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Comic Stages in Magna Graecia: the Evidence of the Vases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Alan Hughes
Alan Hughes
Affiliation:
Alan HughesTeaches in the Department of Theatre, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
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Extract

It has long been believed that the style of comedy depicted on southern Italian vases of the fourth century BC was a local Italiote form called phylax. A. D. Trendall, the leading authority on the vases, has consistently taken the view that the plays were ‘impromptu’ performances, ‘in which light, movable sets could be used to indicate the required background’. It is not surprising that this has become accepted history: the vases, it is believed, represent improvised farce performed on makeshift stages by strolling actors, also called phlyakes.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , Summer 1996 , pp. 95 - 107
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1996

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References

Notes

1. Phylax Vases, 2nd ed. (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1967), p. 13: in subsequent notes, PhV2; see also Trendall, A. D., ‘Farce and Tragedy in South Italian Vasepainting’ in Looking at Greek Vases, ed. Rasmussen, Tom and Spivey, Nigel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 162.Google Scholar

2. Bieber, Margarete, The History of the Greek and Roman Theater, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 129, 145.Google Scholar

3. Beare, W., The Roman Stage, 3rd ed. (London: Methuen, 1964), p. 338.Google Scholar

4. Bieber, , p. 146.Google Scholar

5. The Development of the English Playhouse (London: Methuen, 1973), p. 6.

6. History: Its Purpose and Method (Boston: Beacon Press, 1950), p. 92.

7. Webster, , ‘South Italian Vases and Attic Drama’, Classical Quarterly 42, 1948, pp. 15–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Greek Theatre Production, 2nd ed. (London: Methuen, 1970), p. 102; Pickard-Cambridge, A. W., ‘South Italian Vases and Attic Drama’, CQ 43 (1949), p. 57.Google Scholar

8. ‘A Note on the Würzburg Bell-crater H5697 (“Telephus Travestitus”)’, Phoenix 40, (1986), pp. 379–92.

9. Échos du monde classique/Classical Views, 38, n.s. 13 (1994), p. 53.

10. pp. 61–2.

11. The Theatre in Ancient Greek Society (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 65.

12. ‘Phylax Comedy in Magna Graecia—a Reassessment’, in Betts, J. H., Hooker, J. T., Green, J. R., ed., Studies in Honour of T B. L. Webster (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1988), II, 36.Google Scholar

13. ‘Die Bühne mit Austauschbarenkulissen: Eine Verkannte Bühne des Frühhellenismus?’, Opuscula Atheniensia 13, 1980, pp. 35–83.

14. ‘Theatre Production: 1971–1986’, Lustrum 31 (1989), p. 29.

15. ‘Reassessment’, p. 33.

16. Taplin, Oliver, Comic Angels and Other Approaches to Greek Drama through Vase-Painting (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 31–2.Google Scholar

17. Phylax Vases, 2nd ed. (1967), No. 1.

18. Examples of the perfunctory are PhV2 24, 31, and Trendall and Alexander Cambitoglou, The Red-figured Vases of Apulia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978–82) 5/141: in subsequent notes, RVAp. Vases are identified by their catalagoue number in PhV2 wherever possible; otherwise, they are identified by their numbers in other catalogues, such as RVAp. Some 59 vases and fragments seem to show some part of the stage or skene.

19. e.g. PhV2 34, 37, RVAp. 4/224a.

20. PhV2 79: also PhV2 88, 95, Spigo, U., ‘Un cratere a calice della cerchia del Pittore di Manfria’ in The Archaeology of the Aeolian Islands: Proceedings of the Conferences Held at the Universities of Melbourne and Sydney on 28/29 May and 5 June 1992, ed. Descœudres, Jean-Paul, Mediterranean Archaeology (Sydney, 1993) vol. 5/6, plate 32.Google Scholar

21. PhV2 57: also PhV2 17, 33, 49.

22. PhV2 57; this artist, the Reckoning Painter, uses the same technique on his name vase, PhV2 33; compare RVAp. Supp. ii, Postscript 10/46a.

23. PhV2 83; also 19, 20, 30, 31, 52, 74, 83. One curious exception is PhV2 41, which seems to show the stage faced with two courses of thick logs.

24. PhV2 20, 33, 49, 52, 60, RVAp. Supp. ii, Postscript, 10/46a.

25. PhV2 112, RVAp. 4/224a.

26. From the Tarporley Painter PhV2 84 (plate 1), c. 400 BC to several dated by Trendall to the second quarter: PhV2 20, 33, 49, 52, 57 (plate 2), 60, 112, RVAp. Supp. ii, Postscript, 10/46a.

27. RVAp. Supp. ii 1/124. Two more Apulian vases, both dated c. 370 BC, show what might be either plain square posts surmounted by a thicker block, or simple columns with plain capitals: PhV2 67, RVAp. 4/251, both c. 370 BC.

