Kretiko Theatro-Meletes (review)

Nikolaos M. Panagiotakis,. Athens: Stigmi. 1998. Pp. 325.

The study of Renaissance Cretan theater is only one of several scholarly subjects greatly impacted by the work of Nikolaos M. Panagiotakis (1935-1997). Through a series of books and articles, Panagiotakis explored historical and philological aspects of manuscripts and codices, chronicles, poetry and prose, art and cultural institutions, religion, and music from the Byzantine to the Renaissance eras, and from Crete to Switzerland. The breadth of his scholarship as well as the path-breaking originality of his approach have earned him a distinguished position in the Greek philological pantheon of the twentieth century. His ground-breaking contributions to the identification of the author of Erotokritos, as well as his discoveries regarding the historical reconstruction of the life of El Greco, serve as noteworthy examples of his talent and erudition. Panagiotakis belongs to a group of scholars who passionately devoted their entire career to deciphering the "Cretan miracle"--the flourishing of the arts in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Crete. Had Seferis lived twenty-five years longer, he might have been better able, thanks to this volume, to imagine the "habits of someone who wrote verses in Crete at 1600" (having confessed his inability to do so in his 1946 article on Erotokritos).

The ten articles of Panagiotakis compiled in this volume, edited by Stefanos Kaklamanis and Yiannis Mavromatis, explore various topics related to Cretan theater, from its beginnings to its peak. At the core of most of the articles lies the issue of actual theatrical performances, the places where they might have been held, and the people who orchestrated them. Panagiotakis's painstaking research helped not only to unearth precious information in the labyrinthine and inexhaustible Venetian archives, but also to reconstruct the social context of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Crete, in which the privileged classes cultivated the arts for instruction and entertainment.

In "New Elements of the Cretan Theater," which is published here for the first time since it was written in the year of his death, Panagiotakis summarizes with clarity and precision the major issues that have preoccupied scholarship on theatrical activity in Crete from the sixteenth century through the conquest of Candia (Herakleion) by the Ottoman Turks in 1669. Eight plays have survived: three tragedies--Erofili, Rodolinos, and Zenon; three comedies--Katzourbos, Stathis, and Fortunatos; one pastoral drama--Panoria; and one religious drama--The Sacrifice of Abraham. The authorship, manuscript tradition, and history of the printing, as well as the Italian models for these eight plays, have been the focus of considerable scholarship in the twentieth century. Despite this, evidence regarding theatrical performances of these plays is very meager. In his brief survey, Panagiotakis reviews the six known contemporary accounts of actual performances in Crete and reveals four more passages in the texts, which link performances with specific social groups--soldiers, academicians, priests, and monks. He repeatedly states his conviction, based on scanty references, that there must have been a vast number of plays, especially comedies, which were performed regularly, the texts of which have been irrevocably lost.

Almost all the other articles in the volume provide detailed and extremely well-documented evidence with respect to the theatrical performances in Crete. Panagiotakis details, for example, the activities of the Stravaganti of Candia and the Vivi of Rethymnon, both of which were academies of letters similar to those flourishing all over Italy during the time, and in the context of which the art of theater was cultivated; the presence of Antonio Molino, who reportedly staged performances in Corfu and Crete and adopted the greghesco, a comic version of Modern Greek, in his comedies; and the life and death of Ioannis Kassimatis (c. 1527-1571), who was a supporter of the Reformation and preached in favor of it in Crete, a practice that led to his imprisonment and death in the dungeons of Venice. The "Lament of the Poor Fallidos," a satirical poem that might have been performed as an interlude, is also included in the volume, together...