January Conference 1999
THEATRE
: ANCIENT & MODERN
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Introduction
to Theatrical Language
Pat
Easterling, University of Cambridge, U.K.
At all times in the
history of theatre the particular language in which a play is
enacted has been crucially important as a guide - however enigmatic
- to interpretation. For ancient Greek theatre the language of
a tiny sample surviving from a genre originally represented by
huge numbers of plays is typically all the evidence we have, and
the challenge to decode its significance becomes all the greater.
Quite apart from grappling with the problems of corrupt or fragmentary
texts, critics of ancient drama are forced to build their sense
of what is 'normal' on a limited number of plays, without the
help of acting styles, stage effects, music or dance to create
a sense of the complex codes by which the plays communicated with
their audiences. But there is much to be extracted by a patient
and observant reader, and the four papers in this Section illustrate
very clearly what a wide range of questions can be asked of tragic
language and what diverse answers can be teased out of it.
Two of the contributors
are concerned with the visual dimension, though in strikingly
different ways. While Felix Budelmann studies the language of
Oedipus at Colonus in order to trace the interplay between
visual and verbal symbolism and the multiplicity of meanings that
a single image can convey, Pantelis Michelakis shows how vase
paintings can help to elucidate both the fragments of a lost play
(Aeschylus' Myrmidons) and its reception in a later comedy
(Aristophanes' Frogs). Nikos Charalabopoulos also deals,
though more broadly, with reception in his study of theatrical
terminology in Plato, showing how the language of drama, and language
about drama, which becomes more and more familiar in the discourse
of the fourth century, takes on special significance in Plato's
dialogues, partly because of their own dramatic character. Lyn
Fotheringham follows a quite different path, looking at formal
markers in tragic language and exploring what the occasional omission
of the temporal augment in verbs used in narrative speeches might
signify, with Sophocles' plays as her chosen sample.
These discussions
demonstrate the paradoxical richness of the evidence, restricted
as it is, reminding us that there is no limit to what the language
of drama can do.
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Classical Receptions in Drama and Poetry in English