Ancient Greek comedy was one of the final three principal
drama
Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on Radio drama, radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a g ...
tic forms in the
theatre of classical Greece (the others being
tragedy
Tragedy (from the grc-gre, τραγῳδία, ''tragōidia'', ''tragōidia'') is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy ...
and the
satyr play
The satyr play is a form of Attic theatre performance related to both comedy and tragedy. It preserves theatrical elements of dialogue, actors speaking verse, a chorus that dances and sings, masks and costumes. Its relationship to tragedy is stron ...
).
Athenian
Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh List ...
comedy
Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term ori ...
is conventionally divided into three periods:
Old Comedy
Old Comedy (''archaia'') is the first period of the ancient Greek comedy, according to the canonical division by the Alexandrian grammarians.Mastromarco (1994) p.12 The most important Old Comic playwright is Aristophanes – whose works, with thei ...
, Middle Comedy, and New Comedy. Old Comedy survives today largely in the form of the eleven surviving plays of
Aristophanes
Aristophanes (; grc, Ἀριστοφάνης, ; c. 446 – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion ( la, Cydathenaeum), was a comic playwright or comedy-writer of ancient Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. Eleven of his fo ...
; Middle Comedy is largely lost, i.e. preserved only in relatively short fragments by authors such as
Athenaeus
Athenaeus of Naucratis (; grc, Ἀθήναιος ὁ Nαυκρατίτης or Nαυκράτιος, ''Athēnaios Naukratitēs'' or ''Naukratios''; la, Athenaeus Naucratita) was a Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourishing about the end of t ...
of
Naucratis
Naucratis or Naukratis (Ancient Greek: , "Naval Command"; Egyptian language, Egyptian: , , , Coptic language, Coptic: ) was a city and trading-post in ancient Egypt, located on the Canopus, Egypt, Canopic (western-most) branch of the Nile river, ...
; and New Comedy is known primarily from the substantial papyrus fragments of
Menander.
The philosopher
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical Greece, Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatet ...
wrote in his ''
Poetics'' (c. 335 BC) that comedy is a representation of laughable people and involves some kind of blunder or ugliness which does not cause pain or disaster.
C. A. Trypanis wrote that comedy is the last of the great species of poetry Greece gave to the world.
Periods
The
Alexandrine grammarians The Alexandrine grammarians were philologists and textual scholars who flourished in Hellenistic Alexandria in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE, when that city was the center of Hellenistic culture. Despite the name, the work of the Alexandrine gramm ...
, and most likely
Aristophanes of Byzantium in particular, seem to have been the first to divide Greek comedy into what became the canonical three periods:
[Mastromarco (1994) p. 12] Old Comedy (ἀρχαία ''archaia''), Middle Comedy (μέση ''mese'') and New Comedy (νέα ''nea''). These divisions appear to be largely arbitrary, and ancient comedy almost certainly developed constantly over the years.
Old Comedy (''archaia'')
The most important Old Comic dramatist is
Aristophanes
Aristophanes (; grc, Ἀριστοφάνης, ; c. 446 – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion ( la, Cydathenaeum), was a comic playwright or comedy-writer of ancient Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. Eleven of his fo ...
(born in 446 BC). His works, with their pungent
political satire and abundance of
sexual and
scatological innuendo, effectively define the genre today. Aristophanes lampooned the most important personalities and institutions of his day, as can be seen, for example, in his buffoonish portrayal of
Socrates
Socrates (; ; –399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no te ...
in ''
The Clouds
''The Clouds'' ( grc, Νεφέλαι ''Nephelai'') is a Greek comedy play written by the playwright Aristophanes. A lampooning of intellectual fashions in classical Athens, it was originally produced at the City Dionysia in 423BC and was not ...
'', and in his racy anti-war farce ''
Lysistrata
''Lysistrata'' ( or ; Attic Greek: , ''Lysistrátē'', "Army Disbander") is an ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BC. It is a comic account of a woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponne ...
