1 00:00:04,880 --> 00:00:10,356 This week we're moving into tragedy and to an entirely new genre in which myths are 2 00:00:10,356 --> 00:00:14,528 conveyed in antiquity. Up till now we've seen epic poetry, on the 3 00:00:14,528 --> 00:00:18,440 one hand, and then we saw some examples of the Homeric hymns. 4 00:00:18,440 --> 00:00:23,916 All of the things that we've looked at up till now are long narrative poems, some of 5 00:00:23,916 --> 00:00:29,001 them very extended with Homer and Hesiod and all of them use this dactylic 6 00:00:29,001 --> 00:00:34,102 hexameter form where we had a specialized epic diction that was put to use to tell 7 00:00:34,102 --> 00:00:37,848 tales of the past and of the gods in a certain kind of framework. 8 00:00:37,848 --> 00:00:42,170 We're going to move to something completely different now, when we get into 9 00:00:42,170 --> 00:00:44,648 tragedy. We're talking about another way of 10 00:00:44,648 --> 00:00:48,682 presenting mythic material that has it's own constraints and it's own 11 00:00:48,682 --> 00:00:51,967 possibilities. Which are very different than what happens 12 00:00:51,967 --> 00:00:55,251 in epic poetry, than what epic poems are capable of doing. 13 00:00:55,251 --> 00:00:58,421 Tragic poets are dealing with much shorter time frames. 14 00:00:58,421 --> 00:01:03,031 What's happening up on stage, usually represents exactly the amount of time that 15 00:01:03,031 --> 00:01:05,740 you and I sit viewing what happens up on stage. 16 00:01:05,740 --> 00:01:10,223 There's more pressure put on that particular smaller time frame, to tell 17 00:01:10,223 --> 00:01:13,025 the, the full story in this small bit of time. 18 00:01:13,025 --> 00:01:17,882 So we have a lot of more elusive kind of reference to broader mythological 19 00:01:17,882 --> 00:01:21,058 traditions that get brought in and brought to bear. 20 00:01:21,058 --> 00:01:26,849 Typically we are focusing on very small window of time and it's chosen as a crux 21 00:01:26,849 --> 00:01:30,835 moment, something pivotal is happening in a larger mythic strand. 22 00:01:31,520 --> 00:01:36,564 We concentrate on this crux moment and the, what happens before and after unfolds 23 00:01:36,564 --> 00:01:42,176 as background and forward looking around this very a tight focus that we have in 24 00:01:42,176 --> 00:01:45,130 the story. Tragic time is usually now. 25 00:01:45,130 --> 00:01:49,824 What's happening on stage is happening supposedly in the now time, and you and I 26 00:01:49,824 --> 00:01:54,342 are brought back to some earlier time. That is meant to be unfolding right in 27 00:01:54,342 --> 00:01:58,449 front of our very arrs, eyes. The people that we see up on stage are 28 00:01:58,449 --> 00:02:02,242 actual. Real people that are inhabiting characters 29 00:02:02,242 --> 00:02:06,342 and acting like other people. I suppose goes without saying. 30 00:02:06,342 --> 00:02:10,774 But casting our mind back across how we've seen myth being treated in the course up 31 00:02:10,774 --> 00:02:12,409 until now. We haven't seen that. 32 00:02:12,409 --> 00:02:15,047 We've seen an epic poet who stands up and recites. 33 00:02:15,047 --> 00:02:19,320 And tells you all the things in the third person that some other group of people 34 00:02:19,320 --> 00:02:21,747 did. Now, we'll have people stand up and in the 35 00:02:21,747 --> 00:02:25,809 first person, represent themselves as if they are Agamemnon or as if they are 36 00:02:25,809 --> 00:02:29,291 Clytemnestra or all the other characters we've been reading about. 37 00:02:29,291 --> 00:02:32,614 There's a sense of absolute make believe that's happening here. 38 00:02:32,614 --> 00:02:35,199 This is, again, different than what we see in epic. 39 00:02:35,199 --> 00:02:38,621 People are standing up, pretending to be To the other people. 