May 2006

Stages of Imagination: Broadcasting Greek Plays, 1920s-1970s
Amanda Wrigley, Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama,
Oxford University, UK

From its origins in the 1920s BBC Radio broadcast a large number of programmes which drew substantially on English language translations of ancient Greek and Roman texts, particularly those by the Greek dramatists. These programmes were aimed at the non-specialist, and for many decades efforts were made to explain those aspects of the subject matter knowledge of which could not be widely assumed. Not since the emergence of relatively cheap translations of classical works had the literature, history and thought of antiquity been made accessible to such a wide public; and radio's public was arguably wider, since the medium was cheaper and less dependent on a good level of literacy. [1] This phenomenon was only one strand of what the Reithian 'mission' to broadcast the full range of the nation's cultural wealth and political debate to a wide public. [2] But the investigation and interpretation of this phenomenon is of central importance to the reception history of classics in twentieth-century Britain – not least in terms of the sheer number of classics-related programmes and the size of their audiences (which were frequently numbered in millions, and even the less popular broadcasts were heard by hundreds rather than tens of thousands).

As the first substantial account of 'classics on the radio' this paper offers an outline of the terrain, drawing on and taking further the preliminary conclusions in my case-study of radio productions of Aeschylus' Agamemnon . [3] The particular focus in this paper is on general trends in the production of Greek tragedy in the radio medium – both the nature of the radio production as something distinct from the play on the stage or the page, and also the creative collaboration of producer, translator / adaptor / writer, and composer in the production process. There is, of course, much more that needs to be said, in particular about the theory of radio as a medium for performance and radio drama as art form (especially with regard to its use of music); the fascinating evidence for the reception of these radio productions of Greek tragedies will be the subject of an paper contiguous to the present one; and, not least, once the principles have been established, a more detailed work evaluating the productions in terms of performance is required. [4] It will also be important to evaluate the reciprocal impact that 'classics on the radio' may have had on the subject itself and public perceptions of it. The unceasing broadcast of translations of ancient texts via the spoken word to an enormous and diverse audience may well have affected the ways in which classical texts and subjects were translated, taught, studied, read, published and performed over these several decades when classics was continuing it steady shift away from the centre of educational curriculum. [5]

Radio may be considered a particularly suitable medium for classical works which were originally intended for vocal delivery in live performance – that is, drama and poetry such as the Homeric epics. Not only were 'straight' productions of the ancient dramatic texts in translation regularly broadcast, but also other works written especially for radio which drew creatively on them: for example, Louis MacNeice's Enemy of Cant, billed as a 'panorama of Aristophanic comedy' (1946); Daryl Hine's A Mutual Flame, a radio version of Alcestis set in a Canadian City (1961); and Gabriel Josipovici's 're-texturing' of Aeschylus in Ag and Seven (1976; 1981). This is, of course, in addition to the frequent broadcasts of established stage adaptations of Greek tragedy (such as those by Anouilh, Cocteau, Eliot, Gide), and also operatic versions (e.g. by Charpentier, Gluck, and Mendelssohn). On occasion thoughtful programme planning allowed for stimulating juxtaposition of cultural genre: the 1950 production of MacNeice's Agamemnon was, for example, preceded two days earlier by Gluck's opera Iphigénie en Aulide . The radio medium lent itself particularly well to dramatic material, and dramatizations of writings not intended for performance were popular. So, not only were plays broadcast, but also the quasi-dramatic features (named after the cinematic 'feature film'). Thus were many other subjects from classical literature, myth, philosophy and history dramatized, either as plays or features. [6] To take the point of view of the listener unfamiliar with the literary output of antiquity, it could be argued that in terms of radio the phrase 'Greek play' might loosely stand for any dramatization of ancient Greek texts or mythological subject.

It is worth mentioning the air-time given to classics as a subject or dis cipline, as opposed to its extant texts. Amongst the huge number of radio talks given by Gilbert Murray on classical and political subjects, in 1931 he gave a series of six on 'Why Greek?', focusing on the modern application of the study of classics; and the point of learning 'dead languages' was defended (albeit not directly challenged) in the 'What is the Point of … ?' series in 1945. Nor were more scholarly aspects avoided: for example, in 1952 Michael Ventris gave the first public announcement of his decipherment of Linear B on radio; [7] in the late 1950s there was a series on English Classical Scholars; and periodically programmes would include passages from ancient texts read in the original language. The Appendix lists all the classical programmes broadcast in 1948, a sample (not necessarily exhaustive) of the fare that was available in this particularly rich period for classics on the radio.

