Paste your essay in here…Ancient Greek Theatre
I chose this topic because I have also had a fascination with ancient Greek culture. I think it started I elementary school reading the Percy Jackson book series, reading about the Greek God’s and how they were worshiped for centuries. I have written many research papers in previous classes on Greek Culture and no matter what aspect of Greece you are writing about theatre also has a major impact on it. I took three theatre classes in high school and a Greek mythology class as well my senior year so I feel like I have a strong concept and strong background on this particular topic.
Ancient Greek theatre played a vital role in the development of theatre as a whole, because of this we still see big similarities between theatre today and Greek theatre dating back to the 6th century. Greek theatre also produced many remarkable plays that are still around today, in this time there were also numerous scholars that have become famous over the years because of the way they impacted and changed theatre. Theatre was so popular in this era because it was performed at religious ceremonies, contests and festivals, all of which praised the God’s of their time.
The first signs of theatre in ancient Greece were around 6th century in the city of Athens, this is where we see the first sign of what is known as tragedy, these types of plays were performed to worship the Greek God Dionysus, who was the God of Wine, and Theatre. According to Cartwright’s article “Ancient Greek Theatre” A tragedy is a play which depicts the downfall of a basically good person through some fatal error or misjudgment, producing suffering and insight on the part of the protagonist and arousing pity and fear on the part of the audience. Cartwright also discussed how Tragedies were performed in an open theatre outside, when it first began it spectators would sit on a large hill with a wooden stage at the bottom of the hill, it wouldn’t be until later on when they would build seats and have a full theater. Early tragedies usually had one main actor who would perform in a costume and mask, the play’s also consisted of a chorus normally made up around 15 men who would sing and dance but not speak. Later 3 actors were permitted on stage but there was a limitation to make it fair to all poets in competitions, due to the limited number of actors, they would often portray multiple different characters which made them change costumes, and masks sometimes, because the actors would change this allowed for the play to be broken up into different scenes and would eventually lead to a musical interlude being played during these times.
Another form of Greek theatre that emerged later was comedy. Comedy was the final of the three dramatic forms of theatre in ancient Greece, the other being Tragedy and Satyr. Greek comedy is divided into three periods, old comedy, middle comedy and new comedy. Old comedy survived today mostly because of the eleven surviving plays of Aristophanes, while middle comedy is mainly lost, we only have short fragments by authors of that time. New comedy is known primarily from fragments of Menander. Many famous men from ancient Greece have committed on this particular part of Greek drama including, Aristotle in “Aristotle’s Poetics”, who said that comedy is a representation of laughable people and involves some kind of blunder or ugliness which does not cause pain or disaster. In Trypanis’s “Greek Poetry: from Homer to Seferis” he also wrote that comedy is the last of the great species of poetry Greece gave to the world.
During this time many playwrights emerged, they were very well thought of and highly respected and really made a name for themselves, a big one being Aeschylus. According to Briggs in “Ancient Greek Author” Aeschylus was an ancient Greek playwright who is commonly known as the father of tragedy, during his time he is estimated to have written over seventy plays but unfortunately only seven of those have survived through the centuries. Another major playwright of ancient Greece is Sophocles, he is on of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays survived through the ages. His first plays were written later than Aeschylus, but he wrote over one-hundred and twenty plays during the course of his life, only seven have survived in complete form; Ajax, Antigone, Women of Trachis, Oedipus Rex, Electra, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus. For nearly fifty years Sophocles was the most celebrated playwright in the dramatic competitions. He competed in thirty competitions, he won twenty four of them, where as Aeschylus won thirteen competitions, and was sometimes defeated by Sophocles. Euripides is the last of the three tragedians whose plays survived, a significant amount in fact over ninety of his plays survived. Euripides popularity grew as Sophocles and Aeschylus declined, which helped him win his fair share of competitions. He is also known to have made theatrical innovations that influenced drama, such as, representing traditional mythical heroes as normal people in extreme circumstances. This led him to make changes that later writers would adapt to comedy. The last Playwright I will touch on his Aristophanes, he was a comic playwright in ancient Greece, he is known as “the Father of Comedy”. He had eleven of his forty plays survived almost completely, these along with pieces of some of his other plays provide some of the only real examples of what is known as “Old Comedy”.
Other important figures that impacted Greek Theatre include Aristotle. Aristotle was a philosopher and teacher born in the first part of the fourth century, he has become one of the most important people in terms of Greek dramatic criticism, not only that but also one of the most important influences in all of literature. Aristotle analyzed the plays of the fifth century along with the plays of his time and classified them into different kinds of drama, he also helped set the rules for the construction of tragedy. Aristotle also said that the action, or plot of a play is of far greater importance than the characters, he also stated that it was very clear in tragedy that the plot does not rise out of the characters, but instead the plot tests the characters through the working out of destiny.
According to Kruritz, in “the Making of Theatre History” throughout the year there were two major competitions for a playwright to enter in, the first took place in the spring festival of Dionysus in the city of Dionysia in Athens. Since Theatre was a national treasure this festival was very big and would have a huge audience who would be eagerly waiting to see plays since this was one of the only forms of entertainment back then. At these festivals nearly seventeen plays would be performed in four days, five of which were comedies, nine tragedies, and three were satyr. For a playwright to be considered he would have to submit an application with three tragedies and one satyr, among all who applied only 3 playwrights were chosen. On the day of the festival a panel of judges would judge each play and the winners were given a bronze tripod cauldron, there were also prizes for leading actors as well. Playwrights who regularly won these competitions became famous, some of these winners I previously talked about.
In conclusion ,Ancient Greek theatre played a major role in theatre today primarily because there were so many changes made in the era. We have so much information on the great playwrights of that time including some of their plays and if not all of them complete we at least have fragments of others. The way Greeks thought of theatre also helped it survive, especially if you compare it to other points throughout history. To the Greeks theatre was the biggest event of the year everyone looked forward to it because for four days it gave them an escape from their day to day lives to just come together as a country and praise and worship their God’s at the time. Greek theatre made its impact on the world it gave us our comedy tragedy mask which is a clear symbol of theatre around the world. All in all theatre would not be what it is today without the contributions of Greek playwrights, philosophers, and royalty.