Chapter IV — The Scenery
§ 1 General Character of the Scenery
In the production of a play the chief objects on which care and money were bestowed were the training of the chorus, the payment of the actors, and the supply of suitable dresses. The scenery was never made a prominent feature of the exhibition. All that was required was an appropriate background to show off to advantage the figures of the performers. The simplicity in the character of the ancient scenery was a necessary result of the peculiar construction of the stage. The Attic stage, though from sixty to seventy feet long, was apparently never more than about fifteen feet in depth, and was still further contracted in after times. On a long and narrow platform of this kind, any representation of the interior of a building would be out of the question. All those elaborate spectacular illusions, which are rendered practicable by the great depth of the modern stage, were impossible. Nothing more was required than to cover over the wall at the back with a suitable view. Again, not only were the mechanical arrangements simple, but the number of scenes in use upon the Attic stage was very limited. Not only was a change of scene in the course of the same play practically unknown, but there was often very little difference between one play and another as regards the character of the scenery required. Each of the three great branches of the drama had a background of a conventional type, specially appropriated to itself, and this typical background was the one usually adopted. When therefore a series of tragedies was being exhibited, or a series of comedies, it must often have happened that the same scenery would do duty for several plays in succession.
The use of painted scenery, natural as it appears to us, was only invented very gradually by the Athenians. For a long time the erection at the back of the stage continued to retain its original character. It was regarded, not as a back-scene, but merely as a retiring-place for the actors. The notion of covering it over with painted scenery, in such a way as to make it represent the supposed scene of action in the play, was a development of comparatively late times. The old drama had no scenic background. The action was supposed to take place in some open region; the decorations were confined to such properties as could be put up on the stage; the wooden hoarding in the rear was nothing more than the front of the actors’ room. Things were still in this primitive condition when Aeschylus wrote his four earlier plays. The progress of the art of scenic decoration can be traced very distinctly by comparing these plays with his later tragedies. In the first four there is no mention of any scenery, no clear definition of the exact spot where the action is taking place. The scenic appliances are limited to properties erected in front of the hoarding. In the Supplices the scene is laid in an open district at some distance from the city. In the centre is an altar of the gods, at which the suppliants take refuge.566 Otherwise there is a total absence of local colouring. In the Persae, the next in order of his plays, the action is also laid at a distance from the palace. The only object mentioned as actually in sight is the tomb of Darius.567 In the Septem the performers are gathered together within the walls of Thebes beside an altar on some rising ground, from which the towers of the city are visible.568 But there is no clear definition of the scene, and no mention of any palace or other building from which the actors make their entrance. In the Prometheus the action takes place in a rocky region of Scythia. But in all probability the cliff to which Prometheus is chained was merely built up upon the stage. There is nothing in the play to suggest an elaborate representation of the view. In these four plays the background was still a bare wall with doors for the actors. It had no scenic significance. But when we come to the Oresteia, the last dramatic production of Aeschylus, a great change is noticeable. The scene is now laid in front of a building which is clearly defined and frequently referred to. In the first two tragedies it is the palace of Agamemnon at Argos; in the third it is the temple of Apollo at Delphi, and later on the temple of Athene at Athens.569 The contrast between these plays and the earlier ones, as regards local colour and allusions to the scene of action, is very marked and conspicuous, and denotes a considerable advance in the art of mounting a play. The old actors’ booth had now become a regular scenic background.570 The bare hoarding was covered with painting, to represent a palace, or a temple, or whatever else might be required. This conclusion, which may be deduced from the extant dramas themselves, is confirmed by the ancient traditions as to the introduction of scene-painting. Aristotle says it was invented by Sophocles; Vitruvius apparently ascribes it to Aeschylus.571 Whichever statement be correct, it is clear, from the fact of its being attributed to both poets, that it must have been introduced at that particular period when both were exhibiting upon the stage. It cannot be placed earlier than the first appearance of Sophocles in 468, or later than the last appearance of Aeschylus in 458. Moreover Sophocles, if he really invented it, is not likely to have done so immediately on his first appearance. The most probable date, therefore, is some period not very long before the production of the Oresteia, and subsequent to the production of the four early plays of Aeschylus.