''. He was one of a large number of comic poets working in Athens in the late 5th century, his most important contemporary rivals being
Hermippus
Hermippus ( grc-gre, Ἕρμιππος; fl. 5th century BC) was the one-eyed Athenian writer of the Old Comedy, who flourished during the Peloponnesian War. Life
He was the son of Lysis, and the brother of the comic poet Myrtilus. He was younger ...
and
Eupolis
Eupolis ( grc-gre, Εὔπολις; c. 446c. 411 BC) was an Athenian poet of the Old Comedy, who flourished during the time of the Peloponnesian War.
Biography
Nothing whatsoever is known of his personal history. His father was named Sosipolis. ...
.
The Old Comedy subsequently influenced later European writers such as
Rabelais,
Cervantes,
Swift, and
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his '' nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity—es ...
. In particular, they copied the technique of disguising a political attack as buffoonery.
Middle Comedy (''mese'')
The line between Old and Middle Comedy is not clearly marked chronologically,
Aristophanes
Aristophanes (; grc, Ἀριστοφάνης, ; c. 446 – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion ( la, Cydathenaeum), was a comic playwright or comedy-writer of ancient Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. Eleven of his fo ...
and others of the latest writers of the Old Comedy being sometimes regarded as the earliest Middle Comic poets. For ancient scholars, the term may have meant little more than "later than Aristophanes and his contemporaries, but earlier than
Menander". Middle Comedy is generally seen as differing from Old Comedy in three essential particulars: the role of the chorus was diminished to the point where it had no influence on the plot; public characters were not impersonated or personified onstage; and the objects of ridicule were general rather than personal, literary rather than political. For at least a time, mythological burlesque was popular among the Middle Comic poets. Stock characters of all sorts also emerge: courtesans, parasites, revellers, philosophers, boastful soldiers, and especially the conceited cook with his parade of culinary science.
Because no complete Middle Comic plays have been preserved, it is impossible to offer any real assessment of their literary value or "genius". But many Middle Comic plays appear to have been revived in
Sicily
(man) it, Siciliana (woman)
, population_note =
, population_blank1_title =
, population_blank1 =
, demographics_type1 = Ethnicity
, demographics1_footnotes =
, demographi ...
and
Magna Graecia
Magna Graecia (, ; , , grc, Μεγάλη Ἑλλάς, ', it, Magna Grecia) was the name given by the Romans to the coastal areas of Southern Italy in the present-day Italian regions of Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania and Sicily; the ...
in this period, suggesting that they had considerable widespread literary and social influence.
New Comedy (''nea'')
New Comedy followed the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and lasted throughout the reign of the
Macedon
Macedonia (; grc-gre, Μακεδονία), also called Macedon (), was an ancient kingdom on the periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece, and later the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece. The kingdom was founded and initially ruled b ...
ian rulers, ending about 260 BC. It is comparable to
situation comedy
A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ne ...
and
comedy of manners
In English literature, the term comedy of manners (also anti-sentimental comedy) describes a genre of realistic, satirical comedy of the Restoration period (1660–1710) that questions and comments upon the manners and social conventions of a g ...
.
[Winkler, Martin M. (2001)]
''Classical Myth & Culture in the Cinema''
p. 173
The three best-known playwrights belonging to this genre are
Menander,
Philemon, and
Diphilus.
The playwrights of the New Comedy genre built on the legacy from their predecessors, but adapted it to the portrayal of everyday life, rather than of public affairs. The satirical and farcical element which featured so strongly in Aristophanes' comedies was increasingly abandoned, the de-emphasis of the grotesque—whether in the form of choruses, humour or spectacle—opening the way for greater representation of daily life and the foibles of recognisable character types.
[S Halliwell ed., ''The Birds'' (Oxford 1998) p. ix]
Apart from Diphilus, the New Comedians preferred the everyday world to mythological themes, coincidences to miracles or metamorphoses; and they peopled this world with a whole series of semi-realistic, if somewhat stereotypical figures,
who would become the stock characters of Western comedy: braggarts, the permissive
father figure and the stern father (''
senex iratus''), young lovers, parasites, kind-hearted prostitutes, and cunning servants. Their largely gentle comedy of manners drew on a vast array of dramatic devices, characters and situations their predecessors had developed: prologues to shape the audience's understanding of events, messengers' speeches to announce offstage action, descriptions of feasts, the complications of love, sudden recognitions, ex machina endings were all established techniques which playwrights exploited and evoked. The new comedy depicted Athenian society and the social morality of the period, presenting it in attractive colors but making no attempt to criticize or improve it.
