A Comparative Study of Two Plays: Electra and Medea

The two masks of drama- one with the corners of its mouth turned down, the other with the corners of its mouth turned up-are familiar everywhere. Derived from masks actually worn by the actors in ancient Greek plays, they symbolize the two principal modes of drama. Indeed, just as life gravitates between tears and laughter, they seem to imply that all drama is divided between tragedy and comedy. (Perrine, 2010, p. 1082) The primary objective of this article is to compare and contrast two dramas which are written by two Greek tragedians in Ancient Greek. According to Lethbridge and Mildorf, the main features that one can look at when analyzing drama are the following: Information flow, Overall structure, Space, Time, Characters, Types of utterances in drama, types of stage and dramatic sub-genres. (Lethbridge & Mildorf, 2003, p. 90) So, this study is concentrated on these two Greek tragedies and is intended for an analogy between them based on some aforementioned characteristics to manifest their similarities and distinctions.

Keywords:

Drama , Electra , Medea , tragedy , play.