The Greek theater and its dramaFlickinger, Roy C. (Roy Caston)
History
The Greek theater and its drama
Flickinger, Roy C. (Roy Caston)
Drama -- Technique; Greek drama -- History and criticism; Theater -- Greece -- History -- To 500
pass to their place of action so frequently as in fifth-century drama
(see p. 88, above).
There is still another sentence in Pollux which needs to be discussed.
He declares that “the hyposcenium is adorned with columns and sculptured
figures turned toward the audience, and it lies beneath (ὑπό) the
logium.”[200] There is no doubt as to the general position of the
hyposcenium—it is the room[201] immediately behind the orchestra and
on the same level—but there is a division of opinion as to the type
of theater which had one and as to its function. In accordance with
his belief that Pollux is describing the Hellenistic theater, Dörpfeld
understands it as the first story of the scene-building in a theater
of this type.[202] The columns and statuary would then refer to the
proscenium just in front of it and to the figures which were sometimes
placed in the intercolumniations thereof. In Hellenistic theaters
Dörpfeld believes the top of the proscenium to have been used by speakers
in the public assemblies and for that reason to have been known as a
logium (see p. 59, n. 1, above); the hyposcenium, of course, lay on a
lower level. Pollux’ statement could not refer to a theater with a stage
because the wall beneath the front of the stage was not decorated with
columns or statuary (see p. 86, above), the proscenium now being raised
one story and appearing at the back of the stage. On the contrary, the
pro-stage writers maintain that Pollux refers to the space under a stage.
In this instance I agree with them as against Dörpfeld, though I would
not look upon Pollux’ statement as applying to the theaters before his
own day. Accepting Dörpfeld’s opinion that the Hellenistic theaters had
no stage, I think that the first story of their scene-buildings had no
special name and that the term “hyposcenium” had not yet come into use;
Pollux, however, is referring to the space under the stage in the Nero
theater. The front of this was probably adorned with the same frieze as
now stands before the Phaedrus stage, and we may not dogmatically assert
that no columns stood there as well.[203] The Athens theater was inclined
to be _sui generis_ at all periods, and these would not be the only
particulars in which the Nero theater differed from the Graeco-Roman type.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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