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Ancient Greek comedy |
Greek comedy is the name given to a wide genre of theatrical plays written, and performed, in Ancient Greece. Along with tragedy, it makes up the greater portion of ancient Greek theatre, and its descendant traditions.
Evolution
This evolution is much simpler than that of its sister art, tragedy, mainly because there is little exact information regarding its origin and earlier development. All that Aristotle can tell us is that it first took shape in Megaris and Sicyon, whose people were noted for their coarse humour and sense of the ludicrous, while Susarion, the earliest comic poet, was a native of a Megarian town. Add to this that it arose from the phallic processions of the Greeks, as did tragedy from the dithyramb, and we have about all that is known about the origins of comedy.
At the country festivals held in celebration of the vintage it was the custom for people to pass from village to village, some in carts, uttering the crude jests and abuse unjustly attributed to the tragic choruses; others on foot, bearing aloft the phallic emblem and singing the praises of Phales, the comrade of Bacchus. In cities it was also the custom, after an evening banquet, for young men to roam around the streets with torches in their hands, headed by a lyre or flute-player. Such a group of revellers was called a komos, and a member of the band a komast or komos-singer, the song itself being termed a komoedia, or comedy, just as a song of satyrs was named a tragoedia, or tragedy.
The Phallic processions were continued as late as the days of Aristotle (384 – 322 BC), and we learn from one of the orations of Demosthenes that the riotous youths who infested the streets of Athens delighted in their comic buffooneries. Pasquinades of the most obscene kind were part of the exhibitions. When formally established as part of the Dionysiac festivals, the Leneas and Dionysia, it had its chorus, though less numerous and costly than the dithyrambic choir, and the actors, at first without masks, disguised their features by smearing them with the lees of wine.
Comedy is defined by Plato as the generic name for all exhibitions which have a tendency to excite laughter. Though its development was mainly due to the political and social conditions of Athens, it finally held up the mirror to all that was characteristic of Athenian life.
Forms of Ancient Greek Comedy
By a consensus of authorities comedy has been arranged in three divisions, or rather should they be termed variations in form - the old, the middle and the new.
New Comedy
The new comedy lasted throughout the reign of the Macedonian rulers, ending about 260 BC. It
may be studied to better advantage in the Latin adaptations by Plautus and Terence than in the few Greek fragments that have come down to us
(though during the twentieth century, the complete text of Dyskolos, a play by Menander, the leading writer of New Comedy, has been
rediscovered. It is the only example of New Comedy to have survived in its entirety. A few long fragments by Menander have
survived as well from such plays as The Arbitration, The Girl from Samos, The Shorn Girl, and The
Hero), nor did it differ essentially from the comic drama of
References
- Aristotle, Poetics, lines beginning at 1449a. [1]
- The Drama: Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization, volume 1, by Alfred Bates. (London: Historical Publishing Company, 1906)
- P.W. Buckham, Theatre of the Greeks, 1827.
- Francis MacDonald Cornford, The Origin of Attic Comedy, 1934.
- Xavier Riu, Dionysism and Comedy, 1999. [2]
External links
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