Objects as Actors: Props and the Poetics of Performance in Greek Tragedy by Melissa Mueller

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 120 production of a sort of theory—moral, biological, and satiric—as a reaction” (204). We can ask whether the satirist/performer actually feels the emotions he displays/communicates/describes, but this would be a fool’s errand. It would be missing the point of Juvenal’s satire, which is to engage us with the farrago of emotions seen in and through human experience and to point up the moral ambiguities of life.2 Keane carefully leads us through five books of Juvenal’s Satires, giving consideration both to how these Satires are all connected and to the different ways in which each Satire performs emotion. She deftly pulls together passions, satiric behavior, the speaking “I,” Quellen, bodies, and emotional evolution throughout the 15 ½ Satires to give us a fully fleshed-out and sometimes funny picture of Juvenal with the occasional nod to the ways in which contemporary issues and approaches have affected our understanding of Juvenal.3 She does not allow us to come away with a homogenized picture of Juvenal, but rather opens up the seams of his Satires, using emotions as a tool. She shows us Juvenal “rewriting the satirist’s job description” (216). Keane asks at the end: How would a successor to Juvenal have portrayed him? (213). Keane has answered her own question here: perhaps in just the way she has allowed us to engage with him. She is to be congratulated for giving us a new look at this much worked-over poet. BARBARA K.GOLD Hamilton College, bgold@hamilton.edu * * * * * Objects as Actors: Props and the Poetics of Performance in Greek Tragedy. By MELISSA MUELLER. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 2016. Pp. x + 278. Hardcover, $55.00. ISBN 978-0-226-31295-8. Mueller begins this intriguing and engaging book by underscoring the importance of props, as “actors,” in fifth-century tragic dramaturgy. Previous 2 Even Keane regards herself as performing: “The reading I have performed in this chapter . . .” (85). 3 For example, she says that the explosion of ancient sexuality and gender studies have finally allowed Naevolus to have a presence and a voice in Sat. 9 (p. 109). For humor, see her description of Juvenal “shedding his inner ‘Naevolus’” in Book 3 (91). BOOK REVIEWS 121 scholarship, she notes, tends to downplay the role of non-human elements in Greek tragedy. Mueller stresses that props in ancient drama aid audiences in interpreting the plays and the larger repertoire. Mueller presents six detailed casestudies of various tragedies, each exploring a different category of theatrical objects, such as weapons, recognition tokens, and textiles. The book’s first half involves tragedies as part of a larger poetic and theatrical tradition, while the second treats tragedy’s engagement with contemporary Athenian society. Mueller concludes each chapter with further avenues for study. In Chapter 1, Mueller examines Ajax’s sword as prop in Sophocles’ Ajax, with Philoctetes’ bow and Heracles’ weapons as comparanda. Here, Mueller grapples with the difficult staging of Ajax’s suicide, and the visibility of the sword on stage. Mueller emphasizes that Ajax’s sword is presented as Hector’s Iliadic gift, and the sword thus links the tragic and Iliadic Ajax as it kills him. A recent book, Staging Ajax’s Suicide (Most, Glenn & Leyla Ozbek, eds., Pisa 2015), would have been another excellent resource, both here and for Chapter 5 on Ajax’s shield. Chapters by Patrick Finglass (“Second Thoughts on the Sword”) and Maria Chiara Martinelli (“Aiace e la spada”) nicely complement Mueller’s astute analysis. Further discussion of Philoctetes’ bow and Heracles’ weapons would also have been helpful alongside Mueller’s detailed thoughts on Ajax’s sword. Chapter 2 delves into the complicated semiotics of the textiles of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, especially those in Agamemnon. Mueller not only explores the significance of the tapestry upon which Agamemnon marches to his death, but also suggests an olfactory component—an especially keen-scented audience may have smelled the prop’s porphyra-dye. So too, perhaps, could the character of Cassandra smell latent danger mingled with the dye and Agamemnon’s putrefaction. Mueller also emphasizes the “intertheatricality” of props, since props were often reused between productions. Mueller tracks the bloodstained...