Over eighty years ago Greek tragedy began its life as a staple of BBC Radio's dramatic repertoire. The earliest production for which a confirmed record exists is an abridged version of Murray 's hugely popular translation of Euripides' Medea, with Sybil Thorndike as Medea and Lewis Casson as Creon, broadcast at tea-time on 28 June 1925. [8] Another early broadcast was Murray 's translation of Iphigenia in Tauris produced by the young Tyrone Guthrie for BBC Belfast (c. 1924-1926). I have recorded more than one hundred dramatic productions of Greek tragedy in translation and adaptation (compared with twenty-five for Greek comedy) produced on BBC Radio in the fifty-year period from the mid-1920s. [9] It is worth remembering that each of these productions will have received repeat broadcasts in the months following the first broadcast; and many successful productions would have been referred to the Transcription Service for broadcast overseas. In the earlier decades especially, Greek tragic productions were often accompanied by an introductory talk and article in the Radio Times, an important aspect of the production process.

Of the tragedies produced on radio the relative popularity of the three tragedians mirrors that of the stage, with Aeschylus accounting for one fifth of productions, Sophocles one third, and Euripides almost one half. The statistics also report that in this period Murray is by far the favoured translator and contributor of introductory talks, [10] but that many other translators, poets, and writers have an important part to play in the historical narrative (especially Kenneth Cavander, Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, Gabriel Josipovici, Louis MacNeice, David Thompson, Constantine Trypanis, Philip Vellacott, Rex Warner, and E.F. Watling). It is significant that the majority of these 100+ Greek tragic productions fall within the fifteen years following the end of WWII, with a surge of activity in the immediate post-war period, and a steady peak being maintained throughout the 1950s. Explanatory factors may include the post-war revival of interest in the arts, with the audience for radio drama in particular having doubled during WWII; [11] the gradual impact of the 1944 Butler Education Act; and the birth in 1946 of the Third Programme, a new BBC Radio network for 'high culture', under which umbrella Greek tragedy comfortably sat. The figures report that half as many tragedies were broadcast in the 1960s in contrast to the previous decade. The most obvious reason for this would seem to be the detrimental impact of television broadcasting on the size of the radio audience, [12] but in fact the more immediately significant causal factors are internal to BBC Radio. The most notable of these was the retirement in 1963 of Val Gielgud, a pioneer in radio drama who had led the Drama Department for over thirty years: his cultural conservatism was rapidly displaced by his successor Martin Esslin's strong support of contemporary playwrights and modern theatrical trends. [13]

It is to state the obvious that drama performed on radio is quite different from drama performed before a corporeal audience. Owing to the necessity of expressing the drama through sound alone, radio first developed its own dramatic conventions designed to engage the visualizing imagination and thereafter in tandem with technological developments discovered a realm of dramatic possibilities whose effect on the imagination is perhaps more analogous to the experience of reading a novel than seeing a play staged. Both acts make an intimate appeal to the visualizing imagination with a complex of narration, description and dialogue or interior monologue/thought. But whereas the reader can 'pause' and 'play' the narrative at will, the listener (in the pre-digital age) must submit to the speed and onward motion of the broadcast (or switch off – the ultimate control). Making particular reference to Brecht's radio play The Trial of Lucullus, which charts the Roman general's descent into Hades, Esslin notes that the radio play came into development at an appropriate literary moment when novelists were moving from 'the description of the surface of life into the inner landscape of the soul'. [14]

