THE ONE-ACTOR RULE IN GREEK TRAGEDY

THE ONE-ACTOR RULE IN GREEK TRAGEDY

G.M. Sifakis

The famous limitation of themmber of actors who performed a classical Greek tragedy (and I shall confine myself to tragedy in this paper because comedy presents a different set of problems) has never been fully understood. Why should such a limitation exist in the first place? Why should an actor have to impersonate several dramatic characters, often very unlike each other (see p.18 below), in the course of the same play? Thirdly - a phenomenon even less palatable to modern taste - why in certain cases did the development of the plot make it necessary that the same dramatic character should be played by different actors in different scenes of the same play? It is easy to see that all this was possible because there were no female actors in the “legitimate” theatre in classical times, and because actors covered their heads with masks and their bodies with elaborate costumes (long-sleeved and usually reaching down to their ankles). Also, it hardly needs to be said that such a theatre convention could exist only because of the corresponding convention on the part of the playwrights that restricted to three the number of characters allowed to speak in the same scene of a tragedy (and not vice versa; but more about this below).

Although an early investigator of the three-actor rule and its consequences for the distribution of parts in the surviving plays pointed out, quite rightly, that the rule has to be seen in the general context of ancient theatre conventions, which often offend our sensibilities as conditioned by modern realistic drama (and he is quoted approvingly by the editors of Sir Arthur Pickard-Cambridge’s Festivals),’ others have even tried to deny the very existence of the rule itself by equating it with the compositional restriction mentioned above.* However, the majority of scholars accept what Aristotle plainly says at Poet. 1449a 15ff. (viz., that Aeschylus increased the number of actors from one to two and Sophocles increased it to three)3 but, on the whole, seem to take the limited number of actors as an unavoidable stringency imposed on the dramatists by tradition or religious conservatism, festival regulations or economic reasons. The way John Gould and David

I should like to extend my thanks to Professor I.E. Stefanis for being so kind as to read this paper and offer me his constructive criticism, and to Mr Alan Griffiths for his substantial editorial interventions. I H. Kaffenberger, Das Dreischauspielergesetz in der griechischen Tragodie (Diss. Giessen,

1911). Cf. The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, 2nd edition, revised by J. Gould and D.M. Lewis (Oxford 1968) 144 (henceforth, DFA).

K. Rees, The So-called Rule of Three Actors in the Classical Greek Drama (Chicago 1908); K. Schneider, RE Suppl. viii (1956) 190-193.

With the notable exception of the distinguished interpreter of the Poetics and historian of Greek drama, G.F. Else, Aristotle’s Poetics: The Argument (Cambridge, Mass. 1963), 164ff., The Origin and Early Form of Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, Mass. 1965) 58, 86.

STAGE DIRECTIONS - ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF E. W. HANDLEY

13

14 STAGE DIRECTIONS - ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF E. W. HANDLEY

Lewis indicate that an “artistic principle (conceived as having an aesthetic basis)” may be involved here is in fact quite e~cep t iona l .~

What I propose to do in this paper is precisely to explore the possible aesthetic basis of the three-actor rule - and not to offer a full discussion of the evidence for (and secondary literature on) early hypokritai and the development of tragedy.’ It will be a convenient starting point to quote here the relevant passage of Aristotle:

It was in fact only after a long series of changes that the movement of Tragedy stopped on its attaining to its natural form. (1) The number of actors was first increased to two by Aeschylus, who curtailed the business of the Chorus, and made the dialogue, or spoken portion, take the leading part in the play. (2) A third actor and scenery were due to Sophocles. (3) Tragedy acquired also its magnitude. [. . . J (4) Another change was the plurality of episodes or acts.

Poet. 1449a 14-19, 28; Bywater’s translation

Evidently, Aristotle considered the successive changes in the number of its performers as stages in the evolution of tragedy as an art form. From a purely choral performance, tragedy gradually reached perfection, its physis, in plays such as, for instance, the Oedipus Tyrannus, in certain crucial scenes of which all three actors (and the chorus) are on stage and engage in dialogue (the prologue, the scene in which Jocasta asks Oedipus to pardon Kreon, and the two scenes with the Corinthian messenger).

However, as has often been observed, such scenes of three-cornered dialogue do not occur in Aeschylus and the early plays of Sophocles, although Sophocles’ “later plays all have successful trio conversation”;6 and the same could be said of Euripides, since some of his earlier plays (among the surviving ones), such as the Alcestis (438 BC), the Medea (431 BC), and the Hippolytus (428 BC), do not contain any significant scenes of trio conversation (except for the exadas of Hipp.).

