SOURCE: Adrados, Francisco R. “From Agricultural Festival to Theatre.” In Festival, Comedy and Tragedy: The Greek Origins of Theatre, pp. 319-68. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1975.

In the following excerpt, originally published in Spanish in 1972, Adrados contends that tragedy developed from agricultural rituals and festivals and that Thespis, if he ever existed, was more of a refiner than an inventor of the genre.

1. Festival and Lyric. Unity and Differentiation of Lyric. Thespis

1.

Greek Lyric as a whole was influenced by Epic, a profane genre from a remote epoch, though not without traces, which will not concern me here, of a religious origin. But Lyric directly originated from those elements of ritual in which dance, words, and music played a part. In several of its genres the dance was lost, and so too, to a large extent, was the mimesis which at first often accompanied it. A greater...