Wise 2013

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Aristotle, Actors, and Tragic Endings: A Counter-Response to

Johanna Hanink

Jennifer Wise

Arethusa, Volume 46, Number 1, Winter 2013, pp. 117-139 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/are.2013.0000

For additional information about this article

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Arethusa46 (2013) 117139 2013 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

ARISTOTLE, ACTORS, AND TRAGIC ENDINGS:

A COUNTER-RESPONSE TO JOHANNA HANINK

JENNIFER WISE

Thered probably be tears.

Which wouldnt be auspicious.

Orestes1

In Arethusa 41, I suggest that Aristotles sad-ending theory of tragedytells us more about the habits of fourth-century actors than about the tenor

of fifth-century tragedy (Wise 2008). On the basis of certain similarities

between the didaskalic record of 34139 and the (roughly contemporary)

Poetics, I hypothesize that the philosopher may have been misled by the

performance practices of his time into equating true tragedy with weepy

endings. InArethusa44, Johanna Hanink takes up the challenge this idea

poses for much received wisdom about ancient tragedy and subjects it to

a most welcome scrutiny (Hanink 2011). In Haninks view, the hypoth-

esis marks a step forward for our understanding of how the realities of

contemporary performance might have influenced Aristotles own view

of tragedy (312). Im grateful to Hanink for the time she devoted to my

argument, for the additional evidence she has adduced in its support,2and,

especially, for her keen grasp of what I was trying to do (324):

By drawing out the interplay of theatrical reality and Aris-

totelian theory in her article, Wise prompts us to examine

more carefully how the Poetics might be reconsidered

1 Orestes789; trans. Arrowsmith 1992.239.

2 Hanink 2011.315, especially the wonderfully confirming calculations of Csapo

19992000.41011.

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118 Jennifer Wise

against the recent scholarship that has begun to investigate

the fourth century B.C. as both an important dramatic

era in its own right and a crucial site for the formation

of the notion of classical tragedy and the canon of Greekplays that would survive.

Hanink clearly endorses this goal, concluding that Wise suc-

cessfully highlights the degree to which the Poeticshas been read in the

past without due consideration of contemporary theatrical practice (324).

Nevertheless, she disputes four single points that I make along the way

(312). She also misstates my argument in one key place, but in a way that

productively reframes the problem. After correcting this detail in her pr-

cis and drawing out its implications, I will deal in turn (albeit out of order)

with each of Haninks concerns and end with a brief discussion of why

her explanation for the depoliticizing of tragedy in Aristotles hands is less

credible than the one I offer.

Haninks summary of my argument is beautifully lucid and almost

wholly accurate (2011.31112). But after noting that my hypothesis rests

on a contention that fifth-century tragedies, or at least tetralogies, had, as a

general rule, concluded with happy endings, Hanink misstates a crucial

point. She continues: These productions, the argument goes, tended to end

on a propitious note for the citizens of whichever polis served as the plays

setting and thus, by extension, for the Athenian spectators (312). This is

not quite right. What I describe is the apparent fifth-century expectation

that tragic productions end propitiously for the spectators at the perfor-

mance(not necessarily for the characters in the play). And the spectators

need not be Athenian.3I name the various groups for whom fifth-century

tragedies seem to have been expected to end well: the spectators at Aetna

who viewed Aeschyluss good-auguring Sicilian tragedy (2008.381), and

the Athenians, their friends, allies, or fictional stand-ins (395; also 394,

385). But there are some political groups who dont fit into any of these

categories. The people of Sousa, for example, the city in whichPersiansis

set, would not have been seen by the Athenian spectators at the first per-

formance of this play as friends, allies, or fictional stand-ins, but rather as

3 Csapo 2010.9899 thinks that Euripides Captive Melanippe might have been written forspectators at Metapontum or Herakleia and hisArchelaosfor audiences at Aegae; the audi-

ences at Syracuse for a reperformance of AeschylussPersians could also be added to the

list: Nervegna 2007.16.

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Aristotle, Actors, and Tragic Endings 119

enemies, alter egos, or something of that nature.4An inauspicious ending

for Athens destroyers, which is what Aeschylus theatrically delivers to the

people of Sousa inPersians, would, precisely because the misfortune was

not their own but their enemies, have augured well for the Athenians watch-ing it: the (sad) defeat of Persia portended the (happy) salvation of Athens.

This may just be a simple misstatement on Haninks part. But it

highlights the basic theatrical fact on which my hypothesis is based: the

emotional outcome for the people in a tragedy (the characters) may be dif-

ferent from the emotional outcome delivered to the people watching it (the

spectators). The fates of the characters, their happiness or sadness, is, of

course, specified in the text, but what this ending might portend (or por-

tended) for the spectators at a given performance is simply not provided

by the play. The text ofPersians, for example, says that Xerxes and the

chorus mourn and wail in grief and loss at the end. But how this dramatic

outcome was received by particular spectators is something that can only

be reconstructed or imagined on the basis of evidence from outside the

text: our knowledge that the play was written and first performed for Athe-

nians, by Athenians (rather than for Persians, by Persians); the fact that

these Athenian singers, dancers, and spectators had recently defeated the

Persians in battle; that they had fined another playwright 1,000 drachmas

for producing a depressingplay about the Persians;5and that they knew

in advance that the performance would end not with the Persians tears

but with the frat-house antics of their own joyous satyrs.

How a plays ending affects the audience depends, in other words,

on who that audience is, what they know, and how they feeleven before

the play has begun. As Aristotle observes inRhetoric, audiences respond

very differently to the same stimulus depending on their pre-existing emo-

tions, hopes, and expectations (1377b3178a4):

When people are feeling friendly and placable, they think

one sort of thing; when they are feeling angry or hostile,

they think either something totally different or the same

thing with a different intensity . . . If they are eager for,

4 The tragic city of Thebes, which Froma Zeitlin analyses as an anti-Athens, might be

another setting where things were not expected to go well or resolve happily for the people;see Zeitlin 1990.13067.

