Why Reading About Greek Theatre Makes the Crazy
Because there's so much missing. I mean, look at this: Aeschylus wrote 76 plays. We have 6. Sophocles wrote 123 and we have 7. Euripides, 88 and 18. Aristophanes (the slacker), wrote about 44, of which we have 11.
Every time I read someone making an offhand comment about the kind of topics one of them favored, or their particular approach to character or theme, I get twitchy. If the only part of Bradbury's oeuvre that survived was Fahrenheit 451 and There Will Come Soft Rains from The Martian Chronicles, then everyone would be talking knowledgeably about how he liked to blow shit up.
Not that there shouldn't be extrapolations made from the surviving plays. But these extrapolations become 'facts' so quickly, and often without acknowledging that they're based on incomplete and potentially censored bodies of work.
Every time I read someone making an offhand comment about the kind of topics one of them favored, or their particular approach to character or theme, I get twitchy. If the only part of Bradbury's oeuvre that survived was Fahrenheit 451 and There Will Come Soft Rains from The Martian Chronicles, then everyone would be talking knowledgeably about how he liked to blow shit up.
Not that there shouldn't be extrapolations made from the surviving plays. But these extrapolations become 'facts' so quickly, and often without acknowledging that they're based on incomplete and potentially censored bodies of work.