(no subject)
Jul. 11th, 2023 01:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedantherI decided to read the Oresteia, Aeschylus' trilogy of classical tragedies, because someone once told me a fun anecdote about how it was originally staged. It turns out the anecdote is probably not true, but what's happening instead is quite interesting in itself.
One of the features of the classical Greek theatre was that it didn't use many actors in the sense we're familiar with them. There was the famous Greek Chorus, which represented a group of people (for example, in Agamemnon, the first part of the trilogy, the Chorus represents the Elders of Argos, none of whom have individual names or personalities), but it was only around a century before the Oresteia was written that somebody (tradition says it was a guy named Thespis, hence thespians) came up with the idea of having an individual performer playing the role of a distinct character. At first, each play would only have (in addition to the Chorus) one individual actor, who would use masks and costume changes to switch between characters as required; later someone else added a second actor, so that characters could have dialogue with each other as well as with the Chorus. At some point during Aeschylus' lifetime, a third actor was added, and as far as we know now, that's the furthest it was ever taken. There might be additional performers playing non-speaking roles like a king's entourage or a messenger or whatever, but never more than three speaking roles in any given scene.
The story I was told was this: that Aeschylus was the playwright who first used a third speaking actor, that the play he did it in was The Libation Bearers, the second part of the Oresteia – and that the audience had no idea it was coming. Near the end of The Libation Bearers, Orestes confronts his mother Clytemnestra, intending to slay her in retribution for her murder of her husband, his father, Agamemnon, in part one. Clytemnestra appeals to him as her son to spare her life. Orestes turns to his friend Pylades and asks him what he should do. Pylades has been hanging around all play as somebody for Orestes to think out loud to, but he's never spoken, so by this point the audience is sure he's being played by a non-speaking performer – especially in this scene, where the two speaking actors are clearly playing Clytemnestra and Orestes. He can't answer Orestes' appeal; literally and metaphorically, everything that can be said has already been said. So imagine the audience's reaction when he answers anyway!
As I said, now that I've read the Oresteia I don't think this story is true. One reason why is that I don't believe The Libation Bearers is the first play to have three speaking actors on stage at the same time: it's not even the first play in the Oresteia to do so. Agamemnon also has three speaking characters on stage at once, though admittedly only two of them speak at a time; you could conceivably stage it with only two speaking actors and a body double who fills the role of the third character until it's time for her to speak. But to do that, you would need to have a speaking actor trade places with the body double in full view of the audience; as far as I know, we have no reason to believe that was something the Greeks did, and in this case it would give away the fact that the character is about to speak and ruin the effect.
Let's take the scenes in order:
In Agamemnon, King Agamemnon arrives home from the Trojan War with his entourage and his war trophy, Cassandra; his wife, Clytemnestra, comes out to greet him. The scene involves the Chorus, portraying the city elders; two speaking actors, portraying Agamemnon and Clytemnestra; various non-speaking performers, portraying the king's attendants and the queen's attendants – and then there's Cassandra, who through all of this just stands in the background saying nothing, and as far as the audience can tell is another non-speaking role. When the greetings are done, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra go into the palace, leaving Cassandra outside. The Chorus does a bit of chorus stuff, and then Clytemnestra comes back out to invite Cassandra in. Cassandra doesn't respond to anything she says, nor to the Chorus when they try; it's not clear whether she's giving them all the cold shoulder or just doesn't speak the language, but either way it reinforces the idea that she's not going to say anything. Clytemnestra loses patience and goes back inside –
– and then Cassandra breaks her silence, and boy does she break her silence. Cassandra is a speaking part, and an actor's part – for me, this was one of the most affecting sections of the entire trilogy. And, as I said, you could conceivably stage it by subbing in the actor who'd been playing Agamemnon before she starts speaking, but I don't believe that's the intention; I believe the intention is to add dramatic effect to what she says by the unexpectedness of her having anything to say for herself.
One other thing I would like to note before continuing: Within the story, what moves Cassandra to speak is not an ordinary impulse, but the prompting of a divine power: her initial outburst is forced out of her by the gift of prophecy bestowed on her by the god Apollo. Even if this isn't the first play to use a third voice, the entry of the third voice into the drama is still framed as an unusual event.
