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III. Language and Stage Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

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Extract

Although the career of Sophocles overlapped in its earlier years with that of Aeschylus and later on with that of Euripides, it is very hard to avoid over-simplifying the development of fifth-century tragedy into a progression from Aeschylus to Sophocles to Euripides. The same simplification is found amongst ancient critics, for whom Sophocles is ‘the middle one’ in ways which go beyond mere chronology. Thus Dio Chrysostom (first/early-second century A.D.) in his comparison of the three tragedians’ versions of the Philoctetes story says of Sophocles that ‘he seems to stand midway between the two others, since he has neither the ruggedness and simplicity of Aeschylus nor the precision and shrewdness and urbanity of Euripides, yet he produces a poetry that is august and majestic (σϵμνήν δέ τινα καί μϵγαλοπρϵπἢ ποίησιν), highly tragic and euphonious in its phrasing, so that there is the fullest pleasure coupled with sublimity and Stateliness (μϵτἁ ὕψους καί σϵμνότητος)’ Approximately a century earlier the critic Dionysius of Halicarnassus also found a ‘middle’ quality in Sophocles’ style: between the ‘austere’ (Pindar, Aeschylus, Thucydides, etc.) and the ‘smooth’ (Sappho, Euripides, Isocrates, etc.) he located the intermediate, ‘well-blended’ (ϵὔκρατος) mode of composition, including Sophocles as well as Homer, Demosthenes, Plato, and others. Of this intermediate style Dionysius says he is at a loss to decide ‘whether it is produced by excluding the extremes or by blending them’; but it is at any rate clear that it is defined principally by reference to what it is not.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Surveys in the Classics , Volume 16: Sophocles , 1984 , pp. 8 - 11
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

Notes

1. Or. 52.15; tr. Crosby (Loeb).

2. De comp. verb.21-4.

3. Mackail, J. W., Lectures on Greek Poetry2 (London, 1911), p. 173 Google Scholar. This is quoted by Gellie, G. H., Sophocles: a Reading (Melbourne, 1972), p. 261 Google Scholar. Gellie himself discusses Sophocles’ style in his ch. on ‘Poetry’, pp. 261-79.

4. De imit. 2, fr. 6.2.11 (2.206. 16-17 in Usener-Radermacher) = Test 120. For an author not keeping to ‘what is necessary’ one may compare the stomach-turning description of the self-blinding at Seneca Oed. 952-79.

5. There is a different effect at Oed. Tyr. 1184-5, where the horror of incest emerges by contrast with the formality of the Greek.

6. Cf. Easterling (1982), note on 94-140.

7. Cf.Robinson, D. B., ‘Topics in Sophocles’ Philoctetes’, CQ 19 (1969), 34–56 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 43-4.

8. The most overwhelming is Eurip. Bacch. 1278.

9. Goheen, R. F., The Imagery of Sophocles’ ‘Antigone’: a Study of Poetic Language and Structure (Princeton, 1951)Google Scholar.

10. B. M. W. Knox’s book Oedipus at Thebes (Yale, 1957)Google Scholar takes verbal analysis about as far as it can go (cf. the reservations of Kamerbeek at pp. 26-8 of his edition of Oed. Tyr.). In ‘Sophocles’ Oedipus’ (in Knox (1979)) K. brilliantly but sometimes fancifully analyses the mathematical imagery in Oed. Tyr., and explores the possibility that plays on the name ‘Oedipus’ are present.

11. See e.g. Biggs, P., ‘The disease theme in Sophocles’ Ajax, Philoctetes and Trachiniae’, CPh 61 (1966), 223-35Google Scholar; Cohen, D., ‘The imagery of Sophocles: a study of Ajax’s suicide’, G & R 25 (1978), 24–36 Google Scholar (esp. on sword imagery); Stanford, W. B., ‘Light and darkness in Sophocles’ Ajax’, GRBS 19 (1978), 189-97Google Scholar; Rosivach, V. J., ‘The two worlds of the Antigone ’, ICS 4 (1979), 16–26 Google Scholar (esp. on light and dark); Shields, M. G., ‘Sight and blindness imagery in the Oedipus Coloneus ’, Phoenix 15 (1961), 63–73 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harsh, P. W., ‘Implicit and explicit in the Oedipus Tyrannus ’, AJPh 79 (1958), 243-58Google Scholar; Segal, C. P., ‘The hydra’s nursling: image and action in the Trachiniae ’, AC 44 (1975), 612-17Google Scholar.

12. Cf.Taplin, O., The Stagecraft of Aeschylus (Oxford, 1977)Google Scholar and Greek Tragedy in Action (London, 1978); also Steidle, W., Studien zum antiken Drama unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Bühnenspiels (Munich, 1968)Google Scholar.

13. See Taplin (1978), pp. 67-9. On the ambiguous ending to Phil. see Easterling, P. E., ‘ Philoctetes and modern criticism’, ICS 3 (1978), 27–39 Google Scholar, at 35-9.

14. Cf. Taplin (1978), pp. 89-93. Detailed analysis of stage action in Phil. can be found in Taplin, , ‘Significant actions in Sophocles’ Philoctetes’, GRBS 12 (1971), 25–44 Google Scholar.

15. It is noteworthy that we cannot say for sure precisely when Electra does let go the urn. Jebb (followed by Seale, D., Vision and Stagecraft in Sophocles (London, 1982), p. 71)Google Scholar thinks it happens between 1217 and 1218 - and this would be one possibility for a director to consider. The passage is in any case a useful reminder that the stage action is not always entirely deducible from the words.

For more on the urn scene see J. Dingel, ‘Requisit und szenisches Bild in der griechischen Tragödie’, in Jens (1971), pp. 355ff.

16. Cf.Buxton, R. G. A., ‘Blindness and limits: Sophokles and the logic of myth’, JHS 100 (1980), 22–37 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Seale (1982). (Note in passing the importance of touching in the plays: e.g. Oed. Tyr. 1510, Oed. Col. 1638-9.)