The Greek Sense of Theatre : Tragedy and Comedy Reviewed

In this updated and extended edition of __The Greek Sense of Theatre,__ scholar and practitioner J.Michael Walton revises and expands his visual approach to the theatre of classical Athens. From the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides to the old and new comedies of Aristophanes and Menander, he argues that while Greek drama is seen now as a performance-based rather than a strictly literary medium, more attention should still be paid to the nature of stage image and masked acting as part of this conception. In The Greek Sense of Theatre, J. Michael Walton proposes that we consider Greek tragedy of the fifth century BC as performance-based, with a visual emphasis overlooked in much classical scholarship. Greek plays have survived as written texts, virtually without stage direction, and because the conditions of the first performance were never recorded, it tends to be assumed that language was the most important feature of the Greek drama. Professor Walton seeks to disprove this idea, expanding this new edition to include the comedies of Aristophenes and Menander as well as the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides