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Approaches to Theory/Criticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2021

Richard Schechner
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Extract

For the last hundred years or more, Greek tragedy has been understood as an outgrowth of rites celebrated annually at the Festival of Dionysus. Those rites have been investigated both in their relation to the god Dionysus and in their relation to the primitive religion of the Greeks. The result is a conception of Greek tragedy which is very different from that which prevailed from the Renaissance into the eighteenth century. The Renaissance humanists and their successors saw it in “civilized” and rational terms; in our time we see that much of its form and meaning is due to its primitive source, and to the religious Festival of which it was a part. This new conception of Greek tragedy has had a very wide effect upon our understanding of the sources of poetry in our tradition, and also upon modern poetry itself, including the theatre and music….

Type
Research Article
Information
Tulane Drama Review , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , Summer 1966 , pp. 20 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © The Tulane Drama Review 1966

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References

1 Introduction to Aristotle's Poetics (New York: Hill and Wang, 1961), pp. 36-39.Google Scholar The entire scope of the following essay was formulated and discussed in my seminars. I owe much to John Emigh, Philip McCoy, Gillette Elvgren, Burton Melnick, and Sidney James. I should also like to thank William Arrowsmith, Eric Bentley, Boyd Compton, Donald Kaplan, Monroe Lippman, Erika Munk, and Arthur Wagner for suggesting changes and additions to portions of this work which they read in draft form.

2 William Arrowsmith, on several occasions, has attacked the Cambridge thesis. See, for example, “The Criticism of Greek Tragedy,” TDR, volume 3, number 3, p. 37: “It seems to me that nothing but chaos can come from the fashionable notion that because Greek tragedy begins in ritual, its structure is therefore ritual dramatized, its hero a ritual scapegoat, and its action a shadow-play of the death of the Eniautos-daimon.” My tack, as I hope will become clear, though in no way opposed to Arrowsmith's, is in a different direction.

3 It was in Themis that Murray printed his “Excursus on the ritual forms preserved in Greek tragedy,” which is the basis for much of the later work connecting theatre and ritual.

4 Murray's “Excursus” in Jane Ellen Harrison, Themis: A study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion (Cambridge: 1912), pp. 341-363.

5 The earliest mention of the Dithyramb is found in a fragment of Archilochus of Paros (fr. 77 D) dating from the first half of the Seventh Century B. C. Most of our evidence comes from the Fifth Century: the time of the plays themselves. As P. W. Pickard-Cambridge notes ( and my facts are taken from his book, Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Comedy [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., edited with notes by T. B. L. Webster, 1962]): “The attempts to throw light upon the original character of the dithyramb by reference to the derivation of the name have so far led to no certain results” (p. 7). This philological observation is very important because Pickard-Cambridge also states: “The dithyramb may be very old if the philological indications are to be trusted” (p. 31), italics mine. The point is that we do not know the original form—or even date—of these dances. Certainly we know nothing of a Primal Ritual that came before them.

6 “Excursus,” op. cit., pp. 342-343.

7 Harrison, , Art and Ritual (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1913), p. 76.Google Scholar

8 “Excursus,” op. cit., p. 345. Murray associates Pentheus with Zagreus, Orpheus, and Osiris, “who are torn in pieces and put together again.” Pentheus is not put together again; and the assumption that he is “only another form of Dionysus” does some violence to the dramatic structure of The Bacchae. We may also ask why the “whole sequence” is contained in the later part of the play; what are we to make of the first part? Murray's observations may be ingenious literary criticism; they are not convincing anthropology.

9 T. B. L. Webster, editor of the 2nd edition of Pickard-Cambridge, notes that Pickard-Cambridge attacked Murray's Primal Ritual and in 1943 Murray responded: “I was wrong, as Mr. Pickard-Cambridge pointed out, in attributing too exclusive and original an importance to this type of play [the Primal Ritual], but its existence is clear.” Webster adds: “With our extended knowledge of the history of the Dionysus cult the theory can be restated in a form which is both tenable and valuable. But briefly, it is this: ritual of the eniautos daimon type in the Mycenaean age very early (and certainly before Homer) gave rise to myths which were dramatized very early and so established a rhythm which was so satisfying that stories from other mythological cycles were approximated to it.” Pickard-Cambridge, op. cit., p. 128. Murray, however, did not abandon his thesis; certainly those theatre critics who drew on it have not been as delicate as Webster suggests they ought to be. And even Webster admits that his thesis is unproven.