40 00:02:38,818 --> 00:02:43,673 When my, young son walks around and back in the early days he used to play make 41 00:02:43,673 --> 00:02:48,238 believe and you kind of wonder well that's sort of interesting and slightly childish 42 00:02:48,238 --> 00:02:52,643 thing to pretend like you're someone else but this is exactly what's happening in 43 00:02:52,643 --> 00:02:55,275 this genre. And the strangeness of people walking 44 00:02:55,275 --> 00:02:59,410 around pretending to be other people I think is by now completely lost on us; 45 00:02:59,410 --> 00:03:02,848 we're used to this genre. But at the time the Greeks were really 46 00:03:02,848 --> 00:03:07,199 inventing a whole genre of tragedy it was surely something that was striking and 47 00:03:07,199 --> 00:03:09,968 noteworthy. Bringing to bear, actually bringing to 48 00:03:09,968 --> 00:03:14,383 life these ancient characters and the figures up on stage was something that 49 00:03:14,383 --> 00:03:17,250 would have had a bit of a magical resonance to it. 50 00:03:17,250 --> 00:03:21,665 The actors are all going to be male, they portray characters that are male or 51 00:03:21,665 --> 00:03:24,302 female. And they wear masks of different kinds. 52 00:03:24,302 --> 00:03:27,570 So we don't actually get to see their facial expressions. 53 00:03:27,570 --> 00:03:32,042 Instead, there's a kind of stylized sense, that's brought into the make believe. 54 00:03:32,042 --> 00:03:36,515 That just they, in their own persona, are being covered up by an exterior masks. 55 00:03:36,515 --> 00:03:39,439 Which is often, which is typically very rudimentary. 56 00:03:39,439 --> 00:03:43,299 Doesn't have a lot of elaborate kinds of decorative items on it. 57 00:03:43,299 --> 00:03:48,548 It's just a way of hiding the normal person's face and putting a tragic mask on 58 00:03:48,548 --> 00:03:52,420 the outside of it. Tragedies start in the sixth century BCE. 59 00:03:52,420 --> 00:03:55,242 They start to come to be in ancient Athens. 60 00:03:55,242 --> 00:03:58,785 They come to a full fruition in the fifth century BCE. 61 00:03:58,785 --> 00:04:03,969 This is where the most important of our tragedians show up and we have a major 62 00:04:03,969 --> 00:04:08,956 threesome that survives from antiquity of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. 63 00:04:08,956 --> 00:04:12,500 We'll be looking at examples of each of these figures. 64 00:04:12,500 --> 00:04:19,017 Plays they were shortly after they had a. Appeared themselves, historically, on the 65 00:04:19,017 --> 00:04:23,673 scene embraced very widely as the obviously greatest of all these trag 66 00:04:23,862 --> 00:04:28,267 tragic poets from antiquity. They also happened to survive to us, in 67 00:04:28,267 --> 00:04:31,161 some and a little bit more detail than others. 68 00:04:31,161 --> 00:04:36,384 Some of them, we have more plays from than others but these are the three greats 69 00:04:36,573 --> 00:04:41,230 recognized in their own time as such. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. 70 00:04:41,230 --> 00:04:46,147 The context for a tragedy is quite a bit different than what we've seen with our 71 00:04:46,147 --> 00:04:49,972 versions of epic poetry. Remember when we talked about Homer or 72 00:04:49,972 --> 00:04:54,526 Hesiod being sung we talked about a context of aristocrats having a dinner 73 00:04:54,526 --> 00:04:59,019 party and maybe wanting to have some entertainment after the dinner party. 74 00:04:59,019 --> 00:05:03,997 When we talked about the Homeric hymns we talked about festival context and these 75 00:05:03,997 --> 00:05:08,612 hymns being sung in honor of gods at festivals that were given in the gods' 76 00:05:08,612 --> 00:05:10,615 honor. For tragedy very different. 