Blackwell Reference Online

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In Aristophanes’ comedy Frogs, Dionysus journeys to Hades in search of a talented poet. With the recent deaths of Sophocles and Euripides, the god of the theater seeks to restore to Athens one of her great poets from among the shades. This search leads to a raucous contest between two of Athens’ greatest playwrights, Aeschylus and Euripides, representing respectively, in rough terms, traditional and newfangled tastes, poetics, and values. Underlying the comic treatment of Athenian drama, mores, and politics (and the three are closely linked) is a core assumption that tragedy is central to Athenian life and prosperity. To understand this centrality of tragedy to Athenian life, we need to situate it in the context of performance.We are accustomed to reading plays as verbal texts accompanied by stage directions and notes that suggest a performance. For the fifth-century Athenians, however, tragedy was performed. Etymologically, drama is a Greek word meaning “something done.” Tragedies were performed during an important religious/civic holiday in a large open-air theater. Written texts were still rare in this period, and the experience of drama was primarily, if not exclusively, in performance. We should consider the performative aspect of Greek drama as part of the fabric of a predominantly oral culture, which Athens continued to be during this period.On many points our information ... log in or subscribe to read full text