Greek & Roman Drama Exam Papers
Contents:
June 1995
Time : Three hours
(In addition, candidates are allowed ten minutes before the examination begins to read the paper)
Candidates should answer FOUR questions on plays by four DIFFERENT authors.
Level III candidates may not answer a question on a play which has been discussed at length in the MAJOR essay.
1. The Prometheus can be viewed as a struggle between two adversaries, of whom one is on stage throughout and the other never appears. In what ways do the other characters, and the chorus, contribute to the presentation of this struggle, and to the audience's evaluation of it?
2. Is it reasonable to interpret the Ajax as predominantly a conflict between two social orders; the old 'heroic' society, represented by Ajax, and the new 'civilised' society, represented by Odysseus?
3. In the course of the Philoctetes, Neoptolemus repeatedly changes his mind. Why is this so? What do his vacillations contribute to the plot?
4. Page suggests that the brutal murder of the children in the Medea is 'caused by jealousy and anger against their father'. Is this how you would define Medea's motives for killing her sons?
5. It has been suggested that although Electra serves Euripides' purpose of presenting a 'de-mythologised' and realistic matricide, she nevertheless fails to convince us as a character. What is your opinion of Euripides' characterisation of the protagonist of the Electra?
6. Conacher writes of Euripides' Helen: 'It may be that in this play ... the poet indulges in a form of spoudaiogeloion, a peculiarly Greek blend of the grave and the gay ...'. What evidence do you find for the presence of the 'grave' in this play?
7. In the Birds, the central character is called 'Pisthetaerus' 'Mr Persuasive'. How well does he live up to his name?
8. 'Far from being a pornographic orgy, ... the [Lysistrata] is a celebration of the life-giving properties of love, ...' (Whitman). Do you agree with this assessment of Aristophanes' play?
9. Menander's Old Cantankerous has been seen as being influenced by Aristotelian/Peripatetic thought? Is such a view justified?
10. Norwood considers Plautus' Amphitryo as a dramatic failure in that it attempts to combine without success 'horseplay, wifely dignity, lewd jests and celestial splendour'. Is this fair comment?
11. Major innovations in Seneca's Oedipus are the divination by omens and the calling up of the spirits of the dead. What do they contribute to the play? Do you find them appropriate?
November 1993
Time : Three hours
(In addition, candidates are allowed ten minutes before the examination begins to read the paper)
Candidates should answer FOUR questions on plays by four DIFFERENT authors.
Level III candidates may not answer a question on a play which has been discussed at length in the MAJOR essay.
1. "Wrong? I accept the word. I willed, willed to be wrong!" Considering the play as a whole, in what sense (if any) does this admission of Prometheus seem to be true?
2. An ancient commentator said that the Ajax should have ended after the discovery of Ajax's body, and what followed was untragic. Do you agree with him?
3. "A reversal is a change from one state of affairs to its opposite, which conforms to probability or necessity" (Aristotle Poetics XI) What are the major 'reversals' of the Philoctetes? Do they meet Aristotle's criterion?
4. The Aegeus scene in the Medea is considered by some as a dramatic weakness in the play because it relies on too great a coincidence. Others see the scene as pivotal. What is your view?
5. What do you see as the contribution of the secondary characters to the effectiveness of Euripides' Electra?
6.The Helen is a rollicking melodrama with the simple purpose of entertaining and providing an escape from reality.' Comment.
7. Is the Birds to be seen as a unified play, in which everything contributes to the central theme, or are there parts which are more or less irrelevant to it?
8. It has been argued in relation to the Lysistrata that 'the Athenian public will have found [the character Lysistrata] far too amusing to be taken seriously'. What is your assessment of the 'seriousness' of Lysistrata?
9. 'We can admire Menander's dramatic skill in the Old Cantankerous, and we can accept that the play has positive messages on how to live with one another, but there's not much to make us laugh in the play'. What do you think?
10. What is your response to Erich Segal's view that '...the Amphitryo presents nothing more elevated than an act of adultery and the joys of Alcmena's body...Plautus' interests are in fact limited to sex and adultery?
11. It is possible that Seneca's Oedipus was never performed on stage. If it was performed, do you think that the audience would have found it genuinely tragic and moving?
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