5 See my discussion of this story as evidence that tragedies in the fifth century were expected

to end auspiciously for the spectators: Wise 2008.39293.

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120 Jennifer Wise

and have good hopes of, a thing that will be pleasant if

it happens, they think that it certainly will happen and be

good for them (trans. Roberts 1941.137980).

Depending on what the spectators desire and expect, on who

their friends and enemies are, how they feel about Persians in general, or

even Oedipus in particular, they will react very differently to the same

dramatic outcome.6Theatre history shows unmistakably that features spe-

cific to the real-life context in which a play is vieweda recent death or

assassination,7a war or epidemic,8the audiences current opinions about

the peoples, issues, or characters represented9can shape the spectators

experience as much as anything in the play itself. Audience response is

shaped even by the type of event they think theyre attending: are they

seeing the play within the context of a conquering kings victory revels,

as part of a beloved actors farewell tour, or as part of a prestigious annual

celebration of their own free and democratic city?10As Hans Robert Jauss

shows (1982), aesthetic experience is partly shaped in advance by a pre-

existing horizon of expectationsa set of beliefs and assumptions about

what were about to see.11

An audiences emotional experience of a play is also shaped by

the intentions of the actors. Because audiences do not receive the play

from the text but only through the actors interpretation of it, the intentions

6 AtFrogs 118390, for example, Euripides and Aeschylus violently disagree about whether

Oedipus was born lucky or was wretched from the start.

7 Consider the story about the audience bursting into tears at theproagonwhen Sophocles

appeared in mourning for Euripides. The story was clearly intended to record something

remarkablerevealing, if nothing else, that audiences did not normallyburst into tears at

the proagon. In this case, however, they did, because events surrounding a performance

unavoidably shape its meaning: Lefkowitz 1981.88104.

8 See Scott 1997.1518 on the wholly different reception given by American and Canadian

audiences to the very same shows during the early years of WW I when only the Canadi-

ans were fighting.

9 During the French Revolution, Paris audiences interrupted and rioted during plays that

represented kings and powerful noblemen in positive ways; see Root-Bernstein 1984.198ff.

and Wise 2012.

10 See Ceccarelli 2010.101 for the shows staged by Philip and Alexander to celebrate

their sacking of cities and, especially, for her observation that in the fourth century, dra-

matic festivals [sometimes] had no civic context at all, as when tragedy was performedon the initiative of kings.

11 See Revermann 2006.15975 for a superbly detailed discussion of these issues;

also Bennett 1990 and Roselli 2011.35.

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of performers replace those of the playwright when the play is staged.12

The locus classicus for the consequences of this ineluctable fact is Anton

Chekhovs comedy The Cherry Orchard, which was transformed into a

lugubrious tearjerker by Stanislavski and companyeven while the play-wright was still alive to object.13Chekhov was a hard-working grandson of

a serf and son of a grocer, a largely rural doctor who treated peasants for

free.14In The Cherry Orchard,he depicts an aristocratic family monopo-

lizing 3,000 acres of land that they refuse on principle to cultivate, lease

out, subdivide, or take any steps to conserve. Their intransigence results in

bankruptcy, the loss of their estate, and the cutting down of their (unpro-

ductive) cherry orchard. Chekhov makes his intentions clear by ending the

play not with the sorrow of the aristocrats but with a speech by their old

servant Firs, who realizes in the final scene that his masters have forgot-

ten all about him, locking him up in the house with the furniture as they

blithely depart forever to start new lives elsewhere.

Constantine Stanislavski, however, who acted in and directed

the play, was a privileged man-about-town and heir to one of the larg-

est fortunes in Russia.15He identified with his character Gayev and with

Gayevs aristocratic relatives, mourned their fate, and made audiences do

the same. Accordingly, Stanislavskis production of The Cherry Orchard

ended with a heart-rending bit of tearjerkery whereby Gayev slowly exited

the stage with his shoulders wracked in a spasm of virtuosic sobbing that

was described by one spectator as almost more than an impressionable

playgoer can bear (quoted by Loehlin 2006.68). This grief-wracked exit

does not exist in the text, is largely contradicted by Chekhovs instruc-

tions for Gayev in the scene (Loehlin 2006.6869), and, in any case, is

followed by the appallingly funny speech of the servant, Chekhovs cho-

sen ending. But Stanislavskis display of soulful agony was so moving to

12 During the lifetimes of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides when the poet acted his play

himself or taught it to others, the intentions of actors would scarcely have existed as an

independent determinant of the plays meaning. Once posthumous revivals by professional

actors come on the scene, however, the interpretations of actors will count for more than

those of the poet, as Aristotle noticed (Rhet. 1403b33).

13 Chekhovs letters of 1904 record his intense annoyance with the Art Theatre actors

over their misinterpretation of his play: they positively do not see in my play what I

wrote. He even offers to swear that some of them have never read the play through tothe end even once: Yarmolinsky 1973.466.

14 Koteliansky and Tomlinson 1925.110, Friedland 1964.15859.

15 Stanislavsky 1925.2132, Benedetti 1991.17090.

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122 Jennifer Wise

audiences that his characters emotional suffering was experienced as the

true outcome of the play.

