A Cultural History of Comedy in Antiquity

Michael Ewans, Andrew McConnell Stott, Eric Weitz

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781350440692
• eBook ISBN: 9781350187580
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: History Reference

Drawing together contributions from scholars in a wide range of fields inside Classics and Drama, this volume traces the development of comedic performance and examines the different characteristics of Greek and Roman comedy. Although the origins of comedy are obscure, this study argues that comedic performances were at the heart of Graeco-Roman culture from around 486 BCE to the mid first century BCE. It explores the range of comedies during this period, which were fictional dramas that engaged with the political and social concerns of ancient society, and also at times with mythology and tragedy. The volume centres largely around the surviving work of Aristophanes and Menander in Athens, and Plautus and Terence in Rome, but authors whose plays survive only in fragments are also discussed. Performances and plays drew on a range of forms, including satire and fantasy, and were designed to entertain and amuse their audiences while also asking them to question issues of morality, privilege and class. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: form, theory, praxis, identities, the body, politics and power, laughter and ethics. These eight different approaches to ancient comedy add up to an extensive, synoptic coverage of the subject.

CHAPTER ONE

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Form

GESINE MANUWALD

INTRODUCTION

“Ancient comedy” is a modern term covering a wide range of distinct varieties of “comic” (light) drama occurring in different periods and places throughout the ancient world. Ancient scholars since Aristotle have tried to define “comedy” more precisely (Arist. Poet. 2.1448a16–18; 5.1449a31–b9), despite numerous differences between these attempts: “comedy” is seen as a dramatic genre involving characters of lower status and presenting fictional stories.¹ In the Hellenistic period the Greek comic poet Antiphanes famously has a character distinguish between tragedy and comedy by saying that tragedy is blessed since audiences know the stories while comic poets have to invent everything (Antiphanes, fr. 189 K.-A.; English translation in Rusten 2011: 506–7). In terms of authorship, early Roman playwrights produced both comedies and tragedies; but from the time these genres had established themselves in Rome and in Greece, there was a separation between serious and light dramatic genres, so that playwrights only produced works of one type.²

This survey will look at the various forms of “comedy” in roughly chronological order. Such a structure implies a distinction between Greek and Roman manifestations as well as between the main historical and literary periods. For each phase the major varieties of comedy, their standard format (and deviations) as well as formal characteristics of key representatives will be mentioned. The overview will start with classical Greece (c. fifth century), when comedies performed at the regular Athenian festivals are attested for the first time, and then move to Hellenistic Greece (c. late fourth–third century), when the political situation and the format of comedy changed significantly. Afterwards it will consider Republican Rome (c. 240–4), when comedy on the model of Hellenistic Greece was introduced and established at Rome, and conclude with the subsequent developments in the imperial period and late antiquity.

Throughout, it has to be borne in mind that more or less complete comedies only survive from four playwrights (Aristophanes, Menander, Plautus, Terence), each of whom was active in a different context. Since what survives from all other comic poets consists of testimonia, titles and fragments,³ not all questions about the standard form of Greek and Roman comedy can be answered for sure; this applies particularly to issues of dramatic structure. Typical features have to be inferred on the basis of the extant dramas of a few representatives and corroborated by fragments of other playwrights. Still, it appears that some key features emerge as characteristic of the dramatic genre of comedy and remain constant throughout most of antiquity; others are more specific to particular periods and are abandoned, changed or replaced over the course of time.⁴

CLASSICAL GREECE

According to Aristotle the origins of comedy are uncertain and less well known than those of tragedy (Arist. Poet. 3.1448a29–b2; 5.1449a38–b9). Later ancient scholars (apparently since Hellenistic times) distinguished three phases of Attic Greek comedy: Old, Middle, and New Comedy. This tripartite division of comedy ignores that the development was gradual, different styles overlapped, and it is problematic to posit sharp breaks in literary history. Still, there is no doubt that the main characteristics of comedy during the central sections of these periods differ from each other in form and content.⁵

In Athens the development of comedy is connected with its position at the regular festivals. The introduction of a comic competition at the Athenian Dionysia, the main festival for dramatic performances, took place early in the fifth century (486);⁶ a few decades later (c. 440) comedy began to be also part of the festival of the Lenaea, the second festival including dramatic performances. At each of these festivals five playwrights produced their comedies in a dramatic competition.

For the classical period the main evidence for comedy, representing the phase of “Old Comedy,” comes from the plays by the Athenian writer Aristophanes (c. 440s–c. 380s), as the works of his contemporaries only survive in fragments. Eleven plays by Aristophanes are extant; this represents about a quarter of his output, extending over almost all of his career (first performance at a festival: 427).⁷ The textual evidence for that phase is complemented by vase-paintings.⁸

As in tragedy, originally, the presence of a chorus was an important constituent of a drama as reflected in official terminology (when “the archon [chief magistrate] grants a chorus” indicates the permission to perform a drama).⁹ The comic chorus (of twenty-four members) consisted of male citizens at the Dionysia and of citizens and resident aliens (metics) at the Lenaea. Accordingly, the structure of the plays was based on the interaction between the chorus and (male) actors (typically three). Characters in Old Comedy were mostly taken from everyday life or contemporary history, complemented by fictional, fantastic figures (with corresponding costumes and appropriate masks). Actors would wear costumes with padded stomachs and buttocks as well as phalluses.¹⁰ The protagonist often embodies a middle-aged man or woman.

