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III. Form and Mode (1): Action, Episode, Theatre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

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The supposedly ‘classical’ sequence: prologue (or prologue-scene) –parodos (entry-song of the chorus) – five episodes, each followed by a choral ode (stasimon) – exodos (exit-scene): is found in only four plays, Alc, Med., HF, Bacc. – and only in Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus of Sophocles, nowhere in Aeschylus. In most plays the fifth episode doubles as the exodos; in Tro. and IT the fourth does (as in all Aeschylus’ tragedies except Agamemnon). Such external shaping may suggest that Euripides deliberately has fewer main movements than practice, if not tradition, allowed. That is only crudely true. Rather, he both lengthens his episodes, and tends to multiply their internal scenes (best defined by entrances and exits); some scenes are almost independent, so that ‘episode’ nears ‘act’ in our sense, and more than one significant development occurs within it. A good example is the very long second episode of Or. (356-806, five scenes): Menelaus, Orestes, Tyndareus, and Pylades successively enter, Tyndareus and Menelaus go out in its course; Orestes moves through hope of help from Menelaus, bitter attack from Tyndareus, rejection from Menelaus to a fresh resolution of defiance together with Pylades.

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Research Article
Information
New Surveys in the Classics , Volume 14: Euripides , 1981 , pp. 14 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

Notes

N.B. Almost all the main advances in studying Tragedy’s formal structures have been made by German scholarship, which the Notes in this and the next section cannot conceal. Murray, pp. 131-60 and Lattimore (1964), pp. 14 f., 56-72 discuss form and convention in poetic drama sensitively; cf. Greenwood, pp. 128-41, Grube, pp. 24-8.

1. The five-’act’-structure becomes regular only in Tragedy’s post-’classical’ beneficiary, New Comedy: Weissinger, R.T., A Study of Act Division in Classical Drama (Iowa City, 1940)Google Scholar.

2. H. W. Schmidt, ‘Die Struktur des Eingangs’, in Bauformen, pp. 1-46, subsumes and develops all earlier studies of prologue-speech, -scene and parodos (bibl. in his p. 1 f., nn. 4.6; cf. Schmid, pp. 771-5). See esp. Imhof, M., Bemerkungen zu den Prologen der soph, und eur. Tragödien (Winterthur, 1957)Google Scholar; F. Stoessl, ‘Parodos’, RE 23.1, 632-41; 23.11, 2312-45. Grube, pp. 63-73 and 107-110 (parodoi) gives the best English survey; cf. Murray, pp. 135-7, Kitto, pp. 278-84.

3. There are statistical and analytic synopses of episode and scene, in relation to plot, by K. Aichele, ‘Das Epeisodion’, in Bauformen, pp. 47-83 (esp. 61 f., 73-9 for E., with bibl. at 73 nn. 73 and 74). Excellent comparative appreciations in e.g. Friedrich, Matthiessen, Ludwig (pp. 93-138) and esp. Strohm (pp. 165-82), who stresses fluency; in English, Grube, pp. 80-92.

4. For the patterns in Med. see e.g. Strohm, pp. 168 f., Aichele, p. 62, in Bacc. Strohm, p. 180, Aichele, pp. 62 f. - and Taplin (1978), pp. 138 f., the end of a chapter which establishes persuasively the real effect of ‘mirror-scenes’. Webster (1967), pp. 282 f. is sceptical of such symmetries, but also recognizes patterns. While Ludwig showed the clear structure and proportions of later plays, both he and some followers have gone too far in finding symmetries: Friedrich (e.g. pp. 16 ff. on Ion, 73 ff. on Tro.,) Matthiessen and Strohm use the undeniable evidence most sensitively.

5. Excellent, lively introduction by Taplin (1978), esp. pp. 1-21 (fuller on the resources, with bibl., (1977), pp. 434-51); also Arnott, P.D., Introduction to the Greek Theatre (London, 1959). pp. 1–62 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baldry, H.C., The Greek Tragic Theatre (London, 1971), pp. 1–73 Google Scholar. For other works see n. 10 below.

6. Necessary warnings well stated by the writers named in n. 5 and esp. Greenwood, pp. 121 ff., Walcot (early chapters}.

7. Evidence and conjecture assessed by Taplin (1977), pp. 442-7.

8. For Ajax’s suicide in Sophocles, see Arnott, P.D., Greek Scenic Conventions in the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford, 1962), pp. 131-8Google Scholar and Lesky (1972), p. 191. Cf. Taplin (1978), p. 189 n. 5.

9. Elsewhere in plays: Iris and Madness at HF 815 ff., probably Aphrodite at Hipp. 1 ff. (to balance Artemis at the end, whose high place is implicit in Hippolytus’ vagueness at 1391-3 and her own spiritual coldness). Only Thetis at And. 1228 and the Dioscuri at El. 1233 use the ‘machine’: see Barrett, ed. Hippolytos, p. 397 f. Gods in prologues normally use the ground: Apollo and Death in Alc, Dionysus certainly in Bacc. (see 47-54); Poseidon and Athena in Tro., too, probably.

10. The best collective treatments of evidence, archaeological and literary (esp. the plays!), are Flickinger, R.C., The Greek Theater and its Drama (Chicago, 1936)Google Scholar; Pickard-Cambridge, A.W., The Theatre of Dionysus at Athens (Oxford, 1947)Google Scholar and The Dramatic Festivals of Athens (2. ed. by J. Gould, D. M. Lewis, Oxford, 1968); Webster, T.B.L., Greek Theatre Production (London, 1970)Google Scholar. For appreciation of the resources in use see esp. Taplin’s books (bibl.); Arnott (n. 8 above); Hourmouziades, N.C., Production and Imagination in E. (Athens, 1965)Google Scholar; Steidle, esp. pp. 9-25. Kitto, pp. 272-8, however, thinks that E.’s bold theatre often masks dramatic weakness.

Some special discussions: Dale, Coll. Papers, pp. 119-29,259-71 (off-stage action; ekkyklêma); K. Joerden, ‘Zur Bedeutung des Ausser- und Hinterszenischen’, in Bauformen, pp. 369-412 (bibl.); Dingel, J., Das Requisit in der griechischen Tragödie (diss. Tübingen, 1967 Google Scholar) (cf. Bauformen, pp. 347-67); Spitzbarth, A., Spieltechnik der griechischen Tragödie (Zurich, 1946 Google Scholar) (useful index locorum); Bain, D., Actors and Audience (Oxford, 1977) devotes pp. 13–66 Google Scholar to ‘asides’ in E.; Mastronarde, D.J., Contact and Discontinuity: Some Conventions of Speech and Action on the Greek Tragic Stage (Berkeley, 1979)Google Scholar; Hamilton, R., ‘Announced Entrances in Greek Tragedy’, HSCP 82 (1978), 63–82 Google Scholar; Stanley-Porter, D., ‘Mute actors in the tragedies of E.’, BICS 20 (1973), 68–93 Google Scholar.

Mary Renault’s novel The Mask of Apollo (London, 1966) wonderfully - and accurately -evokes an actor’s life in the fourth century.

11. Romilly, J.de, L’évolution du pathétique d’Eschyle à Euripide (Paris, 1961)Google Scholar stresses the predominantly pathetic mode; cf. Jones, p. 267. Pucci, P., The Violence of Pity in E.’s Medea (Cornell U. P., 1979)Google Scholar writes on E.’s “remedial” ‘rhetoric of pity and fear’ (cf. his Arethusa 10 (1977), 165-95). For Tragedy’s immediacy of emotional experience, then and now, see esp. Vickers, pp. 78-96; Taplin (1978), pp. 167-71.