Classical Greek drama originated as religious rituals honoring Dionysus, the god of wine. Over centuries, harvest dances evolved into theatrical productions featuring choruses and actors. The great playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes emerged in 5th century BC Athens, perfecting the genres of tragedy and comedy. Their plays were performed in large outdoor theaters and told mythological stories to explore human ethics and destiny through characters like tragic heroes who defy the gods and fate.

1. Classical Greek Drama
Background information
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2. Four Reasons for Theater
• Religion (honor Dionysus, the Greek god
of wine and fertility/harvest and drama)
• Displaying loyalty to your city-state
• Honoring local heroes
• Entertainment

3. Origins
• Song and dance was a way of
worshipping the gods…
Mortals, I command
you to tell me how
awesome I am!
We
love
you!

4. Origins
• …and celebrating the harvest.

5. Origins
• Over the centuries, harvest dances
developed into the dithyramb, a religious
ritual performed by a chorus of men
wearing masks.

6. Origins
• Eventually, dithyrambs changed into
literary compositions on heroic subjects,
and choruses began competing for prizes
(a bull or a goat).

7. Tragedy
• Tragodia in Greek (Goat Song)
• Derived from the words Tragos, meaning
goat, and oide, meaning song.
• 1. Choruses were dressed in loin-skins of
goats
• 2. Prize for best song was a goat

8. Tragedy (Cont.)
• Stories based on myth or history, but
varied interpretations of events
• Focus was on psychological and ethical
attributes of characters, rather than
physical and sociological.

9. Origins
• This is Thespis.
Hi everyone!
I made the dithyramb better
by adding a new character,
separate from the chorus.
• He created the first actor. We get the term “thespian” from
his name.

10. Origins
• Aeschylus added a second actor to the
stage.
• Sophocles added a third.
• The chorus remained, but the audience
became more interested in the actors and
their lives and struggles.

11. Origins
• The 5th Century B.C. was known as the
golden age of Greek Drama.
• A four-day festival (City Dionysia) was
held in March with competitions and prizes
for the best plays.
• Four playwrights emerged as the greatest:
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and
Aristophanes.

12. Each presented 3 tragedies followed by a
satyr play.
The satyr play was short
•Chorus- half-man, half- beast- satyrs,
companions of Dionysus
•Burlesque of mythology ridiculing gods or
heroes
•Everyday and colloquial language

14. Origins
• Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound (tragedy)
• Sophocles: Antigone, Oedipus Rex,
Oedipus at Colonus (tragedies)
• Euripedes: Medea (tragedy)
• Aristophanes: The Frogs, The Clouds
(comedies)

15. Sophocles
• He wrote more than 120 tragedies… only
7 still survive today.
What did he add to plays?
• A third actor (originally two- used masks)
• Painted sets
• Larger chorus (from 12 to 15 members)

16. The Theaters
• The first theaters were just hillsides with a few
wooden benches for the important spectators
(theatron).
• The orchestra was paved with stones, and was
where the actors and chorus performed.
• An altar for Dionysis, called the thymele, was in
the center of the orchestra
• The skene, a rectangular building made of
wood, provided changing rooms for actors and
prop storage.

17. The Theaters
• Theater design continued to evolve.
• Stone seats were added for everyone, not
just the most important people.
• The wooden skene was replaced by a
permanent stone building with a façade
called a proskenion.
• The parados (plural: paradoi) was the
entrance/exit used by the Chorus.

18. The Theaters
• Basic elements of a theater:
• Circle for the actors.
• Slope for the spectators with benches.
• Open air for a roof.

20. Structure of Greek Plays
• Prologue, which described the situation and set the
scene (exposition)
• Parados, an ode sung by the chorus as it made its
entrance
• Scene/Episode where the action/dialogue happens
• Ode lyric poem commenting on the action (uses elevated language)
• Scenes 2-4 each followed by an Ode
• Scene 5
• Paean (prayer of thanksgiving to Dionysus)
• Exodus

21. The Chorus
• Only men could be in the chorus or be
actors in the play.
Wait a minute…
But Martin Lawrence
pulled it off in “Big
Momma’s House!”
You’d never make a
convincing woman!