77 00:05:10,615 --> 00:05:15,230 We have people that come to an outdoor theater, a space analogous to the one. 78 00:05:15,230 --> 00:05:20,947 We see here a Roman version of one of these, that we see in a beautiful form 79 00:05:20,947 --> 00:05:25,686 preserved, in Sicily. Come to an outdoor space and sit around 80 00:05:25,686 --> 00:05:29,207 in, a large. Usual, likely to be much more primitive 81 00:05:29,207 --> 00:05:33,319 then what we see here. These big stone versions of these theaters 82 00:05:33,319 --> 00:05:38,507 are more of them are Roman examples. The Greek versions would have been less 83 00:05:38,697 --> 00:05:41,797 well of, less monumental of their architecture. 84 00:05:41,987 --> 00:05:47,365 Seating would have been more rudimentary, maybe wooden benches maybe just a grassy 85 00:05:47,365 --> 00:05:49,200 hill. And then the, the, the. 86 00:05:49,200 --> 00:05:55,184 Large stone buildings that we see around the theaters, would not have been there 87 00:05:55,386 --> 00:06:00,833 for at, at a, at a, in Greek times. So we have context in which you go to this 88 00:06:00,833 --> 00:06:04,263 outside space. You come and in doing so, what, you 89 00:06:04,263 --> 00:06:07,912 understand yourself as. We're engaging in something that's 90 00:06:07,912 --> 00:06:11,877 happening in honor of Dionysus. Dionysus was the patron god of the 91 00:06:11,877 --> 00:06:14,820 theater. And he was drawn out, often times very 92 00:06:14,820 --> 00:06:19,085 explicitly as being the focus of what the, was happening in the theater. 93 00:06:19,085 --> 00:06:23,951 It was meant as a festival in his honor. The most important of these festivals 94 00:06:23,951 --> 00:06:28,216 happened in Athens and happened very specifically centered on Dionysus. 95 00:06:28,216 --> 00:06:33,082 So when we talk about the theater we're gonna talk about this figure of Dionysus. 96 00:06:33,082 --> 00:06:38,308 He's gonna come up at a couple of points when we deal with the tragedies themselves 97 00:06:38,308 --> 00:06:41,844 and in particular one. We look at the Bacchi, we'll see that 98 00:06:41,844 --> 00:06:44,757 Dionysus indeed shows up as a character on our stage. 99 00:06:44,757 --> 00:06:47,946 Think about that. A festival in honor of Dionysus, in which 100 00:06:47,946 --> 00:06:52,819 Dionysus himself is going to participate. Now drawing our mind a little bit to how 101 00:06:52,819 --> 00:06:56,554 these plays are staged. You and I as an audience actually get up, 102 00:06:56,554 --> 00:06:59,118 go to this physical space and watch it happen. 103 00:06:59,285 --> 00:07:01,793 We go collectively to, the whole groups of us. 104 00:07:01,793 --> 00:07:05,527 They are watching this thing. We're not sitting in one small dinner 105 00:07:05,527 --> 00:07:09,206 party and having a, a, an entertainment that's been hired on for us. 106 00:07:09,206 --> 00:07:14,000 We're actually going to a place where many 100s of us could sit around and watch this 107 00:07:14,000 --> 00:07:18,347 entertainment unfold before us. We see a couple of features when we walk 108 00:07:18,347 --> 00:07:20,800 in. There's a very plain stage up front, only 109 00:07:20,800 --> 00:07:23,475 a few only a couple of meters off the ground. 110 00:07:23,475 --> 00:07:26,937 Not, not high. And that plain stage, up front, has scene, 111 00:07:26,937 --> 00:07:30,066 scenery behind it. We're not going to see it here in our 112 00:07:30,066 --> 00:07:33,531 archeological example, but it has scenery hanging up behind it. 113 00:07:33,698 --> 00:07:36,772 That scenery is going to be very plain and very sparse. 