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The tragedies and comedies of the Athenian dramatists were essential to the achievement of Classical Athens and the greatness of Ancient Greece. There would have been no Shakespeare without Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. Furthermore, Greek Drama is on the exalted level of Shakespeare – profound and splendid, tragic and humorous, moving and unforgettable. Aeschylus has been called the Father of Western Tragedy and “the most Hebraic” of the Greek playwrights. Only seven of his plays have come down to us. Luckily, Prometheus Bound and the Oresteia trilogy are among them. Sophocles composed, among other exquisite tragedies, Oedipus Rex and the Antigone. Aristotle praised Oedipus Rex as the greatest of tragedies, a virtully perfect play. Sophocles’ heroine Antigone is Literature’s exemplar of Conscience standing up against Tyranny. Euripides, brilliant
and original, detests and satirizes bullies and hypocrites; sympathizes
with women and condemns social customs and attitudes directed against
them; casts children as tragic figures, without sentimentalizing. Euripides
creates dignified characters from the lowest classes – peasants,
slaves, foreigners, beggars, the physically-handicapped. Aristophanes –
It is enough to know that he entered a comedy entitled Knights
at the Dionysian festival in 424 BC; and this play attacked with staggeringly
abusive, clever and hilarious language the most powerful and ruthless
man in Athens; and Aristophanes not only got away with this unscathed,
but won first prize in the festival competition. |
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