My contention with studying Greek plays

Greek plays are often the subject of study in liter­ature classes all across America. They’re often wonderful examples of tragedy and dramatic irony. But really, is reading them most effective way to study them? I realize that these plays are worthy of study, but I must say that the way they are examined and taught is flawed in many instances.

The Oedipus plays, the Oresteia, and countless other Greek works are studied in liter­ature class. They were plays. And as such, they were written to be performed, and not read. Unfor­tu­nately, the Greeks didn’t discover the screenplay format yet. As such, the plays are not all that readable.

Greek plays were also written for an audience who were far more informed as to the back­ground of the play: many plays are set on the backdrop of some histor­i­cally important event or based on the premise of culturally embedded knowledge. In fact, the audience often knows the end result before the story is even told. As such, modern readers are lost as to the context of the play in which context is incredibly important to the overall under­standing of the play. If the reader does not have a firm under­standing of the historical and cultural context in which these plays were written and performed, much is lost in this lack.

It would be similar to a Chinese film­maker releasing a film in China about the American Civil War, putting the audience right in the middle of the Battle of Fort Hinden. Most of the Chinese wouldn’t know anything about American history and watching a movie about it would be lost on them. It could be one of the most compelling films ever made, a Sundance worthy and Academy Award winning film that docu­ments some tragic twist of fate between two brothers who were sepa­rated at birth and discovered each other as enemy soldiers fighting for either side. So as dramatic and tragic as it could be in its own right, the true meaning and depth of the film is lost on anyone who doesn’t know about the American Civil War. Simi­larly, it would be as if an American film­maker made a movie about the Chinese Boxer Rebellion that plopped us into the middle of some massacre. Most of us probably have never even heard of the Chinese Boxer Rebellion. And those of us who have heard of it probably don’t know all the partic­ulars. So one should really be educated in the history of Ancient Greek as a prereq­uisite to studying Greek plays. Unfor­tu­nately, that isn’t the case.

So in addition to the inherent lack of context and cultural education of Ancient Greece, Greek plays are not written to be studied as liter­ature. Greek plays were written very simply. They consist of dialogue and minimal stage direc­tions. Because of this sparse writing, modern readers are not privvy to the many nuances of an actual perfor­mance. Missing are vocal tones and dramatic acting, as well as a tangible physical repre­sen­tation of characters.

In an ideal modern screenplay, char­acters would be intro­duced in the text. The reader would read a brief description of the char­acter, perhaps a little bit of his back­ground. This char­acter would be intro­duced to the reader in a proper fashion. This aids in read­ability. Scenes are broken down and clearly iden­tified. Ulti­mately, the screenplay is a very readable piece of writing. This is a stark contrast to the Greek play where scenes are not desig­nated, and char­acters are often inserted into the story without a proper introduction.

The lack of cultural knowledge and context, in conjunction with an inher­ently inap­pro­priate format, makes the study of Greek plays difficult enough as it is. To further hamper ones enjoyment and enrichment is the language in which it is written. It is difficult to under­stand upon the first reading the meanings of many of the lines. The reader must first process the sentence to comprehend just what is being said. Then the reader must proceed to
analyze the sentence for content. Finally, the reader must place that sentence in the context of the entire line.

Modern readers of Greek plays are at an enormous disad­vantage. It would be absurd to assume that the average student would be able to read and accu­rately analyze these plays all on their own without any guidance. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t study Greek plays, but if one were to study them, I would highly recommend finding a profi­cient and patient professor, preferably one who is more histor­i­cally inclined. In a more honest summary, I hate studying Greek plays.