Sophocles the Playwright

By: Jodie Kitain, Nick Suss, Joey Palandrani, Will Nelson and Sean

Kenny

Who was Sophocles?

• Born in 495 B.C. about a mile northwest of Athens, in the town of Colonus.

• He was the son of a wealthy merchant and enjoyed all of the comfort of a thriving Greek empire.

• Sophocles studied all of the arts highlighting his large array of interests. In addition to writing, Sophocles acted in many of the plays that he wrote himself.

• However, the young Athenians voice was comparatively weak, and eventually he would give up his acting career to pursue other ventures.

What did Sophocles write?• Of Sophocles’ more than 120 plays,

only seven have survived in their entirety.

• Of these, Oedipus the King is generally considered his greatest work. This masterpiece tells the story of a man named Oedipus who kills his father in order to marry his own mother.

• Another masterpiece, Antigone, possibly the first of the surviving plays to have been written, is the story of a passionate young woman who refuses to submit to earthly authority when it forbids a proper burial for her brother Polyneices.

• Illustrating the rival claims of the state and individual conscience, Antigone is an excellent example for the modern social dramatist.

What did Sophocles write?

• Sophocles’ Seven Surviving Plays are: – Oedipus the King

– Oedipus at Colonus

– Antigone

– Ajax

– Electra

– The Trachiniae

– Philoctetes

The Three Tragedists of Ancient Greece

• Aeschylus, Father of Tragedy

• When Aeschylus first began writing, the theatre had only just begun to evolve. Plays were little more than animated oratorios or choral poetry supplemented with expressive dance.

• A chorus danced and exchanged dialogue with a single actor who portrayed one or more characters primarily by the use of masks..

• Most of the action took place in the circular dancing area or "orchestra" which still remained from the old days when drama had been nothing more than a circular dance around a sacred object.

• According to Aristotle, Aeschylus was responsible for introducing a second actor into the format of the theater, resulting in dialogue that could develop much more freely.

The Three Tragedists of Ancient Greece

• Sophocles, Greek Playright • One of the great innovators of the theatre, he

was the first to add a third actor. • He also abolished the trilogic form.

Aeschylus, for example, had used three tragedies to tell a single story.

• Sophocles chose to make each tragedy a complete entity in itself--as a result, he had to pack all of his action into the shorter form, and this clearly offered greater dramatic possibilities.

• Sophocles was responsible for the invention of skenographia, scene painting, and periaktoi or painted prisms. Therefore, Sophocles became the first playwright to put a defined background behind the actors in his plays.

• As a result of the addition of an artistic background, Sophocles’ plays seemed to become more realistic and appealing to the spectators.

Periaktoi or painted prisms are still used today in theatre.

The Three Tragedists of Ancient Greece

• Euripides, Greek Tragedian • Euripides focused on the realism of his characters;

for example, Euripides’ Medea is a realistic woman with recognizable emotions and is not simply a villain.

• In Hippolytus, Euripides writes in a particularly modern style, demonstrating how neither language nor sight aids in understanding in a civilization on its last leg.

• Euripides makes his point about vision both through the plot and through the sparseness of his staging, which lacked the dazzling elements that other plays often had.

• According to Aristotle, Euripides's contemporary Sophocles said that he portrayed men as they ought to be, and Euripides portrayed them as they were.

• Among the three ancient Greek tragedians, Euripides is particularly known for employing the literary device known as deus ex machina (God out of machine), whereby a god or goddess abruptly appears at drama's end to provide a contrived solution to an intractable problem.

• Mechanical devices had to be invented that allowed the gods to appear and disappear quickly.

Comprehension Questions

• What was the result of Aeschylus’s addition of a second actor to Greek tragedies?

• Of Sophocles’ 120 plays, how many have survived in their entirety? How many of them can you name?

• In your opinion, of all the changes made to the format of tragedy plays by the three Tragedists, which one do you think was the most effective?

Bibliography• Bates, Alfred. "Sophocles and His Tragedies." TheatreHistory.com. 2002. Web. 20 Mar. 2011. <

http://www.theatrehistory.com/ancient/sophocles001.html>.

Denault, Leigh T. "The Glory That Was Greece." Www.watson.org. 2003. Web. 20 Mar. 2011. <http://www.watson.org/%7Eleigh/drama.html#sophocles>.

Fonseca, Ruben. "Ancient Greek Theater." Cartage.org. 3 Nov. 2010. Web. 20 Mar. 2011. <http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/arts/Architec/AncientArchitectural/GreekArchitecture/GreekBuilding/Theater.htm#Playwrights>.

Theatre Database. "Sophocles." Theatre Database. 2002. Web. 20 Mar. 2011. <http://www.theatredatabase.com/ancient/sophocles_001.html>.

Timeline Index. "Sophocles, Greek Playwright - Timeline Index." Timeline Index - People, Periods, Places, Events... 2004. Web. 20 Mar. 2011. <http://www.timelineindex.com/content/view/842>.