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Greek Theatre: Tragedy and Comedy

Contributors: Sasha Blakeley, Max P�ngsten
Greek comedy and tragedy were the two primary types of theatre in Ancient Greece. Both held an important
place in Greek culture, religion, and even politics. Explore what made Greek comedies and tragedies similar and
di�erent.

Table of Contents

What is Greek Theatre? Origins and Introduction

Satyr Plays

Greek Tragedy

Greek Comedy

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What is Greek Theatre? Origins and Introduction
What is Greek theatre? Ancient Greece had a thriving theatre tradition that lasted for centuries.
Greek theatre history dates back to at least the 6th century BCE and originally took the form of
monologue-style plays with a single actor, with a second actor being added later and then a third.
Historical evidence suggests that the �rst plays to be performed were probably Greek tragedy
plays, which retained their popularity for centuries, but which hit their peak in Athens in the 5th
century BCE. The two other major forms of Greek theatre were satyr plays and comedies, each of
which played a speci�c role in Greek society, religion, and culture. Most theatre was traditionally
performed outside in large amphitheaters that were designed to have excellent acoustics. Cities
tended to host theatre festivals in honor of the god Dionysus, which were generally structured as
competitions between notable playwrights.

The ruins of an ancient Greek amphitheatre

Satyr Plays
The �rst Greek theatre de�nition to cover in detail is the satyr play. Probably originally created
between 520 and 510 BCE in Athens, satyr plays were around half of the length of other plays and
provided comic relief in between the heavier tragedies of a festival. They starred satyrs, or half-
goat and half-human men who were companions of Dionysus. Satyr plays typically featured a
chorus that engaged in humorous dances and short scenes set in rural areas, often satirizing real
events. It is possible that these plays were also designed to honor Dionysus and to provide an
outlet for Dionysian wildness for both actors and the audience.

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Greek Tragedy
Greek tragedy was typically the main event at theatre festivals in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE.
These plays were heavy in tone and depicted stories from mythology with which audiences were
usually already familiar. Aristotle wrote in his Poetics about how tragedies ought to unfold, and his
ideas provide an e�ective framework for understanding this kind of play. In addition to technical
elements, Aristotle named four essential plot elements that a tragedy must have in order to have
the right e�ect on the audience. These elements are:

Element Meaning Example: Oedipus Rex by

Sophocles

Hamartia

Originally an archery term meaning ”missing the
mark,” hamartia is often mistranslated as a ”fatal
�aw.” However, it is more accurately translated as a
fatal mistake that a character makes early on in the
play, often through no fault of their own.

Unbeknownst to him and against everyone’s
best e�orts, Oedipus kills his father and
marries his mother.

Peripeteia
Swift and sudden reversal of fortune: this is when
the play suddenly changes course and tragedy
befalls the characters.

A shepherd arrives and tells Oedipus a story
about an infant raised by farmers, which
makes Jocasta (Oedipus’ wife and mother)
realize what has happened and beg Oedipus
to stop asking questions.

Anagnorisis
Realization. Characters abruptly become aware of
the full extent of what is happening to them, usually
with a feeling of dawning horror.

Oedipus �nally realizes who he really is and
that he has in fact murdered his father and
committed incest with his mother.

Catharsis
A purgation of emotion. Characters experience
negative emotions as a result of their realizations,
which the audience can share.

Oedipus gouges out his own eyes in his
horror at what he has done.

An important thing to keep in mind about tragedies is that they are not stories with a speci�c
moral. Oedipus Rex was not written to warn people about the dangers of prophecy, murder, incest,
or asking questions. Likewise, Oedipus did nothing wrong that would have made him somehow
earn his fate: he was a victim of circumstance. The emotional impact of tragedy often comes from
characters experiencing outcomes that they by no means deserve or could have avoided, but
instead being caught up in the whims and delights of the gods with little say in their own destinies.