Stanislavskis choices not only glorified the landed gentrys suf-

ferings beyond what Chekhov had intended,

they also redirected the playssatirical barbs. Lopakhin, for example, is a vital but guiltily successful busi-

nessman (and grandson of a serf) who, Chekhov insisted, must be played

as a cross between a merchant and a professor of Medicine at Moscow

University (quoted by Loehlin 2006.48). Stanislavskis production depicted

him instead as a boorish lout who spits, picks his teeth, and lazes around on

the divan, smoking; Lopakhin was also subjected to the ultimate theatrical

indignity of being dressed in a deliberately absurd looking hat: a yokels

knotted handkerchief (Loehlin 2006.48). The plot resolves, of course, with

Lopakhins purchase at auction and clearing of the land (to build summer

cottages). By portraying Lopakhin as a grossly materialistic boor, Stanislav-

ski ensured that the fate of the aristocrats would seem lamentable indeed.

I impose on the readers patience with such a detailed recitation

of the facts of this case because the point it is meant to illustrate is dif-

ficult to appreciate in the abstract: that even something as trivial as the

choice of a characters hata matter of greater concern to the costumer

than the poet, as Aristotle might sayhas a direct hand in determining

the meaning of a plays ending for the spectators. Although, as James

Loehlin so tactfully puts it, Stanislavskis treatment of Chekhovs char-

acters seems to go against Chekhovs text (2006.68), it was Stanislav-

skis production of The Cherry Orchardthat toured the world and made

the play famous, moving audiences to tears all over Russia, Europe,

and the United States (Loehlin 2006.68, 79). Stanislavski later admitted

that Chekhov had written a happy comedy, and all of us had considered

the play a tragedy and even wept over it, but the plays reputation had

been made.16Following Aristotle, we might consider extra-textual matters

like the actors delivery to be unworthy of serious attention (Rheto-

ric 3.1404a2). But as this case shows, it is the choices made by actors, as

much as or more than those made by playwrights, that decide if, when,

and for whom the spectators weep.

If a play like The Cherry Orchard could be transformed within

months of its composition from a critique of the Russian aristocracy into

16 Years later, Stanislavski (wrongly) remembered Chekhovs anger in connection with

Three Sisters (1925.278), but Borny 2006.201 corrects his mistake. See also Senelick

1997.6771.

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an anguished lament for their martyrdom,17 how much more might the

tenor of fifth-century tragedies have changed over the course of a hundred

years? During the fourth century, according to Edith Hall, the most dura-

ble marks left on [the spectators] memories after the performance ofa play were those connected with the afflictions suffered by the leading

characters (2006.16). But as Eric Csapo crucially reminds us, this was

evidently not the case for most of the fifth century, when audiences were

much more intently focused on the choral aspects of tragedy (2010.105; also

19992000.404). Representations of (and jokes about) the effects of trag-

edy on audiences show that spectators reactions varied widely in the fifth

century, from effusions of patriotism and military zeal (Frogs 102044),

through delirious love for the playwrights braininess,18to outrage over the

plays moral, religious, and political ideas.19In addition to focusing on a

tragedys civic advice (Frogs100809, 1055), a typical fifth-century

Athenian spectator like Dionysus20 was most memorably impressed by

things that were done and sung by the chorus (Frogs 102829).21By the

mid-fourth century, on the other hand, tragic audiences are depicted as

mainly focused on the suffering of individuals (Roselli 2005.21);22by the

mid-third century, a tragedy could conceivably be performed in competi-

tion without any chorus at all (unlike comedy: Nervegna 2007.21). In short,

fifth-century spectators reacted to the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and

17 In his reconstruction of Stanislavskis production from photos and eyewitnesses,

Loehlin describes (2006.68) the final scene: Ranevskaya has her hands crossed over her

chest in an image of saint-like suffering.

18 Frogs 5260, 77080; also many anecdotes about the audiences love for the poets

brains, philosophy, and poetic skill in Kovacs 1994.25, 33, 35, and 37.

19 From Lefkowitz 1981 and Kovacs 1994. Despite the unreliability of some or even

many of these stories, a distinct picture of audience response to fifth-century tragedy does

nevertheless emerge, and it is one in which the spectators are simply not particularly focused

on the suffering of the protagonists. Instead, the anecdotes speak of the audience being

astounded and terrified by the shows noise, costumes, and special effects, and enlightened

or infuriated by the playwrights ideas (Lefkowitz 1981.70, 71, 95, 103, 158, and 159). In

Kovacs 1994, tragedy is reported to have made audiences feel happy (43), to have physi-

cally saved them (25), and morally, religiously, and politically provoked and angered them

(7, 39, 5355, 63, 87, and 105), sometimes to the point of physical and legal action (7,

53, and 6163). See also Roselli 2011.2649 for an excellent discussion of many of these

anecdotes and testimonia.

20 Wright 2009.157 n. 63, also Slater 2002.

21 See Ceccarelli 2010.138 and n. 130 for the predominantly choral meaning of trag-edy in the fifth century.

22 Roselli 2005.2021 quotes and analyses a fragment from Timocles comedy Women

at the Dionysia.

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124 Jennifer Wise

Euripides in ways that were specific to their moment in historical time.23

A textually prescribed ending that delivered one set of emotions to audi-

ences in this century, in the hands of one set of performers, may have had

a very different effect on spectators a hundred years later.Let me start, then, with Haninks third point, about the nature

of fourth-century Euripidean revivals (2011.312). She begins by accept-

ing, and providing additional evidence for,24my suggestion that the celeb-

rity actors who mounted such revivals would have been likely to favour

minimally choral and maximally protagonistic plays (315). But she dis-

putes my corollary suggestion that these star actors, for similar reasons,

would also have been likely to choose weepy over celebratory plays. As

evidence for her skepticism, she cites Ion and Orestes, two protagonist-

centred plays that may have survived thanks to their selection for celebrity

revival (Hanink 2011.315):

And yet there does not seem to be any correlation between

the percentage of a tragedy that consisted in actors song

and the nature of the plays resolution: of the four Eurip-

idean plays that are more than ten percent actors song

(Hecuba, Ion, Phoenissae, Orestes), two are tragedies

that Wise numbers among those that have happy end-

ings: both theIonand Orestes are resolved by means of

a deus ex machina.

