Religious origin.
Whatever elements the Greek drama may, in the sources from which it
sprang, have owed to Egyptian, or Phrygian, or other Asiatic influences,
its development was independent and self-sustained. Not only in its
beginnings, but so long as the stage existed in Greece, the drama was in
intimate connexion with the national religion. This is the most signal
feature of its history, and one which cannot in the same degree or to
the same extent be ascribed to the drama of any other people, ancient or
modern. Not only did both the great branches of the Greek drama alike
originate in the usages of religious worship, but they never lost their
formal union with it, though one of them (comedy) in its later growth
abandoned all direct reference to its origin. Hellenic polytheism was at
once so active and so fluid or flexible in its anthropomorphic
formations, that no other religious system has ever with the same
conquering force assimilated to itself foreign elements, or with equal
vivacity and variety developed its own. Thus, the worship of Dionysus,
introduced into Greece by the Phoenicians as that of the tauriform
sun-god whom his worshippers adored with loud cries (whence _Bacchus_ or
_Iacchus_), and the god of generation (whence his _phallic_ emblem) and
production, was brought into connexion with the Dorian religion of the
sun-god Apollo. Apollo and his sister, again, corresponded to the
Pelasgian and Achaean divinities of sun and moon, whom the Phoenician
Dionysus and Demeter superseded, or with whose worship theirs was
blended. Dionysus, whose rites were specifically conducted with
reference to his attributes as the wine-god, was attended by deified
representations of his original worshippers, who wore the skin of the
goat sacrificed to him. These were the _satyrs_. Out of the connected
worships of Dionysus, Bacchus, Apollo and Demeter sprang the beginnings
of the Greek drama.
"Both tragedy and comedy," says Aristotle, "originated in a rude and
unpremeditated manner--the first from the leaders of the dithyramb, and
the second from those who led off the phallic songs." This diversity of
origin, and the distinction jealously maintained down to the latest
times between the two branches of the dramatic art, even where they
might seem to come into actual contact with one another, necessitate a
separate statement as to the origin and history of either.
Origin of tragedy.
The dithyramb.
Lyrical tragedy.
The custom of offering thanks to the gods by hymns and dances in the
places of public resort was first practised by the Greeks in the Dorian
states, whose whole system of life was organized on a military basis.
Hence the dances of the Dorians originally taught or imitated the
movements of soldiers, and their hymns were warlike chants. Such were
the beginnings of the _chorus_, and of its songs (called _paeans_, from
an epithet of Apollo), accompanied first by the phorminx and then by the
flute. A step in advance was taken when the poet with his trained
singers and dancers, like the Indian _s[)u]tra-dh[=a]ra_, performed
these religious functions as the representative of the population. From
the Doric _paean_ at a very early period several styles of choral
dancing formed themselves, to which the three styles of dance in scenic
productions--the tragic, the comic and the satyric--are stated
afterwards to have corresponded. But none of these could have led to a
literary growth. This was due to the introduction among the Dorians of
the _dithyramb_ (from [Greek: dios ], descended from Zeus, and [Greek:
thriambos], the Latin _triumphus_), originally a song of revellers,
probably led by a flute-player and accompanied by the music of other
Eastern instruments, in which it was customary in Crete to celebrate the
birth of Bacchus (the doubly-born) and possibly also his later
adventures. The leader of the band (_coryphaeus_) may be supposed to
have at times assumed the character of the wine-god, whose worshippers
bore aloft the vineclad _thyrsus_. The dithyramb was reduced to a
definite form by the Lesbian Arion (fl. 610), who composed regular
poems, turned the moving band of worshippers into a standing or "cyclic"
chorus of attendants on Dionysus--a chorus of satyrs, a _tragic_ or goat
chorus--invented a style of music adapted to the character of the
chorus, and called these songs "tragedies" or "goat-songs." Arion, whose
goat-chorus may perhaps have some connexion with an early Arcadian
worship of Pan, associated it permanently with Dionysus, and thus became
the inventor of "lyrical tragedy"--a transition stage between the
dithyramb and the regular drama. His invention, or the chorus with which
it dealt, was established according to fixed rules by his contemporary
Stesichorus. About the time when Arion introduced these improvements
into the Dorian city of Corinth, the (likewise Dorian) families at
Sicyon honoured the hero-king Adrastus by tragic choruses. Hence the
invention of tragedy was ascribed by the Sicyonians to their poet
Epigenes; but this step, significant for the future history of the Greek
drama, of employing the Bacchic chorus for the celebration of other than
Bacchic themes, was soon annulled by the tyrant Cleisthenes.
The rhapsodes.