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A still from an 1896 production of

Oedipus Rex

In addition to the plot elements listed above, tragedies tended to have �ve parts. These were:

Prologue: The beginning of the play, usually including some exposition to situate the audience in a
familiar story

Parados: The entrance of the chorus, who would go on to provide important narration and emotional
responses throughout the play

Epeisodia: A scene that moves the plot forward. These would alternate with the stasima; plays would
usually have three to six of each

Stasima: A song sung by the chorus, often explaining action that took place o� stage or warning the

Structure of Greek Tragedies

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characters

Exodus: The �nal scene of the play that included the actors’ and chorus’s exit from the stage

These elements developed over time; earlier tragedies tended to be simpler in structure, featuring
fewer actors. Those who acted in tragedies wore masks to indicate their character and often played
more than one character in a production. All ancient Greek actors were men. Many, but not all, of
the most famous tragedies from ancient Greece were written as trilogies all featuring the same
characters or family.

Who wrote Greek tragedies? Although some plays have been lost, there are many Greek tragedy
examples that still exist today. Three writers tend to dominate the current scholarship around and
understanding of tragedy, largely because their work won many of the dramatic festivals of the
time and because they adjusted the commonly understood structure of theatre in ancient Greece.

Aeschylus

Aeschylus lived from approximately 525 to 455 BCE. He was the �rst to write plays that featured
two characters instead of one actor and a chorus. Although he wrote around seventy plays in his
career, only seven survive. These are:

Three plays collectively called The Oresteia, which were Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The
Eumenides

The Persians

The Suppliants

Seven Against Thebes

Prometheus Bound, which has disputed authorship

The Oresteia was �rst performed at the Dionysia festival in Athens in 458 BCE. It won �rst prize at
the festival. The trilogy follows the family of the House of Atreus, many of whom underwent
signi�cant tragedies in Greek mythology. The plays follow two generations of the family, starting
with Agamemnon’s homecoming from the Trojan War and the subsequent con�ict between him
and his wife, Clytemnestra.

Sophocles

Who Wrote Greek Tragedies?

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Sophocles was a man who wrote Greek tragedies

Sophocles lived from around 496 to 406 BCE. Like Aeschylus, he expanded on the accepted form of
Greek tragedy, adding a third actor to his plays. He wrote around one hundred and twenty plays, of
which seven survive in their complete forms:

A trilogy about Oedipus that consisted of Oedipus Rex, Antigone, and Oedipus at Colonus, often known as
the Theban plays

Philoctetes

Ajax

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Electra

Women of Trachis

Of these plays, Oedipus Rex and Antigone are the most famous and most often performed. Antigone
is one of the daughters of Oedipus and Jocasta who ends up su�ering her own tragic fate after the
death of her brother, Polynices, whom she buries against King Creon’s orders.

Euripides

The last major writer of Greek tragedy was Euripides, who lived from around 485 to 406 BCE.
Nineteen of his over ninety plays have survived. Euripides was notable for the adjustments that he
made to familiar Greek myths, particularly in his version of the myth of Medea. He shocked
audiences by sharply increasing the level of violence that Medea commits at the end of the play.
His other most famous play is The Bacchae, about Dionysus destroying King Pentheus, who refused
to believe in his divinity. Tragedians like Euripides retold myths in part to keep religious traditions
alive and relevant.

Greek Comedy
What type of play made fun of Greek legends? Comedies �t this role. Unlike satyr plays, Greek
comedies were full-length plays that did not necessarily feature satyrs and were often direct
parodies of either myths or historical or current events. They could also provide a way to keep
myth and religion relevant. Comedies were performed in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE in many of
the same cities as tragedies, sometimes in their own festivals and sometimes separately. These
plays relied on several elements for humorous e�ect, including:

Lampooning, or deliberate satirizing of a person or concept

Reducto ad absurdum, meaning presenting an idea in an extreme and ludicrous form to mock it

Crude humor, much of which was sexual in nature

Social commentary intended to mock current events and public �gures

While the speci�c social context of Greek comedies no longer exists, some of these plays manage
to retain their humor even in the present day through universal appeals to the human condition.

