Browse

Aeschylus: Suppliant Women

A. J. Bowen

Aeschylus starts his tetralogy boldly, making the Danaids themselves prologue, chorus and protagonist. Guided by their father Danaus, these girls have fled from Egypt, where their cousins want to ... More

Aeschylus starts his tetralogy boldly, making the Danaids themselves prologue, chorus and protagonist. Guided by their father Danaus, these girls have fled from Egypt, where their cousins want to marry them, to seek asylum in Argos: they claim descent from Io, who was driven to Egypt five generations earlier when Zeus' love for her was detected by jealous Hera. In the long first movement of the play, the Danaids argue their claim, pressing it with song and dance of pathos and power, upon the reluctant Argive king. He, forced eventually by their threat of suicide, puts the case to his people, who vote to accept the girls, but while they sing blessings on Argos, Danaus spies their cousins' ships arriving. Left on their own when he goes for help, they sing more seriously of suicide, and seek sanctuary upstage when the Egyptians enter. A remarkable tussle of two choruses ensues; in the nick of time the king arrives, sees off the Egyptians (but they promise a return) and offers his hospitality. The girls want their father, however, and go when guided by him and his escort of Argive soldiers. Their final song has elements of wedding song in it; they share it, provocatively, with the Argives. The rest of the tetralogy is lost, but enough is known to indicate that marriage is the theme. Aeschylus probably surprised his first audience in his use of the myth; his command of theatre and poetry is fully mature.Less

Aeschylus' Supplices: Play and Trilogy (second edition)

A. F. Garvie

This book's first appearance (1969) was a full response to the publication (in 1952) of a papyrus fragment from Oxyrhynchus which indicated a late production date (in the 460s bc) for Aeschylus' ... More

This book's first appearance (1969) was a full response to the publication (in 1952) of a papyrus fragment from Oxyrhynchus which indicated a late production date (in the 460s bc) for Aeschylus' trilogy Supplices, thus upsetting the previous scholarly consensus that it was an early work — indeed the earliest Greek tragedy to survive. There was, the book argued, no longer good reason to suppose that the play belonged to an early stage in its author's development. A final chapter also examines the evidence for reconstruction of the other, lost plays of the trilogy. Few would now argue, as they used to, that Supplices belongs to the 490s but some still have the feeling that it looks like an early play; they attempt to put it back into the 470s. Stylistic and structural evidence, itself often subjective, is not strong enough to place the play in one decade or exclude it from the previous one; but the book remains convinced that, even without the additional testimony of the papyrus, all the internal evidence points to the 460s. While the view that Supplices is very early may now have died, some of the salutary lessons of P.Oxy 2256 fr. 3 have still to be learnt and it is timely for this re-issue to be presented to a new generation of Aeschylean students and scholars.Less

Ancient Drama in Music for the Modern Stage

Peter Brown and Suzana Ograjenšek (eds)

Opera was invented at the end of the sixteenth century in imitation of the supposed style of delivery of ancient Greek tragedy, and, since then, operas based on Greek drama have been among the most ... More

Opera was invented at the end of the sixteenth century in imitation of the supposed style of delivery of ancient Greek tragedy, and, since then, operas based on Greek drama have been among the most important in the repertoire. This book provides an exceptionally wide-ranging and detailed overview of the relationship between the two genres. Since tragedies have played a much larger part than comedies in this branch of operatic history, the volume mostly concentrates on the tragic repertoire, but a chapter on musical versions of Aristophanes' Lysistrata is included, as well as discussions of incidental music, a very important part of the musical reception of ancient drama, from Andrea Gabrieli in 1585 to Harrison Birtwistle and Judith Weir in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.Less

Ancient Greek Women in Film

Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos (ed.)

This book examines cinematic representations of ancient Greek women from the realms of myth and history, including Helen, Medea, Penelope, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, Iole, Dianeira, Io, Gorgo, ... More

This book examines cinematic representations of ancient Greek women from the realms of myth and history, including Helen, Medea, Penelope, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, Iole, Dianeira, Io, Gorgo, Olympias, and Cleopatra. The chapters assembled here discuss how these female figures are resurrected on the big screen at different historical junctures, and are embedded in a narrative that serves different purposes (aesthetic, socio-moral, political) depending on the director of the film, the screenwriter, the studio, the country of its origin, and the time of its production. Using a diverse array of hermeneutic approaches (gender theory, feminist criticism, gaze theory, psychoanalysis, sociological theories of religion, film history, viewer-response theory, and personal voice criticism), the chapters aim to cast light on cinema's investments in the classical past and decode the mechanisms whereby the women under examination are extracted from their original context and are brought to life to serve as vehicles for the articulation of modern ideas, concerns, and cultural trends. Binding the chapters together is the common goal to explore the dialectic of continuity and rupture that characterizes the appropriation of the women of Greek myth and history in the cinema. To this end, the volume as a whole investigates not only how antiquity on the screen distorts, compresses, contests, and revises antiquity on the page but also, more crucially, why the medium uses such eclectic representational strategies vis-à-vis the classical world.Less

