本书阐释的是人们耳熟能详的十部古希腊悲喜剧，其中有埃斯库罗斯的《阿伽门农》、《奠酒人》和《欧墨尼得斯》，索福克勒斯的《安提戈涅》、《俄狄浦斯王》和《俄狄浦斯在科罗诺斯》，欧里庇得斯的《美狄亚》和《酒神的伴侣》，以及阿里斯多芬的《鸟》和《吕西斯特拉特》。

这四位剧作家中的前三位是举世无俦的悲剧作家，他们代表了古希腊乃至迄今为止的悲剧发展的顶峰；另一位是在希腊悲剧盛极将衰的时候对所有人、所有事都予以嘲讽的喜剧作家，他以卓越的捉弄人的手法和令人钦佩的荒诞体现了古希腊的另一种辉煌。

Ancient Greek drama is the foundation of Western civilization.At the sametime,the world of the Greeks seems distant and exotic to contemporary students.This introductory guide overviews the historical,political,and culturalbackground of Greek drama.Designed for high school students andundergraduates,this work begins with an overview of the contexts andterminology of Greek drama.

It then provides detailed discussions of ten widely studied plays:

Agamemnon

Choephoroi

Eumenides

Antigone

Oedipus Rex

Oedipus at Colonus

Medea

Bacchae

Birds

Lysistrata

Chapters discuss the playwright's life and dramatic style,the role of mythin the play,the plot of the work,important speeches,and performance issues.Each chapter also directs the reader to further resources.

Introduction

1、Aeschylus: The Agamemnon(458 B.C.)

2、Aeschylus: The Choephoroi("The Libation Bearers")(458 B.C.)

3、Aeschylus: The Eumenides(458 B.C.)

4、Sophocles: The Antigone(442 B.C.)

5、Sophocles: The Oedipus Rex (426 B.C.)

6、Sophocles: The Oedipus at Colonus(406 B.C.,performed 401 B.C.)

7、Euripides: The Medea(431 B.C.)

8、Euripides: The Bacchae(406 B.C., performed 405 B.C.)

9、Aristophanes: The Birds(414 B.C.)

10、Aristophanes: The Lysistrata(411 B.C.)

Selected Bibliography

Index

Movement and Music

All performers were trained singers and dancers.Choral lyrics were cho-reographed and sung to musical accompaniment that was both melodicand rhythmically complex.The division of odes into strophe and anti-strophe corresponds to the assignment of alternating stanzas to one andthen the other half of the Chorus,who sang and danced each strophe inunison.Dance movements included row formations with interweavingmovements,double dances "with two half-choruses facing and matchingone another," acrobatic leaps,splits,processionals,and dances of victory,defeat and madness.

DRAMA'S BASIS IN MYTH

Whereas comedy was absolutely topical and full of fantastic inventionof plot and character,tragedy drew for its subject matter on the already-set myths and legends of gods and heroes,figures immediately identifiableto the audience.The use of contemporary material was rare,and,as thepoor reception that Aeschylus'the Persians received suggests,considerednot proper.

That the broad outlines of the stories dramatized by the playwrights werealready known presented the dramatist with opportunities for subtle ironiceffect,suspense,and complex reversals of expectation.An audience alreadycognizant of the legend on which a play was based was a discriminating audi-ence able to focus on nuances of action and meaning.We expect authorsin our day to make up stories; the tragic playwrights of ancient Greece,like the epic poets before them,proved their mettle by how they used thealready-shared stock of myth.In fact,as Homer and Hesiod's invocationsto the Muse demonstrate,epic poets believed or articulated the belief thatnothing was invention,but that they simply "recorded" what the Musebreathed into them.

REALITY AND RELIGION IN GREEK DRAMA

Greek dramas are about death,about kinship in all its compelling and sor-rowing complexity,about loss,about young girls who never marry and neverreceive the portion of life allotted to them,about the limits of what oneknows set against what one thinks one knows,about pride and evil and error,and about truth.They are full of powerful ritual and,although not naturalis-tic,are profoundly realistic in that they address life's deepest realities.Greekdrama is about coming to know what lies beneath the surface of things,andthe image of Cassandra,the garments of the god cast aside,going clear-eyedto what she cannot avoid,is an emblem of this drama.

Religion is part of the very fabric of Greek theatre.Greek tragedy is religiousnot because gods appear onstage,but because they are understood to standbehind all things.The Medea,where no god appears,is as religious as theOedipus at Colonus,in which Oedipus experiences a divine apotheosis.WhenMedea speaks in lament for the central moments that mark a life and thatshe will not have,her grief is predicated on a sense of pattern and order,acosmic scheme in which humans participate.In these plays humans do notlack free will,but they and the gods together shape human destiny.The playsin this volume,although they do not cohere around any single theme,never-theless reveal how tightly Greek drama is tied to ritual stages of life and howfully two spheres—the divine and the human—are joined.

These plays are made realistic not only by subject matter but also bydramatic technique.In many ways audience and characters are linked.Thelament of Ismene and Antigone in the Colonus runs roughly parallel to areal-time lament and thus makes the audience co-participant; ritual catharsisis experienced first-hand by the audience.The suddenness of Orestes'visionsat the end of the Choephoroi lets the audience feel the terror that besets him.The offstage cries of Medea at the beginning of the Medea create the impres-sion for the audience of something accidentally overheard,which in turnproduces the illusion that the character has a "real" inner life and is therefore"real." In subtle and varied ways that modem theatre is still discovering,these dramatists dissolve the "fourth wall."

THE DIVISIONS OF THE DRAMA

Greek tragedy and to a lesser extent Greek comedy are divided into episodes separated by Choral songs.

Names of Structural Divisionss

Prologue: whatever dialogue precedes the entry of the Chorus.(This may be a single speech of an actor or dialogue between actors.)

Parodos: the entry of the Chorus,in choral song.

Episode: a scene of spoken dialogue.

Choral Song: any song of the Chorus after its entrance.Episode and choral song,also called stasimon,alternate throughout the play.

Exodos: the concluding dialogue of the play,followed by the departure of the Chorus.Specific Types of Scenes and Songs

Angelia: a messenger-speech describing at length what has happened offstage.

Ephymnia: refrains between choral stanzas.

Epirrhema: alternation of choral song with iambic speech from an actor.

Kommos: a shared lament between Chorus and actor(s).

Parabasis: in comedy,direct address by the Chorus to the audience about matters possibly,but not necessarily,related to the play.

Paean: a song of praise to a god.

Stichomythia: rapidly alternating lines of dialogue,usually in scenes of argument or interrogation.Additional Theatrical Terms

Choragos: the wealthy citizen who underwrites the cost of training the Chorus assigned a particular playwright.

Koryphaios: the Chorus leader,who both sings and engages in dialogue.

Protagonistes: the lead actor in a drama.

Deuteragonistes: the second actor in a drama.  Tritagonistes: the third actor in a drama.

Scholia: the earliest critical commentaries on these plays,usually in the form of marginal notes in Greek on play scripts.

Strophe,Antistrophe,and Epode: the usual pattern of a choral ode,in which the meter and length of the first stanza (the "strophe"),sung by half the Chorus,is mirrored in the second stanza (the "antistrophe"),sung by the other half of the Chorus,followed by a shared and metri-cally different final stanza (the "epode").

Trilogy: the three-play unit in which tragedies were originally composed.

Satyr-Play: the fourth play that a tragic playwright was expected to pres-ent; it parodied aspects of the trilogy and was performed at the trilogy's conclusion.

Tetralogy: the name given to the four-play group of trilogy and satyr-play.(P4-6)

This text is an introductory guide to the literary study of Greek drama.Itincludes both tragedy and comedy and is intended for use by high school andundergraduate English students and their teachers.No knowledge of Greek isnecessary,and all essential background information historical,cultural,andreligious—is provided.The 10 plays discussed are the plays most frequentlystudied at those levels: the Agamemnon,Choephoroi,and Eumenides (theOresteia) of Aeschylus,the Antigone,Oedipus Rex,and Oedipus at Colonus ofSophocles,the Medea and Bacchae of Euripides,and the Birds and Lysistrataof Aristophanes.

The approach of this text is literary rather than thematic.Where stan-dard Aristotelian terminology is helpful,it is included,but discussions arenot shaped with such terms in mind.The great Greek playwrights wereprofoundly interested in how one should live,in the power of emotion,inthe nature of the gods,and in the limitations of human understanding.Thistext assumes that the best way to appreciate these plays is to regard all thatis in them—their images,their contrasts,their use of myth,the sequenceof scenes—as intentional artistry.It further assumes that sometimes theplaywright's focus is thematic and sometimes purely human and that eachplay,when studied closely,reveals its essential nature.Comedy is included inthis volume because the spirit of Athens is in some measure grasped by know-ing that alongside tragic performance,and in times of war and dire politicalcircumstance,uproarious comedies were enjoyed along with the most searingtragedies.Aristophanes is not only a bawdy and witty comic genius but alsoa playwright who offers us a window into the life—religious,political,anddomestic—of fifth-century Athenians.From such reading we come as closeas we can to that distant reality and find it vibrantly before us.

When speeches,odes,or scenes are analyzed,they are referred to but notreprinted.Individual chapters include the following,about which a wordneeds to be said:

"The Use of Myth": These sections,by indicating what the received myth was,clarify the dramatist's own invention and emphasis.Attention is also drawn to myth to distinguish it from stage action—from what the playwright sets before us in the hour or so of performance for that dramatic action is the source of the play's meaning.The Oedipus Rex is,for example,a play about discovery.

"Historical Context": Political,social,and religious background with direct relevance to individual plays appears in these sections.The Peloponnesian War,for example,receives particular attention in the Aristophanes chap-ters,rituals surrounding hero cults are discussed in the Choephoroi and Oedipus at Colonus chapters,Dionysiac practice in the Bacchae chapter,the status of women and foreigners in the Medea chapter,the Athenian judicial system in the Eumenides chapter,and so on.

"Synopses": There appear in each chapter a single-sentence summary of the plot,a list of scenes,and a scene-by-scene synopsis of the action.In the chapters on comedy there is,with each synopsis,a discussion of comic techniques.

"Passage and Scene Analysis": Speeches and odes of varying length and type are discussed in detail in relation to plot,character,and theme,and attention is paid to nuances of language and imagery.Minor and major characters are analyzed closely,and individual scenes that are central to plot construction or that represent emotional climaxes of the action are examined: arguments are made,for example,for the dramatic necessity of Polyneices'scene in the Colonus,of Cassandra's scene in the Agamemnon,and so on.Attention is given also to the remarkably "modem" techniques of these playwrights—the dream-work of the Bacchae and the fusing of audience and characters in the conclusion of the Colonus.

"Stagecraft": These sections draw attention to the great importance of what is seen on stage,and examine the range of theatrical resources available to these playwrights and the skill with which they were deployed.Dramatic variations in type-scenes like the dirge and mes- senger scenes,offstage speech,and theatrical devices,like the revolving platform and the crane,as they serve the particular thematic needs of different plays,are discussed.Dramatized metaphors are also looked at.Translations,Line Numbers,and Transliterated Words: All Greek plays are written in verse lines that are numbered.Translations vary in how they deal with line numbers: free translations omit line numbers; exact translations retain them.It has been my experience in studying the texts for this volume that the more strict translations are the more illu-minating.Where essential to the discussion,Greek words and phrases are transliterated and explained; if necessary,lines numbers are given in parentheses.Occasionally,lines in the texts are not continuous and the "Scene Divisions" portions of chapters will necessarily reflect such discontinuity.

It is hoped that this text,when coupled with careful study of the playsthemselves,will help the reader to see how splendid these works are.These plays are the standard against which all subsequent Western dramahas been measured.The well-made plays of Ibsen and the radical innova-tions of Beckett are felt as such because of the classical model that standsbehind them.

I am indebted to the many fine scholars whose work I have read andcited in these pages; their perceptions directed and deepened mine.Specialtribute must be paid,however,to H.D.E Kitto and to E.R.Dodds.Not onlydoes the clarity of their prose stand as an enduring model,but,repeatedly,they show their readers the right questions to ask,and there is no greatergift than that.