Shakespeare's Ear

by Tim Rayborn

  The head god, Ea/Enki, hears about this sibling squabble (Ishtar had arranged for him to be notified if she were gone for more than three days, a sensible precaution) and basically tells Ereshkigal to cease and desist and let her sister go. The queen has no choice but to obey, and so Ishtar returns to the world of the living, putting on one garment at a time as she leaves. But there is a condition: someone else must take her place. She doesn’t want anyone to have to make that sacrifice, but when she sees her husband Dumuzi not mourning her loss at all, she immediately chooses him, and down he goes, dragged by an entourage of demons; so much for that thirty-six-thousand-year reign.

  All of this was juicy stuff to portray, and it’s possible that these kinds of stories were given dramatic readings, even if they were not actually “plays” in the way we think of them. Various masks have been found that seem to represent gods and monsters, which would have made for a splendid way to convey religious teachings about the authority and power of the gods, reasons for the natural order of things, and our place in the cosmos. These temple areas, if not exactly “theaters,” could certainly accommodate large and curious crowds.

  Did these theatrical-like concoctions make their way out of the temple and into secular life? There isn’t much evidence, but they certainly could have, even if only on a small scale. It’s easy to imagine royalty being entertained by masked players telling such stories at a banquet (including the disrobing and angry demons), for example, even if no public theaters were ever built.

  Ancient Egyptian dramatic rituals

  Violence, dismemberment, and hippo burgers

  Egypt in the ancient world was a wonder, a culture filled with mystery and fantastic myths. It has captivated the imagination of the West and the world since the beginning of modern archeology in the eighteenth century. Its buildings, pyramids, and statues inspire awe, and its culture continues to fascinate. Egypt’s body of religious beliefs and rituals was immensely complex and changeable, with certain narratives and gods being melded into one another over the centuries, stories being adapted and rewritten, and beliefs being updated as the need arose.

  At the heart of these, however, were certain key myths that retained their power, among them the legends of the gods Osiris, Set, Isis, and Horus. To mark the annual Nile flooding that came in spring, these tales would be reenacted at temples and shrines for the benefit of the priests and the gods they worshipped; the general public was probably not allowed to witness certain sacred dramas, while others may have been widely viewed. Given that some of these accounts were pretty violent, the dramatic portrayals could get a bit bloody, as well.

  The myth of Osiris—the god of the underworld who presided over the judgment of souls, as well as of agriculture and rebirth—was well known and revered throughout Egypt. It tells of how the green-skinned god was envied by his brother, the jackal-headed god Set, who coveted his throne. Set attacks Osiris and dismembers him, cutting him into fourteen pieces (or sixteen, or forty-two, the stories vary). Osiris’s wife and sister (it’s complicated), Isis, recovers all of the pieces and puts him back together, Frankenstein’s monster-like, but she is unable to recover his phallus. No problem! She fashions a replacement out of gold, and using an ancient spell, brings her brother back to life long enough for them to do the deed and produce a child, Horus, the god of the sky. Thereafter, Osiris becomes lord of the underworld, and the hawk-headed Horus becomes a much-loved god who battles against his father’s murderer on several occasions.

  This striking series of episodes lent itself well to ritual dramas at various festivals that were performed yearly in Abydos, Heliopolis, and other cities. One wonders how the actors might have presented Osiris being chopped up and distributed about the land. They probably used a number of props and masks, and spoke dialogue derived from the written mythological accounts.

  The villain of the story, the god Set, was represented on some occasions by a live hippo in the performance area (in some myths, Set took the form of a hippo). The high priest, or perhaps even the pharaoh, would kill the animal, thus representing the vanquishing of the god. Thereafter, it was carved up and portions were served and eaten as a final symbolic gesture of Set’s defeat.