The language was initially rather expressive, including colloquialisms and vulgar phrases, coinages of words, some imitation of non-Attic dialects or ungrammatical and even nonsensical expressions to characterize “barbarians” as well as elaborate expressions in the style of tragedy. Because Old Comedy is rooted in contemporary Athenian society, there may be direct or indirect allusions to topical political issues and even explicit (frequently mocking) references to named individuals (onomasti kōmōdein). All ancient comedy was written in verse, and Old Comedy displays a rich variety of spoken and sung verses (including iambic, trochaic, and melic verses).

A play of Old Comedy often starts with a prologue setting the scene: frequently, at the start there is criticism of the current political and social conditions, and the protagonist comes up with an exciting idea of how to improve the situation. During the subsequent parodos the chorus enters. A sequence of episodic scenes follows, featuring various characters (including passages in which characters with different views argue against each other): in those discussions the initial idea may be supported or criticized. Most of Aristophanes’ plays feature a choral section called parabasis, often around the middle of the play: this is a unique element in Attic Old Comedy, offering remarks outside the plot, in which the chorus may serve as a vehicle for the playwright’s direct engagement with the audience.¹¹ The scenes after the parabasis might feature other characters approaching the protagonists because of the new regime they are trying to set up. The play concludes with an exodos, when the chorus and the characters depart after a final conversation. Generally, in the time of Old Comedy the dramatic structure of comedy is different from that of tragedy and is rather flexible and loose.¹²

In Aristophanes’ late plays (Assemblywomen and Wealth) structural developments can be observed: the parabasis disappears or is drastically shortened, although the pieces still contain elements of metadrama and addresses to the audience. The role of the chorus and the agōn (argumentative discussion) are reduced. This is generally interpreted as an evolution towards “Middle Comedy,” especially as Aristophanes’ final two plays, Aiolosikon and Kokalos, produced soon after 388, are mythological burlesques without a chorus (16 and 13 fragments as well as testimonia in K.-A., vol. III 2; English translation of material on Aiolosikon in Rusten 2011: 281–3).

Although the assumption of a strict tripartite division of the history of Attic Greek comedy has become problematic, and a gradual process is more likely, a core period of 380–350 can be identified in which what are regarded as typical characteristics of Middle Comedy can be seen most clearly, with transitional periods of twenty to thirty years on either side.¹³ In Middle Comedy there is less evidence for the extensive use of the chorus, for the agōn, and for references to contemporary politics. The language is more refined and less exuberant. There is less metrical variety; for instance, the meter of the anapaestic tetrameter is not attested anywhere.¹⁴ Typical characters of New Comedy, such as the slave, the cook, the parasite, or the soldier, appear, but are not yet fully developed. Comedies of this period are often based on comic and parodic versions of mythical plots.¹⁵ Middle Comedy appears as less vulgar than Old Comedy, and actors no longer wear padded costumes and phalluses.¹⁶

In addition to scripted comedy following a plot there were various less formal types of comic performances from the sixth century all over Greece, though information about these comic forms is limited.¹⁷ One of these was the Doric mime or “comedy,” which seems to have appeared early in the sixth century. Pieces in that genre often presented farcical scenes from daily life or mythological travesty, including song and dance, without much emphasis on a plot. Early literary versions of such comic forms are the plays in verse by Epicharmus and the pieces in rhythmic prose by Sophron (fifth century).

HELLENISTIC GREECE

After the classical period dramatic contests continued not only in Athens (with victory lists extending into the mid-second century), where a new phase in the development of comedy emerged, but they are also known for the third to the first centuries for other places in mainland Greece as well as some islands and cities in Asia Minor: in this time comedy spread beyond Athens, exported by traveling troupes of actors, the Artisans of Dionysus. Greek comic plays were also performed in the west, in Sicily and Italy.¹⁸ Contrary to what used to be assumed, the plays shown there are less likely to have been of a local type, but rather Athenian in origin, though adapted to the changed performance conditions and audience preferences.

In addition to revivals of existing pieces new plays were produced, especially in Athens. These plays followed the style called “New Comedy,” conventionally regarded as extending from the first production of a comedy by Menander (c. 342– c. 291) in 321 to the middle of the third century. The only play of this type to be preserved almost completely is Menander’s Dyskolos (discovered in the twentieth century); in addition, there are substantial parts of several other plays by Menander.¹⁹ Already in antiquity connections between “...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Text
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Notes on Contributors
• Series Preface
• Comedy Title Abbreviations
• Other Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Form
• 2 Theory
• 3 Praxis
• 4 Identities
• 5 The Body
• 6 Politics and Power
• 7 Laughter
• 8 Ethics
• Ethics in Roman Comedy
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Copyright