Masters, Servants and Orders in Greek Tragedy: A Study of Some Aspects of Dramatic Technique and Convention 0719012961, 9780719012969

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MASTERS, SERVANTS AND ORDERS IN GREEK TRAGEDY

0

A study of some aspects of dramatic technique and convention

DAVID BAIN

MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS

©

David Bain 1981

Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road Manchester M 13 9PL British Library cataloguing in publication data Bain, David Masters, servants and orders in Greek tragedy. - (Publications of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Manchester; no. 26) 1. Greek drama (Tragedy) - History and criticism I. Title II. Series 882'.01 PA3131 ISBN 0-7190-1296-1

Phototypeset in Y.I.P. Times by Western Printing Services Ltd, Bristol Printed and bound in Great Britain at The Pitman Press, Bath

CONTENTS

page

PREFACE

vi

A 'grammatical' rule

1

Countermanded

orders

8

III

Changed circumstances

14

IV

Ordering the unthinkable

21

The action freezes

24

Doubtful and controversial passages

30

Comedy - a contrast

44

I II

V VI

VII

1

EXCURSUS

11 -

EDITIONS

staging of Soph. O.K. 826-47

48

The commands at Aiskh. Kho. 877ff

56

-The

EXCURSUS

OF INDIVIDUAL

PLAYS

65

BOOKS AND ARTICLES

68

INDEX OF SUBJECTS DISCUSSED

71

INDEX OF PASSAGES DISCUSSED

72

INDEX OF GREEK WORDS

73

PREFACE

It would be presumptuous for one who has written a short study upon a small topic to seek to detain the reader with a selfjustificatory preface. I shall confine myself to two observations. My decision to strive for brevity may have given my work a somewhat dogmatic appearance particularly where it deals with the question of the relationship between words and action on the tragic stage. I avoided theoretical discussion of this topic because I felt that such discussion would unbalance the book and because there already exist what seem to me adequate defences of the position I adopt. I recognise, however, that there is still more to be said upon the subject. Secondly, as regards my choice for study of such an apparently minor aspect of Greek tragedy, I make no apology. I believe that it is only after first studying the parts of tragedy that we can move towards obtaining a convincing picture of the whole and I find that a great deal of what is currently written about tragedy hy avoiding the particular and exalting generality does little to assist us towards that goal. My work was complete and had been accepted for publication when I first encountered D. J. Mastronarde's remarkable book, Contact and Discontinuity (for an account of which the reader is referred to my notice in a forthcoming issue of The Classical Review). I decided that his approach and goals were sufficiently different from mine to allow me to avoid radical revision of my own work. In one or two places where his arguments seemed superior to mine I suppressed or re-wrote my original discussions and throughout my work I have, where appropriate, added references to him. Had I been starting my study afresh, I would certainly have discussed and made use of his newly evolved descriptive terminology. My thanks must go to the staff of the Manchester University Press for their dispatch and courtesy in dealing with the production of this book. I am also grateful to Professor H. D. Jocelyn for his encouragement and assistance.

I

A 'GRAMMATICAL'

RULE

Study of the corpus of Attic tragedy reveals many recurring p~tterns of action. Although it would be mistaken to deny the tragedians an ability to induce tension or to surprise an audience, there is a degree of predictability in their dramatic technique. A new-found papyrus of tragedy is often 'placeable' within the lost play from which it came. On very little evidence we are able to say with some confidence what sort of scene it contains, what has preceded it and what was to come. Likewise we have the capacity to reject as subjective and unlikely certain interpretations of the action in Greek tragedy put forward by modern scholars by pointing out that what they are suggesting would be contrary to the normal technique or in other words would 'break the rules'. 1 This situation is happily described by Fraenkel's well-known saying: 'for Greek tragedy there exists ... something like a grammar of dramatic technique' (Fraenkel in hisAgamemnon-commentary III 305). In formulating this analogy Fraenkel opened the way to a new field of study, a study that might proceed in the same way as the study of the analogue, the grammar of a language. The analogy between a grammar of a language, particularly a language like ancient Greek, and the 'grammar' of Greek tragic technique may be worked out in several aspects. The 'rules' of both grammars are reconstructed from attentive reading of ancient texts. Rules in languages (as in games) generally presuppose modifications, exceptions and in the last resort violation. Grammars have tended to be written from a strict, prescriptive viewpoint and in the case of the Greek language certain strictly-defined rules have been found on further examination and with an accretion of new evidence to be violated too frequently for it to be worthwhile considering them rules at all. On the other hand some rules do appear to hold good and those passages in which they are violated are either to be regarded as solecisms or else as being only apparent violations, arising from textual corruption. The same may be true of the gram-

