Teaching Plato in Translation
by Susan Gorman, Boston University
Original text © 2004 Susan Gorman
The Symposium
Theater and Masking
The frame of the Symposium is bound up in theater. The setting is a Dionysiac festival. The occasion for the symposium described in the text is Agathon's victory in the tragedy competition. The traditional opposition between Dionysus (emotion, nature) and Apollo (reason, culture) is retained in the different speeches of the banqueters.
I think that it is important not to simply gloss over these elements of theater. Why would Plato emphasize theater in this discussion of love and the forms? What does the element of theater add to this text?
I stress with my students the fact that theater resonates in the distinctions between form and physicality. Theater is an imitation of reality. The physical world, similarly, imitates the world of the forms. What we see, in Platonic philosophy, is only a representation of the actual ideal, or form, of that object. In order to figure out what is actually happening in theater, it is necessary for the audience to look more closely. In philosophy and in the different realms of philosophy, politics and ethics, it is necessary for the general populace to look closely at events in order to find out what is going on behind the scenes. The element of theater signals to the audience that they need to do extra work to figure out the text.
Masking also takes on particular resonance in both theater and in the Symposium. We the audience need to look behind what is on the surface to find out what is real.
Using the image of theater points out the different layers of meaning that are set on top of each other. The task of the audience is to find these layers.
Finally, I think that it is worthwhile to note that in this text alone Plato tells the story in the persona of Apollodorus who tells it through Aristodemus who then presents it through the masks of the participants. The most important philosophical dialogue is presented through Socrates of Diotima. What does it add to the text that it is recounted to us through so many different layers?
