some reflections on the illusion in greek tragedy

SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE ILLUSION IN GREEK TRAGEDY

David Bain

In this paper I return to topics upon which I discoursed at some length a decade or so ago, first in an article and then in the opening and closing chapters of a book which dealt with Greek dramatic conventions.’ My return to these topics is in part prompted by a re-reading of that book prior to its recent reprinting. This evoked a wish to present and discuss evidence which came to my notice after its first publication and to take into account work by others which has appeared in the intervening period.?

I do not propose here to present a general discussion of ‘the illusion’ or to justify my use of the term. I speak unrepentantly of ‘the dramatic illusion’ on the assumption that when I do so the reader will understand what I am saying2 I intend instead to re-examine two specific questions. Both concern the relationship between actor and audience or, alternatively, between playwright and audience. The first was posed in my article on audience address. ‘Is the audience ever addressed directly in Greek tragedy?’ The second was discussed in the final chapter of my book. ‘Do we ever find play with the illusion in Greek tragedy?’

These questions seemed to me important when first I attempted to answer them and they still seem so today. The answers one gives affect an important part of our composite picture of the genre. It is perhaps demanding too much to hope that investigation of this kind will enable us to discover the ‘nature’, the ‘physis’, of Greek tragedy. At the very least, however, we are entitled to hope that when we discuss such questions we may eventually arrive at some notion of its flavour. In some way the present study is intended as a companion-piece to several recent studies which, although they deal with what are apparently disparate topics, nevertheless all

I D. Bain, ‘Audience Address in Greek Tragedy’ CQ ns 25 (1975) 13-25 - henceforth ‘Audience Address’; id., Actors and Audience: a stud-v of Asides and Reluted Conventions in Greek Drum0 (Oxford 1977, reissued in paperback 1987) -henceforth A&A. The reissue of A&A is virtually unaltered save for the correction of misprints and the addition in square brackets where space permitted of further material. I take the opportunity here of mentioning some works which I should have had to take into account if I had attempted a wholesale revision. 0. Taplin, The Stagecruft oj’Acsc~hylus: the Dramatic Use of Exits and Entrances in Greek Tragedy (Oxford 1977) which appeared shortly after A&A has obvious contacts with the parts of that work concerned with tragedy. The discussion of Aesch. ScT Iff. deals at length with the question of audience participation. Two articles in the same volume of HSCPh (R. Hamilton, ‘Announced entrances in Greek tragedy’, HSCPh 82 (1978) 63-82, and R. J. Tarrant, ‘Senecan drama and its antecedents’, ih. 21 3-63) are important contributions to the study of conventions in Greek tragedy. Hamilton discovers a new rule regarding the announcement of new entries. Tarrant’s article, despite its title, goes over many of the passages from tragedy discussed in A&A and sometimes provides interpretations preferable to the ones found therein. The brief, but remarkable monograph of D. J. Mastronarde (Contact and Discontinuity: some Conventions ofspeech and Action on the Greek Tragic Stage (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1979)) contains an examination of the phenomena discussed in the first part of A&A and invents a new technical vocabulary to describe them (see my review, CR ns 32 (1982) 4-6). D. Bain, Masters, Servants and Orders in Greek Tragedy: u Study ofsome Aspects of Dramatic Technique and Convention (Manchester 198 1 ) contains several retractions, corrections and revisions of things said in A&A. For a general discussion of ‘the illusion’ see A&A chapter one. I now incline more towards the position outlined by Taplin in the article cited below than to the Johnsonian view there recommended. I am not deterred from talking about the illusion in Greek tragedy by the absence of any ancient Greek word capab:e of translating it (drndtq, a seductive candidate, will not do: see the discussion in G. Lanata, Poetica pre-Plutonica: testimonianze e frammenti (Florence 1963) 193f.). Anecdotal evidence of the kind supplied by Plut. Vit. Pelopid. 29.5 (the ultimate source perhaps of Hamlet’s ‘What’s he to Hecuba ... ?’ - see Hamlet, ed. J. Dover Wilson (The New Shakespeare) 300) suggests to me that the Greeks understood the concept even if they did not have a word for it.

I

2 ESSAYS ON GREEK DRAMA

have in common a desire to extend our knowledge of the methods of communication employed by the Greek dramatist?

The present paper was ready for delivery when I first encountered Oliver Taplin's stimulating article entitled 'Fifth-century Tragedy and Comedy: a Synkrisis' (JHS 106 (1986) 163-74 - henceforth cited as 'Synkrisis' = 'Die Welt des Spiels und die Welt des Zuschauers in der Tragodie und Komodie des 5 Jahrhunderts', WJh' 12 (1986) 57-71). Rather than recasting my discussion to take full account of this work, I have simply referred to it at appropriate moments. The reader who will no doubt observe a considerable overlap even in points of detail between the two articles is invited to regard them as complementary to each other.

In 'Audience Address' I examined passages from Greek tragedy in which scholars, ancient and modem, had claimed that there was direct address of the audience. I argued that in each case such an assumption was mistaken and unnecessary as long as one was prepared to grant that the mere fact of a speaker expressing himself aloud when alone on stage or going so far as to admit that he was speaking was no more than a reflection of a theatrical convention and that it did not force us to assume in such an event that an audience was being addressed or even that the speaker acknowledged the presence of an audience. Thus I drew a clear and strict distinction between Greek tragedy and comedy. As is well known, in comedy i t is often made quite clear that the actor is addressing the audience. He uses such expressions as &v6pe5 or (less frequently) 19~arai and so acknowledges the presence of the audience in the theatre, admitting that he himself is in the theatre and that he is an actor playing a part.

