I trust you are all well in this gelid
month of Poseidon.
Aeschylus (c.525 BCE – 456 BCE) is known to
most us as ‘The Father of Tragedy’ for being the first Greek playwright whose
individual works survive intact (only seven of his estimated output of seventy
to ninety plays have survived) and also for adding many innovations to the
tragedy format such as a second actor and possibly scene decoration (skenographia), some of which went as far
as full chariot with real horses entrance scenes! Not only that but amped up
costumes for the actors and platform boots to make the players literally larger
than life. They must have caused quite a sensation.
But were there others before him to whom we
should give the title?
Theatre was still in its infancy when
Aeschylus began writing plays and there is evidence of earlier innovators, such
as Thespis, who added an actor to
stand apart from the chorus creating the
initial -albeit limited- dramatic dynamic. There are problems even with identifying the
origins of Greek Tragedy – it is still not completely accepted that they are a
development from the dithyramb (a sort of early ritual dance with singing and
flute accompaniment in honour of the god at festivals) as Aristotle states.
The school of thought that has Aeschylus as
the puller-together of all the pre-existent disparate elements into the new
synthesis can be traced from Wilamowitz’s 1889 Introduction to Greek Tragedy
through to Gilbert Murray’s book on Aeschylus in 1940. Aeschylus seemed to have
gone one further and added a second actor and in the process created the
dramatic triangle (chorus, actor 1 and actor 2), an essential building block for
realistic character interplay with the chorus taking a more backseat supporting
role. This must have seemed a radical departure from the days where the
dithyrambic performances were simply a chorus or two choruses with their ‘call
and response’ strophe and antistrophe recitation to flutes and measured
dancing.
It hasn’t been seriously challenged since
then although I am sure it has been chipped at around the edges and we find
that among recent scholars the doubts have resurfaced. However with the lack of
epigraphical evidence we remain in the dark on these matters with speculation
as our only recourse.
Thespis is the playwright credited with starting the ball rolling with the
inauguration of the tragic performances at the Dionysia (the large festivals in
honour of the God Dionysos held at Athens) in 534 BCE. Sadly we have nothing
other than the titles (and even these titles may themselves be spurious
inventions of another writer Heraclides) of his plays from the Suda, a 10th
Century Byzantine literary encyclopedia of the ancient world so it’s
practically impossible to tell how much of an innovator he might have been and
thus the real father of Tragedy.
There are other contenders for the title –
although they seem to be even more shadowy figures than Thespis, victims of the
ravages of time and the loss of their plays with only the most fleeting of
references in other works. Choerilus (dates
unknown but around the same time as Aeschylus?) is one and is credited in a
life of Sophocles as being his one time opponent in the Dionysia competitions
and a contemporary of Aeschylus. However, only two fragments of his works
survive and those are obscure epithets rephrased in Aeschylus’s plays.
We also have Pratinas who was
said to have competed against Choerilus and Aeschylus between the years 499 BCE
and 496 BCE. Pratinus’ son Aristesias, who carried out the compiling and
presentation of his father’s work after his death was well known for his satyr
plays (the fourth element in the traditional tetrology format of plays and a
hangover from the Dionysiac elements of the original frenzied if somewhat
indecorous celebratory rites of the gods worship at the festivals) rivaling
those of Aeschylus himself.
As it happens, the Oresteia is the only
complete trilogy we have of an ancient Greek dramatist that is (almost)fully
extant and that too had a satyr play ( the Proteus
which is sadly lost apart from a couple of fragments) as was customary to
complete the performance. The interesting point here is that Pratinas is listed
in the Suda as being the first to write such plays, in turn derived from the
original ritualized dithyrambs and if it is correct that tragedy grew out of
the dithyrambic elements, this puts him in potential pole position for the
title of Father of Tragedy. However we must be cautious with the Suda since a
lot of its entries are often difficult to cross-reference in order to verify or
are just basically incorrect.
As if two rival contenders weren’t enough
we also have Phrynicus who was
Aeschylus’ elder being born sometime around 530 BCE and had considerable career
overlap (around 20 years) with the latter playwright. Aristophanes the comedic
playwright mentions Phrynicus as his main rival in his play Frogs (908 f;1296
f) so who is not to say that we could
have a case of two writers at the top of their game, watching each other’s
work, reacting to it, improving on it and trying to out- innovate each other? Phrynicus
is also attributed as the first playwright to use real events from recent
history and give them the dignified mantle of tragedy. He was also the first to
introduce a female character into drama.
The historical event which Phrynicus
decided to write about was the sack of the city of Miletus in 494 BCE as a
tragic nadir to the events of the ill fated Ionian revolt against the Persians.
Herodotus tells us (Histories Book VI.29) that Phrynicus was fined a 1000
Drachmas for ‘having reminded the citizens of their own misfortunes’, so
horrific and realistic was the drama, leaving no bloodthirsty details out one
can assume. Could Aeschylus have been inspired by this to write the Persians? I say this for two reasons;
one that perhaps Aeschylus was in the audience and, like any professional
passionate about perfecting his craft had one eye on the play and the other on
the faces of the audience. What he saw must have electrified him.
The other reason is that he would have
realized that Phrynicus had made a great discovery and a great mistake at the
same time, in that real recent events have the ability to transform drama from
mere entertainment into something altogether more powerful and significant, but
more importantly to locate the tragedy too close to home was overkill or even
politically dangerous – an artistic mistake which diminished the tragic impact and
subtlety of emotion and psychological effect.
Wouldn’t it rather be more subtle to
maintain the high tragedy and deep pathos of such recent events…but locate them
in the breasts and hearthstones of the enemy? Surely this is where the genius
of Aeschylus lies; in the perfect execution of this blinding insight in the
shape of his masterpiece The Persians 472
BCE. Through his play the message resounds all the stronger ‘This is what
happened to the Persians but it could so easily have been us’.
Tragically the play was to be more
prophetic than either Aeschylus or the Athenians could have known…with the
hubris and attendant retribution suffered by Athens as it went through the long
drawn out years of mutually assured destruction of The Peloponnesian Wars.
We are in pure speculation territory here I
hasten to add…in fact at its wildest shores! We are totally unclear as to who
might have been borrowing from who or who was originally the traditionalist and
who the innovator and for how much of their respective careers this would have
been the case for either artist since surely, the creative mind and sensibility,
the times and fashions themselves, would surely have been ever changing for
both men. Is it the fact that because we have more work surviving on one writer
of a period that we decide to crown him or her as the epitome of that period
let alone its leading light?
It does worry me though that in future
millennia..archeologists or literary archivists of the far future may be
describing (insert mediocre but highly popular mass selling author here!) as
The ‘Father of Ancient British Literature’...merely based on his/her surviving
works as opposed to the 3 surviving 5-line fragments of an obscure minor writer
called James Joyce.
What I am saying is that there are a lot of
gaps in early Greek tragedy and we should bear that mind. I suppose though that
the title ‘one of the fathers of Greek Tragedy’ sounds a bit too ‘open
relationship’ plus the fact that there is only room at the top for one with
these sorts of monikers. One thing is for sure, Aeschylus was certainly worthy
of such a title but we cannot rule out the possibility of such a conclusion for
Phrynicus too.
Euge!
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