Ladies' Greek: Victorian Translations of Tragedy by Yopie Prins

Author:Yopie Prins [Prins, Yopie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Literary Criticism, Ancient & Classical, Comparative Literature, Subjects & Themes, Women, General, Semiotics & Theory
ISBN: 9781400885749
Google: gLsIDgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2017-05-09T00:58:17.443000+00:00

3.7 Scene from Electra, Senior Dramatics, Smith College, 1889. Creator unknown. College Archives, Smith College (Northampton, MA).

Much as Jebb had inspired the women at Girton to translate their impression of Greek into an expressive performance, Tyler used the language of impression and expression, encouraging the women of Smith to perform the Greek play in order to “feel its impression in its entireness.”

The frontispiece for A Greek Play and Its Presentation gives a unified impression of the play, in a photograph that shows nearly the entire cast on stage (figure 3.7). In this photograph, the chorus is clustered in the foreground while Electra, dressed in black, stands further in the center background: she is pointing into the palace door but looking back at the Paidagogus, standing to her right. In fact, all the faces are turned toward the Paidagogus, who was acted by one of the students but seems to stand in here for the pedagogical figure of Tyler himself. The frontispiece, placed next to the title page with the name of “Henry M. Tyler, Professor of Greek in Smith College,” turns him into the “author” of the production. He had led the students through several months of rigorous training during the winter term of 1889, when the study of the play became a daily college exercise, focusing on classroom methods for comprehension of the play and lessons in the pronunciation of ancient Greek. But he was not the only one who trained the students, as Henry Sargent (who had directed Oedipus at Harvard in 1881) took over the directing of the play during the spring term: nine week of rehearsals in the college gymnasium, where students did physical exercises and learned various forms of classical poses and statuesque movement, carefully choreographed with music for the choral odes.

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