The Walled Orchard (61 page)

The main — or only — talking-point was the extraordinary set of plays that Euripides was supposed to be presenting. He was keeping very quiet about them himself, and this only fuelled the furious speculation. For at least one of them was (apparently) going to revolutionise our entire approach to Tragic drama, the Gods, and pretty well everything else. We knew that one of these plays was going to be about Helen, and that Euripides had taken his old hobby-horse, the story in Stesichorus that Helen never went to Troy but was spirited away to Egypt while Paris was left with a replica made of cloud, and used it to create some vast metaphysical question to which there was no immediately obvious answer. Then another play was going to be about Andromeda, dealing with the story in a roughly similar way; and both plays were to have happy endings and be closer in many respects to Comedy than Tragedy. Now I belong to the school of thought that many of Euripides’ plays are unintentionally Comic, and so I couldn’t wait to see what would happen if Euripides tried to be deliberately funny; I expected the entire audience to be in floods of tears before the entry of the Chorus. Several of the Comic poets, Aristophanes included, were desperately trying to get advance copies of these plays, by bribing the Archon’s slaves or getting the actors drunk, so as to be able to include snippets of parody in their next Comedies; and even I felt a vague irritation, because Euripides hadn’t had the decency to put on these grotesque farces of his in time for me to use them in my masterpiece. I had been reduced to having another go at the
Telephus,
which was the one weakness that I could think of in the whole play.

Of course, you will be thoroughly familiar with those two boils on Tragedy’s backside, Euripides’
Helen
and
Andromeda,
and you’ll be wondering what all this fuss was about. But there were some very curious things in those plays, particularly in the
Helen,
when you think of what I’ve been telling you about the situation at the time. For example, in the
Helen,
there’s no end of praise for Sparta, mostly dragged in without any perceptible justification from the plot or the characters. If Euripides’ intention was to shock the audience he certainly succeeded, and there were quite a few normally intelligent people who were very impressed. Then there was that extraordinary line about how even the most widely travelled men can’t tell the difference between true gods and false ones and things which are half-divine and half-mortal. Now when a man has a reputation for obscure profundity, such as Euripides has, he can get away with saying anything at all, and people will do their very best to read something wonderful into it; and there was no shortage of idiots who took this to be a highly intelligent comment about the statues that were smashed and the expedition to Sicily. In fact I remember having the whole thing explained to me, in detail, by a barber while he was trimming my beard about a week after the Festival, and I was unable to argue with him for fear of moving my chin too much and getting my throat cut. At the time I was thoroughly convinced by what he said, as it happens; but I’m afraid I can’t remember a word of it after all this time.

What with the Euripides scandal and politics and the War, therefore, nobody seemed particularly anxious to find out in advance what Eupolis was going to put on that year; in fact, the general opinion as I heard it was that Eupolis was well over the hill, hadn’t written anything worth bothering with since
Maricas,
and should retire gracefully and let one of the newcomers have a chance. This sort of talk just made me all the more determined to show them all that I still had something to say, and I started making rather a nuisance of myself at rehearsals, just when Philonides and the cast had reached an uneasy truce. As a result of my interference, which consisted mainly of wholly unreasonable demands that the Chorus-numbers be made even more spectacular and that the actors learn whole new speeches with less than a week before the Festivals began, we very nearly didn’t have a play to put on at all. But Philonides triumphed over adversity, and just when I was ready to give up, we had a last rehearsal at which virtually everything worked. I remember walking home after that final run-through and going straight past my house because I was saying Solon’s speech over to myself in my head, and I hadn’t finished it by the time I reached the door.

At last the time came for the official preview, two days before the start of the Festival proper. In those days we did it slightly differently; the poets, producers, Choruses and actors went down to the Odeon (you can imagine my feelings on revisiting the place) with costumes but without masks, and the poet had to get up on a platform and announce the title of his play, with a brief summary of the plot. Naturally, nobody ever said what the play was actually about — that would have been a disastrous mistake; instead, we would put together a sort of Delphic riddle to inflame interest. I had never enjoyed this stage in the proceedings before, since I used to have no great confidence in my ability to project my voice. But, after my trial in that very building, I knew all about the acoustics in the Odeon, and it was a positive pleasure to stand up on the platform where I had made my defence and announce my Comedy. It was really a sort of declaration of defiance on my part, and to mark the occasion I had written rather a good little piece. I was well into this, and getting a very healthy reception from the audience, when a couple of men at the back of the hall started shouting and throwing olives at me. I recognised them as some of Aristophanes’ regular hangers-on, who he paid to clap and shout ‘Encore!’ during his plays (some of them had been with him for fifteen years, and were as well known in Athens as the actors themselves). This, I reckoned, was a bit hard. It’s not uncommon for a poet to organise little riots during the play itself, as I seem to remember telling you before somewhere; and I recall with great pleasure the time Cratinus got his supporters to start making a noise during one of Euripides’ early efforts — he had heard that Euripides had included a speech in praise of money, and he got his people to object to this on moral grounds, with the result that the poet jumped out of his seat, ran down on to the stage and begged them to hear the rest of the play and see what a bad end the money-loving character came to. But to organise a disturbance at the preview was something entirely new; and what made it worse was that Aristophanes had somehow found out what the plot and best scenes of my play were going to be, and had told his men to shout this secret information out at the tops of their voices. But Philonides had apparently suspected something of the sort (although he hadn’t seen fit to share his suspicions with me) and had hired a mob of his own. These men jumped up and started yelling that Aristophanes was part of the oligarchic conspiracy and ought to be taken to the top of the old tower in the Potters’ Quarter and thrown off. So in the end Aristophanes’ trick backfired on him, because Phionides’ riot got far more laughs and the son of Philip was so frightened that he ran home and hid under the bed for the rest of the day.