Apuleius and Drama: The Ass on Stage

Regine May

This book discusses the use of drama as an intertext in the work of the 2nd century Latin author Apuleius, who wrote the only complete extant Latin novel, the Metamorphoses, in which a young man is ... More

This book discusses the use of drama as an intertext in the work of the 2nd century Latin author Apuleius, who wrote the only complete extant Latin novel, the Metamorphoses, in which a young man is turned into a donkey by magic. Apuleius uses drama, especially comedy, as a basic underlying texture, and invites his readers to use their knowledge of contemporary drama in interpreting the fate of his protagonist and the often comic or tragic situations in which he finds himself. This book employs a close study of the Latin text and detailed comparison with the corpus of dramatic texts from antiquity, as well as discussion of stock features of ancient drama, especially of comedy, in order to explain some features of the novel which have so far baffled Apuleian scholarship, including the enigmatic ending. All Latin and Greek has been translated into English.Less

Aristophanes and the Cloak of Comedy: "Affect, Aesthetics, and the Canon"

Mario Telò

Aristophanes, whose eleven surviving plays are all that remain of Old Comedy, has been stereotyped since ancient times as the poet who brought order and stability to this rowdy theatrical genre. But ... More

Aristophanes, whose eleven surviving plays are all that remain of Old Comedy, has been stereotyped since ancient times as the poet who brought order and stability to this rowdy theatrical genre. But how did this image arise, and why were the rivals Cratinus and Eupolis relegated to secondary status and merely fragmentary survival? This book traces Aristophanes’ supremacy, paradoxically, back to the defeat of his Clouds at the Great Dionysia in 423 BCE. Both Wasps (422) and the revised Clouds (419–417), the two plays at the center of this study, depict the earlier Clouds as a failed attempt by Aristophanes, the good son, to heal the comic audience—reflected in the plays in a pair of dysfunctional fathers. Through this narrative of failure, Aristophanes advances a “proto-canonical” discourse that anticipates the contours of the Hellenistic comic canon by elevating his aesthetic mode while delegitimizing his rivals. Aristophanic comedy is cast as a prestigious object, an expression of the supposedly timeless values of dignity and self-control. This discourse, which depends on both internal and external textual connections, is grounded in the distinctive feelings that different comic modes purportedly transmitted to an audience. In Wasps and Clouds the Aristophanic style is figured as a soft, protective cloak meant to shield an audience from debilitating competitors and restore it to paternal responsibility and authority. Aristophanes’ narrative of afflicted fathers and healing sons, of audience and poet, is thus shown to be at the center of the proto-canonical discourse that shaped his eventual dominance.Less

Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy

M. S. Silk

This book presents a radically new critical study of Aristophanes. Against the limited view of Aristophanes as Athenian theatrical satirist, the author identifies him as one of the world's great ... More

This book presents a radically new critical study of Aristophanes. Against the limited view of Aristophanes as Athenian theatrical satirist, the author identifies him as one of the world's great writers. Through an exploration of Aristophanes' comic poetry, informed by a wide range of theory from Kierkegaard to Adorno, a particular consideration of Aristophanes' own understanding of his medium, and challenging comparisons with modern literature, this book adds a new chapter to the long-standing debate about the nature and potentialities of comedy. Close analyses of Aristophanes' language and style, lyric poetry, presentation of character, organizational structures, and humorous modes, are conducted in this spirit. The enigma of ‘serious comedy’ and of Aristophanes' complex preoccupation with tragedy is at the centre of a new assessment of Aristophanic comedy as a whole. All Greek in the text is translated; the versions offered seek to convey the distinctive character of the original.Less

Aristophanes: Ecclesiazusae

Alan H. Sommerstein (ed.)

Ecclesiazusae, probably produced in 391 BC, is at once a typically Aristophanic fantasy of gender inversion, obscenity and farce, the earliest surviving work in the western Utopian tradition, and the ... More

Ecclesiazusae, probably produced in 391 BC, is at once a typically Aristophanic fantasy of gender inversion, obscenity and farce, the earliest surviving work in the western Utopian tradition, and the source of a blueprint for a communist society on which Plato may well have drawn in his Republic. This edition attempts to set the play, more closely than has usually been done, against the political background at the time of its production, when Athens has just spurned what proved to be the last opportunity to escape from a war it did not have the resources to fight, and to define the details of staging as precisely as the text will allow. This edition presents the Greek text with facing-page translation, commentary and notes.Less

Aristophanes: Knights

Alan H. Sommerstein (ed.)

