January Conference 1999
THEATRE
: ANCIENT & MODERN
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Forty
Years of Theatre Research and its Future Directions
J.R.
Green, University of Sydney, Australia
This paper is presented
essentially as it was given, with all that that implies. References
are given below first to the objects illustrated on that occasion
and then to key publications by the scholars mentioned. The latter
are not intended to be exhaustive: indeed there is much that is
omitted.
On Christmas Day,
as I was sitting under a sun umbrella in rural New South Wales,
wondering what I might say to you this morning, I was in a very
different world, and it is a difference I find useful. For one
thing the remoteness lent a sort of objectivity, and though one
might guess that Aeschylus, with his fascination for foreign worlds,
would have had interesting things to say, he knew nothing like
it, and it had known nothing like him. There was no way ethnographic
analogy could intrude, and no way that my environment could fool
me into thinking otherwise. But it did remind me of one of the
fundamentals of the way in which our attitude has changed over
the last forty years, that by and large we no longer assume that
we have automatic knowledge of or insight into the Greeks. This
is, I think, a good thing because it means that we have less of
a tendency to suppose that they were like us, to identify with
them, with all the problems of anachronism that that can bring.
My second thought,
as I sat there, was that it has been almost precisely 40 years
since the pre-publication text of Menander's Dyskolos first
reached London, and the excitement of, for the first time, having
a complete play of the greatest of New Comedy writers was heady
stuff. I remember very clearly the series of seminars at the Institute
of Classical Studies in London as the text was first disentangled,
led of course by Eric Turner and, with him, Eric Handley whose
edition of the play remains by far the best both in terms of its
erudition, its sensitivity, and the breadth and good sense of
its approach.
It was of course to
provoke a massive revival of interest in later Greek comedy, and
not only as text.
We might also recall
that it was not all that long before our period that Aeschylus'
Supplices had been found not to be his earliest extant
play, something which caused quite a stir for a while, even if
it is now interesting to reflect how the steam has gone out of
the issue. We have come to live with it. Texts and commentaries
have fared pretty well over our period, despite what we sometimes
like to think. We have new Oxford texts of major authors; tempting
morsels continue to come from the Oxyrrynchus Papyri; from 1962
we have Fraenkel's Agamemnon, a monument if ever there
was one; we have new commentaries, not least the Cambridge series,
to answer the needs of our generation. A more personal choice,
perhaps, are the enormously useful Loebs of the fragments of Sophocles
from Lloyd Jones, and of Menander from Geoffrey Arnott, not to
mention his Alexis. Then there are TGrF (Tragicorum
Graecorum Fragmenta) and PCG (Poetae Comici Graeci).
Things in that area are alive and well, and the only real problem
is how many of them we can afford to buy.
I suppose the greatest
changes have come in the area of interpretation and in our approach
to ancient drama. Within this area, there is no doubt that the
single most important factor is the one which now seems blindingly
obvious, the realisation that Greek plays were written to be performed
and that they needed to be assessed not only as pieces of literature
but in terms of their potential in performance. That it was not
obvious to everyone forty years ago was, of course, a matter of
historical tradition, and the shift has been prompted in no small
part by advances in related fields, not least archaeology. And
this is where I am going to put my emphasis.
In attempting to say
something about the style of performance of ancient drama, there
are two possible directions to take. The one is to look at the
texts themselves and to try to imagine the demands of the play
in one's mind. This is of course necessary, particularly in terms
of exits and entrances, the number of (speaking) actors used and
the possible ways they are used; and scholars have gone on to
hypothesise much more besides. There has been outstanding work
in this general area, not least by Oliver Taplin in the later
1970s (since then he has become more and more dedicated to involving
archaeological evidence), by John Gould and by Rush Rehm. The
other route is by looking at the archaeological evidence, at the
remains of theatres and what they can tell us of the physical
setting, and at representations of actors and their masks so as
to develop some idea of what the performers actually looked like
on stage. It is fair to point out here and now that these routes
have by and large been taken separately, and there is still only
a very small body of work which manages to combine the two approaches.
This is a problem which needs to be coped with, but one which,
in practice, is increasingly difficult in an age of specialisation,
when there are so few people who are capable of dealing with the
nuances of the language of the original texts, especially over
the full range, and yet also have a proper and valid command of
the archaeological evidence and its methodologies. Let us look
at the issue of methodologies for a moment.
As Attic red-figure
pottery of the fifth century became better known and published
in the later part of the nineteenth century, a number of scholars
began to look for possible illustrations of theatre on painted
vases. Such an approach had its critics. Robert and Vogel, for
example, tended to deny that vase-painting had any dependence
on tragedy in fifth-century Athens because, as they put it, the
themes of tragedy would not have had the time to penetrate the
popular consciousness to the point of inspiring the industrial
arts. This is an interesting concept - not least because it is
predicated on a large gap between the world of literature and
that of popular art - something which was largely true in their
own day. We have a very different view of the role of theatre
these days, to the extent of becoming somewhat obsessed with questions
of the way drama reflected the polis. Be that as it may, the tradition
of looking to archaeological material for illustrations of what
we read about in texts, rather than as evidence in its own right,
became even stronger in the earlier part of the twentieth century.
The centrality of
ancient texts had a strong and explicable basis which we need
not elaborate. We can point out that plays of Aristophanes, for
example, were known only as texts from, say, the middle of the
fourth century bc, and the work of the classic tragedians from
the later part of the Hellenistic period. They were not performed
even in later Antiquity, except for a limited range in fairly
exceptional circumstances. They were preserved as texts, and this
was how they lasted through the Middle Ages and so on into the
Renaissance and beyond. It is little wonder that the performance
tradition was lost as being in any real way central to academic
concerns. It was largely lost even in Antiquity, as one can see
at a glance from the scholiasts or, for that matter, from the
writings of Pollux whose best information is what he copied from
a text of 450 years earlier.
In the later 19th
and early 20th centuries, with the discovery and publication of
more and more archaeological material, the search for illustrations
quickened. Louis Séchan's Etudes sur la tragédie
grecque, published in 1926, was a case in point, filled with
execrable and often inaccurate line drawings taken from vases
which he took as illustrating themes from Greek tragedy, without
much apparent care for their centres of manufacture or the contexts
of their creation. Somewhat before this Margarete Bieber (who,
incidentally, was born in 1879) had developed a broader view,
beginning with her Die Denkmäler zum Theaterwesen in Altertum
in 1920, which was converted into The History of the Greek
and Roman Theater published by Princeton University Press
in 1939, with its second edition in 1961. She covered a wide range
of material objects, such as figurines of actors and their masks
as well as a handy survey of theatre buildings. It still has its
uses today. As I tell my students, however, look at the pictures
but please do not read the text.
