The Art of Greek Comedy

Katherine Lever

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032225784
• eBook ISBN: 9781000579307
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Originally published in 1956, this is a critical analysis of the comedies of Aristophanes and Menander studied in the context of the history of comedy, of the allied arts, and of contemporary life.

Aristophanes and Menander are deservedly the most famous writers of Greek comedy. The extant comedies of Aristophanes are notable for wit, comical action, beautiful poetry, and the dramatization of such problems as health of mind and body, sex, money, government, law, religion, education, and drama, music and poetry. Menander portrays with delicate and sympathetic understanding a world in which the seeming evils of loss and discord eventually lead to the genuine goods of discovery and concord. The art of Aristophanes is critically examined in three chapters and that of Menander in one.

For centuries Dionysos had been worshipped in a spirit of ecstasy which manifested itself in song, dance and the wearing of masks and costumes, pantomime, farce, and satire. The processes by which these diverse elements were developed and fused into the complex literary form of Old Comedy are the subject of the first three chapters.

Aristophanes was not only pre-eminent as a writer of Old Comedy; he also participated in the transformation of Old Comedy into Middle Comedy, a curious and interesting dramatic form which is fully treated in the seventh chapter. In the last chapter the emergence of New Comedy is traced and the art of Menander criticized. The book ends with a brief indication of the various forms in which the spirit of Greek comedy had survived to the present day.

CHAPTER 1 Archaic Greek Comedy: 600 to 530 b.c.

The beginning of Greek comedy is lost in the misty times of primitive man, if by beginning of comedy we mean the very earliest mimetic performances [1]. Vestiges of prehistoric tribal rites and ritual dances have been discovered by archaeologists; and anthropologists have reconstructed primitive cults by comparison with other tribes and by study of literary remains. Wherever one searches, thousands of years back in time or thousands of miles away in space, one finds tribal man dancing in honour of his god. When, as so often happens, the dancers wear masks, use gestures, sing or are accompanied by singing, and communicate to the worshippers a myth or to the god thanksgiving, praise, or entreaty, then the religious cult is hardly to be distinguished from the religious drama. When the dancer loses his identity as a worshipper and impersonates a character, he becomes an actor; and his actions, becoming imitative rather than self-expressive, are dramatic.

Is tribal cult, then, the origin of acting and thus of the drama? Aristotle sought the origin of drama beyond cult in the nature of man and found that imitation is instinctive in human beings. Laughter, the other major component of comedy, is also inherent. Indeed, man has sometimes been defined as the animal who laughs. The origin of comedy might be investigated more appropriately by the psychologists than by the anthropologists [2]. By studying people of all types to-day, the psychologists might discover the nature and the source of the comic spirit and dramatic form. From one point of view, the fountainhead of comedy is internal and not external, and comedy is born anew with every clown and spectator.

Even if the psychologists should succeed in explaining the human love of imitation and laughter, the origin of comedy would still elude us because of the difference between dramatic literature and theatrical performance. Theatrical performances of an impromptu or ritualistic kind—actors who sang, danced, mimicked, improvised a few words or simple incident —might well have arisen and developed separately from dramatic literature—the comic treatment of character or situation in poetry or prose. We might then say that true comedy originated at the moment when a dramatist first composed words and designated action for others to convey to an audience. If such a moment ever existed, no trace of it remains. Like the explanations of the anthropologists and psychologists, it is hypothetical and not historical.

A seemingly more substantial starting-point would be the eleven extant comedies of Aristophanes. Beginning with his characters, plots, comic devices, costumes, masks, metres, and vocabulary, we could trace them back to their sources in the earlier comedies and in non-dramatic poetry and prose, dancing, music, and art. Next, his ideas would need to be studied in relation to contemporary Greek culture and to his artistic intention. The dangers of this method are that indebtedness may be stressed to the exclusion of originality, and history may be distorted through the reversal of its natural direction. The early history of Greek comedy should guide us toward the understanding of Aristophanes. The problem then still remains. At what point does a history of Greek comedy begin?

A practical solution may be found by accepting an inscription that a man named Susarion invented the first comic chorus early in the sixth century. If one stops to question who Susarion was and where he lived and how or in what sense he invented a comic chorus and what the comic chorus was like, the solution crumbles into controversy. But, after acknowledging the uncertainties and obscurities, one may still find a modicum of probability sufficient for a starting-point. A turning-point would perhaps be a more accurate phrase, for Susarion could have been a comic dramatist only because seventh-century poets had already composed in a comic vein, semi-dramatic performances had already been common in Greece, and the time was ripe.

The sixth century was one of social and political revolution and great artistic and intellectual advance. By 600 b.c. the Mediterranean world had been explored and most of the Greek colonies which encircled the Mediterranean and Black Seas had been established. Trade routes connected the cities on the mainland and the Ionian coast with their colonies in Spain, southern France, Italy, Sicily, Thrace, southern Russia, Egypt, and Africa. With the trading of raw for manufactured products and with more extensive commerce, barter became impracticable; and coinage spread rapidly throughout Greece in the sixth century. Industry grew and flourished, but the changing values caused agricultural unrest with the small farmers, in particular, oppressed by debts and the injustice of aristocratic landowners. A few attempts were made in the seventh century to relieve their distress by legislation, but no lasting reform was accomplished in Attica until Solon. A few tyrants, too, had gained power in the seventh century, perhaps by means of the rising usefulness of money, but the most famous lived in the sixth century [3].