10-11 Webster, who supports the Dithyramb theory, says: “Our evidence for the early history of tragedy is so slight that any account is unsatisfactory. If The Persians must now be accepted as the earliest surviving play of Aeschylus, more than sixty years separate it from the beginning of the competition. The Persians already has all the solemnity and grandeur of Aeschylean tragedy. It is difficult to see a thread leading back from here to a performance of fat men and satyrs.” Webster traces the worship of Dionysus “back to Mycenaean times and before that to Minoan times. The ecstatic dances of the maenads and the dances of satyrs and fat men can be traced back to these sources. Much of the mythology, including some versions of the Resistance story, was already formed before Homer. The Dionysus cults of the seventh and sixth centuries are revivals, not new creations.” Pickard-Cambridge, op. cit., pp. 129-131.

12 See Boas, Franz, “The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology” and “The Methods of Ethnology” in Race, Language, and Culture (New York: Macmillan, 1948)Google Scholar, Goldenweiser, Alexander, Early Civilization (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1922), pp. 23-27Google Scholar, and Lowie, Robert, Primitive Society (New York: Horace Liverwright, 1920).Google Scholar

13 See, for example, Edmund Leach, “Frazer and Malinowski,” Encounter, November, 1965.

14 The Poetics, Chapter IV (Fergusson, op. cit.).

15 The Origin of Attic Comedy (London: Edward Arnold, 1914), p. 219.Google Scholar

16 Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Comedy, p. 95.

17 Ibid., p. 96.

18 “Excursus,” op. cit., p. 344.

19 Artaud has muddied the waters by introducing in such a powerful way his notion of ritual. But by “ritual” I understand him to mean nothing other than the transcendence of the actor by outside forces and the presentation of this transcendence in set forms endlessly repeated. Artaud does not suggest that theatre came from this or that ritual. He thinks theatre isritual.

20 There are two theories concerning the connection between the church and theatre in the Middle Ages. The traditional view locating theatre's origins in church ritual has recently been eloquently voiced by O. B. Hardison, Jr. in Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1965). Benjamin Hunningher in the second part of The Origin of the Theatre (New York: Hill and Wang, 1961) argues that the church absorbed and then spit out the folk drama which had persisted in pagan forms from Roman times.

21 I am excluding dance and music from these considerations, though obviously they cannot be excluded as “performance activities” of man. In the discussion which is to follow, music and dance would become varieties of theatrical expression. I am sure that professionals in those fields would consider theatre as varieties of music or dance. In many cultures, including aspects of our own, there is no separation of music-dance-theatre.

22 Performance is an extremely difficult concept to define. From one point of view—clearly stated by Erving Goffman in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Anchor Books, 1959)—performing is a mode of behavior that may characterize any activity. Thus performance is a “quality” that can be “applied” to any situation. This is true, and transactional analysis (as it is used in sociology and psychology) develops consequences from this observation. However, I choose to mean something much more limited by performance: the doing of an activity by an individual or group largely for the pleasure of another individual or group. Thus, while performance in its larger sense may characterize the mode of any activity, performance in the smaller sense is part of the form of many kinds of play, games, sports, theatre, and ritual. I recognize that some activities legitimately called play, games, sports, and rituals would notbe included in my smaller definition of performance. My definition is further complicated by the fact that game theory applies to performance and non-performance activities equally. However, in trying to manage the relationship between a general theory and its possible applications to an art form, I thought it best to center my definition of performance around certain acknowledged qualities of theatre, the most staple being the audience. Even where the audience does not exist as such (some Happenings, certain kinds of non-literate theatre), the function of audience persists: part of the performing group watches—and is supposed to watch—other parts of the performing group.

23 See, for example, Herskovits, Melville J., Man and His Works (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950), p. 427 ff.Google Scholar and Bohannan, Paul, Social Anthropology (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1963), p. 48 ff.Google Scholar The point is that these activities are so ancient and universal that discussions of origin are metaphysics, not anthropology.

24 Technology is cumulative and in many cases the result of diffusion. Therefore one can speak of technological evolution. But even here a strictly Darwinian model will not apply. Cultural evolution—of which the discussion of the “development of art forms” was a part—flourished in the heyday of Darwinism: late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. No one denies the Darwinian theory as it applies to genetically linked species; but, as Claude Levi-Strauss has said, axes do not beget axes. There is no genetic link between or within cultures. Influences occur and cultural development follows patterns not yet clearly understood. In artistic matters—where technology as such is not so important—there is no such thing as accumulation. Artists, when they know the past, pick and choose what material they want to use. Our century has seen an awakened interest in “primitive” art forms. But the term “primitive” is misleading. Earlier forms often repeat themselves; that is all we can say with certainty.

25 One might think that this agonistic element exists in racing. But there one is racing against someone (or someone's “record”). In football, on the other hand, the game is complicated by the fact that both teams, while playing against each other, are also playing against the clock. While stalling is a negligible strategy in baseball and a disastrous one in racing, it is crucial in football, where many games end with the leading team “running out the clock.” Suspense drama adapts this attitude towards time; frequently the hero is attempting to get something done before the deadline.

