Choral passages sung and danced in unison, sometimes divided into two groups. The type of groupings are unknown. More varied entrances, groupings, etc. More active In both comedy and tragedy, the chorus probably entered after the prolog and then stayed. Functions of the chorus 1. The chorus was usually made up of amateurs - 11 months training - the most expensive part of the production.
In satyrs - lewd pantomime, etc. Most agree more on comic costumes: adapted from everyday Greek life Chiton made too short to emphasize comic elements.
Male characters, not the chorus, wore a phallus. Slaves and old men wore comically exaggerated costume. Women probably wore more everyday costume. Satyr plays: Goatskin loincloth with phallus in front and tail in back. All tragic players except flutes? None survive - made of cork, linen, wood.
In 5 th century, probably not exaggerated. Later became so. Covered whole face - hair, beard, etc. Comedy - more varied often birds, animals, etc. Probably not realistic. Characters had exaggerated masks, some in chorus wore identical masks. Satyr chorus Greek "New Comedy" : The plays of Menander are the only surviving fragments Instead of Old Comedy's focus on social, political, and cultural satire, Greek New Comedy dealt with romantic and domestic problems.
The Didaskalia project at Berkeley has a valuable section on ancient Greek Theatre -- I highly recommend that you visit that site. You can take short study quizzes based on textbook materials by going to the Student Online Learning Center page for our textbook Trumbull, Introduction to Theatre Online Course Dr. Unit III-Page 1. Next Section. Back to the Course Schedule.
Students will examine:. Aeschylus - B. Euripides - B. Sophocles - B. Aristophanes - or B. From the 4th century B. Menander - B. Records of dramas scattered. Commentaries such as Aristotle. Archeological remains of buildings. Visual art - primarily from vase painting. Therefore, the conclusions we make are highly conjectural, but we can discuss the standard accepted views of Greek theatre. Performed for special occasions festivals Athens had four festivals worshipping Dionysus -- Bacchus in Latin, Roman god of wine, fertility, rebirth The son of Zeus [a god] and Semele [a mortal], reared by satyrs, killed, dismembered, and resurrected was actually reborn -- Competitive -- prizes awarded.
Late point of attack Violence and death offstage Sophocles's Ajax is an exception Frequent use of messengers to relate information Usually continuous time of action except Aeschylus's Eumenides Usually single place except Ajax Stories based on myth or history, but varied interpretations of events Focus is on psychological and ethical attributes of characters, rather than physical and sociological.
Tragedy was abandoned in favor of melodramatic treatment. Chorus-half-man, half-beast - satyrs, companions of Dionysus. Based on a "happy idea" - a private peace with a warring power or a sex strike to stop war. Structure of the Comedy: Part One:. Music - most believe music was integral-most dialog was recitative retch-ee-tah-teev'. Cotharnus is a high boot or soft shoe, perhaps elevated with a thick sole. A short cloak may also have been worn, called a chalmys , or a long one called a himation.
Vase painting are our major evidence, but the vases are earlier than the 5 th century B. The plays themselves have few references to costumes. He reduced the heroes to the level of the contemporary. He demonstrates that gods who do evil deeds are not to be considered as gods! Euripides encouraged his audience to criticize antiquated conventions and the restraints of the social order- a human made order.
Euripides ' work promotes a psychological understanding or perception of events. The plays move from darkness to light. He promotes a questioning of the gods, often displaying their actions in a fashion so that they appear ludicrous or at least questionable.
He illustrates how the gods whatever they may do are not responsible for human motivation. His human personages are seen struggling simply to survive in some tolerable manner. Euripides illustrates how human laws deny basic human rights to women, bastards, foreigners and slaves. His plays show the consequences of accepting those laws without question. He illustrates how the heroic deeds of the legends look when carried out by contemporary humans. Euripides discredits belief in the gods that promotes horrors.
In his play Medea, he shows a horrible act of a mother killing her children in the light of unjust and inhumane conventions that drove her to such a horrible act.
In the Trojan Women he shows the Athenians how their victory over the Trojans looked to the women and children of Troy who were raped and killed. The Greeks were made to think by Euripedes works, to think and to question.
Aristophanes BC. Aristophanes was a comic playwright. He was a conservative minded artist. He liked to poke fun at man and his foibles. He delivered hilarious indictments concerning the politics, morality, law, economic theories and educational practices of his time. His plays are an example of old comedy: burlesque, farce, comic opera, pantomime. It was fun with a serious intent to it.
In one play the Lysistrata, the men of a Greek city-state are off at war. The women are lamenting their fate as they await news of the war and learning whether their husbands and sons are still alive or not.
The women do not like their station in life, the folly of war and the devaluation in the eyes of men. They are aware that the men appear to have only one interest in them.
They use this as part of a scheme. The women send word to the front lines that no woman of the polis will have sex with the men while there is still a war going on. When word of this strike reaches the men at war not much times goes by before they have settled the matter and are at peace again. This play was greeted with much laughter by the audience for several reasons.
It was Aristophanes way to condemn both the impatience to go to war and the narrow interest that men appear to have had in women. In another of his plays, the Clouds, Aristophanes is poking fun at the Sophists. These public speakers, debaters, lawyers and educators were respected, feared and despised by many.
The Sophists were destroying respect for the traditions, including the family. They taught a form of skepticism, atheism, cynicism and relativism that was undermining the foundations of the moral and social order. They did have tremendous skills as orators. It is connection with Socrates that this play becomes very important. In this play, the author, a friend of Socrates, uses his name in a comedy that criticizes the Sophists.
It was burlesque and farce; an exaggerated comic depiction. The text and some information about the play The Clouds. Aristophanes and Socrates were well known to one another. They were friends of a sort. They dined together as reported in the Symposium of Plato and Zenophanes. It was in the manner of a Friar's Club Roast were the host of honor is lampooned and kidded by his friends that Aristophanes thought that he would poke a little fun at Socrates.
Aristophanes used the name of Socrates for one of the characters in his play. He made him the head of a school. It was a school of sophistry, something that in real life Socrates not only would have no part of but also would criticize. In the play the character Socrates spends his time suspended in air above the stage looking heavenward in contemplation of the clouds and the heavens and divine nature of things.
Because of this association with the Sophistry, many who saw the play but who had never met Socrates or who had not learned of his actual works, his questioning and questing after virtue and wisdom, these people would mistakenly associate Socrates with being a Sophist and thus the animus born toward the Sophists was directed to Socrates.
Some of the jurors at the trial of Socrates were probably in that group who knew of Socrates only indirectly and through the play. People today born after the events depicted in an Oliver Stone film might take the film to be an actual depiction of the events as they did occur. Those who were alive and experienced those events now that this is not the case.
In the Clouds, Aristophanes satirizes the intelligentsia of his day and decries the new educational programs of the Sophists. The play opens with a father confronted by his son who is begging for more money to pay off gambling debts. The father is a well-to-do businessman who wanted his son to assist him in business instead of going off entertaining himself and gambling. The father agrees to pay off the debt one last time if the son will agree to make something of his life, go off to school and learn how to assist his father in the business.
The son must agree as the debtors are threatening. The father takes his son into town where he knocks on a door and enters a "school" where his son will be taught how to speak well so that he can conduct business, take up legal matters in a court and become educated.
In the school the actor named Socrates appears above the stage engaged in reflections upon heavenly matters. The son is given a course in oratory, rhetoric and sophistry. The son returns home to meet his father.
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