Classical Greek Drama Research Articles

The Two-Faced Mirror: The Aristotelian-Hegelian Structure of The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

For centuries, classical Greek drama was considered, by playwrights and theorists alike, the greatest influence on the structure of the dramatic text. One of its main features, for example, was the law of three units. Elaborated by Aristotle, the prescriptions oriented the plays to take place in a single place, within twenty-four hours, and exhibit a continuous plot, with a beginning, middle, and end. However, for thinkers such as Hegel, modern drama needed new approaches. In his writings, the German philosopher postulated that modern drama should exhibit narrative speed, and a certain dynamic quality, aligned with the internal and external conflicts of the characters. This article aims at analyzing the way in which Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), balanced both Aristotle and Hegel’s views by engendering a modern text with classical roots, while simultaneously embedding a comedy satirizing the customs of English society.

How to Live Well: Mimetic Ethics and Civic Education in Graeco-Roman Antiquity and Early Christianity

Mimesis played a crucial role in moral and civic education in Graeco-Roman antiquity. From classical Greek drama to Aristotle to the Graeco-Roman rhetorical traditions, mimetic ethics focuses on how personal example and imitation shaped people’s behaviour and character. Extended contact with the Graeco-Roman traditions led early Christianity to adopt the concept of mimesis in the overlapping spheres of family and education. Discipleship and citizenship intersect in that Christians are called to be good disciples or ‘citizens’ in God’s society. This study explores the Johannine, Pauline, and Petrine traditions and proposes that the mechanism of personal example and imitation regulates the ethical–political life of early Christians and instructs them to live well in both the church and society.

A Century of Scholarly Neglect: Shakespeare and Greek Drama

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a number of Shakespeare scholars, including Israel Gollancz (1894), H.R.D. Anders (1904), J. Churton Collins (1904), and Gilbert Murray (1914) wrote convincingly of Shakespeare’s debt to classical Greek drama. However, in the century since, most scholars and editors have repeatedly held that Shakespeare was not familiar with Greek drama. In Classical Mythology in Shakespeare (1903), Robert Kilburn Root expressed the opinion on Shakespeare’s ‘lesse Greek’ that presaged this enduring dismissal: “It is at any rate certain that he nowhere alludes to any characters or episodes of Greek drama, that they extended no influence whatsoever on his conception of mythology.” (p. 6) This century-long consensus against Attic dramatic influence was reinforced by A.D. Nutall, who wrote, “that Shakespeare was cut off from Greek poetry and drama is probably a bleak truth that we should accept.” (Nutall, 2004, p.210) Scholars have preferred to maintain that Plutarch or Ovid were Shakespeare’s surrogate literary mediators for the playwright’s adaptations from Greek myth and theatre. Other scholars, however, have questioned these assumptions, including Laurie Maguire, who observed that “invoking Shakespeare’s imagined conversations in the Mermaid tavern is not a methodology likely to convince skeptics that Shakespeare knew Greek drama.” (p. 98) This near-universal rejection of Greek drama as Shakespeare sources have profound philological implications. Indeed, this essay argues that the proscription against recognizing the Attic canon as an influence in Shakespeare has been driven by the belief that Will Shakspere of Stratford had, at most, an education that was Latin-based. The examples show that the real author had to have been exposed to both the Greek language and the Greek dramatists. Evidence for alternative candidates, including Edward de Vere, shows that many were schooled in Greek and that some even collected and supported translations of Greek works. It is my contention that Shakespeare’s dramatic imagination was actually fired by the Greeks, and Shakespeare research has clearly suffered from a century of denial.

A functional discourse approach to the particle ἀτάρ in Classical Greek

Abstract Taking into consideration both discourse structure and the pragmatics of contrast, this paper draws on Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) to provide a comprehensive and unified account of ἀτάρ in Classical Greek. In classical Greek drama, the particle ἀτάρ designates two main types of contrast. In its most common usage, it marks a discourse contrast, a boundary in conversational structure, such as the beginning of a new exchange or adjacency pair. More specifically, ἀτάρ can signal a change of addressee; the introduction of a new topic or new visual focus; or an abrupt thematic discontinuity such as an interruption. Moreover, ἀτάρ can also mark denial of expectation, especially when preceded by a preparatory μέν. When expressing counterexpectation, the particle instructs the addressee to process the next discourse segment in such a way as to contradict or eliminate some piece of information possibly inferred from the preceding segment. Very similarly, the classical prose of Herodotus, Plato and Xenophon shows analogous usages of ἀτάρ, namely, as a boundary between larger portions of discourse with or without thematic discontinuity, or as a marker of denial of expectation between acts and moves.

