Essay Database

Tragedy was performed in Athens at the annual festival of Dionysus, the Great, or the City, Dionysia in late March. Competition was held on three successive mornings of the festival. Three tragic poets, who had been selected earlier in the year, each presented a tetralogy, consisting of three tragedies and a satyr play. Additional festivities included comic and dithyrambic contests, religious processions and rituals of various kinds. At the close of the festival ten judges …

…of the limited amount of information a playwright provides to the reader or audience and must fill in details the playwright leaves to the director or reader. As a short story, the events of the play may have to be rearranged, specific scenery may have to be described, and new characters may have to be introduced. Others may want to rewrite the play as a series of newspaper articles reporting the events of the play.