The Oedipus File
Tragedy and Comedy from Ancient Greece to the Roman Republic, with summeries of plays for improvisations
57 pages
Sample pages
What is important is not your role in life but the way you interpret it,
and it’s not the longest roles you must ask for, but the most challenging.
- Epictetus
Introduction
The selection of plays in this book were the most popular with audiences during the Classic Period, from the fifth century bc in Greece to the second century bc in Rome. A summary is provided for each play with a detailed description of the scenes upon which the group can improvise.
The term Classic, coined in France in the seventeenth century, implies Ancient Greek and Roman achievements in philosophy, art, architecture, and literary works. In my resolve to introduce the subject to my students it’s interesting to note how Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, the world’s first detective story, is interpreted depending on ethnicity. Is Oedipus an innocent victim of fate or is he ultimately responsible? Personal accountability, a novel concept developed by the Seven Sages in Greece, was a predominant theme in the tragedies.
A group from the Maghreb projects in France decided that Oedipus’ father was responsible, while in the Mississippi Delta the reaction was stuff happens. His self-immolation was senseless, if not cowardly. This viewpoint has merit. His impulsive reaction after he learned the truth had dreadful consequences for his children.
A chapter is dedicated to the Presocratic philosophers starting with Thales of Miletus, one of the Seven Sages and the first to apply deductive reasoning to geometry. He predicted an eclipse and calculated the distance of enemy ships by the height of a shadow. His mother was worried he’d never marry, he’d tell her it’s too early until one day he said, “It’s too late”.
ONE
The Origins of Tragedy and Comedy
TWO
Homer's Iliad and Odyssey
The tragedies are based on Homer’s narrative of the Trojan War, and the victorious Greeks’ journey back to their kingdoms.
The Judgement of Paris
Another pathetic story of the gods in Olympus,
why the philosophers in Ancient Greece turned to nature in their quest for the truth.
The Trojan War - The Curse of Atreus
Was Helen really kidnapped
or did she leave her wayward husband of her own accord?
THREE
Tragedy
The poets were influenced by the philosophers who emphasized personal accountability.
Hubris: the fallen hero.
FOUR
Comedy
Old Comedy - Middle Comedy - New Comedy
From Ancient Greece to Rome after the occupation of Athens.
FIVE
Summaries of the Tragedies
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides
SIX
Summaries of the Comedies
Menander, Terence, Plautus
SEVEN
The Presocratic Philosophers
These oftentimes eccentric thinkers were also scientists, mathematicians and astronomers,
and the first to come up the concept of the atom.
EIGHT
Philosophies influenced by the Presocratics
Cynicism, Skepticism, Epicuranism, and Stoicism
NINE
From the Classic Period to Neoclassicism
TEN
Suggestions for improvisations
Tragedy and Comedy in the Golden Age of Greece
Fifth century bc in Greece defines a period of remarkable advancements in philosophy, the sciences, the arts and the theatre. The Theatre of Dionysus, built near the Acropolis in Athens, was the model for future open theatres in Greece and all of Europe after the Greeks colonized southern Italy in the 8th century bc (Magna Graecia).
The plays were submitted in a contest during the yearly festivities honoring the god Dionysus, and the three poets we know of are the ones that received the most awards.
The tragedies were the first to be performed on a stage, graduating from one actor to two, and finally to three with special effects. The playwright/poets were friends with the philosophers who advanced the concept of personal accountability, which they integrated into their stories.
The arrival of comedy as a performance onto itself is exclusive to Aristophanes, who lived around the same time as Socrates. Up until Aristophanes, only short comic skits were performed at the end of the tragedies. He used his wicked satire to expose the complacency and decadence of Athenian society, was anti-war and believed the world would be better ruled by women.
The extraordinary intellectual surge that occurred around that time was not a uniquely Greek experience. It appeared simultaneously in the Eastern horizon with three main schools of thought: Jainism, Buddhism, and Confucianism.
While Socrates questioned assumptions and cited the advantages of living an honest life, Confucius wrote his doctrine on personal ethics and government responsibility to better Chinese society. In India, Siddhartha’s quest for truth led him to a spiritual transformation produced by an ascetic way of life, while the Hindu Bhagavad-vita preached selflessness and inner detachment.
As the philosophers in Greece speculated on the origins of life, their search brought them to the question of reality: What is real?
One group believed reality could only exist as one infinite and unchangeable essence. A second group dismissed the idea, insisting reality was relative and could only be found in the identifiable, physical world of opposites. If the two factions had contrasting theories they shared the same foundations. Both camps preached reason, logic, discernment, and integrity.
Page 8
The Renaissance
The all-encompassing influence of the Catholic Church suffered a heavy blow after the Ottoman Turks occupied Constantinople in 1453, the Church's last bastion in the East after the fiasco of the Crusades.
Pope Urbin II, in his call to kings and nobles in 1095 to reclaim Jerusalem from Muslim control (God wills it) didn’t think things through. Not only did the Church lose all the territories the Christian kings had occupied since the first Crusade, and not only were the banned literary texts of the Ancient Greeks brought back to Italy by the Crusaders.
The merchant families, notably the Medici in Florence, gained vast wealth with rare goods from the Mid-East. This made them as powerful as the popes and kings, and they were not afraid of breaking rules established by the Church.