The element which transformed lyrical tragedy into the tragic drama was
added by the Ionians. The custom of the recitation of poetry by
wandering minstrels, called _rhapsodes_ (from [Greek: rhabdos], staff,
or from [Greek: rhaptein], to piece together), first sprang up in the
Ionia beyond the sea; to such minstrels was due the spread of the
Homeric poems and of subsequent epic cycles. These recitations, with or
without musical accompaniment, soon included gnomic or didactic, as well
as epic, verse; if Homer was a rhapsode, so was the sententious or
"moral" Hesiod. The popular effect of these recitations was enormously
increased by the metrical innovations of Archilochus (from 708), who
invented the trochee and the _iambus_, the latter the arrowy metre which
is the native form of satirical invective--the species of composition in
which Archilochus excelled--though it was soon used for other purposes
also. The recitation of these iambics may already have nearly approached
to theatrical declamation. The rhapsodes were welcome guests at popular
festivals, where they exercised their art in mutual emulation, or
ultimately recited parts, perhaps the whole, of longer poems. The
recitation of a long epic may thus have resembled theatrical dialogue;
even more so must the alternation of iambic poems, the form being
frequently an address in the second person. The rhapsode was in some
sense an actor; and when these recitations reached Attica, they thus
brought with them the germs of theatrical dialogue.
Invention of the tragic drama.
The rhapsodes were actually introduced into Attica at a very early
period; the _Iliad_, we know, was chanted at the Brauronia, a rural
festival of Bacchus, whose worship had early entered Attica, and was
cherished among its rustic population. Meanwhile the cyclic chorus of
the Dorians had found its way into Attica and Athens, ever since the
Athenians had recognized the authority of the great centre of the
Apolline religion at Delphi. From the second half of the 6th century
onwards the chorus of satyrs formed a leading feature of the great
festival of Dionysus at Athens. It therefore only remained for the
rhapsodic and the cyclic--in other words, for the epic and the
choral--elements to coalesce; and this must have been brought about by a
union of the two accompaniments of religious worship in the festive
rites of Bacchus, and by the domestication of these rites in the ruling
city. This occurred in the time of Peisistratus, perhaps after his
restoration in 554. To Thespis (534), said to have been a contemporary
of the tyrant and a native of an Attic deme (Icaria), the invention of
tragedy is accordingly ascribed. Whether his name be that of an actual
person or not, his claim to be regarded as the inventor of tragedy is
founded on the statement that he introduced an actor ([Greek:
hypokrites], originally, "answerer"), doubtless, at first, generally the
poet himself, who, instead of merely alternating his recitations with
the songs of the chorus, addressed his speech to its leader--the
_coryphaeus_--with whom he thus carried on a species of "dialogue." Or,
in other words, the leader of the chorus (_coryphaeus_), instead of
addressing himself to the chorus, held converse with the actor. The
chorus stood round its leader in front of the Bacchic altar
(_thymel[=e]_); the actor stood with the _coryphaeus_, who had occupied
a more elevated position in order to be visible above his fellows, on a
rude table, or possibly on a cart, though the wagon of Thespis may be a
fiction, due to a confusion between his table and the wagon of Susarion.
In any case, we have here, with the beginnings of dialogue, the
beginning of the stage. It is a significant minor invention ascribed to
Thespis, that he disguised the actor's face first by means of a pigment,
afterwards by a mask. In the dialogue was treated some myth relating to
Bacchus, or to some other deity or hero. Whether or not Thespis actually
wrote tragedies (and there seems no reason to doubt it), Phrynichus and
one or two other poets are mentioned as having carried on choral tragedy
as set on foot by him, and as having introduced improvements into its
still predominating lyrical element. The step which made dramatic action
possible, and with which the Greek drama thus really began, was, as is
distinctly stated by Aristotle, taken by Aeschylus. He added a second
actor; and, by reducing the functions of the chorus, he further
established the dialogue as the principal part of tragedy. Sophocles
afterwards added a third actor, by which change the preponderance of the
dialogue was made complete.
Origin of comedy.
If the origin of Greek comedy is simpler in its nature than that of
Greek tragedy, the beginnings of its progress are involved in more
obscurity. Its association with religious worship was not initial; its
foundations lay in popular mirth, though religious festivals, and those
of the vintage god in particular, must from the first have been the most
obvious occasions for its exhibition. It is said to have been "invented"
by Susarion, a native of Doric Megaris, whose inhabitants were famed for
their coarse humour, which they communicated to their own and other
Dorian colonies in Sicily, to this day the home of vivacious mimic
dialogue. In the rural Bacchic vintage festivals bands of jolly
companions ([Greek: komos], properly a revel continued after supper)
went about in carts or afoot, carrying the phallic emblem, and indulging
in the ribald licence of wanton mirth. From the song sung in these
processions or at the Bacchic feasts, which combined the praise of the
god with gross personal ridicule, and was called _comus_ in a secondary
sense, the Bacchic reveller taking part in it was called a
_comus_-singer or _comoedus_. These phallic processions, which were
afterwards held in most Greek cities, and in Athens seem to have early
included a "topical" speech as well as a choral song, determined the
character of Old Attic comedy, whose most prominent feature was an
absolute licence of personal vilification.
