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Conventions of Greek tragedy
 The tragic genre is perhaps the oldest genre in literature, dating back to the ancient
Greeks
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A great deal of ink has been spilled over why the god of
life would be celebrated with tragedy
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 Tragedy held a central role in the political, social and religious life of the ancient
Greeks
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 Unlike today's theatre, Greek drama was performed as part of a non-commercial,
public, religious celebration
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 Performance conventions in the Greek theatre included the wearing of masks by the
actors, who typically presented more than one role
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By around
300 BCE, a knowledgeable audience member might recognize as many as 28
separate masks
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 There were two conventions to Greek tragedy on stage with regards to violence: that
the audience must never witness any act or occurrence that impinged on a human or
animal body so as to be the proximate cause of a death, and that in tragedy, the
audience must not witness any person inflicting a blow on any other person
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 There are certain resemblances between the greatest of Shakespeare's tragedies and
the greatest Greek tragedies
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Then the language of Shakespeare's loftiest tragic vein
has many turns of thought and metaphor which are surprisingly like the Greek
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Every idea is articulated into words
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The thoughts and purpose of the characters are thus metaphysically presented, and
are often expounded with a rhetorical power which the stage functions of the
characters do not suggest

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