ABSTRACT
Both Socrates and Sophocles will use a dialectical approach of statement and counterstatement to, as Mikhail Bakhtin says, test truth through “the provocation of the word by word.” If Aeschylus lays out the foundational principles of tragedy, Sophocles continues to develop the form by seizing upon its inherent dialectal dynamics. Where Euripides might be inclined to show off in an almost sophistic fashion, Sophocles is known for debates that are perfectly balanced in their argumentation. If Aeschylus’ Clytemnestra is the living personification of his idea of theatre, then Sophocles’ Orestes and Electra can be seen as the dialectically-opposed offspring of their mother. Sophocles, the master of all things dialectical, throws us immediately into the secret dialectics of the play, truth vs. fiction, or perhaps we should say, truth vs. theatre. Sophocles’ urn becomes, in many ways, the ultimate metaphor for theatre.
