Athenian buildings would have provided a strong reminder–if one was
needed–of the cost of the war. Many modern readers have foundThe
Persiansboastful–a play written by the victors for a victorious and jubi-
lant audience. There is no doubt, though, that Aeschylus does not shy
away from describing the horrors of war.
Regardless of how we interpret it, Aeschylus, the first playwright
whose works survive, wrote thefirst history play–a play depicting a
historical event, using historical characters;^4 and, as it happens, the battle
he wrote about was also described by thefirst historian in the Western
tradition.^5 Tragedies based on recent historical events, events within living
memory, were certainly a rarity in the ancient world; far more common
were those depicting familiar myths. Indeed,The Persians is the only
surviving non-mythic tragedy from the golden age of Greek theatre.^6 But
history plays have continued to be written–by Shakespeare, Pushkin and
Ibsen, to name but a few–and they have continued to be popular.
As I have said, a natural focus for the relationship between philosophy
and theatre is the question of the extent to which (and how) theatre can
put the world on the stage. We have looked at this question for theatre in
general, in terms ofmimesisand truth; but history plays are a special case,
because they explicitly look to connect what is going on in front of the
audience with something that really happened. As such, they form an
obvious point of interest for philosophers interested in the relationship
between theatre and truth in general, not to mention theatre and the
philosophy of history. Wherever history plays have appeared, it has been
natural enough for spectators to ask about the relationship between what
they are seeing and the events that they claim to depict. This chapter
looks at philosophical approaches to this question.
To begin with, let us imagine that we go to see a performance of a history
play–say, Shakespeare’sJulius Caesar–and that, once the performance is
over, our theatregoing companion asks us:‘I wonder if it happened like
that?’This is the question I shall use to guide us in our inquiry. A few
comments about the question itself: First, the question is comparative, not
merely historical. Our companion wants to know something about the
relationship between the performance and the past. She isn’t asking only
about the historical event, so it won’t do to hand her a history book. Second,
she is not–or not just–asking about the truth-values of the propositions as
they appear in the text of the play. We have just seen a performance, with
actors in costumes, with scenery–with words, to be sure, but words with
emphasis and intonation. Sohowthings were said might be just as important
as what was said. Finally, we should keep the question of how accurate it
is separate from how successful it is as a literary or theatrical enterprise. Note
that it would be perfectly possible to think that historically accurate plays are
betteras plays, but we can remain silent on that matter.
76 From the World to the Stage