AESCHYLUS ( 525-406BC ) TO E. G. O’NEILL AND T. S. ELIOT ( 1714-1958 ).
The historical development of dramatic art has three distinct periods, or milestones, in which each has been marked by a constellation of prominent creative artists. The first of these three milestones, occurred, approximately, between the early sixth and late 5th century BC; in Greece. The genre of the period were those of Aeschylus (525-456 BC), Sophocles (circa 496 to 406 BC), and Euripides (c. 480 to 406 BC). This period has had an influential and profound effect on art through twenty-five centuries to the present day. Ovid in the 8th century wrote the influential ‘Metamorphoses’, the principal link, or rather vehicle, in transmitting the cultural influences of Greece, to the succeeding epoch-making dramatists, poets and composers in the centuries to follow.
PETRARCA AND BOCCACCIO TO SHAKESPEARE 1304-1674.
The second milestone, following Athens or Attica, includes two of Italy’s mediaeval poets: Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375); and the greatest poet and influential figure of the Italian Renaissance; Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). England’s medieval poet: Geoffrey Chaucer (1342-1400), whose writings – in Middle English – have won him the status of one of England’s greatest poets. During the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, the Elizabethan and Jacobean Age (1558-1625 ), emerged the greatest poet and dramatist, William Shakespeare (1564-1616); who was followed by the English Renaissance poet: John Milton (1608-1674), who wrote Early Stuart poetry and prose; and is regarded as only second to Shakespeare.
GLUCK AND GOETHE TO GIRAUDOUX, E. G. O’NEILL, AND T. S. ELIOT 1714-1958.
The third milestone includes Christoph Gluck (1714-1787), the Bavarian classical German composer who wrote ‘Orfeo ed Eurydice’. Followed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) who brought German literature into a new, and perhaps greatest epoch. Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) the German-French composer who, in 1859, wrote the celebrated operetta: ‘Orphée aux enfers’. Moreover, the late 19th and early 20th-century German composer, Richard Strauss (1864-1949). Who, in 1909, collaborated with Austrian dramatist, and poet, Hugo von Hofmannsthal in writing the opera: ‘Elektra ‘.
Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944), the avant-garde French writer and playwright, who experimented with impressionistic form and classical traditions; in creating his 1937 play ‘Électre’. The poet, librettist, painter, and avant-garde filmmaker, Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) who, in 1926, wrote a modern version of the play: ‘Orphée’. Jean Anouilh (1910 – 1987), French playwright, essayist and impressionist, who wrote ‘Antigone’, and employed Greek myths for his play ‘Électre’. André Gide (1869-1951), the influential 17th-century French humanist and novelist who, in 1931, wrote ‘Oedipe’. James Joyce (1882-1941), the Irish novelist who developed new literary methods in his modern rendition of Homer’s ‘Ulysses’; in 1922. The American-English poet, literary critic and playwright, T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), the most learned poet of his generation, wrote: ‘The Cocktail Party’ (1949) based upon ‘Alcestis’ of Euripides, ‘The Confidential Clerk’ (1953), and ‘The Elder Statesman’ (1958); both of which were also based on Greek themes.
Western civilization is indebted to the Hellenes, who surpassed all others, in the ancient world, with their massive contributions and intellectual depth, in philosophy and science. They cultivated tragic form unlike any other in the history of dramatic art.
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