In his own time, Philemon was perhaps the most successful among the New Comedy, regularly beating the younger figure of Menander in contests; but the latter would be the most highly esteemed by subsequent generations.
[H Nettleship, ed, ''A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities'' (London 1894) p. 478] Menander's comedies not only provided their audience with a brief respite from reality, but also gave audiences an accurate, if not greatly detailed, picture of life,
[H J Rose, ''A Handbook of Latin Literature'' (London 1967) p. 78] leading an ancient critic to ask if life influenced Menander in the writing of his plays or if the case was vice versa. Unlike earlier predecessors, Menander's comedies tended to centre on the fears and foibles of the ordinary man, his personal relationships, family life and social mishaps rather than politics and public life. His plays were also much less satirical than preceding comedies, being marked by a gentle, urbane tone,
[J Boardman ed., ''The Oxford History of the Classical World'' (Oxford 1986) p. 182] a taste for good temper and good manners (if not necessarily for good morals).
The human dimension of his characters was one of the strengths of Menander's plays, and perhaps his greatest legacy, through his use of these fairly stereotype characters to comment on human life and depict human folly and absurdity compassionately, with wit and subtlety. An example of the moral reformations he offered (not always convincingly) is Cnemon from Menander's play ''
Dyskolos
''Dyskolos'' ( el, , , translated as ''The Grouch'', ''The Misanthrope'', ''The Curmudgeon'', ''The Bad-tempered Man'' or ''Old Cantankerous'') is an Ancient Greek comedy by Menander, the only one of his plays, and of the whole New Comedy, th ...
'', whose objections to life suddenly fade after he was rescued from a well.
The fact that this character was not necessarily closed to reason makes him a character whom people can relate to.
Philemon's comedies tended to be smarter, and broader in tone, than Menander's;
while Diphilus used mythology as well as everyday life in his works. The comedies of both survive only in fragments but their plays were translated and adapted by
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus (; c. 254 – 184 BC), commonly known as Plautus, was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the ...
. Examples include Plautus' ''Asinaria'' and ''Rudens''. Based on the translation and adaptation of Diphilus' comedies by Plautus, one can conclude that he was skilled in the construction of his plots.
Substantial fragments of New Comedy have survived, but no complete plays. The most substantially preserved text is the ''Dyskolos'' ("Difficult Man, Grouch") by Menander, discovered on a papyrus, and first published in 1958. The
Cairo Codex
The Cairo Codex is a manuscript discovered in 1907 that contained the first significant fragments of plays by the ancient Greek playwright Menander, including parts of ''Epitrepontes'' (Men at Arbitration), ''Perikeiromene
''Perikeiromene'' ( ...
(found in 1907) also preserves long sections of plays including ''
Epitrepontes'' ("Men at Arbitration"), ''
Samia'' ("The Girl from Samos"), and ''
Perikeiromene'' ("The Girl who had her Hair Shorn"). Much of the rest of our knowledge of New Comedy is derived from the
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...
adaptations by Plautus and
Terence
Publius Terentius Afer (; – ), better known in English as Terence (), was a Roman African playwright during the Roman Republic. His comedies were performed for the first time around 166–160 BC. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought ...
.
Influence
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ...
claimed Menander as a model for his own gentle brand of
Roman satire.
The New Comedy influenced much of Western European literature, primarily through Plautus and Terence: in particular the comic drama of
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
and
Ben Jonson
Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for ...
,
Congreve, and
Wycherley, and, in France,
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (, ; 15 January 1622 (baptised) – 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (, , ), was a French playwright, actor, and poet, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language and world ...
.
[J Boardman ed., ''The Oxford History of the Classical World'' (Oxford 1986) p. 450]
The 5-act structure later to be found in modern plays can first be seen in Menander's comedies. Where in comedies of previous generations there were choral interludes, there was dialogue with song. The action of his plays had breaks, the situations in them were conventional and coincidences were convenient, thus showing the smooth and effective development of his plays.
Much of contemporary romantic and situational comedy descends from the New Comedy sensibility, in particular generational comedies such as ''
All in the Family'' and ''
Meet the Parents
''Meet the Parents'' is a 2000 American comedy film written by Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg and directed by Jay Roach. It chronicles a series of unfortunate events that befall a good-hearted but hapless nurse (Ben Stiller as Greg Focker) while v ...
