This is Mark Ringer’s third book about Greek tragedy. The first, Electra and the urn: Metatheatre and role playing in Sophocles (University of North Carolina Press, 1998), provides a reading of each of the seven Sophoclean tragedies, with a focus on Sophocles’ use of metatheatricality. The second, Euripides and the boundaries of the human (Bloomsbury, 2016), ambitiously analyses each of the nineteen Euripidean tragedies and argues that despite Euripides’ dramaturgical diversity, there is an ever-present, underlying “concern with the limitations that define the human condition” (p. x).[1] As the title of his new book suggests, Ringer continues his exploration of these limitations, with a new focus on characterization and the Aeschylean image of the yoke of necessity. Like he does in his books on Sophocles and Euripides, Ringer devotes a chapter to each of Aeschylus’ six extant plays, organized chronologically according to their production dates.[2]
The book explicitly follows in the footsteps of the late 20th century work of P.E. Easterling, Brian Vickers, and Maurice Pope by aiming to restore the importance of character to discussions about Attic tragedy.[3] What it lacks in an explicitly defined theoretical framework and critical engagement with more recent work on character in Greek tragedy,[4] it more than makes up for in its accessible and authoritative readings of the Aeschylean tragedies.[5] The first part of the introduction briefly reviews 20th-century scholarship on the presence (or absence) of character and characterization in ancient tragedies, with key excerpts from influential scholarship provided for those readers who may not be familiar with the debate. In addition to arguing that Aeschylus “[invents] the tragedy of character” (p. ix), i.e., the burden of bearing the yoke of necessity and having to choose a course of action that may constrain either one’s own, or another’s, freedom, Ringer repeatedly demonstrates that Aeschylus crafts psychologically convincing figures on the stage. Ringer’s position is clear: respecting the cultural differences and the temporal distance between 5th-century BCE Athens and 21st-century CE societies does not necessitate a disavowal of tragic psychological interiority.
Ringer does not strictly differentiate between individual and collective characters. He often treats the Aeschylean chorus as a “character” in its own right, that displays “the ability to transform and, at times, surprise” (p. 111). The choruses of the Oresteia are given special attention, with a welcome focus on their old age that is rarely found in other treatments of the trilogy. Throughout the book, Ringer focuses on the increasing interiority, duality, and ambiguity of Aeschylus’ characters, tracing the development of dramatic characterization in Aeschylean dramaturgy, often considering the plays in relation to one another.[6] Chapter 1 discusses the relatively simple characters of the Persians. Chapter 2 compares the Persians to the Seven against Thebes to illustrate that Eteocles is a markedly more complex figure than any found in the preceding play. Chapter 3 reveals that the Suppliants is the first drama to depict a character who openly deliberates between two equally horrifying choices, and the first Aeschylean drama to stage a direct confrontation between antagonistic characters. In Chapter 4, which is almost double the length of the other chapters, Ringer argues that the apogee of this dramatic development is the Oresteia, particularly the Agamemnon, in which not only the titular character, but also minor characters such as the watchman display “a new kind of interiority” (p. 95). Chapter 5 continues the exploration of the Oresteia, focusing on the faster-paced Libation Bearers and its sharper characterizations, with Chapter 6 concluding the analysis of the Oresteia, with numerous performance parallels drawn between the Agamemnon and the Eumenides.
Characterization is a strong focus of each chapter, but the image of the yoke does not feature as extensively. Chapter 1 on the Persians contains the most references to the yoke and its figurative weight in the play, ranging from the yoke of slavery (which reoccurs in the Seven against Thebes and the Oresteia) to the yoke of military force that leaves the Persian women without their spouses, yoked alone in their grief. He also develops a convincing argument about Xerxes’ hubristic action of placing a yoke not only on Greece, but across the sea. Ringer usually returns to what he takes to be the most important yoke, the yoke of necessity into which Agamemnon willingly slips his neck (Ag. 218), an image which through Ringer views the arming of Eteocles in the Seven against Thebes (pg. 57), and Pelasgus’ surrender in the Suppliants (pg. 79).
