Character in Sophocles

TLDR

Greek tragedy character-drawing is traditionally viewed as distinct from modern theatre, often considered more limited or rudimentary. The paper seeks to clarify the specific nature of the difference between ancient and modern character-drawing to assess its importance. By examining the constraints of live performance—limited to what characters say and do and how others respond—alongside conventions such as masked male actors and formal style, the authors argue that these conventions do not severely restrict character portrayal. The study finds that conventional differences are largely insignificant, while true distinctions arise from differences in attitude.

Abstract

Critics are always reminding us that character-drawing in Greek tragedy was a very different thing from what we meet in the modern theatre, different and (it is implied) perhaps more limited or rudimentary. But this contrast between ancient and modern is too vague to be illuminating: we need to define exactly what kind of difference it is before we can decide whether it is important. In drama meant for live performance it can hardly be a difference of technique , since every playwright is limited to two basic means of character-drawing, what his figures say and do and what other people say and do to them and about them. Nor can there be much significance in differences of convention . Of course convention counts for something: a dramatist writing for three masked male actors, who must take all the speaking roles in his play, male or female indiscriminately, using a highly formal and declamatory style of acting in a large open-air theatre, will create characters which can be rendered in these circumstances. But there is no reason why the particular conventions of his time should limit his portrayal of character in any serious way: Lady Macbeth, after all, was written to be played by a teenage boy. Surely the differences that really demand attention are those of attitude .