Ajax behind the skēnē. Staging, Address and Word Order at Sophocles, Ajax 339-343 (original) (raw)
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Vocative address is a crucial component of human communication: it acknowledges and bestows identity to the addressee and defines his/her relation to the addresser, providing, at the same time, an index to the latter’s idea of his/her Self. Ancient Greek addresses relate either to body or social status: gender or age, familial or civic ties, private or public, personal or collective identities. Beginning with a categorization of addresses with reference to OT, analysis then focuses on the ferocious collision of father and son at the crossroad, which is conducted in speechless gestures (OT 800–13). The neglect/absence of addresses at the crossroad signposts the absence –the non-anagnorisis– of identities with clear and hierarchical social positions. Turning to Antigone, the paper then explores how vocative addresses reveal the protagonists’ sense of their Self, the relation of their social identities to the identity provided by their body, and the conditions of their communication on stage. The use –or the absence– of vocatives is connected to the way that both Antigone and Kreon adopt and exhaust timeless and universal ideas, only to reduce themselves to arguments that derive from their particular bodily identities: Antigone will focus on the identity of one “of the same womb”; against Antigone, Kreon will summon his male identity, and against Haemon his identity as an elder. The play’s exodos features a spectacular transformation of Kreon: cut off from any human communication, as his vocatives show, and lamenting with a dead body of a beloved young man in his hands, he appears to embody on stage his female adversary: the absolute defeat of the/his Self.
Sophocles’ Ajax has long confounded critics. As a study of the great hero figure it has been found wanting, on the basis that Ajax kills himself half-way through the play. On the other hand, the characters left in his wake have been criticised for destroying the tragic gravity by engaging in petty quarrelling over his body. This paper makes sense of the character of Ajax and the structure of the play by pointing to the strong Iliadic resonances at the beginning of the drama, as Ajax plays the role of Achilles going for his sword in anger at Agamemnon in an extreme manifestation of dissent from authority. In Ajax’s case, however, Athena does not stay his hand, but rather deflects it so that he experiences the shame of killing cattle and herdsmen. Moreover, the focus even in this opening scene rests with a spectator – Odysseus stands by looking on – rather than with the hero himself as in the Homeric scene. Indeed, the rest of the play examines the fall-out from dissent from the perspective of those dependent on him – his wife, half-brother (Teucer) and men (the Chorus). In this way the double agon, in which Teucer defends the right to bury Ajax in defiance of the authorities, is fundamental to implicating the audience in the process of reassessing Ajax’s standing and putting a value on dissent. The shift in focalisation from hero to spectator and the investigation into the problems with, and importance of, dissent suggest one way in which this play performs within the cultural context of Athenian democracy.
Supplication and Hero Cult in Sophocles’ Ajax
Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies, 2011
J EBB' in his edition of Ajax, suggested the hero's cult in Attica as a clue to the play's dramatic unity.1 On this view, the death of Ajax is not the climax of the tragedy; the securing of funeral rites is essential for his consecration as a hero, and thus would be, for an Athenian audience, the natural goal of the action. This is an attractive proposition, since we know that Sophocles' fellow-citizens saw in Ajax more than the bluff warrior of the Trojan saga; Ajax was a sacred hero with particularly strong local associations. He had a shrine on Salamis, and games were held there annually in his honor. He was the eponymous hero of one of the ten Attic tribes, and received cult honors in Athens itself. After the battle of Salamis he was rewarded for his help with the dedication of a captured warship.2 Unfortunately, however, there is not a word of any of this in Sophocles' play; jebb's theory lies open to the objection raised most pointedly by Perrotta: "della consacrazione ad eroe, del culto dell' eroe Aiace, nella tragedia non si parla affatto."3 There is, however, at least one reflection of the hero's cult in Ajax that has not received sufficient attention: the brief but moving scene in which Teucer places Eurysaces as a suppliant at his father's corpse. Here, in a ceremony at once intimate and awesome, those who love Ajax enact, at least symbolically, his consecration as a hero. When Teucer appears and learns with certainty of his brother's death, his first act is to send Tecmessa to get Eurysaces, fearing that the child might fall into the hands of his father's foes (985-87). Teucer then faces Menelaus, who comes to denounce the dead man and forbid his burial, and engages him in a heated exchange. Thus, when 1 Introduction, pp. xxx-xxxii.
