Paper DRAMA

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DRAMA CLASSICAL TRAGEDY

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

2015



PREFACE

First at all, give thanks for God’s love and grace for us.

Thanks to God for helping me and give me chance to finish this

assignment timely. And I would like to say thank you to ……….as the lecturer

that always teaches us and give much knowledge aout how to practice !nglish

well.

This assignment is the one of !nglish task that composed of "rama. I

reali#ed this assignment is not perfect. $ut I hope it can e useful for us. %ritics

and suggestion is needed here to make this assignment e etter.

&opefully we as students in .......................can work more professional y

using !nglish as the second language whatever we done. Thank you.

$andar lampung "ecemer '(, )*'+

'



TABLE OF CONTENT

Preface i

TABLE OF CONTENT ii

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION '

A. $ackground f -rolem '

B. -rolem tatement '

CHAPTER II LITERATURE OF THEORIES )

A. "rama %lassical Tragedy /

$. rigin of Greek Tragedy /

%. i0 Formative !lements of A Tragedy +

". -lot in Greek Tragedy 1

!. The 2uantitative -arts of Tragedy "efined 3

F. %haracter of Greek Tragedy 4

CHAPTER III CLOSING

%onclusion………………………………………………………….………..'*

5eferences……………………………………………………………….…...''

)



CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Backr!"#$ !f Pr!%&e'

"rama has een divided into several genres. Although most playwrights are not

concerned to the matter of drama classification, some playwrights do write plays

in accordance with some theory of the formal principle for each genre. Thus, we

need to know at least some prominent genres of drama. In this paper we are going

to discuss one of genre of drama called drama classical tragedy. A greek tragedy is

a dramatic and choral presentation of an action usually taken from legend or

remote history and involving incident of a certain magnitude. The action is

complete in itself, is treated in a serious manner, and is normally interpreted so as

to e0hiit some religious, moral, or political significance.

B. Pr!%&e' S(a(e'e#(

'. 6hat is drama tragedy7

). &ow development of drama tragedy 7

/. 6hat the character of drama tragedy7

CHAPTER II



LITERATURE OF THEORIES

A. Dra'a C&a))*ca& Trae$+

Tragedy is an imitation of an action, erious, complete and of a certain

magnitude in a language eautified in different parts with different kinds of

emellishment, through action and not narration, and through scenes of pity and

fear ringing aout the 8%atharsis’ of these emotions. A Greek tragedy is a

dramatic and choral presentation of an action usually taken from legend or

remote histor y and involving incidents of a certain magnitude. The action is

complete in itself, is treated in a ser ious manner , and is normally interpreted so

as to e0hiit some religious, moral, or political significance.

Tragedy, like almost all ancient drama, is written in verse, and the

scenes of spoken verse are marked off y choral songs or other lyr ics. The

ending may e a ha p py solution, ut usually it involves a rever sal of fortune from

good to ad and is tr agic in the modern sense of that word.

In the present wor k, the action or story is termed the su 9ect of the

play, the significance the theme of the play. An ap pr eciation of this significance is

usually essential to any profound interpretation, for the dramatists in old and

honest fashion presented the gr eat pr o lems of ethics and religion. They could

hardly e said definitively to have solved these prolems. Their activity was the

r illiant effervescence which pr eceded and in par t, no dout, r esulted in the

develo pment of systematic Gr eek philosophy. They wer e, a ove all, poets and

dramatists of an intensely alive contempor ary theatre.



The political im plications of Greek tragedy are veiled, for tragedy was

re:uired to maintain a high dignity, and they usually escape the modern reader

unless he is intimately ac:uainted with the histor y of the per iod. uch

im plications, ut not narr ow par tisanship, can fr e:uently e discerned, however ,

especially in the plays of Aeschylus and !uri pides.

This emphasis upon serious significance does not im pair the vitality of the

drama. ignificance, indeed is wholly lacking in any literature only when that

liter atur e ecomes so r omantici#ed that it is no longer a true re presentation of

life, or when it ecomes utter ly frivolous. If the r eligious and moral and political

conceptions of the Gr eek s had genuine validity in their actual life, then these

conce ptions must inevita ly a ppear in any honest and ser ious dr amati#ation of

their lif e.

B. Or**# !f C&a))*ca& Trae$+

5eligious celeration is the origin of drama. From the various pagan rites

and festivals arose the earliest dramas called Greek Tragedy and Greek %omedy.

Greek Tragedy arose from the patterns of the "ionysian rites of life and death.