They hired translators to convert the works of Plato and Aristotle into Latin, which were enthusiastically embraced by scholars. The original Greek writings had been saved in Persian and Arabic in Spain, which had been occupied by the Moors from North Africa for nearly 800 years since 711 ad.
Al-Hakam II, the second Umayyad Caliph of Córdoba, opened a library in his palace which became a center for translation to Latin, and the linguists who came to Florence were greeted as rock stars.
Commedia dell’arte
The weary troupes settled in Florence, where they opened a guild called “Arte della Commedia” or commedia dell’arte, the first acting guild. The universal character types and convoluted scenarios set a trend in Europe. Beaumarchais, Marivaux, Goldoni, Rossini, Shakespeare, Molière are some of the known authors who used commedia dell’arte plots and characters in their work.
Arguably the most outstanding contribution of this style is the predominant role of the servant, called Zanni. After the bubonic plague farmers moved to the city to replace the servants who’d died. Zanni is an adaptation of the name “Gianni” that was common in the countryside.
The most popular domestic was Sganarelle, who will do anything to aid his master for a price. He is Don Juan’s confidant, and often put to task disguised as a doctor, according to him the easiest of all the tasks as he is good at bluffing.
Louis XIV disregarded the bitter complaints by the bourgeois class because the satires were popular (Louis also made sure the nobility would have no time to conspire against him by forcing them to live at Versailles half the year, where they had to learn to dance).
The character of Il Capitano was introduced in the 16th century, when Italy was being tyrannized by mercenary armies. He was masked and adopted a heavy Spanish accent. Around the same time appeared Scaramouche, a clownish figure part Zanni, part Capitano, dressed in black Spanish-ish attire.
The Juggler played an important role as speaker of the people, never popular with the authorities. A horse was ready for him to flee before they arrived to arrest him.
So the audience could easily identify the characters, the actors took on roles according to their body type. The hero would be a Y, the intellectual was equal to I, and the strongman an H. They kept the same character their whole lives until their body changed with age, and they played older roles. They even had their character officially added to their name.
A part the commedia dell’arte troupes, men always acted the women’s roles (even Juliette). This practice started in Ancient Greece, considered too dangerous for women to perform publicly.
This lasted up until the 17th century in France, with Racine, Corneille, and Molière who shared a theatre in Paris with a commedia troupe, “Les Italiens”.
Page 40
The Presocratics
“There is no way of knowing if the gods exist, or don’t exist. There are obstacles that keep me from reaching the truth, either the argument is too vague or life is too short.”
- Protagoras
Materialism
A system of thought that appeared with the Presocratic philosophers where the tangible, or material, world is studied in contrast to the transcendent.
Around the 5th century bc in Greece, an eclectic group of thinkers questioned the ultimate powers of the unpredictable gods in Olympia, and used logic and observation of the elements to determine Man's presence on earth. These strong personalities of unwavering principles were drôle and wise and popular. If they could understand the physical world through science and mathematics, they would find clues to unravel the mysteries of life.
The word philosopher, or philosophos, was allegedly formulated by Pythagoras (Philos: loving, Sophia: knowledge). The first person to qualify was undoubtedly his teacher Thales (maybe related) of Phoenician descent, and one of a group of thinkers called the Seven Sages.
These philosophers weren’t interested in the likelihood of an immaterial, secondary world. They did not disclaim that it could exist but they refused to go down a road they felt would lead nowhere. Everything one had to say about the unknown was supposition. What we think is relative to what we know in the material world, and anything outside the territory of perceived knowledge cannot be accepted as true. Only as a perception of the truth.
In the 3rd century the Greek historian Diogenes Laërtius assembled all knowledge of the ancient Greeks in ten volumes called Lives and Opinions of the Most Famous Philosophers and a Brief Summery of the Main Doctrines of All Schools. What we know of ancient Greek philosophy comes mostly from this source.
The first three
Thales (b. 636 bc)
Born and lived in Miletus, a prosperous Greek city in Asia Minor. Thales was the first to use deductive reasoning in mathematics. His mother wanted to see him married but he preferred to spend his time on a hill gazing at the stars. People thought he was odd until he successfully predicted an eclipse, determined the distance of enemy boats by calculating a shadow, and made a bundle of money by forcing the price up on beans. Thales ultimately decided that everything must originate from one element: water.
Anaximander (b. 610 bc)
One of Thales’ pupils, may have been related. He didn’t agree with the idea of water as the source of life though he did think that life originated in a moist environment. Water, according to Anaximander, was just one of the elements in the physical world. The originating force had to come from an indefinite substance that he called Aperion (infinite.) This indefinable core, which came into being through the separation of hot and cold, is a place where people will go back to after death. He anticipated the atom and Darwin’s theory of evolution by suggesting that human beings had developed from fish.
Pythagoras (b. 582 bc)
Eccentric genius and alleged creator of the Pythagorean Theorem who formed a sect similar to the Orphic cult. He studied mysticism in Egypt and encountered Zarathustra in Persia concerning the theory of duality (opposites set in motion by the forces of good and evil). Pythagoras maintained that everything was made of numbers and that each had an explicit identity. One is Intelligence, Two is Opinion, and so forth. They were also supposed to have therapeutic and esoteric qualities. Pythagoras’ controversial sect had a long list of unusual rules (don’t touch white chickens, don’t eat lima beans) and a superior attitude that didn’t go well with the local folk. He and his followers were finally chased out of town, allegedly through a field of lima beans.
