AESCHYLUS

          
                                 


          Aeschylus was born in 525 B.C in the city of Eleusis  , and is often called the ''Father of Tragedy'' .He is also considered to be the person who practically invented drama as we know it today.
     When Aeschylus first began writing,the theatre had only just begun to evolve.A chorus danced and exchanged dialogue with single actor, who portrayed one or more characters by using masks.Most of the action took place in the circular dancing area or 'Orchestra', which still remained from the old days when drama had been nothing more than a circular dance around a spaced object.
                   It was a huge leap for drama when Aeschylus introduced the second actor.He also attempted to involve the chorus directly in the action in the play.Although  Aeschylus is said to have written only ninety plays, only seven had survived.He directed many of his own productions ,and one of his plays 'THE PERSIANS' contains the first ghost scene in drama!
He wrote over 80 plays (some say 90), and he won his first victory at the City Dionysia in 484BC. He acted in and oversaw every detail of their production of his plays as well, clearly what we moderns would call a true regisseur. Only seven of his plays survive: the Persians; the Suppliant Maidens; the Seven Against Thebes; the Oresteia, a trilogy (the only complete extant Greek trilogy) consisting of the Agamemnon, the Libation Bearers, and the Furies; and the first play of another lost trilogy, the Prometheus Bound. His plays were the first to be preserved, and in subsequent generations, his plays were so highly regarded that a khoros was provided automatically for a revival of one of his plays. He was regarded by his contemporaries as the best writer of satyr plays. Toward the end of his life, he went into a self-imposed exile where he wrote his last play. After his death, his son Euphorion produced four tetralogies posthumously and won first prize. Aeschylus spent a great part of his mature life at the court of Hieron, tyrant of Syracuse, returning to Athens to supervise the production of his dramas for the contests, in which he apparently competed alternate years. He continued to write up until the day of his death which, according to the story told, was caused by an eagle's mistaking his bald head for a stone and dropping a tortoise on it to break the shell. But this tale we shall have to take with more than a grain of salt. Aeschylus was the first dramatist to give dignity and meaning to tragedy. Also, as his own producer and stage manager, he designed special costumes for his actors; pioneered in the use of masks; enlarged the stage; and was the first dramatist to have any sort of setting for his plays. Altogether, it is probable that few men in the entire history of the theater, have had such far reaching effect on their chosen profession as Aeschylus, Father of Greek Drama. Influence on Greek drama and culture ; Mosaic of Orestes, main character in Aeschylus' trilogy, The Oresteia When Aeschylus first began writing, the theatre was new. Some playwrights like Thespis had made the cast bigger to include an actor who was able to talk with the chorus. Aeschylus added a second actor, allowing for more drama; and the chorus became less important. He is said to have been the first to use skenographia, or scene-decoration, but Aristotle said the first person was Sophocles. Aeschylus also added more details to the costumes, and had his actors wear platform boots, called cothurni, to help the audience see them better. When they walked on stage in the first performance of the Eumenides, the chorus of Furies were so frightening in looks that they made young children faint, old men urinate, and pregnant women go into labor. His plays were written in the strict style of Greek drama. They were in verse and no violence could be performed on stage. The plays had to be set away from normal life in Athens, either by telling stories about the gods or by being set, like The Persians, in a far-away place. Aeschylus' work has a strong moral and religious emphasis. The Oresteia plays were about man's position in the universe in relation to the gods, the laws of the gods, and punishment from the gods. Fifty years after Aeschylus' death, the comic playwright Aristophanes praised him in the The Frogs. Aeschylus is a character in the play and says that his Seven against Thebes "made everyone watching it to love being warlike"; with his Persians, he says he "taught the Athenians to desire always to defeat their enemies". He says that his plays helped the Athenians to be brave and virtuous . His earliest existing play is The Persians, presented in 472. A historical tragedy about the Battle of Salam?s, set in Persia at the court of the mother of King Xerxes I, the play drew an invitation from Hieron I, tyrant of Syracuse, to performance before his court. It is highly probably Aeschylus drew on his own experiences at Salamis with the Persians, who had again invaded Greece around 480, in creating the famous play. Although Aeschylus was the undisputed champion of the competition at Athens for most of his illustrious career, he suffered a memorable defeat in 486 to a young Sophocles. There were not to be two in a row, for the next year Aeschylus produced his Oedipus trilogy of which Seven Against Thebes is the only survivor. The Oresteia, Aeschylus' masterpiece and his only intact trilogy, was writen in 458. Shortly after presenting it, the playwright traveled to Sicily for a second time. It was there also, in Gela, that Aeschylus died in 455-6 B.C.E. His son Europhion was a prominent dramatist in his own right, stealing victory from Sophocles and Euripides in a subsequent round of the competition his father had once dominated for so many years. Aeschylus's innovations in the ancient dramatic form were fundamental. Chiefly, he was responsible for the introduction of a second actor. Whereas, previous to Aeschylus, plays had been more like recitations between a single actor and a chorus, the use of a second actor increased immensely the possiblities for flexible dramatic action and dialogue. He also expanded the presentation of drama by means of more elaborate costuming, stage machinery, and scenery. Majesty, profundity, and loft of language and theme are characteristic of the grand style of the so-called "Father of Tragedy."