There are in tragedy occasions when it is easy to gain the impression that there is some such direct communication between actor and audience and an admission that proceedings are taking place in a theatre. This is particularly true of the prologues of Euripides' and most of all the point in those divine prologues when the speaker announces his intention to withdraw." Even so such passages contain no mention of spectators or second-person plural verbs. The contrast between a divine prologue-speaker in comedy like Pan in Menander's D ~ s c d w and the tragic speaker like Hermes in Euripides' /on is revealing. When Pan withdraws from the stage after introducing the first entrants of the play he appeals directly to the audience to give Menander's play a fair hearing. As I said in 'Audience Address' when comparing these speeches. 'there is nothing like this in tragedy' (p.23).

The distinction drawn between the two genres formed the basis of much of the discussion of the dramatic illusion in the first and last chapters of A&A. It was also crucial to the treatment of the aside in tragedy in that book. 1 argued that. unlike the aside in comedy, the tragic aside was never a confidence imparted to or shared with the audience. For the most part it represented a spontaneous outburst of emotion made with no particular auditor in the speaker's mind. The two types of aside developed independently of each other and. if there was any interchange between the two genres. it was tragedy that influenced comedy and not, as many

I am thinking in particular of J . Could. -Dramatic charilcter and "human intelligibility" in Greek tragedy'. PCPhS 11s 24 (1978) 43-67. B. Gredley, 'Greek tragedy and the "discovery" of the actor'. T/icwc.s iri Drmmi vo1.6 (1984) 1-14. and P. E. Easterling. 'Anachronism in Greek tragedy'. . / H S 105 (1985) 1-10, (Malcolm Heath's T/rc P o 4 c . s o f ' G r c ~ X 'I'rogcv!\ (London 1987) came to my notice too late to be taken into account in this article.) ' The tailpieces of Euripides' plays can he left out of account irrespective of their authenticity. They do sometimes

contain prayers for victory. but i t is clear that they are outside the actual play to which they are appended. See 'SynkriGs'. 166.

" S e e Hamilton (11.2) 68.

D. BAIN 3

had asserted, the other way round: comedy on occasion borrowed from tragedy the spontaneous outburst.

In returning to the arguments put forward in ‘Audience Address’ I do not wish to review all the evidence set out there. Instead I will look once more at the passage in tragedy which is ostensibly the best candidate7 to be considered an example of audience address in tragedy. It is a passage beset by difficulties, and recently an interpretation of it has been set forth that differs radically from mine.

This is Eur. 0i.esre.s 128-9: EYGEZE xap’ & ~ p q Qq drxlt9pmev zp i~a5 , Ohl<OVOCX KkhhOS; EO’KI 6’ 4 nkhfY.1 y U V i .

128 &TE Let Z Aesch. A,?. 536 (Triclinius) y&p Duport

These lines are spoken by Electra to justify an apostrophe of phvsis that immediately precedes them: ‘0 physis, how great an evil art thou among men, while being a salvation for those lucky in receiving thy gifts’. Helen, the person referred to in the lines, has just left the stage and Electra is alone when she utters them save for the presence of her sleeping brother. The chorus does not enter ti l l 140 so that there can be no question of the plural verb in 128 being addressed to them. In the ancient commentary we find some serving maids conjured up solely for the purpose of providing an audience for this harangue. As I have shown in my article (20, 20 n. I ) this technique would be quite abnormal in tragedy. In these circumstances it is easy to see why many, including one group of ancient commentators, have been driven to the conclusion that in 128f. Electra must be addressing the audience.

In 1975, following Leo and Fraenkel (see ‘Audience Address’, 20), I argued that we were not obliged to posit any particular addressee or group of addressees to account for the presence of a plural verb in a passage like this. What we were confronted with was in reality an exclamation in the form of a question, another way of saying ‘look at that!’ The notion of an addressee was irrelevant. ‘In the case of such an idiom which clearly derives from the spoken language, one is not encouraged to speculate too deeply on the identity or existence of an addressee’ (‘Audience Address’, 21).

The most recent commentator on Oresfes, Sir Charles Willink (Oxford 1986), treats the passage rather differently. While accepting that there can be no question of Euripides indulging in direct address of the audience, he cannot believe that the text as editors print it with E ~ ~ E Z E as the verb and with a question mark at the end of 129 can represent anything else. Accordingly he suggests that we follow Porson in adopting the poorly attested variant %EZE which gives us an imperative and emending nap’ to yixp (Wecklein kept E’~&TE but accepted the emendation yixp). Willink’s advocacy of @p is also motivated by a desire to be rid of nap’ &,pas which, as a glance at the coniecturae minus prohahiles in Wecklein will show, has troubled many.

Willink argues that the Vulgate text with past-tense verb and question would have found easy acceptance in a period when it was believed that audience-address was admissible in tragedy (it is indeed clear that ancient commentators were prepared to countenance it: see ‘Audience Address’, 15, 15 n.2). Y&ZE he thinks acceptable as a ‘generalised plural’ of a kind which he finds paralleled elsewhere in tragedy. Not all of his examples seem to me apposite, and I would

’ Taplin (n.2) 13 1 n.2 was surprised that I did not mention in my article as the strongest candidate for an example of audience address in tragedy Aesch. Eum. 681 (cf. ‘Synkrisis’, 166). I omitted i t precisely because, as Taplin points out, the line that follows excludes this possibility: xpwTa~ 6i~aq ~ p i v o v ~ & < aypol~o~ XuroO.


prefer to keep second person imperatives from choral odes (e.g. Soph. El. 1384) out of the reckoning .

