The erection of a scene-building about 465 B.C. somewhat relieved the difficulty of the playwrights’ problem. First of all the places of entrance were increased 50 per cent or more. Secondly, the new entrances were nearer the orchestra than were the parodi and enabled an actor to come in or depart more quickly. Thirdly, the presence of buildings almost required the scene to be laid in a town or city and correspondingly multiplied the possible motives for visiting it. And finally, since the doorways often represented the homes of certain of the dramatic characters, no elaborate motivation was needed to explain their passing in and out at frequent intervals. When his work was done, the useless actor could be temporarily eliminated with neatness and dispatch. These considerations and the introduction of the third actor at about the same time (see [p. 167], above) soon doubled the amount of coming and going in the plays (cf. Mooney, op. cit., p. 54). The influence of the former factor appears in Euripides’ Suppliants, the action of which takes place before a temple. It so happens, however, that the temple doors in this case are not used for entrances and exits. Consequently of all Euripides’ tragedies this one has the least passing to and fro. On the other hand the influence of the second factor is seen in the fact that this piece and Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus (see [p. 227], above), both making practically no use of their back scene but both employing three actors, are higher in “action” than the corresponding plays of Aeschylus, which belong to the two-actor period.
Nevertheless, when all is said, the erection of a scene-building still left the ancient dramatists far behind the moderns in the easy and plausible motivation of their characters’ movements, and no further advance (from this point of view) was subsequently made in the theatrical arrangements. All the dramatic personages still had to come to the same (usually a public) place; they could not dodge in at one door and out at another at their creator’s caprice, but whether entering or leaving had to walk a considerable distance in plain view of the spectators. Consequently the silent actor is found after 465 B.C. as well as before. Thus in Euripides’ Suppliants one or more characters are being neglected at almost every point. But in my opinion this phenomenon is no longer due primarily to the inadequacy of the theatrical arrangements but to other considerations. For example, the limited number of actors often resulted in prolonged or awkward silence on the part of a character who was being impersonated by a mute (see [pp. 174-82], above). Again, in the Alcestis, after Heracles has brought the queen back from her grave, she utters never a word. Euripides himself explains this on the ground that she may not speak until her consecration to the gods of the lower world be undone and the third day come (vss. 1144 ff.). This is a clever pretext but not the real reason. Nor do I think, as some do, that in this instance the limitation of actors is responsible, since only two actors speak in this scene and the play belongs to the three-actor period. Alcestis’ silence springs rather from the impossibility of placing in her mouth a message worthy of her experiences, one which “telling what it is to die had surely added praise to praise.” Still again the silence frequently arises from inability to master the technique of the trialogue (see [pp. 169 f.]) or from the nature of the plot. In any trial scene it is almost inevitable that both the judge and the accused should remain inactive for considerable intervals. Thus in Aeschylus’ Eumenides the silence of Athena (vss. 585-673 and 711-33) and of Orestes (vss. 244-63, 307-435, 490-585, and 614-743) is scarcely more noteworthy than that of the Duke and Antonio in Act IV of The Merchant of Venice. When his case was about to be decided, Orestes terminated a silence of one hundred and thirty lines by the thrilling ejaculation, “O Phoebus Apollo, what shall the judgment be!” (vs. 744)—another example of the dexterity with which the Greek poets could transmute base metal into pure gold.
It need not be said that the same difficulty of plausible motivation puzzled the comic as well as the tragic writers of antiquity, and they extricated themselves with no less ingenuity in their own way. For the further unfolding of the plot in Plautus’ Pseudolus it became necessary that that crafty slave should explain to his accomplices certain developments which had already been represented on the scene. Actually to repeat the facts would have been tedious to the spectators, while to motive an exit for all the parties concerned until the information could be imparted and then to motive their re-entrance might have proved difficult and certainly would have caused an awkward pause in the action. The poet therefore chose the bolder course of dropping for the moment all dramatic illusion and at the same time of slyly poking fun at the conventions of his art: “This play is being performed for the sake of these spectators. They have been here, and are aware of developments. I’ll tell you about them afterwards”(!) (vss. 720 f.).
