SOURCE: Stevens, Thomas Wood. “The Invention of Tragedy.” In The Theatre: From Athens to Broadway, pp. 8-15. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1932.

In the following excerpt, Stevens explores how Thespis, in adding an actor to the already established dithyramb form, in effect invented tragedy.

It is the scholarly fashion to decry Aristotle; he so seldom quotes his authorities. But he alone of the men near the first crest attempts to tell about it systematically. The height was reached in the fifth century before Christ. He wrote in the fourth. Already the evidence was difficult to gather. Tragedy arose among the leaders of the dithyramb, he tells us; this might convey everything, if we knew more about the dithyramb.

As a form, it is first mentioned in the seventh century. In the sixth, it had ceased to be a drunken improvisation, had engaged its poets, composers, creative dancers...