Now if we pay attention to dates, and remember that the introduction of the third actor is likely to have occurred in the late sixties (and in any case between Aeschylus’ Suppliants and 458 BC, the year of the O r e ~ t e i a ) , ~ we have more than 30 (possibly 35) years of tragic productions in Athens before Sophocles and Euripides could use their “three actors with complete freedom”.8 Obviously, the addition of the third actor eventually made scenes of three-way dialogue possible, but their composition has to be seen in the context of the gradual, general, movement of Greek art (not of tragedy alone) towards realism, which reached a peak in New Comedy and Hellenistic art. This is the rcason why three-cornered dialogue scenes are relatively frequent in late plays of Euripides, such as the Orestes, the Iphigeneia at Aulis, or the Bacchae, and of course why they are commonplace in Menander, in whose comedies all three actors are almost constantly on stage, engaged in intricate dialogue patterns. And it is precisely because of

In Pickard-Cambridge, DFA (n.l), 135 (but they do not elaborate further). Cf. N.C. Hourmouziades, “Menander’s Actors”, GRBS 14 (1973) 187.

There arc several good general accounts that I would like to mention in this connection: DFA 126-156 (on actors); Albin Lesky, ‘H ~ppayln) xo iqm T ~ V &p,yaiwv ‘E;lilljvwv (translated and updated by N.C. Hourrnouziady, Athens 1987) i , 89-100 (on Thespis and early tragedy); and B. Zucchelli’s monograph on Y z o K ~ L ~ ~ ~ . Origine e storiu del termine, Studi gruinmutici e linguistici 3 (Milano 1962).

6 T.B.L. Webster, An Introduction to Sophocles (2nd ed., London 1969) 122. He considers “the absence of trio conversation in the Truchiniue [as] strong evidence for its early date.”

7 Cf. B.M.W. Knox, “Aeschylus and the Third Actor”, AJPh 93 (1972) 107. As Webster (ibid. [n.6]) says of Sophocles with reference to OT, which is dated by Knox to 425

or 426 ( A J f h 77 [I9561 133-147).

G.M. SIFAKIS: THE ONE-ACTOR RULE IN GREEK TRAGEDY 15

his realism, as opposed to the most realistic instances of tragedy, that the following judgement would not apply to the plays of Menander:

A Greek play is not able to cope with a set of three people who are at once so important and so closely involved as Theseus and Hippolytus and Phaedra. [. . .] Greek [tragedy] has a number of examples to show of the mildly triangular scene, but it never overcame its distaste for the full-blooded triangular clash.g

It should be made clear, then, that value judgements to the effect that a dramatist did or did not make good use of his actors in a play (or, as is often said of Aeschylus, that he never managed to use his third actor well) are due to our modern taste and point of view, and have no absolute validity. Euripides’ skill in this respect did not make him a “better” tragic poet at the end of his life than when he wrote the Medea and the Hippolytus, in his fifties; and when Aeschylus produced the Oresteia nobody had yet written a three-way dialogue, and probably nobody did afterwards in the next quarter of a century or more. The inferences we are entitled to draw, therefore, are that (a) the addition of the third actor was prompted not by any desire on the part of Sophocles to compose scenes with trio conversation, but presumably by what Aristotle calls “magnitude” and “plurality of episodes” in the evolution of tragedy; (b) the early use of the third actor could be, in a different way, as appropriate to the earlier forms of tragedy and as effective as its employment in the later plays of Sophocles and Euripides;lo (c) never during all the stages of this evolution could there have been a one-to-one relationship between dramatic characters and performers; (d) the successive increases in the number of its performers are indeed stages in the development of tragedy because they were generated by the internal growth of its mythos (which is equated with the mimesis of the action, and called the end and “soul” of tragedy, by Aristotle, Poet. 1450a 4, 22, 38). Because this growth ceased at the point where three actors could play all speaking parts, and in view of Aristotle’s acceptance of the Pythagorean notion of completeness and perfection represented by the number three (On the Heavens, 268a loff.), it is hardly surprising that the philosopher equated the addition of the third actor with the last stage in tragedy’s evolution.

I should like now to approach our problem from a different angle, that of technical terminology and usage. I shall skip the debate about the original meaning of hypokrites (interpreter or answerer) because I think that at the present stage of our knowledge no confidence in either theory would be justified.” On the other hand, the construction of the verbs dnoxpiv&ot?ar and (its synonym) &yovi&n?ai with an actor’s name as subject and the title of a play (or “drama”, “tragedy”, “comedy”) as their object is standard and occurs often in classical as well as in later authors. I shall quote here two passages, from Aristotle and Demosthenes respectively, which we shall need in our discussion below:

A.J.A. Waldock, Sophocles the Dramatist (Cambridge 195 1) 60. lo Bernard Knox describes what Aeschylus did with his third actor in Ag. and Cho. as “something

huge, strange, and magnificent”, op.cit. (n.7) 108 (he refers primarily to the part of Cassandra). I 1 Cf. Zucchelli, op.cit. (n.5) 19. Perhaps a detailed investigation into the lexical and semantic

fields of &coKpivo,uai and dcoKpivo,uai (with their derivatives), across the ancient dialects and until the later “hypocrite”, may in the future throw some light on the early relationship and usage of the terms in question. Although I would not accept G.K.H. Ley’s line of arguTent as a whole, I admit that he has made a good case in favour of the “answerer” in his paper on “ YcqIcpivsoOai in Homer and Herodotus, and the function of the Athenian actor”, Philologus 127 (1983) 13-29.