  Sometimes enthusiasm for the ritual dramas could go too far. The Greek writer Herodotus (ca. 484–ca. 425 BCE) wrote in his Histories about a pageant that got out of hand:

  At Papremis … while some few of the priests are occupied with the image of the god, the greater number of them stand in the entrance of the temple with wooden clubs, and other persons to the number of more than a thousand men with purpose to perform a vow, these also having all of them staves of wood, stand in a body opposite to those: and the image, which is in a small shrine of wood covered over with gold, they take out on the day before to another sacred building.

  The few then who have been left about the image, draw a wain with four wheels … and the other priests standing in the gateway try to prevent it from entering, and the men who are under a vow come to the assistance of the god and strike them, while the others defend themselves. Then there comes to be a hard fight with staves, and they break one another’s heads, and I am of opinion that many even die of the wounds they receive; the Egyptians however told me that no one died.

  Sometimes these mock battles were not so mocking. The Roman poet Juvenal (late first to early second century CE) records how rivalries between towns during these ritual dramas could become fierce and lead to violence. In the towns of Ombus and Denderah, for example, there was so much enmity that they would try to disrupt each other’s performances, first with fists, then with the throwing of stones, and finally with arrows! One unfortunate combatant from Denderah was left behind and apparently cut to pieces; maybe they were emulating the whole Osiris/Set thing a little too well.

  The Hittites and the Anatolian Greeks

  Stormy marriages, drunk dragons, and castrated gods

  The Hittites occupied what is now Turkey, with an empire that reached its height by the fourteenth century BCE. They had their own unique culture and beliefs, including religious rituals that may have been acted out as dramas.

  Like the Mesopotamians, they performed rituals wherein the king and queen would act out a sacred marriage between gods, in this case the weather god Tarhun (also known as Teshub) and the sun goddess Arinniti, who may have been the supreme deity in the Hittite pantheon. We say “may” because much information has been lost about their beliefs and has to be pieced together from stone inscriptions, a tedious task for which, thankfully, there are still enthusiasts. This ritual took place in Arinna, the major cultic center for Arinniti’s worship. The exact nature of the ritual is not known. It may have been public, or performed in front of priests only. It may have been symbolic, or they may actually have ritually consummated the marriage. But it was undoubtedly an important dramatic ritual.

  At the spring festival of Puruli, held in the city of Nerik, there was a commemoration of the sky god’s defeat of the dragon god Illuyanka. The story tells how Teshub gets his butt kicked by said dragon in their first encounter. In one version, he asks Inara, the goddess of wild animals, for help, and she devises a plan to get the dragon drunk. The reptile, then quite tipsy, is done in by Teshub and other gods; not very fair. Another version records that Teshub loses his eyes and heart to the dragon after their first battle—damned inconvenient—and devises a plan for revenge by marrying and having a son who marries the dragon’s daughter and asks for his father’s eyes and heart back as a wedding gift. The gracious dragon agrees, and Teshub, thus restored, goes back to face him again and kills him; again, not very sporting. Some surviving texts indicate that there were directions for the ritual, implying that it was performed for an audience, but we don’t know how many actually saw it, or if it was an annual enactment.

  By the first millennium BCE, the mother goddess Cybele was widely worshipped in the same region, and the tragic story of her love for the god Attis was well known. Ritual representations of the tale were perfo
rmed at festivals, probably in caves rather than in temples, but certainly before an audience of some kind. The later Greek version of events was very saucy, indeed. Cybele refused the advances of Zeus, a bold move which the arrogant leader of the gods was not about to take lightly. He approached her as she slept, and—for real—got himself off on her. This money shot was enough, her being a fertility goddess and all, for her to become pregnant, and at the appropriate time, she gave birth to one Agdistis, a hermaphrodite.

