©Damen, 2009

Classical Drama and Theatre

If true, this would put The Phoenician Women at least a generation ahead of its time, inasmuch as it was Euripides several decades later who was the first playwright—or so Aristophanes leads us to believe—to realize the dramatic value of bringing members of the working class onto stage. Even today many a play opens with servants cleaning the house and, as they converse, revealing the dramatic situation for the audience. These so-called "feather-duster scenes" in modern dramas are often disparaged as trite, but in Phrynichus' day highlighting a lower-class character—or, at least, not a king as such—would surely have been an innovative touch, hinting at this playwright's foresight and ingenuity.

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