16 STAGE DIRECTIONS - ESSAYS INHONOUR OF E. W. HANDLEY

(a) dn&Kpivavzo yap atkoi zag zpayq6iag oi noiqzai npdzov (each one his own plays, that is [Arist. Rhet. 1403b 231).

(b) raika p2v yap za ia,p&ia E‘K @oiviKdg Bonv E6pidGow zoOzo 62 zb 6p@a olj6~nhnoz’ o h &dGwpog oCz ’ Apiozb6qpog kKpivavzo , o[g 06~05 za zpiza Eywv Gi&z&&o&v, &AA& MbAwv fiywvi&zo K C ~ &i 64 zig &AAog zriv

noAA&mg 62 Apiozb6qpog z j ~ ~ ~ i ~ p i z a i , Bv 8 nmoiqpiva iapp~ia ~ a A r i g ~ a i

napiAinw. !or& yap 6rjnov ZODI?,,’ iin E‘v &ram zoig Gpdpaoi zoig zpayl~oig Ltaipezbv E‘oziv 6onq $pa5 zo?g zpizaywviozaig zi, zohg zvp&vvovg ~ a i zohg za ornjnzpa &ovzag &ioi6vai. E‘v zoivvv z@ &&pan zolizy, oKE‘y/aot9 ’6. Kpkwv AioXivqg o h Aiywv n&noiqzai z@ noiq$, 6 06z& npbg a6zbv 06~05 6n2p @g npqpdag 6i&Ex1?q oBz& npbg zohg 6i~ao~hg E ? ~ E V .

Dem. de F.L. 246-247

ZCXhXl&V dnOKplT&V. 2 VZlYbVqV 62 ~ O ( O O K ~ ~ 0 V g Z O A h k l g pudV @&66WpOg

OV/lq&pdVZWg i+L?V n O / 2 k k l g a h b g E ipqKhg K a i &Kplp& k ~ & Z l ~ T & & V O g

This famous passage from Demosthenes not only illustrates very well the syntax of the verbs hypokrinesthai and agonizestlzai (to act, to perform) mentioned above,I2 but also gives some interesting bits of additional information, namely, that (a) certain actors in the fourth century specialized in the revival of different fifth-century plays; and (b) the part of Kreon in the Antigone was played by Aeschines in his capacity as a supporting actor of such leading men as Theodoros and Aristodemos. Whether Aeschines was really the tritagonist in this case, as Demosthenes typically insists, seems immaterial (even if he had been the second actor Demosthenes would still have called him tritagonist in order to denigrate him), but to suggest that because “it is a natural assumption that the part of Kreon was played by the protagonist [ . . . ] the likeliest explanation is that Demosthenes is lying” is unwise.I3 Both Theodoros and Aristodemos were famous actors of the fourth century,l4 and any association of Aeschines with them could only be that of an assistant, in fact a hired assistant, a journeyman (pioI?wzbg). l 5

The passages quoted above, and many others which could be added to them,I6 imply that the protagonist was recognized as the only player of a tragedy, as if he alone acted the play while the other two actors, necessary though they were for the production of a play, assisted and (literally as well as metaphorically) worked for him. This was true from the earliest phases of theatre history when, in Aristotle’s words, “the poets themselves acted the tragedies”, down to Roman times, as is shown by inscriptions, which reflect official language.

The group of Athenian inscriptions known as Didaskaliai (IG ii2 2319-2323), which is generally assumed to be based on Aristotle’s Didaskaliai (although the inscriptional records went down to ca. 120 BC), registers all dramatic poets who competed at the Dionysia and Lenaia each year, in the order they were placed (in separate lists for tragedy

l 2 Puce LSJ (s.v. CxooKpivw, B.II.l), Sophocles’ “Antigone” in the Demosthenes passage is clearly the play and not the part of Antigone in it.

DFA 141, n.2. l 4 See I.E. Stefanis, Aiovvoiarc-oi r&,yv?~ai (Herakleion 1988) nos.332 and 1157. l 5 Cf. Dem. de Cor. 262: piofihoa5 oav7bv roig Papvo~dvoiq [ ~ x i ~ a ~ o v p ~ v o i g

E ‘ K E ~ V O ~ S ] 6xo~pimig, Cipliilq ~ai Z w ~ p d ~ & i , d~pimywvi~mq. Other roles played by Aeschines included the parts of Kresphontes and Oinomaos in the respective plays of Euripides and Sophocles, see Dem. de Cor. 180 and cf. DFA 50; Stefanis, opcit., no.90, p.33. Regarding the part of Kreon, see below p.19.

I 6 E.g., Ar. Pax arg. iii.51; Athen. i.39, viii.31; Plut. Dem. 28.3.4, 29.2.3, Pel. 29.9.2; Dio Cass. 59.5,29.29.