Against Willink it may be objected that plural injunctions of the kind he is using to parallel ’i6Eze here (e.g. Eur. Or. 809, 7067’ ~ K E ~ V O . ~7606’ Bzaipou~) and particularly the type where the verb demands that the ‘generalised’ addressees observe something are normally, as one might expect, of a more general character than what we are presented with here, a request to consider Helen’s coiffure. In my article, I asserted that Or. 128f. was different from ‘harangues introduced by second-person plural verbs such as Eur. Andr. 950ff.: “therefore guard well with locks and bolts your house doors”.’ Such injunctions arise from some specific incident or occurrence observed by the speaker who then moves on to generality, moralising upon a turn of events he has just witnessed. This type of utterance is almost a Euripidean mannerism. It is easy to exemplify in all kinds of drama. Comparable is Figaro’s tirade in The Marriage cf Fi~quro when, after learning as he thinks of the infidelity of his bride-to-be, he enjoins all husbands:

Aprite un PO’ quegli occhi, Uomini incauti, e schiocchi, Guardate queste femmine, Guardate cosa son.

(Mozart-da Ponte, Le N o z e di Fi,quro, Act IV sc. 8)

So in Orhello 1.1.170 a particular occurrence leads to a generalised command to fathers: ‘Fathers, from hence trust not your daughters’ minds / By what you see them act’. There are admittedly two passages in Greek tragedy which begin with an imperatival ‘look!’ and might be thought to have a reference particular enough to provide a parallel for 01.. 128f. as interpreted by Willink. Each, however, seems to me to possess an extra degree of generality and to contain a form of moralising which brings them closer to the usual pattern. The first is the section of Teucer’s speech in Sophocles’ Ajax which begins ‘consider the lot of two mortals (Ajax and Hector)’ and goes on to compare the careers and fortunes of the two heroes.’ The other passage is an utterance by Theseus at Eur. Hipp. 943: ‘look at this man (Hippolytus) who, despite being my son, shamed my bed and is convicted by the dead woman as being the worst of all criminals’. It may be a subjective judgement, but I do not feel that these match the tone of the Oresres-passage. It should be noted that in both of these instances there are others present on stage when the exclamations are uttered.

Other examples of the idiomatic question equivalent to a command which is prefaced by a past tense verb of seeing or hearing all contain singular verbs. The only explanation I can offer in an attempt to reconcile this passage with those others where the verb is singular is the one I offered in my article.“’ Euripides by using the plural verb is slightly altering an idiom of popular speech and thereby dignifying it. This is a procedure most commonly associated with Sophoc1es.l’

The problem of Or. 128 is the plural verb.

See M. Kaimio. Thc. Chorrrs c!fGrcek Drmru wifhiii the Light of the Persou und Nuniher Used (Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 46. Helsinki 1970) 139.

“There are good grounds for considering that this comes from an interpolated passage - see ‘Audience Address’, I8 n.4. and compare M. L. West, Gironron SO (1978) 242: ‘ I would excise only 1028-35.’

I” Which is in fact a condensation of five somewhat tortuous pages of the thesis from which the book evolved (D. M. Bain, Asides und Reluted Comwitioris irr Creak Drcinrci, Diss. ined. Oxon. 1973, 129-34). Cf. ‘Audience Address’. 21 n.5, and add to the references there R. Pfeiffer. SBAW 1938, 53. and E. Fraenkel. Dire Seniimwi rnnrorri di Edi(cwd Frcieik4 (Roma 1977) 49 (on Soph. Phil. 254).

D. BAfN 5

If some doubt therefore still surrounds Eur. Or. 128f. there is little to be said about other passages which have been alleged to contain audience-address. If such a device was possible, one might have expected to find at least one or two clear-cut examples from what we have of tragedy. Despite this (and perhaps because of a lack of a study which systematically examined the question) scholars have been remarkably free in positing the existence of the phenomenon. I mention here in passing two passages where two famous names have gone sadly astray and where one wonders if they would have made the suggestions they did if they had applied themselves to a general consideration of the question of audience-address in tragedy.

The first passage is the conclusion of Hyllus’ long narrative in Truchiniue in which he narrates the disastrous results of Deianira’s gift to Heracles (Soph. Truch. 8050:

. .. . . . . . . . . . K a i v ~ v ahka 4 @vz’ iaoyr&o6’ 4 zE6VqKoz’ h p t i y .

At 749 Hyllus had begun his reply to his mother with a second-person singular address d xpil patkiv a& ... Now, however, when he concludes the narrative section of his speech (750-806 are formally akin to a messenger-speech) we find him using a second-person plural verb. Here we find Karl Reinhardt putting forward an interpretation that shows that he was prepared to countenance audience-address in Sophoclean tragedy.” He draws attention to the transition made in the following line (807) where Hyllus once more uses the second person singular, addressing his mother alone and not, as here, a plurality. Reinhardt explains the plural as the result of Hyltus’ report being addressed to the spectators.’’ Seemingly he believed that all messenger speeches were so dire~ted.’~ Surely this is quite mistaken. Hyllus’ narrative is meant to be heard by the people of Trachis as well as Deianira. Here they are represented by the chorus which, as in other tragedies, by its presence gives the play a public aspect even although in this case the chorus is female. It is quite normal for narratives of this kind to be addressed to a group comprising an actor on stage and the chorus. There is thus nothing remarkable about this particular plural verb.

