A
Glimpse of Theater History
SATYR
PLAYS
Each offering at the City Dionysia consisted of a tetralogy. three tragedies and one satyr play, a comic form that was required of each poet. The earliest was said to have been written by Pratinas in about 500BC. Only two examples exist: the complete Cyclops (c. 423BC) of Euripides and the nearly complete Ichneutai (Searching Satyrs) (c. 440BC) of Sophokles. This is not a very large field from which to draw reliable conclusions, especially since contemporary opinion held that Aeschylus wrote the best satyr plays, and he apparently even attempted to provide a thematic connection with the trilogy of tragedies that preceded them.
Satyr
plays derive their name from the fact that the chorus is always made up
of satyrs, the mythical half goat-half man creatures that accompanied
Dionysus. The setting is presumed to be usually bucolic, and the chorus
leader was always Silenus, a round version of a satyr similar to the Bacchus
of Fantasia, who frolics continuously and makes and drinks wine. He was
a sort of water-spirit whose duty it was to keep the vines well watered,
hence his taste for wine. Often, he was Papposilenus, an older version
of the same character, like the one seen on the right holding a thyrsus
and accepting what looks like a child from Hermes. Dionysus himself does
not appear in the plays.
The purpose seemed to be to provide a kind of after-dinner mint to the
day's heavy meal of tragedy. The humour was gently satiric of the gods
and heroes, highlighted by many opportunities for dancing and farce. The
mockery was good natured rather than purgative--that was left to Aristophanes
in his Old Comedies. Aristotle had claimed that the drama originated in
the dithyramb. Bieber explains her theory that the satyr play may derive
from the ecstatic origins of the Dionysic cult itself, claiming that the
dramatic impulse arose from this ecstatic worship. Her reasoning runs
thus: In worshiping the god by using his gift of wine, the worshippers
transformed themselves into the sacred herd or thiasus of Dionysus.
In this altered state, men truly believed themselves to be satyrs and
women maenads or bacchae in Thebes, thyiades in Delphi
and lenae in Athens. She cites Herodotus and Suidas who tell us
that one Arion, a singer himself, gave to these chanters of the dithyramb--which
he produced in the beginning of the sixth century at the time of the tyrant
Periander in Corinth--the costume of the satyrs. She concludes: "...The
practice of representing someone other than oneself grew out of the ecstasy
and led to the development of the mimic art of the actors."
The structure was that of a tragedy.
1] Prologue
2] Parodos
3] Episodes separated by
4] stasima [choral songs]
5] Exodus
The language of the play (Aristotle's "diction") was close to everyday speech, and was frequently obscene. The playing style was probably rather slapstick and knockabout using frequently obscene gesture.
Euripides' Cyclops
is a version of the Polyphemus episode in the Odyssey [I quote
the Coleridge translation throughout the following.]. Like Homer's story,
the play is set on the island of Sicily near Mt. Aetna, but Euripides
added Silenus and a khoros of satyrs who have been enslaved by the terrible
Cyclops Polyphemus. They are grousing about their lot (Silenus has to
rake the floor of the cave clean while the satyrs are stuck with herding
his flocks instead of worshipping Dionysos all day presumably with copious
amounts of drink) when the see Odysseus' ship pulling up onto the shore.
Odysseus asks for the help due a wayfarer, but Silenus explains that they
have stumbled onto the land of the cyclops, "a joyless land"
where there is no wine. Odysseus asks:
| ODYSSEUS: Are they hospitable and reverent to strangers? SILENUS: Strangers, they say, supply the daintiest meat. ODYSSEUS: What, do they delight in killing men and eating them? SILENUS: No one has ever arrived here without being butchered. |
Odysseus tries to buy food from the leader of the satyrs without success
and at last hits on the expedient of offering him some of his wine. That
turns the trick. Silenus takes one swig and declares, "Zounds! Bacchus
is inviting me to dance; ha! ha!" And no doubt here followed a silly
dance of drunken revelry. At last he goes off to steal the Cyclop's food
for Odysseus, and the khoros gets Odysseus to tell what happened in Troy.
