By convention, distant, violent or complex actions were not directly dramatized, but rather took place offstage, and then were described onstage by a messenger of some sort.
Plays were not generally divided into acts or discrete scenes and, although the action of most Greek tragedies was confined to a twenty-four hour period, time may also pass in non-naturalistic fashion. It was a highly stylized (not naturalistic) art form: actors wore masks, and the performances incorporated song and dance. Sophocles introduced three or more actors, allowing still more complexity. The Chorus delivered much of the exposition of the play and expounded poetically on themes.Īeschylus transformed the art by using two masked actors, as well as the Chorus, each playing different parts throughout the piece, making possible staged drama as we know it. Very early dramas involved just a Chorus(representing a group of characters), and then later a Chorus interacting with a single masked actor, reciting a narrative in verse. The playwrights typically also composed the music, choreographed the dances and directed the actors. Classical Greek theatre was written and performed solely by men, including all the female parts and Choruses. Greek tragedy developed specifically in the Attica region around Athens in the 6th Century or earlier.
Pastorals were lyric poems on rural subjects, usually highly romanticized and unrealistic in nature. Elegiac couplets usually consisted of a line of dactylic hexameter, followed by a line of dactylic pentameter. Lyric odes generally dealt with serious subjects, with the strophe and antistrophe looking at the subject from different, often conflicting, perspectives, and the epode moving to a higher level to either view or resolve the underlying issues.Įlegies were a type of lyric poem, usually accompanied by the flute rather than the lyre, of a mournful, melancholic or plaintive nature. These sung verse were divided into stanzas known as strophes (sung by the Chorus as it moved from right to left across the stage), antistrophes (sung by the Chorus in its returning movement from left to right) and epodes (the concluding part sung by the stationary Chorus in centre stage, usually with a different rhyme scheme and structure). The formal rhythm is therefore consistent throughout the poem and yet varied from line to line, making it easier to memorize, while preventing it from becoming monotonous (epic poems are often quite long).ĭidactic poetry, such as the works of Hesiod, emphasized the instructional and informative qualities in literature, and its primary intention was not necessarily to entertain.įor the ancient Greeks, lyric poetry specifically meant verse that was accompanied by the lyre, usually a short poem expressing personal feelings. The traditional metre of epic poetry is the dactylic hexameter, in which each line is made up of six metrical feet, the first five of which can be either a dactyl (one long and two short syllables) or a spondee (two long syllables), with the last foot always a spondee.
Early Greek verse (like Homer’s “Iliad” and “Odyssey”) was epic in nature, a form of narrative literature recounting the life and works of a heroic or mythological person or group.