In its engagement of the imagination, radio drama has been likened to the practices of bedtime stories, oral literature, reading novels and dreaming. [15] In all these acts of 'representative performance' (in a culturally anthropological sense), the characters are not bodily impersonated and the drama/action is not physically enacted. A does not seriously pretend to be B before the audience C. Theatrical drama is unique in that sense, and the playing out and watching of the action is charged by the mutual knowledge of the serious pretence that is occurring. In radio drama, a cousin of the stage, A does seriously pretend to be (speaking in the voice of) B, in a performance which is later broadcast to the remote audience C. [16 In its imposition of temporal and spatial distance between actors and audience, the technology of radio removes the special and mutual charge of live, bodily performance, but it offers the potential for a close perspective of the psychological unfurling of character and an intimate appeal to the mind's eye. All acts of representative performance must appeal to the imagination. On the stage, the desolate island of Lemnos may be evoked by a single rock; but radio drama must make engage the listener's imagination through the auditory sense alone. The building blocks of the radio drama are (i) the words of the script, (ii) the way in which these words are delivered, e.g. by single or multiple voices, and in dialogue, monologue, or as interior thought, (iii) music, (iv) non-verbal and non-musical 'sound signs', and (v) the temporal and spatial shifts in the narrative. But it is the combination of all these sounds which produces a dramatic effect larger than the sum of its parts. Radio drama thus has a host of sounds other than words at its disposal, and these can be used in combination to create powerful effects of counterpoint not possible on the page; indeed, some recognize affinities between radio drama and opera.

Certain aspects of Greek tragedy could be said to lend themselves well to dramatic performance in a purely aural medium: for example, the small number of principal roles; the potential for a wide range of vocal delivery (speech, chant, song) by individual and multiple voices; soliloquy, presented as such or interpreted as interior monologue; and descriptive devices such as narration which 'tell' rather than 'show' the action to the audience (e.g. messenger speeches). Furthermore, the choral odes are comfortably integrated into the dramatic whole through the ease with which music accompanying song and chant is accommodated into the dramatic 'soundscape'.

A 1929 production of Euripides' Electra was considered by the BBC to be one of the most satisfactory productions done that year on account of its 'poetic value and classic purity of outline'. [17] This combination of poetic language and relative simplicity of plot, so esteemed at this point when radio drama was in its infancy and in great thrall to the stage, would help to guarantee Greek tragedy's prominence on the airwaves for decades. For some time it was not an uncommon belief that Greek plays might be best done on radio: one reviewer considered in 1937 that 'their lack of action is then an advantage, and the power of the words is left to recreate the original atmosphere without the intrusion of a modern stage setting'. [18] Still two decades later, Val Gielgud agreed, asserting that 'the visual presentation [of Greek plays] in the theatre is always liable to teeter dangerously on a ledge separating too narrowly the sublime from the ridiculous … broadcasting presentation, compelled by circumstances to essay less, may on occasion accomplish more'. [19]

In the absence of questions of stage setting and costume design, and the physical representation and choreography of the chorus, the radio drama surely has the potential to get more quickly to the human dimension of the drama. During the early decades of radio, theatrically staged productions of Greek drama invariably flagged up antiquity, and therefore temporal and cultural difference, through both the linguistic fidelity of the translations and the set and costume design. It may also be significant that radio acting embraced a naturalistic performance style much earlier than the stage, possibly enabling a greater connection between character and listener. Also worth thinking about is whether the act of listening to a Greek drama on the radio is 'easier' in some senses than reading the same translation on the page. Hearing a play in aural performance may be a less daunting prospect for the infrequent reader: listening required concentration, but also passivity; hearing unfamiliar Greek names is arguably less of a challenge than wondering how they are pronounced from the page. In addition, it might be argued that the visualizing imagination works especially well with works set in societies so long ago in time as to be largely unknown or unknowable? Where can those people be envisaged but in the imagination?

From the comparative lack of critical attention paid to the reception of Greek tragedy in the five decades following the end of WWI within the emerging discipline of classical reception studies, it may be thought that little of interest or importance occurred in those decades. An alternate view is that the most significant aspects of the reception history of Greek tragedy in this period are to be found far from the professional stages of the capital, in smaller-scale, amateur, and sometimes touring enterprises right across the rest of the country. This mushrooming of theatrical activity naturally runs in parallel with the publication history of translations of classical texts in this period, the teaching of classics in translation and in the curricula of organizations such as Toynbee Hall and various workers' and evening institutes; and, as I hope to have shown, in the energetic activity on the airwaves. The cultural and political shifts of the late 1960s – which, it has been cogently argued, led to a revival of interest in translating and staging Greek tragedy more often, and in more political and aesthetically adventurous styles [20] – is to be understood as having deep roots in the earlier part of the century, in activities which variously and unceasingly strove to engage with and re-interpret the plays in translation. By such incremental steps was the subject gradually loosened from the ties of scholarship and privilege which traditionally accompany the learning of ancient languages, a process which needs to be interpreted alongside and in relation to the shift of classics from the centre of the traditional educational curriculum. [21]

References

APGRD Database, University of Oxford, ed. Amanda Wrigley (published online at www.apgrd.ox.ac.uk/database).

