Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy The Hellenistic Age general chaos - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

chapter 10 later greek comedy
SMART_READER_LITE
LIVE PREVIEW

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy The Hellenistic Age general chaos - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy The Hellenistic Age general chaos and confusion after Spartas victory in the Peloponnesian War led to a civil war of sorts inside Greece the rise of Thebes the Battle of Leuctra (371 BCE ):


slide-1
SLIDE 1

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

The Hellenistic Age

  • general chaos and confusion after

Sparta’s victory in the Peloponnesian War

  • led to a civil war of sorts inside Greece
  • the rise of Thebes
  • the Battle of Leuctra (371 BCE): “the

graveyard of the Spartan aristocracy”

slide-2
SLIDE 2

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

The Hellenistic Age

  • the rise of Macedon
  • especially, Philip II
  • defeated the combined forces of the

southern Greeks at Chaeronea (338 BCE)

  • but Philip was assassinated (336 BCE)
  • and Alexander assumed Philip’s throne,

saddled up and rode east

slide-3
SLIDE 3

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

The Hellenistic Age

  • Alexander’s conquests opened up the

East to Greek cultural colonization

  • the Greek language began to evolve into a

vernacular dialect called koine

  • the Greeks were, in general, richer than

ever before

– but depressed – and disoriented (get it?)

slide-4
SLIDE 4

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

Philosophy in the Hellenistic Age

  • rise of many new philosophies
  • Stoicism: be unemotional and trust that

the universe has a plan

  • Epicureanism: retreat behind garden

walls and avoid pain

slide-5
SLIDE 5

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

Art in the Hellenistic Age

  • all this led to drastic

changes in art

  • e.g. statuary focuses
  • n violence/pain
  • technically brilliant but

hollow

slide-6
SLIDE 6

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

Post-Classical Drama

  • tragedy faltered, collapsed and died

– though revivals of “old” tragedies from the Classical Age still had a huge following

  • comedy survived by inventing the sit-com
  • also, mime thrived but did not peak — yet!

– still too bawdy and low-brow for most viewers – drama would not sink as low as mime— at least, for a while

slide-7
SLIDE 7

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

Post-Classical Drama

  • according to Platonius, funding for drama

was undercut, leading to cost-cutting measures

– e.g. fewer choruses (or new odes) – also, the end of the parabasis – and the end of the phallus

  • also, less direct assault on those in power
  • instead, comedies ridiculed figures in myth
slide-8
SLIDE 8

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

Post-Classical Drama

  • no play extant from 388 to 316 BCE
  • this period is called “Middle Comedy”
  • but we can judge from the outcome what

must have happened

– especially, the development of stock character types – e.g. braggart soldier, greedy prostitute, young lover, stingy old man, etc.

slide-9
SLIDE 9

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

Post-Classical Drama

  • cf. Theophrastus’ Characters

http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/ClasDram/chapters/101lat ergkcomedy.htm#theophrastus

  • n.b. “character” = “image on a coin”
  • but who invented “characters”: comic

poets or philosophers?

– comedy seems the more likely source!

slide-10
SLIDE 10

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

Post-Classical Drama

  • Euripides: the “father of New Comedy”
  • later comic poets used his melodramatic

style, particularly in crafting complex plots

  • but no choruses (i.e. written by dramatists)

– only four “choral interludes” (> five acts) – Aristotle called these songs embolima (“throw-ins”) – but were they unrelated to the plot?

slide-11
SLIDE 11

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

Post-Classical Drama

  • greatest author of Middle Comedy was

Alexis of Thurii

  • no play of his survives entire

– but many fragments – and the Greek original of Plautus’ Poenulus?

  • invented the character of the parasite

– parasitos (“priest’s assistant”)

slide-12
SLIDE 12

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

New Comedy

  • by late 300’s BCE, New Comedy appears

– many playwrights from outside Greece

  • based on common domestic concerns

– e.g. family, wealth, being a good neighbor

  • but built around extraordinary

coincidences, like Euripides’ rescue plays

– e.g. recovery of long-lost children

slide-13
SLIDE 13

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

New Comedy

  • New Comedy was seen to reflect life in the

day realistically

  • thus, it also shaped life in Hellenistic

Greece

– e.g. offered a more optimistic and hopeful view of life than that of Stoics/Epicureans

  • but still another “garden wall” for Greeks

desperate to flee from the world at large

slide-14
SLIDE 14

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

New Comedy

  • three great exponents of New Comedy

– cf. the triad of classical tragedians

  • Philemon (ca. 368-267 BCE)

– won most often at the Dionysia – much reflection on philosophy

  • Diphilus (ca. 360-290 BCE)

– from Sinope (on the shore of the Black Sea) – famous for farce and physical comedy

slide-15
SLIDE 15

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

New Comedy

an ancient bust of Diphilus

slide-16
SLIDE 16

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

Menander

  • but the “star of New Comedy” was

Menander (ca. 344-291 BCE)

– however, only considered best after his lifetime, cf. Euripides

  • his plays, however, were not carried down

through a manuscript tradition

– his Greek is later (not classical) so his drama was not used in training medieval schoolboys

slide-17
SLIDE 17

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

Ancient Depictions

  • f Menander
slide-18
SLIDE 18

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

Menander

  • yet much of his work has been found

among the papyri unearthed in Egypt

– very popular reading even long after his death

  • one complete play (Dyscolus, “The

Grouch”) and many sizeable fragments

– more than half of Samia, Epitrepontes, Aspis – less than half of Sicyonius, Misoumenos, Perikeiromene

slide-19
SLIDE 19

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

Menander

  • from the remains of Menander’s work, it’s

clear the three-actor rule remained in effect

– even though New Comedy requires much more action than tragedy or Old Comedy ever had – i.e. entrances/exits, more characters to play, and thus frequent/faster costume changes – sometimes only five lines on stage to effect a change of role offstage (and move to a new point of entry): see handout on Dyscolus

slide-20
SLIDE 20

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

a Roman mosaic depicting the

  • pening scene of

Menander’s Synaristosai (“The Ladies Who Lunch”)

slide-21
SLIDE 21

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

Menander

slide-22
SLIDE 22

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

Menander

  • took stock characters of Middle Comedy

and made them more humane/subtle, e.g.

– Polemon the “braggart soldier” in love (Perikeiromene) – Thais the kindly madam (Eunuch) – Davus the inept “managing slave” (Andria)

  • thus, characters resist “characterization”

– this sort of metatheatre promoted realism

slide-23
SLIDE 23

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

Menander

  • characters who recur in Menander:

– Moschion (“Bull-Calf”): young lover/rapist – Demeas (“People”): gruff old man – Smikrines (“Small”): stingy old man – Syros (“Syrian”): clever doorman/butler

  • principal theme in Menander is love

– especially, the freedom to marry as one chooses

slide-24
SLIDE 24

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

Menander’s Samia

  • an excellent example of Menander’s subtle

use of “characters”

– all of them want and try to do what’s right – in the end, coincidence, character and a friendly universe save them

  • from this, they — and we! — learn lessons
  • in particular, all our lives have the makings
  • f a “happy ending” if we’ll just let it happen
slide-25
SLIDE 25

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

Menander’s Epitrepontes (“The Litigants”)

http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/ClasDram/cha pters/103reading5epitrepontes.htm