It\u2019s been a humanist truism for some time to say that Shakespeare speaks to every age, transcending his time and place through the sheer force of his universal genius. But any honest student first encountering the plays will tell you differently, as will many a seasoned scholar who works hard to place the writer and his work in historical context. Even onetime director of London\u2019s National Theatre, Nicholas Hytner, once said, \u201cI\u2019ll admit that I hardly ever go to a performance of one of Shakespeare\u2019s plays without experiencing blind panic during the first five minutes. I sit there thinking… I have no idea what these people are talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, none of that means we can\u2019t learn to appreciate Shakespeare, and we do not need a graduate-level education to do so. But much of his archaic language and obscure references will always sound foreign to modern ears. How much more so, then, the language of the ancient Greeks, whether in translation or no? Although we\u2019ve also been taught to think of the Homeric epics as containers of universal truth and beauty, the world of Homer was, in many ways, an alien one\u2014and the literature of ancient Greece was far closer to song than even Shakespeare\u2019s musical speeches.<\/p>\n
In fact, \u201cbefore writing was generally known among the Greeks,\u201d the University of Cincinnati notes, \u201cpoets recited and sang stories for audiences at the courts of city leaders and at festivals. A poet could actually improvise a tale in the six-beat rhythm of Greek verse if he knew the plot of his story.\u201d We do not know whether Homer was one enterprising scribe or \u201ca group of poets whose works on the theme of Troy were collected\u201d under one name. But in either case, that poet or poets heard the tales of Hector and Achilles, Odysseus and Penelope, and all those meddling gods sung before they wrote them down. Now, thanks to Georg Danek of the University of Vienna and Stefan Hagel of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, we have some idea of what those songs may have sounded like.<\/p>\n
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