Greek Drama

Abstract

Abstract There is plenty of drama in everyday life, and the experience of life is the source of everything that succeeds in the theatre. Almost every human society has formal drama of one kind or another, if we define the word loosely. We know the Greeks sat on theatre benches to watch sacred rituals. The ceremonies of state and of religion, and the moments of birth, death, marriage, harvest, and so on, have a great deal in common with theatrical drama, but we recognize drama strictly speaking because it uses actors, takes place in something like a theatre, an area defined by an audience, and probably has a plot, and more importantly an inner form, that we have learnt to expect. Once there is a theatre, there will be many other conventions: applause, competition, a style of speech, maybe the mask and the dance.