G.M. SIFAKIS: THE ONE-ACTOR RULE IN GREEK TRAGEDY

and for comedy at each festival). The name of each poet is followed in the records by the title or titles of his plays (e.g. three tragic poets with three tragedies each at the Dionysia in the late 340s) and the (leading) actors who performed them; the name of the victorious actor concludes the record of each year. What is interesting for our discussion is that the same three protagonists performed all tragedies. However, each actor did not perform the plays of one poet, but only one play by each of the contesting poets in the same festival. Thus, each poet took advantage of the talent and skills of all three leading actors; each actor performed one play of the winning poet, and the winning actor was presumably judged on the basis of all his performances. The name of each poet is recorded first, followed by the titles of his plays in the dative (so the verb implied is not “produced” [ & % % ~ K E ] but dvka or was second, or third).I7 Each play title is then followed by the verb h&(Kpivaro), “acted”, and an actor’s name. If we were to supply an object for the verb “acted” it could only be the play corresponding to each actor. Of course, the protagonists did not actually perform the plays single-handed, nor did they assist each other. There is no doubt that each one of them had his own supporting actors and mutes, but the records recognize only the leading men as performers of the plays.

The same picture emerges consistently from other inscriptions. In Hellenistic times, tragic and comic actors staged free performances at Delos and Delphi “in honour of the god” (Apollo), and were honoured for that by the two cities; they are invariably referred to as if they were solo performers.I8 In other places, such as the cities of Euboea, early in the third century, and Kerkyra, in the second century BC, regulations were laid down regarding the engagement of theatre artists; in both cases, three flute players and three tragodoi (two for Karystos) were to be engaged, as well as three komodoi for Kerkyra and (perhaps) four komodoi for the festivals of the Euboean cities.19 All these actors have to be understood as troupe leaders who were offered considerable amounts of money for undertaking the productions of plays.20

Occasionally, we get a glimpse of secondary actors: the Ionian guild of Dionysiac artists appoints a number of its members to carry out the Dionysiac games at Iasos, namely, two flute players, two tragodoi, two komodoi, one singer to the kithara, and one kithara player. They are to go to Iasos o h raig d?rq-p&m’aig (with their assistants), and also to be accompanied by three ambassadors: a tragic poet, a singer to the kithara, and a tragic synagonistes.21 At Delphi, a tragodos by the name of Nikon of Megalopolis offers a free performance (in 165 BC), and is awarded proxenia and other privileges, including an honorary invitation to the prytaneion that was also extended to the persons accompanying him (rohgp&r ’aOroij), who are taken to be his supporting actors.22 There is just one case in which the secondary actors are listed as performers, the records of the

11

Cf. B.D. Meritt, Hesperia 7 (1938) 116-118 (DFA 123). I s IG xi 105-108,110,112-113,115, 120,130,133; SIC3 659. l9 Euboea: IG xii.9 207,, (DFA, p.306); Kerkyra: IG ix.1 694,. 2n Cf. zpa@ob5 zobs .$plap4oavraG, IG xii.9 207,,; the amount paid to komodoi in Euboea

was 400 drachmae (but to be at all meaningful this sum has to be compared with the per diem allowance provided by the same law, 9 obols). The total cost of the performances in Kerkyra was expected to be 50 minae (IG ix.1 694,,,,,). On actors’ fees see P. Ghiron-Bistagne, Recherches sur les acteurs duns la Gr2ce antique (Pans 1976) 179ff. 2L Michel 101436T37 (DFA 316; mid-second century BC). We wonder whether this supporting actor

was to take part in the performances too (the ambassador singer is a different person from the kitharu singer appointed to perform). 22 SIG3 659,; it has also been suggested that Nikon’s two synagonists are to be identified with the

two persons following Nikias in the list of proxenoi, SIG3 585,,.


Delphic Soteria.23 For some unknown reason, the authorities at Delphi decided to commit to stone, and thus to eternity, the names of all participants in the performances of their festivals, including the chorus-men, diduskaloi and flute players, and even the costumiers.

But on the whole the secondary actors, although they had professional status24 and were members of the unions of t e c l ~ n i t u i , ~ ~ lived in the shadow of the principal performers, the trugodoi and komodoi. We should also recall in this connection that the (ancient) Greek language had no word for theatre troupe or company (thiusos does mean “company” but was not used as a technical term for “theatre company”).

The strict hierarchy in the professional status of theatre artists, for which the evidence is unanimous and unequivocal, cannot be explained on the basis of social reasons alone. It reflects a long tradition of a stylized theatre production, in which performances were organized around a master actor who “acted the play” with the help of two assistants. This tradition originated in the period before Sophocles, when the poets were the diduskuloi as well as the performers of their plays; by the middle of the fifth century, probably soon after Sophocles had given up acting, the prize for actors was introduced at the Dionysia, and the conditions for the rise of a class of star performers were created; a century later Aristotle was to write that “the actors are now more important than the poets” (Rhet. 1403b 33). He means, of course, the master actors.

