Are these answers right about Aeschylus?
1) How did their work build on past traditions?
Continued to write within the very strict bounds of Greek drama: his plays were written in verse, no violence could be performed on stage, and the plays had to have a certain remoteness from daily life in Athens, either by relating stories about the gods or by being set.
What was the focus of their work?
Aeschylus’ work has a strong moral and religious emphasis. The Oresteia trilogy particularly concentrated on man’s position in the cosmos in relation to the gods, divine law, and divine punishment.
Are they right? It was the best I could come up with… thank you!
Your answers look good to me. You might add that he took few liberties with the existing myths, but he did depict man’s uncertainty and the dilemma of being caught between the demands of different deities. Also, in regard to past traditions, he continued to write plays in which a large proportion of the lines were spoken by the chorus and in which the dialogue consisted either of long speeches or of exchanges of single lines (stichomythia)–and some of his existing plays can be performed with only two actors.
If you have time, it might add dimension to your picture of Aeschylus to read the Electra of Euripides (in which Electra, who has been married off to a peasant, lures Clytemnestra into Orestes’ clutches by sending word that she has had a baby) and/or of Sophocles (in which Electra stands outside the window shouting encouragement as Orestes kills Clytemnestra in the house), as well as Aristophanes’ The Frogs, in which the shade of Aeschylus, in the Underworld, argues with the shade of Euripides over the relative merits of their works.
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