Progress and Necessity

Progress and Necessity

That theater has undergone many changes since its early incarnation in ancient Greece is a fact obvious even to the casual observer. And it is likewise clear that, as the cultural and social structure of the world shifts and changes over time, it is appropriate that its art forms change as well, in order to address appropriately the new reality in which they exist. However, perhaps not too unexpectedly, there are those who reject our modern manifestation of theater as insincere or false -- indeed, as there are in every time those who contest the latest evolutions of all types of art.

Chief among those who disapprove of the theater of their own (and, in fact, nearly all) time is Friedrich Nietzsche, a philosopher who seems to have made his reputation largely by being gloomy and arrogant. It should not be surprising to us that a man who had little good to say about anything (other than himself and the things he liked) would criticize the greater portion of the history of any art form, but what is interesting -- and, moreover, an instance of a particular mistake which seems to have afflicted others as well -- is the reason he gives for his displeasure.

According to Nietzsche, worthwhile tragedy perished even before the fall of ancient Greece, and the cause of its demise was the rise of reason. As he says in The Birth of Tragedy,

"When after all a new genre sprung into being which honored tragedy as its parent, the child was seen with dismay to bear indeed the features of its mother, but of its mother during her long death struggle. The death struggle of tragedy had been fought by Euripides . . . . Tragedy lived on there in a degenerate form, a monument to its painful and laborious death (Nietzsche 70)."

As we find out later, Euripides was merely acting under the influence of Socrates -- a terrible man, a plague upon the Athenian state, whose listed faults remind one of Nietzsche himself -- but that is little comfort; the damage is done. And what is the crime of Euripides, this upstart dramatist, who dared introduce a new element to the theater? Apparently, that he "succeeded in transporting the spectator onto the stage (ibid.)" -- that he permitted the common man in the audience to identify with the actors in a more personal way, and therefore shortened, perhaps eliminated, the distance between the two camps.