Emma Murphy – Aoife Smyth – Classic Antiquity
James Marry – Christina Smith – Shakespeare’s Tragedies
 Emotions were an integral part of theatre
as far back as classical antiquity up to
modern times.
 The way in which a play was preformed or
written could have a lasting emotional
effect on the audience or reader of the
text.
 Greek plays were preformed in open air
theatres and so many of the audience
members would be sitting very far away
from the stage.
 This meant that masks were extremely
important as they would feature
exaggerated facial expressions and
features.
 The masks would also work as an aid to
amplify the voice of the actors so the
audience could hear them
 A disinvite mask was made fro each
character and the masks also allowed
the actors to play multiple characters
 Masks were made of linen or
cork so this meant that not
many have survived.
 The masks were colour
coded. Brown mask would
indicate a man and a white
mask would indicate a
woman.
 Very few props used in Greek tragedy.
 When a prop was used, it was significant
 E.g. Red carped in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, symbolise the
blood that Agamamnon would shed at the hand of his
wife.
 E.g. Dress and coronet Medea gifts the princess, which
bring about both her and her fathers demise.
Sculpture of Medea’s
children sending gifts of
the poisoned dress and
coronet to Glauce, the
princess in Euripides’
Medea.
 Performed in open air amphitheatres.
 Stage on the ground with tiered seating rising around it
(imagine layout of the Coliseum),which helped project
actors voices.
 Company made up of main characters, with each actor
playing multiple, and a chorus.
 Chorus do not meddle with course of play, offer a
listening ear
 Tragedy was oriented to all people of Greece
 Based off well known myths and legends
 In honour of the Dionysus, god of theatre, wine,
fertility and madness.
 Three most famous tragedians were Sophocles
(Oedipus The King), Euripides (Medea) and Aeschylus
(Prometheus Bound, among others).
 Tragedies would have been written as a trilogy.
 The only full trilogy surviving today is Aeschylus’
Orestia.
A Fixed
Expression
•Actors performed wearing masks.
•Small cast play multiple characters, just
change mask.
•Characters easily recognisable to audience.
•Masks would be in a fixed expression.
•Actors could not rely on their own faces to
portray emotions.
•Characters mask tells a lot of who the
character is or what they will go through.
•E.g. Character of Oedipus has a crown to
signify being the king of Thebes, gaping
downturned mouth to symbolise his
sorrow, and blood coming from his eyes to
represent him blinding himself.
Example of mask used to
represent character of Oedipus
in Sophocles’ play
 Medea betrayed by her husband.
 Foreigner, gave up everything to be with him.
 Plots her revenge.
 Medea known to have a innate knowledge of poisons
and herbs.
 Anger evident in her first confrontation, or agon, with
Jason, her adulterous husband.
 Guilt over the thought of killing her children.
 Her pride would of being embarrassed by her peers
spurs her into action.
MEDEA:
As a man you're the worst there is—that's all
I'll say about you, no trace of manhood.
You come to me now, you come at this
point,
[550]
when you've turned into the worst enemy
of the gods and me and the whole human race?
It isn't courage or firm resolution
to hurt your family and then confront
them,
[470]
face to face, but a total lack of shame,
the greatest of all human sicknesses.
But you did well to come, for I will speak.
I'll unload my heart, describe your evil.
You listen. I hope you're hurt by what I say.
 The origins of Greek comedy are
unknown but men have been
dressing up and mimicking others
since long before records were
written.
 The Greek word for comedy derives
from the work revel and song and
Comic drama actually developed
from song according to Aristotle.
 First activity of this happening in
Greek history can be seen on pottery
from the 6th century which saw
many people dressed in exaggerated
costumes.
 The first comedies were satirical and
mocking of men in powerful
positions for their vanity and
foolishness.
 Aristophanes is known as the father of Greek Comedy.
 His plays go beyond the artistic function and give us an
insight into social and political life in Classical Athens.
 Many of his plays have been lost and only eleven of his
thirty plays survive today.
 Some of his plays are ‘The Knights’, ‘The Birds’, ‘The
Clouds’ and ‘The Babylonians’.
 Plot summary:
Lysistrata plans a meeting with the women of Greece to discuss a
plan to end the Peloponnesian War ( war between Athens and
Sprata)
She asks the women to withhold sex from husbands until the peace
treaty is signed.
There is a chorus of old men and old women who descend on
Akropolis.
Lysistrata is like a leader and go between of the Men and the
Women and she tries to get them to sign a peace treaty.
The Play ends in a song sung in unison be the chorus of the old
Men and chorus of the Old women.
Asritsophanes was commenting on the foolish nature of the war
and where foolish creature must to tell the men what to do. He
suggests that women were very intelligent and should be listened
to.
Audiences and readers of Shakespeare's work all come to
the agreement that he is the master of emotions
A writer who can fully understand human emotions and
promote such invigorating emotional responses within
readers and audiences
Shakespeare neither ‘editorialised judged or eliminated
emotions rather he studied the duality of emotions
their depth and personified them in his characters
Macbeth is a play written by William Shakespeare. It is
considered one of his darkest and most powerful tragedies.
Set in Scotland, the play dramatizes the corrosive
psychological and political effects produced when evil is
chosen as a way to fulfil the ambition for power.