22. Acting
I’m a BIG fan of
Greek theater!

23. Function of the Chorus
1. Expressed opinions, gave advice, and
occasionally threatened to interfere in the
action.
2. Expressed the author’s point of view.
3. They served as the ideal spectator, reacting
as the author would want the audience to
react.
4. They helped establish the mood and
heighten the dramatic effects.
5. They added color, movement, and

24. Acting
• Up to 15,000 spectators could watch a
performance.
• Upper seats were more than 55 yards
from the action below.
YOU
THE PLAY

25. Acting
• The actors’ gestures had to be
exaggerated and dramatic so people in
the back row could see.

26. Acting
• At first, masks were fairly realistic
representations of human faces and expressed
emotions such as joy and sorrow.
• Later, they grew in size and became less
realistic.

27. Costumes
• long, flowing robes – colored symbolically
• high boots, often with raised soles (heroic
parts)
• larger-than-life masks made of linen,
wood, and cork
(1) Allowed for multiple roles, (2) different
genders, (3) emotion (4) amplification of
voice

29. The Chorus
• Entered at the beginning of the play.
• Remained during the performance.
• Announced entrances and exits of characters.
• Commented on the action of the play.
Kinda like these guys.

30. The Chorus
• The chorus embodied the moral ideas of
society and admonished characters
against breaking these moral laws.
• The choragos was the leader of the
chorus.
• Sometimes he participated in the dialogue
and represented the responses of a
typical citizen.

31. The Stage
• The violence - murder, suicide, and battles
- almost always occurred offstage.
CRASH! BLAM! KAPOW!
Aaargh! I am
stabbed! The pain
is horrible!!!
A messenger would appear
after the event and describe
in gory detail what had
just happened.

32. The Plays
• Greek drama was staged without
spectacle
• Scripts were written in a simple, direct
manner
• The Unities according to Aristotle:
 Unity of Action
 Unity of Time
 Unity of Place

33. The Plays
• Unity of Action: should have one
overpowering action that moves the play
forward (no subplots)
• Unity of Time: only actions that could
logically have taken place in 24 hours
• Unity of Place: Action or events being
described were limited to one locale.

34. The Stage
• Continuous presence of the chorus
• No intermissions
• No scenery or special effects: the skene
served as whatever building the play
needed (palace, temple, cave)
• Lighting was natural
• Very few props, no subplots, no
more than 3 actors on stage at a
time

35. The Stage
• “Deus Ex Machina”
• Literally means “God the machine”
• The play ends with the gods intervening
and/or resolving the plot.
@#$
%&!

36. The Plays
• Plays retold myths, rewrote history, and
ridiculed politicians.
• Aristophanes wrote comic plays and got
into trouble for satirizing politicians and
even the gods.

37. The Plays
• The other three masters were tragic
poets.
• Tragic plays captured humankind’s
timeless struggle to find the purpose of life
and to achieve self-understanding.

38. The Plays
Central to the tragedy is the fall of the great
man This person is called the tragic hero.
His/her fate is brought about by a flaw within
his or her own character. There is a
CATASTROPHE: The "turning downward"
of the plot in a classical tragedy. By
tradition, the catastrophe occurs in the
fourth act of the play after the climax.

39. The Tragic Hero
1. A tragic hero is of noble birth or has high
status in their society, meaning that he is
royalty or is considered royalty in his society
(well respected).
2. Is not all good or all bad (great but not
perfect). Downfall is not wholly deserved.
3. However, a tragic hero has a tragic flaw
(harmartia), a defect in his character (i.e.
hubris) that leads to his downfall.