As the date of the
original version makes clear, her work was firmly rooted in the
antiquarian tradition, and what it lacks by modern standards is
a clear sense of what objects were made where, when and why. In
these books all items were given equal value, whether provincial
or mainstream, well-dated or vague.
Somewhere in here,
on the other hand, we need to put Pickard-Cambridge and his three
major books, his Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy of 1927,
The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens of 1946, and The Dramatic
Festivals of Athens of 1953. Two of them had major revisions
from Webster and from Gould and Lewis, but despite work done in
the interim, The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens remains,
over fifty years later, the best and fairest statement and interpretation
of the evidence for the most important of Greek theatres. It is
perhaps worth thinking about Pickard-Cambridge. We still quote
his work as a standard source, to save ourselves further footnotes,
but we in fact very rarely think about him or his attitudes.
What is perhaps rather
curious when we look back forty years is the way that the Germans
had largely fallen out of this picture - as if Miss Bieber had
taken the subject to the Anglo-Saxon world. I don't think it had
anything much to do with World War II. It was just one of those
odd gaps in the tradition. There was of course Frank Brommer,
who was very conscious of the earlier work of Otto Jahn and then
Ernst Buschor, particularly in his own chosen area of satyr-play;
as an archaeologist used to dealing with objects, he was very
conscious of the potential use of visual material; but he was
not really interested in the big picture of ancient theatre. In
more recent times, of course, Erika Simon has revived the German
tradition with some vigour, and I must say that I set the English
version of her little handbook on Greek theatre as required reading
for students.
The next major figure
to emerge in our survey is of course T.B.L. Webster, and it is
he who takes us firmly into our period with an enormous range
of books and articles on these themes running from the late 1940s
until well into the 1960s. An important formative influence on
his work came in the period after he left Oxford and went to work
under Andreas Rumpf in Germany. It was here, I suspect, that he
learned something of the rigour with which one has to treat archaeological
material. Whatever the case, the more popular books like Greek
Theatre Production, or the extraordinarily useful Illustrations
of Greek Drama written with Trendall, were built on a solid
foundation of comprehensive catalogues of objects that had been
subjected to careful classification in their own terms. As he
himself said in his preface to the second edition of Pickard-Cambridge's
Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy of 1962, 'the main problems
remain the same, but the archaeological evidence has increased
and can be more precisely assessed than was possible thirty-five
years ago...'. This puts it modestly. I think of the first editions
of Monuments Illustrating Old andMiddle Comedy in 1960,
Monuments Illustrating New Comedy in 1961, and Monuments
Illustrating Tragedy and Satyr-Play in 1962. (One only wishes
that there were a better word than 'monuments' in English: it
takes a fair stretch of the imagination to see a third-rate clay
figurine as a monument. It works better in other European languages.)
For the novice, these are daunting volumes, lists of terracottas,
pots, sculpture, mosaics, jewellery or what have you, that seem
to show or are representations of ancient actors or their masks.
And even though the later versions of these volumes have been
made a little more user-friendly, with more illustrations, anyone
who is not a thoroughly case-hardened investigator is not very
likely to use them. Or at least I have not seen much evidence
that they do. One of our major tasks over the next few years is
to do something about it. Through websites in Sydney and the Dramatic
Archive of the Institute of Classical Studies in London, we are
intending to put them up on the internet with full search facilities
and as many illustrations as we can without running into too many
copyright problems. So that if you need to know what, say, a comic
slave or a tragic messenger looked like at a given time and place
in the ancient world, you will be able to find as many as we know.
Or you will be able to check by traditional things like museum
number, provenance, place or material of manufacture, or by publication
reference. And of course, unlike printed versions, on the web
the publication references can be up-dated regularly. It goes
without saying that any help in this enterprise will be more than
welcome.
But this is running
ahead of our survey. Lists of objects are useless as evidence,
whether or not they come over the internet, unless they are managed
properly. It is like having texts without awareness of the problems
of grammar and syntax, without commentaries, without some context
of function and setting, that is, without knowing what they mean.
Thus this vase in the British Museum [1]
is not much good to us unless we discover that it is a vessel
made for use at the symposion, as a prominent and central object
for holding wine, and that it therefore has a functional context
which may affect interpretation of the decoration. We need to
discover that it was made in the Greek city of Taranto in southern
Italy, a city which has come to be shown as being in close contact
with Athens, at least so far as theatre is concerned, and therefore
a source of reliable evidence for style of production. We need
to be told, with a fair degree of certainty, that it must have
been made fairly soon after 350 bc. It shows what is fairly obviously
a figure from the comic stage, and so the background information
we have gathered so far is important in helping us deduce, for
example, that in up-to-date stage production of that period, the
phallos is much smaller, on the way to disappearing, while in
other centres such as Paestum, pieces of the same date [2]
still have the traditional version that was common at the end
of the fifth century, even if the Paestans combine it with relatively
up-to-date masks. That is, we are coming steadily closer to being
able to say something about regional patterns, and so to a more
sophisticated view of the history of stage production.
If you have gone to
all this trouble, you will also know that what we see here is
a cook, bringing a loaded table into a sanctuary. You know it
is a sanctuary because in vase-paintings of this place and period,
the bushes at the sides and the boukrania above are conventional
ways of conveying that information. You know it is a cook because
he has a mask with bald head but full hair at the sides, and a
snub nose, and a beard that degenerates into wisps at the bottom.
(Makers of terracotta masks or figurines have difficulties showing
this sort of beard, and one has to remember that when constructing
one's classification.) His rounded shoulders are fairly typical
too, and they help the impression of bustling earnest that goes
with the character-type and that the actor must have conveyed
through body-language on stage.
The cook is preparing
a feast, a celebration, and, in comedy, this is a motif that signals
the successful conclusion of the intrigue, the point at which
everyone lives happily ever after. There is some point, then,
in having this as the decoration on the wine-bowl that is the
central feature of the symposion you are giving; it sets the context
in the happy world of Dionysos that you are creating in your symposion.
Or, to put it a slightly different way round, theatre is a key
point of reference in the lives of people in mid-fourth century
Taranto. We can use the pot to tell us something of the rôle
of theatre in society.
There has been quite
a lot of interest in the place of theatre in ancient society even
though it is something which is very difficult to pin down, especially
at anything more than a generalised level. One wants to move beyond
the old game of reading historical reference into the texts of
the tragedians, a game which in the end never struck me as being
very productive. More useful has been the work of scholars like
Robert Connor and Simon Goldhill who have attempted to explore
the place of the Great Dionysia in Athenian society of the later
fifth century. What is more difficult is the place of the other
theatre festivals. Nor has there yet been any convincing attempt
to show how a play written for the Dionysia is any different from
one written for one of the lesser festivals. With a few notable
exceptions belonging to the Hellenistic period, we know very little
about the festivals in other centres. It is an area where there
is room for more work.
