The power and emotionally jarring words of the ancient Greek plays brings the reader or audience member directly into the life and times of ancient Greece. The ancient Greeks had a unique style of theatre that is still impressive today. The power of the words, skill of the rhymes, and effectiveness of the imagery have the power to draw in the most reluctant of readers and charm the hardest of hearts. In the days when the Hellenistic Greeks began to appreciate the finer forms of performance arts, the audience would be held spellbound and captivated by the spectacle in front of them. Originally, Greek theatre was simply a choral recitation performed by a chorus, but it evolved into a complex form of art, which represented the life and times of the Greek poleis.
The origins of Greek theatre lie in improvisation. Actors would perform a play without any preparation, and would see how the plot progressed. Improvisation revolves strongly around an actor's ability to move with the flow of the scene. In Greek theatre, actors had the benefit of knowing the general story line before the skit began to start. Plays were almost always based on events that had an impact on the citizens, be it moral, religious, philosophical, or political (Harsh, Philip Whaley, A Handbook of Classical Drama, Stanford University Press, 1944, California). The success or failure of the performance lay not in the writing, but in the performers' ability to bring the story to life.
At the heart of each Greek play is the chorus, a group of fifteen or more performers who speak, move, and act as one single body. The unity of the chorus gives stability to the play and adds either an objective or subjective view on the events as they occur on stage. Originally, a play was comprised solely of a chorus singing a dythyramb, a traditional hymn to Dionysus, the God of wine, drama, merriment and sexuality. These dythyrambs are accredited today as the beginnings of Greek tragedy.
Dythyrambs, and later plays, were performed during festivals dedicated to the god Dionysus. Dionysus was the son of Zeus and Semele. Semele was tricked by Zeus' wife Hera into asking Zeus to appear before her as a God, whereupon she was immediately destroyed, as mortals cannot look on a God in his pure form and survive. Zeus took her unborn child and harboured it in his thigh, where it came to term. He gave the child to Semele's sister Ino, who named him Dionysus and raised him as her own (Ed. Johsnton, Bernard, and Bahr, Lauren S., Collier's Encyclopedia, Maxwell MacMillon Canada, 1991, Toronto). When Dionysus was finally given a place among the gods after years spent running from Hera's jealous rage through the East, he brought sexual ecstacy and mysticism into the Greek faith. Dionysus was accorded the title “Bacchus”, and his following were known as “Bacchi” (for the males) or “Bacchae” (for the females). He was depicted as being attended on by satyrs and sileni, woodland mythological beings shaped like men but with the tails, ears, and hooves of animals. The remarkable story of his birth was the inspiration for the first Greek plays, and he became thereafter known as a patron of the performing arts.
In the year 534 B.C.E., tragic drama was first permitted into the Athenian state festivals. In the Spring, there was a religious holiday called “City Dionysia”, which lasted seven days. There were four theatrical competitions. Five plays were performed, and prizes went to the best work by both actors and playwrights. Theatres were built to house these shows. They were huge open-air buildings with a foundation of stone and wooden seats and stages. Each theatre could house approximately eighteen hundred people, which was roughly one fifth of the population of Athens at the time. They were almost always completely filled. The priests of Dionysus sat in specially reserved seats in the front row, accompanied by any distinguished visitors to the city. (McLeish, Keith, Aspects of Greek Life: The Greek Theatre, Longman Group Ltd., 1972, Singapore)
In 486 B.C.E., the definition of “drama” grew to include comedy as well as tragedy. A second festival, Lenaia - or the Feast of the Wine Presses - took place in February. One comedy was permitted to enter the competition, as well as one tragic tetrology, or four tragedies on a similar theme from the same author. Some famous comedies performed during this time include the works of the famous comic playwright Aristophanes, creator of The Birds, Lysistrata, The Frogs, The Acharnians,, and The Peace.
As theatre became more and more developed, a standard form began to take shape. Plays would open with a prologos, or a prologue. The opening had to be powerful and grab the audience's attention. Aeschylus' Agamemnon opens with a gripping monologue from a Watchman. It begins with the lines:
