What is a Greek Tragedy?

The word “tragedy” comes from the Greek words tragos, which means goat and oide, which means song. A tragedy
is a dramatic poem or play in formal language and in most cases has a tragic or unhappy ending. One may ask, what does a
goat have to do with a dramatic play? There are many theories that explain what a goat has to do with this. It has been said
that the actors dressed in goatskins to represent satyrs. Another, which says that the actor or the singer competes for a goat.
It was even said that the goat represented unhappy times. An ancient Greek tragedy is like nothing that we have produced in
modern English. For over twenty-three centuries tragedies have left us wondering, and full of questions about the existence
of ancient Greeks. The way life is described is a world like no other. The effect of tragedies often depends on the buildings,
the scenery, the dancing, the actors etc. The only concrete parts of a tragedy we have are the words. Tragedies were first
performed as religious rituals and to honor the gods and goddesses. A lot of what it did was explain the relation between the
human and the divine, explain the relation between the human world and the material world, and explained violence and its
origins. Tragedies started with a dithyramb, which is a singing of a choral lyric, and eventually grew to a mythological or
heroic story. Ancient philosopher Aristotle defines tragedy as “… a representation of a serious, complete action which has
magnitude, in embellished speech, with each of its elements [used] separately in the [various] parts [of the play],
[represented] by people acting and not by narration; accomplishing by means of pity and terror the catharsis of such
emotions.” (Poetics 25-29).

http://www.ravenwoodmasks.com/theater-masks/greek-masks.htm

Greek theater mask expressing a sorrowful emotion, often worn by the chorus

Structure of a Tragedy

Prologue-
The prologue marks the start of the play. Often it is one or two characters standing in
front of the scene giving an expository monologue or dialogue.
Parados-
A parados was one of two gangways on which chorus and actors made their entrances from either side into the
orchestra.

Episode/Stasimon-
First comes the episode, and then follows the stasimon. In tragedy, there is an alteration
between the episode and the stasimon until when the last episode is performed was when the
last stasimon was performed. The episode is the part that falls between choral songs and
the A stasimon is a stationary song, sung after the chorus has taken up its station in the
orchestra. Typically there are three to six episode/stasimon rotations.
Exodos-
The exodus is the final scene or departure, usually a scene of dialogue. In some cases,
songs were added.
Aristotle-
From Poetics
The quantitative parts of tragedy

(i) A prolouge is a whole part of a tragedy this is before the processional [song] of a chorus.

(ii) An episode is a whole part of a tragedy that is between whole choral songs.

(iii) An exit is a whole part of a tragedy after which there is no song of the chorus

(iv) Of the choral part, (a) a processional is the firsts utterance of the chorus; (b) a stationary song is a song of the chorus without anapaestic or trochaic verse; and (c) a dirge is a lament shared
by the chorus and [those] on stage.

The theatre at Delphi

www.delphic-oracle.info/images/delphi-theatre.jpg

The Performance
Tragedies were often performed at festival. The first festival where
they were performed was at the festival of Dionysus. Supposedly the first
festival of Dionysus was
Held in 34 B.C.E. and was a competition to find the best tragedy; the competition was won by Thespias. Because the festival
was held in honor of Dionysus, it was held at the end of March when all the grapes had fermented into wine. There where
three days of tragedy performance for three authors, whom performed three plays each plus a satyr play. The festival was
held in the city of Athens in the theatre of Dionysus. Dionysus is the god of festival. He was born to Semele and Zeus;
however, when Semele was killed Zeus took him out of the womb and sewed him in his thigh.

In a performance, there are often two speaking actors on a stage. The actors were labeled as the protagonist, the
deutaragonist, and the tritagonist. The protagonist was the most important character. All actors were male because due to
social standards, females were not allowed to perform. Below the stage is the orchestra where the chorus was. The chorus
was made of about fifteen people and they stood in the orchestra for the whole play. The chorus was to sing the parados as
entering into the orchestra. Once in the orchestra, the chorus had occasional speaking parts, however, its main job was to
sing and dance the stasimon. Scenes of violence in the tragedy were often forbidden. Battles, murders, suicides, etc., were
performed offstage but were reported by messengers. All actors wore masks so no one could see facial expression. Greek
tragedy was often about symbolism. Actors were not an impersonation; they were a representation of their character.

http://classics.uc.edu/~johnson/myth/dionysus/dionysus6.jpg

Visible signs that a figure is Dionysus: grape vines, thyrsus (a kind of staff with a sort of pine-cone like thing on
the top), a leopard skin, a beard, a panther

Aristotle on Plot in Tragedy

From Aristotle’s Poetics
Plot is the most important part of a tragedy

(i) Tragedy is a representation not of human beings but of action and life. Happiness and
unhappiness lie in action, and the end [of life] is a sort of action, not a quality; people are of a certain sort
according to their characters, but happy or the opposite to represent the characters, but they include the
characters for the sake of their actions. Consequently the incidents, i.e. the plot, are the end of tragedy