Myth and drama emerge from ancient cultural practices, and can be understood as poetic modes of understanding and representation. A myth is a fiction with a simple, often non-linear, narrative that tells a story about human behaviour, the origins of the universe (creation myths), natural phenomena, the relationship between culture and nature, and the physical and metaphysical. It makes use of symbols and archetypes, especially for characterisation; gods and humans often consort with each other, mingling their identities. Divine or semi-divine births support dynastic myths, such as the house of Atreus in Greek and Roman mythology; Seneca’s Medea claims her birthright as grand-daughter of the sun. Mythic histories make claims about lineage and establish national and ethnic identities by telling stories of war and conquest, or the founding of the city-state, as in for example Aeschylus’s Oresteia.
Greek dramatists drew on myths for their subject matter, adding plot and characterisation. But myth and drama are also related closely in terms of religious ritual and public performance. The earliest Greek drama developed from religious festivals. The chorus performed a dithyrambic hymn in praise of Dionysius, the god presiding over revels and festivals, the Lord of the Dance. Dramatisation occurs when the protagonist separates from the Chorus, speaking as a single voice. In tragedy, the protagonist’s voice and presence indicates his estrangement from society and nature; the audience recognises the mythic patterns of destiny and suffering, and how these might be resolved. Sometimes dramatic conflict arises from equally-justified moral imperatives (a pattern noted by Hegel), as in Sophocles’s Antigone, in which the protagonist refuses to privilege the demands of the state over duties to the gods of the underworld, thereby condemning herself knowingly and willingly to death. Greek fertility rites and satyr-plays gave rise to comedy, while the ancient agrarian rites celebrated at Eleusis suggest another, occult source of mythic drama.
In the early Middle Ages, Western drama developed out of liturgical practices, for example antiphonal tropes sung for Holy Week and Easter services. However, we might use the term ‘mythic drama’ for the popular mystery plays based on the Corpus Christi Cycle of the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. The plays’ version of sacred history drew on Gospel narratives, Biblical creation myths and the liturgical calendar. English cycles include the Wakefield, York, Coventry and N-Town cycles. Characterisation tends to be realistic and representative of all social classes, such as the thieving Mak from the Wakefield Second Shepherd’s Play, but characters such as Adam in the Creation and Fall of the Angels (Wakefield) also point to symbolic archetypes.
Modern writers returned to mythic themes. Playwrights such as J.M. Synge and Sean O’Casey found in Irish myth and history a means of exploring and constructing national and ethnic identity, along with a powerful political critique and a protest against British hegemony. Synge’s Deirdre of the Sorrows (1907-09), for example, relocates the tragic myth of ‘The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu’ in contemporary Ulster. Jean Anouilh’s daring adaptations of Sophoclean drama, Antigone (1943), and dramatisations of Greek myth, Eurydice (1941), attacked French collaboration with Nazi Germany. More recently, Timberlake Wertenbaker has explored issues of gender and violence through mythic dramas like The Love of the Nightingale (1988), based on the story of Philomene and King Tereus from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
by Hilary Weeks, Course Leader & Senior Lecturer, English Literature, School of Humanities, University of Gloucestershire