Briggs, Asa (1965; rev. ed. 1995), The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, vol.2: The Golden Age of Wireless, 1927-1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

— (1970; rev. ed. 1995), The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, vol.3: The War of Words, 1939-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

British Broadcasting Corporation (1947), The Third Programme: A Symposium of Opinions and Plans (London: BBC).

Carey, John (1992), The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880-1939 (London: Faber).

— (2005), What Good are the Arts? (London: Faber).

Carpenter, Humphrey (1997), The Envy of the World: Fifty Years of the BBC Third Programme and Radio 3 (London: Phoenix).

Coulton, Barbara (1980), Louis MacNeice in the BBC (London: Faber).

Crozier, Mary (1948), 'Four Radio Plays', The BBC Quarterly 3.3 (October 1948), pp.165-170.

Drakakis, John (1981 a, ed.), British Radio Drama (Cambridge University Press).

— (1981 b), 'Introduction', in Drakakis (1981, ed.), pp.1-36.

Esslin, Martin (1971), 'The Mind as a Stage', Theatre Quarterly 1.3, pp.5-11.

Gielgud, Val (1957), British Radio Drama, 1922-1956 (London: Harrap).

Grigson, Geoffrey (1984), Recollections: Mainly of Artists & Writers (London: Chatto & Windus).

Guthrie, Tyrone (1931), 'Future of Broadcast Drama', in The BBC Year-Book 1931 (London: BBC).

Hall, Edith (2004 a), 'Introduction: Why Greek Tragedy in the Late Twentieth Century?', in Hall, Edith, Fiona Macintosh, and Amanda Wrigley (eds.), Dionysus since 69: Greek Tragedy at the Dawn of the Third Millennium (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

— (2004 b), 'Towards a Theory of Performance Reception', Arion 12.1 (Spring/Summer 2004).

Hardwick, Lorna (2003), Reception Studies, Greece & Rome, New Surveys in the Classics, no.33 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Holme, Christopher (1981), 'The Radio Drama of Louis MacNeice', in John Drakakis (ed.), pp.37-71, and p.245.

Hope-Wallace, Philip (1949), 'The Unities in Radio Drama', The BBC Quarterly 4.1 (April 1949), pp.21-25.

LeMahieu, D. L. (1988), A Culture for Democracy: Mass Communication and the Cultivated Mind in Britain Between the Wars (Oxford: Clarendon).

MacNeice, Louis (1947?), 'Scripts Wanted!', in BBC Year Book 1947 (London: BBC).

McIntyre, Lisa (2002), 'Women in the BBC, 1922-1945', PhD thesis (University of ?).

McKibbin, Rob (2000), Classes and Cultures: England, 1918-1951 (Oxford).

Murray, Gilbert (1953), Hellenism and the Modern World (London: Allen and Unwin).

— (1960), An Unfinished Autobiography (London) .

Papoutsis, Natalie (forthcoming, 200-), 'Radio productions of Greek tragedy at the Canadian Broadcasting Company', doctoral thesis in progress (University of Toronto).

Rodger, Ian (1982), Radio Drama (London: Macmillan).

Rood, Tim (2005), The Sea! the Sea!: The Shout of the Ten Thousand in the Modern Imagination ().

Rose, Jonathan (2001), The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven: Yale University Press).

S cannell, Paddy, and David Cardiff (1991), A Social History of British Broadcasting, vol.1: 1922-1939: Serving the Nation (Oxford: Blackwell).

Stallworthy, Jon (1995), Louis MacNeice (London: Faber).

Stray, Christopher (1998), Classics Transformed: Schools, Universities and Society in England, 1830-1960 (Oxford).

Taylor, A. J. P. (1965; reprinted 1992), English History, 1914-1945 (Oxford University Press).

Todd, Robert et al . (eds., 2004), The Dictionary of British Classicists (Bristol).

Walton, J. Michael (2006), Found in Translation: Greek Drama in English (University of Cambridge).

Whitehead, Kate (1989), The Third Programme: A Literary History (Oxford: Clarendon).

Wilson, Duncan (1987), Gilbert Murray OM, 1866-1957 (Oxford).

