Greek theatre

“ The Athenian theatre was brought into close connection with all that was most brilliant in the architecture and the sculpture of Athens, with all that is most impressive in the natural environments of the city, with the very deities of the Hellenic worship in their visible manifestations to the senses of men. This circumstance alone determined many peculiarities of the Greek drama, which make it wholly unlike our own. If the hero of a modern play, for instance, calls the sun to witness, he must point to a tissue-paper transparency in the centre of a painted scene ”

“ Here again modern taste confirms the judgment of Pausanias. Neither the Dionysiac theatre at Athens, nor the great theatre at Megalopolis, nor the well-preserved theatre at Delphi, nor any other existing Greek theatre, so far at least as my experience goes, can vie for a moment in beauty and symmetry with the exquisite theatre at Epidaurus. ”

“ Reader, it mortifies me that all which I said to you upon the peculiar and separate grandeur investing the Greek theatre is forgotten. For, you must consider, that where a theatre is built for receiving upwards of thirty thousand spectators, the curve described by what in modern times you would call the tiers of boxes, must be so vast as to make the ordinary scale of human features almost ridiculous by disproportion. ”

“ Thus the goat-song of early days developed into the true drama (action) , the crowning effort of Greek genius. Athens had the honor of creating and perfecting it; while in other departments of verse she fell behind her neighbors, in dramatic poetry she eclipsed them all.
The love of the theatre grew into a passion at Athens. When the first rude structure of boards gave way under the weight of the audience, her citizens erected a permanent edifice of semicircular form, whose seats, rising in tiers, were hewn in the rocky side of the Acropolis. ”

“ The Greek drama owed its power to the qualities of regularity and simplicity: the strength of the modern lies in subtlety and multiplicity. The external conditions of the Attic theatre, no less than the prevailing spirit of Greek tragic art, forced this simplicity and regularity upon the ancient dramatists. These conditions do not occur in the modern world. We have our little theatres, our limited audience, our unmasked actors, our scenical illusions, our freedom in the choice of subjects. ”

“ A Greek theatre consisted of three parts—the auditorium, the orchestra, and the “stage-buildings”. The heart of the whole is the orchestra or “dancing-ground” (ὀρχήστρα) upon which the chorus, throughout the action, were stationed—a circular area of beaten earth, later paved with marble. Beside the altar in this orchestra stood, in the earliest days of the theatre, the sacrificial table upon which the single actor mounted. This table in the fixed theatre is the descendant of the waggon from which the peripatetic actor of Thespis delivered his lines. ”

“ THE FEAST OF BACCHUS.
In order rightly to understand the drama of the Greeks, and especially their tragedy, we must rid ourselves, as far as possible, of those associations which now cling in England round the names of "play" and "theatre." For our modern plays are so unlike a Greek tragedy, and the position which they occupy is so entirely different from that of the Athenian theatre, that the few points which both have in common are more likely to impede than assist us.
The Athenian theatre was a national institution; no private speculation, but the pride and glory of a great people ”

“ Having surveyed the view, and fatigued ourselves greatly by our climb in the summer heat, we descended to the old theatre, cut into the rock where it ascends from the village—the smallest and steepest Greek theatre I had ever seen. Open-air buildings always look small for their size, but most of those erected by the Greeks and Romans were so [pg 266] large that nothing could dwarf them. Even the theatre of such a town as Taormina in Sicily—which can never have been populous—is, in addition to its enchanting site, a very majestic structure ”

“ The Greek mode of building had the advantage of greater cheapness and security, and, if the nature of the ground permitted, also enabled them to make exits and entrances for the public besides those below. In the theatre of Dionysus there were side approaches on the high ground also.{399} The auditorium of the Greek theatre was usually situated in some beautiful spot, from which the visitors to the theatre, at any rate those on the higher ground, who were not hindered by the structure of the stage opposite, had an extensive view. ”

