An Introduction to Greek Tragedy | National Theatre

more than any other art form I've had

experience of great tragedy does one

particular thing and that is look

suffering a human misery directly in the

face and it can't stare it down but it

stares at it no other art form is so

unflinching about

it I think part of the reason that Greek

Theater transcends cultural and temporal

boundaries is because it's the them are

so Universal that even though it's set

in a culture which is very different to

our own the basic themes still speak to

us today because they're Universal we

still have difficulty with our

relationships we still have to make

painful decisions in our own lives and

we still have to Grapple with the

unfairness of the universe and the fact

that people seem to suffer when they

don't seem to really deserve

to the first really important St study

of Greek tragedy was by a fourth Century

Greek philosopher called Aristotle and

Aristotle thought for a very very long

time about what made Greek tragedy

effective and he actually came up with a

formula and that is that the heroes of

tragedy needed to be um good but not so

good that um you sort of couldn't relate

to them people trying to be good but

making mistakes like cron he is actually

trying to be a good King of Thieves he's

just not getting it right he's making

lots of mistakes I wish says that one of

the key things that leads to tragedy is

what he calls the hamartia the era of

judgment and tragedy is actually about

real people making bad decisions that

lead to terrible results real people

making bad decisions often for good

reasons so tragedy is about the idea

that we live in a flawed world full of

suffering and full of Injustice and

misery but it also shows us that those

things are caused by our actions and

they're therefore remediable by our

actions

almost all the plays actually have

someone die in the course of them and so

what we watch is is not only their

reactions if they know it's going to

happen and those um of the people who

are left behind but even in the ones

where people don't actually die the main

characters have a peculiarly intense

relationship they're usually held in the

grip of the past somehow through their

dialogue with the dead many characters

in Greek tragedy who know they're about

to die or fear they're about to die

address the sun one of the strongest

metaphors for death for the ancient

Greeks was I'm going to leave the light

or I will never look upon the sun again

that means I I will die because they

believed that after death they were

consigned to this dark Nether world

beneath the

Earth Greek tragedy is a very stylized

genre and its structure is relatively

fixed it always starts with a prologue

which sets the scene after that then the

chorus come on and sing an introductory

OD which both comment on the previous

scene but also allow for the passing of

time um so a coral ode might only last 5

minutes but the audience can imagine

that perhaps several hours have gone by

and so something important offstage can

have happened during that time one of

the real Innovations made by the Greek

tragedians in in in in literature is in

the way they constructed their plots

what they learned to do over that 80

years was make everything happen in

their plays in less than the time

between a sunrise and a sunset so you

get this very very very skillful writing

that means you can unravel many many

many things that have led to This

Disaster and often much of the future if

the god comes along and gives you some

predictions all concentrated into this

tight action of a single day that has

had an

unimaginable impact on the future of

dramatic

writing it's difficult to underestimate

the impact of Greek Theater on the

theater in Europe that's developed in in

the years since really especially since

the Renaissance um there are modern

playw rights who do deliberately attempt

to use the structures and ideas of Greek

tragedy I mean most famously I suppose

the American playr Arthur Miller who

deliberately sets out in plays like

Death of a Salesman to to to copy the

structure of a Greek tragedy and follow

it through in many ways I think that the

uh modern form of entertainment that

that uses the same kind of material as

ancient Greek tragedy rather you know

astonishing is soap opera the actual

plots of soap opera which are set very

much in the community you have the

community reaction involve these close

family dramas we often have two brothers

fighting you very often have um um

tragic and unexplained deaths you have

inappropriate sex the affair is the

absolute staple you have powerful

matriarchs um you have illegitimacy so

they carry on having their um impact um

in our most popular form of

entertainment

Aristotle talks about a thing called

catharsis which in ancient Greek means

cleansing or purifying and he says that

when we watch the end of a tragedy we

feel pity and fear and those emotions

get purged they get cleansed in some

sense what he probably means by that is

the sense of emotional draining um that

the experience of watching a play

somehow purges you of your all your

emotions and that it's a cleansing

process that it's traumatic but it's

also um a good experience that you come

out of it perhaps feeling drained and I

think anybody who's ever burst into

tears at the end of a movie knows you

can actually feel better for that if it

gets in touch with some sort of strong

emotion in you about oh I really hope

that doesn't happen to me or that poor

woman uh weeping over it can actually

rather paradoxically strengthen you

that's what catharsis

is tragedy is about confronting

suffering death mourning loss all of

these things

um what and what it does is it enables

us to to find Reflections uh of our own

lives and see that these feelings and

ideas are shared these feelings and

ideas are part of a community they're

part of a

tradition