Tragedy Scholars

Question 1

The Ancient Audience

Edith Hall - marginalised people impacting society

Answer 1

• '’Non-Athenians, women & slaves, are permitted by the milticoval form of tragedy to address the public in the theatre as they never could in reality’’

Question 2

Greek Theatre & Performance

Edith Hall - women & marriage

Answer 2

• '’every single transgressive woman in tragedy is temporarily or permanently husbandless’’

Question 3

Oedipus

Garvie - reason for modern appeal

Answer 3

• '’Much of its appeal for modern readers may derive from its resemblance in some respects to a detective novel’’

Question 4

Oedipus

Edith Hall - Anagnorisis/slave character

Answer 4

• '’perhaps the most famous anagnorisis (recognition) in tragedy, Oedipus’ recognition of himself, is the direct result of the extorted testimony of a slave’’

Question 5

Oedipus

Garvie - Oedipus & Tiresias

Answer 5

• '’Oedipus is ignorant but determined to know, whereas Tiresias knows the truth but is determined to suppress it.”
• “Tiresias is physically blind, while Oedipus, the physically sighted, knows nothing’’

Question 6

Oedipus

Garvie - Oedipus as the victor?

Answer 6

• '’In one sense, Oedipus does not fall at all
• He set out to uncover the truth, and by the end of the play he has succeeded in his quest.
• He never says, ‘I wish I had not found out’; for he has gained what he values most - knowledge, no matter what it costs’’

Question 7

Oedipus

Higgins - Athenian impiety

Answer 7

• '’The ridicule of the prophet and his prophecy reflects a change in Athens during the fifth century B.C., when Sophists began to challenge the authority of spiritual power’’

Question 8

Oedipus

Fagles - Secular play

Answer 8

• Oedipus is his own destroyer
• Oedipus is an epitome of the Athenian character a man of action, swift and vigorous
• Oedipus the King is the dramatic embodiment of the creative vigor and intellectual daring of the 5th Century Athenian spirit
• There is not one supernatural event in it; it is the most relentlessly secular of Sophocles’ tragedies

Question 9

Oedipus

Goldhill - paradox

Answer 9

• Oedipus is a paradox in himself - he is both a saviour and a monster

Question 10

The Bacchae

Rosie Wyles - Earthquake/Fallen Palace

Answer 10

• The house is transformed by this scene from a symbol of royal authority to a symbol of Dionysus’ power

Question 11

The Bacchae

Garvie - Dionysus

Answer 11

• The most striking paradox (of the play) is that the god who throughout the play promises joy will at the end produce only suffering and horror

Question 12

The Bacchae

Hannah Roisman - Pentheus desires to see the sexual activity he condemns

Answer 12

• '’We see the young king lose a struggle with his own irrational impulses, as he had earlier lost the battle with external irrationality
• He is both repulsed by sex and at the same time unconsciously desiring it;
• Dionysus is aware of this weakness and takes advantage of it by releasing in him exactly what Pentheus is trying to suppress’’

Question 13

The Bacchae

Hannah Roisman - Agave

Answer 13

Agave’s recognition scene is one of the most painful and harrowing scenes in Greek tragedy

Question 14

The Bacchae

Sophie Mills - Dionysus & Pentheus

Answer 14

• Paradoxically, Dionysus is a god in human form; Pentheus is a human but aspires to be like a god in human form

Question 15

The Bacchae

Goldhill - Bacchic Chorus

Answer 15

• '’The chorus of the Bacchae focuses on the paradoxes and problems of dionysiac worship-uncertain tensions between potentials of human reason and order + the potential for destruction, violence, madness in human society’’