  The gods weren’t happy about this, so they cut off Agdistis’s penis and buried it in the ground. From this sprang an almond tree—no jokes about “nuts.” The nymph Nana became pregnant from one of the almonds—ancient Greek contraception clearly sucked—and gave birth to the beautiful Attis. Agdistis, even though technically his parent, fell in love with Attis and announced this at his wedding, which drove Attis mad. He ran into the forest, castrated himself, and bled to death (violets were said to have sprung up from his blood in the ground). His spirit entered into a tree, but Agdistis asked Zeus to preserve his body forever. In one version of the story from Ovid, Cybele is completely devoted to Attis and it is her devotion that drives him insane. In some accounts Cybele and Agdistis are combined, and Cybele seeks Zeus’s help to resurrect Attis, whose festival as a reborn god is then celebrated yearly.

  Can you imagine trying to act this story out? One would hope that they wouldn’t want to be too realistic in depicting the details, but then again, it seems that priests of both Cybele and Attis were required to be eunuchs, and probably performed that operation on themselves as part of their initiation. That is some serious and painful devotion!

  2

  Ancient Greece and Rome

  Drama as we like to think of it really came into its own during the Greco-Roman period, from roughly 700 BCE in Greece until at least the mid-fourth century CE in Rome. The two genres that have been most often associated with the theater—comedy and tragedy—were invented and then developed to near perfection by the Greeks. Incidentally, “tragedies” didn’t have to be particularly tragic (though people died in them often enough); the term simply meant that the subject matter in a play was given a serious treatment. We will look at comedy and tragedy as the Greeks understood them in a bit more detail later in the chapter.

  A key part of drama in ancient Greece was the dramatic competition, wherein playwrights would vie against one another for prizes and bragging rights, rather like a theatrical Olympics. The best example was the City Dionysia, established in Athens in the sixth century BCE. It was an annual religious festival held in March/April that included many types of performances. The most important were:

  • Dithyrambs: These were choral works for a group of fifty men and fifty boys. Each group sang and danced in honor of Dionysus. The choruses were financed by a choregos, a wealthy citizen who supported their efforts as a matter of civic pride.

  • Comedies: Originally, only three playwrights were allowed to enter; this number was later expanded to five. Such comedies were most often set in contemporary times and poked fun at Athenians, both real and invented.

  • Tragedies and satyr plays: Three playwrights entered the competition, each offering three tragedies and a satyr play. Satyr plays were mythological tales of the gods and heroes. The chorus of these plays was always made up of satyrs (or rather, people dressed up like them), those Pan-like, lecherous, and bawdy half men/half goats who piped and danced in the revels of Dionysus. Such plays were comic and even vulgar, and were intended to contrast with the dark themes, sadness, and death of the tragedies.

  These competitive activities were funded by the city and were considered crucial to urban identity. Those who won the competition were able to feel great pride and enjoy being able to boast of their victory, as well as engage in some epic celebrations for their efforts, involving much wine and food.

  Drama, of course, made its way into the Roman Empire, but those silly Romans eventually turned their attention to shows that were more, shall we say, on the naughty side. The esteemed Greek plays coexisted with hugely popular street theater that spared no one and nothing in its attempts to shock, provoke, and get a laugh, as well as a few coins. This chapter will look at some of the genres of the time, from the noblest to the lewdest, and introduce you to some Greek and Roman playwrights whose works, lives, and deaths were on the peculiar side (bear in mind that many of these biographies are a mixture of myth, legend, and fanciful invention). But first, let’s start with a basic question, the answer to which may seem obvious: What are comedy and tragedy?

  Comedy and tragedy

  It’s all Greek to me

  Before we delve into the strange and unfortunate experiences of some of the ancient world’s greatest playwrights, a bit of background on the genres they used is helpful. In our modern interpretations, comedy makes us laugh and tragedy makes us sad. The two masks so often seen in association with drama have one face smiling and one frowning to indicate this exact distinction. But, as you may have guessed, the truth is a little more complex than that.

  So what were these kinds of tales, and why were they so popular?

