So, welcome to this introduction to Greek tragedy. Now, to begin with, let's not entirely think about Greek tragedy in terms of the conventions of a genre, but in terms of the ongoing effect. Now, HDF Kido, who is one of the great translators of uh of the Greek text, says that what the tragic poet does is to show us the eternal truths of human nature. And George Steiner who also writes about tragedy says that the theater of Sophocles is a mirror in which we can see the dignity and terror of being human. Now to understand this we need to go back in time to the Greek golden age. Now ancient Greece wasn't a singular country at the time. It was a collection of city states and these included Athens, Corinth, Sparta, thieves among others. Now the golden age refers to this period from 480 to 323 B.CEE. So the whole of ancient Greece goes from 1100 to 146 B.CE. But this golden age is this narrow window where we had a lasting impact on western ideas of democracy, philosophy, literature, art, architecture, science and theater. It was a time when Socrates inspired Plato who was a teacher of Aristotle. It was a time when Pericles strengthened Athenian democracy creating the climate for the golden age. It was a time when theater flourished and not just as an entertainment but as a competitive sport. Now the the the tragic theater of the ancient Greeks is revolves around the festival of Dianisis and this took place at the start of the harvest and sailing seasons in March to April. Crowds would flock to the festival in honor of Dian Isis, the god of wine- makingaking, fertility, religious ecstasy, and theater. So, what's important here is to understand that the audiences weren't just there for entertainment, but for religious obligation. And just as the ancient Greeks invented the Olympic Games, so too did they make theater a competitive sport. The word tragedy comes from a Greek word for goat song. And one theory is that this was a prize given to the first winner, Thesbia, who was an actor. There's a whole story around that. It's a whole other story. But what you'll find is a lot of the language that comes from the Greeks at this time kind of sticks around in different ways and you'll see it later in this video. So what are the features of Greek tragedy? Well, the first one and the key one is the noble hero and that is a person who possesses high status or noble birth. Often admired by society, they show courage and moral conviction even in the face of downfall. This hero has a tragic flaw or Hamasha and which leads to their downfall from greatness. Now the important thing to know is that Hamasha doesn't necessarily mean a moral weakness. Aristotle says that Hamasha doesn't come from depravity. It can be a mistake matter out of ignorance or arrogance. So anagnorosis is this moment that occurs for the tragic hero when they make a critical discovery or realization usually about the true identity, a hidden truth or the nature of their downfall. And this leads to the parapeteer which is a sudden reversal of fortune or turning point. It marks the shift from the protagonist position of stability or success to one of downfall and ruin. Now another key feature for Greek theater is masks. Greeks use masks to amplify expression, enable role switching and transform actors into mythic figures, blending practical needs and cultural religious meaning. And this is going to be important later in the video when we talk about the practicalities of staging in the Greek theater. Now these masks had exaggerated features with wide eyes, open mouth, strong expressions to help convey emotions clearly to all audience members. and masks allowed for quick changes between roles, including changes in age, gender, and status. And they help to elevate the story to a mythic or ritual level, connecting the personal drama to universal human experience. And keep in mind, keep coming back to that these plays weren't just entertainment, they were religious festival. It's kind of like going to church, I guess, for the ancient Greeks. uh is that the masks were part of that as part of the ritual act of performance helping the actor to step into a role as a sacred duty. Now the chorus is another feature of Greek theater that is unusual to the modern audience and the the chorus is a group of players and they perform as a collective character that comments on the action reflects the moral and emotional concerns of the community and helps guide the audience's understanding through song dance and dialogue. Now the strophy and the antistrophe are parts of the coral ode in Greek tragedy. So what happens is the chorus the this group of people is in the front and they're moving left and right and the move uh the movement from left to right is called the strophy and the antistrophe the forwards and backwards I guess and that can be a call and response or a balanced reflection that happens in that now the course represents the public opinion social norms and communal concerns and it echoes the idea the power and moral judgment don't rest in a single ruler. but in the citizen body. And that's important because it actually ties into the emerging democracy of ancient Greece, which now leads us into the structure of ancient Greek tragedies. And they were highly structured and they had these typical components. They began with a prologue that introduces the story. Then we'll have the paradox, which is the entrance of the chorus. And from there we'll move into episodes which are the scenes and dialogue of the characters talking to each other. In between these episodes we have the stasma. Okay, the stasma is a plural. Each one of them is called a stasmon and a stasmon is a coral ode reflecting on the events. So you'll have an episode some chitter chatter between the uh uh the characters. Then the chorus comes into play to kind of explain what's happening and to make sense of it for the audience. And finally, we have the Exodus, the final scene and departure. Now, these tragedies often had common themes. And the reason they were so common is because the tragedies tended to come from uh epic poems. So, before there was theater in ancient Greece, there was poetry. Uh epic poems such as the