Notes from Carlson (Theories of Theatre - the bit about the Greeks)

So - the earliest theories of theatre appear to be found in Aristophanes. It's not the best start: nice and early (the Big Three of Athenian tragedy have already done their thing, but it is close enough to the beginning to make it a prime source), but from the pen of a comedian. Sure, Aristophanes wrote plays, but I don't trust him. Look at the hatchet job he did on Socrates in The Clouds.

There are a few places where Aristophanes explores the idea of theatre: The Acharnians, Peace, The Frogs... most of the time, he is having a crack at his contemporary, Euripides. He is more sympathetic to Aeschylus, an earlier, now dead, author (in The Frogs, he wins what Carlson claims to be the most serious discussion debate about the function of drama). It fits in with Aristophanes' socially conservative attitude. Aeschylus had a genuine vision of Athens as a the locus of an inclusive, just society (The Oresteia is like an advert for Athenian jury duty) and was part of the generation who kicked the Persians out of Greece in a moment of panhellenic enthusiasm.

Marner goes on to connect Aristophanes' critique of Euripides to Plato's notorious joke in The Republic (when he says that he's kick actors out of his ideal city. Notice he is going to kick them out after they have done the performance...). Both Plato and Aristophanes express concern at the impact of 'poetry' (that is roughly equivalent to drama, at least as far as this study goes) on the moral character of the city. For Aristophanes, this means liking Aeschylus better than Euripides - prescribing the correct sort of theatre. For Plato, it means watching the plays, thanking the actors, then sending them off to another city.

Sorry, I can't take either of these critiques seriously. First of all, Aristophanes is chiefly known in the twenty-first century as the author of a bunch of plays about sex. There have been attempts to claim that his Lysistrata is some kind of feminist classic, but the main scene involves a striptease routine outside a temple. It is a bit like Benny Hill pausing as he chases his Angels around a park in their skids, turning to the camera, and reminding the audience that they better not cheat on their wives.

As for Plato - didn't he start his career as a playwright? Then a wrestler (or vice-versa)... and have you noticed the format of his dialogues? Very familiar to anyone who has read a play. While there is a more serious explanation for Plato's fundamental dishonesty that invokes his concept of the Noble Lie, the nature of dialectic and the form of The Republic itself, I'm happy enough to say that the quality of Plato's prose, as well as his persistent use of allegory, would get him kicked out of his ideal state.

To be honest, although I am a big fan of Plato, I don't have much interest in his aesthetics, such as they are. He is subsuming a genuine discussion about the nature of poetry to his broader agenda - and slips in critiques of contemporary pagan religion to bolster his attempt to get a rise out of the reader. The same for Aristophanes - he is playing to the crowd.

Like everyone else, I have to start with Aristotle. But, as Carlin points out, that's a pain too. The text we have is a mess (all those books of Aristotle are pretty much notes by his students - and looking at the way I take notes, we are lucky that he doesn't have a few more chapters that repeat 'I am so bored' in different font sizes). I also think that Aristotle was just trying to argue with Plato, and make a case for the 'morality' of drama.

It's not that I don't think the Greeks are worth reading (well, Aristophanes and Plato are)... it is more that I don't think these are serious attempts to grapple with theatre. But I shall recite the Aristotle theories in my next post, for the sake of form...