RULES
• PICK a play to review. Write three, numbered paragraphs, following the instructions below. (Roughly, 200-500 words total.)
• The earlier the report is posted, the better. Read all reports. The first reporter has the privilege of choosing the play (when there is a choice), or selecting one character within the same play. No report should duplicate another! So we may see reports on secondary plays and characters here, which it will be useful to read.
o You can choose a play from the current (and the prior) lesson–or a play we won’t cover in the course (from our textbook).
o –If you want to report on an external play, ask first–and link the pages or internet text of the play in your report.
• Summarize the story of your play clearly!– Emphasize the main stages of the plot, and include important characters, actions, and elements of the scenery.
o Use complete sentences and fill out paragraphs to identify topics and to add support or significance.
THREE PARAGRAPHS (or sections) by number:
1. Trace or summarize the key stages or elements of the plot of one play (with appropriate illustrations from the story).
2. Analyze ONE main character in that play (describing purpose, problems, and details).
3. Explain the theme (or purpose) of the plot (with a convincing explanation of your hypothesis, offering support from the story).
You may well need to make some discovery and technical learning in these early reports, which is what they are for. Here are key terms and techniques suitable for these reports:
• To illustrate (a category or generalization) is to give an example of what you are talking about.: to illustrate on-line classes, for example, take Intro. to Drama; then describe how it is organized, what is being read in that course, and what work is being assigned. Details fill in the illustration.
• To summarize is to collect the key elements of your essay or character or play together, in an organized paragraph, usually beginning or ending with a topic statement. The topic subject is ‘what it’s all about.’ A thesis statement (or issue question) is ‘what is the point of this material?’
• A plot is the sequence of events within a story or play, perhaps directly involving one main actor who does these things and/or responds to them. The shape of the plot may be ascending (tending toward a happy ending), descending (tending toward an unhappy ending), or mixed (following positive events with negative ones — as in a tragedy; or following negative events with positive ones — as in epic romance).
o A play usually has one main plot (with key actions, and main characters), but may have sub-plots that are shorter than or parallel to the main story (involving lesser actions, themes and/or characters), which are worth noticing.
• The key thematic focus that I would like you to keep in mind is the moral agency of a particular character in the plot, which means his responsibility for his actions and re-actions, including the final positive or negative outcome of the plot of the whole play. Does this character show development (growth) or deca

Primary Reading: Sophocles’ most famous tragedy is Oedipus Rex, the second (though first written) play in the Oedipus Trilogy:
Greek Theater
Greek theater was very different from what we call theater today. It was, first of all, part of a religious festival. To attend a performance of one of these plays was an act of worship, not entertainment or intellectual pastime. But it is difficult for us to even begin to understand this aspect of the Greek theater, because the religion in question was very different from modern religions. The god celebrated by the performances of these plays was Dionysus, a deity who lived in the wild and was known for his subversive revelry. The worship of Dionysus was associated with an ecstasy that bordered on madness. Dionysus, whose cult was that of drunkenness and sexuality, little resembles modern images of God.
A second way in which Greek theater was different from modern theater is in its cultural centrality: every citizen attended these plays. Greek plays were put on at annual festivals (at the beginning of spring, the season of Dionysus), often for as many as 15,000 spectators at once. They dazzled viewers with their special effects, singing, and dancing, as well as with their beautiful language. At the end of each year’s festivals, judges would vote to decide which playwright’s play was the best.
In these competitions, Sophocles was king. It is thought that he won the first prize at the Athenian festival eighteen times. Far from being a tortured artist working at the fringes of society, Sophocles was among the most popular and well-respected men of his day. Like most good Athenians, Sophocles was involved with the political and military affairs of Athenian democracy. He did stints as a city treasurer and as a naval officer, and throughout his life he was a close friend of the foremost statesman of the day, Pericles. At the same time, Sophocles wrote prolifically. He is believed to have authored 123 plays, only seven of which have survived.