28. RVAp. 15/28: also PhV2 45, c. 380, the ‘Eaters of Dainties’.

29. PhV2 39: also PhV2 17, 19, 76; RVAp. 5/295, 15/28.

30. Earliest: perhaps RVAp. 4/33 (c. 380); RVAp. 15/28 (after c. 350).

31. Trendall, , PhV2, p. 13.Google Scholar

32. RVAp. 15/28.

33. Trendall, , ‘Farce and Tragedy’, pp. 163Google Scholar; Taplin, , Comic Angels, p. 93.Google Scholar

34. For example, PhV2 49, 60, 79 (plate 2), 95, 98, 112.

35. PhV2 81, 3rd 1/4 4th C.

36. PhV2 98, and Spigo, plate 32.

37. PhV2 73, 79, 95. PhV2 88 is a fragment, showing only the stage right end of the platform.

38. PhV2 79, RVAp. Supp. ii 1/124, PhV2 76. See also RVAp. 15/28, PhV2 18, 60; in PhV2 80 (plate 7) Dionysos cannot be considered a performer.

39. PhV2 39.

40. PhV2 76.

41. Spigo, plate 32.

42. PhV2 73, 79 (plate 2), 95, 101.

43. The Red-figured Vases of Lucania, Campania and Sicily, Supp. iii (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1983) 337a: in subsequent notes LCS.

44. RVAp. Supp. ii, 1/124, PhV2 37.

45. RVAp. 15.28, PhV2 17, 30, 81, 83; PhV2 37 shows only four steps.

46. PhV2 13.

47. PhV2 84.

48. PhV2 84, LCS Supp. iii (1983) 337a.

49. PhV2 22.

50. See for example paintings by Brueghel, Pieter the Younger and Vinckeboons, David in Gascoigne, Bamber, World Theatre (London: Ebury Press, 1968)Google Scholar, plate xiv, and plate 93; by Karel du Jardin, Martin Drolling and an unknown artist in Cheney, Sheldon, The Theatre, revised ed. (New York: Longmans, Green 1952), plate 22, and p. 377Google Scholar; and an engraving of a fair near Falaise by an unknown artist in Dubech, Lucien, Histoire générale illustrée du théâtre (Paris: Librairie de France, 1932), 3, 125.Google Scholar

51. Vases were fabricated and painted in the red-figured style in Apulia (mostly in Taras, modern Taranto), Paestum, Campania, Lucania and Sicily.

52. They are shown on tragic vases too: e.g. Webster, T. B. L., Monuments Illustrating Tragedy and Satyr-play, 2nd ed. (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1967)Google Scholar—subsequently, MTS2–PV6 (Paestan), NV2 (Campanian), GV1 (Apulian Gnathia ware), RVAp. 2/40 (Apulian). If the name vase of the Painter of the Woolly Satyrs is theatrical, it shows us an Attic prototype: Beazley, J. D., Attic Red-figure Vase Painters, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 613.Google Scholar

53. RVAp. Supp iii, 124.

54. PhV2 94.

55. PhV2 83.

56 PhV2 125, LCS Supp. iii, 337a.

57. RVAp. 4/224a, PhV2 24, 84.

58. PhV2 79 (plate 2), 88, 95, 97, 98, 99, Spigo, plate 32. The roof of Apollo's shrine, in the well-known Leningrad scene with Herakles, is supported in the same way; so is the porch roof in Asteas' madness of Herakles: MTS, PV1 plate 12).

59. PhV2 24, RVAp. 5/295. Two fragments also show part of a column. PhV2 145, and 151.

60. The only Sicilian scenes with double doors, PhV2 73 and 77, have plain door jambs.

61. PhV2 83 (plate 4), 84 (plate 1); the two Campanian examples, LCS Supp. iii, 337a (plate 11) and PhV2 125, are dated 350–325.

62. The columns and draperies beneath the stages: see PhV2 p. 13.

63. PhV2 xxi, 18, 23: xxi does not show a scene in the theatre.

64. LCS 1/15; LCS 1/268; LCS3/495; Trendall, , Red-figured Vases of Paestum (Rome: British School at Rome, 1987) 2/971Google Scholar: in subsequent references, RVP.

65. RVP 2/223, 2/278, 2/279; RVP 2/270 is similar, but substitutes a Papposilenos for the actor.

66. PhV2 36, 65, 80.

67. Artists routinely left out features which were irrelevant to the scene: thus the absence of a door in PhV2 80 and the fact there is only one window in PhV2 36 and 65 does not prove that there was no door, or only one window.

68. Dresden ZV 2891, Trendall, , Paestan Pottery (Rome: British School at Rome, 1936), #290Google Scholar; Syracuse 66557; Würzburg H4696 and H470, MTS2 GV1; Louvre K404, MTS2 NV2; Madrid 11094, MTS2 PV1.

69. LCS Supp. iii, 337a; the other vase is PhV2 125.

70. Bieber, , p. 130.Google Scholar

71. Comic Angels, p. 93.