The Greek theater and its drama

by Roy C. Flickinger

Aristotle also pointed out that epic poetry has an advantage in that it can present many events simultaneously transacted, while the drama is restricted to but one.[338] A curious violation of this self-evident principle occurred in a recent American play. Toward the end of Act II in Eugene Walter’s Paid in Full, Emma Brooks is disclosed making an appointment with Captain Williams over the telephone. In the next act we are transferred to Captain Williams’ quarters, and the dramatic clock has in the meanwhile been turned back some fifteen minutes, for presently the telephone bell rings and the same appointment is made over again. In other words, Act III partially overlaps Act II in time, but the scene is different. It can scarcely be 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. Their practice throughout simply reacted to theatrical conditions as they found them. It has remained for their successors, whose theater has for the most part been quite dissimilar, to observe the unities with a literalness and exactness such as never characterized the great dramatists of Greece. That both ancients and moderns have produced masterpieces under these restrictions is, of course, beyond dispute. In fact, some of our most impressive plays of recent date such as Kennedy’s Servant in the House, have conformed to them. That many modern plays would have been improved by observing them is doubtless also true. Even so uncompromising an admirer of Shakespeare as Professor Lounsbury[339] wrote:

Let it not be imagined, however, that any attempt is made here to deny the merit of modern plays which observe the unities, or to maintain that a powerful drama cannot be produced upon the lines they prescribe. Such a contention would be only repeating on the side of the opponents of this doctrine the erroneous assumptions which its advocates put forth. He who ventures to take a position so extreme can hardly escape a feeling of serious discomfort if called upon, in consequence, to decry the productions of Corneille, Racine, and Molière, to say nothing of some of the most brilliant pieces which have adorned the English stage. Nor, furthermore, need it be denied that there are conditions in which the observance of the unities may be a positive advantage. Especially will this be the case when the characters are few and all the incidents of the plot are directed to the accomplishment of a single result. The concentration of the action is likely to contribute, in such pieces, to the effect of the representation. He who sets out to imitate the simplicity of the Greek drama will usually find himself disposed to adopt, as far as possible, its form. Within its limitations great work can be accomplished by the drama which regards the unities, and, to some extent, it will be great work because of its limitations.

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.

As a cumulative result of the conditions already described the action of a Greek drama was restricted to the culmination alone, corresponding to the fifth act of most modern plays. Though we have seen that the Greek poets arbitrarily juxtaposed, as if within the confines of a sun’s circuit, events which were actually separated by considerable intervals, yet even the widest license would hardly permit a whole series of transactions, of sufficient dignity and importance to be chosen for tragic representation, to be compressed within a single day and limited to a single spot. As Dryden[340] expressed it, the ancient playwrights “set the audience, as it were, at the post where the race is to be concluded; and, saving them the tedious expectation of seeing the poet set out and ride the beginning of the course, they suffer you not to behold him, till he is in sight of the goal, and just upon you.” Thus in Aeschylus’ Suppliants we see nothing of the unwelcome suit of Aegyptus’ sons and of the events which led the daughters of Danaus to take refuge in flight. All this lies in the past and is brought before us indirectly. The action begins when the Danaids have reached another land and are on the point of being overtaken by their cousins. Similarly, in Euripides’ Alcestis we learn by hearsay the long story of Apollo’s servitude at the court of Admetus, of his providing a way of escape from death for the king, and of the latter’s disheartening search for a substitute. Only the final stage in the action, the day of the queen’s self-immolation and rescue, is chosen for actual representation. The same situation recurs in almost every piece. Of course in trilogies it was possible to select three different time-spheres and three different localities for the dramatic action. But here again only the crests of three crises in the story were put before the spectators’ eyes; all the rest was narrated. So invariable a method of attack would seem monotonous to us today, but its successful employment by Ibsen and many another in modern times proves that there is nothing blameworthy in the practice per se.

Finally, since the dramatic action was confined to a single day (however elastic) at the culmination of the story, it was rarely possible for the dramatis personae to experience any particular change or development of character during the course of the play. This fixity of type was not only a natural result of theatrical conditions in ancient times and of the use of masks but was also in thorough accord with Homeric conventions (see [pp. 254 f.], above). Moreover, it harmonized completely with the Greek fondness for schematization. Horace’s words in his Ars Poetica are entirely Hellenic in spirit: “Either follow tradition, or invent that which shall be self-consistent. In the former case, let Achilles be impatient, irascible, ruthless, keen...; let Medea be untamed and unconquerable, Ino tearful, Ixion treacherous, Io ever roving, and Orestes in sorry plight. In the latter case, keep the character to the end of the play as it was at the beginning and let it be consistent” (vss. 119 ff.). All this implies more than we would think desirable today. Not only was a positive development into a character seemingly inharmonious with that seen at first rarely possible, but the singleness of purpose in ancient plays, which has been called the unity of mood (see [p. 201], above), crowded out incidents which might have revealed other phases, no matter how consistent, of a dramatic personage’s character. The taste of some critics objected to even the slight modifications in rôle which ancient conditions did permit. For example, to modern readers the manner in which Medea, in Euripides’ tragedy of that name, wavers between love for her children and the desire to punish her recreant husband by murdering them is esteemed one of the finest touches in ancient drama. But the Greek argument which is prefixed to this play reports that “they blame Euripides because he did not maintain Medea’s rôle but allowed her to burst into tears as she plotted against Jason and his second wife.” Again, so excellent a critic as Aristotle cites the title rôle in Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis as an example of inconsistency,[341] inasmuch as the Iphigenia who pleads for her life at vss. 1211 ff. in no wise resembles her later self, who willingly approaches the altar. To modern feeling, since the change is psychologically possible and is plausibly motived by the sudden realization that her death can serve her country, it seems entirely unobjectionable. But these two passages and the usual practice of the Greek stage reveal a discrepancy between the ancient and the modern points of view. The simplicity of character-drawing which resulted from Greek methods is strikingly described, in a different connection, by Mr. Cornford:

Agamemnon, for instance, is simply Hybris typified in a legendary person. He is a hero flown with “insolence” (the pride and elation of victory), and that is all that can be said of him. He is not, like a character in Ibsen, a complete human being with a complex personality, a center from which relations radiate to innumerable points of contact in a universe of indifferent fact. He has not a continuous history: nothing has ever happened to him except the conquest of Troy and the sacrifice of Iphigenia; nothing ever could happen to him except Pride’s fall and the stroke of the axe. As we see him he is not a man, but a single state of mind, which has never been preceded by other states of mind (except one, at the sacrifice in Aulis), but is isolated, without context, margin, or atmosphere. Every word he says, in so far as he speaks for himself and not for the poet, comes straight out of that state of mind and expresses some phase of it. He has a definite relation to Cassandra, a definite relation to Clytemnestra; but no relation to anything else. If he can be said to have a character at all it consists solely of certain defects which make him liable to Insolence; if he has any circumstances, they are only those which prompt him to his besetting passion.[342]

There seems no human thought so primitive as to have lost its bearing on our own thought, nor so ancient as to have broken its connection with our own life.—E. B. Tylor.