The satyr-drama.
Tragi-comedy.
Thus independent of one another in their origin, Greek tragedy and
comedy never actually coalesced. The "satyr-drama," though in some sense
it partook of the nature of both, was in its origin as in its history
connected with tragedy alone, whose origin it directly recalled.
Pratinas of Philus, a contemporary of Aeschylus in his earlier days, is
said to have restored the tragic chorus to the satyrs; i.e. he first
produced dramas in which, though they were the same in form and theme as
the tragedies, the choric dances were different and entirely carried on
by satyrs. The tragic poets, while never writing comedies, henceforth
also composed satyr-dramas; but neither tragedies nor satyr-dramas were
ever written by the comic poets, and it was in conjunction with
tragedies only that the satyr-dramas were performed. The theory of the
Platonic Socrates, that the same man ought to be the best tragic and the
best comic poet, was among the Greeks never exemplified in practice. The
so-called "hilaro-tragedy" or "tragi-comedy" of later writers, perhaps
in some of its features in a measure anticipated by Euripides,[55] in
form nowise differed from tragedy; it merely contained a comic element
in its characters, and invariably had a happy ending. It is an
instructive fact that the serious and sentimental element in the comedy
of Menander and his contemporaries did far more to destroy the
essential difference between the two great branches of the Greek
dramatic art.
_Periods of Greek Tragedy._--The history of Greek--which to all intents
and purposes remained Attic--tragedy divides itself into three periods.
I. _The Period before Aeschylus_ (535-499).--From this we have but a few
names of authors and plays--those of the former being (besides Thespis)
Choerilus, Phrynichus and Pratinas, all of whom lived to contend with
Aeschylus for the tragic prize. To each of them certain innovations are
ascribed--for instance the introduction of female characters to
Phrynichus. He is best remembered by the overpowering effect said to
have been created by his _Capture of Miletus_, in which the chorus
consisted of the wives of the Phoenician sailors in the service of the
Great King.
II. _The Classical Period of Attic Tragedy_--that of Aeschylus,
Sophocles and Euripides, and their contemporaries (499-405). To this
belong all the really important phases in the progress of Greek tragedy,
which severally connect themselves with the names of its three great
masters. They may be regarded as the representatives of successive
generations of Attic history and life, though of course in these, as in
the progress of their art itself, there is an unbroken continuity.
Aeschylus.
Aeschylus (525-456) had not only fought both at Marathon and at Salamis
against those Persians whose rout he celebrated with patriotic
price,[56] but he had been trained in the Eleusinian mysteries, and
strenuously asserted the value of the institution most intimately
associated with the primitive political traditions of the past--the
Areopagus.[57] He had been born in the generation after Solon, to whose
maxims he fondly clung; and it was the Dorian development of Hellenic
life and the philosophical system based upon it with which his religious
and moral convictions were imbued. Thus even upon the generation which
succeeded him, and to which the powerful simplicity of his dramatic and
poetic diction seemed strange, the ethical loftiness of his conceptions
and the sublimity of his dramatic imagination fell like the note of a
mightier age. To us nothing is more striking than the conciliatory
tendencies of his conservative mind, and the progressive nature of what
may have seemed to his later contemporaries antiquated ideals.
Sophocles.
Sophocles (495-405) was the associate of Pericles, and an upholder of
his authority, rather than a consistent pupil of his political
principles; but his manhood, and perhaps the maturity of his genius,
coincided with the great days when he could stand, like his mighty
friend and the community they both so gloriously represented, on the
sunny heights of achievement. Serenely pious as well as nobly patriotic,
he nevertheless treats the myths of the national religion in the spirit
of a conscious artist, contrasting with lofty irony the struggles of
humanity with the irresistible march of its destinies. Perhaps he, too,
was one of the initiated; and the note of personal responsibility which
is the mystic's inner religion is recognizable in his view of life.[58]
The art of Sophocles may in its perfection be said to typify the
greatest epoch in the life of Athens--an epoch conscious of unequalled
achievements, but neither wholly unconscious of the brief endurance
which was its destiny.
Euripides.
Euripides (480-406), as is the fate of genius of a more complex kind,
has been more variously and antithetically judged than either of his
great fellow-tragedians. His art has been described as devoid of the
idealism of theirs, his genius as rhetorical rather than poetical, his
morality as that of a sophistical wit. On the other hand, he has been
recognized not only as the most tragic of the Attic tragedians and the
most pathetic of ancient poets, but also as the most humane in his
social philosophy and the most various in his psychological insight. At
least, though far removed from the more naif age of the national life,
he is, both in patriotic spirit and in his choice of themes, genuinely
Attic; and if he was "haunted on the stage by the daemon of Socrates,"
he was, like Socrates himself, the representative of an age which was a
seed-time as well as a season of decay. His technical innovations
corresponded to his literary characteristics; but neither in the
treatment of the chorus, nor in his management of the beginning and the
ending of a tragedy, did he introduce any radical change. To Euripides
the general progress of dramatic literature nevertheless owes more than
to any other ancient poet. Tragedy followed in his footsteps in Greece
and at Rome. Comedy owed him something in the later phases of the very
Aristophanes who mocked him, and more in the human philosophy expressed
in the sentiments of Menander; and, when the modern drama came to
engraft the ancient upon its own crude growth, his was directly or
indirectly the most powerful influence in the establishment of a living
connexion between them.
