Theatre Flashcards
Functions of theatre x3
Entertainment
Politics
Religion
Entertainment x3
Rudeness of Comedy
Farce
skill of the tragedy
Rudeness x1
Wasps+ Clouds - ‘Zeus…through a sieve’ + swears
Farce x3
Wasps:
‘…the prosecutor, the dog’…’Bow-wow’
Knights - string of insults ‘ill stuff you like a sausage skin’
Clouds (on sophists) ‘pale-face bare-footed quacks’
Purpose of comedy (for entertainment - against other themes) x3
Not religious as very few religious themes
Political themes simply what was current and relevant
No real intended harm - Cleon still thrived, Socrates convicted much later for political reasons, courts still functioned the same way
Tragedy entertainment x2
Competition based on skill of writers
Also only have very little time to digest the tragedies, so subliminal messages probably not picked up by many
Tragedy human commentary
Starting speech gives idea of no free will
Tragic critique of religion x4
holding gods to a higher moral standard than men (servant)
Sheer cruelty of Aphrodite(compared to Artemis)
opening speech - Phaedra will be ‘groaning and driven mad’
BUT ‘my enemies shall pay me their full debt’
Also those who suffer most are Theseus and Phaedra, not Hippolytus - hidden critique of the traditional view
Political thematic categories x5
Politics of the festival
New Thinking
Critique of prominent Athenians
Demagogy
Courts
Festival process x3
party (komos) with lots of wine and singing
Audience behaviour - Hissed, clapped, shouted out, threw food
3 tragedies, 1 satyr play - hour long
Political purpose of festival x2
Showing Athens as cultural and power centre
Tribute from Delian league displayed to all
Political purpose - riches - festival x2
Choregia - a tax of the wealthy to help hire a chorus
Sponsors who undertook to finance the plays - show their wealth
Tragedy as political - sophistry x2
Nurse as sophist
Deceptive ‘what you say is plausible but vile…so eloquent for evil’
‘this is what brings destruction on our fine cities…fair speech, too fair by far’ (fair/fine - kallos - persuasive but not good)
Tragedy political - women’s rights x2
Hippolytus tirade
‘they could live at home like free men - without women’ - potential inversion of the power dynamic?
‘how cruel a curse it is to be born a woman’
Religious Festivals x3
Dionysia
Dionysus patron of theatre
Generals leading prayers
Parade with phalloi - as a symbol of rebirth
Religious tragedy x3 worship and strength
Gods key theme in Hippolytus, emphasising subsurvience to them
‘abhor pride and avoid exclusiveness’ to the gods…we ‘should ovserve the honours due to gods’
Power of gods: ‘neither fire-blast nor star-stroke Is more fearful than aphrodite’s dart’
Tragedy - critique of gods? x2
Gods pity but no emotion ‘my eyes are forbidden to shed tears’
Gods go before death ‘how easily you leave our long companionship’
Critique of Demagogy (extreme power, rhetoric, control)
x3
‘you shall be the paramount chief, chief too of the market, the harbours and the Pnyx’
‘always try to win over the people with little touches of rhetoric’
‘jurymen! Brethren of the order of three obols, whom I feed by my loud denunciations, true or false!’
Courts x4 - emotion/faults
Premise of the play - old man addicted to the courts so the son has to fake a trial in his home
Instant judgment - ‘Oh the villain he is! What a thievish creature he looks, too!’
Emotion: after the pups are shown Philocleon is ‘in tears
Bdelycleon misleads Philocleon ‘ he leads Philocleon to the urns by a roundabout route, so that they come first to the acquittal urn. P: There, in she goes [because it is the first one]’
Figures: Cleon Corrupt x1
Corrupt
Hidden commentary on Cleon’s extortion ‘he sailed right round the mortar, and he’s eaten the rind off all the cities’ (Cleon embezzlement from Sicily in the 427 expedition)
Socrates and Sophists x4
2+1+R
Clouds - socrates: Zeus? Who’s Zeus? What rubbish you talk! There is no Zeus! - clouds
‘no it’s a celestial vortex…’so zeus is dead and Vortex has taken his place’
Strepsiades uses sophistic argumentation to see off creditors
(Reliability - Socrates not too criticised as acc Plato symposium, still amicable relations with Aristophanes)
