GREEK DRAMA AND PROMETHEUS BOUND

First: a distinctionTwo (main) kinds of Greek Drama

Tragedy – Violent and weighty: dealt with big themes and important people. Prometheus Bound is a tragedy.

Comedy – Silly, bawdy, often highly sexual. The word comedy comes from the Greek “komos” – or, a drunken procession. Usually they mock actual living people (like Socrates).

These categories still apply in Shakespeare’s time. Each year, at the Murray Shakespeare Festival, we usually see one of each.

Tragedy comes from “tragedoia,” which means “Goat Song” – a couple of reasons why

1. The winner got a goat.2. Sometimes a goat would be sacrificed to

Dionysius during a series of plays.3. The goat sacrificed would be a substitution

for a human (readers of the Old Testament will recognize this; think Abraham and Isaac ) – a gift or penance to the gods.

4. The hero of a play, like a goat, must be sacrificed. For what, exactly? Often some kind of hubris, or desire to be on an equal level with the gods. Or perhaps a willing ignorance of the gods commands. Here’s a cool explanation of this:

http://cgim.dbq.edu/cgim/greece05/greek_tragedy.htm

Festival of DionysiusIn the 6th century B.C., there would be a festival to Dionysius – the god of wine and fertility.

The events would involve singing, drinking, recitations of Homer, and contests during which plays were written to be performed.

This would continue in Athens, the heart of Greece, for years to come.

The Greek TheaterHere is a view of the amphitheater at Epidaurus – it goes 50+ rows back and seats about 14,00000. Here’s a view from the top. There was no lighting, obviously, or anything to help the acoustics. However, visitors to the amphitheater even today note the remarkable way that sound caries.

The Theater of Dionysius Here’s where plays were performed in Athens:

In the fifth century, when Prometheus Bound was performed, the audience would have been mostly men. Much like modern stadiums and arenas, the theater would have been multi-purpose: political assemblies and speeches would occur there as well.

• Theatron = area of seats for the audience hollowed out from the hillside

• Orchestra = large area in front of the stage where the chorus sang and danced

• Parados = walled walkway used by the chorus to enter and exit the stage

• Pro-scenium = a long, low stage behind the orchestra

• Skene = building that contained the actors’ dressing rooms

A Diagram of the Theater

In addition:The “mechane” – the “machine” would lift actors from above the “skene” building

The “ekkyklema” was a trolley that would come out of the “skene” – whenever this happened, it meant that the scene shifted to the indoors.

ActorsThat’s right: Actors. Women were not allowed on stage, so men even played the women’s roles.All actors wore masks. They didn’t rely on facial expressions – think about it: how would the audience in the top row have seen them?Instead, actors used their bodies: lots of gestures, very physical.Performances were highly artificial.

Realism in Modern TheaterThis is Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire from the late 1940s. Brando was famed for giving highly realistic, emotional performances.Think about it: you’re in a theater, so you know what’s happening in front of you isn’t real – but actors like Brando (in theater and movies) bring to the stage a sense of authenticity . You can even see this in his clothing.

Realism in Ancient Greek Theater• The Greek Theater didn’t care about

realism. Actors would play multiple roles.• The stories were meant to express a

“version” of the story, but the audiences (and playwrights) knew that this was a poetic version.• Actors wore masks, would shout their

lines at the top of their lungs.• Things that had happened over the

courses of days would be reduced down to a few hours.

The ChorusIn addition, a “Chorus” would speak lines both to the audience and to the actors.

There were about fifteen of them – sometimes they would be speak all at once. Sometimes they would alternate lines.

This is how the Oceanids work in Prometheus Bound.

Sometimes Choruses represent “the average person” or even the audience themselves – they provide a commentary on the events that happen. Sometimes they tell the audience how to interpret what they’ve seen. Or they represent conventional wisdom, often to contradict the wild ideas of the main character.

