100 books like The Greek Tragic Theatre

Choosing five books that might be the most useful for anyone contemplating a revival of plays that were created for a single performance nearly two and a half thousand years ago is a daunting task, one I could have undertaken many times over.

While no practitioner would be recommended to try to recreate the original production, all would be advised not to ignore the circumstances which have contributed to the plays’ survival as living dramas.

Peter Arnott was rare among classicists in that his approach was primarily from a performance perspective.

He was himself a director of note, but also a puppeteer whose solo productions of Greek tragedies and comedies were a good introduction to the reality of masked performance to players and audiences in the huge performance spaces where the Athenian festivals were celebrated and where the playwrights explored the potential of their new medium.

While the first two links are a good introduction to classical drama and theatre for the uninitiated, this third choice is different, a vast and unparalleled compendium covering productions of the whole corpus of direct and marginal translations of Greek tragedy on the English stage over some 250 years.

It is a work of reference rather than a ‘good read’, but it is a book into which I hope everyone would find reason to dip who believes in research as an essential feature of creative preparation for the new production of a ‘classic’.

The book is written by two of the most prominent and inspirational contemporary classical scholars whose prolific output in kindred areas of the classics and of theatre history has little rival.

Issues such as stage censorship, social and political change and translation bias show how the classical repertoire from Aeschylus through to Seneca has made it possible,… show more.

Despite a somewhat daunting front cover, this is a most engaging book.

It can be misleading to divorce an understanding of Greek comedy from that of tragedy. Both were performed on specific occasions and engaged their audiences through complementary approaches to dramatic performance.

Kenneth Dover, knighted in 1977 for ‘services to scholarship’, was a most inspiring of teachers and a writer on all aspects of the ancient world, never more so than this book on Aristophanes.

Here he confronts all aspects of Old Comedy from a playwright who, through a mixture of farce and fantasy, created an unparalleled portrait of daily life in ancient Athens, but whose works remained fully untranslated and unperformed in English right up to the later years of the 20th Century.

Dover shirks neither political impetus, nor the ribaldry, blatant sexism, and often wildly obscene behaviour of the characters.

This may seem a rather strange nomination as it is the catalogue for a remarkable exhibition, curated by Mary Hart at the J. Paul Getty Museum in 2010.

The main justification is that this was probably the greatest collection of illustrations of dramatic performances in the classical world ever displayed together, in pots, paintings, and artefacts. Though hardly a reliable guide to how Greek comedies and tragedies were originally staged, the various artworks are given contexts and explanations in accompanying commentaries.

Above all, what the book validates is the belief that the earliest Greek theatre emerged as a visual art form, never initially to be preserved in print. Today, we do have some 46 more or less complete playtexts, including a couple from New Comedy, which there is no space to champion here, but which also features strongly throughout the catalogue.

Thrilling portraits of violent women in Greek tragedy—for example, Clytemnestra, Electra, and Medea—seem like an anomaly in a society that expected women to get married, bear children, be quiet, and stay at home. In this accessible introduction to the subject Rabinowitz examines tragedy in its original theatrical and social contexts. Her analyses of selected plays are grounded in psychoanalytic and feminist theory, and include vivid accounts of some modern performances. Whatever is happening in the world, there is always a Greek tragedy that speaks to it. 

This academic work rarely left my side when I was writing The Muse of Fire. It provides an in-depth and well-researched overview for readers who want to know more about the Old Price Riots of 1809—the central historical event in the novel. For me, a huge bonus was that the author, Marc Baer, very graciously consented to read and provide feedback on my book before it was published to ensure I got my facts right about the longest-running and most disruptive riot in British theatrical history.

Forget Shakespeare. Nicholas Bracewell and Lord Westfield’s Men are a far more intriguing introduction to Elizabethan theatre. I was there, watching the rehearsals, hearing the applause, and enjoying the play as murder was committed, literally, behind the scenes.

With a bit of alchemy, madness, and passion thrown into the mix, if you love the Elizabethan period this is a not-to-be-missed historical mystery as Nicholas pits his wits against the devil himself. 

This excellent collection of articles by the top connoisseurs of East European art and culture discusses how Ukrainians and Jews created new trends in art and literature in the midst of the revolutionary turmoil Kyiv, then short-lived capital of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and later of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. This book proves that avant-garde images and trends emerge from the revolutionary utopianism and the desire to create a universalistic language understandable beyond the ethnic divide and languages.

I love this book because it spotlights performance contexts and conditions–what it means to stage history during the Elizabethan period–and, through this focus, provides fresh, nuanced interpretations of the plays it considers, including some by Shakespeare and others performed by Queen Elizabeth’s Men.

It is another formative book for me, especially because it negotiates ideas and representations of ‘truth’ in historical drama. Walsh’s book offers a compelling account of the communal construction of history and the interplay between presence and absence, which has also helped me understand my own methods as a critic and historian.

This book was amazing in helping me think about Shakespeare and the history of divisions in our own history. Like all of James Shapiro’s work, Shakespeare in a Divided America is filled with fascinating information delivered in lively and engaging prose. This book provides a cultural and historical exploration of how readings and performances of Shakespeare’s plays in the past two centuries have exposed fault lines in our country’s political and social fabric. In the nineteenth century, the assassination of President Lincoln and the deadly Astor Place Riots; in the twentieth-century debates over free speech, gender, immigration, and race; and in our own time controversies over political division and Trump-era extremism: Shapiro shows how all of these have issues played out through the vehicle of Shakespeare’s plays, particularly Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Othello.