There are two flaws in Haninks reasoning here. The first is that,

as the case of The Cherry Orchard shows, the texts ofIon and Orestes tell

us little about how these plays were performed by fourth-century actors.25

Indeed, about plays like these, where the happiness of the ending depends

wholly on the eleventh-hour reversal of a deus ex machina, we must remain

completely in the dark, for we do not even know whether Old Tragedies

in revival were performed right to the end (see Nervegna 2007). (In later

23 Roselli 2005 analyses the prejudices and expectations of this audience in detail;

n. 26 provides a bibliography of current scholarship on its composition in the fifth century.

Also Revermann 2006.15975.

24 Especially Csapos statistics (19992000.41011) that suggest to Hanink (2011.315):

That nearly seventy percent of the sung lines in Oresteswould have been sung by actors(and not the chorus).

25 For the things they do tell us, such as actors textual interpolations, see Page 1987

and Hall 2007.

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periods, we see star actors ending the play midway through, with their most

heart-breaking or clap-trapping speech.26) The fact that Aristotle associates

Euripidean plays in general with miserable endings (1453a25), despite the

fact that many of them end happily in the texts, tends to support my viewthat fourth-century actors, even whenstaging an all-time favourite play

like Orestes (Nervegna 2007.19),performed it in such a way as to impress

the spectators most strongly with the suffering of the protagonist (see Hall

2006.16). The other weakness in Haninks counterargument on this point

is that the sample size is too small. Two ostensibly happy-ending plays out

of four sounds like a lot, but out of all the Old Tragedies chosen for revival

in the fourth century, these two may have been exceptional choices in a

period overwhelmingly dominated by sad-ending plays.

In connection with this, her third objection, Hanink also cites the

fact that new tragedies continued to be written and staged as trilogies (320).

This she takes as evidence that Aristotle would not have been as likely as

I suggest to have mistaken the true nature of fifth-century tragedy. How-

ever, these new trilogies were presented without a concluding satyr play.

That is, neither the excerpted revivals northe three-part premires of the

fourth century concluded with the kind of raucous celebration with which

all tragedies had ended at the City Dionysia in the fifth century.27 How

could Aristotle have known what effect a concluding satyr play would have

had on the audiences experience of the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles,

and Euripides in the previous century? His discussion of satyr performance

in Poeticsshows clearly that the question hadnt even occurred to him.28

26 When on tour, for example, Stanislavskis actors performed individual actsof Chekhovs

plays. The actors and the public enjoyed these excerpts, says Stanislavski 1925.286,

for they allowed the actors to focus the spectators attention on the emotions of the

characters.

27 Hall 2006.168, Harrison 2005, Griffith 2002.20203, Sommerstein 2002.22ff.;

also Seaford 1984.159, who analyses the obscenity, hilarity, and joyful endings of

satyr drama (5). Gilbert 2002.8587 compares the dominant theories of the satyr play in

our time. While they differ in their view of its anthropological function, all agree that the

satyr play ended with joy and success. For evidence of how the disappearance of the satyr

play from tragedy proper affected peoples view of tragedy, see Hall 2007.284: whereas

in 430 Tragoidiahad still been conceived as a cheerful maenad, the companion of bois-

terous satyrs, a fourth-century monument equates tragedy with a famous actor and a

melancholy role.

28 At 1449a2023, he associates satyr performance with dancing, trochaic tetrameters, anda ludicrous and undignified effectbut also with the distant past of tragedys develop-

ment, long since left behind and irrelevant to both the fifth- and fourth-century tragedies

that he discusses.

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126 Jennifer Wise

Conceivably lacking the counsel of any fifth-century playwrights or audi-

ences, Aristotle would have had no reason to conclude that all the actors

of his time were doing tragedy wrong. On the contrary, as he tells us

himself, he concluded, on the basis of what he saw on the stage, and inthe tragic competitions, that when actors did tragedy well, they were doing

it right (Poetics 1453a2628).

Turning to Haninks first point, we proceed to the matter of my

alleged exaggeration of Euripidess unpopularity in the fifth century.

Hanink writes: One of the key premises underlying Wises argument is

that fourth-century audiences received Euripidean tragedy far more warmly

than had Euripides contemporaries (2011.313). In fact, my discussion

of Euripides is concerned solely with his record of victories in the tragic

contests and with the (universally accepted) fact that, judged by his num-

ber of first-place prizes, he was the least successful of the fifth-century

tragedians whose work is known to us today.29That this was my intent is

stated plainly: Compared with the sensational success of Aeschylus, who

won first prize thirteen times of the nineteen he competed, and Sophocles,

who won at least twenty victories (and never placed third), Euripides won

a paltry four times in his life (2008.383).30 My purpose in mentioning

this fact was to invite readers to compare it with Aristotles discussion of

Euripides in Poetics;my purpose was not, as Hanink suggests, to pres-

ent Euripides as unpopular with fifth-century audiences in any absolute

sense. I noted Euripides poor fifth-century record of victories relative to

Aeschylus and Sophoclesfor the sole purpose of teasing out the oddness of

Aristotles decision to defend Euripides sad-ending strategy on the basis

of its success in competition(Poetics 1453a2328).31

As I tried to show, Aristotle uses an argumentative sleight-of-hand

to equate the tragic with sad endings (even while acknowledging that

some of the best tragedies actually end well).32It occurs in his statement

29 As Roselli notes (2005.1), Euripides was both the least winningest of the three

great fifth-century tragic poets andwildly popular. Wright 2009.14950 discusses the

existence of an anti-prize mentality and emphasizes the disjunction between the number

of prizes a poet won and how warmly his work was received.