114 00:07:36,772 --> 00:07:39,510 In the middle of it though always, is going to be. 115 00:07:39,510 --> 00:07:43,309 A door, there's a door in the middle of the back of the stage and usually when 116 00:07:43,309 --> 00:07:47,206 we're watching a tragedy, there's going to be stuff that's happening behind that 117 00:07:47,206 --> 00:07:49,398 door. So as we're watching we turn around and 118 00:07:49,398 --> 00:07:53,538 look at the door and say I wonder what's happening back there, huh what could that 119 00:07:53,538 --> 00:07:55,779 be? And then at some point in the play they'll 120 00:07:55,779 --> 00:07:59,627 be characters that disappear behind the door and we'll say oh, what's happening 121 00:07:59,627 --> 00:08:02,111 back there? And at some point in the play the doors 122 00:08:02,111 --> 00:08:06,154 might just burst open and we'll find out whats happened back there behind the door. 123 00:08:06,154 --> 00:08:08,200 Some kind of awful, ugly stuff has going on. 124 00:08:08,200 --> 00:08:12,048 So we've got a very spare stage, a very spare screen behind us, and a door there 125 00:08:12,048 --> 00:08:16,606 that's a focus of a good deal of our attention keeping an eye and an ear on 126 00:08:16,606 --> 00:08:20,776 that is a very good thing. Now, the actors, we have a few of them up 127 00:08:20,776 --> 00:08:26,147 on stage they have these masks on and not very elaborate costumes and they are 128 00:08:26,147 --> 00:08:30,128 reciting lines. Imitating make believe were delivering 129 00:08:30,128 --> 00:08:35,120 direct lines in the first person of the characters that they were representing. 130 00:08:35,120 --> 00:08:37,917 In front of the actors is going to be a chorus. 131 00:08:37,917 --> 00:08:42,202 The chorus has a liminal role. They have a role in between you and I and 132 00:08:42,202 --> 00:08:45,893 the actors up on stage. You and I are out here in the audience. 133 00:08:45,893 --> 00:08:49,702 Up on stage are the actors that are these individuals back here. 134 00:08:49,702 --> 00:08:53,690 In between us, in the zone. In between, this is not very well spelled 135 00:08:53,690 --> 00:08:58,094 out here in this Roman example. But there would have been a large space in 136 00:08:58,094 --> 00:09:02,737 front of the stage, before where you and I were sitting, where the chorus moved 137 00:09:02,737 --> 00:09:05,356 around. This is a group of people, the chorus 138 00:09:05,356 --> 00:09:10,505 comes in a group, a dozen give or take. And these people as they're engaged in the 139 00:09:10,505 --> 00:09:15,108 tragedy they provide a kind of a collective commentary on what's happening 140 00:09:15,108 --> 00:09:18,149 up on stage. So there will be actors up there that are 141 00:09:18,149 --> 00:09:21,303 delivering lines. They'll have dialog back and forth and 142 00:09:21,303 --> 00:09:25,734 then, the chorus might sort of jump in and say have, have, have, are you sure you've 143 00:09:25,734 --> 00:09:29,377 remembered everything about the story that you're telling this other character? 144 00:09:29,515 --> 00:09:32,835 Perhaps you can elaborate on that. And, as a group, they'll speak and then 145 00:09:32,835 --> 00:09:36,525 the actor might respond to the chorus and say, what are you people talking about? 146 00:09:36,525 --> 00:09:39,430 What do you know? The chorus has gets engaged with the 147 00:09:39,430 --> 00:09:42,012 actors up on stage. The chorus will also turn around and 148 00:09:42,012 --> 00:09:44,190 address us. They might, well they typically worry 149 00:09:44,190 --> 00:09:47,577 about what's happening up on stage. As the characters are going through the 150 00:09:47,577 --> 00:09:51,324 motions of what's going to happen to them, the chorus might turn around and look at 151 00:09:51,324 --> 00:09:54,124 us and say, can you believe what's happening up there on stage? 152 00:09:54,124 --> 00:09:57,646 Those people, look what they're doing, oh my goodness, don't they realize what's 153 00:09:57,646 --> 00:10:00,310 about to happen? And then they'll turn around to the people 154 00:10:00,310 --> 00:10:02,522 on stage. Don't you guys realize what's happening? 