The great tragic masters and their contemporaries.
The incontestable pre-eminence of the three great tragic poets was in
course of time acknowledged at Athens by the usage allowing no tragedies
but theirs to be performed more than once, and by the prescription that
one play of theirs should be performed at each Dionysia, as well as by
the law of Lycurgus (c. 330) which obliged the actors to use, in the
case of works of the great masters, authentic copies preserved in the
public archives. Yet it is possible that the exclusiveness of these
tributes is not entirely justifiable; and not all the tragic poets
contemporary with the great writers were among the myriad of younglings
derided by Aristophanes. Of those who attained to celebrity Ion of Chios
(d. before 419) seems to have followed earlier traditions of style than
Euripides; Agathon, who survived the latter, on the other hand,
introduced certain innovations of a transnormal kind both into the
substance and the form of dramatic composition.[59]
The successors of the great masters at Athens.
III. Of the third period of Greek tragedy the concluding limit cannot be
precisely fixed. Down to the days of Alexander the Great, Athens had
remained the chief home of tragedy. Though tragedies must have begun to
be acted at the Syracusan and Macedonian courts, since Aeschylus,
Euripides and Agathon had sojourned there--though the practice of
producing plays at the Dionysia before the allies of Athens must have
led to their holding similar exhibitions at home--yet before the death
of Alexander we meet with no instance of a tragic poet writing or of a
tragedy written outside Athens. An exception should indeed be made in
favour of the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse, who (like Critias in his
earlier days at Athens) was "addicted to" tragic composition. Not all
the tragedians of this period, however, were Athenians born; though the
names of Euphorion, the son of Aeschylus, Iophon, the son of Sophocles,
and Euripides and Sophocles, the nephew and the grandson respectively of
their great namesakes, illustrate the descent of the tragic art as an
hereditary family possession. Chaeremon (fl. 380) already exhibits
tragedy on the road to certain decay, for we learn that his plays were
written for reading.
The Alexandrians.
Soon after the death of Alexander theatres are found spread over the
whole Hellenic world of Europe and Asia--a result to which the practice
of the conqueror and his father of celebrating their victories by scenic
performances had doubtless contributed. Alexandria having now become a
literary centre with which even Athens was in some respects unable to
compete, while the latter still remained the home of comedy, the tragic
poets flocked to the capital of the Ptolemies; and here, in the canon of
Greek poets drawn up by command of Ptolemy Philadelphus (283-247),
Alexander the Aetolian undertook the list of tragedies, while Lycophron
was charged with the comedies. But Lycophron himself was included in all
the versions of the list of the seven tragic poets famed as the "Pleias"
who still wrote in the style of the Attic masters and followed the rules
observed by them. Tragedy and the dramatic art continued to be favoured
by the later Ptolemies; and about 100 B.C. we meet with the curious
phenomenon of a Jewish poet, Ezechiel, composing Greek tragedies, of one
of which (the _Exodus_ from Egypt) fragments have come down to us.
Tragedy, with the satyr-drama and comedy, survived in Alexandria beyond
the days of Cicero and Varro; nor was their doom finally sealed till
the emperor Caracalla abolished theatrical performances in the Egyptian
capital in A.D. 217.
The tragedy of the great masters.
Thus Greek tragedy is virtually only another name for Attic; nor was any
departure from the lines laid down by its three great masters made in
most respects by the Roman imitators of these poets and of their
successors.
Subjects of Greek tragedy.
Tragedy was defined by Plato as an imitation of the noblest life. Its
proper themes--the deeds and sufferings of heroes--were familiar to
audiences intimately acquainted with the mythology of the national
religion. To such themes Greek tragedy almost wholly confined itself;
and in later days there were numerous books which discussed these myths
of the tragedians. They only very exceptionally treated historic themes,
though one great national calamity,[60] and a yet greater national
victory,[61] and in later times a few other historical subjects,[62]
were brought upon the stage. Such veiled historical allusions as
critical ingenuity has sought not only in passages but in the entire
themes of other Attic tragedies[63] cannot, of course, even if accepted
as such, stamp the plays in which they occur as historic dramas. No
doubt Attic tragedy, though after a different and more decorous fashion,
shared the tendency of her comic sister to introduce allusions to
contemporary events and persons; and the indulgence of this tendency was
facilitated by the revision ([Greek: diaskeue]) to which the works of
the great poets were subjected by them, or by those who produced their
works after them.[64] So far as we know, the subjects of the tragedies
before Aeschylus were derived from the epos; and it was a famous saying
of this poet that his dramas were "but dry scraps from the great
banquets of Homer"--an expression which may be understood as including
the poems which belong to the so-called Homeric cycles. Sophocles,
Euripides and their successors likewise resorted to the Trojan, and also
to the Heraclean and the Thesean myths, and to Attic legend in general,
as well as to Theban, to which already Aeschylus had had recourse, and
to the side or subsidiary myths connected with these several groups.