From Jerusalem to Athens by Nurit Yaari

Reviewed by: From Jerusalem to Athens by Nurit Yaari Shiraz Biggie FROM JERUSALEM TO ATHENS. By Nurit Yaari. Oxford University Press. 2018. 480 pp. Hardcover and ebook, $140.00. Discussions of Israeli theatre, and Jewish theatre in general, often begin with the Talmudic prohibition against the theatre sparked by the encounter and rejection of Hellenism. Nurit Yaari’s book, From Jerusalem to Athens, is no exception, but builds from the idea that the Jewish rabbinical tradition (Jerusalem) and the classical tradition (Athens) are critical and often intertwined influences on Israel’s modern theatre. Yaari argues the contemporary encounter with classical Greek theatre has influenced Israeli artists to address questions of identity and “engage in an intellectual, artistic, and political dialogue with both Jewish culture (the particular) and classical Greek drama (the universal)” (p. 7). From the very beginning, Yaari establishes the role of Greek theatre as a “universal” to be reckoned with through a specific production. In her introduction, she situates the origins of Hebrew theatre with efforts dating back to the Italian Renaissance and Enlightenment periods that combined classical Greek drama elements with the Hebrew language. After establishing this precedent, the book focuses on productions staged either just before or within the modern State of Israel. Yaari’s work is expansive, looking at three types of productions: first, those directly following and using the Greek texts in translation; second, those created by theatrical artists across other traditions that are in dialogue with Greek drama (Anouilh, etc.); and, finally and critically, those native Israeli-written dramas inspired by Greek texts. The book is most exciting and illuminating in discussing the latter, offering significant new insights and approaches to the works in question. The book’s chapter organization is based on particular points of inquiry, such as chapters that explore a theatrical company, a specific Greek or Israeli playwright, conflict, or directorial approaches. Her book traces and frames the theatre of Israel in relation to “Athens” and how this interchange allowed for rich experimentation for Israeli theatre makers. Underlying her book is the broad question of theatre history—why this particular play here and now? Thus, many of the individual chapters are directly related to wars and conflicts in which Israel has played a part and seek to make arguments beyond not only the theatre itself, but on a changing Israeli society. Her book’s strength and weakness lie in this comprehensive mapping of “Athens” onto the “Jerusalem” of Israeli theatre. Yaari looks at 70 years of Israeli theatre (1945–2015), covering 22 Greek plays and touching on approximately 86 productions. Periodically, this [End Page 604] expansiveness obscures an overall through-line to the manuscript in favor of specific chapter arguments. The book occasionally places different productions in conjunction with contemporary Israeli events; the author does not always provide enough context on these events for the reader who is less familiar with Israeli society. As a contribution to the study of Israeli theatre, using the argument that the encounter between “Athens” and “Jerusalem” has been fruitful, the book offers a new way of viewing Israeli drama and its significant figures and adds to the growing English-language scholarship that aims to take Israeli theatre beyond its diasporic origins. One of Yaari’s methodological strengths, which allows her to intertwine a production’s reception with its cultural context, focuses on staging rather than only the play texts. She includes not only the play’s translation but a comprehensive discussion of all the elements of theatrical language, using production photos, designs, interviews, and reviews to piece together a picture of the theatrical event. She also draws on her own vast experience with and reception of many of the productions included. This multifaceted approach helps establish for the readera strong impression oftheactualproductions that are importantto her overall analysis. This approach also helps clarify the line between critical and audience response that marks not only the individual productions, but also the theatre culture of Israel more generally. The first two chapters approach two of Israel’s most well-known theatres, Habima (Israel’s National Theatre) and the Cameri (Tel Aviv’s municipal theatre), looking at their first attempts at classical drama in the mid-1940s...

