in this video we're going to continue our discussion on ancient Greek theater now we are going to get into some of the concepts of the writings and the writers that existed during that time I'll start off with something known as the as Aristotle's rules for tragedy Aristotle's rules for tragedy Aristotle was a one of the Greek philosophers who somehow became the master of poetics the rule maker for all things literary the rules for writing poetry and tragedy and what not and the many of the tragedies were based on the ancient myths Greek mythology that you learned about your literature course and those and often those myths were told to these plays and Aristotle decided that he was going to be the person who established the rules for the Dionysian rights for the competitors who would put these plays into competition and that's why many of the plays for years and years and years looked very similar in format the story lines weren't the same but their format was so Aristotle established these rules and something that he called the poetics which was kind of like the Bible for playwriting and poetry and so forth and basically Aristotle established these six rules for writing tragedy these were the sick Aristotle's six rules for writing tragedy the first one was that the tragedy must provide catharsis the tragedy must provide a catharsis or a spiritual purge that the audience would experience when they felt terror or when they felt pity are some strong emotion for what they saw on stage that the emotional impact the climactic moment whether it be horrifying or saddening or whatever should really flush the audience's emotion a spiritual purge and that purge according to aristotle should be designed to make the audience members go out and live a better life be smarter in some regard don't get consumed by jealousy or rage or greed or something like that his second rule was that the hero in a tragedy should always first of all be of high social standing such as a king or a god or something like this today's standard a high social standing would be like a high-ranking political figure a president or a governor or maybe even a celebrity or a sports figure or something like that and Aristotle said that that that hero the king or that God should possess a tragic flaw something in that character's personality something in his character or some failure in judgment that brings about disaster so were bonded with this heroic character this came with his god we like him but he gets consumed by some human component I always say greed or anger or lust or something like this and he succumbs and he gives in to it and as a result he dies from that but usually before he dies he gives some big long soliloquy some monologue explaining oh if I hadn't given it to greed I wouldn't be like that and there there's your church lesson you learned from his final words what we should not do in our real lives so a king of high social standing who possessed the tragic flaw and character of judgment that brought about his demise Aristotle also said that there must be a change in fortune or a reversal something that changes that makes the characters efforts boomerang in other words something you know something that causes the characters good intentions to turn bad are bad intentions to turn good or some kind of discovery that allows that character to realize what was it brought about his demise there must be some change in fortune some reversal in the storyline that moves that king or that God from ignorance to knowledge Aristotle's fourth rule was that the plays must be written in the highest form of poetry and again you know early on like I told you in another video early on the plays were written as poetry they were all song or chant they were death Rams all right so that's where that rule stemmed from and even in the earliest forms of dialogue tragedies the ones where the actors were delivering dialogue still they were written to be very poetic and over time they evolved away from that his fifth rule was that applied to a play or the plots in these tragedies must conform to three unities three unities they were the unity of action time in place in terms of action Aristotle said that the play should be tied to the storyline should be tied to a series of closely related events that everything that took place should pertain to pretty much to the other things that took place in the storyline in terms of time Aristotle said that the action of every storyline should take place within a 24-hour period not that the play was 24 hours long but the storyline inside the script was in a 24-hour period you know the show opened up and the king and the god is presented with this dilemma and within 24 hours it's over he's dead and the third unity was that of place where Aristotle said that the action of every play written should take place in one locale you know one setting now most playwrights they and now ignore Aristotle's demand that we be consistent with the unity of time and place you know this from watching plays and movies not every storyline takes place within a 24-hour period you know Greece was a nine-month school year Blood Brothers is a 33 year life span of these twins and so forth and so on some stories I guess take place in one day or something like that but it's not because of the rule is just because it's dictated by the playwrights intent same thing with plates I'll go back to Greece it's school year you know it's not one locale the whole thing doesn't take place in the lunchroom you have some of the cat scenes in the cafeteria you have some in the gymnasium for the dance you have some in Marty's bedroom and frenchies dream sequence at the beauty shop and the drive-in movie so playwrights then and playwrights now purposefully ignore his unity for time and place by the way playwrights also today not back then but today we've evolved away from making our eros always be of high social standing no reference Titanic again in that regard the hero is not a high social standing Jack is the lowest of lows he worms his way in you know as a vagrant determined and during a poker by winning a poker game or something like that he's third class but becomes the hero back then the Greeks did honor that rule but to in terms of making the hero of high social standing but not anymore now each play or I should say many of the Greek plays did not observe the unities but they kept those rules in the poetics I guess so that people throughout history would know what rules were being followed and what rules were being violated they wanted to preserve that the initial standard for writing tragedies was our work as existed in these poetics now in terms of the Greek format what do I mean format you know earlier in this course we talked about the order of a play the order of the play is the pattern of the audience's experience as they experience a show from the time they lure to it show through publicity purchase tickets go to the theater watch the show talk about it on the ride home or the day after or maybe for a lifetime they didn't call it the order of the play they call it the form the Greek theater form which means format so when we talk about the Greek format we're talking about their order of the play and your notes from earlier there are eight items to our order of a play but they only had four there was you know there was a structure set up with four parts to it and just like hopefully you when you watch a play you'll go oh this is the transition now we're an exposition this is the conflict now we're into the climax and you'll be able to watch the play and understand what's going on from a structural standpoint the Greeks were able to do that as well by following these four parts to the Greek theater form the first was the prologue which introduced the play it was nothing but a voiceover you didn't even see where the voice was coming from some voice talked from afar and talked about setting up the action for what you were about to see there and that kind of eased everybody in to the play all right it's kind of like a two-minute warning in most theaters today where they flash the lights and saying get ready calm down in your conversations after the prologue he had the second part which was called the parados PA are do s I talked about this earlier in another video that's when the chorus filed on to the Greek theater stage piled on to the orchestra singing a song are delivering a chant by the way that parados was the equivalent to our exposition if you remember when we talked about exposition that's the early moments of dialogue that kind of ease us into the role of the play and give us the background knowledge about the main players that we need to understand in order to understand their plight well the parados did this when the chorus filed on singing this song are delivering this chant the information in that chant are in that song was the was the exposition it was the information that gave the audience the background knowledge to understand what was going on after the parados we had the third part of the great theatre forum which was known as the episode Ian EP is OD IO n episode Ian and what the episode ian was was a passage of dialogue delivered by an actor eventually delivered by an actor you'll see what I mean by that alternating with a song or a chant provided by the course you'd have dialog than a song or dialogue than a chant you know and a lot of rituals even today or that way and as I talked to you about earlier ancient Greek tragedies began as rituals over time that changed we'll get to that momentarily and the fourth part of the great theater form was the Exodus II x OD us and that was simply a song that took the chorus off stage and ended the show and in the story so those were the four parts of the great form are no words what we would call today the order of the play so they were structured they were formatted and they are learned early on that the best way for audiences to follow a storyline is not just to learn about the characters plight but also to understand the outlining of a play the structure of a play so you can monitor which phase of their their plight we were moving into in our next video we will wrap up our notes on ancient Greek theater by discussing some of the great playwrights that existed during the old Golden Age of Greece thank you