30 Again at the end of the paragraph (2008.383), I specify that I am judging the suc-

cess of Euripides plays in competition only by the number of times they were awarded

first prize.31 The oddness of his argument is especially glaring since, as Hanink notes (2011.319

20), Aristotle was surely aware of Euripides record of victories in the fifth century.

32 At 1453b2754a10, he lists all the possible types of tragic plots: the murder is either com-

mitted or averted, in knowledge or in ignorance. Of the (less good, less tragic) type of

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that though critics disagree with him and say that tragedies should notend

sadly (as they often do, for example, in Euripides), sad-ending tragedies are

actually the right or correct kind of tragedy to write, the most truly

tragic kind of tragedies. Why? Because, says Aristotle, these plays provetheir superior tragic-ness on the stage, and in the tragic competitions

(1453a2328). As a way of unpacking this rationale, I chose in my article

to focus on its second half, in the tragic competitions, because victories

in tragic competition are objectively quantifiable. Since we know for a

fact that Euripides rarely did succeed in the tragic competitions with his

sad-ending strategy in the fifth century, then it simply does not follow, as

Aristotle says, that the strategys effectiveness is proved in competition

unless, of course, as I propose, he was really thinking of the fourth-century

contests, during which, if the didaskalic record of 34139 is any indica-

tion, Euripides record was impressive indeed. Over a three-year period,

his plays beat out those of his Old Tragedy rivals for selection by starring

actors three years in a row, a success rate of 100 percent.33

But even leaving Euripides success rate out of it and concentrat-

ing instead on the first half of the rationale, we arrive at the same result:

Aristotle is basing his preference for sad endings not on the play texts, nor

on what the critics say is appropriate for tragedy, but on how effective the

plays are on the stage. The right tragic, Aristotle says, is what is seen

to be the most truly tragic on the stage. Tautologies like thistrue trag-

edy is what is most truly tragicare errors in reasoning. But the rationale

is no less revelatory for its fallacious logic. It shows that when justifying

his bias toward sad-ending plays, the philosopher is thinking of his own

experience as a spectator of tragedy as seen on the stage. Euripides

improved fortunes in fourth-century contests, therefore, demonstrable as

it is, is not one of the key premises of my argument (Hanink 2011.313).

A look at Euripides comparatively few victories in the fifth century was

just a convenient way of showing how surprisinglystage-centricAristo-

tles preference for sad endings really is.

This brings us to Haninks fourth point. Given Aristotles access

to perhaps the entire corpus of fifth-century tragedies, Hanink doubts that

plot in which the murder is averted,he praises Cresphontes,Iphigenia,andHelleas the

best of this (not truly tragic) kind.

33 Snell 1971.1314. James Butrica interprets the record as saying that these Euripid-ean plays won against others (2001.197); Revermann thinks it cant be known whether

they competed or were just exhibited (2006.21). Euripides improved success rate in the

contests of the fourth century is attested either way, however: either he won three years

in a row or was chosen for exhibition three years in a row.

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128 Jennifer Wise

he could have been misled by the way in which fourth-century actors per-

formed them. After surveying some of the evidence that Aristotle would

have had to hand, Hanink concludes that (321)

It is thus hardly the case that it was merely on the basis of

watching single acts of fifth-century tragedies out of con-

text that Aristotle produced thePoetics (Wise 2008.42).

Rather, thePoeticswould have been composed upon the

firm foundations of Aristotles own access to the tragic

texts and exposure to new performances and reperfor-

mances at both the Great Dionysia and elsewhere.

I do not in fact say or imply anywhere that it was merely on

the basis of fourth-century performances that Aristotle wrote thePoetics.

The point I make is rather that these performances evidently played a very

significant role in shaping Aristotles ideas about tragedy, since, by his own

admission,stage effectiveness was the touchstone whereby he judged what

was most truly tragic. Though he acknowledges the existence, excellence,

and even the critically approved normalcyof happy-ending tragedies, he

nevertheless departs from the norm and equates true tragedy with sad-

ending plays. That he adduces their effectiveness on the stage as the

best proof of their superior tragic-ness should be enough to persuade us

of the need to give due weight to his experience of tragedy as performed

on the stage. For where else does a man get his ideas of stage effective-

ness if not from the stage? No matter how firm his knowledge of or

exhaustive his access to the body of fifth-century tragic texts, Aristotle all

but tells us outright that he did not derive his sad-ending theory of trag-

edy from texts of any kind. When explaining why sad endings are more

truly tragic than happy endings, he refers us to the impression that actors

make with these plays on the stage. As he says, plays with miserable

endings reveal themselves to be the right kind of tragedy when theyre

performed well: on the stage, and in the tragic competitions, such plays,

properly worked out, are seen to be the most truly tragic (1453a2328).

His bias toward sad-ending tragedies is thus based not on poetic texts but

on theatrical performances.

Furthermore, as we learn from the reception of Chekhovs plays

over the course of a century, stage performances, especially highly effec-tive and moving ones, come to inform peoples subsequent readingexpe-

rience. For decades after Stanislavskis histrionic tour de force, even

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readersof Chekhov experienced The Cherry Orchardas a weeper.34This

is because the horizon of expectations of which I spoke above affects

readers no less powerfully than theatre goers (Jausss insights were first

developed in connection with readers responses to literary texts). Hav-ing spent his entire theatre-going life seeing fifth-century plays on stage

only in the non-satyric, apoliticized, and protagonist-centred versions pre-

sented by famous actors, Aristotle is very likely to have had his horizon

of expectations shaped by these performances and by his fellow specta-

tors reactions to them. In fact, its almost inconceivable that the best and

most deeply affecting performances of tragedy that hed witnessed in the

theatre would nothave shaped, even if unconsciously, his basic ideas of

what tragedy is supposed to be.

