Roman Theatre

Muses of Tragedy and Comedy

Alexander the Great (died 323 BC)

In 336 BC, Alexander the Great ascended the Macedonian throne and undertook a series of campaigns which united the known world from Macedonia to the western borders of India.

Hellenistic Period (323 30 BC)

The Hellenistic Period is generally considered to be the epoch that falls between the death of Alexander the Great and the Roman conquest of Egypt. Following the death of Alexander (in 323 BC) his Empire became subject fell into dissaray. Out of the almost constantly shifting political topography, a new culture of multiple nations unified by the Greek language emerged.

The Spread of Roman Power

As the Roman Empire spread throughout the known world, it carried with it the culture, laws, and government of Rome. Thus, Roman society was spread and integrated into the cultures of the Mediterranean.

Tragedy declines This is the age of the rise of comedy.

Hellenistic Seeds of Roman Comedy:

Middle Comedy

No chorus No public impersonations strayed away from political during Alexanders reign Domestic situations Burlesques and social satires Stock characters (no names)

New Comedy
New Comedy is the ancestor of sitcoms, with plots focusing on domestic issues, usually involving boy-meets-girlparents-forbidmarriage and the intervention of a clever slave to save the day.

Menander

(342 BC - 292 BC).

Many ancient critics considered him the supreme poet of New Comedy. However, despite having composed over one hundred plays, he achieved success at only eight of Athens twiceyearly dramatic festivals.

In Menanders lifetime, comedy had moved away from its Aristophanic roots in politics and the machinations of public affairs, and was beginning rather to focus on fictitious setcharacters from ordinary life.

The role of the chorus is therefore generally confined to performing brief interludes between acts.
Menander made elaborate use of masks to provide for the wide range of characters. These more caricatured masks helped audiences to become familiar with his developing dramatis personae of stock characters.

Menanders particular skill lay in generating convincing exaggerated representations of stern fathers, young lovers, intriguing slaves and so on.

In 321 He produced his first play, Orge ("Anger"). In 316 he won a prize at a minor festival with the Dyscolus and gained his first victory at the City Dionysia the following year. Only extant New Comedy THE GROUCH (Dyscolus) By 301 BC he had written more than 70 plays. Democracy only works with equality, and Menander uses love between people of different classes and social status as a means of helping to create an equality within the city.

Atellan Farce (native performance)

a non-scripted theatrical form which made use of stock masks (characters) and slapstick gags.
It was very similar to the commedia dell'arte of the Italian Renaissance not unlike improv theater today e.g. Saturday Night Live.

Roman Comedy

The actors of Roman comedy were all men, and about five of them shared out all the different roles in the play.

The costumes were fairly simple, consisting of a tunic and a pallium (square cloak), which was long for female characters and short for male characters.

The actors also wore masks, which were wildly distorted stereotypes, not very realistic, but funny.

These plays were performed at religious festivals sponsored by junior officials in the Roman government. The audience was rowdy, and drama competed for audience attention with tightrope walkers, jugglers, and gladiatorial combats.

(Titus Maccius Plautus)

(ca. 254-184 B.C.)

Plautus

He took his familiarity with song, dance, and native Italian farce and combined it with characters and plots from the New Comedy of Hellenistic Greece. His comedies, like Greek New Comedy, did not have a chorus and did not deal with contemporary political or social issues. His plays were written to entertain.

Plautus was the most popular of all Roman comic writers. He wrote in the late third century and the early second century B.C.

Play Structure

Plautus gave new life to an old plot formula:

boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. The many theatrically effective twists and turns of the plotscaused by some characters scheming and tricks or simply through accidental misunderstandingsare happily straightened out in the end. Often, a clever slave drives the plot, taking charge of events for a young master who is too overwhelmed with love to accomplish much on his own.

In performance, Plautuss plays may have resembled modern musical comedies, because it is believed that a good portion of the dialogue was sung.