More remarkable, and indeed almost bizarre, is Wilamowitz’s passing comment on Soph. Ant. 1 165ff.:

... ... ... ... z ; u s ~ p 1 / 6 o v ~ ~ iirav npo&bnv &v&pe~, 06 tifiqp’ $+JI Qjv zoikov, drhh’ Epyruxov fipcpat VEK~OV.

This is part of a speech delivered by the man who brings the news of Antigone’s death and Haemon’s suicide. Wilamowitzt5 tentatively suggests taking iXv6py here as the earliest example of a usage that has now become increasingly familiar from Menandrean comedy. In fact Wilamowitz made this suggestion in a discussion of the great monologue of Demeas which opens the third act of Menander’s Surniu (Wilamowitz believed that it ‘ohne Zweifel’ began the first act). There is indeed a certain amount of doubt about the text of Soph. Am. 1 l65ff. 1167 is not transmitted in our manuscript tradition, and we are in debt for its presence in the text as well as for the reading & v @ q (the manuscripts give us either h@q or hv6pOq) to Athenaeus. There is perhaps room for doubt whether the verb npo6i3olv is correctly transmitted, but the change of number in 1166f. is unexceptionable. To take &vSpq here as a vocative (rather than

l 2 K. Reinhardt, Sophokles (Frankfurt 1934) 22% = Sophocles tr. by H. and D. Harvey (Oxford 1973) 244. l3 ‘In der Trachinierinnen heisst es V.806: “Ihr werdet ihn sehen”, nicht “du wirst ihn sehen”, denn der Bericht

l4 ‘In der traditionellen Exangelosrolle hat sich das noch spater erhalten.’ l5 Kleine Schr@en 1.425 n. I .

richtet sich an die Zuschauer.’


the subject of the verb) is quite unthinkable. This is not the only place where Wilamowitz imports the practice of New Comedy onto the stage of Sophocles.Ih

Before proceeding to my second question I should mention here another, special, use of audience address which has from time to time been posited for Greek tragedy. This arises in plays which open with crowd scenes. It has been argued that in such contingencies the producer did not avail himself of a crowd of extras. Instead the Athenian audience was expected to imagine itself into the role of the relevant body addressed and in such a way become involved in the action of the play. Two plays have given rise to this suggestion. Both, as it happens, are set in Thebes. One is Aeschylus’ Seven against Thehes which begins with an address to the whole citizen body:

KbGpou nohirat, xpq h c p v rtt Kaipta . . . The other is Sophocles’ Oedipus where Oedipus begins by addressing what we later learn (Soph. O.T. 16-20) is a specially selected delegation of Thebans:

Taplin (op. cit. (n.2) 129ff.) and I (‘Audience Address’ 22 n.1) independently have argued against this manner of staging these scenes, both of us asserting that the producer in each case would have used a stage crowd and that this crowd is the addressee of the relevant speech. It cannot be denied that occasionally crowds do appear on the tragic stage. There ought to be a fair number of people on view during the opening of Euripides’ Herudidue, enough to justify Demophon’s reference to entering to an 6 x h o ~ (Eur. Hcld. 122 - he is not referring to the chorus). We cannot know how many captive Oechalian girls appeared on stage during Soph. Truch. 228ff., but the effect of Deianira singling out one of them as being particularly pitiable (312) would be diminished if there were not a good many visible to the audience. In Euripides’ Helen Theoclymenus returns from the hunt with a considerable retinue (Eur. He/. 1165ff.) and later sends out a large body of men to assist at Menelaus’ burial at sea (1390). The opening of Menander’s Aspis is a striking addition to our examples of crowd scenes in Greek drama. Like the extras in He,-uclidue the retinue of captives Daos leads into Chaerestratus’ house is described as an 6xhos (Men. Asp. 37).

Apparently not everyone has been convinced by the case that Taplin and I have made. The two scholars who have collaborated on an article on the opening of the Sever? which appeared in Illinois Clussiid Studies explicitly reject it.I7 Giinther Zuntz in a discussion of textual problems in Eteocles’ speech says in passing: ‘the Attic citizens crowding into it [the theatre of Dionysus] become KaGpou nohiTai”x (but the Seven is not the opening play of the trilogy). McCulloch and Cameron do not seem to me to have produced any convincing arguments to refute the view that Aeschylus’ play opened with a crowd of extras on stage. Their own suggestions about the text and interpretation of lines 12- 13 do not make the assumption that the audience is being addressed any easier to believe. One might, theoretically, be willing to accept that an Athenian audience would be prepared to take on the role of the whole citizen body of another town. Would the audience be prepared, as McCulloch and Cameron’s interpretation of 1 Iff. asks of it, to assume the role of a restricted section of that citizen body and imagine itself as those people within the age limits that rendered one liable to participate in active combat?

& r&wa Kaspou roG n&LaL v i a cpocpj.

I’ See ‘Audience Address’, 18 n. I . on his approach to Soph. A j m 1093 (wrongly cited there as 1083) where at least

l 7 H. Y. McCulloch and H. D. Cameron, ICS 5 (1980) 5 . 5 n.6. I n G . Zuntz, PCPhS ns 27 (198 I ) 83 [a Heinies I I I (1983) 2621.

& V ~ P E S is a vocative.


In this connection it is worth mentioning a couple of non-literary examples of the world-stage image which occur in moralising contexts and undoubtedly derive ultimately from Hellenistic popular philosophy.

