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Greek Actors - Essay

Greek Actors


The actors in ancient tragedies were hired and paid by the state and assigned to the tragic poets probably by lot. By the middle of the fifth century three actors were required for the performance of a tragedy. In descending order of importance of the roles they assumed they were called protagonist ‘first actor’ (a term also applied in modern literary criticism to the central character of a play), Dueteragonist ‘second actor’ and tritagonist “third actor’. The protagonist took the tile of the most important character in the play while the other two actors played the lesser roles. Since most plays have more than two or three characters (although never ...

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and helped eliminate the physical incongruity of men impersonating women. The masks with subtle variations also helped the audience identify the sex age and social rank of the characters. The fact that the chorus remained in the orchestra throughout the play, and sang and danced choral songs between the episodes. Allowed the actors to exit after an episode in order to change mask and costume and assume a new role in the next episode without any illusion-destroying interruption in the play.
The main duty of an actor was; of course, to speak the dialogue assigned to his characters. This however, was not the only responsibility of the actor. He occasionally had to sing songs solo of with the chorus or with other actors. The combination of acting and singing ability must have been as rare in the ancient world as it is ...

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PAPER DETAILS
Added: 11/6/2007 10:25:27 AM
Category: English
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 339
Pages: 2

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