Sophocles lived a long life, but not long enough to witness the downfall of his Athens. Toward the end of his life, Athens became
entangled in a war with other city-states jealous of its prosperity and power, a war that would end the glorious century during which Sophocles lived. This political fall also marked an artistic fall, for the unique art of Greek theater began to fade and eventually died. Since then, we have had nothing like it. Nonetheless, we still try to read it, and we often misunderstand it by thinking of it in terms of the categories and assumptions of our own arts. Greek theater still needs to be read, but we must not forget that, because it is so alien to us, reading these plays calls not only for analysis, but also for imagination.
Antigone
Antigone was probably the first of the three Theban plays that Sophocles wrote, although the events dramatized in it happen last. Antigone is one of the first heroines in literature, a woman who fights against a male power structure, exhibiting greater bravery than any of the men who scorn her. Antigone is not only a feminist play but a radical one as well, making rebellion against authority appear splendid and noble. If we think of Antigone as something merely ancient, we make the same error as the Nazi censors who allowed Jean Anouilh’s adaptation of Antigone to be performed, mistaking one of the most powerful texts of the French Resistance for something harmlessly academic.
Oedipus the King
Oedipus: The protagonist of Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus. Oedipus becomes king of Thebes before the action of Oedipus the King begins. He is renowned for his intelligence and his ability to solve riddles—he saved the city of Thebes and was made its king by solving the riddle of the Sphinx, the supernatural being that had held the city captive. Yet Oedipus is stubbornly blind to the truth about himself. His name’s literal meaning (“swollen foot”) is the clue to his identity—he was taken from the house of Laius as a baby and left in the mountains with his feet bound together. On his way to Thebes, he killed his biological father, not knowing who he was, and proceeded to marry Jocasta, his biological mother.
The story of Oedipus was well known to Sophocles’ audience. Oedipus arrives at Thebes a stranger and finds the town under the curse of the Sphinx, who will not free the city unless her riddle is answered. Oedipus solves the riddle and, since the king has recently been murdered, becomes the king and marries the queen. In time, he comes to learn that he is actually a Theban, the king’s son, cast out of Thebes as a baby. He has killed his father and married his mother. Horrified, he blinds himself and leaves Thebes forever.
The story was not invented by Sophocles. Quite the opposite: the play’s most powerful effects often depend on the fact that the audience already knows the story. Since the first performance of Oedipus Rex, the story has fascinated critics just as it fascinated Sophocles. Aristotle used this play and its plot as the supreme example of tragedy. Sigmund Freud famously based his theory of the “Oedipal Complex” on this story, claiming that every boy has a latent desire to kill his father and sleep with his mother. The story of Oedipus has given birth to innumerable fascinating variations, but we should not forget that this play is one of the variations, not the
original story itself.
Oedipus (In-Depth Analysis): Oedipus is a man of swift action and great insight. At the opening of Oedipus the King, we see that these qualities make him an excellent ruler who anticipates his subjects’ needs. When the citizens of Thebes beg him to do something about the plague, for example, Oedipus is one step ahead of them—he has already sent Creon to the oracle at Delphi for advice. But later, we see that Oedipus’s habit of acting swiftly has a dangerous side. When he tells the story of killing the band of travelers
who attempted to shove him off the three-way crossroads, Oedipus shows that he has the capacity to behave rashly.
At the beginning of Oedipus the King, Oedipus is hugely confident, and with good reason. He has saved Thebes from the curse of the Sphinx and become king virtually overnight. He proclaims his name proudly as though it were itself a healing charm: “Here I am myself— / you all know me, the world knows my fame: / I am Oedipus” (7–9). By the end of this tragedy, however, Oedipus’s name will have become a curse, so much so that, in Oedipus at Colonus, the Leader of the Chorus is terrified even to hear it and cries: “You, you’re that man?” (238).
Oedipus’s swiftness and confidence continue to the very end of Oedipus the King. We see him interrogate Creon, call for Tiresias, threaten to banish Tiresias and Creon, call for the servant who escaped the attack on Laius, call for the shepherd who brought him to Corinth, rush into the palace to stab out his own eyes, and then demand to be exiled. He is constantly in motion, seemingly trying to keep pace with his fate, even as it goes well beyond his reach.