''.
Dramatists
Some dramatists overlap into more than one period.
Old Comedy
Middle Comedy
New Comedy
See also
* Competitions (''
agon
Agon (Greek ) is a Greek term for a conflict, struggle or contest. This could be a contest in athletics, in chariot or horse racing, or in music or literature at a public festival in ancient Greece. Agon is the word-forming element in 'agony', ...
'') at the
Dionysia
The Dionysia (, , ; Greek: Διονύσια) was a large festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, the central events of which were the theatrical performances of dramatic tragedies and, from 487 BC, comedies. It was the ...
(mixed audiences) and
Lenaia (local Athens audience only) festivals
*
Cult of Dionysus
*
Phallic processions
Phallic processions are public celebrations featuring a phallus, a representation of an erect penis.
Ancient Greece
Called ''phallika'' in ancient Greece, these processions were a common feature of Dionysiac celebrations; they advanced to a cu ...
*
Theatre of Dionysus
*
Prolegomena de comoedia
''Prolegomena de comoedia'' ( eng, Introduction to Comedy) is a modern collective name for several short ancient Greek and Byzantine writings in Greek that are mostly found in the manuscripts of Aristophanes' comedies or taken as excerpts from ot ...
Notes
Sources
* Brown, Andrew. 1998. "Ancient Greece." In ''The Cambridge Guide to Theatre.'' Ed. Martin Banham. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer.
Cambr ...
. 441–447. .
* Brockett, Oscar G. and Franklin J. Hildy. 2003. ''History of the Theatre''. Ninth edition, International edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. .
* Carlson, Marvin. 1993. ''Theories of the Theatre: A Historical and Critical Survey from the Greeks to the Present.'' Expanded ed. Ithaca and London:
Cornell University Press
The Cornell University Press is the university press of Cornell University; currently housed in Sage House, the former residence of Henry William Sage. It was first established in 1869, making it the first university publishing enterprise in ...
. .
* Csapo, Eric, and William J. Slater. 1994. ''The Context of Ancient Drama.'' Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press
The University of Michigan Press is part of Michigan Publishing at the University of Michigan Library. It publishes 170 new titles each year in the humanities and social sciences. Titles from the press have earned numerous awards, including ...
. .
* Freund, Philip. 2003. ''The Birth of Theatre''. Illustrated ed. Vol 1. of ''Stage by Stage''. London: Peter Owen. .
* Janko, Richard, trans. 1987. ''Poetics with Tractatus Coislinianus, Reconstruction of Poetics II and the Fragments of the On Poets.'' By
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical Greece, Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatet ...
. Cambridge: Hackett. .
* Ley, Graham. 2006. ''A Short Introduction to the Ancient Greek Theater.'' Rev. ed. Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including '' The Chicago Manual of Style'' ...
.
* Olson, S. Douglas, ed. 2007. ''Broken Laughter: Select Fragments of Greek Comedy.'' Oxford:
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...
. .
* Taplin, Oliver. 1993. ''Comic Angels and Other Approaches to Greek Drama Through Vase-Painting.'' Oxford:
Clarendon Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
.
* Trypanis, Constantine Athanasius. 1981. ''Greek Poetry from Homer to Seferis.'' Chicago:
University of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including '' The Chicago Manual of Style'' ...
.
Further reading
*
Cornford, Francis Macdonald''The Origin of Attic Comedy'' Cambridge: University Press, 1934.
* Padilla, Mark William (editor)
"Rites of Passage in Ancient Greece: Literature, Religion, Society" Bucknell University
Bucknell University is a private liberal arts college in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1846 as the University at Lewisburg, it now consists of the College of Arts and Sciences, Freeman College of Management, and the College of Engineerin ...
Press, 1999.
* Rozik, Eli
''The roots of theatre : rethinking ritual and other theories of origin'' Iowa City : University of Iowa Press, 2002.
External links
"Aristotle on Comedy" by Malcolm Heath, University of LeedsBBC Radio 4 ''In Our Time'' programme on ancient Greek Comedy, Thursday 13 July 2006
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