The first is one of several gnomic incisions made on one of a pair of inscribed and illustrated silver goblets which are dated to around A.D. 30.24 On these goblets inscriptions which express commonplaces of a cynic or hedonistic character keep company with skeletal depictions of philosophers and dramatists. The inscription in question o q v f i 6 pies (for which compare the opening of Palladas’ distich, A.P. 10.72) is to be found above a depiction of a dramatic mask placed on a stool which stands between the skeletons of the great Sophocles and the lesser At hen i an tragedian Mosc h ion.

Secondly there is an inscription found on a gem, an Egyptian haematite in the Hoffmann collection, the beginning of which runs as follows:

&OS A& / 65 *lYijl ymxijt / olqvilv lYup[&]kqC/ E x a q o E , z[0]6zot & NEpeol[$] & X&ptzq mv&n;ovT€ . . .

The first editor, R. Frohner,’s suggested that the gem was the property of an actor. Peterson,2h however, in re-editing it recognised that the inscription contained an example of the familiar ‘stage of life’ metaphor: o q v f i v . . . d n a q o ~ is comparable with oqvof i azdv found in Vettius Valens (228.31 Pingree) and means simply ‘lived’. The character of the inscription (and probably the ambience whence it came) reflects popular philosophy and, as A. D. Nock has shown.!’ there is no need to look for any connections with mysticism in seeking to explain it.

The student of ancient drama is particularly interested in the possibility of this metaphor or simile (and related phenomena) being exploited for dramatic purposes within a play. When I discussed what I called ‘play with the illusion’ in the final chapter of Actors ond Audience, I had at the time of writing not yet encountered the now popular term ‘metatheatre’ (nor apparently had the compilers of the supplement to the 0.for.d English Dictionmy, the relevant volume of which was published in 1976).>“ If 1 understand him rightly, the originator of the expression, Lionel Abel,> uses it with an application wider and less specific than I would claim for ‘play with the illusion’. He speaks of metaplays, works of metatheatre in which the dramatist adopts the viewpoint that ‘only that life which has acknowledged its inherent theatricality can be made interesting on the stage’ (op. cit. 6Of.). He is thus dealing with larger issues than the ones I had in mind, whether. for example, Hamlet in comparison with the Oresteio is rightfully called a tragedy. For Abel, Shakespeare’s play is metatheatre and the playwright’s intention plainly metatheatrical. It would be interesting to see his approach applied systematically to Greek tragedy which he is inclined to treat as a monolith, a body of unmetatheatrical works which form a contrast to the metatheatrical Shakespeare. A case could be made for regarding one of the Greek tragedians, Euripides. as a metadramatist. I shall presently be mentioning passages from him that I expect Abel would call metatheatrical. For the moment, however, I propose to reconsider the more restricted question of whether there is ‘play with the illusion’ in Greek tragedy, this being, if I may be permitted to coin some jargon

?‘ ‘Silberbecher von Boscoreale’ in K. Schefold, Die Bildnissc dcr artfikrri Dich/cr- (Basel 1943) 166f. Is RhM 47 ( 1892) 307. 2h E. Peterson. EIZ 6EOZ (Gottingen 1926) 257. 27 Nock (n.23) 1.513f. Ix Cf. Taplin. ‘Synkrisis‘. 164 n.9.

L. Abel. Metuthcuti-c: u new iicn ofDrunrutic Forni (New York 1%3).

D. BAIN 9

of my own, in my opinion a ‘micro-theatrical’ matter, the concerns of Abel being ‘macro- theatrical’. Of course, accumulated micro-theatrical effects will almost inevitably lead to metatheatrical drama.

In modem drama the use of the dramatic comparison of life to the stage is often used as an elegant and amusing reminder to the audience that it is a play and not ‘life’ that is on view. As an illustration, one may note in passing three random examples from modem dramatic works. Tonino in Goldon i’s comedy, The Venetian Twins,‘O commenting on a fortunate coincidence cries out:

Cielo, te ringrazio! Vardk che caso! Vardtt che accidente!

Una sorella! Tutti qua! Tutti insieme! El par un Do fradei!

accidente da commedia. The daughter in Eduardo di Filippo’s Neapolitan comedy, Saturday, Sunday and Monday,” asks towards the end of the play:

During the mayhem of the first act of Berg’s opera, Lulu, the poet Alwa remarks of the proceedings: l2

sicchC la nostra famiglia e da compagnia comiia napoletana?

Uber die liesse sich freilich eine interessante Oper schreihen. Effects like these can be paralleled in ancient drama. They occur most frequently in Roman comedy. The locus classicus is to be found at the close of Plautus’ Mostellaria where the triumphant slave advises his master ‘if you are a friend of Diphilus or Philemon, tell them how your slave made a fool of you. You will provide them with excellent deceptions‘ for their come die^.'^' There is no reason to doubt that something similar appeared in-the Phasma which was Plautus’ original.74 Actual examples from Greek comedy are harder to find, but there are at least two instances from the type of comedy which provided Plautus and other authors of the palliata with their models. In a fragment of Alexis a parasite mentions the way his metier is treated in comedy” and likewise in a papyrus fragment that might come from a Menandrean playJh we find a comic cook complaining of the way cooks are depicted in comedy. Without question it is merely by accident of preservationJhat we do not know of more such passage^.'^

On the other hand one is hard put to it to fihcl.anything similar in Greek tragedy. Earlier I argued that in fact it was vain to search for such phenomena in that genre:

Theatrical imagery would be most surprising in tragedy. The tragedians were for the most part attempting imaginative recreations of the Homeric world. In that world the stage has no place ... Though the Greek tragic poet frequently makes reference to his art. he does so obliquely by referring to song and dance, age-old activities which are amply attested in Homer.38

3o I due gemelli veneziani, I11 sc. 19. 3‘ Sahato. Dornenica e Lunedi ( I Capolavori di Eduardo, I1 p.592). 32 A. Berg, Lulu, Act I sc.3. 33 Plaut. Most. 1149f. 34 Cf. A&A, 212 and 212 n.1, and see R. L. Hunter, MH 37 (1980) 224 11.54. j5 Alexis fr.116 (see A&A, 213f.). 36 CGFPR 244.221ff. = ‘Menander, Hydria’ (Gaiser) 103ff. See A&A 218f. 37 T. B. L. Webster (An Introduction to Menander, 122) adduces CGFPR 249.9 as a further example. This is far

j*A&A 210f. from certain.

I 0 ESSAYS ON GREEK DRAMA

While I still believe that this holds good, I regret not having mentioned in this connection a passage which, while going some of the way to providing an example of play with the illusion in tragedy, clearly marks a distinction between the two genres." This comes from a speech at the end of Euripides' Troudes in which Hecuba draws some comfort from the fact that the sufferings of the Trojans will provide a subject for song in a future age:

............ E i & pQ 6EOS

ECST~EVE T&VW n~p tpahbv K&TW ~ 6 0 ~ 0 5 ,

po6oay ckot6ix5 6 d v ~ q Go~Epov Ppo~6.w. &(pCtVEiS &V 6VTEG O 6 K &V 6PVT6EiPEV &V

According to R. B. R~therford,~" 'this passage refutes the contention of Taplin and D. Bain that no case of theatrical self-reference can be found in Greek tragedy. Hecuba's utterance here is in fact very close to the passage of Julius Ccresur cited by Bain [Actors and Audience] 209 n. 1 .' (this is Cassius' exclamation during the conspiracy scene 'how many ages hence shall this our lofty scene be acted over ...'). I would insist that the passage does no such thing while at the same time asserting that there is self-reference in it. Self-reference as such is something I did not and would not deny to Greek tragedy as in fact the extract quoted above will have shown. What I did and do deny is self-reference with specific and explicit reference to the t h e m e . This passage does not provide an exception since Hecuba speaks about song and not, like Cassius, about the stage. What we have is a favoured and recurrent motif of Greek literature which can ultimately be derived from Homer, the possibility that a person may attain lasting fame through becoming the subject of song. This often involves a kind of compensation for present sufferings through posthumous literary 'immortality'.J' So in Iliad 6.357f. we find Helen saying that the kukos moms imposed on herself and Paris is meant by Zeus to lead to a subject of song for future generations: ~ a i 6niooo &v6fphnoiol n ~ h h p ~ 6 ' &oi6tpoi 2ooop&vo~ol. Likewise at Odyssey 8.579f. Alcinous tells Odysseus that the gods have brought about the destruction of Ilium and the concomitant deaths of so many warriors on both sides of the conflict in order that they might be a song for those to come:

......... 2neKhkavto 6' iik6pov &v~~phnot< , Iva +ol ~ a i EooopEvomv hot6q.

This theme seems to have been particularly dear to Euripides. In Alcatis42 we find the chorus apostrophising Alcestis and asserting that she will be the subject of song for bards (uoidoi) in the future. Similarly in Supplic~esJ7 the children of the seven are told that they will create songs for those who come after. In Hippolytus 1428-30 where Artemis announces the posthumous fame of Hippolytus and Phaedra" an actual existing cult-song whose aetion is given is envisaged, but the implicit thought is surely present that the actual dramatic performance of Euripides' play is in some way a kind of fulfilment of the prediction.

7v Cf. also Taplin, 'Synkrisis', 168. 4 0 . / H S 102 (1982) 160 n.69. d l See Wilarnowitz. Der Glairhe der Hellewn, I . 366. and Lanata, op.cit. (note 3) 170f. with the literature cited by

J? roiav Ehirrq t3avoka poh-l xbv pehdwv droihiq. Eur. AIL,. 453f.

JJ &A 6t pouoolroio< d q (TE KapO&vwv I Eorai pipipva, K O ~ K &vbvupoq mobv I Epw 6 @ai6pa<

her.

'Erriyovot 6' av' 'EhhaGa I ~hqBEvre< ht6as 6orEpoicn 8fio&r&. Eur. Sirppl. 1224f.

oiyrl0ioEtai. Eur. H i p p . 1428-30. o~

D. BAlN I I

In all these Euripidean passages there is a kind of reference to the play that is being or has been performed. The allusion, however, is veiled and oblique. It is achieved by speaking of singers and bards and songs rather than of poets and dramatists and plays. As Professor Easterling has observed, this is on all fours with the way in which the tragic poets deal with literacy and monetary matters:

Despite the free use of references to writing and writing materials, there is no mention of hooks in the extant plays. This, no doubt, is where the dramatists drew the line: writing itself was acceptable, and so were writing tablets, but books would be intrusive, too sharply suggestive of the modem world. So even in places where the tragedians are plainly talking about literature as opposed to messages or letters they do not use hihlion or hyhlos. ‘Tablets’ or ‘muses’ seem to be the correct terrnin~logy.~~

She goes on to point out that when money is mentioned in tragedy it is not in terms of obols, drachmae, staters, or talents, but by means of vague and dignified words like ‘gain’, ‘silver’,46 ‘reward’ or ‘gold’. So with the self-referential passages just discussed it can be argued that the proprieties of tragedy are observed. While it would be forced and perverse in their case, just as it would be in the case of indirect allusions to written works of literature or to financial matters in tragedy, totally to reject a suggestion of a contemporary reference, it would be mistaken to detect serious anachronism or rupture of the illusion. Self-reference in tragedy is effected by language which does not take us out of the Homeric world, a world of song, music, muses, bards and minstrels.