The lots were drawn: I was to come on the second day, following Euripides’ Tragedies. I was in two minds about this. On the one hand, you could be sure that the Theatre would be packed as tight as whitebait in a jar; on the other hand, the audience might be so worked up about the Tragedies that my Comedy would be virtually ignored. I’d seen that happen many times; the audience are still talking about the Tragedy, usually at the tops of their voices, when the Comic Chorus makes its entrance. Nobody has heard the opening speech, and so they haven’t the faintest idea of what’s going on. On balance, I decided, it would be a good thing. Nobody, not even a foreigner, would be able to ignore the opening scene of my play, with Athena coming down from Olympus on the machine.

On the first day of the Festival, I was awake long before dawn; and Phaedra and I were among the first people in the streets waiting for the procession to go by. Now not even the strange atmosphere in the city could spoil the opening day of the Dionysia. It’s all different now; but in those days there was nothing like it in the world. Bear with me while I describe it; for my own satisfaction, if you like. It was very much the best side of Athens’ character, and after all the terrible things I’ve been saying about her, I reckon it’s only fair that I should give her a chance to be seen in a better light.

Shortly after dawn all the prisoners in the gaol, except for the dangerous ones, were brought out under guard to watch the procession, and the girls who had been chosen as basket-bearers were scurrying about showing off their new outfits while there was still time, before they had to take their places. The procession was always late starting; but when it came out everyone always declared, every year without fail, that it was the best one yet. The statue of the God would go by, and the basket-bearers, and then the young men chosen to sing the satirical songs and shout vulgar abuse at anyone famous they recognised in the crowd — because now the God was in charge of the City, and mere mortals, however important, had to be made to recognise that fact. Then one of the sacrificial animals — usually a large and savage bull — would always manage to escape and gore someone or other in the crowd, and there were fights and robberies and people fainting and getting trampled, and all the other ingredients of a good day out.

Then came the solemn, rather boring part, with the singing of the dithyrambs by massed choirs and everybody trying to look serious and devout and doing their level best not to cough in the wrong places. I don’t know why it is, but even the most brilliant poet, when called upon to compose a dithyramb, inevitably turns out twenty minutes’ worth of the most turgid rubbish you ever heard in your life, the sort of stuff that would be hissed off the stage without a moment’s hesitation if it was put in a play. But, because it’s the dithyramb and somehow sacred and privileged, the entire audience pretends it’s the most marvellous poetry since Hesiod, and nobody says a word or throws so much as a pine-cone. But everybody is very relieved when it’s over at last, and the real fun can begin.

First, there’s the sticking of the pig, with all the blood and squeals, which the children always like; then the libations are poured, while most of the audience queue up in front of the sausage-sellers and chatter away to each other about the harvest. But they’re all back in their seats for the procession, when the young men carry the jars of silver left over from the tribute after the City’s expenses had all been paid — this was often a bit of a joke, of course; about this time the City was virtually bankrupt, but the procession went ahead all the same — and after that came the presentation of suits of armour to the sons of the men who had been killed in battle that year. Now as you can imagine, this part of the proceedings could be actively embarrassing. At the Dionysia after Sicily, for instance, there simply wasn’t enough armour to go round, and they had to get the young recipients to run round the back and pass on the armour they had just been so movingly presented with to the next candidate. In the end, I believe, they all got their armour, for it’s a serious matter and not even the politicians would dream of cheating; but some of them had to wait several years, and even then there were complaints that a few of the suits of armour didn’t fit, or were second-hand stuff bought from the people who go around stripping the bodies of the dead after battles.

Finally, the names of the judges for the plays are drawn out of the sealed cauldrons brought down from the Acropolis during the procession, and you can picture for yourself all the producers of the plays sitting there in rapt attention as the names were announced, hoping that they had bribed the right people.

Then there would be an interval, and everyone would get up and rush out to buy more sausages, or wine, or apples, or things to throw. There would be queues outside as the foreigners who had come late tried to buy tickets, while the citizens who had only just arrived from the more remote parts of Attica strolled in past them and made sarcastic remarks. When the noise of fifteen thousand chattering and munching human beings had reached its unendurable height, the trumpet would sound and there would be the most frantic rush for seats, like an infantry line collapsing under cavalry attacks in flank and rear. Then you would see the unedifying spectacle of virtually the whole citizen body of our great democracy accusing his neighbour of stealing his seat or his cushion, or sitting on his hat, or blocking his view of the stage. In the middle of this confusion, there would be a blast on the flutes and everybody would break off in mid-recrimination as the first actor of the Festival came on to speak his prologue. This silence generally lasted only long enough for the actor to identify himself and say where the play was set; as soon as everyone realised that it was going to be yet another Orestes’ Return, they would resume their arguments with their neighbours where they had left them. I imagine this is why Tragedies have prologues; I can see no other justification for them.

That was what the opening day of the Great Dionysia was like in my day. Now you will say it’s just the same now, and that I’ve been wasting your time telling you about it, and isn’t that just like a senile old man? But I must ask you to think again. Isn’t it all the more subdued and deliberately literary these days? Remember, we were seeing these great Tragedies, which you respect as much as Homer because you were told they were good when you were a boy, all for the first time, and we didn’t know they were going to be good when we took our places in the Theatre; and bear in mind also that most of them weren’t — the ones you read are the good ones. And besides, nowadays a lot of people don’t even bother to go to the Festivals, whereas then it was really the only time when everyone in Attica who could possibly manage to spare three or four days was sure to be together in one place, absolutely confident that he was perfectly capable of understanding everything that was said, and that his judgement was as good as the next man’s, because Athens was a democracy. That has most certainly changed, and now you have people who understand the drama, and people who know what they like, and a lot of people who say they don’t like plays at all and think they’re boring.