Scodel, 'Context of Ancient Drama', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9510
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9510-scodel-context

@@@@95.10.8, Csapo/Slater, Context of Ancient Drama

Eric Csapo and William J. Slater, <i>The Context of Ancient
Drama</i>. Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press,
1995. Pp. xiv + 435. $44.50 cloth, $24.95 paper; ISBN
0-472-10545-0 cloth, 0-472-08275-2, paper.
  Reviewed by Ruth Scodel -- University of Michigan

  This title may mislead some people. This is a sourcebook, and
the "context" to which it refers is theatrical. It seeks to
provide readers without Greek or Latin access to the primary
evidence about such questions as what ancient productions looked
like, how they were arranged and paid for, and how audiences
behaved. 

  In reviewing a sourcebook, the first question must be whether
it was needed, and whether it meets the need. The gap the authors
seek to fill was a real one, and they have unquestionably done
the job. In aiming to help the widest possible audience, though,
I suspect that they have served the most sophisticated segment of
their market best. English professors who teach the history of
the theater will bless the authors' names; the volume is full of
documents they should know about which were previously completely
out of their reach. On the other hand, I would be uneasy about
assigning the book in a standard class. civ. course on the
history of classical drama. I couldn't assign more than half the
material, because my students, at least, are easily frustrated by
sourcebooks. They lack the historical knowledge to place the
snippets, and the intellectual confidence and enterprise to
compensate for their ignorance. The authors provide good, but
limited background; they assume the book will be used in a
lecture course. The authors invite us to be grateful for their
economy, and from the scholarly perspective I can admire their
judicious selection. My students, though, are likely to resent
having to pay for the book when we don't read all of it. On the
other hand, if it included only the material I would be likely to
want for my students, I wouldn't have learned anything from it,
and I did encounter a number of inscriptions I'd never looked at
before. The plates add immensely to the book's usefulness, and
appendices offer a translation of Pollux and chronological
tables.

  Organization is a perennial difficulty for sourcebooks. This
one is divided into five main sections, labeled "Kinds of
Evidence: Their Nature and Reliability," "Origins of Greek
Drama," "Organization," "Actors and Audience," and "Mime and
Pantomime." The first section is largely about how to evaluate
literary and archaeological evidence, but it also is the main
presentation of some important material. It provides evidence
about how dramatic texts survived and on ancient scholarship, and
introduces the major inscriptions (actual fragments are given in
IV, under "Actors' Competitions"). There is a good discussion of
the pictorial evidence ("Artifacts" means pots, figurines, wall
paintings, mosaics, and manuscript illustration); and there are
descriptions of theaters (illustrated at the back). The main
sections are subdivided into subsections and chapters, which,
sensibly, follow a chronological division. So, for instance, III,
"Organization," includes three subsections for classical Athens,
the Greek world in the Hellenistic and Imperial periods, and the
Roman world; IIIA, Athens, is further subdivided into
"Festivals," and "Regulations," and these areas are then further
subdivided. "Regulation," for instance, includes "The Choregic
System," "Judges," and "Freedom of Expression."  Items are
numbered within each overall section, and arranged within each
sub-heading by the date of the content. This is all satisfactory,
and there is some cross-referencing when it is needed. It will
not be too difficult for someone teaching Greek drama, or Roman
comedy, to isolate the appropriate sections. But I fail to
understand why nobody apparently thought a book this length needs
an <i>Index Locorum</i>, especially since it is provided with a
glossary and bibliographical notes (these are excellent for
non-specialist scholars, though the glossary is incomplete:
<i>diaskeuai</i>, for example, appear in the text but not the
glossary). Indeed, there is no index apart from the glossary,
even though the authors admit in the introduction that costume,
for instance, receives no separate treatment.  

  Accuracy and selections are the next inevitable issues. I have
not even attempted a systematic check of the translations and
references, trusting that if there were frequent errors, I would
notice them. I caught a few (for instance, 316 and 346 seem to
have been exchanged on p.40; O)/RXOS means "testicle," not
"penis"), but not enough to trouble me. The book selects very
well within its parameters, though I might have set these
differently. The decision not to include biographical material
about poets means that the volume is very informative about the
social status of actors, but provides little about the social or
political standing of playwrights (except when author and actor
intersect, as with Laberius); Roman comedy seems somewhat
neglected. 

  In a work that treats this much material, there are plenty of
small points for disagreement, but they should not interfere with
the book's usefulness to anybody. The general interpretive bias
of the authors is quite clear: given a choice between religion
and politics, they always choose politics; given a choice between
religion and entertainment, they choose entertainment. So, for
example, they comment on the Athenian vases showing a
Dionysus-ship accompanied by satyrs as demonstrating "the
connection of satyrs with public amusement." They view tragedy as
basically a secular entertainment, and argue that comic freedom
of speech in Old Comedy is a testing of democratic limits, very
like the license sometimes found in the courts. I would not
dissociate comic and ritual abuse so completely, especially
because abuse of individuals and obscenity tend to be associated.
However, at a time when scholarship is much preoccupied with
grand cultural significance and the ritual aspects of drama are
much belabored, it is refreshing for the scholar, and I hope for
the student, to plunge into the aspect of drama this volume
presents, a world of actors making money, theaters needing
repairs, politicians trying for prestige, cities trying to ensure
that the entertainers they've hired actually show up, special
effects, and booing audiences, a world of spectacle of which our
precious texts were only a small part.