The Stage of New Comedy

Abstract

GREEK THEATRES, considered as monumental architecture, are hardly older than the middle years of the fourth century. Before the Hellenistic period the architectural development of the Greek skene, or stagehouse, is particularly obscure; the archaeological evidence, all very tenuous, comes from the theatres at Athens, Corinth, Isthmia, and Eretria. Only at Athens and Corinth does there seem to be evidence for a skene built before the end of the fifth century;' in neither case is there any sign of a stage, low or high, in front of the early skene. The earliest Athenian skene was probably a temporary structure, perhaps erected for each festival, and capable of being modified from day to day. The back wall is thought to have consisted of boards fastened to posts anchored in sockets cut in the top of the long terrace-wall on the downhill side of the orchestra; the roofed shed, or skene, in front of this wall, enclosed at least part of a rectangular platform of masonry (commonly known as Platform T), ca 7.50m. wide and 3.26m. deep, projecting forward from the terrace-wall on the north-south axis of the orchestra. Even less is known about the form of the