How this simple principle translates in terms of stage action, movement, delivery, and so on, is not appreciated very well today. Sui‘fice it to mention two notions shared by most, if not all, students of ancient theatre, viz. that the splitting of a role between two actors is an awkward problem sometimes imposed by the three-actor rule, and that in trying to discover how the speaking parts of a play were shared by the actors we should look for an even (i.e. acceptable so far as possible to our sensibilities) distribution. If we have no other choice wc will accept that two roles as unlike each other as those of Deianira and Herakles in Sophocles’ Truchiniue were played by the same actor;26 in other cases thc possibilities vary, and in the revised DFA “no attempt is therefore made to indicate the roles played by the first, second, or third actor” in the plays of Euripides (p. 144).

But the three actors were in no way equals, and the famous fourth-century tragedian Theodoros of Athens who, according to Aristotle (Pol. 1336b 28), never allowed anyone, howevcr insignificant as an actor, to enter the stage before himself (because he believed that the first speaker won the audience to his side) would not hesitate to appropriate the first speaking part of a play regardless of whether the same part would perhaps have to be taken by a supporting actor later on. Given the great difference in the status of performers, we should expect that the poets intended certain parts for the protagonists and others for the supporting actors. As Plotinus writes in a protracted metaphor from drama,

23 SIC3 424, 690; cf. my Studies in the History of Hellenistic Drama 7 1-74, 83-85. 24 That of “hired men” or “journeymen”, as I have argued elsewhere: “Boy Actors in New

Comedy”, Arktouros: Hellenic Studies Presented to B.M. W. Knox (Berlin-New York 1979) 205. 25 DFA 129,287f., 291,293,297f.; cf. notes 21-22 above. 26 And we will try to find some excuse for it: e.g., as regards “the difference in temperament

between the two persons [ . . . ] a good actor could certainly prepare himself in an interval extending over 150 lines”; regarding their supposed difference in physical proportions, “there is no reason to think that Herakles, though sturdy and strong, was particularly tall, and the rest would be a matter of mask and dress” (DFA 141). But does Herakles ever get up from his stretcher?


i v Spdpaoi z& pkv zdzz~i a6zoi5 d n010117z45, z 0 ~ 5 62 xprjzai o6mv $Sq. 06 y&p a6zb5 nppwzaywvionjv 0662 S E ~ Z E ~ O V 06S2 zpizov xoiei, &AAh SiSo6g

Siov oi im 201 Kai .?on zdnog LK~CTZY) d pkv z@ &yaG@, d 62 z@ K ~ K @ npinpwv Enneades iii.2, 17.18-23

Although formalization in Greek tragedy was nothing as compared with the Noh drama of Japan, in which shite means both p-ncipal performer and leading role, and waki means second actor and side-character or Plotinus states explicitly that the hierarchy of actors was taken for granted by the poets in the composition of their plays; and of course it must have been pretty obvious to audiences and judges alike, or how else would prizes be contested and fame conquered? So why is it difficult for us to attribute the roles in the surviving plays to the three actors?

Well, in the first place, it is not at all difficult in the cases of Aeschylus and Sophocles.28 In the plays of Aeschylus not only is it clear which parts were played by the poet-performer and which by his assistant(s) but we also get a good idea of pre- Aeschylean conditions, when the poet alone and his chorus performed the plays, if we notice how often an actor addresses and is engaged in dialogue or song exchange with the chorus (even when another actor is on stage).29

In the plays of Sophocles which Webster has called “ d i p t y ~ h ” , ~ ~ the protagonist plays the leading characters in the respective halves of the plays: Ajax and Teucer in the A j m , Deianira and Herakles in the Trachiniue. The Antigone seems to present no problem for an even distribution of parts to actors, but should we assume with Pickard-Cambridge (and others) that “the protagonist must have been Kreon, who appears throughout the play”?31

In view of what Demosthenes says about “Kreon Aeschines” (see p.16 above), the real problem here is not the distribution of parts in itself but whether the part of Antigone or the part of Kreon is the more important one in the first two-thirds of the play. That the question arises at all is due to Sophocles’ (gradual) movement towards realism and his artistry in designing a plot and utilizing his actors fully. However, although until the end of the fourth episode (line 943) Antigone is given 215 lines to speak and Kreon 249, she completely dominates the prologue, the second episode, as well as the fourth one (which includes her famous aria), while she is spoken of and passionately defended by Haimon in the third episode. She and her plight occupy the centre of our interest, much as Ajax and Deianira do in the other diptych plays, while Kreon is pictured as an absolute tyrant,

kKdOZ$I ’TO65 ZpOO7fKOVZa5 AdyOVg $sTl &Z&%OKEV iKdDZ$I E l 5 6 ZEZdx&Xl

27 See Faubion Bowers, Japanese Theatre (Tuttle Co., Rutland, Vt. 1974) 18, 21; Mae J . Smethurst, The Artistry of Aeschylus and Zearni. A Comparative Study of Greek Tragedy and N6 (Princeton 1989) 15f. Comparisons between Noh and Greek tragedy by classical scholars have multiplied since an early article by Albin Lesky (Gesarnrnelte Schrifen 275-280, first.published in 1963); see Peter Arnott, The Theatres of Jupan (London 1969), and Smethurst’s book quoted above, with additional bibliography. 2x In the more “realistic” plays of Euripides the distribution of parts is less obvious, and the

possibilities vary, particularly if one wants to consider role splitting (cf. below) as normal practice. 29 Cf. Oliver Taplin, The Stagecraft of Aeschylus (Oxford 1977) 87, 108. 3o An Introduction to Sophocles 102-104. 31 DFA (1st ed., 1953) 142. Cf. p.16 above.