155 00:10:02,522 --> 00:10:05,954 Then they'll turn to us and say, they don't seem to realize what's happening. 156 00:10:05,954 --> 00:10:08,979 They work back and forth between us and the characters up on stage. 157 00:10:08,979 --> 00:10:12,727 They are also, in addition to being this kind of go-between in terms of the content 158 00:10:12,727 --> 00:10:16,249 of the play, they're also physically in between you and I and the people up on 159 00:10:16,249 --> 00:10:19,661 stage. They occupy this minimal space in-between 160 00:10:19,661 --> 00:10:22,663 the stage and the general audience seating. 161 00:10:22,872 --> 00:10:25,804 Also, they're. Intermediate in terms of their numbers. 162 00:10:25,804 --> 00:10:29,178 Those up on stage are single individuals speaking for themselves. 163 00:10:29,178 --> 00:10:33,590 You and I out in the audience are a whole collective set of eyeballs watching what's 164 00:10:33,590 --> 00:10:37,328 happening there and we all react collectively to what's happening there. 165 00:10:37,328 --> 00:10:41,325 The chorus is somewhere in between a single individual and a collection; they 166 00:10:41,325 --> 00:10:45,581 all react as a single individual though sometimes half of them will say one piece 167 00:10:45,581 --> 00:10:49,838 of dialogue and the other half will say the other and they respond back and forth 168 00:10:49,838 --> 00:10:52,744 to each other. But they have a collectivity to them that 169 00:10:52,744 --> 00:10:56,534 mirrors us but they have an individual, oftentimes, individually expressed 170 00:10:56,534 --> 00:10:59,433 reaction to things that they express in a single voice. 171 00:10:59,433 --> 00:11:04,646 So they have all these kind of roles as mediating between us and the people up on 172 00:11:04,646 --> 00:11:06,490 stage. The chorus sings songs, 173 00:11:06,490 --> 00:11:09,351 Choral odes are an important part of tragedy. 174 00:11:09,351 --> 00:11:14,628 Often times what comes out in these odes is going to be really important narrative 175 00:11:14,628 --> 00:11:17,680 background. So as the actors are up on stage and 176 00:11:17,680 --> 00:11:22,880 they're having some disagreement or fight about what, the, the some important piece 177 00:11:22,880 --> 00:11:26,228 of con that's con, some consequential piece in your own lives. 178 00:11:26,228 --> 00:11:30,726 That chorus will jump in and start to sing the song that tell us why it is that these 179 00:11:30,726 --> 00:11:34,440 two are so upset with each other. There will be a background story that 180 00:11:34,440 --> 00:11:38,259 comes out through the choral ode. Those odes are sometimes tricky to read. 181 00:11:38,416 --> 00:11:42,496 They are dense, they are very illusive, the trididience, the stragic poets or 182 00:11:42,496 --> 00:11:46,628 assuming that you and I and the audience have seen a lot of this stuff already. 183 00:11:46,628 --> 00:11:50,499 So just in the way that if we go to Hollywood movie that is a sequel they 184 00:11:50,499 --> 00:11:54,893 might assume you've seen a whole bunch of the movies that are, are before the sequel 185 00:11:55,050 --> 00:11:59,307 so also a tragedy. It's, it's assumed that you're dealing with a highly literate 186 00:11:59,307 --> 00:12:02,667 audience. Literate in the sense of having seen lots 187 00:12:02,667 --> 00:12:05,916 of tragedies and, have a sense of what the tradition is. 188 00:12:05,916 --> 00:12:10,453 So it allows the poets to say a lot which is to mention a few proper names or 189 00:12:10,453 --> 00:12:13,544 specific places. It taxes us then as modern readers to make 190 00:12:13,544 --> 00:12:17,218 sure that we're up to speed on the traditions that they are referencing. 