Neither is tragedy in its origins a merely literary rendering of human fate. Far from being literature designed for the stage it was originally a sacred play or a played rite. But in the course of time the ‘acting out’ of a myth-theme grew into the regular performance, with mime and dialogue, of a sequence of events constituting a story with a plot.
Comedy and tragedy alike come under the heading of competition, which, as we have seen, is in all circumstances to be called play. The Greek dramatists composed their works competitively for the feast of Dionysus. Though the State did not organize the competition it had a hand in the running of it. There was always a large crowd of second- and third-rate poets competing for the laurels. Comparisons, if odious, were habitual among the audience and criticism was extremely pointed. The whole public understood all the allusions and reacted to the subtleties of style and expression, sharing the tension of the contest like a crowd at a football match. Eagerly they awaited the new chorus, for which the citizens taking part in it had rehearsed for a whole year….
As to the mood in which the drama was performed it was one of Dionysian ecstasy and dithyrambic rapture. The player, withdrawn from the ordinary world by the mask he wore felt himself transformed into another ego which he did not so much represent as incarnate and actualize. The audience was swept along with him into that state of mind. In Aeschylus the violence of the high-flown language, the extravagances of imagination and expression fully accord with the sacred origin of the drama. The mental sphere from which the drama springs knows no distinction between play and seriousness.