Greek Drama - List of Terms

Question 1

Orchestra

Answer 1

Round platform at the center of the theatre where action is performed

Question 2

Skene

Answer 2

Raised platform used as scenery and, in back, for dressing room for actors

Question 3

Chorus

Answer 3

A group of actors,
usually representing the elders of the city,
who speak in unison
and whose odes and hymns alternate with
and comment on the action of the play

Question 4

Choragos

Answer 4

The leader of the chorus who speaks to and for them, as well as with the main character of the play

Question 5

Drama

Answer 5

A literary genre consisting of action and dialogue that is performed before an audience

Question 6

Comedy

Answer 6

A drama which begins in chaos and ends in order and marriage; often the subject matter is satirical, farcical or geared towards the amusement of the audience

Question 7

Tragedy

Answer 7

A drama which begins (a measure of) order and ends in destruction and death, albeit with a cathartic lesson

Question 8

Hamartia

Answer 8

(put over simply) the tragic flaw that brings down the hero’s downfall

Question 9

Hubris

Answer 9

Overweening pride, suggesting that the character thinks he is superior to the gods

Question 10

Aristotle

Answer 10

Greek philosopher
Author of The Poetics
which mapped out the rules and conventions of dramatic form

Question 11

Fear

Answer 11

(According to Aristotle)

The audience’s empathetic anxiety for the hero as the tragedy progresses

Question 12

Pity

Answer 12

(According to Aristotle)
At the end of the play, the switch from empathy to sympathy
as the audience feels sorrow for the tragic hero
but can no longer “relate’ to the extremity of his pain
When fear switches to pity Catharsis occurs

Question 13

Three tragic unities

Answer 13

Place time and action

There was a rule in Classical drama that a tragedy must be confined to one place, time and action

Question 14

Reversal (peripeteia)

Answer 14

The change in luck and circumstance of the tragic hero, ending in recognition

Question 15

Recognition (anagnorisis)

Answer 15

The moment the hero realizes

how his fate and flaws have conspired to change his life

Question 16

Unraveling

Answer 16

The resulting action and accounting after the recognition has occured
the winding down of the play

Question 17

Catharsis

Answer 17

(Untranslatable) The audience’s sense of cleansing

purgative pain brought on by the hero’s recognition at the end of a tragedy

Question 18

Tragic hero

Answer 18

(According to Aristotle) A good person of high standing who
in extreme circumstances
is pressed to confront his own nature and place in the universe
(a recognition of his hamartia leading to self-knowledge)

Question 19

Dionysus

Answer 19

The god of drama and wine

Question 20

Apollo

Answer 20

God of the sun, light, truth, and plagues

Question 21

Sophocles

Answer 21

The third of the great Greek playwrights
(along with Aeschylus and Euripedes);
author of the Theban trilogy
(The Oedipus Cycle)
among others

Question 22

Sigmund Freud

Answer 22

Father of psychology who developed the concept of the Oedipus Complex