scenery
hanging up behind it.
That scenery is going to be very plain and
very sparse.
In the middle of it though always, is
going to be.
A door, there's a door in the middle of
the back of the stage and usually when
we're watching a tragedy, there's going to
be stuff that's happening behind that
door.
So as we're watching we turn around and
look at the door and say I wonder what's
happening back there, huh what could that
be?
And then at some point in the play they'll
be characters that disappear behind the
door and we'll say oh, what's happening
back there?
And at some point in the play the doors
might just burst open and we'll find out
whats happened back there behind the door.
Some kind of awful, ugly stuff has going
on.
So we've got a very spare stage, a very
spare screen behind us, and a door there
that's a focus of a good deal of our
attention keeping an eye and an ear on
that is a very good thing.
Now, the actors, we have a few of them up
on stage they have these masks on and not
very elaborate costumes and they are
reciting lines.
Imitating make believe were delivering
direct lines in the first person of the
characters that they were representing.
In front of the actors is going to be a
chorus.
The chorus has a liminal role.
They have a role in between you and I and
the actors up on stage.
You and I are out here in the audience.
Up on stage are the actors that are these
individuals back here.
In between us, in the zone.
In between, this is not very well spelled
out here in this Roman example.
But there would have been a large space in
front of the stage, before where you and I
were sitting, where the chorus moved
around.
This is a group of people, the chorus
comes in a group, a dozen give or take.
And these people as they're engaged in the
tragedy they provide a kind of a
collective commentary on what's happening
up on stage.
So there will be actors up there that are
delivering lines.
They'll have dialog back and forth and
then, the chorus might sort of jump in and
say have, have, have, are you sure you've
remembered everything about the story that
you're telling this other character?
Perhaps you can elaborate on that.
And, as a group, they'll speak and then
the actor might respond to the chorus and
say, what are you people talking about?
What do you know?
The chorus has gets engaged with the
actors up on stage.
The chorus will also turn around and
address us.
They might, well they typically worry
about what's happening up on stage.
As the characters are going through the
motions of what's going to happen to them,
the chorus might turn around and look at
us and say, can you believe what's
happening up there on stage?
Those people, look what they're doing, oh
my goodness, don't they realize what's
about to happen?
And then they'll turn around to the people
on stage.
Don't you guys realize what's happening?
Then they'll turn to us and say, they
don't seem to realize what's happening.
They work back and forth between us and
the characters up on stage.
They are also, in addition to being this
kind of go-between in terms of the content
of the play, they're also physically in
between you and I and the people up on
stage.
They occupy this minimal space in-between
the stage and the general audience
seating.
Also, they're.
Intermediate in terms of their numbers.
Those up on stage are single individuals
speaking for themselves.
You and I out in the audience are a whole
collective set of eyeballs watching what's
happening there and we all react
collectively to what's happening there.
The chorus is somewhere in between a
single individual and a collection; they
all react as a single individual though
sometimes half of them will say one piece
of dialogue and the other half will say
the other and they respond back and forth
to each other.
But they have a collectivity to them that
mirrors us but they have an individual,
oftentimes, individually expressed
reaction to things that they express in a
single voice.
So they have all these kind of roles as
mediating between us and the people up on
stage.
The chorus sings songs,
Choral odes are an important part of
tragedy.
Often times what comes out in these odes
is going to be really important narrative
background.
So as the actors are up on stage and
they're having some disagreement or fight
about what, the, the some important piece
of con that's con, some consequential
piece in your own lives.
That chorus will jump in and start to sing
the song that tell us why it is that these
two are so upset with each other.
There will be a background story that
comes out through the choral ode.
Those odes are sometimes tricky to read.
They are dense, they are very illusive,
the trididience, the stragic poets or
assuming that you and I and the audience
have seen a lot of this stuff already.
So just in the way that if we go to
Hollywood movie that is a sequel they
might assume you've seen a whole bunch of
the movies that are, are before the sequel
so also a tragedy. It's, it's assumed that
you're dealing with a highly literate
audience.
Literate in the sense of having seen lots
of tragedies and, have a sense of what the
tradition is.
So it allows the poets to say a lot which
is to mention a few proper names or
specific places.
It taxes us then as modern readers to make
sure that we're up to speed on the
traditions that they are referencing.
And I'll do my best to try to pull out
those traditions and highlight them such
as they are relevant to the plays, but
there will be many more that are referred
to in the tragedies that we will only be
able to make mention of in our class.Ah,
So, the more materials that you want to
dig into and look into yourself the better
it is going to be for you.
The stories that we are allowed.
Or, that are capable of being told in this
genre are compressed.
We already talked about this compression
in time.
They're also compressed in terms of the
people that are involved.
We've got these three, you know, few, a
few people up on stage.
One, two, maybe three.
There's something really intense that's
happening to them.
It's as if we're in a kind of pressure
cooker or a vise.
The atmosphere in a tragedy is dense.
It's almost too much.
It's, it's, it's as if things are just
kinda packed on top of one another.
This compressed space produces an
environment that's seems kinda
claustrophobic.
If only we could find a way out, we never
going to be find a way out in tragedy.
In that way, that epic poetry might be
described as being centrifugal, or pushing
ourselves to the very edges of the earth.
The movement in tragedy is very much
centripetal, it moves towards the middle
and people get confined and sucked into
spaces that they might otherwise have
wished to escape, but escape is not gonna
be possible, sadly, for many of the people
that we have a look at.
It's also, going to be a different kind of
story that's told.
The fantastic elements that are possible
in an, in epic.
We could have marvelous voyages across
vast spanses of time, meeting strange
people, on one side of the world to
another.
We can go to the underworld and come back.
A lot of these adventure sides of the
story are not going to be possible to do
in tragedy.
It's very difficult to represent these up
on stage, and the Greeks mostly don't do
that.
Instead, what we have is dialogue.
We have one person speaking, and another
person answering, in that back and forth
of human to human interconnection.
S, first person singular to first person
singular.
It's this connections that the tragenians
work and rework and dive into.
When we enter this world, it will be a
world that is characterized by intimacy.
Sometimes intimacy is wonderfully
supportive and nurturing.
Sometimes intimacy can be nasty and mean.
We gonna see all these dimensions very
much worked out in the deep and
cauldron-like psychology that we'll see
exhibited in many of the plays we're about
to read.