“ Abdera, the birth-place of Democritus, the Thracians, men tattooed all over,—all these towns, by the side of their citadel, had a theatre. Why? Because the theatre keeps alight the flame of love for the fatherland. Having the barbarians at their gates, it was important that they should remain Greeks. The national spirit is the strongest of bulwarks.
The Greek drama was profoundly lyrical. It was often less a tragedy than a dithyramb. ”

“ Not far below the shrine lies the theatre of Dionysus, scooped out of the hillside as are most Greek theatres, with a paved, semi-circular “orchestra,” or dancing place, at its foot. Much of the original seating capacity is concealed by the overgrowth of grass, so that one is likely greatly to underestimate its former size. Once the seats rose far up toward the precinct of Asklepios, and the path that to-day traverses the slope passes through what was once the upper portion of the amphitheatre. ”

“ If the games show the physical side of the Greeks, the theatre above all shows the intellectual. While they invented, and perfected, nearly all kinds of literary art, it is the theatre that touched their life most closely, and most fully gave scope for their genius. This also grew out of religion, and was always a part of their religion. But the Greek gods were no puritans. ”

“ We give to the theatre our after-dinner hours, when work is done, or at best a couple of hours in the afternoon. The theatre is for us a recreation. The Greek theatre opened at sunrise, and the whole day was consecrated to high and strenuous religious attention. During the five or six days of the great Dionysia, the whole city was in a state of unwonted sanctity, under a taboo. ”

“ In this neglected but most picturesque corner remain the walls of a stately acropolis on a rocky peninsula with a harbor on each side of it, and other remains of a great city protruding from the rich soil where this peninsula joins the mainland.
But while the city has perished, the Hieron has, in a certain sense, come to life again. Here an area has been laid bare much larger than that excavated by the Germans at Olympia. The theatre, the best preserved of all Greek theatres, was never entirely covered up, and was early and easily cleared. ”

“ Everything we know about Greek art makes it certain that in the theatre, no less than in sculpture and architecture, this nation of artists achieved a perfectly harmonious effect. How dignified, for example, were their masks, may be imagined from the sculptured heads of Tragedy and Comedy preserved in the Vatican—marble fa [Pg 180] ces of sublime serenity, surmounted by the huge mass of curling hair, which was built up above the mask to add height to the figure. ”

“ The excavations of the Greek archæological society have laid bare at least three principal buildings in connection with the famous spot; the old temple of the god, the theatre, and the famous tholos, a circular building, in which those who had been healed of diseases set up votive tablets. The extraordinary size and splendor of the theatre—Pausanias says it was far the finest in Greece—rather contrasts with the dimensions of the temple, and suggests that most of the patients who came were able to enjoy themselves, or else that many people came for pleasure, and not on serious business. ”

“ Schliemann and his Trojan Discoveries—The Gold and Silver Vases of King Priam—Where They Were Found—Relics of the Sack of Troy—Curious Workmanship—Some Account of the Excavations—We Leave Athens—A Queer Steamer—“Pay or Go to Prison”—End of Our Steamship Adventure.
THE Opera was in fashion at Athens, at the time of our visit, and all went there on the second evening of our stay in the city. The theatre is rather small and the company not first-class, but on the whole the house and the performance were quite as good as one could expect for a city of the population of the Greek capital. ”

“ The modern drama belongs not so much to the sacred mystery-plays of the middle ages as to the classic revival or renaissance of four centuries ago. Those who have seen the ruins of classic theatres at Syracuse, or on the hill-side of Tusculum, will best understand how a modern playhouse shows its Greek origin not only in the arrangement, but in the Greek names of its parts—the theatre, or spectators’ place, which still keeps its well-planned horse-shoe shape ”

“ Since they played in broad daylight, in the sharp clear light of a southern sky, the spectators, even in the most distant places, could have followed the play of the actor’s features, especially since the ancients had better eyes than our present generation. Nor is it correct to suppose that the masks were required in order that the funnel-shaped contrivance applied to its mouth should strengthen the sound; for the acoustics in the Greek theatres were usually so good that the very slightest word even whispered on the stage could be heard in the auditorium. ”

