Playing in the Dark: Masks and Euripides' Rhesus.(Critical Essay) From: Helios | Date: September 22, 2000| Author: Walton, J. Michael | COPYRIGHT 2000 Texas Tech University Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

Rhesus, whether or not it is by Euripides--a hare I do not wish to raise here--presents a unique performance problem. How might the masked actors in the Theater of Dionysus have indicated that the entire action of the play takes place at night? I want to speculate on this unusual problem by recourse both to other theater traditions and to the work of contemporary psychologists on how the human brain perceives and interprets visual information.

Peter Shaffer's 1965 play B...