Winkler, Martin (2001, ed.), Classical Myth and Culture in the Cinema (Oxford University Press).

Woolf, Virginia (1942), 'Middlebrow', in The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (London: Hogarth).

Wyke, Maria (1997), Projecting the Past: Ancient Rome, Cinema and History (London: Routledge).

Wrigley, Amanda (2006), 'Aeschylus' Agamemnon on BBC Radio, 1946-1976', The International Journal of the Classical Tradition 11.2 (Fall 2005, published 2006).

— (forthcoming, 2008), Greek Drama on Oxford Stages … and beyond with the Balliol Players (Exeter Press).

— (forthcoming), 'The Performance and Reception of Greek Tragedy on BBC Radio', …

[1] See Walton (2006) on English translations of Greek drama .

[2] All BBC departments looked overseas for material, and the Empire (later Overseas) Service secured an international audience.

[3] Wrigley (2006).

[4] Wrigley (forthcoming).

[5] For example, t he BBC regularly commissioned new translations which would later appear as Penguin Classics; and Gilbert Murray's book Hellenism and the Modern World (1953) grew out of a series of talks for Radio-diffusion Française, which were later translated and revised for broadcast on the Home Service, and then published.

[6] The breadth of material is best illustrated with a list: John Masefield's A Tale of Troy (1933); MacNeice's The March of the 10,000, after Xenophon (1941); Eric Linklater's play Socrates Asks Why (1942); Edward Sackville-West's The Rescue, from Homer's Odyssey (several productions from 1943); Clifford Bax's play The Trial and Death of Socrates (1943); Maurice Valency's comedy for radio The Thracian Horses (1948); MacNeice's The Golden Ass and Cupid and Psyche, after Apuleius (1944); Patric Dickinson's acclaimed The Death of Hector (1952) and Theseus and the Minotaur (1945); The Golden Fleece, a 'party-political musical' for radio by Donald Cotton and Humphrey Searle (1962); and Alick Rowe's Operation Lightning Pegasus, 'a comedy on what really happened in the back of Trojan Horse' (1981).

[7]'The Cretan Tablets', 1 July 1952, Third Programme. Carpenter (1997), pp.114-15, gives a partial transcript.

[8]The husband and wife team had been in several revivals of the play since its first production. Indeed the 1925 radio production was broadcast weeks after they had given a special performance at Christ Church, Oxford, in aid of the League of Nations Union.

[9]There are doubtless many more for which evidence has yet to come to light. Recordings of many productions exist in the BLSA, and papers documenting the production and reception of these productions are held by the WAC. The production catalogues of these two institutions are substantially incomplete. I have augmented their listings by careful consultation of correspondence files at WAC, and publications such as BBC Production Records . The fullest catalogue for BBC Radio productions of ancient drama from the 1920s up until the present day may currently be considered to be the APGRD Database, University of Oxford, ed. Amanda Wrigley (published online at www.apgrd.ox.ac.uk/database).

[10] Murray 's popularity on radio – which lasted until the mid-1950s – far outlived his popularity on the stage.

[11] Briggs (1970), p.42.

[12] Television replaced radio as the mass medium in the 1950s.

[13] Esslin, an expert on Brecht, had trained at Max Reinhardt's Seminar of Dramatic Art, Vienna, c. 1936-37.

[14] Esslin (1971), p.8.

[15] Esslin (1971), Drakakis (1981 b), Rodger (1982) .

[16] See Edith Hall in 'Towards a Theory of Performance Reception', Arion 12.1 (Spring/Summer 2004), especially pp.52-53.

[17] The BBC Year Book 1930 (London), p.73.

[18] Godfrey Turton, 'Broadcasting a Greek Play' (an article anticipating Trojan Women with Lillah McCarthy as Hecuba), Radio Times, 23 April 1937, p.6. Whilst studying classics at Oxford, Turton helped to found the Balliol Players, an amateur group which toured Greek plays in translation around the English countryside (see Wrigley (forthcoming, 2008)).

[19] Val Gielgud, 'The Electra of Sophocles', Radio Times, 2 May 1963, p.44. Radio plays generally were considered to be nearer reality than the stage (see Drakakis (1981 b)).

[20]Hall (2004 a), p.1.

[21] See Stray (1998).

RESPONSES

Lorna Hardwick, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

Many thanks Amanda for raising such a range of issues. It will be fascinating to see what your further research explores and the kinds of judgement that can be made. I was intrigued by what you suggest in your closing remarks about the importance of radio as one medium that helped in sustaining awareness of Greek tragedy in the inter-war years and wondered whether this actually contributed to the underlying conditions that allowed Greek drama to re-emerge in a more central theatrical and cultural role from the 1960s. However, I suppose that your on-going research will be conditioned by what the sources will bear. So my question is to ask about your assessment of the nature and volume of the sources and especially the light they shed on the relationship between producers, writers/translators and performers and on audience response. Is there, for instance, extensive availability of sound recordings that would indicate the extent to which performance styles were comparable with or differed from other types of radio drama at the time? And how much does the availability of documentary evidence depend on the categories and practices of the BBC archiving systems of the time?

David Wiles, University of London, Royal Holloway, UK

A question rather than a comment. It was fascinating to be taken back to an age when radio was the exciting new mass medium, and Greek drama reached a new audience. You allude via Esslin to the power of radio to do particular things – reaching the inner landscape of the soul. My question is, how do you evaluate this body of material? In cultural terms, what was actually happening? Was the medium being used in a Reithian and ultimately conservative way, to bring Culture to the people, or was the medium used to say something new about the world, pulling something unique out of that infinite source of possibilities which is Greek drama? It would be good to know what your personal view of this is? 

George Theodoridis
Australia www.users.bigpond.net.au/soloword

Wrigley's essay is an excellent piece of research that gives us much to think about, not least of which is the question about how this research can help the expansion of the broadcasting of ancient plays, in a practical way. My understanding from this essay is that the broadcasting of these plays is diminishing exponentially and dangerously; dangerously not only for the medium, because the best scripts are bypassed for lesser ones but for the plays themselves as well as for the general intellectual wellbeing of at least, the English speaking world. A way must be found to use Wrigley's research to attract the eye and ear of the BBC (and of other English speaking radio stations around the world) to the benefits of such broadcast.

Yet, though I agree wholeheartedly with Ms. Wrigley – if indeed that is what she is saying – that the radio is a far more effective, if not more a pleasant, way of getting to know a play that was written for the ancient stage, I still think that, whilst this was so, say even thirty years ago, it is not absolutely so now. I believe this is what Ms Wrigley says also. My point is that generalising this comment is a little dangerous, particularly in the current climate when one 'generally' seeks 'entertainment' and a rather anti-intellectual one at that, rather than a work that stimulates more than the nerves around the inguinal area. One only has to look at the theatrical extravaganzas that have sprouted world-wide since the seventies, or the huge proliferation of pop music stations, which have constantly pushed the intellectually stimulating programmes into the most difficult-to-get-to corners of radio programming.

So, I'm hoping for at least a three-pronged effort:

a) to agitate the radio station programmers of the world to produce and broadcast not only ancient plays but also commentary (critical and Literary) upon them,

b) to agitate impresarios and theatre groups to stage ancient plays with programmes or leaflets which explain the importance of the play and the questions it raises - moral, philosophical and questions of production and acting… anything, in fact that may raise the further interest of the audience.

c) Finally, though not necessarily so, to agitate teachers of the classics and publishers to create more written matter in respect of these plays and their history. This includes the wider use of the internet, which I, personally found a most encouraging medium which constantly propagates more and more interested and interesting contacts.

Wrigley's figures, as I said above, are alarming and reflect a sad downturn of public interest and of willingness by radio programmers to broadcast these wonderful plays. Plays written by some of the most brilliant writers and translated by scholars whose understanding of Greek and Latin, as well as of the art of translating, is often beyond reproach. We cannot let this downturn continue; we certainly can't allow it to be replaced by the shrill and belligerent war cries or the vulgar sounds of self-righteously blown bombs. We should do what these plays were written to do: educate the leaders of the 'big' countries to prefer peace to war.

My best wishes, Amanda for your forthcoming study, particularly concerning the reciprocal impact that 'classics on the radio' may have had on the subject itself and public perceptions of it.

Final Responses from Topic Leader Amanda Wrigley

First, my warm thanks to all three respondents for their enthusiasm and interest in the topic, and to those others who have responded encouragingly 'off-list'. I am delighted to have this feedback on my paper-in-progress, and I appreciate the stimulus provided by the questions and comments. My responses follow.

I would also like to say that if anyone is interested in reading the whole chapter from which this piece was extracted then I would be happy to pass the pre-publication version on for comments. 

Thank you, Lorna, for these stimulating questions.

My research so far does lead me to suspect that the various manifestations of Greek tragedy on the radio (alongside other mass media, such as print) did contribute in a significant way to the conditions which gave rise to the cultural and theatrical efflorescence of Greek tragedy from the later 1960s. Performance of Greek tragedy on radio through the three decades or so when radio was the mass medium of entertainment, to my mind had both a democratizing and popularizing effect on Greek tragedy – it simply loomed far larger in the public consciousness by the end of the 1950s than it could or would have done without radio broadcasting. The BBC's duty (as charged by Royal Charter) to entertain, inform and educate was until sometime in the 1950s interpreted as a charge to raise cultural and educational standards. This is particularly noticeable at two moments: from the birth of broadcasting until the end of the 1920s (which is related to the post-war 'missionary' urge that, for example, drove many touring and amateur groups to choose Greek tragedy as their vehicle for reaching communities that they considered to be impoverished more than just economically), and the rather long 'moment' of WWII and a decade or so afterwards – the golden age of radio. During WWII the power of the medium was fully harnessed, and people began to listen to radio as they had never listened before, placing it at the centre of domestic life for a good decade following. It is fascinating to see how the BBC and individual programme producers responded to this, and one only has to read the various testimonies by playwrights and theatre directors who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s to witness the powerful effect cultural broadcasts had on the creative imagination.

This picture I am forming emerges from four years' work on radio archives, but I have yet to situate this firmly within a wider cultural and social context. Whether the sources will continue to bear out my 'suspicions' remains to be seen. I have worked on the extant written archives for approximately two-thirds of the personnel involved in the historical narrative of Greek tragedy on the radio for the fifty years from the 1920s. These sources can be summarized thus: documentation surrounding the production of a play; correspondence between the various professionals involved – classicists, translators, creative writers, producers, composers, actors, etc; post-production listener surveys; personal correspondence between the listening public and, usually, producers and translators. It is fascinating and illuminating material. The difficulty, of course, with archival sources is that each letter, postcard, opinion, etc in itself is not statistically significant; bearing it all in mind and cross-referencing against a wider historical framework will lead, I hope, to sensible conclusions. So, what remains for me after this archival task is complete, as you hint, is to situate my findings within the larger contexts of drama and other cultural activity on the radio. Focusing on Greek tragedy and some other classical subjects has been necessary thusfar, but I do need to delve into a representative sample of archival sources for other types of cultural broadcasts. The BBC's archiving systems for both written and sound evidence have been rather haphazard over its history, so not everything one would want still exists. However, a great amount does – and, happily, much more than I ever imagined when I first set out.

Thank you, David – your comments encouraged me to pin down my thoughts on this a little more. I still need to do some substantial reading on the workings of the imagination, the 'aesthetic imagination', and the debates within philosophy and psychology on the visual processes of the mind. But I can report that I am revising my use of the term 'the visualizing imagination', which appears more than once in my piece. It misleading implies that the listener actually pictures the drama, almost as a surrogate for the absent stage. Certainly some acts of imagination stimulate mental images – examples for me have been moments such as the watchman at the beginning of Agamemnon, or Philoctetes writhing in pain. I think what Esslin was getting at when he talked of how the radio play came into development at an appropriate literary moment when novelists were moving from 'the description of the surface of life into the inner landscape of the soul', were other acts of imagination which do not conjure mental images. For example, when listening to a character in monologue (which on radio often comes across as interior thought) we are not concerned with where they are sat, whether they are moving, how they are dressed, or the expression on their face. All we have are the words and their delivery, which immediately bypass the physical and transport us into the realm of the psychological. The ease with which on radio monologue comes across as interior thought only adds to the intimate window we are given to one human being's situation and emotional life. Perhaps there are more nuances to be unravelled here, but there may be at least be the clear difference between the visual and the non-visual acts of imagination stimulated by a radio drama. In my own experience, mental images are certainly not stimulated most of the time when I listen to a radio play. I do not engage an inner surrogate for the 'absence' of corporeal performance within a set and on a stage. And when images are aroused, they are fragmentary, fleeting, snatches of an imagined reality as experienced within a dream.