Some of Plautus other well-known plays are:

Amphitryon The Rope Casina The Pot of Gold The Captives The Haunted House The Girl from Persia

(The dates of individual plays by Plautus are unknown, but they are all presumed to have been written between 205 and 184 B.C.)

Terence (Publius Terentius Afer)

(ca. 185-159 B.C.)

He is the most important Roman comic writer after Plautus. He was born in Carthage and brought to Rome as a slave. His owner freed him. Terence stressed characterization, subtlety of expression, and elegant language. Terence based most of his work on Greek models.

It was Terences practice to combine plot elements from two Greek plays to create one new work.

Terences Phormio dramatizes the attempts of two cousins, Antipho and Phaedria, to overcome their fathers objections to their lovers. Both young men are aided by Phormioa tricky parasiteand by dramatic coincidences. The plot complications and stock characters are similar to those in Plautus plays, but Phormio is less farcical and less slapstick. Much of its humor is verbal; there is less physical comic action but more sparring with words. Note that Terences dialogue was spoken. He often used a double plot, placing two characters in similar romantic situations and examining their differing reactions.

Though his plays were admired by his learned friends, the populace preferred more lively entertainments.
Terence had to present his play The Mother-in-Law three times before he could get an audience to sit through the whole performance. On the first two tries, audience members were distracted by nearby circus-type entertainments, which they left the theater to attend.

Subsequent periods, such as the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, used Terences plays as literary models in medieval convents and monasteries and in Renaissance schools.

Roman Tragedy

The Romans also produced tragedies

these were more straightforward translations and adaptations of the Greek plays of the 5th and 4th centuries BCE.
Costumes, masks, and language were all rather inflated.

Although tragedy was performed in Rome during the Republic, only fragments remain.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, (ca. 4 B.C.-A.D. 65)

As a writer, he espoused stoicism, a philosophy of moderation and calm acceptance of whatever happens. Nine plays by Senecaare the only surviving examples of Roman tragedy based on Greek myths:

The Trojan Women, Medea, Oedipus, Phaedra, Thyestes, Hercules on Oeta, The Mad Hercules, The Phoenician Women, and Agamemnon.
(dates for his plays are unknown.)

Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)

His essay on poetic form, The Art of Poetry, surveys the history and theory of dramatic poetry. Less detailed than Aristotle, Horace stressed rules, comedy and tragedy must never be combined a play should have five acts only three speaking characters should appear at the same time gods should not be brought in unless absolutely necessary to resolve a plot. The chorus should be used to forward the action, set a high moral tone, and give "good and sage counsel." the purpose of drama was "to profit and to please the language and actions of characters must fit traditional ideas of suitable behavior for their age, gender, social status, and emotional state (decorum) Anything overly offensive or overly marvelous (fantastical) should be kept offstage. Horace wanted writers to avoid extremes of emotion and to attempt to be truthful. These opinions were not found in Aristotle, but Renaissance critics made it a rule of drama.

65-8 B.C.

Horace was the leading lyric poet of his time.

Roman Theatres

First theatres were made of wood. These temporary structures insured that large crowds would not gather.
A repressive state dislikes places where people can listen to political rhetoric.

The first permanent stone theater in Rome was built by Pompey in 53 BCE. He was only allowed to build his theater by disguising it as a temple to Venus. Others soon imitated him, including the new emperor Augustus, who built the Theater of Marcellus in honor of his nephew.

The Theatre of Marcellus

The one ancient theatre to survive in Rome. Building was started by Caesar and completed by Augustus in the year 11 or 13. It stands on level ground and is supported by radiating walls and concrete vaulting. An arcade with attached halfcolumns runs around the building. The columns are Doric and Ionic
Augustus

In the Roman theatre the orchestra is a place to sit, instead of a performing area as the Greeks had used it. The auditorium is a semicircle. often supported by concrete vaulting.

Theatres are free-standing structures.

They are incorporated within the boundaries of the cities.

They are civic rather than religious buildings.

scaenae frons

pulpitum

The stage grows in importance and is brought into direct contact with the audience.

Corridors under the tiers were used in case of rain.

Large Theatre, Pompeii