Just like tragedies, comedies tended to follow a speci�c structural pattern that audiences expected
to see. This pattern was a little di�erent from that of tragedy. It went as follows:

Prologue: As in tragedy, this situated audiences in the play

Parados: The entrance of the chorus

Structure of Greek Comedies

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Agon: A contest where two actors debated an issue in verse, with one actor losing

Parabasis: The ”coming forward” where chorus members would unmask and address the audience
directly about the issue, including songs, chants, and tongue twisters

Episode: Plot-relevant scenes as in tragedy that went into detail about the Agon

Exodus: The �nal scene of the play, usually involving a song or a marriage of characters

Over time, this structure gradually gave way to a more plot-based comedy, the likes of which would
be more familiar to audiences today.

Who Wrote Greek Comedies?

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An example of the masks used in ancient Greek comedy and tragedy

There are several writers who are remembered for their contributions to Greek comedy, including
Menander, Cratinus, and Eupolis. However, by far the most famous ancient Greek comedy writer
was Aristophanes, who lived from approximately 460 to 380 BCE. Little is known about him as a
person, but eleven of his plays survive. Among these are:

Lysistrata

The Frogs

The Birds

The Wasps

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Lysistrata is perhaps the most famous of these plays, and versions of it are still produced today,
including Spike Lee’s �lm Chi-Raq and the play Lysistrata Jones.

Comparing Greek Comedy and Tragedy
Greek comedy and tragedy had many di�erences that would make going to see either kind of play
a very singular experience. Tragedies did not shy away from horror, were based on established
myths, and allowed the audience to experience catharsis. Comedies were usually based on current
events, used crude humor and wordplay as the basis of humor, and provided lighter forms of
entertainment and social commentary for audiences. Tragedies were the mainstay of Greek
theatre culture and were taken much more seriously, with comedies taking a secondary place on
the stage.

Although they di�ered in subject matter and structure, comedies and tragedies conformed to the
same general principles of theatricality at the time. They were both usually performed during
festivals in outdoor amphitheaters. They featured only male actors and chorus members, all of
whom wore masks throughout their performances. Amphitheaters often had a building at the
back of the stage that allowed actors to change costumes and store props. This building was called
a skene, and it was used in all kinds of theatre.

Lesson Summary
Greek theatre was an important part of ancient Greek culture and religion that could be broadly
divided into three types of plays. Satyr plays were short, comedic plays with slapstick elements.
Tragedy plays retold myths from new perspectives, showing characters who su�er because of fate
rather than their own mistakes. Comedies used elements like lampooning, reducto ad absurdum,
crude humor, and social commentary to entertain audiences. Aristophanes was the most famous
comedic writer in ancient Greece, while Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were the most
famous tragedians. Although Greek theatre was prevalent for many years, it was at the peak of its
popularity in Athens in the 5th century BCE.

Video Transcript

Origins of Greek Theatre
As we saw in our lecture on Greek myth and religion, the Greeks had no holy text of divine
commandments to live by. Instead, the Greeks looked to the example of mythical heroes. These
myths were not set in stone. Rather, each generation reinvented the old myths, telling the same old

Similarities of Greek Tragedy and Comedy

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story from a new perspective or with a di�erent emphasis. This constant reinterpretation kept the
Greek myths fresh and relevant. In short, it brought myth to life. The Greeks called this process the
theatre.

Theatre played a central role in Greek culture. Any polis worth living in held annual theatrical
festivals in honor of Dionysus. Yet theatre would reach its apex in the Panathenaic Festival of
Athens, in which the greatest playwrights competed to perform their works.

The Greeks divided their theatre into three genres: satyr plays, comedies and tragedies.

Location of Athens in Ancient Greece

Satyr Plays
Satyr plays are the oldest sort of play. Satyrs are goat men, drinking buddies of Dionysus and
known for their promiscuous behavior. We know little about the early history of satyr plays besides
that they were part of a ritual to Dionysus, and that they were generally lewd and low brow, a lot of
codpieces and hitting people over the head with things. Imagine if The Three Stooges did a
burlesque show, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of a satyr play. After the invention of tragedy
and comedy, satyr plays continued to be performed during festivals to provide comic relief
between the heavy tragedies.

