THTR 1020 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Satyr Play, Dionysia, Aeschylus
Document Summary
There are only 3 tragic playwrights we can read. Each playwright entered plays for competition: trilogy. Euripides hardly ever won- didn"t hold up traditional values (cid:1) (cid:1) Maternal instinct that mothers are supposed to have, instead, he makes medea much less maternal ; had to make her less feminine to allow the story to happen. Jason is presented as a character with a heroic past, yet his actions in the play exemplify the trait of a weak, reactive character: he didn"t go against the king to protect his children, wishy-washy. Medea also predicts an unheroic death for him at the play"s close. Greek tragedy- doesn"t lose everything: ascends to be a type of deity or something. Euripides" characters don"t get what they should. Established moral and military dominance of athens in the greek world: gradual shift to empire allowed a space for athenian democracy to evolve. Not citizens: women, slaves, foreign born, prepubescent, no military service.