Aristotle (Poet. 1449 a) says that oth tragedy and comedy egan in

improvisations, tragedy arising from the dithyram, a choral poem properly in

honour of the god "ionysus. All drama at Athens was a part of the worship of

"ionysus. "ionysus was a divinity of fer tility. &e was also the god of wine,

which he was said to have rought to Greece. "uring two of his f estivals, the

;enaea in <anuary=Fer uary and the Gr eat or %ity "ionysia in >ar ch=April, plays



were produced in the theatre sacred to him located on the southeast side of

the Acr opolis. It may e that women of respecta le position did not, at least

in the fif th century, attend the performances. !ach play was produced only

once during the festival, ut later it might e re pr oduced in other towns of

Attica or elsewhere.

The ancient theatre was not commercial enterprise, therefore, ut a

religious institution under the direction of the state? the plays for a given festival

were chosen y a state official selected y lot from the Athenian populace? the

state furnished the actors for the plays and assigned wealthy citi#ens, then called

the @cherogi to provide and train the choruses at their own e0pense. It was the

custom that on a given day one dr amatist should present three tragedies and a

satyr=play and that only thr ee actors should e furnished for a given set of

plays. Three

dr amatists participated in each festival, and three pri#es

were awarded them y a panel of 9udges chosen in a very elaorate

manner in order to prevent ri ery or intimidation.

The su9ect matter of Greek tragedy fr om the very eginning was

taken from legend or myth. The choral dithyram out of which tr agedy

developed seems or iginally to have een concerned with the irth of

"ionysus, if we may so interpret a remark of -lato ( Laws (** $B.

-ossily the or iginal su 9ect of tragedy was the passion of "ionysus, or

his death and re ir th, which wer e symolic of the yearly cycle of the

disappearance of the seed eneath the ground in the fall of the year

and its re=emergence in the spring.



C. S*, F!r'a(*-e E&e'e#() !f A Trae$+

!very Tragedy, therefore, must have si0 parts, which parts determine its

:uality namely, -lot, %haracter, "iction, Thought, pectacle, ong.

Two of the parts constitute the medium of imitation, one the manner, and three the

o9ects of imitation. And these complete the list. These elements have een

employed, we may say, y the poets to a man? in fact, every play contains

pectacular elements as well as %haracter, -lot, "iction, ong, and Thought. $ut

most important of all is the structure of the incidents. For Tragedy is an imitation,

not of men, ut of an action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a

mode of action, not a :uality. Cow character determines men’s :ualities, ut it is

y their actions that they are happy or the reverse.

"ramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the representation of

characterD character comes in as susidiary to the actions. &ence the incidents and

the plot are the end of a tragedy? and the end is the chief thing of all. Again,

without action there cannot e a tragedy? there may e without character. The

tragedies of most of our modern poets fail in the rendering of character? and of

poets in general this is often true. It is the same in painting? and here lies the

difference etween Eeu0is and -olygnotus. -olygnotus delineates character wellD

the style of Eeu0is is devoid of ethical :uality.

The -lot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedyD

%haracter holds the second place. Third in order is Thought, that is, the faculty of

saying what is possile and pertinent in given circumstances. In the case of

oratory, this is the function of the -olitical art and of the art of rhetoricD and so



indeed the older poets make their characters speak the language of civic life? the

poets of our time, the language of the rhetoricians. %haracter is that which reveals

moral purpose, showing what kind of things a man chooses or avoids. peeches,

therefore, which do not make this manifest, or in which the speaker does not

choose or avoid anything whatever, are not e0pressive of character. Thought, on

the other hand, is found where something is proved to e. or not to e, or a general

ma0im is enunciated.

Fourth among the elements enumerated comes "iction? y which I mean,

as has een already said, the e0pression of the meaning in words? and its essence

is the same oth in verse and prose. f the remaining elements ong holds the

chief place among the emellishments. The pectacle has, indeed, an emotional

attraction of its own, ut, of all the parts, it is the least artistic, and connected least

with the art of poetry. For the power of Tragedy, we may e sure, is felt even apart

from representation and actors. $esides, the production of spectacular effects

depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet.

D. P&!( *# Greek Trae$+

-lots are either imple or %omple0, for the actions in real life, of which the plots

are an imitation, oviously show a similar distinction. An action which is one and

continuous in the sense aove defined, it call imple, when the change of fortune

takes place without 5eversal of the ituation and without 5ecognition. A %omple0

action is one in which the change is accompanied y such 5eversal, or y

5ecognition, or y oth. -lot in greek tragedy must e whole and unity.



a. The -lot >ust $e A 6hole

Now, according to our defnition, Tragedy is an imitation o an

action that is complete, and whole, and o a certain magnitude;

or there may be a whole that is wanting in magnitude. A whole is

that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A beginning is

that which does not itsel ollow anything by causal necessity,

but ater which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on

the contrary, is that which itsel naturally ollows some other

thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing ollowing

it. A middle is that which ollows something as some other thing

ollows it. A well constructed plot, thereore, must neither begin

nor end at haphazard, but conorm to these principles.