Besides the total absence of direct reference to drama and dramatists in tragedy, there is an almost total absence of reference to poets. The word poietes is attested only once in tragedy and that in a fragment of Euripides where, so I persuade myself, there is room for doubt about the genuineness of its transmission and consequent claims to form part of the tragic

Occasionally one finds in tragedy words which are known to have become technical terms of theatre production or which might be thought to suggest such terms. It is hard to make a case that such words are used as theatrical terms in tragedy. When we encounter episkenos, drama, kommos (Aesch. Cho. 423), epeisodos, skene and katastrophe they are beyond doubt employed without such technical connotation^.^" Simon Goldhil14’ takes me to task for not considering [in the context of self-reflection in tragedy] ‘the wider vocabulary of theatrical experience’. This criticism comes up in the course of a discussion of the scene in Euripides’ Bacchae where Dionysus tempts Pentheus to his doom. His lure is the prospect of a visit to the country and a chance to see the assembled maenads in their natural habitat. The suggestion is first put forward at 8 1 1 : Po6kq~ 09’ 2v dpsoi ouyrca1Yq@va5 i&iv; It is eagerly accepted, but when Pentheus has it pointed out to him that he will have to dress as a maenad for the plan to succeed he demurs. Whereupon Dionysus says (829): O ~ K & T I O ~ a r i l ~ pa~v&Gwv xpo6upo~ d. On this

45 0p.cit. (n.4) 5f. 46 Perhaps references to silver are less dignified since they would suggest the common word for money, &p@ptov. 47 This is the famous tag from Euripides’ Sthenehoeu: xo~qrilv 6’ &pa I ” E p q ~ ~ & ~ S K E I K&V &pouao~ fit TO

xpiv (fr.663 N2). In ‘Audience Address’ (p.24 n.9) I suggested that rroiqnjv may not be what Euripides wrote. The passage is cited with different objects for ” E p q ~ ~ & O K E I . Could it be that Euripides originally used a word for singer or musician, and that Plato was the first to substitute x o ~ q q v in modifying the quotation for his own purposes in the Symposium and so leading to the form of the quotation as we have it in Plutarch (Mor. 762b)? Bentley (Epistle to Mill, 267f. Goold) conjectured poum~ov, which Bothe approved. This is not based on any paradosis since p o u m ~ v in Plut. Mor. 622c is obviously a deliberate modification of the original to suit a particular context. Valckenaer, Diutr. in Euripidem, p.206, defended rco~qqv.

48 See ‘Audience Address’, 13, 13 n.4, and Taplin, ‘Synkrisis’, 168ff. 49 Reading Greek Trugedy (Cambridge 1986) 274 n. 19.


Goldhill comments: ‘the word for “spectator” is theates which is from the same root as the word theatre and is used precisely for those in the theatre at the festival.’ He makes what seems to me the somewhat impenetrable claim that ‘the use of the language of sight and in particular of “spectacle” or “theatre” to express the different interrelation of humans and Dionysus draws together the deluded action of the drama and the illusion of the performance’.5” This is not the place to outline a general interpretation of the Bucchae, and I am prepared to admit that the language of sight and spectacle is extremely prominent in the play.s’ I cannot say, however, that Goldhill’s discussion of this passage convinces me that there is any specific theatrical reference contained in it. 19~anis is itself a perfectly good tragic word. Euripides uses it elsewhere on three occasions, twice in /on (301, 656) of sight-seers, once of a man surveying the enemy battle-line (Suppl. 652). While admittedly it is easy to associate the word with the theatre or at the least with some kind of competitive spectacle,s2 it does not automatically suggest the theatre in the way that Greek words for ‘actor’ do.S3 It can refer as above to sight- seeing, to those attending festivals or to those looking at paintings or. sc~lpture.’~ Are we to see play with the illusion in Menander’s Samia when Moschion explains how he unwittingly became a kind of spectator at the Adonis festival: 2yvopqv ofpat (or oipot) O E ~ ~ C , (Men. Sum. 43)? If we look for theatricality in any reference to spectating in drama, we might feel obliged to spread the net further and consider references to hearing, sitting, cheering and applauding.

I conclude with a brief discussion of a topic where I am broadly in agreement with Goldhill.5s I believe i t is correct to speak of ‘Euripides’ self awareness of genre’ and would like to make a tentative suggestion about terminology. It should, I think, be possible to speak of theatricality and theatrical self-awareness in the tragedians without abandoning the strict separation as regards the illusion which has been posited by myself among others for tragedy and comedy. In other words it should be possible to say of a dramatist who observes the illusion that he is theatrical and conscious of his theatricality. It should be possible to consider the degree of his theatricality while leaving aside the question of the tragic illusion. Euripides. I would assert, is in fact more self-conscious than, say, Sophocles. Various considerations could be adduced to support this view among which would be his formal preferences, the insistence on a prologue and, in most cases, a formal epilogue delivered by a god. This does not mean, however, that he is a breaker of the illusion. The contrast between the ‘self-aware’ and ‘theatrical’ Euripides and the playwright who composes in any form of drama which does not consistently maintain the illusion is easy to demonstrate. One way is to set a Euripidean divine prologue beside a comparable prologue from New Comedys6 or, following Goldhill’s lead,57 the opening chorus in Henry V. I set out part of the latter below, italicising what is completely alien to Greek tragedy:

so Op. cit. 275. ’ I Cf.. from a different point of view, H. Oranje. E i o . i / i i t k ~ ’ Bnc~cha~: //ri, PIuy c r ~ / i /s A i d i c m ~ ~ (Leiden 1984) 134

n. 127. 51 Note Cleon addressing the assembly in Thuc. 3.38.4: a h o i 6’ hp&i$ K a K h &~vo8&ro6vre~ o y n v & ~ &hear&