perhaps well-intentioned but hardly sympathetic for all that.32 What protagonist would ever concede a part like that of Antigone to a supporting actor? After line 943 the protagonist (the “performer of the play”) could return as Teiresias and Messenger, and indeed as Kreon for the exodos, in which Kreon concludes the play by singing his own kommos consisting of no less than three pairs of strophes, interlaced with symmetrical lines of dialogue.

This concluding song is protagonist stuff again, and I shall try to argue right away why attributing it to the leading actor is a legitimate hypothesis - and simultaneously to indicate where the aesthetic basis of the three-actor rule lies.

Our aversion to role splitting is due to a tacit assumption that an actor identifies with his role (and as a result plays well the characters with whom he feels some emotional affinity). Modern drama has accustomed us to characterization based on psychological analysis of unique individuals, and to the portrayal of such characters on stage by actors who know how to fuse their personality with that of the characters they impersonate; and great actors can convincingly imitate disparate personalities without apparent strain. However, ancient acting was not based on psychology and illusion, but on pointed, if not symbolic,33 gesture and movement, elaborate voice management, rhetorical declamation, and expressive singing (which was used by actors to voice literally unspeakable emotions - such as those of Antigone while being led to her death, or of Kreon weeping over his dead kin and his own fate in Ant.). Any one of these qualities would be enough to ruin completely the performance of a modern play, precisely because plot and characterization in modern drama require an entirely different acting style, viz. the style of realistic representation, which would be diametrically opposed to the one described above.

I do not want to go into modern theories of acting and the like, but will ask a sceptical reader to consider why we should find it perfectly acceptable that the actor of Antigone could reappear as Teiresias and/or Messenger later in Sophocles’ play, but do not even think that the same actor could play the role of Kreon in the exodos of the play. The reason is, of course, that we do not want to assume any role splitting unlesss we have to (as we do in the case of Theseus in OC); but what is actually eluding us is that role splitting is not the same as character splitting, nor does it endanger the unity of a character. In the Antigone, Kreon delivers rhetorical iambics in a series of confrontations,

32 To wonder whether Antigone or Kreon is the hero of the play is posing the wrong question, but that is the angle from which the play’s conflict is usually discussed, even though most people in the end recognize Antigone as the heroine of the play. For a modern, sensible, discussion of this dilemma see R.P. Winnington-Ingram, Sophocles: An Interpretation (Cambridge 1980) 1 17ff. In his inaugural lecture, Professor A.D. Fitton Brown suggested that the Demosthenes passage quoted above (p. 16) shows that the part of Antigone is the protagonist role, and hence Antigone the heroine of the play (Greek Plays as First Productions, Leicester University Press 1970). W.M. Calder 111 replied that the protagonist must have taken the part of Kreon (a view shared by many and going back to Karl Frey, 1878), hence Kreon’s is the principal part (Arethusa 4 [1971] 49-52). J.C. Hogan takes the simplifying view that the play has two protagonists (Arethusa 5 [1972] 93-100).

At the present state of our knowledge we cannot tell whether gesture and movement in Greek theatre were significant, i.e. coded to any extent in a way comparable to that encountered in Oriental theatre traditions. In the Japanese Noh, for instance, hundreds of gesture and movement patterns (kata’s) are strictly and extensively coded and classified; it should be added though that extremc formalization was introduced to Noh with the decline of writing new plays, at the beginning of the Edo period (1 603-1 868), when Noh became the official ceremonial art in the court of shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu (see Yasuo Nakamura, Noh: The Classical Theater, Walker/Weatherhill, New York & Tokyo 1971, 129ff.; on stage movement see 225ff.). A parallel development, although for entirely different reasons, could perhaps be seen in the exaggerated stylization of theatre production in late Hellenistic and Roman times.

G.M. SIFAKIS: THE ONE-ACTOR RULE IN GREEK TRAGEDY

in which he is convinced he knows what is right (and relents only when it is too late). When he enters the stage for the last time he is a completely broken and ruined man. The actor impersonating him has to sing a lengthy strophic solo in dochmiacs in quick alternation with spoken iambics, while many things happen and the stage is covered with dead bodies. The scene is a coup de thk6tre but could be destroyed by even a hint of realism. The actor playing Kreon would have to display great skill in using the tools of his trade - voice manipulation, and plotted gestures and movement - in order to bring the play to its unbearable climax; and such a conclusion seems to me the business of the protagonist. Who in the audience would notice, or would mind, the change of actor in this case? On the contrary, I submit that knowledgeable spectators (and the judges) could keep track of the protagonist under his different disguises, and would appreciate such a change and consider it proper and normal.

