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Sep. 24th, 2008 04:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI'm reading "Stagecraft in Euripides", because it's the skinniest hardback book ever, and skinny books to study are clearly of win. But I'm only up to page 18, because it's full of fiddly details, examples and counterexamples and exceptions and why they aren't really exceptions and... I've already ate a tub of chocolate goo, and checked my email, and rearranged the books on my shelves. I know I'm not usually little miss focus, but this one is not helping.
Greek tragedy had a basic structure:
actors do talking, then leave. Chorus does singing. Actors come back on and do more talking, then leave. Chorus does singing again. Rinse and repeat.
So if actors are leaving or coming back in that pattern, with the lyric bits between, then they're not announced. If they're leaving or coming on in the middle of the talking bits, they're announced. Except for sometimes they're announced even if there has just been a chorus lyric bit. In these cases often they're a corpse or a condemned prisoner and there's a particular anapest rhythm to the announcing. The rhythm connects the situations. It's for talking about dead men moving around, apparently.
There's also a bit about how gods don't talk to mortals in this dude's plays, they just turn up and do some talking and leave before the mortals get there.
Okay, assuming I've understood what he's getting at... I read 18 pages of that? Yes. *sigh*
I think I'll go read about Medea instead. It seems a shame when it's a tiny skinny book, but it's so fiddly I think, even though it's being interesting in its way, I'm going to have to come back to it later. Er, if at all.
Greek tragedy had a basic structure:
actors do talking, then leave. Chorus does singing. Actors come back on and do more talking, then leave. Chorus does singing again. Rinse and repeat.
So if actors are leaving or coming back in that pattern, with the lyric bits between, then they're not announced. If they're leaving or coming on in the middle of the talking bits, they're announced. Except for sometimes they're announced even if there has just been a chorus lyric bit. In these cases often they're a corpse or a condemned prisoner and there's a particular anapest rhythm to the announcing. The rhythm connects the situations. It's for talking about dead men moving around, apparently.
There's also a bit about how gods don't talk to mortals in this dude's plays, they just turn up and do some talking and leave before the mortals get there.
Okay, assuming I've understood what he's getting at... I read 18 pages of that? Yes. *sigh*
I think I'll go read about Medea instead. It seems a shame when it's a tiny skinny book, but it's so fiddly I think, even though it's being interesting in its way, I'm going to have to come back to it later. Er, if at all.