In The Libation Bearers, as already summarised above, the effect is repeated, this time with a longer build-up and a more focussed pay-off. Pylades is around for almost the entire play as a mute presence before he speaks up, and when he does it's not Cassandra's torrent of words but three carefully chosen sentences.
Pylades' speech, unlike Cassandra's, doesn't come from a divine impulse – at least, not explicitly. The meat of his utterance is to remind Orestes that he's not just seeking vengeance for himself, but carrying out a task given to him by one of the gods. The play doesn't credit Pylades with a prophetic gift, but in the moment he can be seen as speaking on the god's behalf, figuratively if not literally. The god in question is, once again, Apollo.
The Eumenides dispenses with the surprise tactics; it still uses three voices, but none of them disguise their nature. During the trial scene that makes up the main part of the play, the first two speaking roles are Orestes, on trial for his actions in part two, and the goddess Athena. The Chorus enacts the Furies, who seek retribution on Orestes for the sin of kin-slaying, and various non-speaking performers appear as jurors and citizens watching the trial. As the trial begins, a third speaking character arrives, and immediately declares his intention to speak in favour of Orestes: after two plays as a metaphorical presence, in the final play the third voice is Apollo himself in person.
(And in person he's kind of a jerk, but that's a whole different essay.)
One of the features of the classical Greek theatre was that it didn't use many actors in the sense we're familiar with them. There was the famous Greek Chorus, which represented a group of people (for example, in Agamemnon, the first part of the trilogy, the Chorus represents the Elders of Argos, none of whom have individual names or personalities), but it was only around a century before the Oresteia was written that somebody (tradition says it was a guy named Thespis, hence thespians) came up with the idea of having an individual performer playing the role of a distinct character. At first, each play would only have (in addition to the Chorus) one individual actor, who would use masks and costume changes to switch between characters as required; later someone else added a second actor, so that characters could have dialogue with each other as well as with the Chorus. At some point during Aeschylus' lifetime, a third actor was added, and as far as we know now, that's the furthest it was ever taken. There might be additional performers playing non-speaking roles like a king's entourage or a messenger or whatever, but never more than three speaking roles in any given scene.
The story I was told was this: that Aeschylus was the playwright who first used a third speaking actor, that the play he did it in was The Libation Bearers, the second part of the Oresteia – and that the audience had no idea it was coming. Near the end of The Libation Bearers, Orestes confronts his mother Clytemnestra, intending to slay her in retribution for her murder of her husband, his father, Agamemnon, in part one. Clytemnestra appeals to him as her son to spare her life. Orestes turns to his friend Pylades and asks him what he should do. Pylades has been hanging around all play as somebody for Orestes to think out loud to, but he's never spoken, so by this point the audience is sure he's being played by a non-speaking performer – especially in this scene, where the two speaking actors are clearly playing Clytemnestra and Orestes. He can't answer Orestes' appeal; literally and metaphorically, everything that can be said has already been said. So imagine the audience's reaction when he answers anyway!
As I said, now that I've read the Oresteia I don't think this story is true. One reason why is that I don't believe The Libation Bearers is the first play to have three speaking actors on stage at the same time: it's not even the first play in the Oresteia to do so. Agamemnon also has three speaking characters on stage at once, though admittedly only two of them speak at a time; you could conceivably stage it with only two speaking actors and a body double who fills the role of the third character until it's time for her to speak. But to do that, you would need to have a speaking actor trade places with the body double in full view of the audience; as far as I know, we have no reason to believe that was something the Greeks did, and in this case it would give away the fact that the character is about to speak and ruin the effect.