Poor Helen comes in for a share of derision from the khoros:
| After capturing your blooming prize, were all of you in turn her lovers? for she likes variety in husbands; the traitress! the sight of a man with embroidered breeches on his legs and a golden chain about his neck so fluttered her, that she left Menelaus, her excellent little husband. Would there had never have been a race of women born into the world at all, unless it were for me alone! |
When Silenus returns, Polyphemus is not far behind, and he is in a foul humor. He upbraids the khoros for not working hard enough until he catches sight of Odysseus and his followers and decides that they would be a good meal. Silenus comes back from the cave of the Cyclops pretending to have been beaten by the strangers defending the cyclops lair. The khoros, however, trips him up, telling Polyphemus, "by my own eyes, I saw [Silenus] sell the goods to strangers..." But Polyphemus is hoodwinked by Silenus, and, still intent on ingesting his visitors, he taunts Odysseus (who has introduced himself as "Noman") "Are ye the men who visited on Ilium ... the rape of Helen, worst of women? ..A sorry expedition yours, to have sailed to the land of Phrygia for the sake of one woman!" Odysseus tries to reason his way out of this problem, but the self-serving Silenus interjects (to Polyphemus):
| I will give thee a word of advice! as for his flesh, leave not a morsel of it, and if thou eat his tongue, Cyclops, thou wilt become a monstrous clever talker. |
As if we needed more reason to hate him, Polyphemus lectures his quarry with not a little hybris:
| Wealth, manikin, is the god for the wise; all else is mere vaunting and fine words. Plague take the headlands by the sea, on which my father seats himself! Why hast thou put forward these aguments? I shudder not at Zeus's thunder, nor know I wherein Zeus is a mightier god than I, stranger...So in with you, that ye may feast me well, standing round the altar to honour the cavern's god. [i.e. himself] |
And he goes into his cave, driving Odysseus' men before him. Odysseus lags behind a moment to lament his fate and challenge Zeus:
| O Zeus, ...behold these things; for, if thou regard them not, in vain art thou esteemed the great god Zeus, though but a thing of naught. |
And he goes into the cave leaving the khoros to sing and dance a grisly stasimon detailing what we must imagine is taking place inside the cyclop's cave. Odysseus returns and delivers a messenger speech in which we learn that the Cyclops has eaten two of Odysseus' men and terrorized the rest when Odysseus himself hits on the idea of giving the Cyclops wine.
| ODYSSEUS: He, glutted with his shameless meal, took and drained it in one draught, and, lifting up his had, he thanked me thus, "Dearest to me of all my guests! fiar the drink thou givest me to crown so fair a feast!" Now when I saw his delight, I gave him another cup, knowing the wine would make him rue it, and he would soon be paying the penalty. Then, he set to singing: but I kept filling bumper after bumper and heating him with drink. So there he is singing discordantly amid the weeping of my fellow-sailors, and the cave re-echoes.... |
He then enlistst the aid of the khoros and they devise a plot to blind the cyclops when he has passed out from drinking. He returns to the cave and draws the now drunken monster--"a clumsy clown--out into the open. Silenus has come out with him in hopes of sneaking some more wine and when he is caught at it, Polyphemus drags him back inside his cave, calling him his Ganymede, prompting the following (rather chaste in Coleridge's rendering) exchange on the exit:
| SILENUS: I am undone, my children; outrageous treatment
awaits me. LEADER OF THE KHOROS: Dost thou find fault with thy lover? dost scorn him in his cups? SILENUS: Woe is me! most bitter shall I find the wine ere long. |
Odysseus and the khoros prepare a torch with which to put out the eye of the cyclops, and he tries to get some of the satyrs to go with him into the cave to do the deed.. But the satyrs all manage to find reasons not to help. Says Odysseus, "These are sorry fellows, worthless as allies." And he goes into the cave to blind Polyphemus while the khoros encourages him from a safe distance. From within, we hear the agony of the cyclops as his eye is burned out: "Noman has blinded me!" But he is crafty enough to place himself at the door of his cave to keep his captives from escaping. He is outwitted in turn by the being told they are "On thy right." as they slip by on the left and vice versa. When all his men are safe, Odysseus reveals his true identity to Polyphemus who laments:
| Woe is me! 'tis an old oracle coming true; yes, it said I should have my eye put out by thee on thy way home from Troy; bit it likewise foretold that thou souldst surely pay for this, tossing on the sea for many a day. |
And Odysseus, with one last taunt sets off into the sunset with the satyrs in tow. The final line of the play sounds like an invitation to a sequel:
| As for us, henceforth will we be the servants of Bacchus, sharing the voyage of this hero Odysseus. |
The play raises a number of fascinating staging problems, not least of which is the portrayal of such a monster as the cyclops.
Sophokles' Ichneutai (variously
translated as the Searching Satyrs ,The Searchers, The
Trackers, Hunting Dogs. . . ) is set on the slope of Mt Cyllene
in Arcadia and ridicules Apollo.
See Alexander Gross' provocative essay: http://language.home.sprynet.com/theatdex/satyrs.htm