These substantially remained to the last the themes of Greek tragedy,
the Trojan myths always retaining so prominent a place that Lucian could
jest on the universality of their dominion. Purely invented subjects
were occasionally treated by the later tragedians; of this innovation
Agathon was the originator.[65]
Construction.
The Aeschylean trilogy.
The tetralogy.
Complicated actions.
Thespis is said to have introduced the use of a "prologue" and a
"rhesis" (speech)--the former being probably the opening speech recited
by the _coryphaeus_, the latter the dialogue between him and the actor.
It was a natural result of the introduction of the second actor that a
second _rhesis_ should likewise be added; and this tripartite division
would be the earliest form of the _trilogy_,--three sections of the same
myth forming the beginning, middle and end of a single drama, marked off
from one another by the choral songs. From this Aeschylus proceeded to
the treatment of these several portions of a myth in three separate
plays, connected together by their subject and by being performed in
sequence on a single occasion. This is the _Aeschylean trilogy_, of
which we have only one extant example, the _Oresteia_--as to which
critics may differ whether Aeschylus adhered in it to his principle that
the strength should lie in the middle--in other words, that the
interest should centre in the second play. In any case, the symmetry of
the trilogy was destroyed by the practice of performing after it a
satyr-drama, probably as a rule, if not always, connected in subject
with the trilogy, which thus became a _tetralogy_, though this term,
unlike the other, seems to be a purely technical expression invented by
the learned.[66] Sophocles, a more conscious and probably a more
self-critical artist than Aeschylus, may be assumed from the first to
have elaborated his tragedies with greater care; and to this, as well as
to his innovation of the third actor, which materially added to the
fulness of the action, we may attribute his introduction of the custom
of contending for the prize with single plays. It does not follow that
he never produced connected trilogies, though we have no example of such
by him or any later author; on the other hand, there is no proof that
either he or any of his successors ever departed from the Aeschylean
rule of producing three tragedies, followed by a satyr-drama, on the
same day. This remained the third and last stage in the history of the
construction of Attic tragedy. The tendency of its action towards
complication was a natural progress, and is emphatically approved by
Aristotle. This complication, in which Euripides excelled, led to his
use of prologues, in which one of the characters opens the play by an
exposition of the circumstances under which its action begins. This
practice, though ridiculed by Aristophanes, was too convenient not to be
adopted by the successors of Euripides, and Menander transferred it to
comedy. As the dialogue increased in importance, so the dramatic
significance of the chorus diminished. While in Aeschylus it mostly, and
in Sophocles occasionally, takes part in the action, its songs could not
but more and more approach the character of lyrical _intermezzos_; and
this they openly assumed when Agathon began the practice of inserting
choral songs (_embolima_) which had nothing to do with the action of the
play. In the general contrivance of their actions it was only natural
that, as compared with Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides should exhibit
an advance in both freedom and ingenuity; but the palm, due to a
treatment at once piously adhering to the substance of the ancient
legends and original in an effective dramatic treatment of them, must be
given to Sophocles. Euripides was, moreover, less skilful in untying
complicated actions than in weaving them; hence his frequent resort[67]
to the expedient of the _deus ex machina_, which Sophocles employs only
in his latest play.[68]
Characters.
Diction.
The other distinctions to be drawn between the dramatic qualities of the
three great tragic masters must be mainly based upon a critical estimate
of the individual genius of each. In the characters of their tragedies,
Aeschylus and Sophocles avoided those lapses of dignity with which from
one point of view Euripides has been charged by Aristophanes and other
critics, but which, from another, connect themselves with his humanity.
If his men and women are less heroic and statuesque, they are more like
men and women. Aristotle objected to the later tragedians that, compared
with the great masters, they were deficient in the drawing of
character--by which he meant the lofty drawing of lofty character. In
diction, the transition is even more manifest from the "helmeted
phrases" of Aeschylus, who had Milton's love of long words and sonorous
proper names, to the play of Euripides' "smooth and diligent tongue";
but to a sustained style even he remained essentially true, and it was
reserved for his successors to introduce into tragedy the "low
speech"--i.e. the conversational language--of comedy. Upon the whole,
however, the Euripidean diction seems to have remained the standard of
later tragedy, the flowery style of speech introduced by Agathon finding
no permanent favour.
Improvements in costume, &c.