Let's take the scenes in order:
In Agamemnon, King Agamemnon arrives home from the Trojan War with his entourage and his war trophy, Cassandra; his wife, Clytemnestra, comes out to greet him. The scene involves the Chorus, portraying the city elders; two speaking actors, portraying Agamemnon and Clytemnestra; various non-speaking performers, portraying the king's attendants and the queen's attendants – and then there's Cassandra, who through all of this just stands in the background saying nothing, and as far as the audience can tell is another non-speaking role. When the greetings are done, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra go into the palace, leaving Cassandra outside. The Chorus does a bit of chorus stuff, and then Clytemnestra comes back out to invite Cassandra in. Cassandra doesn't respond to anything she says, nor to the Chorus when they try; it's not clear whether she's giving them all the cold shoulder or just doesn't speak the language, but either way it reinforces the idea that she's not going to say anything. Clytemnestra loses patience and goes back inside –
– and then Cassandra breaks her silence, and boy does she break her silence. Cassandra is a speaking part, and an actor's part – for me, this was one of the most affecting sections of the entire trilogy. And, as I said, you could conceivably stage it by subbing in the actor who'd been playing Agamemnon before she starts speaking, but I don't believe that's the intention; I believe the intention is to add dramatic effect to what she says by the unexpectedness of her having anything to say for herself.
One other thing I would like to note before continuing: Within the story, what moves Cassandra to speak is not an ordinary impulse, but the prompting of a divine power: her initial outburst is forced out of her by the gift of prophecy bestowed on her by the god Apollo. Even if this isn't the first play to use a third voice, the entry of the third voice into the drama is still framed as an unusual event.
In The Libation Bearers, as already summarised above, the effect is repeated, this time with a longer build-up and a more focussed pay-off. Pylades is around for almost the entire play as a mute presence before he speaks up, and when he does it's not Cassandra's torrent of words but three carefully chosen sentences.
Pylades' speech, unlike Cassandra's, doesn't come from a divine impulse – at least, not explicitly. The meat of his utterance is to remind Orestes that he's not just seeking vengeance for himself, but carrying out a task given to him by one of the gods. The play doesn't credit Pylades with a prophetic gift, but in the moment he can be seen as speaking on the god's behalf, figuratively if not literally. The god in question is, once again, Apollo.
The Eumenides dispenses with the surprise tactics; it still uses three voices, but none of them disguise their nature. During the trial scene that makes up the main part of the play, the first two speaking roles are Orestes, on trial for his actions in part two, and the goddess Athena. The Chorus enacts the Furies, who seek retribution on Orestes for the sin of kin-slaying, and various non-speaking performers appear as jurors and citizens watching the trial. As the trial begins, a third speaking character arrives, and immediately declares his intention to speak in favour of Orestes: after two plays as a metaphorical presence, in the final play the third voice is Apollo himself in person.
(And in person he's kind of a jerk, but that's a whole different essay.)
no subject
Date: 2023-07-15 01:59 pm (UTC)(Surely at the stage where there was only one actor delivering the lines, he must have done a visible costume/mask switch -- I don't think Greek theatres had 'wings', let alone dressing-rooms... But presumably that was generations earlier by this point, anyway.)
I certainly had the impression that, say, "Lysistrata" had a lot more than three speaking characters in a scene (the women argue among themselves, the Athenians argue with the Spartans, and of course the men argue with the women), but I couldn't swear that they definitely have more than three individual roles *in the same scene*; the scene where the Spartans arrive could be just Lysistrata, her friend, and the leader of the Spartan women, for instance...
Or is Aristophanes way after the 'classical' drama period in any case?
no subject
Date: 2023-07-16 02:08 am (UTC)About "Lysistrata", I don't know. It's not that far from the Oresteia in time - it debuted around 40 years later - but there's an obvious point of difference in that it's a comedy, not a tragedy. Everything I've read about the development of the number of actors was focussed on the conventions of the tragedy; it could be that there were different developments in the conventions of the comedy that I didn't think to look for and my sources didn't think to mention.
(A few minutes Googling suggests that "Lysistrata" is generally accepted to have at least four speaking characters in one scene, as do a few other surviving comedies from the period, and that there are differing scholarly opinions about whether this means comedies had more actors generally, or sometimes added a fourth actor on special occasions, or it just needs a bit of ingenuity to stage them with only three actors, or what.)
no subject
Date: 2023-07-16 07:17 pm (UTC)Ah, so the audience wouldn't have able to tell in advance either whether Pylades had a major (speaking) part according to whether he was costumed as such :-)
I'm glad that my thirty-year-old memory of "Lysistrata" having lots of people arguing at once was not entirely unfounded!
(We saw it performed in Greek as part of our Ancient Greek course, so I'm afraid my chief memory of it is of the farcical physical clowning that took place, including the wiggling herms that had us all in stitches...)