ABSTRACT
This chapter needs little introduction. Faustus writes in his own blood, and at that moment, not before, but now beyond all cure, he is damned. My remarks earlier (p. 17) about the relative significance or triviality of stage acts and about their commentary within the text are here especially applicable. No doubt conventional gestures and small movements often accompanied the speech of ‘Greek tragedy: even inhibited northern Europeans tend to gesticulate when they become emotional. An obvious example is the deictic, or ‘pointing’, pronoun, hode-‘this here’; this extremely common word was presumably accompanied by a gesture in the direction of whatever is being talked about. But these run-of-the-mill bodily movements, while they are a concern for the actor and producer and while their economy and appropriateness are essential for a good performance, are not my chief concern here. I am preoccupied with the unique action which is brought about by, and which often epitomizes, t he dramatic impact of a particular moment. As when Coriolanus takes Volumnia by the hand, or Cordelia kneels to Lear, or Lady Macbeth cannot wash the stain and smell from her little hand. Some kinds of action and gesture in Greek tragedy are considered elsewhere, notably exits and entrances in the previous chapter, and those involving stage-objects in the next. But there is still a large residue: sitting and lying down, running, kneeling, supplicating, embracing, striking, bowing the head, looking away and so on. Such small deeds may be imbued with a meaning reaching far beyond the mere action itself-just as in familiar life a signature, the exchange of rings, the cutting of a tape, the shutting of a door may ratify and symbolize a momentous event. And small actions may loom very large when brought beneath the searching glass of the theatre. [5.1.1] Cassandra’s part in Agam is punctuated by stage-actions in such a way that the changeable choreography and movements give a physical dimension to the mobility of her visionary expression. Faced with Clytemnestra, who tells her to go inside, she has the bearing of an unbroken wild animal (1062ff.), but once the queen has gone she leaves the chariot with strange cries, and approaches the palace (1072ff.). As she reaches the sacred stone of Apollo Agyieus,1 she stops:
Apollo, Apollo Agyieus, my destroyer-
ah, where on earth have you brought me? What sort of house is this? (1085-7)
She was going to go inside blindly, but the onset of her vision stays her; and when she does finally go 150 lines later it is in full knowledge of her fate [9.1.1]. And she not only sees the truth of the present and of her doom, but she also puts these into perspective against the grim vistas of the past and future. Her revelations also provide the relief of insight, which puts in its place the foreboding and self-doubt of the earlier choral songs. Relief and despair come together in a bold stage gesture. Having seen clearly that Clytemnestra is about to kill her (1258-63), Cassandra casts her prophet’s trappings to the ground (1265); but this defiant rejection of Apollo, who has brought her to misery and death, far from spoiling her prophetic power, seems to unburden and sharpen it, as she goes on to foresee the vengeance of Orestes (1279-85).2