As Hanink acknowledges, Aristotles theatre history researches

were characteristic of his own time, not the fifth century (2011.32021).

The relative novelty of this kind of retrospective scholarship could well

mean that he inherited a theatrical record consisting of little more than

lists of names and dates of victories.35 Crucial questions about perfor-

mance practices are obviously left unanswered by such lists.36 Indeed,

what Aristotle says about the paucity of evidence for early comedy applies

to the issue of audience reception generally: for most of theatre history, it

wasnt taken seriously enough as a scholarly subject for anyone to write

about.37Thus even the most defining facts about the reception of tragedy

in the fifth century, such as whether the audience expected to be carried

away by joy or by sadness at the end, could well have been unknown to

Aristotle in the fourth.

As the annals of theatre history prove, a century can open an

unbridgeable chasm between performance traditions. Less than a century

34 Even by experts, the play continued to be read as a tragedy for about eighty years, for

example Hornby 1986.60. See Senelick 1997 for a complete history of the plays recep-

tion, esp. 6771.

35 See Scullion 2002 for the issues connected with fifth-century victors lists and

Wright 2009.13877 for the inordinate obsession in all periods with prizes and number

of victories.

36 As Revermann 2006.167 and Hughes 2012.206 remind us, even highly detailed

historical records are surprisingly mute about the things we most want to know, such as

performance practices and audience reception.

37 For gaps in the history of comedy, Poetics 1449a37; for the boom, over the last fifteenyears, in interest in issues of reception, see Gildenhard and Revermann 2010.1 and Rev-

ermann 2006.9ff. Roselli 2011 goes a long way toward rectifying the traditional scholarly

neglect of the subject of audience response.

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130 Jennifer Wise

separates Shakespeare from the Restoration, for example, but when his plays

were revived after 1660, they were staged in a way that would have been

unrecognizable to Shakespeares own audiences, with female actors in the

womens parts, French neo-classical improvements to the verse, and Ital-ian-style opera choruses.38About a century separates the lifetimes of Goethe

and Elvis Presley, but wed be making a big mistake if we assumed that

the performance practices and audience expectations of Goethes time were

known to contemporaries of Elvis Presleyeven to those contemporaries

who were experts in theatre, such as Orson Welles, Neil Simon, or Bertolt

Brecht. Hanink thinks that Aristotles access to fifth-century texts and knowl-

edge of the fourth-century theatre would have prevented him from making

any fundamental errors, but there are some fundamental things about which

Aristotle conceivably had no reliable information at all: 1) how the poets

and amateur actors of the fifth century had originally interpreted the roles

that he was used to seeing in the hands of famous, full-time professionals;

2) the effect that the concluding satyr play had on everyones experience of

tragedy during the fifth centuryperformers and spectators alike; 3) all the

subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which the immediate political context for

tragic performance in the fifth century differed from the context in which

he viewed it in the fourth; and 4) the specific ways in which the nature of

the Old Tragedy event as an actors (rather than a poets) art had changed

peoples horizon of expectations when approaching, viewing, and judging

tragic performancesand responding to their endings.

Haninks remaining point concerns her reluctance to accept the

consequences of the fact that in the fifth century, unlike in the fourth, trag-

edies at the City Dionysia appear always to have been funded, rehearsed,

performed, and judged as four-part affairs. In challenging my conclusion

that this can only mean that all fifth-century (City Dionysia) tragedies were

tetralogies, she cites various pieces of evidence that could be taken to sug-

gest, on the contrary, that even in the fifth century, the individual acts of

tragic tetralogies were viewed as separate, stand-alone works (2011.318

19). As quickly becomes apparent, however, Haninks arguments all hinge

on her particular understanding and use of the word viewed. Whereas

she uses the word metaphorically to mean considered, talked of, notated,

38 See, for example, William Davenants Macbeth (1674) and other standard acting

versions of Shakespeare during the Restoration: Spencer 1965.

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mentally conceived, I use it literally to mean actually seen by people

sitting in a theatre. She writes (319; my emphasis):

Contrary to Wises arguments, it was not standard forany given three-plus-one slate of plays to be viewed as

a tetralogy. When, moreover, it comes to the three great

tragedians, it is only in the case of Aeschylus that we have

evidence for the composition of true tetralogies, that is, of

groups of plays connected not just by a general theme but

by the sustained development of a more or less single plot.

One can see from Haninks criteria for true unityi.e., thematic

and narrative (rather than spatial and temporal) continuitythat on the sub-

ject of tragic tetralogies, we are simply talking about different things: Im

talking about what spectators saw in the theatre, Hanink about how read-

ers might write or talk about tragic texts. That a fictional Dionysus, sitting

in a boat with a bookentitled Andromeda, might use this title to describe

what hes reading is hardly surprising, but it does nothing to alter the fact

that whenAndromeda was first performed in competition at the City Dio-

nysia, spectators experienced it as but a piece of a much larger work, the

four-part entry submitted by Euripides to the contest that year. Similarly,

that on victors lists each of the four parts of a tragedy was inscribed with

its own title does nothing to change the fact, so justly pointed out by Mark

Griffith (2002), that they took their places on the list in the first instance

not as winning plays in their own right but as a quarter of the tragic per-

formance that won (or didnt win) first prize. Regardless, even, of whether

the poets invented or, in rehearsal, used these subtitles themselves, when it

came to performance in competition, the spectators judged and therefore

viewed each contest entry as a tetralogy.

As for Haninks insistence that trilogies like the Oresteiawere, in

any case, the exception rather than the rule, the non-survival of any trilogy

except the Oresteiamakes it impossible to say much of anything about

what was or was not typical of trilogies. More to the point, however, is

that the way in which the four parts of a tragic composition related to one

another narratively and thematicallyis actually a separate (literary) issue

that does not really bear upon the theatrical fact that, during the fifth cen-

tury at the City Dionysia, tragedies were performed and therefore viewedby spectators as four-part affairs.