Knights was the first play to be produced by Aristophanes on his own behalf. In it, he launched a violent attack on Cleon, the leading politician of the day, on the whole style of leadership that he ... More

Knights was the first play to be produced by Aristophanes on his own behalf. In it, he launched a violent attack on Cleon, the leading politician of the day, on the whole style of leadership that he represented and on a system which seemed to guarantee that a bad leader could be displaced by a worse. This edition presents the Greek text with facing-page translation, introduction, commentary and notes.Less

Aristophanes: Wasps

Alan H. Sommerstein (ed.)

Wasps was first produced at the Lenaea festival of 422 BC. The play is at once a political satire and also, like Clouds and the lost Banqueters, a comedy on the theme of the conflict of generations. ... More

Wasps was first produced at the Lenaea festival of 422 BC. The play is at once a political satire and also, like Clouds and the lost Banqueters, a comedy on the theme of the conflict of generations. The play follows the efforts of a mischievous and mercurial old man to escape the control of a stern and heavy son. In its political aspect it attacks the leading Athenian politician Cleon, as Knights had. But Wasps represents a departure as it concentrates less on Cleon personally, and more on his and his associates' alleged domination of the law-courts and the men who served in them as jurors. First published in 1983, this edition contains addenda and a new bibliography. The edition presents the Greek text with facing-page English translation, commentary and notes.Less

Between Jerusalem and Athens: Israeli Theatre and the Classical Tradition

Nurit Yaari

How does a theatrical tradition emerge in the fields of dramatic writing and artistic performance? Can a culture, in which theatre played no part in the past, create a theatrical tradition in real ... More

How does a theatrical tradition emerge in the fields of dramatic writing and artistic performance? Can a culture, in which theatre played no part in the past, create a theatrical tradition in real time—and how? What was the contribution of classical Greek drama to the evolution of Israeli theatre? How do political and social conditions affect the encounter between cultures—and what role do they play in creating a theatre with a distinctive identity? This book, the first of its kind, attempts to answer these and other questions, by examining the reception of classical Greek drama in the Israeli theatre over the last seventy years. It deals with dramatic and aesthetic issues while analysing translations, adaptations, new writing, mise-en-scène, and ‘post dramatic’ performances of classical Greek drama that were created and staged at key points of the development of Israeli culture amidst fateful political, social, and cultural events in the country’s history.Less

Children in Greek Tragedy: Pathos and Potential

Emma M. Griffiths

Astyanax is thrown off the walls of Troy, Medeia kills her children to take revenge on her husband, and Aias reflects sadly on his son’s inheritance, yet he kills himself and leaves Eurysakes ... More

Astyanax is thrown off the walls of Troy, Medeia kills her children to take revenge on her husband, and Aias reflects sadly on his son’s inheritance, yet he kills himself and leaves Eurysakes vulnerable to his enemies. The pathos created by threats to children is a notable feature of Greek tragedy, but does not explain the range of situations where the playwrights chose to employ them. Although they are largely silent, passive figures, children exert a dramatic force that goes beyond their limited onstage presence. This book proposes a new paradigm to understand the roles of children in tragedy, emphasizing their dangerous potential as the future adults of myth. Their multiple projected lives create dramatic palimpsests which are paradoxically more significant than the immediate emotional effects. Children are never killed because of their immediate weakness, but because of their potential strength. Staging considerations underpin this re-evaluation, as the embodied identities of children are central to their roles. A new examination of the evidence for child actors concludes that the physical presence of children was a significant factor in their presentation. The socio-historical context of fifth-century Athens gives some pointers, but child roles can only be fully appreciated as theatrical phenomena, utilizing the inherent ambiguities of drama.Less

The Chorus of Drama in the Fourth Century BCE: Presence and Representation

Lucy C. M. M. Jackson

The Chorus of Drama in the Fourth Century BCE seeks to upend conventional thinking about the development of drama from the fifth to the fourth centuries. Set in the context of a theatre industry ... More