Oedipus at Colonus
Beginning with the arrival of Oedipus in Colonus after years of wandering, Oedipus at Colonus ends with Antigone setting off toward her own fate in Thebes. In and of itself, Oedipus at Colonus is not a tragedy; it hardly even has a plot in the normal sense of the word. Thought to have been written toward the end of Sophocles’ life and the conclusion of the Golden Age of Athens. Oedipus at Colonus, the last of the Oedipus plays, is a quiet and religious play, one that does not attempt the dramatic fireworks of the others. Written after Antigone, the play for which it might be seen as a kind of prequel, Oedipus at Colonus seems not to look forward to the suffering that envelops that play but back upon it, as though it has already been surmounted.
In Oedipus at Colonus, however, Oedipus seems to have begun to accept that much of his life is out of his control. He spends most of his time sitting rather than acting. Most poignant are lines 825–960, where Oedipus gropes blindly and helplessly as Creon takes his children from him. In order to get them back, Oedipus must rely wholly on Theseus.
Once he has given his trust to Theseus, Oedipus seems ready to find peace. At Colonus, he has at last forged a bond with someone, found a kind of home after many years of exile. The single most significant action in Oedipus at Colonus is Oedipus’s deliberate move offstage to die. The final scene of the play has the haste and drive of the beginning of Oedipus the King, but this haste, for Oedipus at least, is toward peace rather than horror. [Sparknotes/lit/Oedipus.]

Secondary Reading: We have three escerpts of Roman drama, considered lesser in quality to the Greek tradition, yet highly influential to the tradition of Western drama.
Structure of Ancient Roman Drama
Roman drama has five acts:
first: introduces the two plots
second: intensifies the complications
third: contains some climactic action
fourth: reintroduces an element foreshadowed earlier
fifth: resolves everything

Roman Drama
The Roman theater never approached the heights of the Greek, and the Romans themselves had little interest in serious dramatic endeavors, being drawn toward sensationalism and spectacle. The earliest Roman dramatic attempts were simply translations from the Greek. Gnaeus Naevius (c.270–c.199 B.C.) and his successors imitated Greek models in tragedies that never transcended the level of violent melodrama. Even the nine tragedies of the philosopher and statesman Seneca are gloomy and lurid, emphasizing the sensational aspects of Greek myth; they are noted primarily for their inflated rhetoric. Seneca became an important
influence on Renaissance tragedy, but it is unlikely that his plays were intended for more than private readings.
Although Roman tragedy produced little of worth, a better judgment may be passed on the comedies of Plautus and Terence. Plautus incorporated native Roman elements into the plots and themes of Menander, producing plays characterized by farce, intrigue, romance, and sentiment. Terence was a more polished stylist who wrote for and about the upper classes and dispensed with the element of farce.
The Roman preference for spectacle and the Christian suppression of drama led to a virtual cessation of dramatic production during the decline of the Roman Empire. Pantomimes accompanied by a chorus developed out of tragedy, and comic mimes were popular until the 4th cent. A.D. (see pantomime). It is this mime tradition, carried on by traveling performers, that provided the theatrical continuity between the ancient world and the medieval. The Roman mime tradition has been suggested as the origin of the commedia dell’ arte of the Italian Renaissance, but this conjecture has never been proved.http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/ent/A0857814.html
Titus Maccius Plautus
Sometime around 254 B.C., in the tiny mountain village of Sarsina high in the Apennines of Umbria, ancient Rome’s
best-known playwright was born–Titus Maccius Plautus. Born “Plautus” or “splay-foot”, he apparently managed to
escape his backwoods village at a young age–perhaps by joining one of the itinerant theatrical troupes which
commonly traveled from village to village performing short boisterous farces.
We know, however, that at some point the young Plautus gave up his acting career to become a Roman soldier,
and this is probably when he was exposed to the delights of the Greek stage, specifically Greek New Comedy and
the plays of Menander. Sometime later, he tried his hand as a merchant, but rashly trusted his wares to the sea and
at the age of 45, he found himself penniless and reduced to a wandering miller, trudging through the streets with a
hand-mill, grinding corn for householders.
