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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”

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

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?)

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

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

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

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

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.

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!

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?

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”)

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

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

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

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

New Comedy

an ancient bust of Diphilus

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

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

Ancient Depictions

• f Menander

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

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

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

a Roman mosaic depicting the

• pening scene of

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

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

Menander

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

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

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

Chapter 10: Later Greek Comedy

Menander’s Epitrepontes (“The Litigants”)

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