Critical Casebook:
Sophocles
Theater of Dionysus, Athens, Greece
Overview
• The Theater of Sophocles
• Staging
• The Civic Role of Greek Drama
• Aristotle’s Concept of Tragedy
• Sophocles the Man
• The Origins of Oedipus the King
• Sketch of Dionysus Theater
• Questions for Oedipus the King
The Theater of Sophocles
• Plays both a religious and civic occasion
• Presented only twice a year at religious
festivals honoring the god of wine and
crops, Dionysus
• Comedies were performed in January at the
Lenaea festival, the festival of the winepress
• Major theatrical event took place in March
at the Great Dionysus; city-wide celebration
that included sacrifices, prize ceremonies,
spectacular processions, and three days of
drama
The Theater of Sophocles
• Each day a different author presented
a trilogy of tragic plays
• Portrayed some mythic or legendary
event
• All interrelated
• Followed by a satyr play, an obscene
parody of a mythic story, performed
with chorus dressed as satyrs, or unruly
mythic attendants of Dionysus
The Theater of Sophocles
• Greeks loved competition: plays
were no exception
• Panel of five judges voted on best
play
• All plays were written in verse
• Substantial cash prize given to
winner
• Sophocles did not win for Oedipus
Rex
Staging
• As many as 17,000 spectators could
watch a performance
• Audience arranged in rows
• Athenian governing council and
military cadets seated in middle rows
• Performance space was divided into
two parts: the orchestra, a level
circular dancing space found at the
base, and slightly raised stage built in
front of a skene for costume changes
Staging
• Actors performed primarily on stage
• Chorus danced and sang in the
orchestra
• Skene served as backdrop
• Skene had a large door that served as
a grand entrance for principal
characters
• Also used to present tableau
• No more than three actors were
allowed on stage at any time
Staging
• The chorus was made up of fifteen
people, fixed by Sophocles
• Actors spoken monologue alternated
with the chorus’ singing and dancing
• Tragedy began with a prologue, or
preparatory scene
• Next came the parados, or song for
the entrance of the chorus
• Action was enacted in episodes, or
acts
Staging
• Episodes were separated by
danced choral songs or
odes
• The finale was a closing
exodus in which the chorus
and actors concluded the
action and parted
• The actors wore masks
(personae) which at times
were very exaggerated
• Representative of
characters
• To increase dignity and
visibility, actors wore
cothurni, or high, thick soled
elevator shoes
The Civic Role of Greek Drama
View of the Acropolis
The Civic Role of Greek Drama
• Athenian drama was financed by the
state
• Administration of Great Dionysia fell to
the head civil magistrate
• He annually appointed three
choregoi, or producers
• Producer had to equip the chorus and
rent the rehearsal space
• State covered expenses of the theater,
actors, and prizes
The Civic Role of Greek Drama
• Theater tickets were
distributed free to
citizens; everyone
could participate
• Theater could hold
about half of
Athens citizens
• Poet’s role was the
improvement of the
polis, or city-state
The Civic Role of Greek Drama
• City states sponsored competition
between rhapsodes, or public poetry
performers
• Theater balanced heroism within
Homeric epics with the cooperation
and compromise necessary for
democracy
• Challenged audience to feel
sympathy for vanquished enemy
• Explored problems of the politically
powerless
The Civic Role of Greek Drama
• Some plays depicted men’s toils with
women
• Others depicted powerful men undone by
their own hubris, or judgment
• Called for audience to place themselves in
the shoes of people very unlike themselves
• Meant to enlarge human empathy
• Male actors took on principal roles
• Chorus many times was made up of female
slaves or captives
• Plato hated the idea of men playing
irrational, jealous, grief-stricken, vengeful
Aristotle’s Concept of Tragedy
Tragedy is an imitation
of an action of high
importance, complete
and of some
amplitude, in language
enhanced by distinct
and varying beauties;
acted not narrated; by
means of pity and fear
effecting its purgation
of these emotions.
---Aristotle, Poetics,
Chapter6
Aristotle’s Concept of Tragedy
• Protagonist is someone of high estate
• Protagonist must fall from power and
happiness
• This heightens the calamity of his fall
and gives him a place of dignity to fall
from
• Though protagonist is powerful, is not
necessarily without grief
• The tragic hero is fallible
Aristotle’s Concept of Tragedy
• His fall is a result of his hamartia, or
tragic flaw
• Every tragic hero has a weakness, or
hubris
• Flaw and downfall follow his nature
• Downfall results from actions he is
responsible for
• Audience should feel a sense of
purgation, or katharsis, of emotions
Aristotle’s Concept of Tragedy
• The tragic hero has a moment of
recognition, or anagnorisis, or some
revelation of some fact not known
before or some true identity
• The action of the tragic hero turns out
to have the opposite effect of the one
intended, or reversal (peripeteia)
• Audience may delight in seeing tragic
character humbled, but also may feel
the punishment does not fit the crime
(indifferent universe)
Sophocles the Man
• Lived (496-406 B.C.)
• Tragic dramatist, priest,
Athenian general
• Lived to see his native
city-state in decline
after the
Peloponnesian War
• Oedipus the King, his
most famous play, is
believed to have been
produced five years
after the plague in
Athens
The Origins of Oedipus the King
• First of the three Theban
plays
• Can be translated as
Clubfoot the Ruler
• Also called Oedipus
Tyrannos to distinguish it
from his last play, Oedipus
at Colonus
• Oedipus is derived from the
word oida, which means “to
see”
• Oedipus also means
“swollen foot”
• Tyrannos is a term for
anyone who gains power
without the help of others
Sketch of
Dionysus
Theater
Oedipus Rex Questions
1. How explicitly does the prophet
Teiresias reveal the guilt of Oedipus?
Does it seem to you stupidity on the
part of Oedipus or a defect in
Sophocles’ play that the king takes so
long to recognize his guilt and to
admit to it?
2. How does Oedipus exhibit weakness
of character? Point to the lines that
reveal him as imperfectly noble in his
words, deeds, or treatment of others.
Questions
3. “Oedipus is punished not for and fault
in himself, but for his ignorance. Not
knowing his family history, unable to
recognize his parents on sight, he is
blameless, and in slaying his father and
marrying his mother, he behaves as
any sensible persons might behave in
the same circumstances”. Do you
agree with this interpretation?
Questions
4. Besides the predictions of Teiresias,
what other foreshadowings of the
shepherd’s revelation does the play
contain?
5. Consider the character of Iocaste. Is
she a flat character---a generalized
queen character---or an individual
with distinctive traits of personality?
Provide evidence from the text.
Questions
6. What is dramatic irony? What
examples do you find in the play? Do
they contribute to the effectiveness of
the play? Explain.
7. Violence in the play occurs offstage.
Of what advantage or disadvantage
to the play is this limitation?
8. For what reason does Oedipus blind
himself? What meaning, if any, do you
find in his choice of instrument?
Questions
9. What are your feelings towards him as the
play ends? Justify your answer.
10. How well does Freud explain why the play
moves you? Explain.
11. With what attitude toward the gods does
the play leave you? By inflicting the plague
on Thebes, by causing barrenness, by
cursing both the people and their king, do
the gods seem cruel, unjust, or tyrannical?
Does the play show any reverence towards
them?
12. Does the play end in total gloom? Explain.