2 Masters, servants and orders in Greek tragedy mar of dramatic technique (we must bear in mind, however, that the evidence from which such a grammar·would be constructed is vastly less (and much less varied) than that on which a Greek grammar is founded). Any given rule must be tested as to its formulation and any exceptions apparent or real located and classified. In formulating and testing rules we must allow for innovation and occasional audacity on the part of the artist just as we would or should in the case of a real grammar take into account linguistic innovation and inventiveness. Also since our tragic texts have undergone a long and by no means accident-free transmission we may expect to find that some breaches of the rules are to be accounted for as solecisms arising from textual corruption or deliberate interference in the text of the great tragedians by persons who did not properly understand their technique. 2 This study is devoted to one of these rules in the grammar of dramatic technique. The rule (henceforth 'the rule') - hardly a discovery, it has been invoked more or less explicitly before by commentators and critics 3 - is this: When an order is given to mutes on stage, the order is carried out 4 with little or no delay. 'Mutes' in this case does not include named characters who do not have a speaking part 5 (like for example Akamas in Euripides' Herakleidai), but denotes nameless extras who singly or in groups are given commands. These people are generally attendants, occasionally children. One might say that in most cases the dramatic function of mutes of this kind is merely to be ordered about (in some cases they will add to the visual spectacle 6 and of course they sometimes function incidentally as stage hands by shifting props). 7 With attendants practically the only other occasions (apart from some entrance announcements) 8 where account of them is taken in the text are when their presence is used to back up a threat 9 (Eur. Med. 335f. Eur.Antigone P. Oxy 3317.2, and Soph. Phil. 981ff). 10 The range of orders given to such persons is reasonably varied, but no great demands are made. They are summoned, 11 told to leave (sometimes with further instructions about what to do when they have left), 12 ordered to take someone away, 13 to enter the stage building, 14 and fetch someone out, 15 to accompany someone in, 16 to seize 17 or release someone. 18 More varied instructions include the call to get ready to fight, 19 the request to lay a 'carpet' ,20 to remove a king's sandals, 21 to spread out a garment that had been used as a net, 22 to support and raise someone who has fallen. 23