Meanwhile, translations of Greek New Comedy had come into vogue and Plautus–who remembered the comedies
of Menander from his days as a soldier in Southern Italy–decided to try his hand at writing for the stage. His
earliest plays, Addictus and Saturio, were written while he still made a living with his hand-mill. Soon, however, his
comedies began to suit the public taste and Plautus was able to retire his hand-mill and devote himself to writing
full-time.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Plautus plays were no mere translation of Menander. He adapted the rough and
tumble colloquy of the environments he knew best–the military camp and the marketplace–wild and boisterous like
the Roman farces he may have performed in as a young man.
In those days, plays were never performed alone. They were presented at public celebrations and had to compete
with chariot races, horse races, boxing matches, circuses, etc … Since a close translation of a play by the refined
Menander would hold little interest for a rowdy Roman crowd, Plautus quickly parted company with the Greek
original. He generally took only the outline of the plot, the characters, and selected segments of dialogue–then
stepped out on his own. His objective was to entertain. At all costs, he kept the pot of action boiling, the stream of
gags and puns and cheap slapstick flowing. Anything to make the audience laugh and keep them from peeking in on
the boxing match nextdoor! To this end, Plautus often included scenes in song and dance. Unfortunately, the musical
accompaniments to his plays have now been lost.
In all, Plautus composed approximately 130 pieces–21 of which have survived to this day. He was eventually
granted citizenship and given permission to assume three names like a true-born Roman. The name he chose for
himself was Titus Maccius (“clown”) Plautus.
He continued to some extent the social satire of Aristophanes. His Miles Gloriosus refers to the imprisonment of
the poet Naevius for satirizing the aristocracy. His Cistellaria alludes to the conflict with Carthage. Epidicius and
Aulularia refer to the repeal of the puritanic Oppian Laws. And Captivi and Bacchides mention the wars in
Greece and Magnesia. For the most part, however, he preferred the style of the more recent Greek writers like
Menander. Along with his younger Roman counterpart, Terence, Plautus kept Greek New Comedy alive for later
generations of theatregoers.
Plautus’ works have been adapted by many later playwrights. His Amphitryo was the basis for Giraudoux’s
Amphitryon 38. Menaechmi or The Menaechmus Twins inspired, among others, Shakespeare’s The Comedy of
Errors and Rodgers’ and Hart’s The Boys from Syracuse. The Pot of Gold became Moliere’s The Miser. And
Pseudolus, Casina and several other plays were combined in Stephen Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened on
the Way to the Forum.
http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc21.html

Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Born in Spain in 4 BC, Lucius Annaeus Seneca was educated in Rome and became famous
not only as a playwright, but as an orator and philosopher as well. He served as tutor to the
young Nero, and when the boy became Emperor in 54 AD, he retained Seneca as his
advisor. For several years, Seneca exerted a calming influence on the young emperor. After
he retired in AD 62, however, he lost favor with his former pupil, and in AD 65, he was
accused of conspiring against Nero and was forced to commit suicide.
Of the plays Seneca left behind, at least 8 have survived including The Trojan Women, Oedipus, Medea, The Mad Hercules, The Phoenician Women, Phaedra, Agamemnon and Thyestes. Two more plays, Octavia and Hercules on Oeta have
sometimes been attributed to Seneca although many scholars doubt their authenticity. Hercules on Oeta is generally considered to be an unremarkable imitation of Senecan tragedy, and Octavia appears to have been written after Nero’s death, thus discounting Seneca as the author.
All eight of the authentic Senecan tragedies are adapted from the work of other playwrights. Oedipus is adapted
from Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, Agamemnon is adapted from the play by Aeschylus, Thyestes is adapted
from an unknown–probably Latin–source, and the rest are adapted from the plays of Euripides. Seneca never
allowed himself to be bound, however, by the original text, freely discarding scenes, rearranging, and using only the
material that he found useful.
It is not certain whether Seneca’s plays were actually performed in Roman theatres or whether they were simply
intended for recitation before a small private audience. Some scholars have suggested that the wealthy Seneca
would have considered it beneath him to write for the theatre, and the plays themselves often show a lack of
concern for the physical requirements of the stage. However, with a little imagination, they are certainly stageable,
and it is undeniable that Seneca’s plays had a profound influence on the development of the tragic form in later
times, particularly in the age of Shakespeare.
