Pre-Broadway

For most people, Greek and Roman drama is something laid away in mothballs. Yet when, with modern tailoring, it is taken out and worn, most people admire it. When Broadway roared last season at Jean Giraudoux's Amphitryon 38, it was really patting some forgotten Greek dramatist on the back for his Amphitryon 1. When Broadway flocked to O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra, it was saluting Aeschylus' Oresteia with a Down-East accent. And given practically straight, Aristophanes' lewd, witty Lysistrata proved a Broadway hit.

In a volume monumental for scholarship, yet easy to read and superbly illustrated,* German-born, Nazi-banned Dr. Margarete Bieber (now of Columbia University) has told in full the story of the Greek and Roman theatre--its drama, stagecraft, architecture, acting. Besides treating of obscure and controversial points chiefly interesting to archeologists, her book resurrects many a curious and picturesque fact:

> Greek tragedy arose out of frenzied satyr dances in honor of Dionysus. (Tragedy comes from Tragos, a goat.)

> Masks--the ancient substitute for make-up--appeared in Greek tragedy almost from the beginning. Their purposes: to express a type, depersonalize the actor, permit the actor to appear in more than one part.

> First Roman actors were slaves, who were flogged if they proved to be hams.*

> At a swanky Roman funeral (such as Julius Caesar's) excerpts from tragedies were performed.

> One Roman production so frightened the audience that they fled the theatre.

*THE HISTORY OF THE GREEK AND ROMAN THEATER--Margarele Bieber--Princeton University Press ($7.50).

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