A 'grammatical' rule

3

It is enough to note the passages cited as examples of types of order in the previous paragraph to see that 'the rule' is valid. In each instance it is quite clear explicitly or implicitly from the ensuing action that the orders given have been carried out. Rules in grammar as in games tend to be arbitrary. With this particular rule of dramatic technique, however, we move away from arbitrariness and towards a reflection of real-life human behaviour. There need be no great mystery about our rule. Most of the orders received by mutes are given by social superiors 24(in the case of children by those with greater authority, parents, etc.). Hence it is no great surprise that they should be carried out. More importantly perhaps than the relative social positions of the orderer and the ordered is their dramatic status. This brings us back into the arbitrary world of convention. Tragedy puts restrictions on those who may speak. Characters who have speaking parts may dispute an order whatever their status. Non-speaking characters have by definition no verbal comeback. Gesture would be their only means of conveying to the orderer ( and to the audience) their qualms, hesitations or defiance and it is axiomatic that in the production of Greek tragedy significant gesture is always signalled verbally - that is to say if someone makes a gesture on stage signifying refusal, another person on stage would comment on it. 25It is always possible that there were scenes in tragedy where the disobedience of mutes was so signalled (attempts to introduce unsignalled dumbshow by mutes into extant tragedy are unconvincing and methodologically unsound -cf. below p. 36 on Eur. El. 358ff. and p. 50 on Soph. O.K. 832). Even so one may doubt whether this was at all common. Puzzlement about the behaviour of mutes or keen interest in their reactions would be surprising given their extremely lowly dramatic status. Extras are the lowest of the low in Greek tragedy, their function is, as we have seen, restricted, they are nameless (in contrast to the mutes of comedy) and it is only very rarely that they are in any way individualised.26 It is often the case that their presence only becomes known to the reader well after their entrance and in many instances it is fair to assume that they were present as attendants but never mentioned in the text. 27They are indeed almost 'part of the scenery' (these remarks do not apply to children whose presence is often exploited emotionally). 28One has only to compare a similar type of scene where in one case we have a mute actor and in another one with a speaking part playing the same sort of role to see clearly the

4

Masters, servants and orders in Greek tragedy

difference m status and dramatic importance between mute and actor (e.g. the entrance of Teiresias in Soph. 0. T. where he is accompanied by a mute boy and in Eur. Phoin. where Menoikeus brings him in). As was remarked above, rules in the grammar of a language are often arbitrary ( or at least appear to be) as are rules in games (in Rugby football one may not pass the ball forward, in Soccer one cannot, unless one is the goalkeeper, pick up the ball within the field of play). Arbitrary rules, however, often have exceptions or qualifications which are not so arbitrary, which emend in a commonsense manner the arbitrary rule to suit particular circumstances. In golf one may not in principle interfere with one's ball except on the green - 'the ball must be played as it lies on the fairway' - but there are exceptions made to cope rationally with certain situations that may arise: if it lies beside one's opponent's ball in such a way as to prevent him making his stroke it may be marked, when fairways are soft the rule may be suspended, and so on. In examining the exceptions to the rule of dramatic technique concerning mutes, which we saw to be non-arbitrary being ultimately based on observation of human behaviour, and arbitrary to the extent that tragedy decides that there should be mutes in the first place, we may look for similar contingencies which require modification of the rule. All the time we must be aware of the audience and ask in what circumstances is any breach of the rule acceptable to the audience. This is partly a question again of human behaviour - the ability of a dramatist to make his characters' motivation instantly comprehensible to his audience - and partly a question of dramatic convention since tragedy 29 does not allow all of the experience of its audience to-be exploited on stage, regarding some areas of the experience of the fifth-century spectator as too commonplace and undignified 30 for such exploitation (see below, Chapter 7). NOTES 1 For example, acquaintance with the technique of Greek tragedians with regard to silent actors rules out the suggestion of Kitto ( 1956, 167f.) that in Soph. Ant. Kreon does not exit at 780, but is present 'at the back, utterly unmoved' (op. cit. 170) throughout the eras-hymn and the kommos. Dramatic significance of the kind postulated by Kitto for Kreon's presence, 'he may have nothing to do during these hundred verses of lyrics, but he is

