Roy C. Flickinger

“ Even modern audiences have sometimes felt a certain sympathy with this point of view. “The typical Elizabethan tragedy does not deal with the mistakes of a night, but with the long—often life-long—struggles of its hero. Such a play must have an appropriate ending. After the audience has sympathized with a Hamlet or a Brutus through many a scene, it is not satisfied with a sudden death and a drop of a curtain with a thud. It asks to see the body solemnly and reverently borne off the stage as if to its last resting place. ”

“ The difference between tragedy and comedy in their treatment of the chorus arises from the innermost nature of each, as has been well stated by Mr. Cornford: “The comic chorus has not, from the standpoint of art, the justification and utility which kept the chorus alive in tragedy to the last days of ancient drama. In tragedy it is needed for a high function, not to be so well fulfilled by any other means. It has to utter emotions that can be expressed only in lyric poetry, to say things which the audience longs to have said, but which cannot be said by any character on the stage.... ”

“ Aristotle indicated a mistaken notion current in his day, and likewise in ours, in the following words: “The unity of a plot does not consist, as some suppose, in its having one man as its subject. An infinite multitude of things befall that one man, some of which it is impossible to reduce to unity, and so, too, there are many actions of one man which cannot be made to form one action. Hence, the error, as it appears, of all the poets who have composed a Heracleid, a Theseid, or similar poems. They suppose that, because Heracles was one man, the story also of Heracles must be one story.” ”

“ But that the unities should be arbitrarily imposed upon every drama without exception is absurd, since the theatrical conditions that called them forth are no longer the same. That Aeschylus and Sophocles, if present with us in the flesh, would avail themselves of the greater flexibility and adaptability of the modern theater I cannot doubt. At any rate that restless spirit, Euripides, would certainly have gloried in its freedom. ”

“ On the other hand, against the materialistic school I maintain the self-evident proposition that it is possible for a play to observe all the technical rules arising from the conditions of performance in a theater and before an audience and yet be so lacking in poetry, in truth to life, in inherent worth, as to be [xv] undeserving of the name of “drama.” It is evident, then, that craftsmanship must be the medium of the playwright, not his sole possession. ”

“ If there is one well-authenticated fact in the history of Greek drama, expressly stated in ancient notices and fully substantiated by the extant [5] plays, it is that tragedy arose from a choral performance and only gradually acquired its histrionic features. On the contrary, these carnivals are predominantly histrionic; there is either no chorus or its rôle is distinctly secondary. Had Aristotle been guilty of such a faux pas, we can easily imagine the derisive comments in which modern investigators would have indulged at his expense. ”

“ In undertaking to treat of a subject concerning hardly a detail of which can any statement be made without the possibility of dispute, the unfortunate necessity rests upon me of beginning with three topics which are the most controversial of all—the origin of tragedy, the origin of comedy, and the Greek theater. ”

“ It is particularly easy in dealing with the dramatic remains of bygone ages to ignore or minimize the effect which the manner of presentation must have exercised and practically to confine one’s attention to literary criticism in the narrowest sense of the term. To this tendency classical scholars have been peculiarly prone. But there are many others who are quite aware of the full meaning of the position they occupy. One of these is Spingarn, who roundly declares: “A play is a creative work of the imagination, and must be considered as such always, and as such only.” ”

“ And in either literary genre there was no more reason for such a restriction, whether on historical or technical grounds, than there would be in modern drama. In every period such a detail depends, or ought to be left to depend, entirely upon the requirements of the story chosen for dramatic presentation. Nevertheless, since the histrionic divisions in tragedy were more usually five and since comedy fell more and more under the domination of tragedy, the rigid principle was at last set up for both tragedy and comedy that each play should contain five acts, no more, no less ”

“ As a result, in ancient tragedy the irony of a situation or ambiguous phrase would be recognized at once without any preparation for it whatsoever, while in ancient comedy and in modern plays, whether tragic or comic, these effects usually have to be led up to. Two other considerations ought also to be mentioned, however. First, audiences exercise a sort of clairvoyance in looking beneath the bare words and divining the course of events, so that (paradoxical at it sounds) the surprises of the stage usually are long foreseen by the spectators and only the expected events happen. ”

“ In Greek tragedy the representation of women is strikingly different from that in comedy. Whereas in this respect the latter reacted to the usage of contemporaneous society, tragedy reverted to the practice of Homer. In the Iliad women like Helen and Andromache, suitably attended, not only traverse the Trojan streets but appear on the walls and among the men [280] without losing caste or being regarded as immodest; and though Helen’s elopement with his brother was the source of all Troy’s present woes, Hector addresses her with far more consideration than he shows the wayward Paris. ”