40. The Tragic Hero (cont.)
4. A tragic hero suffers a reversal of fortune
(peripeteia), meaning that he has
everything at one point in the story and
then loses it.
5. Exhibits a downfall (from society, status) or
is cast out.
6. A tragic hero recognizes the consequences
of his actions (anagnorisis).

41. Tragic Hero Trait 7
Catharsis
•Though it arouses solemn emotion, tragedy
does not leave its audience in a state of
depression. Aristotle argues that one
function of tragedy is to arouse the
"unhealthy" emotions of pity and fear and
purge us of them (catharsis).

42. The Oedipus Myth
• King Laios and Queen Jacosta of
Thebes learn from an oracle (fortune
teller) that their son would eventually
kill his father and marry his mother.
• They give the baby to a shepherd
with orders to kill it.
• The shepherd takes pity on the baby
and instead gives it away.
• 

43. • The baby ends up being adopted by
the childless king and queen of nearby
Corinth.
• Oedipus grows up never knowing he
is adopted.

44. • Oedipus eventually learns that he is
supposed to kill his parents, so he runs
away to avoid this terrible fate.
• During his travels, he encounters an
arrogant old man on the road, they argue
and fight, and Oedipus kills him.
• He ends up at Thebes, which is being
terrorized by a mythological monster, the
Sphinx.

45. Oedipus Myth (cont.)
• Oedipus defeats the Sphinx and saves
Thebes. He is hailed as a hero and savior,
and is offered the crown.
• He also gets to marry the queen, and
they have two boys, Polynieces and
Eteocles, and two girls, Ismene and
Antigone.

46. The Riddle of the Sphinx
• In Greek mythology, the Sphinx sat outside of Thebes and asked
this riddle of all travelers who passed by. If the traveler failed to
solve the riddle, then the Sphinx killed him/her. And if the traveler
answered the riddle correctly, then the Sphinx would destroy
herself.
• The riddle: What goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs at
noon, and on three legs in the evening?
• Oedipus solved the riddle, and the Sphinx destroyed herself.
• The solution: A man, who crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on
two legs as an adult, and walks with a cane in old age.
• Of course morning, noon, and night are metaphors for the times in a
man's (person's) life. Such metaphors are common in riddles. There
were two Thebes, apparently this Thebes was the one in Greece.
And this Sphinx was apparently not the one at Giza, in Egypt.

47. Oedipus Myth (cont.)
• Things were fine for many years until a
terrible plague struck Thebes.
• Oedipus learns that the plague is a curse
from the gods, and will only end when the
murderer of old King Laios is caught and
punished.
• Oedipus vows to save Thebes again and
catch the murderer, who is living among
them undetected.

48. • Oedipus eventually learns the entire truth.
• Jocasta, his wife and mother, hangs herself in
horror.
• Oedipus gouges out his eyes and is now blind.
• Creon, the queen’s brother, temporarily takes
over as acting ruler of Thebes, and banishes
Oedipus.
• Oedipus and Antigone wander the countryside
as beggars until he dies, and Antigone returns to
Thebes.

49. • King Oedipus’ sons, Polynieces and
Eteocles, are now old enough to rule, and
agree to rule in alternating years.
• Eteocles goes first, but refuses to
relinquish the throne at the end of his turn.
• Polynieces is angered, flees the city,
raises an army, and attacks his brother
and the city of Thebes.

50. • Thebes is able to withstand the attack, but
the brothers kill one another in battle.
• Creon becomes the ruler of Thebes again,
and is left to clean up the mess.
• He decides to give Eteocles a hero’s
ceremony and burial.
• He considers Polynieces, who attacked
his hometown and family, a traitor, and will
not allow anyone to perform the burial
ceremony.

51. • Antigone begins the morning after Thebes’
victory, the brothers’ deaths, and Creon’s
decree.

52. BIG IDEAS IN ANTIGONE
• MOIRA: one’s portion in life; in other
words one’s fate, fortune, or destiny: the
Moirae are the three sisters who personify
Fate in Greek mythology

53. The End!