The father of the play. Thespians are actors. Thespis utilized a chorus and a single actor. Aeschylus BC. Number of actors: 2 Chorus His plays appear to focus upon justifying the way of the gods to humans according to human notions of justice. He attempts to promote harmony and cooperation. In his plays he demonstrates how violence begets violence begets more violence until reason enters to settle the discord. He demonstrates that the principles which govern the gods are above those of humans.
He favored the civilized life in which reason prevails over violence. He encourages humans to avoid the sin of pride hubris and be mindful of the proper place for everyone. He indicates that the state is the champion of justice and it promotes reasoned reconciliation.
Sophocles BC. Trachinian Women , Philoctetes. Sophocles tragedies are concerned with the fate of human heroes. He accepts the principles of the gods but focuses on the human response to the actions of the gods. The hero is a human who has an extraordinary career, which pushes back the horizons of what is possible for a human. The hero is not a flawless character but a virtuous character.
Sophocles acknowledges the power of the gods but he does not assume that their standards are the same for humans. The human hero takes responsibility for the action of the human. Oedipus could easily claim that he did not know that the man that he killed was his father and neither did he know that the woman who was the mother of his children was also his mother.
Oedipus could have claimed it was all a matter of fate, the work of the gods. He could have offered excuses and "copped a plea". Instead, Oedipus takes responsibility for what he has done and acknowledging the horror of it all, he plucks out his eyes and abandons the palace and his kingship. Euripides B. First Prizes:4 Number of actors: 4 Chorus: While Euripides appears to have won fewer prizes in his lifetime than others, more of his plays survive to this day and are enacted in the principle cities of the Western world every year.
His tragedies are very dark. They challenged the audience to radically reconsider some of their most cherished notions. He reduced the heroes to the level of the contemporary. He demonstrates that gods who do evil deeds are not to be considered as gods!
Euripides encouraged his audience to criticize antiquated conventions and the restraints of the social order- a human made order. Euripides ' work promotes a psychological understanding or perception of events. The plays move from darkness to light. He promotes a questioning of the gods, often displaying their actions in a fashion so that they appear ludicrous or at least questionable.
He illustrates how the gods whatever they may do are not responsible for human motivation. His human personages are seen struggling simply to survive in some tolerable manner. Euripides illustrates how human laws deny basic human rights to women, bastards, foreigners and slaves. His plays show the consequences of accepting those laws without question. He illustrates how the heroic deeds of the legends look when carried out by contemporary humans.
Euripides discredits belief in the gods that promotes horrors. In his play Medea, he shows a horrible act of a mother killing her children in the light of unjust and inhumane conventions that drove her to such a horrible act. In the Trojan Women he shows the Athenians how their victory over the Trojans looked to the women and children of Troy who were raped and killed. The Greeks were made to think by Euripedes works, to think and to question.
Aristophanes BC. Aristophanes was a comic playwright. He was a conservative minded artist. He liked to poke fun at man and his foibles. He delivered hilarious indictments concerning the politics, morality, law, economic theories and educational practices of his time.
His plays are an example of old comedy: burlesque, farce, comic opera, pantomime. It was fun with a serious intent to it. In one play the Lysistrata, the men of a Greek city-state are off at war. The women are lamenting their fate as they await news of the war and learning whether their husbands and sons are still alive or not. The women do not like their station in life, the folly of war and the devaluation in the eyes of men. They are aware that the men appear to have only one interest in them.
They use this as part of a scheme. The women send word to the front lines that no woman of the polis will have sex with the men while there is still a war going on. When word of this strike reaches the men at war not much times goes by before they have settled the matter and are at peace again.
This play was greeted with much laughter by the audience for several reasons. It was Aristophanes way to condemn both the impatience to go to war and the narrow interest that men appear to have had in women. In another of his plays, the Clouds, Aristophanes is poking fun at the Sophists.
They could hold up to 14, people and audiences would come from all over Greece. Early Greek theatres were usually built into hillsides and were circular, so that all members of the audience could hear what the actors were saying. There were never more than three actors on stage at one time and they were almost always men or boys. Ancient Greek Antefix in the shape of a Theatrical Mask. The plays were either comedies or tragedies. The actors wore masks like the one pictured on the right so that the audience members sitting far away could easily spot different characters.
But the masks muffled the actors' voices, so they had to speak very loudly to be heard by the audience. To help the actors, in front of the stage was the chorus. They would chant songs or explain the background to the story being acted out. They were held at Olympia every four years, in honour of Zeus, who was the father and most powerful of all the gods Zeus is shown on the coin pictured opposite.
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