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132 Jennifer Wise

The final part of Haninks article is devoted to proposing a dif-

ferent explanation than the one I offer for Aristotles most striking omis-

sions inPoetics: the absence from his account of tragedy of its Athenian,

civic, Dionysian, and celebratory aspects. I attribute the gloomy, depoliti-cized image of tragedy that we find in Aristotle to the appearance of a new

member of the theatrical cast of Athens,39the full-time professional actor

(2008.398). Hanink thinks that Aristotles universalizing of tragedy is more

likely to have been shaped by, and in turn reflects, tragedys status, already

in this period, as the citys most successful cultural export (2011.322).

While it is true that tragedy was a successful cultural export of

the Athenians in Aristotles time, the problem with Haninks proposal is

that tragedy always was a successful cultural export of the Athenians.

Far from being a development that was specific or new to this period,

the fourth century, as Haninks hypothesis would require, the export of

Athenian tragedy was, on the contrary, one of its defining characteristics

from the start. As Oliver Taplin points out, evidence for the export of

Athenian tragedy predates even our earliest surviving play (1993.2). Eric

Csapo makes the same point with great quantities of evidence (2010.83

107), counting four certain venues for staging plays outside Athens by

about 420 and another four that are probable (2010.102). Athenian trag-

edy was exported to Sicily with Aeschylus in the first quarter of the fifth

century, to other locales in Italy through the middle of the century, and to

Macedon with Euripides and Agathon toward the end (Taplin 1993.23).

Taplin considers the very early date by which Athenian tragedy acquired

its status as a successful cultural export to be but the logical consequence

of its performance at Athens for tourists and foreigners (35). For these

visitors to Athens, as for the patrons who invited Athenian playwrights

back to their foreign courtsto say nothing of the Athenians themselves,

who throughout the fifth century performed in tragedies with concluding

satyr plays and watched their friends and relatives do the sametragedys

intimate connection with the Athenian polis and its Dionysian celebrations

would have been obvious.

Indeed, if patterns in early modern theatre history are any guide,

tragedys cultural prestige abroad existed becauseof its specifically Athe-

nian character, not despite or in opposition to it. For example, the first

international exports of commedia dellarte occurred within a year of the

founding of Il Gelosithat is, from [the] very inception of the genre

39 The title of Edith Halls 2006 book.

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itself (Henke 2008.19). The Gelosi troupe, the Aeschylus of commedia

dellarte, was the first great exponent of a type of theatrical performance

that was still relatively new.40The troupe was founded and first performed

in Italy in 1568. Within the year, it had played in cities as farfl

ung as Linzand Prague; by 1576, eight years later, Il Gelosi had successfully exported

commedia dellarte to Paris, Vienna, Munich, Spain, and Antwerp (Henke

2008.2627). Yet despite its almost instantaneous transformation into an

export commodity, commedia dellarte lost none of its local and wholly

Italian characteristics: regardless of where or for whom they played, com-

media actors performed in Italian, staged the same Italian plots and charac-

ters as they did at home, and used precisely the same Neapolitan, Venetian,

and Bergamese dialects, masks, and costumes that had made this form of

theatre so famous and beloved in the first place.41

Athenian tragedy seems likewise to have been exported to foreign

courts and cities without any diminution of its local characteristics. Judging

from the politically allusive, chorally elaborate, satyr-inflected way in which

tragedy was written and performed in Athens throughout the fifth century,

the genres concurrentstatus as a successful cultural export seems not to

have had any de-politicizing or de-Atticizing effect.42The reason for this

might lie in the very nature of cultural exports: the more famous Athenian

drama became in cities far and wide, the prouder its practitioners would

have been of the specifically Athenian qualities that had given their prod-

ucts such cachet. Likewise from the point of view of the cultural import-

ers: when twentieth-century Parisians, Muscovites, and Berliners wanted

American jazz, jeans, Coke, movies, and rock-and-roll, they wanted the

real thing, with all of its political meanings and authentic materials, not

some de-Americanized, universalized knock-off.43

40 According to Henke 2008.1920, the first written evidence of commedia dellarte

dates to the 1540s.

41 Other examples abound. In nearly all pre-industrial periods during which perform-

ers were limited to the transportation technologies of the Athenians (foot, horse, cart, and

sailing ship), new forms of theatre, including Italian opera, English sentimental comedy,

German Sturm und Drang, and Parisian melodrama, became international sensations within

as little as one year. For the last of these, see Wise 2012.

42 The same appears to have been the case with Old Comedy: despite its export far

beyond its point of origin, even the latest example of the genre, Frogs, is still as politi-

cally allusive, locally topical, and, essentially, as Athenian as ever; see Taplin 1993.35,48, Slater 2002, and Revermann 2006.

43 As Quebecois playwright Michel Tremblay noted in 2000, it is precisely their

accuracy to specific locales that gives plays their truth value: http://www.iti-worldwide.

org/theatredaymessage_list.html (accessed December 14, 2011).

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134 Jennifer Wise

And yet, after nearly a century of successful export without any

apparent change to its basic performance practices, Athenian tragedy

underwent a seismic shift in 386.44 First at the City Dionysia and later

elsewhere

45

excerpts from Old Tragedy classics began to be performed ina non-satyric, minimally choral, and purely histrionic waypurely his-

trionic in the sense that these excerpts, chosen and staged by actors, were

now removed from their original literary and political contexts. Haninks

cultural export theory does not fit well enough with the known chronol-

ogy to explain this shift, but as Paola Ceccarelli puts it, the considerable

changes in [the] production of tragedy after the fifth century doline up

with the rise of professional actors (2010.105).46

Aristotle himself saw the advent of experts in tragic acting as a

significant feature of his time. In the first chapter of Book 3 of Rhetoric,

he mentions two ways in which tragedy was now different than before.