191 00:12:17,218 --> 00:12:21,301 And I'll do my best to try to pull out those traditions and highlight them such 192 00:12:21,301 --> 00:12:25,384 as they are relevant to the plays, but there will be many more that are referred 193 00:12:25,384 --> 00:12:29,518 to in the tragedies that we will only be able to make mention of in our class.Ah, 194 00:12:29,518 --> 00:12:33,703 So, the more materials that you want to dig into and look into yourself the better 195 00:12:33,703 --> 00:12:37,049 it is going to be for you. The stories that we are allowed. 196 00:12:37,049 --> 00:12:40,684 Or, that are capable of being told in this genre are compressed. 197 00:12:40,684 --> 00:12:43,511 We already talked about this compression in time. 198 00:12:43,511 --> 00:12:47,262 They're also compressed in terms of the people that are involved. 199 00:12:47,262 --> 00:12:50,724 We've got these three, you know, few, a few people up on stage. 200 00:12:50,724 --> 00:12:54,186 One, two, maybe three. There's something really intense that's 201 00:12:54,186 --> 00:12:57,475 happening to them. It's as if we're in a kind of pressure 202 00:12:57,475 --> 00:13:01,215 cooker or a vise. The atmosphere in a tragedy is dense. 203 00:13:01,215 --> 00:13:05,099 It's almost too much. It's, it's, it's as if things are just 204 00:13:05,099 --> 00:13:09,683 kinda packed on top of one another. This compressed space produces an 205 00:13:09,683 --> 00:13:12,803 environment that's seems kinda claustrophobic. 206 00:13:12,803 --> 00:13:17,642 If only we could find a way out, we never going to be find a way out in tragedy. 207 00:13:17,642 --> 00:13:23,118 In that way, that epic poetry might be described as being centrifugal, or pushing 208 00:13:23,118 --> 00:13:28,084 ourselves to the very edges of the earth. The movement in tragedy is very much 209 00:13:28,084 --> 00:13:33,137 centripetal, it moves towards the middle and people get confined and sucked into 210 00:13:33,304 --> 00:13:37,856 spaces that they might otherwise have wished to escape, but escape is not gonna 211 00:13:37,856 --> 00:13:41,410 be possible, sadly, for many of the people that we have a look at. 212 00:13:41,586 --> 00:13:45,115 It's also, going to be a different kind of story that's told. 213 00:13:45,115 --> 00:13:48,351 The fantastic elements that are possible in an, in epic. 214 00:13:48,351 --> 00:13:52,821 We could have marvelous voyages across vast spanses of time, meeting strange 215 00:13:52,821 --> 00:13:55,351 people, on one side of the world to another. 216 00:13:55,351 --> 00:14:00,057 We can go to the underworld and come back. A lot of these adventure sides of the 217 00:14:00,057 --> 00:14:02,939 story are not going to be possible to do in tragedy. 218 00:14:02,939 --> 00:14:07,939 It's very difficult to represent these up on stage, and the Greeks mostly don't do 219 00:14:07,939 --> 00:14:10,174 that. Instead, what we have is dialogue. 220 00:14:10,174 --> 00:14:14,880 We have one person speaking, and another person answering, in that back and forth 221 00:14:14,880 --> 00:14:19,789 of human to human interconnection. S, first person singular to first person 222 00:14:19,789 --> 00:14:23,010 singular. It's this connections that the tragenians 223 00:14:23,010 --> 00:14:27,359 work and rework and dive into. When we enter this world, it will be a 224 00:14:27,359 --> 00:14:31,892 world that is characterized by intimacy. Sometimes intimacy is wonderfully 225 00:14:31,892 --> 00:14:35,936 supportive and nurturing. Sometimes intimacy can be nasty and mean. 226 00:14:35,936 --> 00:14:40,285 We gonna see all these dimensions very much worked out in the deep and 227 00:14:40,285 --> 00:14:45,369 cauldron-like psychology that we'll see exhibited in many of the plays we're about 228 00:14:45,369 --> 00:14:45,860 to read.