We have already referred to the fact that topographical conditions in Athens gave rise to a convention regarding the significance of the parodi (see [p. 208], above). As the spectator sat on the south slope of the Acropolis at Athens, with the orchestra and scene-buildings before him, the harbor of the Piraeus and the market place lay toward his right and the open country on his left ([Fig. 29]). And since the theater was roofless and the performances given in daylight, these relationships were visible and must at all times have been present to the consciousness of the audience. The matter was, therefore, one of more consequence than in the modern theater, where many spectators, being unable to see points of orientation outside, would be puzzled to indicate the points of the compass. In the Athenian theater, on the contrary, if the scene were laid locally no poet or stage manager could have allowed a character from the Piraeus to enter by the left (east) parodus without committing a patent absurdity. In such a case there was, at the beginning, no convention; the plays simply reacted to actual local conditions. But the fifth-century plays were rarely laid in Athens, and in them comparatively little is said of harbor, market place, or countryside, whether at Athens or elsewhere. Apart from a rigid convention, there would be no point in staging Aeschylus’ Suppliants, the scene of which is laid just outside the city of Argos, or Aristophanes’ Birds, whose scene is supposed to be in the clouds, in such a way as to conform to Athenian topography. In fact, incidental allusions in the fifth-century plays, the comparative infrequency in them of references to harbor, country, and market place, and minor infelicities arising from any attempt to foist this convention upon them, would all seem to indicate that these plays had been written without much regard for local geography. But with increasing frequency Athens became the imaginary scene of comedies, and the relationships which had become a fixed rule for them were transferred to tragedy also, and soon to other theaters whose setting bore little or no resemblance to that of the theater of Dionysus Eleuthereus. Certainly by the time of New Comedy the convention was firmly established, and except for characters leaving or entering the houses in the background almost every exit or entrance was oriented for the audience with reference to country, harbor, or market place. When Greek comedy was transplanted to Italian soil the convention was taken over, too, and reappears, possibly with some modification, in the plays of Plautus and Terence.
Regardless of the convention, however, and the period of its origin there is one blemish which careful stage managers nowadays seek to avoid. When a door closes upon a departing character, it should not be immediately opened again to admit another character, whom the first character must have brushed against in the hall. A slight pause is somehow provided to enable the two characters to avoid meeting and to give the sense of space beyond the room on the stage. Now in Euripides’ Alcestis a violation of this common-sense principle of stage craft seems to occur. At vs. 747 Admetus and the chorus have departed bearing the body of Alcestis to its last resting place. In the ensuing scene Heracles at last learns the identity of the deceased and at vs. 860 rushes out to wrestle with the king of the dead beside the grave. In the very next verse Admetus returns. According to the Hellenistic convention Heracles must have departed and Admetus have re-entered through the parodus at the audience’s left. But which parodus was employed does not in this case greatly matter. The point is that since Heracles was bound for the spot from which Admetus was returning, they must have used the same parodus. Nevertheless, later developments show that they did not meet; indeed, certain telling features of the dénouement would have been spoiled if they had. Yet how could they avoid doing so? The play furnishes no reply. So far as I can see the only way in which the difficulty can be obviated is by supposing that vss. 747-860 take place before a slightly different part of the palace from the rest of the play. Scholars, however, do not commonly accept a change of scene in this piece (see [pp. 250 f.], below).
The space between the two parodi and leading past the scene-building was usually thought of as representing a street or roadway (see [p. 86], above). In the Hellenistic theater at Athens a stone proscenium ran across the front of the scene-building from one parascenium to the other (see [p. 70], above) ([Fig. 38]), and it is likely that a wooden proscenium occupied the same space from about 430 B.C. It is true that the stone foundation of the parascenia, which were probably erected to serve as a framework for the proscenium, cannot go back of 415-421 B.C. at the earliest (see [p. 67] and [n. 1], above). But it is fair to assume that parascenia entirely of wood were erected as an experiment a few years before permanent foundations were provided for them, and the proscenium colonnade seems to have been employed at least as early as Euripides’ Hippolytus (428 B.C.) and Aristophanes’ Clouds (423 B.C.). Confirmation for this conclusion may be found in the fact that the crane (μηχανή) was introduced at about this same time (see [p. 289], below). When the scene was laid before a private house or a palace, the colonnade was in place as signifying its prothyron (πρόθυρον) or “porch.” When the background was thought of as a temple the proscenium was its pronaos (πρόναος) or “portico.” Moreover, when a less conventional setting was required, painted panels (πίνακες) could be inserted in the intercolumniations in order to suggest the desired locality, and in some theaters the proscenium columns were shaped so as to hold such panels more firmly in place ([Fig. 72]).[312] Thus the action in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus takes place before a grove, and that in Plautus’ The Fisherman’s Rope, along a beach. The interruption of natural scenery by columns at regular intervals would be disturbing to us; that it did not seem so to the Greeks was due not only to their ignorance of modern scenery but also to the sketchy shorthand which they practiced in other fields of art. On ancient vases, for example, a whole forest is frequently represented by a single tree. A similar convention obtains in the drama of modern Persia, where “the desert is represented by a handful of sand on the platform, the river Tigris by a leather basin full of water.”[313] Sophocles is said to have invented scene painting during the lifetime of Aeschylus (see [p. 66], above), but this must be interpreted as meaning that he had the panels applied directly to the front of the scene-building, the proscenium being not yet introduced. It has also been suggested, on the basis of certain vase paintings ([Fig. 73]),[314] that an actual porch (prothyron) was sometimes built extending from the center of the proscenium or taking the place of a proscenium and extending from the center of the scene-building’s front wall. But perhaps these paintings are only conventionalized representations of the proscenium colonnade itself. In any case it is important to observe that no background corresponding to the scene-building is indicated on the vases.
Fig. 72.—Horizontal Sections of Proscenium Columns at Megalopolis and Eretria (1), Epidaurus (2), Delos (3), and Oropus (4).