Opening Spaces

This paper explores the construction of dramatic space in the prologues of classical Greek drama. Drawing from theater scholarship on the phenomenology of space, I show how tragedians and comedians alike experimented with how to shape their audience’s understanding of a play’s setting. I focus on opening scenes in plays by Sophocles and Aristophanes where a character sees with and for the audience, and demonstrate how these moments of staged spectatorship are not necessarily straightforward or seamless; they can facilitate the viewing of dramatic space but also, by laying it bare, reveal its complications. Sometimes there are multiple representational possibilities for physical space within and around the theater; sometimes physical and fictional space are to be seen simultaneously; sometimes the representational gap between physical and fictional space is kept open for a surprisingly long time. Such exposure of the process of theatrical representation, I argue, can draw the audience in as a co-participant in a drama’s production.

Adapting Western Classics for the Chinese Stage by Shouhua Qi

Reviewed by: Adapting Western Classics for the Chinese Stage by Shouhua Qi Maggie Greene ADAPTING WESTERN CLASSICS FOR THE CHINESE STAGE. By Shouhua Qi. London and New York: Routledge, 2019. 192 pp. Hardcover, $140. Shouhua Qi's current monograph, Adapting Western Classics for the Chinese Stage, is, as the author describes, a "comprehensive, interdisciplinary study of … adaptation of Western classics" (p. xv) for the Chinese stage from the early twentieth century to the present. It is a valuable addition to the literature on theatrical performance, drama reform, and transnational, translingual adaptation in the twentieth century. By analyzing many productions, ranging from an experimental 1998 "synthesis sequel" of Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Chekhov's Three Sisters to attempts at "faithful" adaptations, such as Huang Zuolin's 1959 production of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children, Qi sheds light on how Chinese directors, artists, and writers have adapted Western theatre for Chinese stages. Adapting Western Classics is comprised of seven chapters, most considering a cluster of plays and playwrights. Chapter 1, "First Contact," provides a brief overview of late Qing encounters with Western theatre, both from diplomats traveling abroad and Westerners performing in China. "Black Slave's Cry to Heaven" (chapter 2) considers the 1907 adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin by members of the Spring Willow Society in Tokyo and a 2007 performance of Search for Spring Willow Society. Qi's discussion of the latter—a play-within-a-play—is but one example of the nuanced, careful reading and analysis that is found throughout Adapting Western Classics. Chapter 3, "Guess who's coming," [End Page 596] tackles a number of adaptations, with a focus on the works of Brecht, Beckett, and Arthur Miller. This chapter in particular highlights the author's work on the challenges and triumphs of "transnational, transcultural, and translingual adaptations" (p. xvii) for Chinese stages. "Tragic hero and hero tragedy" (chapter 4) examines a number of productions of classical Greek drama, ranging from a jingju adaptation of Oedipus the King to bangzi versions of Medea and Antigone. Again, Qi provides a nuanced, in-depth analysis of the process of adaptation and experimentation. Chapter 5, "Old man Shakespeare, the all but forgotten Shaw, and the importance of being Oscar Wide," examines (as the title implies) the performance of plays by Shakespeare, Bernard Shaw, and Wilde, from the first Chinese performance of Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, 1913) to a 2015 experimental adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest. The historical analysis in this chapter was especially welcome. "An old 'mentor and friend' from afar" (chapter 6) concerns adaptations of works by Aleksandr Ostrovsky, Maxim Gorky, Nikolai Gogol, and Anton Chekov. Rounding out this globe-trotting work is chapter 7, "The tragic, the comic, the absurd, and the 'grand feast' of French classics," from Molière to Albert Camus. As evidenced by the brief chapter summaries, Adapting Western Classics covers an enormous amount of material. The sheer amount of information and analysis marshalled by Qi is impressive, and the volume will no doubt be a helpful resource for scholars interested in transnational adaptations, modern Chinese theatre, and Western drama. However, the amount of information contained within the volume comes at a cost. At times, the work reads more as an edited volume than a cohesive monograph; some of this is certainly due to the sheer amount of ground covered by the author (which is an achievement in and of itself). Repetition—particularly in regard to names, translation of terms, and dates—often reinforces this feeling that the monograph is a collection of loosely related chapters. Although Qi states in the epilogue that the study is "not meant to be encyclopedic and exhaustive" (p. 184), it can read as an encyclopedia in parts—for instance, including lists of productions that are not discussed except in the briefest terms (e.g., simply noting that Satre's The Victors "saw a notable Chinese production in 1997 and two revivals in 2005 and 2014 respectively" (p. 166), with no other commentary). The most engaging parts of the study are when Qi devotes ample time to discussing specific productions; his analysis shines when given the room to. For instance, his...