Theatres as structures
for performers and audience have by and large not had the attention
they deserve, whether in architectural terms or, more importantly,
as working spaces. There are of course notable exceptions, but
it is worth observing that Roman theatres have done far better
in this respect than Greek. By way of work on theatres as such,
we at last have the definitive publication of the great theatre
at Syracuse, even though it remains difficult to feel confident
about the interpretations of some details. It was largely on the
basis of this theatre that Carlo Anti back in 1947 argued that
the orchestra of early theatres was not round but roughly
rectangular. He was ignored for years until Elizabeth Gebhard
published the theatre at Isthmia in 1973, following it up with
an article in Hesperia in 1974. She demonstrated, I think
convincingly, that the theatre at Thorikos, for example, was not
alone in its apparently strange shape, but that there is a strong
likelihood that that this was the normal form in the fifth and
earlier part of the fourth centuries. That is, the orchestra
was simply the space left between the stage and the seating. The
argument was reinforced by the excavation of the theatre at Trachones
in Attica, beginning in 1975. Many of you will have seen it; it
is disturbing that it has still not been properly published.
One upshot is, of
course, that all the arguments about the relevance of circular
threshing floors now have to be winnowed out with the chaff -
and it is at the same time a wonderful example of the dangers
of ethnographic analogy and no less of the romanticism with which
we in modern times have viewed the Greek countryside. In practical
terms it also implies that the staging of fifth-century drama
was far more close-range than we have been brought up to believe
(and this in turn has its implications for the style of acting).
We do not of course have any idea of the size of the audience
in the Theatre of Dionysos at Athens in the fifth century. I am
not sure if I can believe Dawson's recent arguments that it was
comparatively small (perhaps about 3,700 people, including women),
but we have no reason to believe the normally-quoted figure of
17,000. (Something like half that number would not entirely surprise
me.)
The introduction of
the circular orchestra was a development particular to
the middle years of the fourth century when audiences grew exponentially,
and when every Greek town that was worth its salt came to have
a stone-built theatre of its own.
I just want to show
you two particular examples of recently-excavated theatres fairly
quickly because they have particular importance. The first is
the theatre at Metaponto in southern Italy[3].
It architecture was published in 1982, though we still await publication
of the finds which will clarify aspects of the dating. The form
in which you see it here belongs essentially to the fourth century,
and part of its importance lies in the fact that it was built
up by means of an earthen embankment on flat ground. It thus stands
as a precursor of the Roman style of theatre which, as you know,
came to be constructed with much less regard for topographical
considerations. It also, of course, gives one some physical context
for the vases with comic scenes produced in this same city.
The other I mention
with some hesitation because it is the one we have been excavating
at Paphos in western Cyprus since 1995. So far as we can tell,
it was constructed about 300 bc, as part of the larger programme
for the creation of Paphos as the capital of Cyprus by the Ptolemies
of Alexandria[4]. It is only partially
built into a hill, even though there was plenty of hill of fairly
soft stone to dig into. The sides were built up by earthen embankment,
so that it too was partially independent of the terrain. But the
other important thing is that the orchestra is semicircular,
and in this respect it too looks forward to the Roman style of
theatre. In this case we can, I believe, demonstrate that it reflects
the now lost theatre of Alexandria, so that, just as so many other
aspects of things Roman, whether wall-painting or poetry or the
decorative arts, have a large debt to Alexandria, so too, I suspect,
does theatre design.
Let us move now to
some other new material that has come to light over the last forty
years or so.
Oddly enough there
has been virtually nothing to alter our views of the origins of
drama. At the beginning of our period Webster was clever enough
to see that a fragment from Miletos painted in a Late Geometric
or subgeometric style [5], and therefore
dating very early in the seventh century, had to show an early
version of padded dancers. It was important because it helped
undermine the then prevailing view of the importance of Dorian
elements in early drama, and especially comedy. There have of
course been many new vases with representations of padded dancers,
especially Laconian and East Greek. One should also mention Axel
Seeberg's definitive study of Corinthian versions. But the big
picture of the origins of drama remains as foggy as it always
was, and it has not been a particularly popular subject with recent
scholars. What is interesting historically is that there has recently
been a reaction against the positivist views of the middle and
third quarter of our century, and a return to the scholars of
the early part of the century and especially those of the Cambridge
school inspired by the observations of anthropologists.
For early comedy there
have been one or two interesting vases, for example this amphora
in Christchurch of about 530 bc showing part of a chorus of foreign
warriors or Titans parading on stilts [6].
And of about 510 bc, there has been this lovely red-figure psykter,
which finally ended up in the Metropolitan Museum in New York
[7]. It has a chorus of dolphin-riders,
again warriors. It is time for a fresh and fuller look at this
series of vases, though one can already make some observations.
First, that the standard way of depicting an early comedy is by
its chorus, and this is in fact a convention which lasts right
through in Athens to at least as late as the middle of the fourth
century bc. It is a convention which ties across neatly to the
convention which lasted as late as the late fifth century (and
at times beyond) of naming a comedy by its chorus. These scenes
also seem definable as being the first entry of the chorus into
the orchestra, something which stands to reason as being
the point at which it makes its greatest impact by way of its
song and its appearance. That the costumes were created with care
is obvious from the depictions; that they were observed with interest
is obvious from the detail and apparent accuracy with which the
vase-painters remember them and depict them, days after the event
- and, one could add to that, the way that the purchasers purchased
them. There is also more to be said about the nature and function
of early Comedy. So many of these scenes show warriors, and they
are not Athenian warriors but foreigners, whether real or imaginary.
The well-known Knights in Berlin wear helmets which are of a type
used by the hill-tribes of southern Italy at this period [8].
These foreigners are characterised by their military, which is
perhaps one way that Athenians were defining themselves. But what
is abundantly clear is that these choruses, like those of animals
and birds, were part of a process of Athenian self-definition
and self-realisation as they discovered themselves in a larger
world.
For fifth-century
tragedy there has been interesting material, like the column-krater
in Basle from about 480 bc which must show a chorus of youthful
warriors raising a hero from the dead [9],
a theme which seems from a number of vases to have been popular
down to and including Aeschylus' Persae. We need to think
still more about Aeschylus' role in the history of tragedy. We
already knew from the hydria fragments in Corinth that some other
writer had done a Persians with a hero or king on a pyre
some time before [10]. The magnificent
calyx-krater in Boston first published by Emily Vermeule in 1966
is another case in point [11].
On one side it has the death of Agamemnon and, on the other, the
death of Aegisthus at the hands of Orestes. There can be no proof
that this derives from the stage, but it is surely highly probable.
The vase should date no later than about 470, so it cannot be
Aeschylus but, again, an earlier writer. What is worth bearing
in mind is that in this earlier version we already see the net
entangling Agamemnon. Originality in fifth-century theatre did
not lie in subject-matter, or even in the use of a particular
motif. This was common property that belonged to everyone once
it had appeared on stage. It lay, surely, in the handling.
More definitely related
to Aeschylus is a hydria which it is fair to date to about 467
bc [12]. It has Aeschylus' satyr-play
Sphinx, with the council of elders seated in front of the
fearsome creature.
There have been other
new vases with representations drawn from satyr-play, none of
them more intriguing than this bell-krater now in Princeton [13].
It was published by Trendall in 1987 and has essentially been
ignored ever since. I wish I understood it. It was made in Taranto
(probably, rather than Metaponto) in the later years of the fifth
century and should relate to a play written in Athens. On the
left of the scene is a satyr dressed up as Dionysos. There is
ambiguity between the figure of Dionysos and his statue: you see
he stands on a podium in a way that vase-painters often represent
the statue. On the other hand the figure, this satyr-Dionysos,
carries the thyrsos casually over his shoulder rather than erect
at his side as we normally see it in representations of statues.
In front of him we see another satyr (the painter shows enough
of his face to make this clear). He is fully cloaked, with the
mantle coming up over his head. He sits at a table and points
to something on it. Is he playing the role of a female with pessoi?
or what is going on? I don't know. But what it does do is demonstrate
something of the complexity and metatheatricality of satyr-play
at this period.
A vase which has prompted
the spillage of a lot of ink in the academic journals is this
little calyx-krater in the Getty Museum [14].
When I gave it its first publication in 1985, I argued that it
shows Aristophanes' Birds. Some other scholars have been
rather shaken by that thought, but I have had no reason to change
my mind, and I am comforted by the agreement of people I respect.
Whatever the case, the date is about right, and it is interesting
that in 414 bc or thereabouts, Athenians still represented comedies
by their chorus in the traditional convention that we've already
mentioned. This habit of using the chorus as the identifying element
has to be part of the explanation of why they tended not to depict
scenes from comedies - unlike Syracusans, Metapontines and Tarentines
in the West, who developed their own tradition.
Many important South
Italian vases have turned up on the market in the last few decades
as part of the terrible looting of tombs, especially in the cemeteries
of northern Apulia. How much more one could have said about this
material if it had been properly excavated. The dealers scramble
to get hold of these vases because they have ready buyers and
can sell them with little effort. One in particular has had a
marked effect on the way the greater academic public viewed these
things, and that is the small Tarentine bell-krater acquired by
Würzburg and first published in 1979 by Anneliese Kossatz-Deißmann
in the Festschrift for Roland Hampe [15].
It dates to about 380 bc or perhaps a little before, and yet was
very quickly recognised to show a key scene, the Telephos parody
scene, from Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae. Here at last
was incontrovertible proof of what Webster had been saying since
at least 1948, that comic scenes on South Italian vases derived
from Athenian comedy. The vase is now common stock in the modern
literature. What has been less well explored is whether this is
really proof that plays of Athenian Old Comedy with all their
local allusions were exported holus-bolus to a Doric-speaking
population who must at best have known the objects of the jokes
only indirectly, or whether the scripts were modified, or, for
that matter, there had already developed a tradition of staging
special scenes from Athenian comedy, much as we are treated to
selections of well-known arias from operas. We cannot know. But
later evidence might suggest the possibility, and not least the
way that the Latin writers felt that they could combine elements
from different Greek plays into a single comedy - as Gentili has
suggested.
The other important
element is the glimpse this vase provides of provincial delay,
in this case of perhaps a quarter century or even more. If I dare
use ethnographic analogy, I could point out that the case of the
play-loving public of Victorian Australia suggests that this sort
of thing was not so impossible as we might find in these days
of instant communication. On the other hand transmission could
also be almost immediate, as Trendall demonstrated with the case
of Euripides' Cyclops and, more recently, Oliver Taplin
with Euripides' Antiope. Nor do we know if this vase gives
us the first performance of Thesmophoriazusae in Taranto,
or a repeat.
Nonetheless a time-delay
of much the same order is probably demonstrated by the now famous
Choregos Vase, also of about 380 bc[16].
It came into the collection of Lawrence Fleischman in New York,
an art dealer who, with his wife Barbara, had as his private interest
a love of objects concerned with the performance of ancient theatre.
Most of the collection received handsome publication in a catalogue
which accompanied an exhibition. The collection has now gone to
the Getty Museum where for the moment it is unfortunately invisible
while the future of the Villa housing the antiquities is resolved.
The vase itself must
show a scene of an Athenian comedy, arguably of 405 bc or thereabouts,
showing rival older and younger choregoi in an argument over the
merits of old-fashioned tragedy, represented here by the figure
of Aegisthus who has been summmoned through the door. It is a
theme not unlike that of the later part of Aristophanes' Frogs,
here with a slave, labelled Pyrrhias, in what is unusually elaborate
costume for a slave: in one of those comic turn-arounds, he is
playing the part of the archon judging the proceedings.
There are many others
that one could look to, like this scene, again from the Fleischman
Collection, with a ram-like figure emerging from a basket [17].
It is hardly surprising that the other figures show astonishment.
There should be another catalogue of these vases soon. It will
still be called Phlyax Vases, from reasons of tradition
and convention, even if I am one of the strongest believers that
they have nothing to do with phlyakes as such. I promised Dale
Trendall I would get on with it, and so I hope. This year looks
a lot more promising than last.
One of the joys of
the scenes on these vases is that they seem to provide some approximation
of the ways comic actors behaved on stage, their posture, their
gesture, their body-language. If you look at the scene on this
jug in Sydney [18], a man approaches
- one might say hesitantly - a woman whom the mask tells us has
to be his wife. Though we have to be careful of the culturally
specific in reading these things, it is surely fair to say that
the actor playing her plays a solid character. Look at the positioning
of the feet.
Contrast with that
this roughly contemporary figurine of an actor playing a modest
young woman [19]. Look at the way
she has her feet and legs, straight and close together. Look at
he way she has her hands hidden. Look at the rest of the language
of the pose he gives her, with just the head tilted slightly to
one side. Then compare another figurine [20]
of a rather more forward young woman, and ask yourself how you
know she's more forward. Look at the way she holds her cloak,
at the angle of her head, and, most importanly, the positioning
of her legs and feet. Or then this wanton woman[21].
Again look how the actor does it. Look at the positioning of the
legs, the sway of the body, look at how he exposes her arms, the
way one hand is placed on the hip, the exposure of her hair, the
coquettish tilt to the head. This type is the same as we see on
a vase fragment [22] where she
wears a gaudy dress and approaches a man who is simple-minded
enough to be carrying a purse full of money.
I have talked and
written elsewhere recently about vases as evidence for fourth-century
tragedy and its reception, and I shall not repeat it here. Simply
to say that there is exciting new material with scenes that have
to derive from theatre, such as Alcestis as on this Tarentine
loutrophoros in Basle [23]. Many
of these scenes are on vases designed for use in the grave, and
they demonstrate that relevant scenes from the theatre were chosen
to express the values of those left behind, conducting the funeral.
So Alcestis is treated as the ideal wife and mother. Others show
beautiful young people suddenly being carried off to heaven by
a god, taken from the pleasure of mortals for the pleasure of
the gods, as we see on this vase which appeared in 1981 [24].
Theatre is a point of reference in the lives of ordinary people,
and in the fourth century was important to them as well as popular
with them.
As I said at the beginning
there has been a lot of interest in New Comedy, both as text and
in attempts to define costume and mask. The latter are potentially
much clearer since the publication of the third edition of Monuments
Illustrating New Comedy in 1995, though with all the provisos
that I mentioned earlier. Much of the effort on performance has
gone into the re-ordering and interpretation of old material,
but there are times when it has been aided by new. One such case
has been the enormous body of material, especially terracotta
masks and figurines, which turned up in Lipari and for which we
owe a great debt to the industry of Luigi Bernabò Brea
and Madeleine Cavalier. A more particular instance was the appearance
of this fascinating cameo in Geneva [25].
It measures approximately 4 x 6 cm and, though it is hard to be
sure about these things, it probably dates to the beginning of
the first century bc. It shows the same comic scene as the relief
in Naples which has been known since the 17th century [26],
and it therefore prompted something of a search and re-discussion
of the date and function of these scenes drawn from Menandrian
comedy. Also part of this same question were the mosaics from
Mytilene which had their principal publication in 1970 [27].
They are now familiar to us, in fact almost too familiar, to the
point at which most scholars do not really think about them. But
we should be working harder on their date (the excavation process
seems to have told us nothing in this respect), and we should
be working harder on their function at that time and place. What
is this collection about? What are they there for? A good start
has been made in a recent article by Eric Csapo and in a note
by Eric Handley. These mosaics are also good evidence for the
style of costume in the later third or fourth century ad. We might
want to put with them this silver statuette of a comic actor as
slave found in Bulgaria in the late 1970s [28].
It reminds us that slaves kept their fat bellies throughout the
whole history of ancient comedy. They were not proper slim citizens,
and there is much more we could say about that. But on a more
severely practical level, we should also remember that in New
Comedy, changing roles was not as easy for an actor as in Middle.
The belly padding lay under the tights, so if an actor had to
change from being a slim young man to a fat-bellied slave, or
vice versa, he needed quite a lot of time to change. I have not
had a chance to follow this process through from the texts, but
it is the sort of practical factor which must have affected the
way the Menander and his colleagues structured their plays and
I hope someone will look at it soon.
But to come back to
scenes, we still need to think about why they were created. There
seems to be evidence for a set of series of paintings of scenes
from Menander and possibly other playwrights, created in the lifetime
of Menander or very soon after, and probably in Athens. There
is some evidence of a parallel set of tragic scenes, such as we
see here in a late version from Ephesos with a scene from Orestes
[29]. It is part of a series of
alternating tragic and comic scenes. They are each about 40-45
cm high. Tragic and comic alternate here in second-century ad
Ephesos, and they can in Late Hellenistic Pompeii. Whether they
did originally is another matter, nor do we know why they were
created or in what setting.
In this kind of context
we can also view many other pieces such as this bronze incense-burner
in the Getty [30]. It is a fine
piece, datable surely to the first century ad. It is a slave sitting
on an altar, and is adapted to being a single piece and given
a practical function even though the figure was originally part
of a more complex two-dimensional painting. I could also demonstrate
to you that in the original, the slave held a ring in his left
hand, doubtless a vital piece of identification in the plot of
the play. Here it is in a whole other world. (One could write
a book about the uses of comedy.) And as part of that other world,
someone invented a matching figure [31],
not from comedy but from some form of popular entertainment.
As part of my invitation
to speak to you this morning, I was instructed to look to the
future. What can one say? One can point at what needs to
be done, but whether that is what will be done is entirely
another matter. It can also depend on what happens to emerge from
the ground. A new find can set us off in an entirely new direction,
as we have already seen has happened over the last few years.
It can depend on the whim of individuals and the traditions they
excite. Certainly what I would like to see is more people working
on the broader interpretation of the material evidence. It has
so much to offer, even without anything new being excavated.
There is work to be
done on the broader context of Greek theatre buildings, their
function in their social and political settings, in a way that
has already been undertaken for Roman, even if interpretation
of the Greek is more difficult. Nonetheless a good start has been
made by Jean-Charles Moretti, a scholar who has unrivalled first-hand
knowledge of the remains. It is work that will be to some degree
made less daunting with the publication of the electronic archive
of theatres of the Greek world being developed at the University
of Heraklion.
So far as the history
or evolution of Greek theatre is concerned, we still have a long
way to go. I would argue that we have been overly synchronic,
and we have not been interested nearly enough in change through
time. There is, for example, a lot to be elicited about tragedy
of the fourth century and the Hellenistic periods, both for their
new writing and for the ways in which the classics were used,
particularly of course Euripides. We need to know what happened
in theatres in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. What was staged
and why? What has that in turn to do with what is preserved for
us? Pat Easterling and Eric Handley have both started to have
a look at why we lost Menander. How could the world have lost
what was regarded as the best and most relevant playwright of
the Hellenistic and Roman periods? Here again the material evidence
has a lot to reveal, and so too does the archaeological context
of the papyrus fragments and what they can reveal about the function
of the written texts of later antiquity.
John Jory and I have
just begun work on the evidence for the performance of so-called
pantomime, with its mimed performance of well-known myths. It
was surely the most popular kind of theatre in the Roman world,
and yet we have very little idea of how it was staged. In a five-day
session a month or so ago, we managed to identify a dozen mask
types, something I regard as a major breakthrough. There is a
lot more to do and a lot more to say.
So far as performance
is concerned, we are only just beginning to see the historical
dimensions of acting styles for ancient comedy. We are almost
entirely ignorant of them for tragedy, and in an even worse position
for satyr-play. Yet there is a lot that can be done with the available
evidence. We need to look at what were regarded as the norms for
body-language in the ancient world and compare them with what
we can see on stage, to look at what is going on through time.
This is one instance in which the comparative work on more recent
acting styles can prompt us in the way that we look at the evidence.
The ancient world too had its conventions and fashions in acting
styles as well as in art, and there can be little doubt that they
shifted a lot through time. There was surely major shift even
within the fifth century bc, and towards its end when have those
comments on the ape-like manner of the actor Kallipides, presumably
reflecting a perception that it was exaggerated, or perhaps too
close to life. The fourth century saw the really big names in
acting and they pulled in the crowds for which the huge theatres
like that at Epidauros were constructed. The audiences must have
been coming to see how they did it almost more than what
they did.
In the later periods
of the Empire the pictures make both the costumes and the acting
styles look stiffer. Did it have something to do with avoiding
explicit emotion? with the shift away from naturalism that we
also see in sculpture and painting? and why was that happening?
What was it saying about the classical inheritance?
And then we come to
our own view of the past. The work of Hall, Hardwick, Macintosh
and their colleagues on the more recent reception of ancient theatre
and its interpretation through performance, is firmly rooted in
the larger question of elucidating our view of the classical world.
It is very good to see that these topics have such a prominent
place in the programme over the next two days. That it should
happen here at the Open University seems to me absolutely right.
I for one am looking forward to it.
Return
to contents page
References to the
Objects:
[1]
London F 543, from Fasano. Ht 28.4cm. PhV2 79 no. 178;
CVA (1) pl. 2 (38), 2; Green-Handley, Images 67
fig. 42 (colour). Compiègne Painter; soon after the middle
of the fourth century bc.
[2]
Berlin F 3044, probably from S. Agata. Ht 37cm. PhV2 50
no. 76; IGD IV, 14; RVSIS ill. 352; RVP no.
2/125, pl. 44. Two young men (inscr. Gymnilos, Kosilos) pulling
an old man (inscr. Charinos) off a chest in the presence of a
slave (inscr. Karion). Masks Z, L, O, B; two female masks (S)
hang above the scene. Signed by Asteas. Early work; ca. 350 bc.
[3]
D. Mertens, 'Metaponto: Il teatro-ekklesiasterion, I', BdA
67:16, 1982, 1-57.
[4]
J.R. Green, 'Excavations at the Theatre, Nea Paphos, 1995-6',
Mediterranean Archaeology 9-10, 1996-97, 239-242.
[5]
Miletos, from Miletos. IstMitt 9/10, 1959/60, 58, pl. 60,
2 (Hommel); DTC2 315 no. 109, pl. 15b; Coldstream, Geometric
Greece (1977) 259 fig. 84d. Early seventh century bc.
[6]
Christchurch (N.Z.), University of Canterbury 41/57. Ht 41.4cm.
Trendall, Greek Vases in the Logie Collection (1971) pll.
20-21 and frontispiece (colour); IGD no. I, 10; CVA
New Zealand (1) pl. 8; GVGetty 2 (1985) 100-1 no. 4, fig.
7 (Green). Swing Painter; ca. 530 bc.
[7]
New York 1989.281.69 (ex Kings Point, Norbert Schimmel Collection).
ARV2 1622, 7 bis; Para. 259, 326; BICS 14,
1967, 36-37, pl. 6 (Sifakis); GVGetty 2 (1985) 101 no.
6, fig. 9 (Green). Oltos; ca. 510 bc.
[8]
Berlin F 1697, from Cerveteri (?). ABV 297, 17; Para.
128; GVGetty 2 (1985) 100-1 no. 3, fig. 6 (Green); CAH.
Plates to Vol. IV, no. 198; E. Böhr, Der Schaukelmaler
(1982) pl. 198. Painter of Berlin 1686; ca. 540-530 bc.
[9]
Basle BS 415. AntK 10, 1967, 70, pll.19.1-2 and 21.1 (Schmidt);
Simon, The Ancient Theatre (1982) pl. 2; CVA (3)
pll. 6.1-2 and 7.3-5 (with further refs.); GRBS 32, 1991,
pl. 6 (Green); Green, TAGS fig. 2.1; CAH. Plates to
Vols. V & VI (1995) 154-5 fig. 162; P.E. Easterling (ed.)
The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy (1997) 70, fig.
4 (Taplin). About 480 bc.
[10]
Corinth T 1144, from Corinth. ARV2 571.74; Hesperia
24, 1955, 305, pl. 85 (Beazley); GVGetty 2 (1985) 114,
fig. 23 (Green); Taplin, Comic Angels (1993) pl. 7.119;
MTS2 46, AV 13. Leningrad Painter; about 480-470 bc.
[11]
Boston 63.1246. ARV2 1652; Para.373, 34 quater;
AJA 70, 1966, 1-22 (Vermeule); Kossatz-Deissmann, Dramen
des Aischylos auf westgriechischen Vasen (1978) no. 28, pl.
13.1; Shapiro, Myth into Art (1994) 128-129, figs. 89-90,
and 137, fig. 96; MTS2 137. Dokimasia Painter. Compare
the Attic rf calyx-krater with the Death of Aegisthus, Malibu
88.AE.66, Shapiro, Myth into Art (1994) 138-140, figs.
97-99; by the Aegisthus Painter; about 470-460 bc.
[12]
Würzburg, loan (coll. Fujita). E. Simon, The Ancient Theatre
(1982) pl. 7, 1-2; Simon in Kurtz & Sparkes (eds.),The
Eye of Greece. Studies in the Art of Athens (1982) pl. 37a-b.
About 467 bc.
[13]
Princeton 86-33. LCS 105 no. 552, pl. 54.3-4; LCS
Suppl. III, 57, no. D 10; Brommer, Satyrspiele no. 223;
Trendall, Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University
46. 2, 1987, 2-7; MTS2 76, TV 19. TARDOL Group, in which
the Tarporley and Dolon Painters are very closely linked; the
manufacture is as likely to be Tarentine as Metapontine (for what
it is worth, the vase is said to be from Taranto). Originally
attributed to the Dolon Painter; about 400 bc or soon after. Formerly
in the Hirsch collection.
[14]
Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum 82.AE.83. Pres. ht 18.7cm. GVGetty
2 (1985) 95-118, figs. 1-3 (Green); M. Robertson, The Art of
Vase-Painting in Classical Athens (1992) 251 fig. 256; AntK
41, 1998, pl. 4, 1 (Schmidt). Probably by or near the Painter
of Munich 2335; about 414 bc. The foot of the vase is restored.
[15]
Würzburg H 5697. Ht 18.5cm. A. Kossatz-Deissmann (in) H.A.
Cahn and E. Simon (eds.), Tainia. Festschrift Roland Hampe
(Mainz 1980) 281-290, pl. 60; Phoenix 40, 1986, 372-392
(Csapo); Taplin, Comic Angels pl. 11 no. 4; Green-Handley,
Images 52 fig. 27; M. Schmidt, 'Tracce del teatro comico attico
nella Magna Grecia', (in) Vitae Mimus. Forme e funzioni del
teatro comico greco e latino, Pavia, 18 marzo 1993 (Incontri
del Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Antichità dell'Università
di Pavia, VI, Como 1993) 29f., fig. 1; RVAp i, 65 no. 4/4a.
Schiller Painter; ca. 380-370 bc.
