A Concise History of Theater: From Ancient Greece to the Middle Ages
Origin of Theater: The Greco-Roman World
Greek literature is the oldest surviving literature and exerted the greatest influence, though only a tenth of its production has reached us. We owe what we preserve to the learned men of Byzantium. The Greeks created a simple theater, not directed at the elite but at the citizen who demanded intelligence, trial, and no mystery, imagination, and passion.
Tragedy
The word tragedy designates tragic and horrible events. Aristotle defines it as the representation of serious action, which causes catharsis. The origin of this dramatic form is tied to the religious world (Dionysus cult) that extended into the 8th-7th centuries BC, absorbing choral singing: the dithyramb evolved from a song to a choral anthem.
Topics include Dionysus and the world of myths that feed into the tragedy. These stories relate to issues of life and death, leading to tremendous problems. Elements dominate one scene. Few authors’ periods lasted no more than one and a half hours. Costumes included masks. The stage was outdoors.
Authors of Tragedy
Aeschylus (525-456 BC)
Aeschylus contributed to the shape of the tragedy, increased the number of actors on stage to two, and reduced the choir, giving importance to the spoken word. Works: Oresteia.
Sophocles (495-406 BC)
Sophocles followed Aeschylus and increased the number of actors and introduced painted decoration. Example: Oedipus.
Euripides (480-406 BC)
Euripides belongs to the generation linked to the world of the sophists. He contributed a human standpoint and psychological characterization of the characters to the tragedy. Example: Electra.
Comedy
The origin of comedy is not so far from that of tragedy, but it is linked to phallic myths related to procreation and fertility and also to the cult of Dionysus. The choir is involved, and the action is lively and diverse in its plots, dominated by the unreal and unbelievable. Elements: unity of time and place as in tragedy, but differs in the intention (to laugh). Characters are drawn from reality, and the end is happy.
Theater in the Middle Ages
During the Middle Ages, drama as it was known in Rome and Greece faded away. The European theater that would emerge in the 16th-17th centuries has its origin in the religious world. There are several ways that others do not rehearse a cultured educated. Neither is the theater nowadays, but contributed something.
- Songs of Gestation: This is one of the first records and is in the oral part. The juggler performs before an audience and introduces characters with their own voice and had to give it life.
- Student Circles: Students read elegiac comedy. These events dramatize spicy and fun situations.
- The Religious World: Here we find files, mysteries, and religious moralities.
Religious Theater
Cars: Own argument, Christmas themes and passion.
Mysteries: 15th century and are dramatizations of biblical landscapes.
Moralities: 15th century allegorical representations of penance.
Profane Theater
It has its best expression in the farce that began in the thirteenth century with the boy and the blind.
Dances of Death
This is the most recurrent theme. The unstable situation of epidemics and wars put this subject in the center of attention because it has the power of equalizing. These themes appear in poetic, lyrical, and satirical texts, and this is related to the dance macabre. In France, it appears in the fourteenth century: death skeleton.