Storytelling, the Bible, and Marketing: An Ancient Framework for Modern Practice

Storytelling is deeply rooted in Western culture, from parables in the Bible and ancient classical Greek drama to marketing research and practice. This paper analyzes the presence of story structure via Freytag’s Pyramid, applied to biblical accounts and modern marketing examples, presenting Freytag’s framework as a best practice for effective marketing. Additional noted patterns of stories in the Bible are presented as possible premises for creating effective marketing stories.

Ancient Drama and Reception of Antiquity in the Theatre and Drama of the German Democratic Republic (GDR)

Theatre in the German Democratic Republic was an essential part of the state propaganda machine and was strictly controlled by the cultural bureaucracy and by the party. Until the early sixties, ancient plays were rarely staged. In the sixties, classical Greek drama became officially recognised as part of cultural heritage. Directors free to stage the great classical playwrights selected ancient plays, on one hand, to escape the grim socialist reality, on the other to criticise it using various forms of Aesopian language. Two important dramatists and three examples of plays are presented and discussed: an adaptation of an Aristophanic comedy (Peter Hack’s adaptation of Aristophanes’ Peace at the Deutsche Theater in Berlin in 1962), a play based on a Sophoclean tragedy (Heiner Müller’s Philoktet, published in 1965, staged only in 1977), and a short didactic play (Lehrstück) based on Roman history (Heiner Müller’s Der Horatier, written in 1968, staged in 1973 in Hamburg in West Germany, and in the GDR only in 1988). At the end there is a brief look at a production of Aeschylus Seven against Thebes at the BE in 1969.

Classical Drama at a Distance: Teaching Performance Reception in an Online Environment

How do you encourage students to engage effectively with classical Greek and Roman drama and its reception in the modern world in an online distance learning setting? That was the challenge facing the authors of this article while they collaborated on a section of a new Open University Masters’ course devoted to classical reception. The guiding pedagogical principle that underpins our study material is a multi-vocal approach that foregrounds the wealth of different perspectives, theories and methodologies inherent in the study of classical reception. Choosing performance reception as a paradigm for the whole field, we sought to bridge the gap between unseen lecturers and distance learners, creating a dynamic virtual classroom and equipping students with the skills to carry out further research in this thriving field of classical studies.

Conversing in Verse

What does it mean to converse in verse? Stichomythia, where two characters alternate lines or pairs of lines in classical Greek drama, is also, perhaps surprisingly, a frequent feature of nineteenth century popular and literary lyric poems. One probably source is the ballad, where events are often narrated wholly in dialogue. I focus on two Victorian poets in whose work ballads were a strong presence, asking not only what each poet found in the but what each did with the modes of sociability at its core. What happens when we consider Christina Rossetti's devotional poems from the perspective of her pastiches? Or think of Thomas Hardy's elegies for Emma Hardy in light of the ballad expectations aroused by his poems--expectations attached, among other things, to his frequent use of conversational dialogue?

Ajschylos, Sofokles, Eurypides. Religijność trzech tragików greckich

The classical Greek drama not only penetrated human nature in deep, but also had a religious contents and context. Tragedians were to some extent theologians. Aeschylus chose mythological subjects. His logical mind pushed him to deterministic fatalism; his sense of order favored interest for stable ethical rules. Apollo and Athena are more personal and friendly than Zeus; Prometheus acts for humans but against the rules of the world. The plot in the Sophocles’ dramas is nearer to human life, but seen in the light of religion. They were marked by the belief in fate, identified with divine will, and therefore apologetically justified. He believed that moral and religious principles are more important than politics. Euripides, contrary to some opinions, was personally religious, even if he asked bold questions concerning the suffering and evil. He voiced criticisms towards gods, but also declared trust in them and painted salvation coming from gods, often in miraculous form. Among the Greek motifs close to Christianity we may stress the sacrifice for others. Justice, love and forgiveness are divine. The questions asked by the great tragedians paved the way to the answer of the Gospel.