[16]
Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum 96.AE.29 (ex coll. Fleischman, F
93). Ht 37cm. Taplin, Comic Angels pl. 9, no. 1; Schmidt,
op.cit. 36-39, fig. 3; Passion for Antiquities 125-8
no. 56 (colour ill.); RVAp Suppl.ii, 7 no. 1/124, pl. 1,
3. Choregos Painter; early fourth century.
[17]
Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum 96.AE.112 (ex coll. Fleischman, F
100). Ht 27.3cm. Passion for Antiquities 129-131 no. 57
(colour ill.); RVAp i, 96, no. 4/224a. Rainone Painter;
ca. 370-360 bc. Formerly Vidigulfo, Castello dei Landriani 261.
[18]
Sydney 75.02. Ht 17.6cm. U. Höckmann & A. Krug (eds.),
Festschrift für Frank Brommer (Mainz 1977) pl. 22
(Cambitoglou); RVAp i, 118 no. 5/141, pl. 39, 5. Truro
Painter; towards the middle of the fourth century.
[19]
London 1907.5-18.7. Ht .095 m. Pickard-Cambridge, Festivals1
fig. 140; Higgins, Catalogue of the Terracottas i, no.
744, pl. 99; Green-Handley, Images no. 37; MMC3
AT 10c. Early fourth century bc. One of sixteen known examples
of the type; many other variants.
[20]
Oxford 1922.207, from Athens. Ht 10cm. Webster, Gr. Bühn,
pl. 2; MMC3 AT 74b, pl. 13a. Perhaps second quarter of
the fourth century. One of seven known examples of the type.
[21]
London 1865.7 - 20.43 (C 5), probably from Athens. Ht 0.14 m.
Higgins Catalogue of the Terracottas i, no. 746, pl. 98;
Green-Handley, Images no. 39; MMC3 AT 114. Third
quarter of the fourth century bc. Several other comparable examples.
[22]
Policoro, from Aliano. Fragment of a situla. G. Pugliese Carratelli
(ed.), Megale Hellas (Milan 1983) fig. 628; Aparchai...Arias
pl. 146, 1; O. Zwierlein, Zur Kritik und Exegese des Plautus
IV. Bacchides (AbhMainz 1992:4, Stuttgart 1992) 109 fig. 5.
Unattributed; ca. 360-350 bc.
[23]
Basle S 21. RVAp ii 482, 18/16, pl. 171.4; IGD iii.3.5;
Schmidt, Trendall & Cambitoglou, Eine Gruppe apulischer
Grabvasen in Basel (Basle 1976) 78-93, colour pl. opp. 78,
pll. 19-22; BICS 41, 1996, 20, pl. 7 (Green). By a forerunner
of the Ganymede Painter; third quarter of the fourth century bc.
[24]
Richmond (Va) 81.55. Large lekythos. Vases of Magna Graecia
133-6 no. 51 (ill.); RevArch 1988, 296 fig. 5 (Schauenburg);
BICS 41, 1996, 26, pl. 13 (Green); M.E. Mayo, Ancient
Art (Richmond 1998) 54-5 (colour ill.; RVAp Suppl.
1 (1983) 83 no. 281b. Eos and Kephalos; below, hunters with dog,
paidagogos. Underworld Painter (early).
[25]
Geneva 1974/21133. M.L. Vollenweider, Catalogue raisonné
des sceaux, cylindres, intailles et camées. Musée
d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève, ii (1979) 294f., no. 312,
pl. 95 and colour pl. VIII; AJA 89 (1985) 465ff., pl. 52,
2 (Green); MNC3 4XJ 1.
[26]
Naples 6687. 0.45 x 0.53 m. Th. Schreiber, Hellenistische Reliefbilder
(1894) pl. 83; Brunn-Bruckmann pl. 630a; Pickard-Cambridge, Theatre
fig. 77; WS 85 (1972) 226ff. (Brein); AJA 89 (1985) 465ff.,
pl. 52, 1 (Green); MNC3 4XS 1. Not from Pompeii (as has
often been assumed)
[27]
S. Charitonides, L. Kahil, R. Ginouvès, Les mosaïques
de la Maison du Ménandre à Mytilène (AntK
Beiheft 6, Basle 1970); E. Csapo, Pallas 47, 1997, 165-182;
MNC3 6DM 2.
[28]
Varna II-5801, from Odessos. Ht.0.103 m. Arkheologia 1981
45 ff., figs. 1-2 (Minchev); Bull. du Musée National
de Varna (Izvestia na Narodniya Muzei Varna) 17:32
(1981) 64-74, pl. 2 (Minchev); MNC3 6DA 1.
[29]
Ephesos, 'Hanghaus 2'. Gymnasium 80 (1973) 362 ff., pll.
16-20; V.M. Strocka, Die Wandmalereien der Hanghäuser
in Ephesos (Forschungen in Ephesos viii.1, 1977) 45
ff., pl. 62 ff.; MNC3 6DP 1. Dated on stylistic grounds
in the later second century ad. Of an original ten (?) scenes,
three are reasonably well preserved in the western end of the
room (inscribed Sikyonioi, Oresstes, Perikeiromene), and traces
of two more, Iphigeneia (North wall), ..AX.. (SE corner).
[30]
Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum 87.AB.143. Ht 23.2cm. The Gods
Delight (Cleveland 1988) no. 54; Small Bronze Sculpture
from the Ancient World (Malibu 1990) 44 fig. 8a; Masterpieces
of the J. Paul Getty Museum: Antiquities (1997) 109; Green,
TAGS 149 fig. 6.5.
[31]Malibu,
J. Paul Getty Museum 87.AB.144. Ht 19cm. The Gods Delight
(Cleveland 1988) 304-6 no. 54.
Reference to Authors
The reader is referred
in the first instance to my surveys of scholarship on Greek theatre
production covering the years 1971 to 1995 in Lustrum 31,
1989, 7-95 and 37, 1995, 7-202.
aavv., A Passion
for Antiquities. Ancient Art from the Collection of Barbara and
Lawrence Fleischman (Malibu 1994)
Anti C., Teatri
greci arcaici da Minosse a Pericle (Padua 1947)
Bernabò Brea
L. and M. Cavalier, Meligunìs-Lipára, ii. La
necropoli greca e romana nella contrada Diana (Palermo 1965)
- Menandro e il
teatro greco nelle terrecotte liparese (Genoa 1981)
- Meligunìs
Lipára V. Scavi nella necropoli greca di Lipari (Rome
1991)
Bieber M., Die
Denkmäler zum Theaterwesen in Altertum (Berlin-Leipzig
1920)
- The History
of the Greek and Roman Theater (Princeton, first ed., 1939;
second ed. 1961)
Brommer F., Satyrspiele.
Bilder griechischer Vasen (2nd ed. Berlin 1959 (additions
in 'Satyrspielbilder', GettyMJ 6/7, 144-146 1978-79)
Buschor E., Satyrtänze
und frühes Drama (Munich 1943)
Connor W.R., 'City
Dionysia and Athenian Democracy', ClassMed 40, 1989, 7-32
(=Aspects of Athenian Democracy [Copenhagen 1990] 7-32)
Csapo E., 'Mise en
scène théâtrale, scène de théâtre
artisanale: les mosaïques de Ménandre à Mytilène,
leur contexte social et leur tradition iconographique', Pallas
165-182. See also Handley, ib., 197.