. The -lot >ust $e nity

nity of plot does not, as some persons think, consist in the nity of the hero.

For infinitely various are the incidents in one man’s life which cannot e reduced

to unity? and so, too, there are many actions of one man out of which we cannot

make one action.

As therefore, in the other imitative arts, the imitation is one when the o9ect

imitated is one, so the plot, eing an imitation of an action, must imitate one

action and that a whole, the structural union of the parts eing such that, if any

one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will e dis9ointed and distured.

For a thing whose presence or asence makes no visile difference, is not an

organic part of the whole.



E. Te /"a#(*(a(*-e Par() !f Trae$+ Def*#e$

The parts of Tragedy which must e treated as elements of the whole have een

already mentioned. 6e now come to the :uantitative parts the separate parts into

which Tragedy is divided namely, -rologue, !pisode, !0ode, %horic song? this

last eing divided into -arode and tasimon. These are common to all playsD

peculiar to some are the songs of actors from the stage and the %ommoi.

The prologue is all of the first portion of a tragedy that precedes the

entrance of the chorus, which is the parode. An episode is that portion of the

tragedy that takes place etween two complete choral odes. The first episode is

normally concerned with the eginning of the action and the complication of the

plot. This episode is usually followed y another complete choral song, the first

@stasimon, after which, of course, another episode occurs thus the choral song

interrupt the dramatic action and mark off the tragedy into various @chapters of

action. The stasimon is the song sung y the chorus as it enters from the side of

the stage? the parode is the first speech of the complete chorus, not counting

speeches y memers of the chorus. The e0ode is that portion of a tragedy that

follows the last song of the chorus. The coral ode itself is constructed of three

partsD

'. The first of which is the strophe.

). The second movement, called the antistrophe, is identical in structure to

the first.



/. The third and the last movement is called the stand, or opode. Its form is

strict, like the first two movements, ut entirely different from them in

structure.

The content of the strophe is an argument in favour of a view point, which is

spoken y a chorus on one side of the stage. To consider the opposite view, the

chorus travels to the other side of the stage to deliver the antistrophe, through

which it voices its concern? or there is a second chorus on the opposite side of the

stage that does the same. In the opode the chorus moves to canter stage to deliver

its conclusion on the matter under consideration.

F. Carac(er !f Greek Trae$+

'. The ending in drama tragedy always sad ending.

). In Greek Tragedy, a central character is led into death, despair, or misery

through some sort of error, either in himself or in his action.

/. %haracters in a tragedy should generate pity from the audience.

. sually the central character has some particular tragic flaw. The heroic

protagonist struggles to avoid inevitale defeat HfateB.

+. The hero recogni#e the fact of impending doom, often in shape of a person

who ears the message of the protagonist’s fate.

1. The antagonist of tragedy is a god, or the gods, ut in fact the antagonist is

destiny, which is in the hands of the three fatesD %latho, who ears the

distaff that holds the threads of life, ;achesis, who spins the thread, and

Atropos, who cuts the thread when the time comes to do so.

CHAPTER III

CONCLUSION

A Greek tragedy is a dramatic and choral presentation of an action usually

taken from legend or remote histor y and involving incidents of a certain



magnitude. The action is complete in itself, is treated in a ser ious manner ,

and is normally interpreted so as to e0hiit some religious, moral, or

political significance. The ending in drama tragedy always sad ending.

Greek Tragedy arose from the patterns of the "ionysian rites of life and

death. Aristotle (Poet . '4 aB says that oth tragedy and comedy egan in

improvisations, tragedy arising from the dithyram, a choral poem properly

in honor of the god "ionysus.

The part of a tragedy are the prologue, parode, episode, e0ode, and chorus.

Refere#ce)

;ewis Turco.'444.The $ook of ;iterary Terms.niversity -ress of Cew

!ngland.

-hilip 6haley &arsh.'444.A &andook of %lassical "rama.tanford

niversity -ress ;iray.

Cancy orkin 5ainowit#.)**3.Greek Tragedy.$lackwel -ulishing.

.&. $utcher.)*').The -oetics of Aristotle A Translation.Gloal Grey

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