"THE GODS ARE NOT TO BLAME" - OLA ROTIMI'S VERSION OF THE OEDIPUS MYTH

One of the interesting aspects of modern African drama is the fact that traces of the influence of Greek tragedy can clearly be discerned. This is especially noticeable in Nigerian drama where dramatists like Wole Soyinka, Efua Sutherland and Ola Rotimi have adapted Greek plays. There seems to be a special affinity between ancient Greek culture and the Yoruba culture of Western Nigeria. In discussing Soyinka's version of Euripides' Bacchae Andr~ Lefevere (1986:1210) makes the following interesting remarks: "After all; not so long ago the Yoruba formed a conglomeration of small, pre-industrial, mutually competing city states, as did ancient Attica ... Much of classical Greek drama derived from pre-existing oral traditions dealing with religious mythology and mythified history, and so does much of the literary and theatrical output of the Yoruba, whether in English or their own language. The extraordinary vitality of Yoruba beliefs and myths is further evidenced by the fact that they have spread through large segments of the black Diaspora, especially in Brazil and the West Indies, somewhat in the same way as Greek myths and legends have provided literary inspiration throughout the Western world to this very day. Soyinka's version of the Bacchae, therefore, should not be viewed in isolation; it is just one indication of some not yet unravelled deep kinship between ancient Greece and modern Africa - an indication to which scholars might profitably give more attention•.

A constructionist approach to the potential optative in classical Greek drama

The ancient Greek optative mood accompanied by the modal particle ἄν, usually called the ‘potential optative’, has several possible interpretations, dependent on the context. This paper presents a construction-grammar description of the potential optative in classical Greek drama. Following Boogaart (2009), it is argued that a constructionist approach combines the advantages of both a monosemy and a polysemy view, without taking over their shortcomings. The potential optative can be represented as a construction, i.e. a pairing of form and meaning (see Croft & Cruse 2004). The features of this higherlevel construction are inherited by its daughter constructions, which, however, also display more specific elements of form and meaning. Construction grammar explains at the same time what all potential optatives in the corpus have in common, how they differ, and why they may receive such widely different interpretations.

Processual Passing: Ron Vawter PerformsPhiloktetes

Experimental dramaturge-director John Jesurun in 1994 devised a multi-media theatre adaptation of Sophocles' Philoctetes at the behest of the iconic American avant-garde actor Ron Vawter, who at the time was dying of AIDS. Feeding on classical Greek drama and Jesurun's own trademark ‘mediaturgies’ alike, this production presented its audience with a barren and alien landscape where communication is both problematic as well as the only possible means of salvation. More concretely, it featured Vawter in the lead role creating a troubling tension between the play's fictional theme of physical suffering and the ‘embodied liveness’ it highlighted through the HIV-induced purple Kaposi rash on the actor's naked body. At the same time Jesurun'sPhiloktetesis also a funeral play about a stricken warrior narrating his own demise from beyond the grave, a memento mori that unsettles its ancient predecessor by recycling the mythological story of Philoctetes the existential transgressor who refuses to either die or live as he rather opts physically to rot in the isolation of a deserted island. The production thereby deliberately dramatized the actual crossing of the border between life and death with Vawter's naked Philoktetes re-enacting and commenting the process of his passing – all while literally decaying before the eyes of the spectators. Arguably, therefore, when the stricken warrior of Jesurun's play hauntingly reminds us that “the body knows the answer” whereas we ourselves “don't know the question,” he opens up a panoply of problems with the potential to range far beyond mere descriptions of story, scene, or theme. If anything, the case of Vawter'sPhiloktetes-performance indeed indicates that drawing attention to the mediation behind the artistic creation, and particularly the physical embodiment of the actor performing it, highlights both the artificiality and – above all – the negotiability of the illusion, thereby intrinsically invalidating reductive readings.