One was its shift from a poetical to a colloquial diction: The language

of tragedy, he says, used to be decorated by poetical words, but it has

dropped that style altogether and given up all words not used in ordinary

talk (1404a2933). The other change was the emergence of tragic acting

as a distinct and requisitecomponent of tragic production. Whereas skill

in acting scarcely counted in the past, and poets used to win tragic com-

petitions without even thinking about it, expertise in matters of delivery

had become an absolute requirement (1403b3234): It is those who do bear

them in mind who usually win prizes in the dramatic contests . . . in drama,

the actors now count for more than the poets. About the expertise of such

specialists in delivery, Aristotle says that it was a long time before it found

its way into the arts of tragic drama at all (1403b2223). This is because,

in the past, the poets acted their tragedies themselves (1403b2324). In

other words, so long as the poets were performing their own plays, acting

as a distinct art form hardly existed; now it was what won awards.

Aristotles sense that the rise of acting specialists was a feature

specific to his time (now) is also suggested by PlatosIon.47When Plato

44 See Ceccarelli 2010.113, esp. n. 43, for a discussion, with bibliography, of the evidence for

the reperformance of Old Tragedy from 386; also Easterling 1993.562 and 1997c.

45 Ceccarelli 2010, Nervegna 2007, Easterling 1997a, and Hall 2007.

46 Ceccarelli 2010.105 writes that these changes were linked, not least, to the rise

of professional actors, reminding us that there were surely other causes as well, amongthem, presumably, the same political changes at Athens after the loss of the Peloponnesian

War that caused the shift from Old to New Comedy.

47 Woodruff 1983.5 puts the dialogues probable composition date before 390 and its

dramatic date before 412, which would make it a picture of the performing professions

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depicts Socrates interrogating an expert in matters of delivery about the

nature of the performers art, it is still to the older member of the theatri-

cal cast of Athens, the rhapsode, that he turns. That is, even at the end of

thefi

fth century, a rhapsode like Ion was still seen as the working profes-sional, the specialist in matters of performance and delivery, the one for

whom dramatic performance was a trade.48This was probably because

during most of the fifth century, as Csapo notes, actors still came from a

handful of well-to-do families (2010.88); they were not yet professional

performers. In the fifth century, in Niall Slaters words, acting was not

yet a way of making a living: there simply were not enough performance

opportunities for actors to sustain full-time careers (2002.29). By the

mid-fourth century, all this had changed.49Aristotle writes about an actor

like Theodoros exactly as Plato had previously written about a rhapsode

like Ion: as a full-time professional, a specialist in his own distinct art

form, competing and winning prizes against other like-minded profes-

sionals, and pursuing a (potentially) remunerative career.50In the days of

histrionic amateurism,51 the tragedian was expected to delight the city

with a propitious gift;52the job of the fourth-century actor was to make

the spectators cry.

With the advent of full-time performance specialists such as The-

odoros and Polos, tragedy would inevitably have changed to some degree

from a good civic augury into the kind of protagonistic monology of indi-

vidual suffering that we see reflected inPoetics and in the didaskalic record

of 34139. And whether we look to Aulus Gelliuss story about Poloss urn

inElectraor to Stanislavskis sobbing exit in The Cherry Orchard, we see

that the actors special skill, his professional technique, is precisely what

Aristotle recommends to the tragic poet inPoetics:to sympathetically feel,

during the generation prior to Aristotles.

48 See Woodruff 1983.5ff. for the significance of Platos repeated use of techn to

talk about Ions job.

49 Duncan 2005.63 dates the rise of the full-time professional actor to the fourth cen-

tury, Csapo 2010.83116 and Hall 2006.30, 298 to the end of the fifth.

50 Rhetoric 3.2 and Politics 7.17, 1336b1314; Ion 530bd, 535e, 537e, 538b, 539e,

541c.

51 Fifth-century actors and poets were paid (Csapo 2010.8889). By amateurism I

mean that their participation in drama was unrelated to their livelihood and could therefore

be part-time or seasonal.52 See Hanink on the economy of charis and tim with which all three tragedians were

associated both vis--vis Athens and other places. She quotes the hypothesis for Oedipus

at Colonusthat conceives of the play as a favour given by Sophocles to the Athenians,

a gift intended to delight the city: 2010.60.

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136 Jennifer Wise

oneself, the painful emotions of the leading characters (1455a29b). Polos

sympathized with the grief of a mourning princess; Stanislavski emotion-

ally identified with the sorrows of a bankrupt nobleman. Underlying this

job of sympathetic identifi

cationof feeling what others feelis an ethi-cal assumption about the universal equivalence and interchangeability of

all human feeling, and Aristotles theory of tragedy is based on the same

assumption: we pity the character and fear for ourselves. Inspired, perhaps,

by the feats of sympathetic identification carried out by the virtuoso actors

of the fourth century, Aristotle concluded that all human beings will react

identically to Oedipuss fate and that this emotional reaction will be iden-

tical to Oedipuss own: as he suffers, so suffer weallof us, regardless

of whether we ourselves are aristocrats or servants, Athenians or Persians.

In my earlier paper, I argue that the rise of the fourth-century actor was a

catastrophe for our understanding of fifth-century tragedy (2008.384),

and I maintain that this is true (with allowances for some degree of strate-

gic hyperbole), but its worth adding that it was a very good thing for the

theatreand our humanity. The actors of Aristotles time may have given

us a distorted picture of Old Tragedy, but they also developed a technthat

has been teaching us ever since how to sympathize with the suffering and

mourn the destruction of othersincluding our enemies.

University of Victoria

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