One of the greatest contributions of the book to Aeschylean scholarship is its insight into the plays as performances, a field of criticism pioneered by Nicolaos C. Hourmouziades and Oliver Taplin and continued since by Rush Rehm, Peter Meineck, and Michael Ewans. Just before Ringer’s book on Aeschylean tragedy was published, Michael Ewans’ Aeschylus’ Oresteia: Translation and theatrical commentary (2024) became the most comprehensive treatment of the Oresteia in the field of performance criticism. Although Ringer does not explicitly cite this work, his chapters on the Oresteia constitute a worthy conversational partner to Ewans’ commentary. Ringer’s sharply honed expertise as a theatre practitioner continuously informs his reading of the ancient texts. Some insights contribute to the exploration of the book’s main theme, such as his suggestion that “the yoked draft animals pulling the chariot are a visualization of Xerxes’ metaphoric ‘yoking’” (pg. 23) during the queen’s spectacular entrance in the Persians, and his argument that the description of gagging Iphigenia’s mouth in the Agamemnon, “as one would bridle an animal,” sharply contrasts with the characterization of her father who willingly dons the yoke of necessity, since “she has not consented to donning this bestial ‘yoke’” (pg. 103). Other insights are more general, such as the observation that Eteocles’ order to the female chorus in the Seven against Thebes “to ‘stay inside’ is quite theatrically impossible for a tragic chorus” (pg. 48). Ringer also draws from other visual and performative art forms in his vivid descriptions of the tragedies. The messenger’s speech in the Persians “is cinematic in scope” (pg. 27), a scene in the Seven against Thebes “builds its inexorable rhythm, like an ostinato in a mighty symphony,” (pg. 50), verbal echoes become Wagnerian leitmotifs (pg. 52-53), and the chorus in the Agamemnon seems to freeze time “just like a telling fermata or shift in key and tempo” (pg. 99).
With its comprehensive scope and detailed discussion of Aeschylean images and themes, which never oversimplifies “the profound contrapuntal density of [Aeschylus’] thought” (p. 15), this would serve as a perfect introduction not only to Aeschylean characters, but to Aeschylean tragedy in general.
Notes
[1] Ringer includes the Rhesus among the extant Euripidean plays, believing it to be one of Euripides’ earlier works. Other scholars who were publishing at around the same time reject the claims of Euripidean authorship. See, for example, Almut Fries’ commentary on the Rhesus (Berlin, 2014) Vayos Liapis’ chapter ‘Rhesus’ in Laura K. McClure, ed., A Companion to Euripides (Chichester, 2017), and Marco Fantuzzi’s chapter ‘Rhesus’ in Andreas Markantonatos, ed., Brill’s Companion to Euripides (Leiden, 2020).
[2] Following the consensus among scholars of the 21st century, Ringer does not count the Prometheus Bound as an authentic Aeschylean tragedy. The final part of the introduction, titled ‘The Aeschylus We Have’, briefly discusses the six extant plays analyzed in the book. Although fr. 139 from the Myrmidons plays an important role in the preface of the book, other fragmentary plays are only briefly mentioned at the beginning of chapters where they form part of suspected or confirmed trilogies or tetralogies
[3] Ringer acknowledges his debt to the following works of scholarship: P.E. Easterling, ‘Character in Aeschylus’ in Christopher Pelling, ed., Character and Individuality in Greek Literature (Oxford, 1990); Brian Vickers, Towards Greek Tragedy (London, 1973), and Maurice Pope, ‘The Democratic Character of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon’ in Martin Cropp, Elaine Fantham, and S.E. Scully, eds., Greek Tragedy and its Legacy: Essays Presented to D.J. Conacher edited (Calgary, 1986).
[4] The book presumes a certain familiarity with terms such as ‘complex characters’ or ‘succinct characterization’. Readers who are unfamiliar with character criticism may need to supplement their reading with more theoretical approaches to character.
[5] Ringer works closely with the texts of the tragedies, often quoting or excerpting from Sommerstein’s Loeb translations of the Aeschylean corpus. Periodically, Ringer discusses the nuances of transliterated ancient Greek words or phrases, keeping the book accessible to readers who may not have a strong foundation in the language of Ancient Greek, and thought-provoking to readers who are able to read the Greek text.
[6] Comparing different plays is one of the book’s strengths, but in Chapter 3, the constant comparisons to the Oresteia have the effect of presenting the Suppliants as a play that does not have enough literary merit to stand by itself. In the 21 pages dedicated to the Suppliants, there are 22 claims about how it anticipates or foreshadows the Oresteian tragedies.