Greek Tragedy

What is tragedy? What are the issues to grapple with if we are to understand it? What was it like to live in 5th-century B.C. Athens, the time and place that saw tragedy's birth? How and why, precisely, did tragedy originate?

What cultural developments are reflected on the tragic stage? Is tragedy imaginable apart from Athenian democracy? What was the character of the festivals at which tragedy was performed? Can the handling of female characters in tragedy teach us anything about women's place in Athens?

Dionysus is the god at whose festivals tragedies were performed. Did tragedy grow out of rituals in his honor, other types of rituals, or from some other source? Are there other reasons for the link between Dionysus and theater?

If you could go back to 5th-century Athens to attend a tragic performance, what would you see and hear?

Aeschylus made huge contributions to the artistic development of tragedy. How have his seven surviving plays come down to us? How can we study his three earliest surviving plays to grasp not only his awesome gifts, but the staging and theatrical traditions he was building?

In this lecture, you examine the two stories that lie behind Aeschylus's trilogy. The tales of the Trojan War and the accursed House of Atreus were part of the cultural coin of 5th-century Athens, and are essential to understanding The Oresteia and other extant tragedies.

Can guilt be inherited? How does Aeschylus use the characters of Cassandra and Clytaemestra to set up images and themes that will recur throughout the trilogy?

How does Aeschylus carry the major themes of justice, blood-guilt, vengeance, and conflicting moral duties through Libation Bearers, and how does he finally resolve them in Eumenides? What seems to be Aeschylus's final word on the gender issues raised by these plays?

Aeschylus's stagecraft in the Oresteia included the skene building, chariots, royal purple tapestries, a remarkable device known as an ekkyklema, and the actors playing the Furies to create theatrical effects that left his audiences powerfully moved.

Each of the two younger tragedians wrote a play called Electra, and Aeschylus treated the same material in Libation Bearers. The way is open for a fascinating three-sided comparison.

Sophocles is famous for creating isolated heroes. What is known of his life and contributions to stage art? What can we learn from a close examination of Ajax, perhaps his earliest surviving play?

Why is Sophocles's Antigone, like so many other surviving Greek tragedies, set not in Athens but in Thebes? What does Sophocles reveal about conflicts between family and city, divine and human law, human greatness and human finitude?

How does Sophocles handle the well-known story of Oedipus, king of Thebes? How is the work patterned to enhance the sense of inevitability? Can we apply "realistic" standards of plausibility to the actions of Oedipus and Jocasta?

Oedipus the King has inspired influential and distinct readings by Aristotle, Freud, and others. Is this drama about fate versus free will? Is it about the human search for knowledge—a theme perhaps suggested to Sophocles by the Sophists? Here's a chance to weigh the several views.

Both Women of Trachis by Sophocles and Heracles by Euripides take the greatest of all Greek heroes as a subject. How does each depart from the "usual" version of the Heraclean story? Is Heracles a "likely" candidate for tragic treatment?

One of Euripides's most famous tragedies is Medea. Is it significant that Medea is not a Hellene? What does her story, in the hands of Euripides, imply about Athenian views of sexuality and reproduction?

In Hippolytus, why does Euripides invert the story of the household of Theseus? What does this say about Athenian attitudes toward sexuality, and about the role of the gods in human life?

In Hecuba and Trojan Women, Euripides paints harrowing portraits of war's awful toll. The Peloponnesian War was in full swing when these plays were performed. How does Euripides treat the conquered women of Troy? Why did he take the experience of the Trojans as his subject?

Written late in both the Peloponnesian War and the life of their author, Iphigenia in Tauris and Orestes differ in tone, but resemble one another in their reversal of many standard aspects of tragedy. What should we make of these "anti-tragic" tragedies?

In the late Iphigenia at Aulis, how does Euripides modify his earlier treatments of the old Trojan War narrative? Bacchae, his final play, is the only Greek tragedy to feature Dionysus. It emphasizes the terrible price one man must pay for resisting the power of this latecomer among Hellenic gods.

This final lecture on Euripides turns to one of the most vexing critical questions about him: What was his attitude toward the traditional gods?

In this lecture we return to Sophocles, who died a few months after Euripides. Philoctetes is especially remarkable for its portrayal of Odysseus and its "happy" ending. Oedipus at Colonus casts Oedipus in the role of tutelary hero and also paints a portrait of Athens in 406, the year Sophocles wrote the play.

Prometheus Bound is a famous tragedy often attributed to Aeschylus. Rhesus, far more obscure, is sometimes said to be by Euripides. Both are worth learning about, whoever wrote them. Also worthy of consideration as a source on tragedy are the comedies of Aristophanes.

The product of a very specific time and place, tragedy has had an extraordinary history. Highlights include the Roman plays of Seneca; tragedy's influence on Italian opera, Shakespeare, and Racine; and the amazing modern revival of classical Greek tragedy since the 19th century, which continues into our own day.