Watch this!Go to this link: I want you to begin watching at 17:00 and go to 27:00.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Byc6XwoMDSV8emxucGlGUDhHUGs

This is a performance from about 30 years ago of another play by Aeschylus called Agamemnon. They tried to recreate Greek Drama as close as they could to an actual performance.

On the quiz, I’ll ask you to write a bit about this, so make some notes as you watch.

One more thing:Prometheus Bound is a tragedy. What that means, more clearly is:- It’s about a person from a high position

- Tragedy couldn’t be about common people. Prometheus is a god.- They are supposed to be “great” people, greater than the rest of us as an

audience.

- That person falls because of a fatal flaw- Often, this is “hubris,” or pride. This may be a sin against the gods.

- As an audience, we are supposed to experience catharsis – which literally means purgation . . .

CatharsisTherefore, when we watch a tragedy we are supposed to feel “pity and fear.” Tragedies have High goals – you don’t watch them passively. So the question is: how does Prometheus Bound – which is a tragedy- attempt to make us feel “pity and fear.”

Catharsis – Read this short section from the Internet Encyclopedia of PhilosophyFirst of all, the tr agic catharsis might be a purgation. Fear can obviously be an insidious thing that undermines life and poisons it with anxiety. It

wouldbe good to flush this feeling from our systems, bring it into the open, and clear the air. This may explain the appeal of horror movies, that they redirect our fears toward something external, grotesque, and finally ridiculous, in order to puncture them. On the other hand, fear might have a secret allure, so that what we need to purge is the desire for the thrill that comes with fear. The horror movie also provides a safe way to indulge and satisfy the longing to feel afraid, and go home afterward satisfied; the desire is purged, temporarily, by being fed. Our souls are so many-headed that opposite satisfactions may be felt at the same time, but I think these two really are opposite. In the first sense of purgation, the horror movie is a kind of medicine that does its work and leaves the soul healthier, while in the second sense it is a potentially addictive drug. Either explanation may account for the popularity of these movies among teenagers, since fear is so much a fact of that time of life. For those of us who are older, the tear-jerker may have more appeal, offering a way to purge the regrets of our lives in a sentimental outpouring of pity. As with fear, this purgation too may be either medicinal or drug-like.This idea of purgation, in its various forms, is what we usually mean when we call something cathartic. People speak of watching football, or boxing, as a catharsis of violent urges, or call a shouting match with a friend a useful catharsis of buried resentment. This is a practical purpose that drama may also serve, but it has no particular connection with beauty or truth; to be good in this purgative way, a drama has no need to be good in any other way. No one would be tempted to confuse the feeling at the end of a horror movie with what Aristotle calls "the tragic pleasure," nor to call such a movie a tragedy. But the English word catharsis does not contain everything that is in the Greek word. Let us look at other things it might mean.Catharsis in Greek can mean purification. While purging something means getting rid of it, purifying something means getting rid of the worse or baser parts of it. It is possible that tragedy purifies the feelings themselves of fear and pity. These arise in us in crude ways, attached to all sorts of objects. Perhaps the poet educates our sensibilities, our powers to feel and be moved, by refining them and attaching them to less easily discernible objects. There is a line in The Wasteland, "I will show you fear in a handful of dust." Alfred Hitchcock once made us all feel a little shudder when we took showers. The poetic imagination is limited only by its skill, and can turn any object into a focus for any feeling. Some people turn to poetry to find delicious and exquisite new ways to feel old feelings, and consider themselves to enter in that way into a purified state. It has been argued that this sort of thing is what tragedy and the tragic pleasure are all about, but it doesn't match up with my experience. Sophocles does make me fear and pity human knowledge when I watch the Oedipus Tyrannus, but this is not a refinement of those feelings but a discovery that they belong to a surprising object. Sophocles is not training my feelings, but using them to show me something worthy of wonder.

Finally:Prometheus Bound was supposedly written by Aeschylus, perhaps the greatest of all Greek playwrights.

However, this is disputed. It may be more like a play written in the style of Aeschylus.

The question of its authorship is interesting, because it deals with one of the oldest Greek myths, and it makes a point about it.