Finally, Aeschylus is said to have made certain reforms in tragic
costume of which the object is self-evident--to have improved the mask,
and to have invented the _cothurnus_ or buskin, upon which the actor was
raised to loftier stature. Euripides was not afraid of rags and tatters;
but the sarcasms of Aristophanes on this head seem feeble to those who
are aware that they would apply to _King Lear_ as well as to _Telephus_.
_Periods of Greek Comedy._--The history of Greek comedy is likewise that
of an essentially Attic growth, although Sicilian comedy was earlier in
date than her Attic sister or descendant. The former is represented by
Epicharmus (fl. 500), and by the names of one or two other poets. It
probably had a chorus, and, dealing as it did in a mixture of
philosophical discourse, antithetical rhetoric and wild buffoonery,
necessarily varied in style. His comedies were the earliest examples of
the class distinguished as _motoriae_ from the _statariae_ and the
_mixtae_ by their greater freedom and turbulence of movement. Though in
some respects Sicilian comedy seems to have resembled the Middle rather
than the Old Attic comedy, its subjects sometimes, like those of the
latter, coincided with the myths of tragedy, of which they were
doubtless parodies. The so-called "mimes" of Sophron (fl. 430) were
dramatic scenes from Sicilian everyday life, intended, not for the
stage, but for recitation, and classed as "male" and "female" according
to the sex of the characters.
Attic comedy is usually divided into three periods or species.
The Old comedy.
Aristophanes.
I. _Old comedy_, which dated from the complete establishment of
democracy by Pericles, though a comedy directed against Themistocles is
mentioned. The Megarean farcical entertainments had long spread in the
rural districts of Attica, and were now introduced into the city, where
from about 460 onwards the "comus" became a matter of public concern.
Cratinus (c. 450-422) and Crates (c. 449-425) first moulded these
beginnings into the forms of Attic art. The final victory of Pericles
and the democratic party may be reckoned from the ostracism of
Thucydides (444); and so eagerly was the season of freedom employed by
the comic poets that already four years afterwards a law--which,
however, remained only a short time in force--limited their licence.
Cratinus,[69] an exceedingly bold and broad satirist, apparently of
conservative tendencies, was followed by Eupolis (446-after 415), every
one of whose plays appears to have attacked some individual,[70] by
Phrynichus, Plato and others; but the representative of old comedy in
its fullest development is Aristophanes (c. 444-c. 380), a comic poet of
unique and unsurpassed genius. Dignified by the acquisition of a chorus
(more numerous--twenty-four to twelve or afterwards fifteen--though of a
less costly kind than the tragic) of masked actors, and of scenery and
machinery, as well as by a corresponding literary elaboration and
elegance of style, Old Attic comedy nevertheless remained true both to
its origin and to the purposes of its introduction into the free
imperial city. Its special season was at the festival of the Lenaea,
when the Athenians could enjoy the fun against one another without
espying strangers; but it was also performed at the Great Dionysia. It
borrowed much from tragedy, but it retained the phallic abandonment of
the old rural festivals, the licence of word and gesture, and the
audacious directness of personal invective. These characteristics are
not features peculiar to Aristophanes. He was twitted by some of the
older comic poets with having degenerated from the full freedom of the
art by a tendency to refinement, and he took credit to himself for
having superseded the time-honoured _cancan_ and the stale practical
joking of his predecessors by a nobler kind of mirth. But in daring, as
he likewise boasted, he had no peer; and the shafts of his wit, though
dipped in wine-lees and at times feathered from very obscene fowl, flew
at high game.[71] He has been accused of seeking to degrade what he
ought to have recognized as good[72]; and it has been shown with
complete success that he is not to be taken as an impartial or accurate
authority on Athenian history. But partisan as he was, he was also a
genuine patriot; and his very political sympathies--which were
conservative, like those of the comic poets in general, not only because
it was the old families upon whom the expense of the _choregia_ in the
main devolved--were such as have often stimulated the most effective
political satire. Of the conservative quality of reverence he was,
however, altogether devoid; and his love for Athens was that of the most
free-spoken of sons. Flexible even in his religious notions, he was, in
this as in other respects, ready to be educated by his times; and, like
a true comic poet, he could be witty at the expense even of his friends,
and, it might almost be said, of himself. In wealth of fancy[73] and in
beauty of lyric melody, he has few peers among the great poets of all
times.
The parabasis.
