PROJECT IN ENGLING IV

MART CHRISTIAN B. De Guzman IV- AGATE

Aeschylus

Was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays can still be read or performed, the others being Sophocles and Euripides. He is often described as the father of tragedy: our knowledge of the genre begins with his work and our understanding of earlier tragedies is largely based on inferences from his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in plays to allow for conflict amongst them, whereas previously characters had interacted only with the chorus. Only seven of his estimated seventy to ninety plays have survived into modern times, and there is a longstanding debate about his authorship of one of these plays, Prometheus Bound. Fragments of some other plays have survived in quotes and more continue to be discovered on Egyptian papyrus, often giving us surprising insights into his work. He was probably the first dramatist to present plays as a trilogy and his Oresteia is the only ancient example of the form to have survived.

Biography of Aeschylus

The Greek playwright Aeschylus (524-456 BC) is the first European dramatist whose plays have been preserved. He is also the earliest of the great Greek tragedians, and more than any other he is concerned with the interrelationship of man and the gods. Aeschylus was born at the religious center of Eleusis. His father, Euphorion, was of a noble Athenian family. In 499 B.C. Aeschylus produced his first tragedy, and in 490 he is reputed to have taken part in the Battle of Marathon, in which the Athenians defeated the Persian invaders. In 484 Aeschylus won first prize in tragedy in the annual competitions held in Athens. In 472 he took first prize with a tetralogy, three tragedies with a connecting theme and a comic satyr play. It embraced Phineus, The Persians, Glaucus of Potniae, and the satyr play Prometheus, the Fire Kindler. Defeated in one dramatic competition by Sophocles in 468,

Work of Aeschylus

Sophocles

Is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Europides. According to the Suda, a 10th century encyclopedia, Sophocles wrote 123 plays during the course of his life, but only seven have survived in a complete form: Ajax, Antigone, The Women of Trachis, Oedipus the King, Electra, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus. For almost 50 years, Sophocles was the most-feted playwright in the dramatic competitions of the city-state of Athens that took place during the religious festivals of the Lenaea and the Dionsyia. He competed in around 30 competitions, won perhaps 24, and was never judged lower than second place. Aeschylus won 14 competitions, and was sometimes defeated by Sophocles, while Euripides won only 4 competitions. The most famous tragedies of Sophocles feature Oedipus and Antigon: they are generally known as the Theban Plays, although was actually a part of a different tetralogy, the other members of which are now lost. Sophocles importantly by adding a third actor, thereby reducing the importance of the chorus in the presentation of the plot.

Biography of Sophocles

As with all ancient writers, we can know little for certain about Sophocles' life: sources are few and far between, and much of the information scholars have reached is the result of probability and good guesswork rather than any biographical fact. Some of the sources directly contradict each other. Sophocles, usually considered the most accessible of the central triangle of Greek tragedians (the other two being Euripides and Aeschylus), was probably born in or around 496 BC at Colonus, near Athens, the setting of his Oedipus at Colonos(see, particularly, the Ode to Colonus in that play at 668ff). Sources tells us that Sophocles wrote 123 plays in his lifetime, of which we know the titles of 118. Of this huge output of plays (Shakespeare, in comparison, wrote somewhere between 36-39 plays in his lifetime) only seven survive: Antigone, Oedipus Rex (sometimes also called Oedipus Tyrannos, Oedipus at Colonos, Ajax, Electra, The Women of Trachis, and Philoctetes. The tiny size of this sample (around 6% of Sophocles total output) should be enough to discourage us from making generalizations about Sophocles style or development as a writer.

Work of Sophocles

Euripides

Was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninetyfive plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived complete (there has been debate about his authorship of Rhesuslargely on stylistic grounds) and there are also fragments, some substantial, of most of the other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly due to mere chance and partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes and Menander. Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are characteristic of romance. Yet he also became "the most tragic of poets" focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown. He was "the creator of...that cage which is the theatre of Shakespeare's Othello, Racine's Phdre, of Ibsen and," in which "...imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates", and yet he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.

Biography of Euripides

Historians posit that Euripides, the youngest of the three great tragedians, was born in Salamis between 485 and 480 B.C.E. During his lifetime, the Persian Wars ended, ushering in a period of prosperity and cultural exploration in Athens. Of the art forms that flourished during this era, drama was the most distinctive and influential. Among Euripides contemporaries were Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Aristophanes, and these four men dominated the Athenian stage throughout the fifth century B.C.E. Though scholars know little about the life of Euripides, since most sources are based on legend, there are more extant Euripidean dramas than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles combined. In his own lifetime, however, Euripides was the least successful of his contemporaries, winning the competition at the City Dionysia only four times. Though his plays sometimes suffer from weak structure and wandering focus, he was the most innovative of the tragedians and reshaped the formal structure of Greek tragedy by focusing on strong female characters and an intelligent serving class. Although his contemporaries also depicted complex women (Aeschylus Clytemnestra and Cassandra; Sophocles Electra, Antigone, and Deianeira), Euripides concentrated on the interiority of his characters. Because of this focus on psychological motives, some have called Euripides the father of the modern psychological tragedy.

Work of Euripides