Greek and Latin literature and drama have been central and formative components of the Western cultural tradition ever since the Middle Ages; and modern conceptions of theatre in general, as of 'tragedy' and 'comedy' as particular dramatic forms, are indelibly shaped by the specific performance modes that evolved during the sixth to the fourth centuries BC in Athens and during the third to the first centuries BC in Rome. The surviving Greek texts of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes and Menander, and the Latin texts of Seneca, Plautus and Terence, comprise a body of 'classical' drama that has long been recognized as canonical and that sometimes feels almost inevitable. (As Aristotle put it, with Sophocles and Euripides 'tragedy attained its nature [phusis]', Poetics ch. 4. 1449a15.) But as one follows the developments in Greek and Roman culture that led to the evolution of these forms of drama, one quickly comes to see what a large and diverse body of performance traditions had preceded them, and how many options were available to those theatrical pioneers as they set about shaping the plays that we have come to know so well.

Of course the Greeks were not the first to perform stories, or act out social and religious rituals, using words, music, dance, costume and impersonation in some combination or other. 'Theatrical' performances, in the sense of solo or group activities formally presented to an audience in a designated space and for a conventionally recognized purpose or occasion, can be found in almost all societies, ancient or modern, Eastern and Western, and the line between ritual and theatre, ceremony and 'play', may not always be easy - or necessary - to draw.