Quiz 1 Flashcards
ministerium
Latin for religious service or office
Mystery Plays
biblical stories about Christ or from the Old Testament – usually done in cycles.
Miracle Plays
Religious drama retelling the lives of saints, both historical and legendary
Morality Plays
didactic allegories, often of common man’s struggle for salvation
Chester Cycle
Mystery play cycle of 25 plays, from fall of Lucifer to Doomsday
Wakefield cycle
Mystery plays cycle that was realistic; had high literary value
York Plays
Mystery play cycle of 48 plays, more crude and didactic
Quem Quaeritis Trope
around 925 idea was "whom do you seek?" By 1000, plays during service became common -- performed by clergy -- taught a moral lesson -- chanted in Latin
Chauvet Cave
- Has art that is over 30,000 years old; the oldest ever documented
- Discovered in 1994 in France
- flow of drawings seemed to be aided by torches
Ancient Egyptian “Theater”
- Pyramid Texts
- Coronation Festival at the coronation of each pharoah
- Heb Sed: a play about the Pharoah that was performed on his 30th year
- No real dialogue between characters
Ikhernofret’s Stone
- first recorded theaterical performance
- discussed a priests’s duties in a passion play
- dates to around 1820 BC
resurrection theme
part of a multi-day religious festival. Gory story about Set and Orisis in the Nile
Passion Play
- legend central to belief in rebirth
- - important idea of chaos being overcome
Phaistos
- Oldest cultic theater was in Phaistos in Crete. dated 1900-1700 BCE
- could fit up to 300 people
- square court (23 x 23) , probs held stools or benches for spectators
Knossos
- Cultic Crete theater
- - 500 spectators
Sacred Grove Fresco
- shows women dancing in a chorus or acting.
- - all facing left, likely at a goddess’ shrine
Ritual
- -rituals are performed to placate the gods and secure a society’s survival.
- -ritual plots were derived from the myths of the god in whose honor the ritual was performed
Theatrical Drama
- theater aims at affecting how things are PERCEIVED, and has thoughts about them
- civic and social event which features an entertaining performance in front of an audience.
- not sure this happened before Greece.
City Dionysia Festival
- multi-day festival for Dionysis, god God of wine, fertility, revelry, and theater
- theatre evolved from festivals surrounding him that started around 700 BC
- first major play festival:
- each playwright had to enter 3 tragedies and 1 satyr play (a tetrology)
Thespis
- -first Thespian
- -6th century
- -earliest recorded actor
- -first person to step out of the chorus while delivering a prologue and spoke while impersonating a character
tragedy
A play in which the main character(s) struggle against an outside force, and usually comes to a disastrous conclusion
Satyr Play
a bunch of people dressed as Satyrs jumped around onstage as a pallete cleanser
– includes Cyclops (Euripides)
Aeschylus
525-455 BC
- first to develop drama into a form separate from singing, dancing, and storytelling.
- added a second actor
- reduced chorus size from 50 to 12
- also a soldier
- wrote 90 plays, 7 still exist
- The Suppliants
- The Persians
- Seven Against Theebs
- Prometheus Bound
- Orestia (Agamemnon, Libation Bearers and Eumenides)
Sophocles
496-406 BC
- introduced the third actor
- more actor-led than chorus led
- chorus size to 15
- 120 plays / 7 survived
- Ajax
- Antigone
- Oedipus Rex
- Electra
- Oedipus at Colonus
Euripides
480-406 BC
- Developed the Prologue
- Emphasis on personal life and daily living
- 18 surivivng texts;
- serious controversial issues in society: roles of women and illegitimate children
- Medea
- The Trojan Women
- Electra
- The Bacchae
- Iphigenia At Aulis
Aristotle
384-322
– main purpose of a tragedy is catharsis
Theater at Delphi
- Audience (Theatron)
- Orchestra (Altar)
- Skene (stage house) in the back
- usually just a door
Proskenion
a raised platform that supported a small stage. (proscenium)
Parados
(or entrance) to the side
periaktos
Triangle prisms which could be pivoted to reveal three different backgrounds
ekkyklema
A platform on wheels used to display the effect of violence within a play (body cart)
Mechane
a crane-like machine that was used to lower an actor (usually playing the part of a god), onto the stage in order to fix the problems at hand
Parode
When the Greek chorus gives background info, and establishes history
“Old Comedy” era
Pelopennisian War - 405BC
- generally political and social satire
- slapstick, bawdy, scatalogical.
- chorus was important
- only one we really know much about was Aristophanes
Aristophanes
446-386BC
- 40 plays; 11 survive
- The Clouds
- The Birds
- Lysistrata
- Frogs
Parodos
entrance of the chorus, often dance and sung
Agon
debate about the happy idea, a decision is reached to try the crazy scheme
Parabasis
choral ode, literally meaning “going aside” that addresses audiences directly
Episodes
second part of play; shows result of adopting the happy idea
Exodus
reconciliation and revelry, often a banquet in a comedy
Menander
Synonymous with new comedy
- “The Grouch” the guy who falls down a well
- 100 plays,
- Imitated Euripides and was adapted by roman Writers Terence and Plautus
- One of the first to use “Stock Characters”
Hrosvitha of Gandershelm
935-1001
- Earliest known female dramatist
- nun who read and wrote in Latin
- Used Terrence as a model, wrote 6 plays, as well as poetry, history, and biographies of saints
Plautus
- -254-184BCE
- First professional playwright
- comic
- 100 written/ 20 surivived (all set in Greece)
- Adapted stuff from Greek new comedy (in fact often quoted it)
- wrote for the masses
- Bacchides (?)
- The Menaechmi
- The Merchant
- The Carthaginians
- the Rope
- Miles Gloriosus
- The Girl from Persia
The Menaechemi
- one of the most well known Plautus plays
- involves a set of twins and mistaken identity
- basis for comedy of errors and boys from syracus
Peniculus
aka sponge,
– stock chaacter who was a parasite
Erotium
stock character: comic Courtesan
Messenio
stock character: comic servant
Miles Glorious
- Plautus play
- - established the braggart soldier stock character
Terrence
- possibly the first black playwright
- may have been a slave freed by his owner (not a race thing, a conquered thing)
- plays survived because they were in AMAZING latin, so the Catholic church kept his plays around to teach latin
Seneca
- during emperor Nero
- pretty much redid all the Greek greatest hits but made them much more gory
- started including ghosts, restless spirits
- revenge plays
Pantomime
Storytelling dance with music (lutes, pipes, cymbals) and a chorus
Used masks, story-telling, mythology or historical stories, usually serious but sometimes comic
Mime
- -Short, not verbal
- -much more acrobatic
- -Violence and sex depicted literally
- scoffed at Christianity
- much more risque
histriones
actors in rome (who were generally men)
– women were in mimes
Rocius
famous roman actor who was raised to nobility
Theodora
star actress who married emperor Jusinian of the eastern empire in 6th century AD but had to renounce her profession
Theater of Pompey the Great
- closer to nature
- - larger than Greek theaters (could fit more people)
Horace
wrote the Ars Poetica (art of poetry), discussing the origins, forms, and ends of drama.
– plays should be both useful (utilis) and pleasing (dulce)
Medieval Cornish Round Theater
– first theater in the round (?)
