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Text 6. Greek Drama




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Twice a year, writers throughout Greece composed plays that were presented at festivals in Athens to honor Dionysus, the god of human and agricultural fertility. The Cult of Dionysus practiced ritual celebrations. A key part of the rites of Dionysus was the dithyramb. The dithyramb was an ode to Dionysus. It was usually performed by a chorus of fifty men dressed as satyrs – mythological half-human, half-goat servants of Dionysus. They played drums, lyres and flutes, and chanted as they danced around an effigy of Dionysus. Although it began as a purely religious ceremony, like a hymn in the middle of a mass, the dithyramb over time would evolve into stories, drama and the play form. The plays produced on the Athenian stages are one of the lasting contributions of the Greeks. Most of the plays told stories about Greek gods or heroes. They combined religion and history with entertainment. Most popular were the tragedies. Tragedy, derived from the Greek words tragos (goat) and ode (song), told a story that was intended to teach religious lessons. Much like Biblical parables, tragedies were designed to show the right and wrong paths in life.

Tragedies were not simply plays with bad endings, nor pathos (another Greek word, meaning pitiable people or events). They depicted the life voyages of people who steered themselves on collision courses with society, life’s rules or simply fate.

Tragedy did not develop in a vacuum. It was an outgrowth of what was happening at the time in Athens. On one hand, Greek religion had dictated for centuries how people should think and behave. On the other hand, there was a flourishing of free thought and intellectual inquiry. Athens in the 4th and 5th centuries B.C. was bustling with radical ideas like democracy, philosophy, mathematics, science and art.

During a festival for Dionysus, plays were presented from dawn until dark for four days. Three days were devoted to tragic plays. Tragedy was not the only product of Athens’ flourishing theatre culture; comedy also thrived. Not only did the Greeks produce many lasting comedies, they also cast the molds for many Roman, Elizabethan and modern comedies.

The historical development of comedy was not as well-recorded as that of tragedy. Aristotle notes in The Poetics that before his own time comedy was considered trivial and common – though when it was finally recognized as an art form.

Greek comedy had two stages: Old Comedy, represented by Cratinus and Aristophanes; and New Comedy, whose main exponent was Menander.

Comedieswere presented for only one day during the festival. Like comedies today, the Greek comedies made fun of a wide range of topics, from politics to everyday life.

All business in Athens closed during the festivals to Dionysus. Thousands of people headed to the open-air amphitheater to watch the plays. The city even released prisoners from jail so that they could go to the festival.

A jury of Athenian citizens judged the plays and awarded ivy crown to the writer of the winning plays. Many of the prizewinning plays are still performed today.

 


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