By 600 b.c. most of the forms and metres of Greek poetry had been created. The myths and legends of the Greek peoples were being transformed into epic poetry. The Iliad and Odyssey as separate and individual epic poems were probably in existence though their form and provenance are a tangled and thorny thicket of controversy which cannot be entered here. More is known of Hesiod, for he tells us in his Works and Days of the miserable village, Ascra in Boeotia, in which he lives, of the wickedness of his brother, of the deceitfulness of women, and of all the hardships farmers encounter. His Theogony, with its lists of gods and their attributes and its many myths, is one of our most valuable sources of information about early Greek religion [4]. These four poems in dactylic hexameter— two epic and two didactic—became the Bible of later Greece, the storehouse of wisdom to which one looked for advice about war and farming, political statecraft, and daily conduct [5]. Even the comic poet turned to them for themes and characters [6].

For comedy, the most important early poet is Archilochus [7]. He lived in the late eighth century in Paros, a soldier of fortune and a servant of the war god Ares. He sang that his spear was bread and wine and bed (frr. 1,2). He also ‘knew the gifts of the Muses’ and was renowned in later Greece for his musical innovations and metrical versatility [8]. Though he did not create the elegiac and iambic measures, his genius created the mood they retained for centuries. In fact, the iambic metre became synonymous with invective, and the name Archilochus proverbial for those who practised invective [9].

Only fragments of his poetry remain, but even in these few words and lines we can perceive the bitter scorn and ridicule which reputedly caused the suicide of one victim. He objects to generals who are tall, straddling, and vain and to lewd, fatankled women (frr. 58, 184). In another verse form he invokes an elaborate curse upon an untrustworthy friend:

driven out of his course by the waves; and at Salmydessus may the top-knotted Thracians seize him bare of friendly [kinsfolk] there to eat the bread of servitude and fill the measure of many ills, seize him frozen with the cold; and may he have upon him much tangle of the surges, and his teeth be chattering, as he lies on his belly like a dog, helpless on the edge of the surf, spewing out the wave. This I fain would behold, because he wronged me and trod a covenant underfoot, he that was once my friend [10].

Nor does he hesitate to mention by name Lycambes and Hipponax (frr. 94, 97B).

The wit of Archilochus has overshadowed both in ancient days and in our own his moral earnestness and religious fervour [11]. He calls upon his desolate townsmen to listen to his words (fr. 50); and in other fragments counsels endurance of grief, trust in the gods, modesty in victory and patience in defeat (frr. 9-13, 56, 66, 104B). Athena, Ares, Hera, Demeter, and Poseidon are all mentioned, and he beseeches Hephaestus to listen to his supplications, (fr. 75). Zeus he addresses as Father of the Olympians, Ruler of Heaven, who sees the righteous and unrighteous deeds of men and beasts alike and brings all things to fulfilment (frr. 74, 88). The family of Archilochus had been closely associated with the worship of Demeter, and Archilochus himself composed a hymn to Heracles which became the victory chant of the Olympian games [12]. He also says that he can lead the Lesbian Paean, the hymn of Apollo, and ‘the beautiful song of the lord Dionysos, the dithyramb’, when ‘his mind had been struck with the thunderbolt of wine’ (frr. 76, 77).

The leader of a Greek chorus was not simply a poet. He needed to be a musician and dancer as well. The close association of poetry with music and the dance from the earliest times in Greece cannot be sufficiently emphasized. The flute or lyre accompanied the singing or recitation of elegiac and iambic verses, and almost all the Greek poets were known in later days as much for their contributions to musical knowledge as for their words. Choral lyrics were more fully developed in Sparta and in other Dorian states than in the Ionian cities, but Homer mentions five—the dirge, hymn to Apollo, processional wedding song, the hyporcheme, and a maiden-song—others were popular later [13]. Like other forms of Greek poetry, these choral lyrics were largely religious in origin [14]. Even the iambic invective, which in its scurrility seems to us wholly secular, was intended to purify the community by driving out wrongdoers and by averting evil.

Apollo, the patron god of poetry, is the archetype of Greek poets [15]. He is the god of music, to whom the lyre is particularly sacred, and the god of the dance, especially the hyporcheme (a song accompanied by a mimetic dance). He is also the god of prophecy, foretelling what is good and warning of evil. Above all, he is the god of healing [16]. The Greek poet was a medicine-man, not only soothing personal anxiety but strengthening and advising the people in a time of national distress [17]. In these manifold tasks he was guided by the Muses, upon whom he called for inspiration and support with sincere religious belief. The occasions for which he composed were usually religious, for the national festivals were dedicated to the gods, and marriages, funerals, and even banquets were religious ceremonies. The poet naturally, therefore, sang of the myths of the gods and invoked their presence [18]. The immorality of some of these myths strikes the Christian reader perhaps...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication Contents
• Preface
• Table of Contents
• 1 Archaic Greek Comedy: 600 to 530 b.c.
• 2 Archaic Greek Comedy: 530 to 470 b.c.
• 3 Athenian Old Comedy: 487 to 430 b.c.
• 4 Aristophanes, the Servant of Dionysos
• 5 Aristophanes, Comic Dramatist
• 6 Aristophanes, Comic Poet
• 7 Athenian Middle Comedy: 404 to 338 b.c.
• 8 Athenian New Comedy: 338 to 290 b.c.
• Index