Dawson, S., 'The Theatrical
Audience in Fifth-Century Athens: Numbers and Status', Prudentia
29, 1997, 1-15
Easterling P., 'Menander
- Loss and Survival', (in) A. Griffiths (ed.), Stage Directions.
Essays in Ancient Drama in Honour of Eric Handley (BICS
Suppl. 66, London 1995) 153-160
Gebhard E., 'The Form
of the Orchestra in the Early Greek Theater', Hesperia
43, 1974. 428-440
Gentili B., Theatrical
Performances in the Ancient World: Hellenistic and Early Roman
Theatre (London 1979)
Goldhill S., 'The
Great Dionysia and Civic Ideology', (in) J. J. Winkler and F.
I. Zeitlin (eds.), Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama
in Its Social Context (Princeton 1989) 97-129
Gould J., 'Greek Tragedy
in Performance', CambHistClassLit i (1985) 263-281
Green J.R., 'Drunk
Again. A Study in the Iconography of the Comic Theatre', AJA
89, 1985, 465-472
- 'On Seeing and
Depicting the Theatre in Classical Athens', GRBS 32,
1991, 15-50
- 'Notes on Phlyax
Vases', NumAntClass 20, 1991, 49-56
- Theatre in Ancient
Greek Society (London 1994)
- 'Messengers from
the Tragic Stage. The A.D. Trendall Memorial Lecture', BICS41,
1996, 17-30
- 'Deportment, Costume
and Naturalism in Comedy', Pallas 47, 1997, 131-143
- & E. Handley, Images of the Greek Theatre (London 1995)
Handley E.W., Menander,
Dyskolos (London 1965)
Jahn O., 'Perseus,
Herakles, Satyrn auf vasenbildern und das satyrdrama', Philologus
27, 1868, 1-27
Jory E.J., 'The Drama
of the Dance', (in) W.J. Slater (ed.), Roman Theater and Society
(Ann Arbor 1996) 1-27
Kannicht R., S. Radt
& B. Snell, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta
Kassel R. & C.
Austin, Poetae Comici Graeci (Berlin – New York, 1983-)
Moretti J.-Ch., 'Le
théâtre antique', Revue d'Archéologie Moderne
et d'Archéologie Générale 12, 1993-95,
43-76
[see also his regular
bibliographical reviews on theatre architecture in RevArch]
PCG Kassel R. and
Austin C., Poetae Comici Graeci vol 1, (de Gruyter 1983),
vol 2, (de Gruyter 1991)
Pickard-Cambridge
A.W., Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy (Oxford 1927; 2nd ed.
rev. by T.B.L.Webster, Oxford 1962)
- The Theatre
of Dionysos in Athens (Oxford 1946)
- The Dramatic
Festivals of Athens (Oxford 1953; 2nd ed. rev. by John Gould
and D.M. Lewis, Oxford 1968; reissue with supplement and corrections,
Oxford 1988)
Polacco L., Il
teatro antico di Siracusa, pars altera (Padua 1990)
- & Anti C., Il teatro antico di Siracusa (Rimini 1981)
Rehm R., Greek
Tragic Theatre (London 1992)
Robert C., Bild
und Lied (Berlin 1881)
- Die Masken der
neueren attischen Komödie (25.Hallische Winckelmannsprogramm,
Halle 1911)
Schmidt M., 'Tracce
del teatro comico attico nella Magna Grecia', (in) Vitae Mimus.
Forme e funzioni del teatro comico greco e latino, Pavia, 18 marzo
1993 (Incontri del Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Antichità
dell'Università di Pavia, VI, Como 1993) 27-41
Séchan L.,
Etudes sur la tragédie grecque (Paris 1926)
Seeberg A., Corinthian
Komos Vases (BICS Suppl. 27, London 1971)
- 'From Padded Dancers
to Comedy', (in) A. Griffiths (ed.), Stage Directions. Essays
in Ancient Drama in Honour of Eric Handley (BICS
Suppl. 66, London 1995) 1-12
Simon E., The Ancient
Theatre (London 1982)
Taplin O., The
Stagecraft of Aeschylus (Oxford 1977)
- Greek Tragedy
in Action (London 1978)
- Comic Angels
and Other Approaches to Greek Drama through Vase Paintings
(Oxford 1993)
- 'Narrative Variation
in Vase-Painting and Tragedy', AntK 41, 1998, 33-39
TGrF Nauck A., Tragicorum
Graecorum Fragmenta, 2nd edition. 1889, Supplement
by (ed.) B. Snell, (Hildesheim : G. Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung 1964)
Trendall A.D., Phlyax
Vases (second ed., BICS Suppl. 19, London 1967)
- The Red-Figured
Vases of Paestum (London 1987)
- 'Farce and Tragedy
in South Italian Vase-Painting', in T. Rasmussen and N. Spivey
(eds.), Looking at Greek Vases (Cambridge 1991) 151-182
- & A. Cambitoglou, The Red-Figured Vases of Apulia, i (Oxford 1978), ii
(Oxford 1982)
- & T.B.L. Webster, Illustrations of Greek Drama (London 1971)
Vogel J., Scenen
Euripideischer Tragödien in griechischen Vasengemälden:
Archäologische Beiträge zur Geschichte des griechischen
Dramas (Leipzig 1886)
Webster T.B.L, 'South
Italian Vases and Attic Drama', CQ 42,1948, 15-21 (cf.
A.W.Pickard-Cambridge, CQ 43, 1949, 57)
- Monuments Illustrating
Old and Middle Comedy (BICS Suppl. 9, 1960, 2nd ed.
BICS Suppl. 23, 1969, 3rd ed. rev. and enlarged by J.R.Green,
BICS Suppl.39, 1978)
- Monuments Illustrating
New Comedy (BICS Suppl. 11, 1961, 2nd ed. BICS
Suppl. 24, London 1969, 3rd ed. rev. and enlarged by J.R. Green
and Axel Seeberg, BICS Suppl. 50, 1995)
- Monuments Illustrating
Tragedy and Satyr-Play (BICS Suppl. 14, 1962, 2nd
ed. BICS Suppl. 20, London 1967) [3rd ed., including
Pantomime, in preparation]
- Greek Theatre
Production (London 1956, 2nd ed London 1970)
- Griechische
Bühnenaltertümer (Göttingen 1963)
[For a full list
of his publications, see J.H. Betts, J.T. Hooker and J.R. Green,
Studies in Honour of T.B.L. Webster i (Bristol 1986), xiii-xxiii.]
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Classical Receptions in Drama and Poetry in English