Performing Oaths in Classical Greek Drama by Judith Fletcher

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 187 and in detail. But these are also matters that have little directly to do with the announced topic of her book, and which might better have been treated in footnotes or even separate publications, rather than being allowed to take over the discussion here to no obvious immediate purpose and little clear argumentative effect. At the same time, Corbel-Morana tends to leap disconcertingly from matters of detail to grand conclusions about poetics in particular. Among her boldest claims, for example, is that the frog-chorus of Frogs represents in explicitly allegorical fashion poets associated with the contemporary “new” dithyramb; Dionysus’ ability to shout his frog-rivals down thus prefigures Aeschylus’ triumph over Euripides later in the play, and presumably Aristophanes’ own intention of winning the contest at the Lenaea festival. As the author herself concedes, “one can certainly choose not to read the passage this way” (247), and not much of a case is made for doing so, or indeed for accepting many of the book’s larger claims about how animals function in the comedies to construct political and poetic realities. Corbel-Morana does nonetheless effectively bring out the fact that Aristophanes and the other comic poets seem to have felt that the inability of animals to speak for themselves made it interesting to try to talk through and for them. This book is a further, modern step in that project, and readers will welcome its fresh perspectives and detailed treatment of individual problems, even if they remain unpersuaded by some of its overarching claims. University of Freiburg/ S. Douglas Olson University of Minnesota Performing Oaths in Classical Greek Drama. By Judith Fletcher. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. 2012. Pp. xi, 277. Judith Fletcher's book, Performing Oaths in Classical Greek Drama, is another important contribution to recent scholarship on oaths in the ancient Greek world. Fletcher’s breadth is astonishing: in this slim volume on a seemingly narrow topic she deals in depth with several tragedies from all three tragedians, the sole surviving satyr play, and two of Aristophanes’ comedies, while also incorporating dramatic fragments and other fifthand fourth-century texts into her discussion. She moves her previous work on the oath here into a framework of speech acts based on the work of J. L. Austin and John Searle, examining oaths alongside oracles, prayers, prophecies, and curses as demonstrations of “illocutionary prowess.”1 Applying speech-act theory to fifth-century Athens, Fletcher sees these speech acts as a force for the expression of the socio-political power held by adult citizen males. The dramatic performance of oaths would particularly resonate with an Athenian audience, surrounded by oath-bound institutions and acculturated to the quotidian use of oaths, and would create specific audience expectation of consequences for the characters that speak them. The first chapter explores the intersection of issues of gender, power, polity, and piety in speech acts in the Oresteia. Seeing the trilogy (and later the Phoenissae) as a history of a family’s speech acts, Fletcher takes the understood narrative arc of the plays, which moves from a blood-feud system to the Athenian civic homicide court, and applies it 1 J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words2 (Cambridge 1975); J. R. Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge 1969); id., Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts (Cambridge 1979). 188 PHOENIX to oaths, as the “oath evolves from an instrument of vengeance to one of formal law” (39). This evolution parallels other transformations: the relegation of women outside of that formal institution (manifest in Clytaemnestra’s “misuse” of an oath in attempting to secure divine support and in Cassandra’s inability to obtain an oath from the chorus of Argive men), the transformation of the Furies into the Erinyes (curses into blessings), and Orestes’ own development not only into an adult male with the political ability to build alliances (the oath of Argos), but also a hero-cult figure, with elements of the Erinyes’ power. Chapter Two examines what this formalisation of speech act means in the Philoctetes and the Trachiniae; while both plays take place outside...

Performing Oaths in Classical Greek Drama by Judith Fletcher

Performing Oaths in Classical Greek Drama by Judith Fletcher

Mark's and Matthew's "Sub Rosa" Message in the Scene of Pilate and the Crowd

This essay deals with the scene of Pilate and the crowd in Mark and Matthew. In it I suggest that the scene presents a classic, universal, and timeless trope of subaltern-dominant discourse in which the subaltern plays the role of the domi nant, and the dominant unsuccessfully attempts to play the role of the subaltern. The presentation is idealized, not naturalistic or realistic. The narratives are dis guised to contain hidden messages intended to be understood by subaltern Jews but not by dominant Gentiles/Romans, lest the subalterns be subjected to punishment. Rather than being anti-Jewish, as has been commonly held, the narratives, when correctly understood, are, like all subaltern portrayals of subaltern-dominant rela tions, partisanly pro-subaltern/Jewish and anti-dominant/Roman. The literary genre is Roman mime with an additional strong influence from Pharisaic-style parody in a foreign setting, and specifically Esther as the template. In Mark, the actors and the scene portray Caesar and the crowd at the Roman games. The idealized message is that Jesus' trial is quintessentially illegal. In addition to mime, Matthews far more sophisticated psychological narrative draws on classical Greek drama and hidden allusions from rabbinic law. In Matthew, Pilate's perform ance of the Jewish hand-washing ritual is a farce that ironically results in the crowd acclaiming Jesus by providentially accepting Jesus' same-day offer of his blood.

