They also used the regular toothed saw for cutting wood and stone. Various iron hammers, picks, and chisels were used to rough-hew blocks and drums at the quarry, and to finish these at the construction yard.

There were two main types of plays that the Greeks performed: tragedies and comedies.

• Tragedy – Greek tragedies were very serious plays with a moral lesson. They usually told the story of a mythical hero who would eventually meet his doom because of his pride.
• Comedy – Comedies were more light-hearted than tragedies.

Over time, the actors supplanted the chorus as the dominant characters in tragedy, and theater design reflected this important shift. The skene evolved again, this time into a complex and permanent stone structure. This generation of skene allowed the actors to perform on stage level as well on the roof.

Comedy and Tragedy were two major types of Greek plays and the playwrights did not mix them in the same play. Comedy comes from the Greek word Komoidia, which means merrymaking. Tragedy (tragoidia) was derived from the word tragos, which means goat.

The Ancient Greeks took their entertainment very seriously and used drama as a way of investigating the world they lived in, and what it meant to be human. The three genres of drama were comedy, satyr plays, and most important of all, tragedy.

hypocrites

Theatre buildings were called a theatron. The theaters were large, open-air structures constructed on the slopes of hills. They consisted of three main elements: the orchestra, the skene, and the audience.

Thespis

There were no actresses on the Greek stage. All the female roles were played by men. The maximum number of actors required for any Greek tragedy is three. If you look at the plays, you will see that there are never more than three speaking characters onstage at any one time.

The oracles of Greece and the sibyls of Rome were women chosen by the gods through which divine advice would be spoken through them. They were popular throughout the great empires and pilgrims would make their way from far off places just to ask them a question and receive the answer of a god.

Masks served several important purposes in Ancient Greek theater: their exaggerated expressions helped define the characters the actors were playing; they allowed actors to play more than one role (or gender); they helped audience members in the distant seats see and, by projecting sound somewhat like a small megaphone …

1645 – 1 October 1719), also Peg Hughes or Margaret Hewes, is often credited as the first professional actress on the English stage on 8 December 1660….

Sophocles

Greek theatre began in the 6th century BCE in Athens with the performance of tragedy plays at religious festivals.

The theatre of ancient Greece was at its best from 550 BC to 220 BC. It was the beginning of modern western theatre, and some ancient Greek plays are still performed today. They invented the genres of tragedy (late 6th century BC), comedy (486 BC) and satyr plays.

One of the first known actors is believed to have been an ancient Greek called Thespis of Icaria. Writing two centuries after the event, Aristotle in his Poetics (c. 335 BCE) suggests that Thespis stepped out of the dithyrambic chorus and addressed it as a separate character.

priest of Dionysus

Persians

Henrik Johan Ibsen

The playwright Aeschylus added a second speaking role, called the antagonist, and reduced the chorus from 50 to 12. His play ‘The Persians’, first performed in 472 BC, is the oldest surviving of all Greek plays.

Best plays of all time

1. Hamlet by William Shakespeare. What doesn’t this tragedy have?
2. Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill.
3. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
4. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller.
5. Oedipus Rex by Sophocles.
6. Angels in America by Tony Kushner.
7. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.
8. Look Back in Anger by John Osborne.

Bard of Avon

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Troilus and Cressida

Hamlet

Here are 10 of the poet’s most famous quotes:

• ” To be, or not to be: that is the question:
• “This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day,
• “Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.”
• “Men at some time are masters of their fates:

15 Words Invented by Shakespeare

• Bandit. Henry VI, Part 2. 1594.
• Critic. Love’s Labour Lost. 1598.
• Dauntless. Henry VI, Part 3. 1616.
• Dwindle. Henry IV, Part 1. 1598.
• Elbow (as a verb) King Lear. 1608.
• Green-Eyed (to describe jealousy) The Merchant of Venice. 1600.
• Lackluster. As You Like It. 1616.
• Lonely. Coriolanus. 1616.

The 100 Most Famous Quotes of All Time

• “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” –
• “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” –
• “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.
• “If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.” –

Here are the ten most famous of them all.

• Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
• Fair is foul, and foul is fair. (1.1.13), Weird Sisters.
• Out, damned spot! out, I say!
• Something wicked this way comes.
• The milk of human kindness.
• It is a tale.
• This is a sorry sight.
• When shall we three meet again.