Thespis

Greek actor and playwright

• Born: Before 535 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Probably Icarios (now Ikaria) or Athens, Greece
• Died: After 501 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Probably Athens, Greece

Though perhaps more legendary than historical, as none of his plays has survived, Thespis is credited with introducing the first actor into the Dionysian festival of song and dance. Thus, he is the traditional originator of Greek drama.

Early Life

In the sixth century b.c.e. or earlier, the Greeks established an annual festival to honor the god Dionysus. This “god of many names,” as the great dramatist Sophocles would later call him, was also known as Bacchus and Iacchos. He was associated with wine and other bounty and fecundity. His festival, the City Dionysia, was celebrated in March and featured a chorus of fifty singers and dancers whose performance was a part of the religious rites. Eventually, the cosmopolitan City Dionysia was succeeded by a second, domestic festival called the Lenaea (“wine press”) and held in January.

A performance of song and dance is not a drama, and it was Thespis (THES-puhs), an Athenian of whom little is known historically, who is said to have converted the former into the latter. According to one tradition, Thespis’s home was Icarios, or Icaria, in northern Attica, near Marathon. Yet an extant ancient source refers to him simply as “Athenian.” If “Thespis” is the name of a real person, he may have been born to a father who was an epic singer or honored with a nickname later in life, for the name comes from a word that means “divinely speaking” or from a similar word that means “divinely singing.”

The first evolution of the chorus produced a leader who, presumably, would take occasional solo turns during the performance. Until a performer existed apart from the chorus to ask its members questions, to be questioned by them, and perhaps to challenge assertions made in their lyrics, however, no absolute dramatic form was possible. Thespis is not known to history until he makes an appearance to introduce such a performer, the first actor.

Scholars do not agree on the date of Thespis’s achievement. The traditional date for the appearance of tragedy as a part of the City Dionysia, or Great Dionysia, is 534 b.c.e., but late in the twentieth century some scholars argued for a later date, 501 b.c.e. Whatever the correct date, tragedies appear to have been acted as a part of the festival every year thereafter. No comedy is mentioned as having been performed at the City Dionysia until 486 b.c.e. The dramas at the Lenaea were solely comic in 442 b.c.e., and although tragedy was added in 432 b.c.e., comedy continued to dominate. None of these developments would have been possible without Thespis’s innovation.

Life’s Work

Thespis’s career as actor-playwright is inextricably connected with the awarding of dramatic prizes at the Dionysian festivals. Some classical scholars have speculated that the prize originally was a goat, a not insignificant award in ancient Greece. Eventually, the winning dramatist received a monetary prize that was donated by a prominent Athenian. Each donor was chosen by the city government before the competition began.

According to tradition, the first official presentation of drama at Athens occurred in 534 b.c.e. The prize was won by Thespis. It is believed that at least as late as the time of Aeschylus, the next great Athenian playwright, who died in 456 b.c.e., the dramatist combined in his own person the roles of writer, director, composer, choreographer, and lead actor. Thus, when Thespis invented the first actor, it may be assumed that he played the role himself. His revolutionary contribution was the creation of a character who established a dialogue with the chorus. The character did not merely inquire of the chorus what happened next. Thespis impersonated someone interacting with the chorus, contributing to the unfolding plot. He was both the first dramatist and the first actor. Thus, it is appropriate that actors are still called “thespians” in his honor.

The little that is known of Thespis is filtered through the accounts of others, accounts that may themselves be apocryphal. For example, Solon, the famed Athenian lawgiver, supposedly reproached Thespis after witnessing his first play. He felt that it was inappropriate for the playwright to tell the assembly lies. His belief that these lies might actually be believed by the audience is a testament to the seriousness and the persuasiveness of the artifice. Thespis responded that it was appropriate in a play to persuade people that imaginary things are true. Solon, according to the story, was troubled by the idea that such deception might spread into the practice of politics. The problem with this amusing anecdote is that a commonly accepted date of death for Solon is c. 559 b.c.e., fully a quarter of a century before one of the proposed dates for Thespis’s first play. If the story is true, Thespis must have exhibited in Athens before 560 b.c.e., as other sources suggest.

Despite the absence of historical evidence, certain features of Thespis’s dramaturgy may be inferred. The identities of several of Thespis’s immediate successors are known, foremost among them Phrynichus. By 499 b.c.e. the great Aeschylus was competing at the Festival of Dionysus. He was so popular and so critically esteemed that seven of his plays have survived. In the earliest of these, Hiketides (463 b.c.e.?; The Suppliants, 1777), the chorus numbers fifty members. In Aeschylus’s later plays, he reduces the chorus to twelve members, and Sophocles, his younger contemporary, finally fixes the number at fifteen. Reasoning backward thus supports the inference that all of Thespis’s plays employed the original fifty-member chorus, since documentary evidence attests that its reduced number was a much later innovation.

One scholarly school of thought rejects Thespis as a historical personage, viewing him instead as an effort to explain an interesting development in a mythic pattern very ancient and widespread throughout the Near East. Dionysus, through his association with spring and nature’s bounty, is linked to the primitive god who dies over and over only to be reborn over and over, saving humankind by means of his resurrection. This powerful myth, incorporating the deepest mysteries of life and death, has produced countless stories in cultures ranging from Egypt to India. It also accounts, according to this theory, for the emergence of drama as a central element in the worship of Dionysus.

