Representation of women in Athenian tragedy Representation of women in Athenian tragedy The representation of women in Athenian tragedy was performed exclusively by men and it is likely (although the evidence is not conclusive) that it was performed solely for men as well. In a society that valued women’s silence, their predominance in the most public of Athenian art-forms constitutes a paradox. Only one of the surviving 32 plays has no female characters: Sophocles' "Philoctetes". Female tragic choruses also outnumber the male choruses by twenty-one to ten. Macaria, in the "Heracleidae" states that "for a woman, silence and self control are best." The philosopher Xenophon thought
Tragedy imagination which was ‘so encompassing, so receptive to the plurality of diverse orders of experience.’ When compared to the drama of Greek antiquity and French classicism Shakespeare’s forms are ‘richer but hybrid'. Aristotle wrote in his work "Poetics" that tragedy is characterised by seriousness and involves a great person who experiences a reversal of fortune ("Peripeteia"). Aristotle's definition can include a change of fortune from bad to good as in the "Eumenides", but he says that the change from good to bad as in "Oedipus Rex" is preferable because this induces pity and fear within the spectators. Tragedy results in