 As we know Macbeth can be seen as one of the classic
tragedies of the time period
 Through his work shakespeare portrays an array of
emotions but none more than Macbeth
 In his quest for power the character of Macbeth and His
wife Lady Macbeth descend into a inescapable madness
 Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the throne for
himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia, and
he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler as he is forced to
commit more and more murders to protect himself from
enmity and suspicion. The bloodbath and consequent
civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into
the realms of arrogance, madness, and death.
 When we first meet Lady Macbeth she is already plotting
Duncan’s murder, and she is stronger, more ruthless, and
more ambitious than her husband
 At one point, she wishes that she were not a woman so that
she could do it herself.
 Afterward, however, she begins a slow slide into madness—
just as ambition affects her more strongly than Macbeth
before the crime, so does guilt plague her more strongly
afterward. By the close of the play, she has been reduced to
sleepwalking through the castle, desperately trying to wash
away an invisible bloodstain
 Play video here
 she feels shame, sorrow, and a lot of fear. Which eventually
leads to her suicide from the guilt she feels.
 Macbeth on the contrary can be seen as a man not as
evil and twisted as he is made out to be but someone
who is constantly henpecked by his ambitious wife
who has a thirst for power which can also be seen in
her husband .
 At the end of the play we see that the character of
macbeth is almost happy to die and it can be seen and
interpreted as an escape from the life of shame and
misery that he has been living in . He is almost
relieved when he is killed by McDuff
 The RSC and Stanislavki’s system
 Stanislavski's system is a progression of techniques
used to train actors and actresses to draw believable
emotions to their performances. The method that was
originally created and used by Constantin Stanislavski
from 1911 to 1916 was based on the concept of
emotional memory for which an actor focuses
internally to portray a character's emotions onstage.
Later, between 1934 and 1938, this technique evolved
to a method of physical actions in which emotions are
produced through the use of actions
 This was later developed into method acting .
 Hamlet is evidently a tragedy, filled with foreboding emotions which
Shakespeare cleverly portrays through the main character.
 The play deals with the central character Hamlet, a calculated, rationalthinking, and intelligent individual and perhaps the most paradoxical
character in all of English literature. The play explores how this Prince,
is asked to do an action that is beyond his beliefs and morals. The ghost
of his beloved and most mourned father, the old King of Denmark
appears to him and challenges him to carry out the gruelling task of
avenging his murder. This call of action is something that the morally
good Hamlet finds difficult to carry out. He uses rational thinking to
gloss over and hide behind excuses instead of seeking ruthless revenge
and killing King Claudius. Hamlet’s tragic flaw is outlined by his
inability to take action and make final decisions on his desired goal.
 The character of Prince Hamlet displays many strong yet justified
emotions, mainly Despair, Sadness, Anger. Such boiling emotions
which churn in young Hamlet's soul.
 A dramatic device used by Shakespeare
 This is a speech by a character which is addressed to
the audience.
 Shakespeare cleverly uses this to develop the plot of
Hamlet and the character’s emotions.
 The soliloquies in this play give us a deep and clear
insight into Hamlet’s psyche which in itself is very
dramatic and complex.
 It helps us understand the various emotions and
conflicts within the Prince through three aspects :
Imagery, Punctuation and Visual effect
 IMAGERY:
 The use of imagery helps create an insight to the morbid
thoughts and emotions experienced by Hamlet. He uses
this to make his point more vivid and emotional to the
reader.
 In the beginning of the speech, Hamlet lets his emotions
loose and vibrantly describes his wish of suicide,
symbolising the role of emotion in his thoughts.
 Hamlet firstly uses images to express his depressed state of
mind: "O that this too, too solid flesh would melt/
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!"
 Shakespeare establishes a pattern which characterizes the
emotions of despair, anger and sadness.
 To express his dissatisfaction with life, Hamlet compares
life to an unkempt garden; it is ‘flat’, ‘frail’ and
‘unprofitable’.
 We see how Hamlet is filled with rage and bitterness
towards his mother, and how he evidently is disgusted with
the hasty remarriage to Claudius who according to the
Prince is a lesser man than his father “no more like my
father than I to Hercules”.
 Thus, Hamlet criticises emotionally about how polluted
matters corrupt his life.
 Hamlet's emotionally-charged initial rant shows how his
suspicions and frustrations have strong emotional roots
and evidently, he is incapable of restraining his feelings of
rage and despair from bursting within him.
 PUNCTUATIONS:
Shakespeare use of punctuations also highlights the strength of the emotions felt
by Hamlet.
 Hamlet inner struggles are marked by hyphens and exclamation marks in this
soliloquy “And yet, within a month, -/ Let me not think on't, - Frailty, thy
name is woman! -/ A little month…" "Like Niobe, all tears; - why she, even
she; -/ O God!" This use of punctuation indicates how emotions have seemed
to get the better of Hamlet, and his struggle of reason against these emotions.
 VISUAL IMPACT (SCREEN PLAY):
 Here we can see how Kenneth Brannagh visually portrays the morbid and
depressive emotions in Hamlet and also gives us an insight into his extreme
state of mind.
 Play Video.
