Ancient Greek Drama

From the Classical era, we have unaccompanied 44 plays still extant, with perhaps hundreds more lost. Much of our experience comes from the writings of Aristotle from a century later, but he concentrates mostly on aesthetics and says little about the theater itself (MacGowan and Melnitz 1-2).

We do know that the theater developed as part of the solemnisation of the god Dionysus, a pan-Hellenic god who was widely keep throughout the Archaic period and wondered at hammy contests with tragedies and comedies. His was also an orgiastic cult. Dionysus is the god of ecstasy and possession and great power be called the patron saint of the drama as well(p) as of various festivals and celebrations. Bacchus is the Roman name for the same god. The iconography of Bacchus makes him well recognizable in artworks and evokes images of wine and revelry along with specialised symbols of the god and his cult. In Greek mythology, Dionysus was a bastard tidings of Zeus. The mother of Dionysus is variously named depending on the source, and some have express she was Demeter, or Io, and some Dione, and still others Lethe. The most common base has it that Zeus wrapped himself as a mortal and had a secret affair with Semele ("moon"), the daughter of King Cadmus of Thebes. Zeus's wife, Hera, was jealous. She disguised herself as an old neighbor and advised Semele to ask her lo'er to do her a favor by n

Hamilton, Edith. Mythology. New York: Mentor, 1963.

The problematic relationship that Greeks believed existed between gods and existence formed the basis of classical Athens' most enduring ethnical innovation: the tragic dramas performed over the course of three years at the major annual festival held in honor of the god Dionysus (Martin).

Edith Hamilton points out that this story of the birth of Dionysus relates to the subject over which he is a god:

Cohan, Robert. "The Greeks." http://lupus.northern.edu:90/ brutal/

Chabrowe, Leonard. Ritual and Pathos--the Theater of O'Neill. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1976.

In other words, the emphasis is sometimes on the celebration of life in the abstract and sometimes on the life struggle of the individual. . . O'Neill's ultimate purpose was to action an effect in the modern theater like that in the ancient Athenian (Chabrowe xvi).

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