Greek Comedies
For centuries, scholars struggled to �nd something similar to Greek comedy. Luckily for us, Matt
Stone and Trey Parker created South Park. Despite nearly 3,000 years separating the two, South
Park is almost identical to Greek comedy. At the heart of both is the lampoon. To lampoon means
to criticize using ridicule or sarcasm.

Just as Matt and Trey mock celebrities they hate, like Bono and Tom Cruise, so the comedians of
Ancient Greece poked fun at the celebrities of the day, making them look sel�sh, haughty, petty
and stupid. We actually get the word lampoon from the statesman Lampon, who was viciously
ridiculed in several plays by the Athenian comedian Aristophanes.

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Like South Park, Greek comedians did not limit their lampooning to people. They also targeted
ideas. Both used a method called reducto ad absurdum, literally, ‘a reduction to absurdity’. We
see the same pattern unfold in Aristophanes’ The Birds and South Park’s ‘Margaritaville’.

Step 1: Take a common idea you �nd stupid.

The Birds: The gods eat the smoke of religious sacri�ces

‘Margaritaville’: The economy is punishing us

Step 2: Break that idea down to its most basic concepts.

The Birds: You could starve the gods by blocking the smoke

‘Margaritaville’: The economy is a god of some sort

Step 3: Show how that basic idea becomes absurd if taken too seriously.

The Birds: Peisistratus convinces the birds to build a wall between heaven and earth and charge
taxes on smoke

‘Margaritaville’: Stan’s dad starts a cult of the economy, in which everyone wears sheets and plays
with squirrels

Greek heroes have excessive pride, or hubris

In short, Greek comedy displayed the same irreverence, the same scathing criticism, the same
subtle moralizing and even the same tendency toward toilet humor that characterizes South Park.

All this comedy might not sound very religious, but passing moral judgment on ideas and people is
essentially a religious matter. In this way, comedy was the most current and up-to-date branch of
Greek religion.

Greek Tragedy
Yet some questions cannot be addressed so �ippantly, some ideas are timeless and cannot be
dismissed and some issues simply should not be laughed about. To address these deeper
questions with the seriousness they deserved, the Greeks invented the most profound form of
theatre, the tragedy.

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Where Greek comedy is ridiculous, Greek tragedy is painfully serious. Tragedies examine mythical
heroes from a moral perspective and �nd the heroes lacking. Despite all their virtues, every Greek
hero su�ers from the vice of hubris, or excessive pride. This pride leads them to believe things that
are not true and to do things that they should not do.

Throughout the play, the chorus acts as the moral compass, telling the hero his beliefs are wrong,
begging him to refrain from some disastrous action, yet they are ignored. At the climax of every
tragedy, the misguided beliefs and actions of the hero lead him to catastrophe. As he bemoans his
fate, the chorus sings, ‘I told you so!’ and hammers home the moral. The morals vary from play to
play, but they mostly follow a basic formula:

Remember so-and-so? Remember how awesome he was? In his pride, he did such-and-such, and it
destroyed him. Don’t be like so-and-so. Don’t do such-and-such.

With this basic formula, Greek tragedians built and re�ned the morality of their culture.

Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides: Great Tragedians

The Athenian playwrights Aeschylus and Sophocles

Equipped with this outline, let us look at the works of three great Athenian playwrights to see what
kind of morals they tried to teach the people of Athens.

The �rst of the three great tragedians was Aeschylus. Aeschylus lived from 525 – 455 BCE. In that
time he wrote over 70 plays, of which seven have survived. His most famous plays were part of a
trilogy called The Oresteia.

So let us plug the heroes of The Oresteia into our formula. Agamemnon was king of Mycenae. In his
pride, he sacri�ced his own daughter to ensure safe passage to Troy. He returned from Troy
victorious, only to have his wife, Clytemnestra, murder him.

