The Greek theater and its drama

roof of the portico at the top of the auditorium shall be of the same height as the scene-building (v. 6. 4). The scene-building is never built so high as this in Hellenistic th...

If a modern theatergoer could be suddenly set down in ancient Athens, perhaps one of the first things to surprise him would be the discovery that he could not have recourse to h...

Tragedy and satyric drama were derived from the dithyramb; comedy from the comus (see pp. 6, 23 f., 36, and 43 f., above). Now both the dithyramb and the comus were entirely cho...

the character of the chorus is quite destroyed by the mourning song: until this time it has remained thoroughly antique, or has never belied its girlish nature; but here of a su...

The dithyramb and the comus, together with their derivatives, early tragedy and early comedy, were entirely choral. Actors were first developed in tragedy (see pp. 16 and 48, n....

We have already seen that the performance of plays at Athens was confined to two festivals of Dionysus, and the time when the various dramatic genres began to be presented at ea...

Whether the use of masks in Greek drama originated in the mere desire for a disguise or in some ritualistic observance has not been definitely established. At any rate their emp...

The dramatic unities, three principles governing the structure of drama and supposedly derived from Aristotle’s _Poetics_, are a subject of perennial interest. They are known as...

It is unnecessary to state that the differences between ancient life in Greece and modern life in America and Western Europe are endless. To attempt to enumerate them all would...

We have already noted that the Greek theater had no facilities for the direct representation of interior scenes (see pp. 237-42, above). Of the many subterfuges there mentioned...

The technical word used of bringing out a play was διδάσκειν (“to teach”), and the technical name for the director of the performance was _didascalus_ (διδάσκαλος) or “teacher.”...