&arai pEv rwv k o p v yiyveodai . . .. 5 1 Note that a lyric poet. Pindar. is prepared to use acting imagery. He refers in fr.l40a Maehler to hxO~pio~$ (see

D. L. Page. CR ns 6 (1956) 19 If. and A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, The Druniuric F e s f i w l s 1 f A f h e n s 2 (Oxford 1968) 127ff.). Nothing comparable is to be found in tragedy.

s‘The cognate verb 6&&019ai is used at Theocr. 15.23 8aoopevai rov a6oviv in a way that covers all these possibilities.

rs Op. cit. 244ff. sh Cf. above on the prologues of Euripides’ l1w and Menander’s D y i d r r s and see ‘Audience Address’. 22f. 57 Op. cit. 246. Actually I made this comparison in my thesis. See D. M. Bain (n.lO) 139f.

D. BAlN 13

Suppose within the circle of these walls Are now confined two mighty monarchies . . . Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts; And make imaginary puissance. Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them Printing their proud hoofs i’ the receiving earth; For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings, Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times, Turning th’accomplishment of many years Into an hourglass; for the which supply, Admit me chorus to this history; Who, Prologue-like, your humble patience pray, Gently to hear, kindly to judge our play.

This with its second person plural verbs, first person plural adjectives and pronouns, and final appeal for the audience’s favour inhabits a different world from that of Greek tragedy. Shakespeare is the heir of another tradition, or rather of the confluence of two traditions which both admit address of the audience, the renaissance tradition transmitting New Comedy through the medium of Plautus and Terence to the modem stage and the native tradition of the mystery cycles.

It is possible to detect theatrical awareness in Greek tragedy and particularly in Euripides on a small scale in the occasional allusive references found there to the work of predecessors and rivals. Such hints are intended, I believe, for the cognoscenti and as such do not seriously affect the illusion. There are perhaps fewer of them in tragedy than has sometimes been made out, but total scepticism about their existence, an attitude towards which I might in earlier writings appear to have been moving, does not now seem to me to be justified. One cannot get round the implications of Eur. Helen 1056 rcahcaoqq *p T&I hoyoi y’ Evemi n~ where the reference, obscure to us, is partly theatrical, a rejection of a particular escape-plan in a plotting scene.5x When Euripides’ chorus in his Phibctetes apologise for their ten-year delay in visiting the stranded hero, Euripides has in mind (as part of his audience will have had in mind) the play of his great predecessor, Aeschylus, in which the chorus arrives without apology ten years after Philoctetes has been deposited on Lemnus.” As Bernard Gredley has pointed out,ho at Eur. Orestes 1591f, when Orestes intervenes to answer a question directed at Pylades, the words ‘read like a riposte not to Menelaus but to Aeschylus’, Euripides having in mind the famous passage in Choephoroe where the hitherto mute Pylades in one instant breaks his silence and the ‘three-actor rule’.6’ Exactly parallel is the effect found in Sophocles’ Electra when Orestes, reacting to the suggestion that he, Pylades and the paedagogus should wait to observe the entrance of Electra, replies f i n o ~ a . ~ ~ Eduard Fraenkel noted: ‘it is as if Sophocles said “I have not forgotten the Choephoroe, but I’m doing it differently”.’6’

5n Pace Taplin (n.2) 133 n.2 who vainly revives Hermann’s arcatohq ydrp. A. P. Burnett, Cu/crstrriphe Survived, 92.

sq See Dio of Prusa, 52.7. M’ Gredley (n.4) 14. “ Pace A. F. Garvie, Aeschylus, Choephori (Oxford 1986) xlix. n2 F. H. Sandbach’s change of attribution here (PCPhS ns 23 (1977) 71ff.) is at first sight seductive and has now

been adopted by R. D. Dawe in the second edition of volume one of the Teubner Sophocles. See against it , a however, H. Lloyd-Jones, CR ns 36 ( 1986) 1 1.

62 E. Fraenkel, Beohachtungen XI Aristophanes (Rorna 1962) 22 n. 1 .

92 n. 10. draws attention to this passage. Compare also Easterling (n.4) 9f.


Likewise, there is conscious theatricality in passages where the conventions of tragedy are knowingly challenged and where for a moment it is suggested that an action that is by convention abnormal and aberrant will now take place on stage. Such ‘audience teasing’ can be seen for example at Soph. Phil. 887 when Neoptolemus says to Philoctetes ‘these people will carry you’, ‘these people’ being the chorus.M Here too I believe we have theatricality without an obvious breach of the illusion.

University of Manchester

For this effect see W. G. Arnott, G&R ss 20 (1973) S f . , Bain (n.2) 16, and Bond on Euripides Herucles 747ff.

some reflections on the illusion in greek tragedy

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