Introduction to Old Comedy

February 4, 2008

Origins of Comedy

is a company of men singing in a festive manner

• Markers from 4th century show City Dionysia festival included a boy’s chorus, a men’s chorus, comedy, and tragedy

• 6th century B.C. Attic black-figure amphora shows a chorus of men dressed as horses, many choruses of the 5th century B.C. were animal choruses as well

Theories on Origins of Old Comedy

• Aristotle says comedy developed from the preludes to bawdy “phallic songs” which still existed in Greece at Aristotle’s own time, frequently bawdy verses accompanied weddings

• Writings of Archilochus and Hipponax (lyric poets of the 7th century and 6th century B.C. respectively) contain unrestrained vilification and gross humor, they are literary precedents to Old Comedy

• Multiple theories on the origin of comedy in Greece but none have been universally accepted

Old Comedy

• Old Comedy refers to comedies produced at Athens during the 5th century B.C.

• Aristophanes’ eleven plays are the only extant examples of Old Comedy and he is the last old comedian

• The final two plays of Aristophanes produced in the 4th century differ greatly from his earlier work

The Details about Old Comedy

• Comedies performed at two festivals in Athens during the 5th century, the City Dionysia and the Lenaea in honor of Dionysius, five comedies were performed at each festival and prizes were awarded

• In 4th century comedies were performed at the Rural Dionysia festival as well

• Chorus in old comedies made up of 24 men and often the chorus gives its name to the play (example Acharnians, Knights)

• Most Aristophanic plays require 4 actors

Plot and Themes

• Often the hero must overcome tensions with the chorus, at which point the chorus supports and applauds the hero thereafter

• Plots of old comedy are often fantastical (Birds, Clouds, Lysistrata)

• Mythology and theology treated irreverently in Old Comedy, gods made often to seem dishonest, cowardly, foolish— human

• actors wore grotesque, humorous masks, often costumes included exaggerated aspects including bellies and phalluses

A Special Element of Old Comedy

• actors frequently refer to audience members, lampoon political and social characters either by making the person himself a character in the play (Agathon from Thesmorphoriazusae) or creating a thinly veiled caricature of someone

• Shows like The Daily Show with John Stewart, The Colbert Report, and Saturday Night Live (before the awful recent crop of writers) are the closest thing to examples of Old Comedy in the modern United States

• Agathon and Euripides are parodied in the Thesmophoriazusae produced 411 B.C., a few months after Lysistrata

Thesmophoriazusae • Euripides: There dwells, observe, the famous Agathon, the tragic poet.

• Mnesilochus: (considering) Agathon. Don’t know him.

• Euripides: He is that Agathon—

• Mnesilochus: (interrupting) Dark, brawny fellow?

• Euripides: Oh no, quite different; don’t you know him really?

• Mnesilochus: Big-whiskered fellow?

• Euripides: Don’t you know him really?

• Mnesilochus: No. (Thinks again.) No, I don’t; at least I don’t remember.

• Euripides: (severely) I fear there’s much you don’t remember, sir. But step aside: I see his servant coming.

Middle Comedy

• Period covering comedies produced between Old and New Comedy (404 B.C.–321 B.C.), includes the last two plays of Aristophanes the Ecclesiazusae and Wealth

• Loss of Athenian empire in 404 B.C at the end of the Peloponnesian War drastically affected comedy, loss of power at Athens caused comedy to become less political and Athenian and more cosmopolitan

• New comedy style chorus, which does not take part in plot, begins during this period

Middle Comedy (cont’d)

• Grotesque phalluses and padding were abandoned during this period as well

• Plots of New Comedy emerge in this period of Middle Comedy, in most New Comedies a naïve young man falls in love with a prostitute and uses the guile of his clever slave to visit the women, at the end of the story the woman is revealed to be of noble birth through some sort of recognition scene

• Stock characters are common in New Comedy (the young lover, the miserly old man, the prostitute, the pimp, the clever slave, the parasite)