Loulizerl C. Infante

• Ancient Greek comedy was one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece (the others being tragedy and the satyr play).

• Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods, Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, and New Comedy.

• The most important Old Comic dramatist is Aristophanes,

whose 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 in The Clouds, and in his racy anti-war

farce Lysistrata. It is nonetheless important to realize that

he was only one of a large number of comic poets

working in Athens in the late 5th century, his most

important contemporary rivals

being Hermippus and Eupolis.

• Son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaeum was

a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Also known as the

Father of Comedy[5] and the Prince of Ancient Comedy,

Aristophanes has been said to recreate the life of ancient

Athens more convincingly than any other author.His

powers of ridicule were feared and acknowledged by

influential contemporaries; Plato singled out

Aristophanes' play The Clouds as slander that

contributed to the trial and subsequent condemning to

death of Socrates. His second play, The

Babylonians (now lost), was denounced by the

demagogue Cleon as a slander against the

Athenian polis.

• The Acharnians

• Assemblywomen

• The Birds

• The Clouds

• The Frogs

• The Knights

• Lysistrata

• Peace

• Plutus

• Thesmophoriazusae

• The Wasps

• The line between old and middle comedy is not very

clearly marked, Aristophanes and others of the latest

writers of the one becoming the earliest writers of the

other. The latter was indeed merely an offshoot of the

former, but differed from it in three essential particulars: it

had no chorus, public characters were not personated on

the stage, and the objects of its ridicule were general

rather than personal, literary rather than political. The one

was caricature and lampoon, the other was criticism and

review.

• The period of the middle comedy extended from the

close of the Peloponnesian war to the enthralment of

Athens by Philip of Macedon; that is to say, from the

closing years of the fifth to nearly the middle of the fourth

century B.C. It was extremely prolific in plays, but not

especially so in genius.

•

• The favorite themes were the literary and social

peculiarities of the day, which, together with the

prominent systems of philosophy, were treated with light

and not ill-natured ridicule. In dealing with society,

classes rather than individuals were attacked, as

courtesans, parasites, revellers, and especially the self-

conceited cook, who, with his parade of culinary science,

was always a favorite target for the shafts of middle

comedy.

• From about 388 to 322 b.c.e. New Comedy evolved from

Middle Comedy when Athens’s revolt against

Macedonian rule failed, and free speech was lost to the

Athenians and their plays. New Comedies tended to

focus on the role of chance in the average citizen’s daily

fight for survival.

The play would open to find the characters’ lives had

become quite tempestuous, but by the final act,

chance would have resolved the difficulties in the

characters’ favor. Mistaken identities, disguises, and

comical errors abound in these plays.

• In format New Comedies were typically divided into three

or, more often, five acts. Frequently there was an

interlude between acts of a comedy, such as our modern

half-time shows. If a chorus appeared anywhere in a New

Comedy, the chorus would be strictly limited to such an

interlude.

Menander (342–292 b.c.e.), Philemon (c. 368–267

b.c.e.), and Diphilus (c. 360–290 b.c.e.) were the three

most renowned authors of comical plays in this era.. His

work Dysklos (The Grouch) was discovered on an

Egyptian papyrus found in 1959.

• Eubelus

• Philippides,[17] 335 BC, 301 BC

• Philemon of Soli or Syracuse (c. 362–262 BC)

• Menander (c. 342–291 BC)

• Apollodorus of Carystus (c. 300-260 BC)

• Diphilus of Sinope (c. 340-290 BC)

• Euphron[18]

• Dionysius Chalcus, after the god Archestratus

• Theophilus, contemporary with Callimedon

• Sosippus, contemporary with Diphillus

• Anaxippus, 303 BC

• Demetrius, 299 BC