Overview
Tracing the history of tragedy and comedy from their earliest beginnings
to the present, this book offers readers an exceptional study of the
development of both genres, grounded in analysis of landmark plays and
their context. It argues that sacrifice is central to both genres, and
demonstrates how it provides a key to understanding the grand sweep of
Western drama. For students of literature and drama the volume serves as
an accessible companion to over two millennia of drama organised by
period, and reveals how sacrifice represents a through-line running from
classical drama to today's reality TV and blockbuster movies. Across
the chapters devoted to each period, Day explores how the meanings of
sacrifice change over time, but never quite disappear. He charts the
influences of religion, social change and politics on the status and
purposes of theatre in each period, and on the drama itself. But it is
through a close study of key plays that he reveals the continuities
centred around sacrifice that persist and which illuminate aspects of
human psychology and social organisation.
Among the many plays and events considered are Aeschylus' trilogy The
Oresteia, Aristophanes' Women at the Thesmorphia, Menander's The
Bad-Tempered Man, the spectacles of the Roman Games, Seneca's The Trojan
Women, Plautus's The Rope, the Cycle plays and Everyman from the Middle
Ages, Shakespeare's King Lear and A Midsummer Night's Dream,
Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy, Jonson's Every Man in His Humour,
Thomas Otway's The Orphan, William Wycherley's The Country Wife, Wilde's
A Woman of No Importance, Beckett' Waiting for Godot, Tennessee
Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, Suzan-Lori Parks's Topdog/Underdog,
Sarah Kane's Blasted and Charlotte Jones' Humble Boy. A conclusion
examines the persistence of ideas of sacrifice in today's reality TV and
blockbuster movies.