26 For a complete account of Esposizione see T30, pp. 150-155.

27 Even here I know of no example of absolutely non-mimetic theatre. Michael Kirby discusses the “non-matrixed” performance used in Happenings and the “alogical” structure of many pieces. But despite this, performers do dress in costumes, perform in a special place (a place made “special” because a performance has been announced and an audience sought), and generally engage in mimetic activity. While conventional acting stresses the unity between the character's task and the actor's personality, Happenings stress the break between task and person; thus the task may be mimetic without being a “characterization.” See Kirby's ‘The New Theatre,” T30, pp. 23-43 and his introduction to his book Happenings (New York: Dutton, 1965).Google Scholar

28 Gold, silver, and relics adorn many rituals. But the market value of these objects—were they offered as secular pieces—is far less than what society assigns to them as “holy things.” Priceless paintings still bring a price; but would the Vatican sell its relics or art works? In the days when relics were sold the fraud was that people thought they were purchasing “priceless” things, while the priests knew the objects for their “real” worth. In between there was profit. The practice continues.

29 Musical instruments are an exception. Perhaps this is because the quality of sound—which is the essence of music—depends to a great extent on the quality of the instrument. In the other activities the human manipulation of simple objects is the determining factor; beyond a certain minimum standard the greatness Is entirely in the hands of the performer.

30 Burton Melnick, in a study applying elements of the theory developed in this essay to specific plays, notes that “productive work is almost never represented in theatre. Even in plays like John Gabriel Borkma or The Cherry Orchard, where the productive mentality is an important theme, we never see the producer actually working…. When theatre imitates, it usually imitates some kind of performance (with the exception of play). This is natural enough, because ritual, sports, and many kinds of games are structured in order to appeal to an audience. Productive work is not.” Furthermore, I think that productive work is antithetical to performance (except of course where the work is performing). The underlying reasons for this antithesis will, I hope, become clear. Melnick's study will be published in a forthcoming issue of TDR.

31 Huizinga, , Homo Ludens (New York: Roy Publishers, 1950), p. 13.Google Scholar

32 Caillois, Roger, Man, Play, and Games (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1961), p. 21.Google Scholar

33 How much of this has occurred in modern, industrial society could be determined only by a detailed study. Doubtlessly, much “decadence” has entered into these ideally “free” activities. But the strong element of rules operates to defend these activities against such encroachments.

34 Even in non-industrial societies, where the means of production are not technologically sophisticated, play, games, sports, theatre, and ritual are set apart from the work day, which is usually long and gruelling. Often these performance activities are thought to be necessary to production: a ritual must be performed or crops won't grow, etc. But this link is not a confusion between the two kinds of activities; rather it is an acting out of the belief that both productive and non-productive activity is essential for human life.

35 In play and individual fantasy this world has not been institutionalized but remains the private privilege of each. It is in fantasy that we break the rules—even the rules of sports, etc.—and get away with it. There is a tangent running from this which I cannot now follow, leading to new theories of myth and the creative impulse of artists. See, for example, Levi-Strauss, Claude, Structural Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1963), pp. 206-231.Google Scholar

36 The self-awareness is a function both of the activity and the space in which it is set. Audience self-awareness is both informal and formal. Formal self-awareness is inculcated through applause, responsive reading, singing, organized cheering, etc. In theatres—where there is less opportunity for the audience to become aware of itself—there are intermissions and lobbies.

37 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, pp. 35-36. I know that I am quoting Goffman out of context. He meant that any place where something is done that “highlights the official values of the society”—such as a “party,” or “where the practitioner attends his client”—is a celebratory place. In view of my definition of performance, I have specified that which Goffman intended to keep general.

38 Going to the theatre is more tenuously motivated by celebratory solidarity. If we include movie attendance with theatre going, we can perhaps say that people go because the mimetic event relates them to their basic humanity (“catharsis” in tragic theory). However, there is no denying that this function of theatre-going has decreased if compared to fifth century Greece or Elizabethan England. At one point theatre-going was a civic event; later, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it became a social event and people sat according to their class. Although it still has elements of this today, I suspect that theatre, like TV watching, is more and more a simple pastime. That is why its audience is comparatively slight: there are cheaper pastimes. Happenings, and clearly defined sectors of our theatre —such as Off Off-Broadway—are more surely solidarity occasions; one knows what kind of audience to expect and whom to identify with.

