History of European Drama and Theatre

Erika Fischer-Lichte, Jo Riley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134678617
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

This major study reconstructs the vast history of European drama from Greek tragedy through to twentieth-century theatre, focusing on the subject of identity. Throughout history, drama has performed and represented political, religious, national, ethnic, class-related, gendered, and individual concepts of identity.

Erika Fischer-Lichte's topics include:

* ancient Greek theatre
* Shakespeare and Elizabethan theatre by Corneilli, Racine, Molière
* the Italian commedia dell'arte and its transformations into eighteenth-century drama
* the German Enlightenment - Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, and Lenz
* romanticism by Kleist, Byron, Shelley, Hugo, de Vigny, Musset, Büchner, and Nestroy
* the turn of the century - Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Stanislavski
* the twentieth century - Craig, Meyerhold, Artaud, O'Neill, Pirandello, Brecht, Beckett, Müller.

Anyone interested in theatre throughout history and today will find this an invaluable source of information.

1 Ritual theatre

THE TRAGIC HERO

Theatre and the polis

In early spring, when the sea was navigable again after the stormy winter months, the citizens of Athens gathered in the theatre to celebrate the Great, or City Dionysia, the largest and most important state (polis) Dionysian festival. The most significant element and climax of this festival was the performance of tragedies over a period of three days. The choregoi (producers), poets and actors competed in the tragic agon (competition), and a victory earned them tremendous prestige and respect from the polis. The winning poets were held in such high regard by their fellow citizens that they would often be elected to important political or military posts. Sophocles, for example, who won twenty victories in the tragic agon between 468 BC (the first year he competed) and the year of his death in 406 BC, was awarded the post of Hellonotamias in 443–2. Between 441 and 439, he was awarded a general-ship with Pericles during the Samic War, it is claimed due to the enormous success of Antigone. In 428 he was awarded another generalship, this time with Thucydides, and in 411 he was finally elected as one of the probuloi – all of which is impressive evidence of the effect that performances of the tragedies had on the polis.

The performances were dedicated to Dionysus and, thus, functioned as an integrative part of the cult of the state. The Theatre of Dionysus was situated in a holy area dedicated to the god directly adjacent to the temple of Dionysus Eleuthereos. The organisation of the festival was carried out by the polis under the mantle of the highest state minister, the archon eponymos. Preparations for the Great Dionysia lasted many months. Directly after taking up his post in summer, the archon eponymos would select three poets from the competitors and, it is recorded, allocate each a chorus. Generally, the poet was responsible for directing the play. Its financing, however – including several months’ provisions for the citizens, who volunteered as chorus members and who also received a daily wage to compensate for giving up their regular employment – was provided by the choregos, a wealthy Athenian who drew upon personal resources to cover the enormous expenditure involved. The choregos was similarly elected by the archon eponymos.

There was a law which stipulated that wealthy Athenians should take turns to act as choregos, but, although taking on such duties meant a heavy financial burden and only benefited the polis, some choregoi even fought over the position out of sequence. Indeed, many choregoi lost a fortune by outfitting the chorus in an excessively lavish way in order to impress and win personal prestige. It offered the producer an ideal starting point to a public life in politics, as shown by such well-known politicians as Themistocles, Pericles, Alcibiades and Nicias, all of whom took on the post of choregos with great success. In fact, the significance of the choregos was such that his name was put first, above that of the poet, in the reports on the dramatic competition.

The preparations for the festival climaxed in the selection and appointment of the judges of the competition. This was an event of great general interest, due to the large number of Athenians who went to the performances. The judges were appointed through a process of elections and the casting of lots in which the Council of Five Hundred undertook the initial selection. The Council elected candidates from each of the ten districts of Athens whose names were kept in ten carefully sealed urns until the beginning of the competition. The name of one candidate was drawn from each urn, and the judges then wrote their choice on tablets which were placed in yet more urns. To establish the final result, five of these ten tablets were drawn and the rest cast aside. This method of selection aimed to guarantee a high degree of nonpartisanship; the possibility of manipulating the results in such an important event was, to a large extent, ruled out.

The Great Dionysia was considered the most important cultural event in the polis and represented the politics of the polis to the outside world. Since it was held at the beginning of spring, when the various allies of Athens were obliged to submit their annual taxes, many significant representatives from other states were also present, and were given special seats of honour at the festival. The polis at Athens used this occasion to demonstrate its power and riches. It was also the custom to decorate men who had served the community by awarding them a garland in a special ceremony; the sons of soldiers fallen in battle were given a set of arms on the same occasion when they reached adulthood. At the same time, the annual surplus from the state income was divided into baskets of talents (coins) and presented in the orchestra.

