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I. Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

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Greek drama is a complex of poetry, music, song, dance, and spectacle, and the original audience received the impact of the whole complex in its day-long sessions in the Theatre of Dionysos. The original audience was steeped in a continuous tradition of drama: an old man who saw the Persae in 472 could have seen the first tragedy of Thespis in 534, and a very old man who saw Menander’s Dyskolos in 317 might just have been taken as a child to Aristophanes’ Plutus in 388. We on the other hand have only texts, always damaged by the passage of years and sometimes irreparably disfigured, and texts of a mere handful of plays produced between 472 and about 300.

Type
Introduction
Information
New Surveys in the Classics , Volume 5: Greek Tragedy , 1971 , pp. 1 - 6
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1971

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References

page no 1 note 1 Of recent work on the MSS. of tragedy note particularly Dawe, R. D., The Collation and Investigation of Manuscripts of Aeschylus (Cambridge, 1964)Google Scholar; Zuntz, G., An Inquiry into the Transmission of the Plays of Euripides (Cambridge, 1965)Google Scholar. The new Cambridge editions of Sophocles contain an appendix on the transmission of the text by P. J. Easterling, and a good clear account of Euripides is given in W. S. Barrett’s edition of the Hippolytus (Oxford, 1964).

Three collections of conjectures should be mentioned: Jackson, J., Marginalia Scaenica (Oxford, 1955)Google Scholar is well known and is now followed by Broadhead, H. D., Tragica (Christchurch, 1968)Google Scholar. For Aeschylus, R. D. Dawe’s Repertory of Conjectures (Leiden, 1965) is extremely useful. (Note that in what follows I use Latin or English for titles of preserved plays and Greek or English for titles of lost plays.)

page no 1 note 2 Themistius, Or. 36, 316d; Poetics 1449a9; Pickard-Cambridge, A. W., Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Comedy2 (Oxford, 1962), 70 Google Scholar, 78, 89 ff.

page no 2 note 1 Myth and ritual: Gilbert Murray for tragedy, Cornford for comedy, cf. Pickard-Cambridge, op. cit. 126 ff., 193 ff. Heroes: Ridgeway, revived from a new point of view by H. A. Thompson, Year-book of the University of Athens, 1963-4, 276 ff. Solon and Homeric recitation: Else, G. F., The Origin and Early Form of Tragedy (Harvard, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. (Very valuable also is his separation of Thespis and Aeschylus as two essential stages in the creation of tragedy.)

page no 2 note 2 Discussed and illustrated in Pickard-Cambridge, op. cit. 80 ff., 152 ff., 159 f., 170, 301 ff. Some additions in my Greek Chorus (London, 1970), 15, 20 f., 69 f., 93 ff. Cf. also Breitholz, L., Die dorische Farce (Göteborg, 1960)Google Scholar.

page no 2 note 3 On the history of the theatre see Pickard-Cambridge, A. W., Theatre of Dionysus (Oxford, 1946)Google Scholar; Bieber, M., The History of the Greek and Roman Theater2 (Princeton, 1961)Google Scholar; Webster, T. B. L., Greek Theatre Production2 (London, 1970)Google Scholar.

page no 2 note 4 On the ekkyklema see Dale, A. M., Collected Papers (Cambridge, 1969), 121 ff.Google Scholar, 264 ff.

page no 3 note 1 On the single door see A. M. Dale, op. cit. 106 ff., 120, 126 f., 284 ff. Dover, K. J. has argued against this position in PCPS cxcii (1966), 2 ffGoogle Scholar. and in his edition of the Clouds (Oxford, 1968). The single door is further established by C. W. Dearden’s careful examination of all the plays of Aristophanes in The Stage of Aristophanes, London (forthcoming).

page no 3 note 2 Arnott, P., Greek Scenic Conventions (Oxford, 1962)Google Scholar takes a sensibly conservative line on these problems. The relation between what is described and what is actually seen has been discussed several times recently: A. M. Dale, op. cit. 119 ff. (tragedy), 259 ff. (tragedy and comedy); Dingel, J., Das Requisit (stage-properties) in der griechischen Tragödie (Tübingen, 1967)Google Scholar; Hourmouziades, N. C., Production and Imagination in Euripides (Athens, 1965)Google Scholar; Webster, T. B. L., Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, xlv (1962), 235 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. (Menander).

page no 4 note 1 Cf.Sifakis, G. M., Studies in the History of Hellenistic Drama (London, 1966), 130 ffGoogle Scholar. (the book is an extremely important discussion of the organization and production of drama in the Hellenistic age, particularly in Delphi and Delos).

page no 4 note 2 See Bieber, op. cit.; Webster, Greek Theatre Production; Pickard-Cambridge, A. W., The Dramatic Festivals of Athens2 (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar. The revision of Pickard-Cambridge by J. Gould and D. M. Lewis includes a much more satisfactory treatment of masks and costumes and a very good sequence of illustrations, abbreviated below as PCF. In addition to providing information about scenery and costumes, vases and other monuments often provide information about lost plays and many illustrations survive which, although they may have no single figure in costume, were nevertheless inspired by tragedy. Séchan, L., Études sur la tragédie grecque (Paris, 1926)Google Scholar is extremely useful and has been reprinted. The appendix to BICS, Supplt. 20, Monuments illustrating Tragedy and Satyr Play, London, 1967 (abbreviated below as MTS), brings it up to date, and A. D. Trendall and T. B. L. Webster’s Illustrations of Greek Drama (London, 1971) will include much new material.

page no 4 note 3 See Pickard-Cambridge, Festivals 2, 257 ff.; Dale, A. M., The Lyric Metres of Greek Drama2 (Cambridge, 1968), 204 ffGoogle Scholar. I am doubtful whether the Orestes papyrus (on which see Longman, G. A., CQ xii (1962), 61 CrossRefGoogle Scholar) has the original music of Euripides; the musical papyri seem to me to be the scores of later virtuosi who composed their own music.

page no 5 note 1 Cf. The Greek Chorus, 25, 115; 28, 118 f.; 29, 132; 30, 31, and in general Lawler, L. B., Dance in Ancient Greece (London, 1964), 74 ffGoogle Scholar.

page no 5 note 2 Raven, D. S., Greek Metre (London, 1962)Google Scholar is a very useful introduction; Dale, A. M., The Lyric Metres of Greek Drama2 (Cambridge, 1968)Google Scholar, takes the lyric metres by kinds and discusses them, pointing out the differences between the different tragedians and between tragedy and comedy. Her metrical analyses of choruses, lyric dialogues, and solos of tragedy (also classified by general metrical type) are to be published by the Classical Institute, London. My Greek Chorus gives a general account of the metres under each play. Pohlsander, H., Lyric Metres of Sophocles (Michigan, 1963)Google Scholar, has analysed the choruses of Sophocles and comments on metrical interpretations.

page no 6 note 1 Statistics on the iambic trimeter are given for Aeschylus by Garvie, A. F., Aeschylus’ Supplices: Play and Trilogy (Cambridge 1969), 32 f.Google Scholar; for Sophocles in my Introduction to Sophocles 2 (London, 1969), 193 (based on Ceadel, E. B., CQ xxxv (1941), 84 ff.Google Scholar); for Euripides in my The Tragedies of Euripides (London, 1967), 2 ff., based on Zielinski, T., Tragodoumenon libri tres (Krakau, 1925)Google Scholar; cf., on the late plays, Dale, A. M., Euripides: Helen (Oxford, 1967), xxii ffGoogle Scholar.