The distinctive feature of Old, as compared with Middle comedy, is the
_parabasis_, the speech in which the chorus, moving towards and facing
the audience, addressed it in the name of the poet, often abandoning all
reference to the action of the play. The loss of the _parabasis_ was
involved in the loss of the chorus, of which comedy was deprived in
consequence of the general reduction of expenditure upon the comic
drama, culminating in the law of the personally aggrieved dithyrambic
poet Cinesias (396).[74] But with the downfall of the independence of
Athenian public life, the ground had been cut from under the feet of its
most characteristic representative. Already in 414, in the anxious time
after the sailing of the Sicilian expedition, the law of Syracosius had
prohibited the comic poets from making direct reference to current
events; but the _Birds_ had taken their flight above the range of all
regulations. The catastrophe of the city (405) was preceded by the
temporary overthrow of the democracy (411), and was followed by the
establishment of an oligarchical "tyranny" under Spartan protection;
and, when liberty was restored (404), the citizens for a time addressed
themselves to their new life in a soberer spirit, and continued (or
passed) the law prohibiting the introduction by name of any individual
as one of the personages of a play. The change to which comedy had to
accommodate itself was one which cannot be defined by precise dates, yet
it was not the less inevitable in its progress and results. Comedy, in
her struggle for existence, now chiefly devoted herself to literary and
social themes, such as the criticism of tragic poets,[75] and the
literary craze of women's rights,[76] and the transition to Middle
comedy accomplished itself. Of the later plays of Aristophanes,
three[77] are without a _parabasis_, and in the last of those preserved
to us which properly belongs to Middle comedy[78] the chorus is quite
insignificant.
The Middle Comedy.
II. _Middle comedy_, whose period extends over the remaining years of
Athenian freedom (from about 400 to 338), thus differed in substance as
well as in form from its predecessor. It is represented by the names of
thirty-seven writers (more than double the number of poets attributed to
Old comedy), among whom Eubulus, Antiphanes and Alexis are stated to
have been pre-eminently fertile and successful. It was a comedy of
manners as well as character, although its ridicule of particular
classes of men tended to the creation of standing types, such as
soldiers, parasites, courtesans, revellers, and--a favourite figure
already drawn by Aristophanes[79]--the self-conceited cook. In style it
necessarily inclined to become more easy and conversational and to
substitute insinuation for invective; while in that branch which was
devoted to the parodying of tragic myths its purpose may have been to
criticize, but its effect must have been to degrade. This species of the
comic art had found favour at Athens already before the close of the
great civil war; its inventor was the Thasian Hegemon, whose
_Gigantomachia_ was amusing the Athenians on the day when the news
arrived of the Sicilian disaster.
The New Comedy.
Philemon and Menander.
III. _New comedy_, which is dated from the establishment of the
Macedonian supremacy (338), is merely a further development of Middle,
from which indeed it was not distinguished till the time of Hadrian. If
its favourite types were more numerous, including the captain (of
mercenaries)--the original of a long line of comic favourites--the
cunning slave, &c., they were probably also more conventional. New
comedy appears to have first constituted love intrigues the main subject
of dramatic actions. The most famous of the sixty-four writers said to
have belonged to this period of comedy were Philemon (fl. from 330),
Menander (342-329) and his contemporary Diphilus. Of these authors we
know something from fragments, but more from their Latin adapters
Plautus and Terence. As comedians of character, they were limited by a
range of types which left little room for originality of treatment; in
the construction of their plots they were skillful rather than varied.
In style, as well as to some extent in construction, Menander seems to
have taken Euripides as his model, infusing into his comedy an element
of moral and sentimental reflection, which refined if it did not enliven
it.
Decay of comedy.
New comedy, and with it Greek comedy proper, is regarded as having come
to an end with Posidippus (fl. c. 280). Other comic writers of a later
date are, however, mentioned, among them Rhinthon of Tarentum (fl. c.
300), whose mixed compositions have been called by various names, among
them by that of "phlyacographies" (from _phlyax_, idle chatter). He was
succeeded by Sopater, Sotades and others; but the dramatic element in
these often obscene, but not perhaps altogether frivolous, travesties is
not always clearly ascertainable. It is certain that Greek comedy
gradually ceased to be productive; and though even in its original form
it long continued to be acted in imperial Rome, these are phases of its
history which may here be passed by.
Results of religious origin of Attic drama.
