Greek DramaAristotle called drama "imitated human action." But because his meaning of imitation is in doubt, the phrase is not as simple as it seems. J. M. Manly saw three necessary elements in drama: (1) a story (2) told in action (3) by actors who impersonate the characters. This admits such forms as pantomime, but many believe that spoken dialogue must be present.
Drama arose from religious ceremonial. Greek comedy developed from those phases of the Dionysian rites that dealt with the theme of fertility. Greek tragedy came from the Dionysian rites dealing with life and death; and medieval drama arose out of rites commemorating the birth and the resurrection of Christ. These three origins seem independent of one another. The word comedy is based on a word meaning "revel," and early Greek comedy preserved in the actors' costumes evidences of the ancient phallic ceremonies. Comedy developed away from this primitive display of sex interest in the direction of greater decorum and seriousness, though the Old Comedy was gross in character. Satire became an element of comedy as early as the sixth century B.C. Menander (342-291 B.C.) is a representative of the New Comedy—a more conventionalized form that was imitated by the great Roman writers of comedy, Plautus and Terence, through whose plays classical comedy was transmitted to the Elizabethan dramatists.
The word tragedy seems to mean a "goat-song" and may reflect Dionysian death and resurrection ceremonies in which the goat was the sacrificial animal. The dithyrambic chant used in these festivals, perhaps the starting point of tragedy, developed into the ceremonial song. The song then became a primitive duologue between a leader and a chorus, developed narrative elements, and reached a stage in which it told some story. Two leaders appeared instead of one, and the chorus receded somewhat into the background. The great Greek authors of tragedies were Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.), Sophocles (496-406 B.C.), and Euripides (480-406 B.C.).
In ancient Greece, the groups of dancers and singers who participated in religious festivals and dramatic performances. Also, the songs sung by the chorus. At first the choral songs made up the bulk of the play, the spoken monologue and dialogue being interpolated. Later however, the chorus became subordinate, offering inter-act comments.
Two parts of the stanzaic forms of the Greek choral ode, the other being the epode. The strophe and antistrophe are indentical in meter. As the chorus sang the strophe, they moved from right to left; while singing the antistrophe, they retraced their steps exactly, moving back to the original position.
— From Harmon and Holman's A Handbook to Literature, 7th ed.
© Scott Foll 2000. All rights reserved.