By the middle of the fifth century, then, we may regard the use of painted scenery as fully established. Taking this date as our starting-point, it will be interesting to consider the question as to the number and character of the scenes most in use upon the Attic stage. Our principal authority will be the Greek plays still in existence. Vitruvius divides scenery into three classes—tragic, comic, and satyric. According to his description, the salient features in a tragic scene were columns, pediments, statues, and other signs of regal magnificence. In comedy the scene represented a private house, with projecting balconies, and windows looking out upon the stage. The scenery in the satyric drama consisted of a rustic region, with trees, caverns, mountains, and other objects of the same kind.572 The above list is not intended to be an exhaustive one. It merely describes in general outline the type of scene which was most characteristic of each of the three great branches of the drama. At the same time, it is more exhaustive than might at first sight be supposed. If the extant Greek dramas are examined, it will be found that in the great majority of cases the scenery conforms to the general type described by Vitruvius. To take the tragic poets first. Twenty-five tragedies by Sophocles and Euripides have been preserved. In no less than seventeen out of the twenty-five the scene is laid in front of a palace or temple.573 In all these cases the general character of the scenery would be exactly such as Vitruvius describes. The prominent feature would be a magnificent building, with columns, pediments, and statues. Of the remaining eight tragedies, there are four in which the scene consists of an encampment, with tents in the background.574 The other four all require special scenery. In the Philoctetes the scene is laid in front of a cavern in a desert island. In the Ajax it is laid partly before the tent of Ajax, partly in a solitary quarter by the sea-shore. The background in the Oedipus Coloneus consists of a country region, with the sacred enclosure of the Eumenides in the centre. Finally, the Electra of Euripides is altogether exceptional in having its scene laid before a humble country cottage. On the whole, the evidence of the extant tragedies tends to confirm the statement of Vitruvius, and exemplifies the conventional character of Greek tragic scenery. In the great majority of instances the background would be an imposing pile of buildings, adorned with various architectural embellishments. As to the satyric drama, the Cyclops of Euripides is the only specimen of this class of composition which has been preserved. The scene there corresponds exactly to the descriptions of Vitruvius, and consists of a country region, with the cave of Polyphemus in the centre. There can be little doubt that in most satyric dramas the background was of much the same character. As the chorus always consisted of satyrs, whose dwelling was in the forest, the scene of the play would naturally be laid in some deserted country district. The scene in the New Comedy was almost invariably laid in front of an ordinary private house, as is proved by the adaptations of Plautus and Terence. As to the Old Comedy, in six out of the eleven comedies of Aristophanes, the background consists merely of a house, or of houses standing side by side.575 In four others the principal part of the action takes place before a house. In the Thesmophoriazusae the scene consists of a house and a temple standing side by side. In the Lysistrata there is a private house, and near it the entrance to the Acropolis. In the Acharnians the opening scene takes place in the Pnyx; the rest of the action is carried on before the houses of Dicaeopolis, Euripides, and Lamachus. The scene in the Knights is laid partly before the house of Demos, and partly in the Pnyx. The only comedy in which the scenery is of an altogether exceptional character is the Birds, in which the background consists of a wild country region, filled with rocks, and trees, and bushes. It appears, therefore, that even in the Old Comedy there was not much variety in the scenery.
As regards the style of the ancient scene-painting, and the degree of perfection to which it was eventually brought, it is difficult to speak with any certainty. But in the fifth century, at any rate, there can be little doubt that the scenery was of the simplest description. Landscape-painting was still in its infancy, and altogether subordinated to the painting of the human figure. When landscapes were introduced into a picture, they were suggested rather than worked out in detail.576 A city was represented by a few houses, a forest by a few trees, and so on. The paintings for the stage were probably of the same general type. The scenes most in use were front views of temples, palaces, and dwelling-houses. In such cases a rough indication of the different buildings would be considered sufficient. That they were depicted with any completeness and realism is far from likely, though the newly discovered art of perspective was undoubtedly applied to architecture and the painting of architectural scenes much earlier than to landscape.577 It is true that the personages in the extant dramas often use words which seem to imply an elaborate architectural background. They speak of columns, triglyphs, cornices, and pediments.578 In the Ion they even admire in detail the bas-reliefs with which the temple front was decorated.579 But it is not certain that the objects mentioned were all of them actually represented upon the stage. Many of them may have been left to the imagination. As for natural scenery, there was probably very little of this in the early theatre. If the action was laid in a country region, as in the Philoctetes and the Oedipus Coloneus, and in the generality of satyric plays, the necessary effect might be produced by a few rocks, and trees, and other similar objects. In later times it was customary, when the background represented a palace or temple, to insert a landscape on either side.580 Even in the plays of the fifth century there are occasional references to such landscapes. Helen, standing before the palace of the Egyptian king, points to the ‘streams of the Nile’ as flowing close by. The old man in the Electra, when he reaches the palace of the Atreidae, shows Orestes the country round about, with Argos and Mycenae in the distance. The Trojan captives descry, from the Greek encampment, the smoke and flames of burning Troy.581 But here again we may doubt whether, on the contemporary stage, these places were really visible to the spectators. At any rate, if they were delineated at all, it was probably in a slight and symbolical fashion. As time went on the art of scenic decoration was much improved and elaborated. In the Hellenistic period it seems to have reached a fairly high degree of development. Natural phenomena were now depicted with more realism. Seas and rivers, earth and sky, are mentioned among the objects delineated. Even regions in Hades and Tartarus were represented upon the stage.582 The progress of landscape-painting in general among the later Greeks naturally produced its effect upon the work of the scenic artists. But it would be an anachronism to attribute efforts of this ambitious kind to the contemporaries of Sophocles and Euripides.
The introduction of magnificent decorations appears to be always a later development in the history of the drama. On the Elizabethan stage the back-scene consisted of a bare wall, and anything in the way of spectacular effect was provided by the movements and groupings of the actors. To produce an impression by scenic means would have been alien to the taste of the Athenians of the fifth century. In the dramatic performances of that period the conspicuous feature was the chorus in the foreground, with its graceful arrangement and picturesque dresses. Above the chorus, on the narrow stage, stood the actors and mute figures, arranged in line, and dressed in brilliant colours. The long scene in the rear was so far decorated as to form a pleasing background, and show off the persons of the actors to advantage. But no attempt was made to produce a realistic landscape, or to convey the ideas of depth and distance. In its general effect the scene upon the stage resembled a long frieze or bas-relief, with the figures painted in brilliant colours, rather than a picture with a distant perspective.