This aspect of radio drama was something new, and perhaps it was explored and exploited more fully in drama written especially for the medium, rather than in adaptations from existing dramatic and literary work. But the best adaptations seem to me those which relinquish the perceived need to provide 'visual surrogates' for the lack of bodily performance, and become free to explore the drama in human and psychological, rather than theatrical, terms.

You ask what was actually happening in cultural terms, whether Greek tragedy on the radio was a conservative, Reithian phenomenon, or whether it was provided an opportunity to create something new. There is no doubt that much (if not all) Greek tragedy on the radio was fulfilling the Reithian mission (which was dominant long after his 1938 departure from the Director-Generalship) to raise cultural and educational standards by bringing the best of the nation's cultural wealth and political debate within the reach of all. That was the general culture of the BBC, the conditions under which the drama producers worked, and so all 'high cultural' output might be viewed as Reithian. If the productions themselves were little more than staid reading after staid reading, the explanation might stop there. But each and every production was the result of an energetic, thoughtful, and to some extent creative collaboration between a radio producer, an academic and/or translator and/or creative writer, and a contemporary composer (I focus on this in the rest of the chapter from which this piece was extracted). There were incremental steps being taken throughout the decades under discussion to realise the ancient plays in terms of radio, to explore and push the boundaries of what the medium could bring to the performance of these plays. Not all creative collaborations resulted in creative successes. The mindset of the producer was key – if traditional, then the production might come across as a professional playreading-with-music (e.g. Val Gielgud, whose family line seemed to instil in him such an awe for the stage that – pioneer though he was in some sense – he could never bring himself even to add interpolations or 'stage directions' to aid dramatic sense on the air), but if open to the possibilities of the medium, then the production might take the play into new and exciting territory.

But what is fascinating to me is the atomised nature of the audience. The radio production elicited a intensely individual response, which to me is different from what happens in the theatre. It takes courage to walk out of a theatre performance, but a moment's boredom or annoyance to turn the radio off or onto another channel. When one person in the theatre audience starts giggling, it is difficult not to let this affect one's own experience or judgement. The collective act of seeing and hearing a play in live performance in itself affects one's engagement and experience. The atomised, individual response to the radio programme is, by contrast, at the moment of engagement not conditioned in the same way. So, one person's dull broadcast is an enlightening and powerful experience for another.

George, today's cultural climate is different in so may ways from the period that I focus on in my piece that it is difficult to imagine a sustained and regular presence of Greek tragedy on the radio done in the same way today. As far as I understand the demands of contemporary broadcasting, programmes have to compete for resources, budgets, and audiences in a far more business-minded way than in the decades under discussion, making the BBC subject to more complex demands that in its earlier decades. Also, I'm prompted to wonder what might be achieved today by such regular broadcasts as I have been observing in previous decades, especially given more recent developments: for examples, the success of the Open University's Classical Studies Department in reaching thousands of students via distance learning demonstrates how access to Greek tragedy via education is possible in ways it was not several decades ago.

In fact, rather than being at all worried, I think we should rather be amazed at the extent to which classical subjects generally 'do' feature on the BBC Radio and Television. There may not be many Greek tragic radio productions, but we do get to enjoy a remarkable number of programmes which consider in an interdisciplinary and imaginative way subjects from antiquity and which exploit the energies and expertise of leading British classicists. It is surely reassuring that we have moved on from classicists in Gilbert Murray style extolling the virtues of classics to a point when they rather demonstrate the integral use of study of antiquity by engaging with other areas of study and intellectual endeavour. A similar point may be made for productions of ancient drama. Perhaps there are fewer 'straight' productions of ancient plays, but there are certainly many more, often exciting and creative, adaptations and re-writings by contemporary playwrights such as Timberlake Wertenbaker (Dianeira and Hecuba), Andrew Rissik (Dionysus), and Phyllis Nagy (Dolores, after Andromache). In addition, many successes from the stage are later broadcast in a radio version (e.g. several high profile Royal National Theatre productions; Northern Broadsides' production of Hughes' Alcestis ; Colin Teevan's Iph … ; and Deborah Warner's production of Medea, starring Fiona Shaw; and Seamus Heaney's The Cure at Troy).

I think there is a lot to be pleased about here. If such interdisciplinary application and creative use of classics leads to a greater appreciation and interest in the study of antiquity itself then all to the better