He made one of the members of the
goat-chorus step forward and engage in conversation with the
leader of the musicians who marched at the head of the parade
playing upon their pipes of Pan. This individual was allowed
to step out of line. He waved his arms and gesticulated
while he spoke (that is to say he ``acted'' while the others merely
stood by and sang) and he asked a lot of questions, which the
bandmaster answered according to the roll of papyrus upon
which the poet had written down these answers before the
show began.
This rough and ready conversation--the dialogue--which
told the story of Dionysos or one of the other Gods, became
at once popular with the crowd. Henceforth every Dionysian
procession had an ``acted scene'' and very soon the ``acting''
was considered more important than the procession and the
meh-mehing.
AEschylus, the most successful of all ``tragedians'' who wrote
no less than eighty plays during his long life (from 526 to 455)
made a bold step forward when he introduced two ``actors''
instead of one. A generation later Sophocles increased the
number of actors to three. When Euripides began to write
his terrible tragedies in the middle of the fifth century, B.C.,
he was allowed as many actors as he liked and when Aristophanes
wrote those famous comedies in which he poked fun at
everybody and everything, including the Gods of Mount Olympus,
the chorus had been reduced to the role of mere bystanders
who were lined up behind the principal performers
and who sang ``this is a terrible world'' while the hero in the
foreground committed a crime against the will of the Gods.
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