The religious origin of the Attic drama impresses itself upon all its
most peculiar features. Theatrical performances were held at Athens only
at fixed seasons in the early part of the year--at the Bacchic festivals
of the country Dionysia (vintage), the Lenaea (wine-press), probably at
the Anthesteria, and above all, at the Great Dionysia, or the Dionysia
_par excellence_, at the end of March and beginning of April, when in
her most glorious age Athens was crowded with visitors from the islands
and cities of her federal empire. As a part of religious worship, the
performances took place in a sacred locality--the _Lenaeum_ on the
south-eastern declivity of the Acropolis, where the first wine-press
(_lenos_) was said to have been set up, and where now an altar of
Bacchus (_thymele_) formed the centre of the theatre. For the same
reason the exhibitions claimed the attendance of the whole population,
and room was therefore provided on a grand scale--according to the
Platonic Socrates, for "more than 30,000" spectators (see THEATRE). The
performances lasted all day, or were at least, in accordance with their
festive character, extended to as great a length as possible. To their
religious origin is likewise to be attributed the fact that they were
treated as a matter of state concern. The expenses of the chorus, which
in theory represented the people at large, were defrayed on behalf of
the state by the _liturgies_ (public services) of wealthy citizens,
chosen in turn by the tribes to be _choragi_ (leaders, i.e. providers of
the chorus), the duty of training being, of course, deputed by them to
professional persons (_chorodidascali_). Publicly appointed and sworn
judges decided between the merits of the dramas produced in competition
with one another; the successful poet, performers and choragus were
crowned with ivy, and the last-named was allowed at his own expense to
consecrate a tripod in memory of his victory in the neighbourhood of the
sacred Bacchic enclosure. Such a monument--one of the most graceful
relics of ancient Athens--still stands in the place where it was
erected, and recalls to posterity the victory of Lysicrates, achieved in
the same year as that of Alexander on the Granicus. The dramatic
exhibitions being a matter of religion and state, the entrance money
(_theoricum_), which had been introduced to prevent overcrowding, was
from the time of Pericles provided out of the public treasury. The whole
population had a right to its Bacchic holiday; neither women, nor boys,
nor slaves were excluded from theatrical spectacles at Athens.
Costume and scenery.
The religious character of dramatic performances at Athens, and the
circumstances under which they accordingly took place, likewise
determined their externals of costume and scenery. The actor's dress was
originally the festive Dionysian attire, of which it always retained the
gay and variegated hues. The use of the mask, surmounted, high over the
forehead, by an ample wig, was due to the actor's appearing in the open
air and at a distance from most of the spectators; the several species
of mask were elaborated with great care, and adapted to the different
types of theatrical character. The _cothurnus_, or thick-soled boot,
which further raised the height of the tragic actor (while the comedian
wore a thin-soled boot), was likewise a relic of Bacchic costume. The
scenery was, in the simplicity of its original conception, suited to
open-air performances; but in course of time the art of scene-painting
came to be highly cultivated, and movable scenes were contrived,
together with machinery of the ambitious kind required by the Attic
drama, whether for bringing gods down from heaven, or for raising
mortals aloft.
Actors.
On a stage and among surroundings thus conventional, it might seem as if
little scope could have been left for the actor's art. But, though the
demands made upon the Attic actor differed in kind even from those made
upon his Roman successor, and still more from those which the histrionic
art has to meet in modern times, they were not the less rigorous. Mask
and buskin might increase his stature, and the former might at once lend
the appropriate expression to his appearance and the necessary resonance
to his voice. But in declamation, dialogue and lyric passage, in
gesticulation and movement, he had to avoid the least violation of the
general harmony of the performance. Yet it is clear that the refinements
of by-play must, from the nature of the case, have been impossible on
the Attic stage; the gesticulation must have been broad and massive; the
movement slow, and the grouping hard, in tragedy; and the weighty
sameness of the recitation must have had an effect even more solemn and
less varied than the half-chant which still lingers on the modern stage.
Not more than three actors, as has been seen, appeared in any Attic
tragedy. The actors were provided by the poet; perhaps the performer of
the first parts (_protagonist_) was paid by the state. It was again a
result of the religious origin of Attic dramatic performances and of the
public importance attached to them, that the actor's profession was held
in high esteem. These artists were as a matter of course free Athenian
citizens, often the dramatists themselves, and at times were employed in
other branches of the public service. In later days, when tragedy had
migrated to Alexandria, and when theatrical entertainments had spread
over all the Hellenic world, the art of acting seems to have reached an
unprecedented height, and to have taken an extraordinary hold of the
public mind. Synods, or companies, of Dionysian artists abounded, who
were in possession of various privileges, and in one instance at least
(at Pergamum) of rich endowments. The most important of these was the
Ionic company, established first in Teos, and afterwards in Lebedos,
near Colophon, which is said to have lasted longer than many a famous
state. We likewise hear of strolling companies performing _in partibus_.
Thus it came to pass that the vitality of some of the masterpieces of
the Greek drama is without a parallel in theatrical history; while Greek
actors were undoubtedly among the principal and most effective agents of
the spread of literary culture through a great part of the known world.
Writers on the theory of the drama.
The theory and technical system of the drama exercised the critical
powers both of dramatists, such as Sophocles, and of the greatest among
Greek philosophers. If Plato touched the subject incidentally, Aristotle
has in his _Poetics_ (after 334) included an exposition of it, which,
mutilated as it is, has formed the basis of all later systematic
inquiries. The specialities of Greek tragic dramaturgy refer above all
to the chorus; its general laws are those of the regular drama of all
times. The theories of Aristotle and other earlier writers were
elaborated by the Alexandrians, many of whom doubtless combined example
with precept; they also devoted themselves to commentaries on the old
masters, such as those in which Didymus (c. 30 B.C.) abundantly
excelled, and collected a vast amount of learning on dramatic
composition in general, which was doomed to perish, with so many other
treasures, in the flames kindled by religious fanaticism.