“ It is a mistake to suppose that the Greek theatres were too large for the play of an actor’s expression to be observed, and that the coarse features of the mask were arranged with a view to this distance, in which their want of change would be less striking. ”

“ He called my attention to the enormous size of Greek theatres and to the necessity of perfect articulation on the part of Greek actors if they were to be heard. “They were great artists,” said he; “our actors are duffers only. We are all duffers! Give me the Greeks, give me Homer, Pindar, Demosthenes, Plato, Praxiteles, Phidias, Sophocles, and hundreds of others who spoke the language of the gods and did things which only the divine spirit in man can do, and you can have your Morse, McCormick, Howe, Ericsson, and the rest of the materialistic crew who ran the show at Philadelphia.” ”

“ Academy, school, history, philosophy, logic, grammar, poetry, rhythm, harmony, melody, music, are all from Greek words which were in common use in Athens, and the lasting influence of her sublime dramatic tradition is indicated by the great words, chorus, comedy, drama, theatre, and tragedy, and the lesser catastrophe, episode, prologue, and protagonist, all of which draw their meanings from the originality and inspiration of the great Athenian dramatists. ”

“ Dramatic performances in Greece were a part of the worship of the wine-god Dionysos, and in consequence attendance in the theatre at Athens was a religious duty as well as a pleasure. The audience was composed of the citizens, both men and women, and visitors from other states and cities. In early times the playwright acted in his own play, but later the profession of actor was distinct from that of poet. Women’s parts were taken by men.
Plays were performed by daylight in the open air, in theatres so constructed that most of the audience was at a considerable distance from the actors. ”

“ Lessing was the literary Arminius who emancipated our theatre from that foreign rule. He showed us the vapidness, the ridiculousness, the tastelessness, of those apings of the French stage, which itself was but an imitation of the Greek. But not only by his criticism, but also through his own works of art, did he become the founder of modern German original literature. All the paths of the intellect, all the phases of life, did this man pursue with disinterested enthusiasm. ”

“ In other words, Act III partially overlaps Act II in time, but the scene is different. It can scarcely be [264] denied that the dramatic situation has been enhanced by this device, but this gain has been secured at the sacrifice of verisimilitude and dramatic illusion. Such “cut-backs” may be all very well in moving pictures, but they hardly have a place in spoken drama.
Thus, the Greek masters were so far from evolving unities out of their inner consciousness or from observing them invariably that they constantly violated the unities of time and place in both letter and spirit. ”

“ The paucity of actors in Greek drama (see p. 182, below) made any representation of mass effects, such as a battle, quite impossible. The lack of complicated stage machinery prevented the melodramatic actualism that modern audiences love so well. Being thus unaccustomed to the more difficult feats of realism, the ancients had not learned to demand it in lesser matters. ”

“ No other clime can furnish a likeness to these festivals: born of a savage time, they retained the vigorous character of an age of heroes, but they took every adjunct from the arts and the graces of civilization. To the sacred ground flocked all the power, and the rank, and the wealth, and the intellect, of Greece. To that gorgeous spectacle came men inspired by a nobler ambition than that of the arena. Here the poet and the musician could summon an audience to their art. If to them it was not a field for emulation 119, it was at least a theatre of display. ”

“ For we are not to suppose that, while Sparta, [868] and Argos, and Megalopolis, cities comparatively insignificant, possessed theatres of such dimensions, Athens, incomparably the largest and most beautiful of Hellenic capitals, would have been content with one of inferior magnitude. [869]
To determine accurately the various parts of the theatre, and thus affix a distinct meaning to every term connected with it, has exercised the ingenuity of critics and architects for the last three hundred years, still leaving many difficulties to be overcome. ”