Iliad in the Odyssey. And these tragedies came from those poems and were reenactments of the poems which is why the stories were actually well known to the audiences before they even watched them. And so these tragedies explore the tension between human action and divine will. The protagonist often attempts to defy fate only to end up fulfilling it. We have an emphasis on the fragility of human knowledge and the cost of pride. Now these plays are written in verse and that's an important thing. When we do look at a Greek tragedy, we'll look at it in the the translations of the Greek which often keep the verse form but then modern interpretations of these plays tend to give away the verse form and move into pros dialogue. Now these plays written in verse and performed as part of religious festivals and this language rose to the occasion. The language of poetry dignifies the ritual nature of the performance in the staging of the plays in the open air meant that the rhythmic forms of language help guide the meaning for the audience. Now these plays are performed in open air amphitheaters and so you can't do the quiet dialogue because there's not the technology of microphones. There's not the uh it's impossible to do the intimate dialogue that we might be used to in modern theater or film. And so language had to be projected so that everyone could hear and and speaking in verse helped convey meaning more effectively. And so this all then ties into how the actual physicality of a Greek stage informs the action and informs the conventions. And so the physical space of Greek theater shapes the conventions of plot, action and structure. And it also informs this idea of the three unities which is something that kind of guides and binds together a lot of these plays. And so here's an image of a Greek theater. And so the first part of this is where the audience sits. And this is called the theatron which is where the word theater comes from. It's a large semic-ircular seating area where the audience sat and it was usually carved into a hillside for natural acoustics. Now I've been to an amphitheater um not a Greek one but a Roman one at Pompei and it is fascinating how effectively voices do carry to the back of an amphitheater through the natural acoustics. Now the circular area is called the orchestra which is fascinating given that that's the word and how we think of the word orchestra today. And this is a circular floor at the center of the theater where the chorus danced and sang and interacted with the actors. Now this space the actors aren't there. This is for the chorus only. The actors are actually somewhere else and we'll see that in a moment. Now in the middle of the orchestra there was an altar and that small altar was placed in the center and is dedicated to Dianasis the god of the theater the the the god to whom they are dedicating this play. And here we have the procianian. And this is where we get the word precinium as in precenium arch in modern theater. And this is the raised platform of the stage in front of the scheme used by actors for performance. And this evolved into the modern stage. Now the scheme is the structure behind the stage where the actors can change basically building. They can come in and out of that uh space and it was often uh decorated and made into a backdrop as well. So the Greek staging influenced the action seen and not seen. The chorus functioned democratically as a voice of the audience. Now this idea of the three unities are these principles that come from Aristotle's poetics. Now he didn't set them out as rules but they and they were expanded upon later. He didn't he didn't really have three unities but it's attributed to him. But in the Renaissance period, people laid on hard rules that were never intended to be like that. But Aristotle kind of gave these observations. And the first one of this is a unity of action where Aristotle says that tragedy is an imitation of an action that's complete and whole and of a certain magnitude. A whole that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. So play should focus on a single complete plot without unrelated episodes. And the physical space makes it challenging to do anything otherwise. Modern cinema, for instance, can have action happening in five different places and having it come together. The Greek theater couldn't really do that. Some plays did experiment with that, but by and large there was only one real plot line happening. Then there was Unity of Time. tragedy endeavors as far as possible to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun according to Aristotle or but slightly to exceed this limit. Whereas the epic action has no limits of time. Now epics are the poems that I was referring to earlier. Epic poetry would take place over decades but a tragedy a play should take place as one component of that. And so he distinguishes between tragedy and epic poetry. In unity time's not a rule but most plays stick to it. And again the staging makes it difficult to convey time in any other ways. So if there were things that happened in in different time periods they'd be reported in the action of the play. And the last one is unity of place. Now Aristotle never mentioned this but Renaissance writers imposed it later through their misreading of Aristotle. And so these three unities began as observation became rules and then faded out of favor or in favor of artistic freedom. And today they serve as more of a historical insight than a creative limitation. So in ancient times the stories contained in the place were familiar to the audience. As I mentioned earlier, the audience knew the plots and knew the structure. The reward was in the art of particular rendition of the familiar story and how it dignified the ritual nature of the event. And the fact that the audience already knows the story is where we start when we investigate our plays to look at this idea of dramatic irony. So that brings us to the end of this uh introduction to Greek tragedy. Hopefully gives you a bit of insight for you for your journey into reading whatever uh you're studying. And in our case, we're studying Edypus the King. And uh yes, good luck with that.