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IV. Heroes in the Drama: The Problem of ‘Character’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

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Extract

The idea that what happens on stage in a Sophoclean play should be interpreted above all in the light of the motives and intentions of the individual characters has had and continues to have widespread support. In the words of one critic who adopted such a character-oriented approach, ‘Sophocles differs from the other two tragedians in directing his whole technique to the presentation of one or at most two great figures’. But in recent years the notion of ‘character’ has come under increasingly critical scrutiny. In this chapter we shall examine some of the issues involved.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Surveys in the Classics , Volume 16: Sophocles , 1984 , pp. 12 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

Notes

1. Webster, T. B. L., An Introduction to Sophocles2 (London, 1969), p. 55 Google Scholar.

2. I borrow the phrase from B. M. W. Knox’s perceptive and sophisticated book The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy (Berkeley, 1964)Google Scholar.

3. E.g. 79ff., 88-9, 94-5, 874-5, 902-3, 971, 1013-15, 1310ff., 1371-2. The general question of ϕύσις in Sophocles is the starting-point of H. Diller’s essay ‘Über das Selbstbewusstsein der sophokleischen Personen’, WS 69 (1956), 70-85 (repr. in Diller’s Kleine Schriften zur antiken Literatur (Munich, 1971), pp. 272-85.

4. Cf.Waldock, A. J. A., Sophocles the Dramatist (Cambridge, 1951), pp. 49ff.Google Scholar, following Webster (1969), p. 102, etc. Diptychs threaten to invade even the satyr-plays, too fragmentary to defend themselves: Cf.Sutton, D. F., The Greek Satyr-Play (Meisenheim, 1980), pp. 45 Google Scholar and 47.

5. On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy (London, 1962).

6. Reinhardt (1979), pp. 30 and 36, has some excellent remarks on what binds Ajax and Trach. into dramatic wholes. On Ajax see also Pearson, A. C., ‘Sophocles, Ajax, 961-973’, CQ 16 (1922), 124-36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tyler, J., ‘Sophocles’ Ajax and Sophoclean plot construction’, AJPh 95 (1974), 24–42 Google Scholar; Segal (1981), p. 432 n. 5.

7. Jones (1962), p. 37.

8. See SirPickard-Cambridge, A., The Dramatic Festivals of Athens2 , revised by Gould, J. and Lewis, D. M. (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar, index s.v. ‘masks’. The whole book is an invaluable guide to details of staging, actors, costume, audience, etc.

9. See Pickard-Cambridge (1968), pp. 142-4.

10. For one answer see Charles, Garton, ‘Characterisation in Greek tragedy’, JHS 77 (1957), 247-54Google Scholar, at 252.

11. For a possible answer see Buxton (1980); also ch. 4 of Cameron, A., The Identity of Oedipus the King (New York, 1968)Google Scholar.

12. The classic proponent of this view is Tycho, Wilamowitz, Die dramatische Technik des Sophokles (Berlin, 1917)Google Scholar. For a discussion of Tycho see Lloyd-Jones, H. in CQ 22 (1972), 214-28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. See Jens (1971); important reservations about the isolability of the components are to be found in Taplin (1977), esp. pp. 49-60 and 470-6.

14. See Eurip, . Alc. ed. Dale, A. M. (Oxford, 1954), note on 280ff.Google Scholar; also introduction, pp. xxii-xxix. For the comparison with opera see Gould, J., ‘Dramatic character and “human intelligibility” in Greek tragedy’, PCPhS 204 (1978), 43–67 Google Scholar, at 50-1, and Black, M., Poetic Drama as Mirror of the Will (London, 1977)Google Scholar.

15. See B. Mannsperger, ‘Die Rhesis’, in Jens (1971), pp. 173-4.

16. Gould (1978), 51. One may compare B. Seidensticker, ‘Die Stichomythie’, in Jens (1971), p. 206: commenting on the difference between Aeschylean and Sophoclean stichomythia, he notes that Sophocles mixes kinds of stichomythia which are distinct in Aeschylus.

17. See Easterling, P. E., ‘Presentation of character in Aeschylus’, G & R 20 (1973), 3–19 Google Scholar (followed by Winnington-Ingram (1980), 6-8), and ‘Character in Sophocles’, G & R 24 (1977), 121-9; also Garton (1957).