  Tragedy (tragōidia) may have had its origins in the worship of the wine god Dionysus, who later became the patron of the theater. Aristotle held that tragedy grew out of a form of hymn sung to the god. Not everyone accepts this theory, and it’s a debated subject in the study of Greek drama. Even the roots of the word itself are disputed. It may derive from “song of the goats,” referring to the satyrs, or it may mean “song of the harvest,” also appropriate for a god of wine and vegetation. At some point, the idea of presenting mythological stories publicly took hold. Initially, there was only one actor, in costume and wearing a mask so that he could properly impersonate a god and tell his or her story without presuming to do so in mere mortal garb, thus offending said god. Eventually a chorus was added and then two other speaking actors, to allow the story to unfold in a more naturalistic manner. With these innovations came dark tales of revenge and justice presided over by stern gods who sometimes interfered in mortal affairs way too much. Sometimes the plays affected the actors themselves. In an early theatrical anecdote, Greek rhetorician Lucian (ca. 120/25 CE–180/200 CE) recorded how an actor portraying Ajax became so involved with the character’s descent into madness, that he really went mad himself and nearly killed the actor playing Odysseus. Later, he came to his senses and was filled with remorse: “For when his partisans begged him to repeat the performance, he recommended another actor for the part of Ajax, saying that ‘it was enough for him to have been mad once.’”

  Comedy (kōmōidia) had less lofty origins and topics than its sister genre. It probably arose by the sixth century BCE, though mockery and satire in both literature and everyday life were surely far older. The word probably derives from the ancient Greek for “singer/comic poet.” Comedies were more down-to-earth than tragedies and dealt less with mythology (the gods, of course, should not be mocked) and more with social commentary. Political satire, sexual humor, and the foibles of life were all fair game. Greek comedy is divided into three eras: Old Comedy (archaia), Middle Comedy (mese), and New Comedy (nea). The old comedies were more fantastical, but later plays focused more on real-world plots and employed stock characters, something the Romans would take over with glee; these may have influenced the later Commedia dell’Arte in Italy (we’ll get to that in act II), though not every scholar thinks so. The themes of the New Comedy had a lasting impact on Western drama down to Shakespeare and beyond, since this form of comedy emphasized real life and familiar situations (especially related to love and its endless problems) instead of mythic stories.

  Aeschylus (525/524–ca. 456/455 BCE)

  Heads up

  Aeschylus is one of the great tragedians (how’s that for a wonderful word?) of ancient Greece. Credited as the “father of tragedy,” he is said to have written as many as ninety plays, but alas, only seven of them have survived, and some believe that one of these may not be his. Still, his
are among the earliest surviving dramatic works, along with those of Sophocles and Euripides. Within Aeschylus’s meager less-than-ten-percent surviving output, however, are great works such as the Oresteia trilogy, a series of three plays that describe the bloody aftermath of the Trojan War.

  King Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek army during the war, returns after the victory at Troy, but his wife, Clytemnestra, is none too happy that he sacrificed their daughter to the gods to ensure victory, so she murders him. Their son, Orestes, and daughter, Electra, vow to avenge this murder, and eventually Orestes kills Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. He is then beset by the Furies, who intend to avenge the matricide and hound Orestes into the wilderness; eventually, he must stand trial before the gods, including Athena. In the vote on his guilt, they cannot break a tie and so Athena votes in his favor and he is acquitted. The rule of law is upheld and the values of Athens are extolled. Um … hooray? The final play of the trilogy, The Eumenides, was said to have been so terrifying at times that several audience members died of fright and women miscarried, though this is likely just fanciful nonsense that was written down in a later biography of the playwright.

  Another of his plays was Seven against Thebes, which sounds rather like the title of a 1950s Western starring John Wayne. In this charming tale, the sons of the ill-fated Oedipus (more on him in a bit)—Eteocles and Polynices—agree to rule the city in alternating years, but at the end of his first year, Eteocles refuses to cede power to his brother. They quarrel. They fight in single combat. They kill each other. Everyone laments. An additional ending was added some fifty years later (Seven against Thebes II: This Time It’s Personal), where everyone laments even more.