Don’t be like Agamemnon. Don’t let ambition outweigh family.

Aeschylus and The Oresteia

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Clytemnestra was queen of Mycenae. In her pride, she took justice into her own hands and
murdered her husband. Orestes, her son, was heir to the Mycenaean throne. In his pride, he took
justice into his own hands and avenged his father Agamemnon by murdering his mother
Clytemnestra. Orestes was then chased from his home by the Furies, spirits of vengeance and
vendetta.

Don’t be like Clytemnestra and Orestes. Don’t take justice into your own hands. Don’t kill your own
family.

The cycle of violence and vengeance was brought to a halt when the Athenians, guided by Athena,
held a trial. In the course of the trial, the Furies transformed from spirits of vengeance to the
Eumenides, good spirits of reason and democracy.

The moral: don’t be like those barbaric Mycenaeans, always killing their family members and
carrying on feuds. Be like the Athenians, who settle their con�icts through trial by jury. Thus we see
Aeschylus identifying a problem in mythology: the cycle of vengeance. He shows how it brings
about disaster by killing o� the entire family, and he o�ers an Athenian solution to the problem: a
trial by jury. Thus, Aeschylus re�ned the morality of the Athenians.

Euripides wrote more than 90 plays in his lifetime

The next playwright in this succession is Sophocles. Sophocles lived from 497 – 406 BCE, writing a
whopping 123 plays, of which seven survive. His most famous plays are the Theban plays. We
could plug Oedipus into our formula, but I think we’ll leave that to Freud. Best to focus on the last
of the Theban plays, Antigone.

Let’s look at our formula. Creon is king of Thebes. In his pride, he forbids Antigone to bury her
brother, since he was a traitor. Unwilling to forsake her duty to her brother, Antigone buries him
anyway. In his pride, Creon locks Antigone up. Antigone kills herself. Her �ancé, Creon’s own son,
kills himself out of grief. Creon valued the state over family and was left with no family at all. The
moral: don’t be like Creon. Don’t try to put the law of the state above the laws of family.

Sophocles and the Theban plays

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Thus we see a further re�nement. Aeschylus distinguished the justice of vengeance from the justice
of law. Sophocles distinguished the laws of the state from the laws of family.

The �nal tragedian of the triad is Euripides. Euripides lived from 480 – 406 BCE. He wrote over 90
plays, of which 18 survive. These plays are so wonderful it is di�cult to pick just one, but time is of
the essence, so we will look at Euripides’ last surviving play, The Bacchae.

Pentheus was king of Thebes. In his pride, he refused to recognize the new god, Dionysus. In his
pride, he insults the mother of Dionysus. In his pride, he forbids his people to worship Dionysus
because he �nds the rites barbaric and uncivilized. In his pride, he attempts to capture the god. In
his pride, he spies on the rites of Dionysus. And for his pride, Pentheus dies horribly, torn limb
from limb by his own mother, who plays catch with balls of his �esh. Don’t be like Pentheus. Don’t
deny new gods, and don’t become so civilized that you forget you’re an animal.

Athenian Theatre’s Impact on Culture
Euripides’ Bacchae marks the apex of civilization. Where Aeschylus was trying to civilize the
Athenians, and Sophocles was trying to re�ne that civilization, Euripides has come full circle, calling
into question the very nature of civilization itself.

Thus we’ve seen how Athenian theatre constantly rede�ned Athenian religion and culture. With
tragedians busy creating new morals and comedians ridiculing outdated ones, Athenian culture
stayed relevant and dynamic. Guided by the constantly updated morals of their theatre, the
Athenians would go on to establish democracy and take philosophy to new vistas.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most well known Greek tragedy?

It is di�cult to choose just one famous Greek tragedy. A few of the best-known works from this
time include:

Medea

Oedipus Rex

The Bacchae

How were Greek tragedies and comedies similar?

Euripides and The Bacchae

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Greek tragedies and comedies tended to feature a chorus, masked actors, and a strict
structure. They often focused on Greek myths and were performed outdoors in
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