Seeking Vengeance: Revenge Tragedy, Coherence and Scepticism from Sophocles to Shakespeare

Literary representations of revenge frequently encourage us to question the motivations behind such an impulse towards symmetry and coherence, as well as the outcomes of such a quest. In this sense, such literary representations relate closely to tragedy itself, the dramatic genre in which revenge is most often given aesthetic form in the shape of revenge tragedy. While this particular sub-genre is principally located on the Renaissance stage, it has its roots in the Senecan tradition, which itself draws on classical Greek drama. This article aims to explore representations of revenge in tragedy from Sophocles to Shakespeare, focusing on the scrutiny under which such representations repeatedly place the idea of "coherence", the attempt to find pattern, meaning and justice in the midst of tragic horror and destruction. In so doing, it aims to draw parallels between the drive towards revenge and the quest for coherence in tragedy, suggesting that an obsessive attempt to find satisfaction in order and symmetry is repeatedly found to be ethically questionable, as it can be both punitive and violent.

Oedipus, Shmedipus: Ancient Greek Drama on the Modern Yiddish Stage

And beautiful was Hannah like --I. L. Peretz, Venus and Shulamis 1889 At turn of twentieth century, some forty years after establishment of first professional Yiddish theater troupe, Jewish playwrights and directors began to introduce plots, characters, and dramatic motifs of ancient Greek tragedy onto modern Yiddish stage. Even as these writers sought to make fifth-century Greek drama resonate for their Yiddish-speaking audiences, they consistently engaged in what Glenda Abramson has termed the Judaization of Greek mythology. (1) Yiddish playwrights reconfigured ancient tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides to reflect a particular set of Jewish literary norms and values. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Yiddish translations and adaptations of those Greek dramas that prominently feature a maternal protagonist. This article traces gradual development of a Greek presence in modern Yiddish theater through a case study of various permutations of two ancient Greek tragedies that best exemplify this model of maternal centrality--Medea and Oedipus King. Their Yiddish equivalents in Jacob Gordin's epic Medea (1897) and Wild Princess (1898), Z. Libin's domestic tragedy Henele, or, Jewish Medea (1903) and Mendl Elkin's Sorrows of Oedipus (1935) may be set in different locales, feature an assortment of Greek and Jewish characters, and demonstrate varying degrees of fidelity to their ancient Greek source texts. (2) Yet despite these surface variations, these adaptations are characterized by deep similarities in approach. In an effort to combat traditional Jewish aversion toward Greek culture, Yiddish playwrights transposed their ancient Greek source texts onto a thoroughly modern Jewish landscape, complete with biblically derived morals, a deep distrust of polytheistic superstition and veneration of hallowed Jewish mother. In following pages, I aim to demonstrate how Yiddish writers employed three primary mitigating strategies in their translations and adaptations of Greek tragedies. Each adaptor struggled to temper implicit challenge to Jewish tradition posed by inclusion of Greek material by adding a variety of elements designed to resonate with a Jewish audience. First, Yiddish writers replaced polytheistic pantheon of ancient Greece with a neutral or pseudo-monotheistic theology. Second, writers emphasized biblical and national parallels in order to render these plays more familiar to a Jewish audience. Finally, many twentieth-century Yiddish versions of Greek dramas substantially revised morally ambiguous maternal characters to align with more familiar archetype of overly devoted Yidishe mame of Jewish stage. Writers and translators in both Hebrew and Yiddish were initially wary of Greek material because of its dual sacred-secular prohibition by Rabbinic tradition and influential Enlightenment thinkers alike; however, both theatrical traditions simultaneously embraced Greek tragedy at turn of century. Yet classic social histories such as Hutchins Hapgood's Spirit of Ghetto, as well as standard Yiddish theater histories by B. Gorin, Nokhum Oyslender, and Jacob Mestel, scarcely mention translations of Greek drama into Yiddish. A few articles have considered presence of Greek material in Hebrew, most notably, Glenda Abramson's Hellenism Revisited: Uses of Greek Myth in Modern Hebrew Literature (Prooftexts, 1990) and Dwora Gilula's The First Greek Drama on Hebrew Stage: Tyrone Guthrie's Oedipus Rex and Habima (Theatre Research International, 1988). However, there has been no study to date investigating presence of Greek drama in modern Yiddish theater, which was far more popular and widespread than its Hebrew counterparts in early twentieth century. In exploring encounter between ancient Greek drama and modern Yiddish theater in twentieth century, this paper suggests an approach to Yiddish theater history that accounts for modern Jewish response to classical Greek drama as encountered on Yiddish stage. …