39-40 I am indebted to Arthur Koestler for the way in which I use the terms “self-assertive” and “self-transcendent.” See Koestler's, “Some Aspects of the Creative Process” in Control of the Mind, ed. Farber, Seymour M. and Wilson, Roger H. L. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1961), pp. 188-208.Google Scholar

41 The relation between child play and adult fantasy needs more exploration. Freud's suggestion linking the operation of the pleasure principle in infancy with our adult artistic creations is extremely interesting. See Freud's, “The Relation of the Poet to Day-Dreaming,” first published in 1908 and reprinted in On Creativity and the Unconscious (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), pp. 44-54.Google Scholar The great student of child play is Piaget, Jean, and I recommend Play, Dreams, and Imitation in Childhood (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1962).Google Scholar Adults also play, and the relation between adult play and productive activity is a subject that has not, I believe, been given sufficient attention. I define play as an activity in which the participant sets his own rules. A game has generally acknowledged rules. Therefore, many of the activities transactional analysts would call games I prefer to call play.

42 Eric Berne, in Games People Play (New York: Grove Press, 1964), p. 36 ff, defines ritual in an operative way: “ … a ritual is a stereotyped series of simple complementary transactions programmed by external social forces. … The form of a ritual is parentally determined by tradition…. Some formal rituals of special historical or anthropological interests have two phases: 1) a phase in which transactions are carried on under rigid parental strictures, 2) a phase of parental license in which the child is allowed more or less complete transactional freedom, resulting in an orgy.” This fits neatly with my contention that ritual and play join in crucial instances. Thus the Performance Chart, to be read accurately, should be folded cylindrically so that play and ritual are close together, the “opposites” of games, sports, and theatre.

43 “King Lear and Game Theory,” unpublished. Application papers to appear in TDR will include detailed analyses of plays from the classical Greek, Elizabethan, and modern theatres.

44 Mathematical game theory is not only about games. Its models are built from games and it interprets decision making during conflict in terms of games. Game theory deals with behavior on a wide scale, including games as I have used the word—and theatre, too. Basic game theory texts include von Neumann, John and Morgenstern, Oskar, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1964)Google Scholar, Shubik, Martin, ed., Game Theory and Related Approaches to Social Behavior (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1964)Google Scholar, and Luce, R. Duncan and Raiffa, Howard, Games and Decisions (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1957).Google Scholar A good introduction to transactional analysis—which is a kind of game theory without mathematics —is Berne's Games People Play.

45 Models are not the end of criticism, but the beginning. A model is an outline of a play's action in terms of its shape. From there one could proceed to do the traditional work of the critic: discussing characterization, motivation, theme, imagery, and so forth.

46 In Euripides’ Orestes, Tyndareus tells Menelaus that Orestes should “have haled his mother into court, charged her formally with murder, and made her pay the penalty prescribed, expulsion from his house. Legal action, not murder. That was the course to take” (11. 499-504). The speech is ironic, suggesting that pre-Homeric Argos had Athenian law. The Oresteia's subject is the creation of that law. Euripides is playing for—and gets—a bitter, anachronistic laugh.

47 A complementary analysis of Hamlet's character could be done from the point of view of transactional analysis. In Berne's terms, Hamlet is forever playing the Child or the Parent. He is frequently involved in “crossed transactions” in which his reply is not to the question. Hamlet uses these transactions to avoid being the Adult in the situation: getting to what needs to be done.

48 Feeling and Form (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953), p. 357.Google Scholar

49 The relationship between Pentheus and Dionysus soon becomes something other than conflictual; the rhythmic and ritualistic preparation for Pentheus's death—his dressing in woman's clothes, his prurient imagination of what he will see on Cithaeron—parallel the ritual-farce of Claire and Solange who kill one person in order to murder another. Both plays might be described as “awesome farces.”

50 Michael Kirby and Richard Schechner, “An Interview with John Cage,” T30, pp. 50-72.

51 Throughout The Bald Soprano Ionesco hints that he is denying time. The clock strikes a variety of times, none of them correct and several of them impossible. The Fireman reminds his listeners that he is “going to have a fire in exactly three-quarters of an hour.” Because actual actors speaking lines runs counter to the “tragedy of language” which The Bald Soprano is, perhaps the best “performance” of the play is the recent ideographic book (New York: Grove Press, 1966). The alternative ending quoted is printed there, n.p.

52 This movement from the house is brilliantly reflected in Chekhov's settings. Act I: The drawing and ball rooms, filled with the sisters and their friends. Natasha enters, is made fun of, and goes into a corner where Andrey comforts her. Act II: The same setting, but Natasha is in control. Masha and Irene meet their lovers quietly, in corners, in semi-darkness. The party is called off by Natasha who needs only whisper to Chebutykin that Bobik isn't sleeping well. The three sisters are never on stage together. Act III: Set in the bedroom now shared by Olga and Irene. Isolated here, the sisters are unable to control Natasha who treats Anfisa miserably. Act IV: Set in the garden outside the house. Olga has moved to the school. Irene is planning to leave. Andrey pushes Bobik's baby-carriage.