To put it differently, if the leading actor was the performer of a play he should be expected to perform all major parts, provided that they did not coincide in the same scenes. This simple principle clashes with the principle of even distribution of parts to actors, and I am afraid that we have no sure guide to help us decide in favour of the one or the other (what seems “natural” to us is of very little value). But we can ask: which of the two principles is likely to have been more appropriate to the style of ancient performance and to have enhanced its unity?

There is no paradox in suggesting that the unity of performance in Greek theatre - its rhythm and tenor, its style in general - was maintained by the protagonist. Think of Aeschylus masterminding his plays;34 or even an early actor such as, say, Klearchos or Mynniskos (both of whom had assisted Aeschylus to present his plays and perhaps had been trained by him in the arts of theatre),35 standing in for Sophocles and co-operating closely with him when the poet decided to give up performing on account of his weak voice.

This discussion will not be meaningful, however, unless we recall that the language of tragic poetry, the tragic lexis in Aristotle’s terms, was conventionally uniform and did not aim at characterizing the dramatis personae;36 and furthermore unless we recognize that its delivery also must have been conventional, precluding realism (as declamation, recitative, and song, as a rule do). Under such circumstances, the personal timbre of voice would be veiled to a large extent (though not quite hidden) by prolonged training and deliberate voice management (not to mention masks), as is the case in many other traditions of stylized acting and/or singing.37

As regards generic style of singing, we can easily think of several traditions, from Italian be1 canto to Andalusian flamenco, to Peking Opera falsetto. Stylized delivery can also be paralleled by various dramatic genres, and I hope I may be excused if I mention here two

21

34 Cf. P.D. Arnott, Greek Scenic Conventions (Oxford 1962) 109. 35 Stefanis, opcit., nos.1412 and 1757. 36 I do not want to repeat here what I have written on this subject in my paper on “Children in

Tragedy”, BICS 26 (1 979) 7 1. 37 I am afraid this (and what follows) is incompatible with Z. Pavlovskis’ suggestion that the

voices of ancient actors were recognizable behind the masks as the voices of contemporary actors are today recognized, for instance, on the radio; and that the personal timbre of voice was then utilized by the poets to indicate a family bond between characters who were played by the same actor (e.g. Atossa and Xerxes, Ajax and Teucer, Pentheus and Agave): “The voice of the actors in Greek tragedy”, Class. World 71 (1977) 113-123 (quoted with approval by F. Jouan, “RCflexions sur le rBle du protagoniste tragique”, Thkitre et spectacles: Acres du Colloque de Strasbourg, 5-7 Novembre I981 [Leiden 19831 76ff.


puppet-theatre traditions, the Japanese puppet theatre (ningyo joruri, which after many centuries of development came to be known in modern times as Bunraku) and the modern Greek Karagiozis. The reason why puppet theatre is perhaps more relevant to our discussion than other dramatic genres is that one master performer speaks, as a rule, all parts in a play. This is an extreme practice, but precisely because of that it illustrates well the principle of style unity we have been discussing.

Japanese puppet theatre is a sophisticated art form, which has generated works of great literary merit.38 At the beginning of the 17th century, a pre-existing form of narrative chanting called joruri began to be illustrated by (also pre-existing) puppets and the joruri play was born. The puppets were manipulated by several operators (in later Bunraku each puppet - about one-third the size of a man, and dressed in rich costumes - is operated by three men), but the “chanter not only spoke for all the puppets, but also described their actions and t h o ~ g h t s ” . ~ ~ The performance of the joruri chanter was accompanied on the shamisen (a lute-like instrument) by a musician supplying background music. “It may seem unusual’’, writes the English translator of the most famous of joruri plays, “that it should be with a chanter rather than with an author or even a celebrated puppet operator that the art was always most closely identified, but the role of the chanter is the one of the greatest importance in the joruri. [ ... ] Often Japanese books would lead us to believe that the chanter was entirely responsible for the quality of the works he performed, as if the contribution of the author was of negligible value. [ ... ] The chanter, who usually also acted as producer, had absolute control over the texts he used. [ . . . ] In this sense we may speak of [chanter] Gidayu [rather than playwright Chikamatsu] as the greatest figure in the history of the j~ruri”.~O It should be added that this master performer was assisted by one or more4’ aides who on occasion chanted together with him, could even replace him for brief spells at a time during long sessions, but very seldom spoke for a character and apparently only for some special effect.42

In the Greek shadow-puppet theatre the puppet master manipulates his leather or cardboard heroes (two at a time) and speaks for all of them. His assistants (usually one or two) operate other puppets which they hand over to the puppet player when their turn to speak comes. It is not impossible for an assistant to speak on rare occasions, but several Karagiozis players remember that they graduated, as it were, to the profession from their former rank as assistants all of a sudden, at a time when their master had been ill and incapable of meeting an engagement, and surprised everyone by their unexpected competence in the delivery of dialogue.43 This sounds suspiciously like a motif of professional lore but is no less revealing for that.