It was a matter of course that every Athenian had the right to participate actively or act as a spectator at the festival in honour of Dionysus. In later years, a theorikon or ‘spectator's wage’ was paid to every spectator (equal to the money paid to councillors or trial jury members) because attending a performance was considered to be the public duty of the citizen towards the polis.

The period of the festival was considered holy: it was forbidden to carry out trials, make arrests or send out the bailiff; and prisoners were released for the duration of the festival. Violation of the rules of the festival was seen as the equivalent to religious sin. Violence during the festival or attempting to break open the urns which held the names of the judges could result in the death penalty.

The festival of the Great Dionysia started on the tenth day of the month Elaphebolion (March/April). On the eighth night of the Elaphebolion the so-called proagon took place, in which the poets presented themselves and their plays to the public. On the eve of the festival proper, the ninth night, the statue of Dionysus Eleuthereos was carried out in a festive procession and brought to his temple in the holy quarter. During the course of the night, the announcement was made that the god had appeared and the festival could commence.

The festival began with a great sacrificial procession on the first day which wound its way through the city towards the temple of Dionysus Eleuthereos. After the carrying out of a sacrifice, it moved into the theatre (which could seat approximately 14,000 spectators) and the ceremonies, described above, took place. This was followed in the afternoon by the competition of the dithyramb chorus, which was divided into one by boys and another by men. The comic agon, in which five comedies were presented, took place the following day (from 486 BC). The festival was completed by the tragic agon – the most important part of the event. One tetrology by a different poet (three tragedies originally linked thematically and a satyr play) was performed on the third, fourth and fifth days. With the announcement of the victor in the tragic agon (after 449 BC an agon of the best tragic actor was added to the agon of the tragic poet and choregos), the Great Dionysia drew to a close. On the following day, a public meeting was held in the theatre in which the correctness of the procedure during the festival and offences to be punished were debated.

In the fifth century BC in Athens, four festivals were held annually in celebration of the god Dionysus: the Rural Dionysia (December/ January), the Lenaea (January/February), the Anthesteria (February/March) and the City or Great Dionysia (March/April). Whilst the first three festivals had a relatively long tradition, whose origins are unknown, the City, or Great Dionysia was a new invention. It was introduced in the second half of the sixth century BC by the tyrant Peisistratos and purposefully organised as the largest and most respected festival in honour of the god. The apparently natural link which came to be made between the cult of Dionysus and the performance of tragedy was in fact a contrivance.

This detail exposes a unique aspect of tragedy, which becomes even more noticeable when ethnological comparisons with other cultures are made. Apparently, similar cult festivals and celebrations exist in widely differing cultures which, like the Great Dionysia devoted to the god Dionysus, are dedicated to a god, hero or even totemic animal. Here, too, theatrical performances are an integral part of the festival; they are based on the biography, or key episodes in the life of the dedicatory figure, or involve actions and characteristics associated with a specific god. In confirming the presence of the god, dedicatory clan father or founder, the performance provides the members of the clan, family or community who attend with a shared identity which emphasises their sense of community. Within the framework of a cult, therefore, performance serves to confirm collective identity and unity: those who attend are reminded of their collective unity which derives from a single being.

Apart from a few exceptions (such as Euripides’ The Bacchae), the mythological plots of the Greek tragedies, however, have nothing to do with the dedicatory god of the festival, Dionysus. Similarly, the relatively late and contrived connection between tragedy and the cult of Dionysus, mentioned above, would seem to suggest that the relation between tragedy and Dionysus, the god of metamorphosis, must have been of another kind altogether.

The first records to mention the performance of a tragedy refer to the City or Great Dionysia in the year 534 BC (the Olympics of 536/5– 533/2 BC). The victor of the tragic agon is recorded as Thespis who, in ancient Greek texts, was often described as the ‘founder’ of tragedy. Perhaps it was he who gave Peisistratos the idea of holding performances of tragedy at the planned new Dionysia to make it attractive. In any case, it is believed he was the originator of the idea of placing an actor opposite the chorus, which had a long tradition as a cultural institution, in order to provoke dialogue between them. The second actor was later introduced by Aeschylus; Sophocles introduced the third. Tragedy never stretched beyond this number.

Unfortunately, no tragedy by Thespis has survived, and other than some titles and single verses, nothing remains either of the tragedies by Choirilos, who took part for the first time in 523/20, Phrynichos, who won his first victory in 511/8 or Pratinas, who came to Athens in 515 and made the satyr ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Ritual theatre
• 2 Theatrum vitae humanae
• 3 The rise of the middle classes and the theatre of illusion
• 4 Dramatising the identity crisis
• 5 Theatre of the ‘new' man
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index of dramatic works
• General index