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Tragedy and Comedy
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Tragedy and Comedy in Theater Dionysus, the god of wine was not Greek in origin, but a northern foreigner, who also stood for fertility in its more openly sexual aspects: his celebrants originally carried phalluses in his procession, and were themselves often dressed as goats. In its original form the cult inspired its followers with wild frenzy in which they tore up and ate the flesh of living animals, and so acted out the devouring of the god himself. The cult was tamer in Greece where songs were early written for god. From these songs there developed at Athens the art of tragedy: the word means ‘goat-songs,” and shows the close connection with god Dionysus. At first largely sung by a chorus and formally religious in tone, the tragedies began to deal with more personal human problems, and individual actors’ roles became more and more important. The first competition to choose the best tragedy was sponsored by Peisistratus in 534 B.C., and annual contest were held thereafter. Many hundreds of tragedies were written; comparatively few have survived in full-probably the best-and we have fragments of others. The later Greek philosopher Aristotle believed that it was the purpose of tragedy to arouse pity and terror in the spectators; to purge or purify them by causing them to reflect on the fearful punishments that highly placed men and women bought upon themselves by their own sins, the worst of which was hubris, arrogance. The first, and some would still say the greatest, of the three chief tragedians whose works survive was Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.), whose seventy-odd tragedies we have seven. The earliest in time was The Persians (427 B.C.), in which Aeschylus explained the defeat of the Persians as the result of Xerxes’ efforts to upset the international other established by gods, and of the arrogance by which he offended Zeus. The audience could ponder recent history (it was only seven years since the Persians had been defeated) and considered the moral reasons for their own victories: such a play would tend to sober up any fire-eater who thought one Greek could lick Persians. In Prometheus Bound, Aeschylus dealt with the punishment meted out by Zeus tp Prometheus the Titan, who had stolen fire as a gift to mankind and who now lay chained to a rock while vulture pecked at his liver. Zeus himself behaved tyrannically-he was new to the job of being king of the gods when Prometheus committed his offense-and only gradually learned to temper his wrath with mercy. Just as Xerxes had offended against the proper order of things by trying to impose Persian rule on Greece, so Prometheus had, even out of good will, offended by trying to get mankind the great gift of fire too soon. In the trilogy The Oresteis, all three plays of which survive, Aeschylus dealt with the ghastly tragedies in the family of Agamemnon who sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to get a favorable wind to go to Troy, was murdered by his unfaithful wife Clytemnestra on his return, and was avenged by his son Orestes, who killed his mother on orders of Apollo. Orestes suffered torments by the Furies, and was acquitted by a court presided over by Athena; but only Zeus succeeded in transforming the Furies into more kindly creatures. Crime and punishment, remorse and release, a benevolent god over all: These Aeschylus portrayed in lofty, moving verse. Sophocles, the second of the three greatest tragedians (496-406 B.C.), wrote many tragedies, of which only ten survive. He believed deeply in Athenian institutions and in the religion of his fellow-Greeks and took an active part in the public life of Periclean Athens. In the Antigone, the niece of Creon, tyrant of Thebes, defied her uncle’s harsh decision that the body of her brother, killed while leading a rebellion, must be exposed to be devoured by beasts of prey. Proclaiming that divine law required decent burial, she disobeyed Creon, and caused the proper ceremonial earth to be sprinkled on the body. She knew she would die for her defiance, but she carried its message of the sanctity of the individual conscience down the centuries, proclaiming the superiority of what is eternally right and decent to any mere dictator’s brutal whim. Living to be ninety, Sophocles saw the ruin brought by the Peloponnesian War, and his last tragedy, Oedipus at Colonus after his death, dealt with the old age of the famous Theban king who in ignorance had killed his father and married his mother, and had torn out his own eyes in honor when he discovered what he had done. A blind