Bremer why messenger speeches

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Open Access for Academic Societies. About us. Stay updated. Corporate Social Responsiblity. Investor Relations. Review a Brill Book. Reference Works. Primary source collections. Open Access Content. Contact us. Sales contacts. Publishing contacts. Social Media Overview. Terms and Conditions. Critical news from offstage from either inside a building or from a distant location, conveyed typically in a scene reporting that news either to the chorus by itself or to any appropriate character present on stage with the chorus.

Such a scene would typically appear about two-thirds to four-fifths of the way through a play. Some plays can have two messenger scenes. Typically, the messenger character brings essential news critical to the drama narrating about events that have taken place off-set. Typically the messenger gives the essence of the news in a short dialogue, and then he is asked by the actor or chorus to give the whole story, which he does so in a rhesis or long speech or monologue which can be up to 80 or even lines in length.

Bremer says that messenger speeches made it possible to present events at locations different from where the chorus happened to be: crowd scenes, miracles, and murders all of which were not really feasible to act whilst the chorus was in the arena of the orchestra. Most of the extant dramas have at least one messenger speech, the device is most conspicuous in the plays by Euripides and Sophocles, less so in the works by Aeschylus. What about absolute constructions? Why not present participles?

The combination of present participle and aorist verb is surely as capable of expressing two distinct verbal ideas in historic sequence as the combination of aorist participle and aorist verb.

With respect to third-person predicates, one ponders the status of impersonal verbs. And why not first-person predicates? Needless to say, I find this an unattractive proposition. While Dickin uses third-person past-tense indicatives as an index of performativity, her argument implies that a better index would be distinct historic-sequence verbal ideas in spoken narrative. Through a survey of reporting figures, quantitative data in hand, Dickin demonstrates that the stereotypical late fifth-century Euripidean messenger is not the last or first word.

Finally, and here I find myself mostly in agreement, these figures represented desirable, actable roles. It is thus far established that a there are different types of reporting figure, and b one of these types manifests a higher incidence of the sort of vivid narrative appropriate for mimetic display. I am as yet unconvinced that a survey of vase paintings most of which are from Magna Graecia and date from the fourth century , although fascinating, can prove that actors in any period, let alone fifth-century poets, considered the DM an especially significant role in tragic performance.

Given that Dickin mostly offers a brief survey of the subject and a digest of secondary literature, it might have been more efficient to direct the reader to, say, Trendall and Webster, Green, and Taplin, outlining those points on which A Vehicle for Performance differs. For all its praiseworthy willingness to engage with comparative non-literary evidence, this central chapter nevertheless interrupts the flow of the argument, and would be less egregious as an appendix.

The argument here, and it is an attractive one, is that tragic poets composed in such a way that the part of the DM could be constituent in a starring role. All of which I like well enough, but Dickin leaves important questions unasked.

Could not reperformances, say, in Magna Graecia, use role-distributions other than those of the original performance? Dickin presents a comparatively simple Thespis-Aeschylus-Sophocles-Euripides teleology. In particular, we are told that because Aeschylus predates the acting prize of c. In particular, it is possible in every extant genuine Euripidean tragedy — except Trojan Women — to give to the same actor the part of the DM and the aristocratic character whose tragic experience is narrated in the DMSp.

More could and perhaps should have been made of this: the strength of A Vehicle for Performance is that it gives such so-called minor characters their due. As Dickin demonstrates, tragic messengers deserve serious consideration as dramatic characters in performance. Overall, the main thrust of the argument is convincing or at the very least plausible, but the devil, as it were, is in the detail. Infelicities of style abound; controversial or problematic assertions are made in a matter-of-fact manner; the treatment of primary evidence leaves something to be desired, painting a more monochrome picture than the sources allow; the treatment of secondary literature is likewise less than ideal.

Better qualified readers than I will likely note rather more omissions than mentioned in this review. Finally, and most importantly, I am not certain that the argument belongs in book form.

The main body of the text is a svelte pages including notes: with judicious editing, A Vehicle for Performance could have been an excellent long article or two. Nevertheless, it remains a work to be digested carefully, in toto.