The Chorus of Drama in the Fourth Century BCE seeks to upend conventional thinking about the development of drama from the fifth to the fourth centuries. Set in the context of a theatre industry extending far beyond the confines of the City Dionysia and the city of Athens, the identity of choral performers and the significance of their contribution to the shape and meaning of drama in the later Classical period (c.400–323) as a whole is an intriguing and under-explored area of enquiry. Drawing together the fourth-century historical, material, dramatic, literary, and philosophical sources that attest to the activity and quality of dramatic choruses, the book provides a new way of talking and thinking about the choruses of drama after the deaths of Euripides and Sophocles. Having considered the positive evidence for dramatic choral activity, the book provides a radical rethinking of two oft-cited yet ill-understood phenomena that have traditionally supported the idea that the chorus of drama ‘declined’ in the fourth century: the inscription of χοροῦ μέλος‎ in papyri and manuscripts in place of fully written-out choral odes, and Aristotle’s invocation of embolima (Poetics 1456a25–32). The book goes on to explore how influential fourth-century authors such as Plato, Demosthenes, and Xenophon, as well as artistic representations of choruses on fourth-century monuments, have had an important role in shaping later scholars’ understanding of the dramatic chorus throughout the Classical period. The book’s conclusions, too, have implications for the broader story we wish to tell about Attic drama, and its most enigmatic and fundamental element, the chorus.Less

Comedy and the Rise of Rome

Matthew Leigh

This book looks at Roman comedy in the light of history and Roman history in the light of comedy. Plautus and Terence base their dramas on the New Comedy of 4th- and 3rd-century BC Greece. Yet many ... More

This book looks at Roman comedy in the light of history and Roman history in the light of comedy. Plautus and Terence base their dramas on the New Comedy of 4th- and 3rd-century BC Greece. Yet many of the themes with which they engage are peculiarly alive in the Rome of the Hannibalic war, and the conquest of Macedon. This study takes issues as diverse as the legal status of the prisoner of war, the ethics of ambush, fatherhood and command, and the clash of maritime and agrarian economies, and examines responses to them both on the comic stage and in the world at large. This is a substantially new departure in ways of thinking about Roman comedy and one that opens it up to a far wider public than has previously been the case.Less

Diversifying Greek Tragedy on the Contemporary US Stage

Melinda Powers

Demonstrating that ancient drama can be a powerful tool in seeking justice, this book investigates a cross section of live theatrical productions on the US stage that have reimagined Greek tragedy to ... More

Demonstrating that ancient drama can be a powerful tool in seeking justice, this book investigates a cross section of live theatrical productions on the US stage that have reimagined Greek tragedy to address political and social concerns. To address this subject, it engages with some of the latest research in the field of performance studies to interpret not dramatic texts in isolation from their performance context, but instead the dynamic experience of live theatre. The book’s focus is on the ability of engaged performances to pose critical challenges to long-standing stereotypes that have contributed to the misrepresentation and marginalization of under-represented communities. Yet, in the process, it also uncovers the ways in which performances can inadvertently reinforce the very stereotypes they aim to challenge. This book thus offers a study of the live performance of Greek drama and its role in creating and reflecting social, cultural, and historical identity in contemporary America.Less

Epic Performances from the Middle Ages into the Twenty-First Century

Fiona Macintosh, Justine McConnell, Stephen Harrison, and Claire Kenward (eds)

Graeco-Roman epic poetry was the staple of the early operatic repertoire and it continues to provide a rich storehouse of themes for contemporary creative artists working in divergent traditions. ... More

Graeco-Roman epic poetry was the staple of the early operatic repertoire and it continues to provide a rich storehouse of themes for contemporary creative artists working in divergent traditions. Since Tim Supple and Simon Reade’s stage adaptation of Ted Hughes’s Tales from Ovid for the RSC (1999), versions of Greek and Roman epics have routinely provided raw material for the performance repertoire both within major cultural institutions and from emergent, experimental theatre companies. The chapters in this volume range widely across time (the Middle Ages to the present), place (Europe, Asia, and the Americas), and genres (lyric, film, dance, opera) in their searches for ‘epic’ content and form in diverse performance arenas. The anxieties about the ability to write epic in the early modern world in some way explain, together with the precedent of Greek tragedy’s reworking of epic material, this migration to the theatre. Yet equally, with this migration, epic encountered the barriers imposed by neoclassicists, who sought to restrict serious theatre to a narrowly defined reality that precluded epic’s broad sweeps across time and place. In many instances in recent years, the fact that the Homeric epics were composed orally makes reinvention not only legitimate but also deeply appropriate. With specialists from Classics, Music, English, Modern Languages, Dance, Theatre and Performance Studies, and from the creative industries, this volume is the first systematic attempt to chart the afterlife of epic in modern performance traditions.Less