There should be no doubt that puppet masters in Japan and Greece (or anywhere else for that matter) could have their assistants impersonate some of the characters in the plays they produced, but they did not. What could have been the gain from such a deviation from tradition? Not even a touch of realism given the nature and appearance of the “actors”. On the contrary, harm to the consistency of characterization, the rhythm and

78 Its greatest playwright, Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1723, is also considered Japan’s greatest dramatist; see Donald Keene, The Battles of Coxinga: Chikamatsu’s Puppet Play, Its Background and Importance (Cambridge 1971) 31ff.; F. Bowers, op.cit. (n.27) 33.

39 Keene, op.cit. 100. 40 Ibid. 28. 41 Masatayu, the first performer of The Battles of Coxinga in 1715, was aided by five assistants

(ibid. 9). 42 Ibid. 148 with n.174. 41 Cf. the journal Odarpo no. 10 (July-August 1963) 56,60.


flow of the performance, the unity of style, in a word, to the control of the master performer over his work, would have been considerable and unacceptable to him and to his audience alike. No performer would jeopardize his success by entrusting to an assistant part of the work he was expected to do (and was supposed to do much better).

Dramatic performances in Athens were entries for a contest of great importance, whose prizes (just like those of the national athletic and musical games) carried honour, fame, and professional success. Competition was fierce, as the fourth-century scheme matching competing actors to competing poets (see p.17 above) shows. The contesting actors, as we have seen, were considered master performers, responsible for the presentation of new plays (and the production of old plays). In this they were assisted by supporting actors who thus helped the principals to carry out their duties and contend for the prize. The use of masks and generic style of delivery made it possible for actors to play several roles and also share a role between them, but did not obliterate the distinctive quality and management of an actor’s voice. So the voice of the tragic actor Theodoros, for instance, seemed, according to Aristotle, to be that of the character he was impersonating, while the voices of all other actors apparently did not (Rhet. 1404b 22-24). Experienced spectators (and judges) would undoubtedly have had no great difficulty in keeping track of the protagonist in his different roles, and in following the performances of the supporting actors also - if they wanted to, But was it really necessary? The synugonistui were not antagonists but assistants to the principal actors, and contributed to the success of their performance. Their work reflected on the principals, as the success (or failure) of the latter reflected on them.

The number of actors, then, was limited to three not because of lack of resources or some other external pressure, but because this apparent restriction suited the style of classical performance. In its evolution from a largely choral performance with one actor (playing all parts) to the representation of a comparatively complex plot by three actors and a chorus, tragedy did not even approach realism in our sense. To represent its extremely generalized imitations of human life, the tragedians developed an apparatus of expressive means, including poetic diction (lexis), music (rnelopoiiu), dancing, stage, masks, etc. (opsis). The enactment of these imitations was carried out by a number of operators, including musicians, chorus-men, and as many actors as necessary to present to the audience a story that had been constructed so as to make a point. The style of performance, therefore, derived from the design and construction of the play as a whole at each stage of tragedy’s evolution.

That the three-actor rule was strictly related to the style of performance is actually borne out by the fact that it was retained in the production of New Comedy as well, although New Comedy was closer by several degrees to realism than tragedy had ever been. It still “remains true”, as Eric Handley wrote in his introduction to the Dyskolos, “that we have no certain evidence of a scene in Menander which demands the presence of four speakers or more”;& and the Soteria records (n.23 above), dating from about thirty years after Menander’s death, constitute solid evidence for three-actor troupes doing the comedies at Delphi. But what seems to many people to be a considerable problem is that there is no Menander play, so far as we can tell, in which the application of the rule does not entail splitting of roles, often major ones, between two or even all three actors (not to mention mutes). But was this really a problem, or a matter of rhythm and style? Handley has taken a very sensible view. Having accepted that some small parts could be given to

44 The Dyskolos ofMenander (London 1965) 26. Cf. Hourmouziades, GRBS 14 (1973) 185.


extras (whom I have called apprentices elsewhere [see n.24]), he writes: “After much dispute, there still seems good ground for the common view that three actors normally shared the speaking parts, with extras to walk on for them at need in scenes where they were silent, as well as to take other non-speaking parts; and of course with changes of dramatic r61e which by most modern standards seem unnatural; but modern standards do not necessarily apply to an ancient performance, in which masks and relatively simple costumes made changes easier and gave a wide scope to a skilful dramatist with a small, highly trained cast” (ibid.; italics mine).

The A.S. Onassis Center for Hellenic Studies, New York University Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Rethymnon, Crete

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THE ONE-ACTOR RULE IN GREEK TRAGEDY