A 'grammatical' rule

5

far from dramatically ineffective', smacks of the modern stage and modern direction. On the ancient stage silent actors are only significant when adverted to in the text (see Taplin, 1972). 2 One sympathises with Knox (1978) reviewing Taplin when he says 'it will appear to many that new criteria for impugning the text of the dramatists are something that we can do without ... ', but in principle I believe that textual corruption is just as likely to be revealed by aberrant dramatic technique as by aberrant syntax or metre (which is not to say I accept all the diagnoses of corruption put forward by Taplin). 3 Cf. U. von Wilamowitz (1875, 243), Fraenkel (1963, 102), Zuntz (1960, 207), Kannicht on Eur. He/. 1410-17, Reeve (1972a, 54 n. 1), Bain (1979, 266, n. 6). See now Mastronarde (1979, 105ff.). 4 One might add in modification 'or an effort is made to carry it out'. See below, p. 36. 5 On these see Richter (1934) and Stanley-Porter (1973). 6 The anecdote found in Plutarch, Phokion 19.2-3 about a fourthcentury actor who demanded a large number of attendants when playing a queen is relevant here. See Taplin (1977, 79f.) on the significance of the absence of such attendants with royal personages. 7 See below, pp. 8, 36 and compare (the only instance of an address to extras in satyr-plays) Eur. Kykl. 83f.). 8 For announced entrances of non-speaking characters unaccompanied by speaking characters see Hamilton (1978, p. 81). He does not collect passages like Soph. O.K. 722f. where the new (speaking) entrant's entourage is mentioned (cf. Soph. Ant. 382, 0. T. 298 - an allusive plural? Later, 444, Teiresias addresses a single naic -0. T. 1114, Phil. 539 on which see below, note 26, Eur. Alk. 612, Med. 46ff., Her. 442ff., Ion, 1257). Eur. I.A. 1359 is a kind of delayed entrance announcement. 9 Taplin ( 1977, 231) interprets Aiskh. Hik. 1022 vnoc5i,ac0ec5'onac5oi/ µ00c as an appeal to mute attendants 'listen to this!' It is worth noting that there are no parallels for such an appeal to attendants (the treatment of Eur. Or. 128f. in the scholia is mistaken, see Bain, 1975, 20). I believe with Johansen that we have a X opix onac5wv singing in 1034-61. A recent advocate of a divided Danaid chorus, McCall (1976, 129 n. 11 ), is mistaken in his treatment of onacvv which is always masculine in tragedy. 10 The text of Soph. Phil. 981ff. is doubtful and has not been satisfactorily emended (see Dawe, 1978, 132). There is no real parallel for the absence of a subject for creA06c1 in 983 (commands like Soph. Ai. 593 adduced by Dawe are quite regular cf. Aiskh. Kho. 983, Soph. Ant. 491, Soph. El. 1123). 11 Soph. Ai. 541f., Eur. Med. 894ff., 950, Eur. Hik. 811, Eur. Bakch. 1216. 12 Aiskh. Seven 30ff., Soph. Ai. 1402ff., Soph. Ant. 1108ff., Soph. 0. T. 142, 1169, Soph. O.K. 1130f., Eur. Med. 969ff., Eur. Hkld. 1053, Eur. El. 1135ff. (with a carriage), Eur. Tro. 1246, Eur. He/. 1390, 1431, Eur. Bakch. 346, 352, [E.] Rhes. 877. 13 Soph. Ant. 1320, 1339, Soph. Trakh. 1264, Eur. Hkld. 1050, Eur. 0