Euripides: Cyclops: & Major Fragments of Greek Satyric Drama

Patrick O'Sullivan and C. Collard (eds)

Satyric is the most thinly attested genre of Greek drama, but it appears to have been the oldest and, according to Aristotle, formative for tragedy. By the 5th century BC at Athens, it shared most of ... More

Satyric is the most thinly attested genre of Greek drama, but it appears to have been the oldest and, according to Aristotle, formative for tragedy. By the 5th century BC at Athens, it shared most of its compositional elements with tragedy, to which it became an adjunct; for at the annual great dramatic festivals, it was performed only together with, and after, the three tragedies which each poet was required to present in competition. It was in contrast with them. Euripides' Cyclops is the only satyr play which survives complete. Its title alone signals its content, Odysseus' escape from the one-eyed, man-eating monster, familiar from Book 9 of Homer's Odyssey. Because of its uniqueness, Cyclops could afford only a limited idea of satyric drama's range, which the many but brief quotations from other authors and plays barely coloured. Our knowledge and appreciation of the genre have been greatly enlarged, however, by recovery since the early 20th century of considerable fragments of Aeschylus, Euripides' predecessor, and of Sophocles, his contemporary — but not, so far, of Euripides himself. This book provides English readers for the first time with all the most important texts of satyric drama, with facing-page translation, substantial introduction and detailed commentary. It includes not only the major papyri, but very many shorter fragments of importance, both on papyrus and in quotation, from the 5th to the 3rd centuries; there are also one or two texts whose interest lies in their problematic ascription to the genre at all. The intention is to illustrate it as fully as practicable.Less

Euripides: Iphigenia in Tauris

M. J. Cropp

Iphigenia in Tauris tells the story of the princess Iphigenia who was sacrificed by her father Agamemnon to expedite his campaign against Troy but was rescued by the goddess Artemis and transported ... More

Iphigenia in Tauris tells the story of the princess Iphigenia who was sacrificed by her father Agamemnon to expedite his campaign against Troy but was rescued by the goddess Artemis and transported to the land of the Taurians. There she herself must perform human sacrifices as a priestess of Artemis in the local cult. Troy has now been sacked, and Agamemnon murdered by his wife and avenged by his son Orestes. With his mother's blood on his hands, Orestes is guided by Apollo to seek purification through bringing the image of the Tauric Artemis to Greece, and so is reunited with his sister. The drama centers on Orestes' near-sacrifice at Iphigenia's hands, their recognition in the nick of time, and their ingenious and thrilling escape to bring the cult of Artemis to Halae and Brauron near Athens.Less

Euripides: Selected Fragmentary Plays: Volume I

The fragmentary plays of Euripides are a body of texts still regularly increasing in number and extent. They are of very great interest in themselves, apart from the significant aid they give to the ... More

The fragmentary plays of Euripides are a body of texts still regularly increasing in number and extent. They are of very great interest in themselves, apart from the significant aid they give to the fuller appreciation of the surviving complete plays. This two-volume edition brings together for the first time for English readers the more substantial and important of the plays, about fifteen in all. Each play is introduced by a summary bibliography and an appreciative essay which analyses the mythic background and plot: reconstructs the play as far as the fragmentary text and secondary evidence allow; and discusses themes, characterisation, staging, date, reflections of the story in art and other dramatisations. For each play, the fragmentary texts are presented as conveniently and succinctly as possible, together with a brief critical apparatus of sources and readings. An English translation stands on the facing page. The text and translation of each play are followed by a short, primarily interpretative commentary. Text with facing translation, commentary and notes.Less

Euripides' Escape-Tragedies: A Study of Helen, Andromeda, and Iphigenia among the Taurians

Matthew Wright

This book is a critical study of three late plays of Euripides. It offers a reading of the plays, which has important implications for the way in which we read Euripidean tragedy and tragedy in ... More

This book is a critical study of three late plays of Euripides. It offers a reading of the plays, which has important implications for the way in which we read Euripidean tragedy and tragedy in general. It re-evaluates the escape-tragedies (Helen, Iphigenia among the Taurians, and the fragmentary Andromeda) and argues that they are to be taken seriously as a major dramatic and intellectual achievement. The book also argues that the escape-tragedies were produced as a thematically connected trilogy in 412 BC. The book assesses the ways in which genre affects our understanding of the plays. It also examines the plays' treatment of central themes such as myth, geography, cultural identity, philosophy, and religion. These are not separate topics but are seen as being joined together to form an intricate nexus of ideas. The escape-tragedies emerge as being serious, dark, pessimistic plays which raise some disturbing questions about the human condition.Less