“ We thus pass from one problem to another: Why this disparity between the technique of tragedy and comedy? Must we suppose that the comic dramatists were more clever artists than their tragic confrères? By no means. Comedy was more mobile and reacted more quickly to the actual conditions of contemporaneous life; tragedy was more conventional, never could free itself entirely from the power of tradition, and could only slowly modify that tradition. The situation is clearly revealed in the field of meter. ”

“ If a modern theatergoer could be suddenly set down in ancient Athens, perhaps one of the first things to surprise him would be the discovery that he could not have recourse to his favorite recreation any day that he might choose. Of course, this situation resulted from the fact that ancient drama was connected with religion, was part of some god’s worship, and as such could be presented only at the time of his festivals. ”

“ It certainly applies to cases of blinding, which, whether self-imposed (Sophocles’ Oedipus the King) or wrought by others (Euripides’ Hecabe) , always take place off-scene—the later sight of the bloody masks and ghastly eyes is harrowing enough and to spare. Nevertheless, however strong a case may be made out for it, the aesthetic interpretation cannot, because of one cogent objection, provide the real, ultimate reason for the convention. Is suicide so much less revolting than homicide that the same taste can consistently shrink from the sight of one but tolerate the other? ”

“ With actors, impersonation became possible for the first time in Attic comedy. Besides the nondescript chorus and chorus leaders, there were now performers who could assume the identity of real or imaginary characters and carry a rôle or, by a change of mask, several rôles through the play. The importance of all this is too obvious to require amplification. It marked the birth of dramatic comedy at Athens. Through the introduction of actors, comedy became amenable to several other influences. Tragedy could at once make itself felt. ”

“ Yet true soliloquies, as seen in Shakespeare, are a late development in Greek drama. The epic hero, when alone, may appeal to some divinity or the elements, or he may address his own soul; he never simply thinks his thoughts out loud. So long as the tragedies began with a parodus the choreutae would nearly always be present; and a character who was otherwise alone could address his remarks to them. Consequently no monologues occur in either the Suppliants [305] or the Persians of Aeschylus. But with the introduction of a prologue the way was opened up. ”

“ Or if one of our dramatists could be set down in a Greek theater of some twenty-four hundred years ago, which was incapable of representing an interior scene and had never contained a box set, certainly his dramas would have to be turned literally inside out before they could be produced at all. Would this recasting in no wise affect their aesthetic criticism? Spingarn is anxious to protect Aristotle from the imputation of believing that plays and their theatrical representation are “mutually inclusive.” ”

“ If it were desired to disclose to the audience the corpse of someone who has just been done to death behind the scenes, perhaps with the murderers still gloating over their crime, or to set any similar interior view before the faithful eyes of the spectators, the simplest device was to fling open the appropriate door of the scene-building and thus to display the desired objects or persons close behind the opening. Whatever may be said for such a method under other conditions, in the Greek theater it ran afoul of certain practical considerations. ”

“ The question to be asked concerning a dramatist is—“Does he desire to give the public the best they will accept from him, or does he give them the readiest filth or nonsense that most quickly pays?” He cannot always even give the public the best that they would accept from him. In sitting down to write a play, he must first ask himself, “Can I get a manager of repute to produce this, and in such a way and at such a theatre that it can be seen to advantage? Can I get some leading actor or actress to play this part for the benefit of the play as a whole? ”

“ The foregoing treatment will show that I do not believe a study of the origin of religion to be indispensable for a discussion of the origin of Greek tragedy. Prior to Arion and Epigenes there was nothing which the most fanciful could recognize as akin to modern tragedy. After the work of Thespis and Aeschylus no one can fail to note its presence. To trace, so far as we may, the gradual unfolding of the new genre from a state of nonexistence to a period of vigorous growth seems to me a concrete problem and distinctly worth while. ”

“ In Sophocles’ Antigone, for example, the isolation of the heroine is intensified by a chorus, not only of men but of old men, who would be least sympathetic with her violation of a public edict. In Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound the defiant Titan would have scorned the overtures of a group of men, whoever they might be, but the feminine tact and sympathy of the Oceanides reach his heart at once. Such a chorus, moreover, is an effective foil the better to emphasize the hero’s indomitable strength and will-power. ”