Seneca’s tragedies are divided into five episodes separated by choral interludes. This five-act form would become
the standard during the Renaissance. Another of Seneca’s conventions, the use of soliloquies and asides, would also
prove integral to the evolution of Renaissance drama.
Seneca was perhaps best known, however, for his scenes of violence and horror. In Oedipus, for example, Jocasta
rips open her womb, and in Thyestes, the bodies of children are served at a banquet. Other writers would later
imitate these scenes of violence and horror. Consider, for example, John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi in which
the Duchess’ enemies create a ghastly wax scene of her murdered husband and children. Seneca’s fascination with
magic, death, and the supernatural would also be imitated by many Elizabethan playwrights including, among others,
Christopher Marlowe.
http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc50.html
Primary Reading: The late medieval play Everyman describes the usual life of a human being on this earth, and prescribes the limits and ends of such a life, by fairly traditional Christian theology. morality play, form of medieval drama that developed in the late 14th
cent. and flourished through the 16th cent. The characters in the morality were personifications of good and evil usually involved in a struggle for a man’s soul. The form was generally static, but it contributed significantly to the secularization of European drama. The first known moralities were called the Paternoster plays. The greatest English morality is Everyman.
Everyman (after 1485)
Everyman is the best surviving example of the type of Medieval drama known as the morality play. Moralities evolved side by side with the mystery plays, although they were composed individually and not in cycles. The moralities employed allegory to dramatize the moral struggle Christianity envisions universal in every individual.
Everyman, a short play of some 900 lines, portrays a complacent Everyman who is informed by Death of his approaching end. The play shows the hero’s progression from despair and fear of death to a “Christian resignation that is the prelude to redemption.”1 First, Everyman is deserted by his false friends: his casual companions, his kin, and his wealth. He falls back on his Good Deeds, his Strength, his Beauty, his Intelligence, and his Knowledge. These assist him in making his Book of Accounts, but at the end, when he must go to the grave, all desert him save his Good Deeds alone. The play makes its grim point that we can take with us from this world nothing that we have received, only what we have given.
The play was written near the end of the fifteenth century. It is probably a translation from a Flemish play, Elckerlijk (or Elckerlyc) first printed in 1495, although there is a possibility that Everyman is the original, the Flemish play the translation. There are four surviving versions of Everyman, two of them fragmentary.
[Jokinen, Anniina. “Everyman: An Introduction.” Luminarium. 7 Jan. 2002. <http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/intro.htm>]

Dr. Desmet (Winter 1997): “Everyman and the Parable of the Talents”
Death refers directly to the Parable of the Talents when he demands from Everyman his “reckoning” or account book (page 367 line 102-109). Everyman must tell God “how thou hast spent thy life and in what wise” (line 109).
The Parable of the Talents therefore refers to the metaphor “life is a precious possession.” If you have many talents, you must “invest” them wisely–use them as you should use material goods, in a charitable way. If you have a few talents, you must invest them wisely as well. Even if you have only one talent, you must invest it wisely and do good in the world with that talent.
In an important way, the play Everyman demonstrates the ways in which a person who does have talents (Good Deeds that are trapped in the ground) wastes them, like the servant who buries his one talent in the ground and is cast into the dark, the “place of wailing and grinding of teeth.” According to the play’s allegory, what forces in everyday human life cause us Everypersons to waste our talents?
Secondary Reading: Five hundred years before, a nun named Hrosvitha wrote a closet drama called Dulcitius.
Hrosvitha: the Voice of Gandesheim
The Saxon Hrosvitha was a Benedictine nun who lived during the Ottonian period, in the early- to mid-900’s AD. She was one of many creative cloistered ladies from the medieval period. Freed from the duties of wife and mother by virtue of their religious lives, many women recieved an education that was unheard of in more mundane spheres; Hrosvitha was no exception. A full, detailed biography of her is not known, but in some of her works, she provides a few bits of information about herself and her environment, from which we can glean or extrapolate her life’s circumstances.
Her name can be spelled any of a variety of ways; hence, readers may find her being called Hrosvit, Rosvitha, Roswitha, and so on. Hrosvita herself noted that her name derives from Germanic roots, and means “Strong shout”.
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