Greek Tragedy: Lost Plays and Neglected Authors

Abstract

Greek Tragedy: Lost Plays and Neglected Authors J. MICHAEL WALTON At the bottom of page 1 of The Lost Plays of Greek Tragedy, Volume 1,* Matthew Wright adds a footnote to his résumé of some of the views of early Greek tragedy before Aeschylus’ Persians. “I do not discuss the early twentieth-century ‘ritualists’—e.g. Harrison, Cornford, Murray—whose work is refuted at length by Pickard-Cambridge (1927), because I regard their theories as pure fantasy .” This is an encouraging opening if only because Greek drama is curiously prone, in generalized summaries of Athenian culture or of theatre history, to maintaining obsolete notions about anything from kothornoi to compulsory attendance at the theatre as a civic obligation. An exclusively ritual origin to the dramatic festivals is another of these that has recently re-raised its implausible head, and it is good to see it summarily dismissed. Wright continues to lay out his stall in this chapter, entitled “The Earliest Tragedies,” and to consider the possible contributions of Thespis, Choerilus, Pratinas and Phrynichus as “prototragedy.” He follows with the account of origins offered by Aristotle in the Poetics. What is missing, and is, I would suggest, a serious oversight in such a study, is any critical assessment of the importance of Homer, either in terms of subject matter or how epic may have become dramatic. Skeptical as Wright may be about approaching Greek drama from a performance perspective, there is surely room for the moment, Thespian or otherwise, when the rhapsode’s “Agamemnon spoke and said” morphs into “Enter Agamemnon.” *Matthew Wright, The Lost Plays of Greek Tragedy, Volume 1: Neglected Authors, London, Oxford, New York, New Delhi, and Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2016, 277 pages. arion 24.3 winter 2017 What follows is for the most part more persuasive. In the five chapters after this opening, Wright marshals a mass of references from the best part of a thousand years about a strong tragic tradition which lasted well into the Hellenistic period before declining from Greek into Latin. Numerous lost playwrights are identified, traced as far as maybe with a diligence that is admirable, indeed formidable. A whole chapter (chap. 3) devoted to Agathon is justified if only because more is known about him, though not his work, than about any other of these “neglected authors.” The suggestion, however, that he might somehow have influenced Oscar Wilde carries little conviction. Chapter 4 on “Tragic Family Trees” is the most intriguing . Wright takes off in a different direction here, asking interesting questions about the possibility of theatrical dynasties in Athens. But some of the questions, though asked, can produce no proper answer, at least at this point in his argument. The reason for novel approaches is surely more to do with the need for innovation in the well-trodden path of Greek myth, which Wright later emphasizes for the fourth century BCE (121), than with the agonistic nature of theatrical production (92). A couple of passing references to Harold Bloom serve only to remind us how marginal his reading of the Greeks now seems. On the other hand, the detailed tracing of Carcinus, best known as a choreographer (or a comic butt) from the finale to Aristophanes ’ Wasps, identifies first his son, then his grandson, another Carcinus, as an important figure of the fourth century stage. The trouble is, and it is something of which Wright is clearly aware, what sense can you make tracing a dramatic tradition via plays that are not there? And none of them are. Most of the tragedians whose existence is recognized from fragments, quotations or didascaliae are at best ghostly presences represented, if they are lucky, by the odd speech of twenty or so lines without a context. And with dramatic dialogue context is everything. greek tragedy: lost plays and neglected authors 160 Imagine, for example, if nothing was left from Euripides’ Medea but the following: Oh, Jason, I’m sorry. Forgive me For what I said. I was angry . . . “What a fool you are, Medea,” I tell myself “To get upset with those who want to help . . .” (869–74) Even if aware of Euripides’ other work, might we not imagine from such lines in...