6

Masters, servants and orders in Greek tragedy

Hek. 1282, Eur. Tro. 786ff. (Taplin, 1977, 91 n. 2 follows the mss in giving 782-9 to Andromache keeping vµer:ipo1c·in 788. I believe that the command is better in the mouth ofTalthybios: Andromache has shot her bolt at 779 and )..aµ[Javer:ewould be anticlimactic spoken by her after 774ff.), Eur. Hik. 1104, Eur. Or. 629, Eur. Bakch. 1381, Eur. /.A. 1462 (~ 1475). 14 Eur. El. 393 (with baggage), Eur. Tro. 35lf., Eur. He!. 1169 (with dogs), Eur. Phaeth. 26lf. 15 Soph. Ant. 491, Eur. Tro. 880ff., Eur. Phoin. 779 (?) (see below, excursus 1, n. 6). 16 Aiskh. Kho. 712f., Soph.Ant. 577, Eur.Alk. 546ff., Eur. Her. 336. 17 Soph. Phil. 1003, Eur. Andr. 425 (and bind), Eur. Ion 1402f., Eur. Kretes (GLP 11 = Austin 82) 45. 18 Soph. Phil. 1054, Eur.Andr. 715 (Peleus does the actual unbinding himself), Eur. Bakch. 451. 19 Aiskh. Ag. 1651. 20 Aiskh. Ag. 908. 21 Aiskh. Ag. 944. 22 Aiskh. Kho. 983. 23 Eur. Hkld. 603ff. 24 See for an apparent exception, p. 18. 25 See Mastronarde (1979, 2-4), Taplin (1977, 28ff.) and Zwierlein (1970, 216 n. 40). 26 Sometimes 'messengers' appear who have been part of a mute entourage sent off earlier (e.g. Eur. /. T. 1284ff.~ 1205ff. and Eur. El. 766f.). The mutes in Sophokles' Philoktetes are given exceptionally careful and extended treatment. The man who is to return later posing as a merchant (he will be played by the actor who plays Odysseus) is introduced (45) and sent off (48ff.) and we are told that he will later be sent back to the ship and will perhaps return in disguise (127f.). When he returns as a speaking character, announced and with a sailor in attendance (539f.), he tells Philoktetes that the man he has with him had been left guarding the shipctlv c5voiva)..)..ozv(543). Why is he (or Sophokles) so specific in detail? Perhaps because people who are going to tell lies like to incorporate the maximum of circumstantial detail (whether true or false) into their stories, but perhaps also as an aide-memoire for the poet (or producer). The two others are (in terms of the story) Odysseus and another sailor, (in terms of the production) two other extras who will reappear along with Odysseus. It is highly likely that when we next see Odysseus and he 'arrests' Philoktetes he has two sailors with him ( on the 'one for each arm principle', cf. Excursus I, n. 1). These will be the extra we saw earlier posted as a scout (who is now being impersonated by the actor who played Odysseus) and the attendant of the fake merchant who is at present on stage. cvv c5voiva)..)..ozvin 543 may provide some support for Bernhardy's conjecture ~v)..)..d[Jer:ov1003 (~v}._}._6,[Jer:i y' A is a metri causa conjecture and is idiomatically out of court: see Dawe, 1978, 57f. and Denniston, 1954, 125). For dual imperatives directed at attendants we have to look to comedy (cf. Ar. Birds 435, Ar. Lys. 438, Ar. Frogs 605).

A 'grammatical' rule

7

27 See Taplin (1977, 79f.) and Andrieu (1954, 202ff.). The latter greatly exaggerates the difficulty of tabulating the movements of extras in order to bolster his theories regarding stage directions in ancient texts. 28 Especially by Euripides: see Kassel (1954, 37) and Sifakis (1979, 77f.). 29 Nor of course does comedy or any other form of drama, but comedy's range is surely greater. 30 When similar situations arise in comedy and tragedy there are often significant differences of treatment to be observed. In tragedy the matter of fact, prosaic, physical element is often suppressed. Fainting is common in both genres, but it is only in comedy (and in Senecan pseudo-tragedy which as Tarrant shows owes much to the conventions of comedy) that those attempting to revive the parties who have collapsed cry out for water to be fetched (see Tarrant, 1978, 250).

II

COUNTERMANDED

ORDERS

One ohvious reason for the non-completion of an order (or hesitation in carrying it out) would he the countermanding of the order. The most effective form of countermanding is for the issuer of the order himself to cancel his order or modify it. Alternatively dispute may arise should there he others present who question the order. There arc, I hclicve, two occurrences of the former situation, cancellation of an order, in tragedy. They arc hoth in Euripides. In the fliketidcs after instructing his own herald to go to Thebes, Theseus remarks on the entrance of the Thcban herald and halts his own man (i:nicx1:c 397; sec also he low, p. 15 ). The commands issued hy Thcoklymenos in his entrance spccch 1 (Eur. !le!. 1 I 69ff.) have hecn interpreted variously. After an initial apostrophe to his father's tomh, he orders his hunting equipment to he taken in: 11/ll:ic /ll:V OIJVKl)l'