The Auditorium and the Audience of the Greek Ancient Theatre
Abstract
The author deals with the auditorium of the Greek theatre in a twofold meaning: as a part of the stage building and as its audience who took seats in the theatre during performances. The first part of the paper depicts the following issues from the historical point of view: the auditorium of the Greek theatre as instanced by the most characteristic remnants of the ancient theatrical buildings, that is the size of the audience, its division into blocks of seats, benches for the audience, seats and seats of honour.
The second part deals with the theatrical audience: their number, their social composition, their behaviour during performances, relations between the stage and the audience. The latter aspect is more particularly exposed in the paper; the close relations between the spectators and actors have been discussed on the example of the texts of dramas (tragedy and ancient comedy) that have been preserved until now. As far as other particular issues are concerned, one should stress that the author is in favour of women in the theatre both during agons (dramatic contests) of tragedies, and in comedies, disputing in this matter with the opposite view presented by S. Goldhill (of 1997).
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