The Greek dramatists came to play a role in their culture very similar to the role played by the prophets in Hebrew culture. The God of the Hebrews was all-wise, all-good, the very source of order in the universe. The gods of the Greeks were willful, inconstant in their sympathies, frequently the source of disorder and strife. For the Hebrews, God was the ultimate moral arbiter. Such was not the case with the Greeks, but as a highly rational and civilized people, they realized their religious practice must address the thorny moral issues of life. To the playwrights fell the lot of supplying this moral dimension to the worship of Dionysus. It can thus be argued that the innovation of Thespis—or whoever or whatever that legendary figure represents—made possible in the next century the works of the great Aeschylus and Sophocles, dramatizing the deepest and subtlest conflicts of humankind.

For virtually every theory about Thespis and his work, there exists a countertheory. Some scholars argue that his plays grew out of the dithyramb, a wildly emotional choric tribute to Dionysus. Others insist that his first performances were given in his native region at country festivals and later brought to Athens by him and his players and that these were rather crude representations of the doings of satyrs, lustful, mischievous goat-men. Support for this theory comes from the fact that the etymology of “tragedy” can be traced to a word meaning “song of goats.” Some sources indicate that Thespis gave only the most general direction to his reveling masquers and that a later poet, Pratinas, was the first person to write words for the players to learn by heart. This assertion, however, cannot be correct if, as Aristotle reportedly wrote, “Thespis invented a prologue and a (set) speech” for the chorus. Thespis is not discussed in the extant part of De poetica, c. 334-323 b.c.e. (Poetics, 1705), Aristotle’s treatise on the drama, but other ancient authors quote from the lost portion.

The Roman poet Horace says that Thespis and his actors toured the Attic countryside in a wagon. By some accounts, Thespis, as the only one of his players to impersonate individual characters, would play one part after another in the same story. Since this activity necessitated frequent changes of mask and disguise, Thespis had a skene, a temporary booth, set up for the purpose. Thus, Thespis would also have invented the first traveling stock company and the first dressing room.

Still, whether the most minimal or the most extravagant view of Thespis’s accomplishments prevails, his essential contribution to the drama was enormous. Without his brilliant conception of a character separate from the original chorus, the great comedies and tragedies produced during the next one hundred years would never have come to be.

Significance

Thespis is a fascinating figure, in large part because of his historical elusiveness. Scarcely two classical scholars agree in every respect about his life and work. An example noted above is the belief of some experts that Thespis was producing what were essentially plays as early as 560 b.c.e. Others are equally convinced that a true tragedy was not acted in Athens until thirty or even fifty years later. Were Thespis’s first plays crude, bucolic representations of the antics of the half-man, half-goat satyrs? Or, were they another solemn evolutionary step in the worship of the archetypal god who dies and is reborn yearly? Perhaps these jousting theories will never be reconciled. It is clear, however, that Thespis, no matter what the precise details of his accomplishment, can be favorably judged—and honored—by the fruits of his labor.

Before Thespis, there was no drama. By c. 534 b.c.e., a competition among tragic dramatists had become a part of the City Dionysia (with Thespis himself identified as the earliest victor). The competitions began with tragedy and were expanded to include comedy. The festival’s third, fourth, and fifth days were given over to tragic and comic contests. During the period of the Peloponnesian War, 431-404 b.c.e., tragedies were performed in the mornings, comedies in the afternoons.

At the Lenaea, the number of comedies was reduced to three for the duration of the Peloponnesian War. Before and after the war, however, five comic poets and two tragic poets regularly competed. This explosion of dramatic activity in the sixth and fifth centuries b.c.e. was lit by the spark of Thespis’s innovation.

Bibliography

Else, Gerald F. The Origin and Early Form of Greek Tragedy. 1967. Reprint. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972. References to Thespis are sprinkled throughout the 102 pages of text, and chapter 3, pages 51-77, is titled “Thespis: The Creation of Tragôidia.” Especially interesting is a discussion on pages 51-52 of the origin and meaning of the dramatist’s name.

Gaster, Theodor H. Thespis: Ritual, Myth, and Drama in the Ancient Near East. 1961. Reprint. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. Here Thespis is used as a metaphor for the beginnings of European literature. Gaster argues that drama everywhere derived from a religious ritual designed to ensure the rebirth of the dead world. Traces the myth through Canaanite, Hittite, and Egyptian sources, concluding with biblical and classical poetry.

Gould, John. Myth, Ritual, Memory, and Exchange: Essays in Greek Literature and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. An examination of early Greek drama and literature that looks at the role of ritual and myth. Bibliography and index.

McLeish, Kenneth. A Guide to Greek Theatre and Drama. London: Methuen, 2003. A study of Greek theater, including its development.

Sommerstein, Alan H. Greek Drama and Dramatists. New York: Routledge, 2002. An examination of the world of Greek drama.

Thomson, George. Aeschylus and Athens: A Study in the Social Origins of Drama. New York: Haskell House, 1972. Thomson infers elements of Thespian dramaturgy by reasoning backward from what is known of the plays of Aeschylus.