Α variety of major and minor figures occupy the stage of Greek drama in a way that performers who contribute to the staging of a play are not virtually confined to the limited number of the three actors. This statement does not imply that the notorious " three-actor rule " of the antiquity can be contended with an enlarged theory which would advocate an unlimited cast of actors. Such an idea belongs to a modem perception of theatre-making where a different actor corresponds to each role so that a free number of actors as well as any availability in the combination of performers is allowed in a modern theatrical production. Accordingly, the conventional assumption of the use of the three actors in the Greek theatre is a factor which qualifies significantly the shaping of the dramatic dialogue and the staging of the play. However, beyond this fundamental principle of Greek theatre, a wider range of performers were needed to act on the ancient Greek stage so that drama extended the possibilities of speech and action in the dialogical scenes of a theatrical production. At this point, I would suggest that mute performers in tragedies may also be considered as acting performers who operate in different levels of dramatic importance and may produce a considerable amount of impact in the shaping of the dialogue by their non-speaking presence. The present paper will discuss the shaping of the dramatic dialogue with particular reference to the combinations of the dialogical encounters between speaking actors, while taking into consideration that non speaking parts have always been an important issue in the staging of the Greek plays. In this respect, the following argument owes a great deal to the theoretical analysis of dramatic dialogue inferred by Andrew K. Kennedy, who contends that " a study of dialogue as verbal interaction-both existential and stylistic-can only benefit from any study of the non-verbal elements of drama which illuminates the total sign system of the theatre. " ' The opening scenes in Sophocles' tragedies will be used as an example in order to illustrate the function of the dialogue between actors with different roles.2 These references aim at the elaboration of the idea that there can be observed a design of dramatic dialogue in Greek drama, which bears affinities with other theatrical genres, but its structure is also highly conventional in the patterning of the dialogical encounters on the ancient Greek stage. Structural features and pecularities of dramatic dialogue Before I proceed further with the dialogical encounters of the acting persons on the Greek stage, it would be appropriate to make some preliminary remarks for the structure of dialogue in its theatrical context. This reference is not virtually confined to the dramatic dialogue in the theatre of antiquity, but it might encompass the dialogical pattern of plays of different periods and dramatic genre.3
review of Euripides: Phoenissae, edited by Donald J. Mastronarde
Classical Philology, 1995
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Sophocles' Electra 1050–57 and the Pragmatics of Tragic Exits
Classical Philology 117.2, 2022
This article argues for the authenticity of Sophocles Electra 1050–54, deleted in Lloyd-Jones and Wilson’s and Finglass’ editions. After a refutation of scholars’ earlier objections (including Stobaeus’ misleading attribution of 1050–51 to Sophocles’ Phaedra), two substantive arguments are advanced in favor of their retention: (1) in terms of scenic grammar, if 1050–54 were removed, Chrysothemis’ exit would be ineptly unnoticed, in contradiction with Sophocles’ usual handling of exits; (2) in terms of conversation analysis, 1050–54 replicate a pre-patterned sequence ubiquitously found in tragedy to terminate rapid dialogues when exits are involved, whereas their absence would make the closing unjustifiably abrupt.
A Grief Observed: Tecmessa and Her Sadness-Work in Sophocles’ Ajax
Looking at Ajax, 2019
Chapter 9 in Looking at Ajax, ed. David Stuttard (Bloomsbury, 2019) 155-73 "A Grief Observed: Tecmessa and her Sadness-Work in Sophocles' Ajax" Chorus: There she is! The young bride, captive of his spear, Tecmessa, I see her. She's steeped in this cry of grief (oiktos). (894-5) Chorus: The pangs of true pain (gennaia dyē), I know, pierce your heart. (938) Tecmessa: These things would not have reached this state but for the gods. Chorus: Too heavy indeed is the burden of grief (achthos) they've contrived." (950-1) 1 "Tonight all the hells of young grief have opened again; the mad word, the bitter resentment, the fluttering of the stomach, the nightmare unreality, the wallowed-in tears. For in grief nothing 'stays put.' One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats…I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process. It needs not a map but a history,…Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape." C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (1962, 69-71) This essay will study the onset of grief and the process of mourning at one particular point in the post-suicide portion of Ajax, namely the so-called epi-parodos ('second parodos', 868-78) and third kommos (semi-musical dialogue of lamentation between the chorus and Tecmessa, 879-973). A new examination of these passages, and especially the kommos, is timely because a key part of the Greek text that has long been controversial-Tecmessa's two speeches at the end of each strophe and antistrophe (915-24 and 961-73)-has now been restored to more secure footing by P.J. Finglass. 2 My objective is to argue that one of Sophocles' first priorities immediately after Ajax's suicide (865) is to engage his actors and audience in the process of 'working through' the psychological and moral wounds of his death. 3 This cathartic process is important because it