Satyr play

Satyr Play

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Satyr play

Satyr plays were an ancient Greek

Ancient Greece

The term Ancient Greece refers to the period of History of Greece lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman Republic conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth ....
form of tragicomedy, similar to the modern-day burlesque

Burlesque

Burlesque is a humorous theatrical entertainment involving parody and sometimes grotesque exaggeration. Prior to Burlesque becoming associated with striptease, it was a form of Parody music in which an opera or piece of classical theatre is adapted in a broad, often risqu? style very different from that for which it was originally known....
style. They always featured a chorus of satyr

Satyr

In Greek mythology, satyrs are a troop of male companions of Pan and Dionysus ? "satyresses" were a late invention of poets ? that roamed the woods and mountains....
s and were based in Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
and contained themes of, among other things, drinking, overt sexuality (often including large phallic

Phallus

Phallus can refer to a penis, or to an object shaped like a penis. The word comes from Vulgar Latin "phallus", from Ancient Greek "fa????" phallos, penis....
props), pranks and general merriment.

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Satyr plays were an ancient Greek

Ancient Greece

Burlesque

Satyr

Greek mythology

Phallus

Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
Dionysia

Dionysia

The Dionysia was a large religious festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, the central event of which was the performance of tragedy and, since 487 BC, Greek comedy....
, playwrights usually submitted four plays to the competition: three tragedies

Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of The arts based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific Poetic tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western culture....
and one satyr play. The satyr plays were performed at the end of the festival as spirited entertainment to lighten the atmosphere after many hours of Tragedy, or between the 2nd and 3rd Tragedy of a trilogy as comic relief. They were also generally much shorter, around half the length of an average Tragedy.

Satyric drama was one of the three varieties of Athenian drama

Drama

Drama is the specific Mode of fiction Mimesis in performance. The term comes from a Ancient Greek word meaning "Action " , which is derived from "to do" ....
(the other two being tragedy and comedy

Comedy

Comedy as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse generally intended to amuse, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western culture origins are found in Ancient Greece....
). Its origin can be traced back to Pratinas

Pratinas

Pratinas was one of the earliest tragic poets of Athens, he was a native of Phlius in Peloponnesus. About 500 BC he competed with Choerilus and Aeschylus, when the latter made his first appearance as a writer for the stage....
of Phlius

Phlius

Phlius was a Ancient Greece city in the northwestern Argolid, in the Peloponnese. Although geographically close to Argos, the city became a Spartan ally and a member of the Peloponnesian League....
(about 500 BC). It is probable that, after settling in Athens, he adapted the old dithyramb

Dithyramb

The dithyramb was originally an Ancient Greece hymn sung to the god Dionysus and was also a term used as an epithet of the god.. Its wild and ecstatic character was contrasted by Plutarch with that of the paean....
with its chorus

Greek chorus

The Greek chorus is a group of twelve or fifteen minor actors in tragedy and twenty-four in Ancient Greek comedy plays of classical Athens....
of satyr

Satyr

In Greek mythology, satyrs are a troop of male companions of Pan and Dionysus ? "satyresses" were a late invention of poets ? that roamed the woods and mountains....
s, which was customary in his native place, to the form of tragedy which had been recently invented in Athens. This new kind of drama met with so much approval, and was so much developed by Pratinas himself, as well as by his son Aristeas, by Choerilus

Choerilus

There were several poets named Choerilus:* Choerilus * Choerilus of Iasus - epic poet* Choerilus of Samos - epic poet...
, by Aeschylus

Aeschylus

Aeschylus was an Ancient Greece playwright. He is often recognized as the father or the founder of tragedy, and is the earliest of the three Greek tragedy whose Play survive extant, the others being Sophocles and Euripides....
, and the dramatists who succeeded him, that it became the custom to act a satyric drama after a set of three tragedies. The seriousness of the preceding plays was thus relieved, while the chorus of satyrs and Sileni

Ipotane

In Greek mythology, Silenus was a companion and tutor to the wine Greek god Dionysus. The name is derived from Silenoi, the followers of Dionysus....
, the companions of Dionysos, served to indicate the original connexion between that divinity and the drama.

The material for a satyric drama, like that for a tragedy, was taken from an epic

Epic poetry

An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation....
or mythology, and the action, which took place under an open sky, in a lonely wood, the haunt of the satyrs, had generally an element of tragedy; but the characteristic solemnity and stateliness of tragedy was somewhat diminished, without in any way impairing the splendour of the tragic costume and the dignity of the heroes introduced. The amusing effect of the play did not depend so much on the action itself, as was the case in comedy, but rather on the relation of the chorus

Greek chorus

The Greek chorus is a group of twelve or fifteen minor actors in tragedy and twenty-four in Ancient Greek comedy plays of classical Athens....
to that action. That relation was in keeping with the wanton, saucy, and insolent, and at the same time cowardly, nature of the satyrs. The number of persons in the chorus is not known, although there were probably either twelve or fifteen, as in tragedy. In accordance with the popular notions about the satyrs, their costume consisted of the skin of a goat, deer, or panther, thrown over the naked body, and besides this a hideous mask and bristling hair. The dance of the chorus in the satyric drama was called sicinnis, and consisted of a fantastic kind of skipping and jumping.

Aeschylus

Aeschylus

Perseus

Perseus , the legendary founder of Mycenae and of the Mycenae there, was the first of the mythic heroes of Greek mythology whose exploits in defeating various archaic monsters provided the founding myths in the cult of the Twelve Olympians....
is allowed to masturbate

Masturbation

Masturbation refers to sexual stimulation, especially of one's own sex organ , often to the point of orgasm. The stimulation can be performed manually, by other types of bodily contact , by use of objects or tools, or by some combination of these methods....
a satyr's penis

Penis

The penis is an external sex organ of certain biologically male organisms, in both vertebrates and invertebrates.The penis is a reproductive organ, technically an intromittent organ, and for Eutheria, additionally serves as the external organ of urination....
, as that fragment survives. Another play discusses the need to gang rape Helen

Helen

In Greek mythology, Helen , better known as Helen of Sparta later Helen of Troy, was the daughter of Zeus and Leda , wife of King Menelaus of Sparta and sister of Castor and Pollux, Castor and Pollux and Clytemnestra....
. The only satyr play to survive in its entirety is Euripides

Euripides

Euripides was the last of the three great tragedy of classical Athens . Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias....
's Cyclops
Cyclops (play)

The Cyclops is an Ancient Greek satyr play by Euripides, the only complete satyr play that has survived. It is a comical burlesque-like play on the same story depicted in book nine of The Odyssey by Homer....
. We also have large fragments of a Sophocles

Sophocles

Sophocles was the second of the three classical Greece tragedy whose work has survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus and earlier than those of Euripides....
comedy called Ichneutae
The Tracking Satyrs

The Tracking Satyrs is a fragmentary satyr play by Sophocles written during the 5th century BC. Fragments of the play were discovered in Oxyrynchus in 1907....
(Tracking Satyrs), and still smaller pieces of other satyr plays exist. The Romans

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
did not imitate this kind of drama in their literature, although, like the Greeks, they used to have merry after-pieces following their serious plays.

Sources

Easterling, P. E. (Editor), Bernard M. W. Knox (Editor); The Cambridge History of Classical Literature; Volume I Part 2: Greek Drama Cambridge University Press; Reprint edition (1993). ISBN 0521359821.
Flickinger, Roy Caston, The Greek theater and its drama, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1918

Satyr play

Sources

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