Going to the theater in 500 B.C.

 What was drama like around 500 B.C., when Aeschylus was learning to be a playwright? Greek tragedy changed rapidly in three generations: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.

Traditional drama had a single actor playing against a chorus. Aristotle says Aeschylus added a second actor and Sophocles added a third. Sophocles had new ideas about how to handle dialog. We soon had painted scenery, and Euripides was criticized for being overly fond of what we call “special effects.”

What was tragedy like before this exciting period began?

H.D.F. Kitto thought Aeschylus’s The Suppliant Maidens offers a good clue. Kitto calls the form “lyrical tragedy.” Here’s Kitto’s summary:

 

The chorus enters and expounds the situation; the actor enters and gives us an impression of his general position. Now all the dramatic forces are present; something may be kept back … but nothing new can enter. It is more important however to notice that nothing new is wanted. The limitation, like most limitations to the great artist, does not mean poverty but intensity.

 

The actor represented a main character, “drawn in outline only.” Playwrights would later explore the details of personality in their characters and would develop dialog as a way to show the quirks of that personality. But the characters in “lyrical tragedy” were a bit like paintings and sculptures in Classical Greece. They portrayed idealized forms with calm countenances — with no hint of individual expression on their faces.

We tend to think of drama in terms of personalities. The drama Kitto describes or imagines is more general. It’s simply a story of a human being confronting a moral problem, instead of a unique personality confronting a moral problem in a unique way.

In The Suppliant Maidens, the 50 daughters of Danaus show up in the Greek polis Argos, fleeing Egypt and forced marriages with their cousins.

They go to the altars of the gods and ask King Pelasgus for protection. The Greeks gods made it clear that it was a duty to protect suppliants. The Egyptian suitors made it clear that protecting the women would mean war.

In the past 2,500 years or so, writers have learned a few things about characterization. But in this play Pelasgus is just a human being, fated to be a leader, and doomed to make a choice that’s tragic. Is it better to expose your people to a horrific war or to the outrage of the gods?

The drama is in the moral question, rather than in the characters or the plot.

• Source: H.D.F. Kitto, Greek Tragedy; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1954, p. 31. Greek scholars complained that Kitto was dated when I was in college 50 years ago. I still find his ideas stimulating.