beggar, outcast, Oedipus now knew that he could not have avoided the pollution of his unwitting crimes, and that his self-mutilation too was justified. Tempered by years of suffering, he sought sanctuary to die, and received it from Thebes. Reflecting upon the terrible story of Oedipus and on trials of all human life, Sophocles’ chorus sang that for mankind the best thing is never to be born, and the next best to die as soon as possible after birth: The passions of youth, the blows dealt one middle life, and the anguish of old age are not worth it. Nineteen plays remain of the many written by the third and last of the Attic tragedians, Euripides (485-406 B.C.), who focussed rather more upon human psychology, with far less emphasis on divine majesty. More realistic in their introduction of children, slaves and other characters upon the scene his plays were also more romantic in their exploration of the far reaches of the human mind. The Hippolytus showed the uncontrollable sexual passion of a decent woman-Phaedra-for her ascetic stepson Hippolytus, who rejected it as he would all passion. She was ashamed of her lust but, as in the case of Poliphar’s wife and Joseph, accused Hippolytus of having attacked her; he was executed, she committed suicide. The Medea showed a woman so far gone in agony brought about by rejection of her love that she killed her children in a fit of madness. The Alcestis showed a husband so selfish that he gladly accepted the offer of his devoted wife to die for him so that she might prolong his life; and then suffered agonies of remorse at his folly, when he had lost her. The Trojan Women presented the sufferings of the women of Troy at the hands of the Greeks. It was staged in the same years as the Athenian atrocity at Melos, and must have caused the audience many uncomfortable moments of self-questioning. The Bacchae explored the excesses of religious ecstasy: in a frenzy a quuen tore own son to bits, thinking he was a lion. Was Euripides saying that men under the impulse of strong emotion were beasts, or that the old religion had too much that was savage in it, or only that the young king had defied the god and his hubris had brought him a fate that he well deserved? Comedy Comedy, like tragedy, also began at the festivals of Dionysus. Aristophanes (450-c. 385 B.C.) has left eleven complete plays and parts of a twelfth. Besides making his audience laugh, he hoped to teach them a lesson through laughter. A thoroughgoing conservative, Aristophanes was suspicious of all innovation. In The Frogs, for instance, he brought onto the stage actors playing the parts of the two tragedians Aeschylus (then dead) and Eiripides (still alive). The god Dionysus himself solemnly weighed verses from their plays on a giant pair of scales. Every time, the rather solemn, didatic, and old-fashioned Aeschylus outweighed the innovating, skeptical, febrile, modern Euripides: a tragedian’s duty, Aristophanes thought, was to teach. In The Clouds Aristophanes ridicule the philosopher Socrates, whom he showed in his “think-shop” dangling from the ceiling in a basket so that he could voyage in air and contemplate the sun. Aristophanes meant to call attention to the dangers offered to Athenian youth by the so-called Sophists. His identification of Socrates with them was somewhat unfair; but, like the others, Socrates taught young men to question the existing order, and he was therefore fair game. Aristophanes opposed the Peloponnesian War not because he was a pacifist, but because he thought it necessary. In Lysistrata the women denied themselves to their husbands until the men made peace, and in other plays Aristophanes denounced the Athenian politicians, including Pericles himself, for going to war. In The Birds the leading characters set off to found a Birdville (Cloud-cuckoo-land) to get away from war. In one of his plays, of which we have only two, the women took over the state and proposed to share all the men among them, putting prostitutes out of business; in the other, Poverty and Wealth appeared in person and argued their cases. These later plays provided a transition to the “New Comedy” of the fourth century, gentler and more domestic. We have several New Comedies by Menander, including one published for the first time only in the late 1950’s. The drama was of course only one form that Greek poetic genius took. From the earliest days the Greeks were the maters of Lyric poetry as well : among the most celebrated are poems of love by the poetess Sappho, of war by Spartan poets in the very early days, and of triumph in the games by Pindar.
Compiled by: Fereydoon Ganjoor
Civilization in the West
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