Old Comedy

Old Comedy (archaia) is the first period of the ancient Greek comedy, according to the canonical division by the Alexandrian grammarians.[1] The most important Old Comic playwright is Aristophanes – whose works, with their daring political commentary and abundance of sexual innuendo, effectively define the genre today.

Origins and history

The origins of the Old Comedy were traced by Aristotle to the komos or celebratory festival processions of ancient Greece, and the phallic songs that accompanied them.[2] Although the earliest Athenian comedy, from the 480s to 440s BC, is almost entirely lost, it is clear that comedy had already crystallised into a highly structured form, with the chorus playing a central role.[3] The most important poets of the period were Magnes, whose work survives only in a few fragments of dubious authenticity, and Cratinus, who took the prize at the City Dionysia probably sometime around 450 BC. Although no complete plays by Cratinus are preserved, they are known through hundreds of fragments: he was noted in antiquity both for a mastery of plot and for the obscene vehemence of his attacks on Pericles.[4]

Aristophanes and his contemporaries

Aristophanes satirized and lampooned the most prominent personalities and institutions of his time, as can be seen, for example, in his scurrilous portrayal of Socrates in The Clouds, and in his racy anti-war farce Lysistrata. Aristophanes was only one of a large number of comic poets, however, working in Athens in the late 5th century BC; his biggest rivals were Hermippus and Eupolis. Classical literary criticism placed Aristophanes somewhere between the harshness of Cratinus and the smoothness of Eupolis.[5]

All the Old Comedy writers worked within a highly structured format – parados, agon, and parabasis – which paradoxically offered maximum scope for improvisatory flights of fancy.[6] Song, dance, costume, and chorus all played important roles, as did the parody of the ‘senior’ drama, tragedy.[7] Possibly due to the influence of tragedy was the important role of a heroic figure in Aristophanic comedy: as Northrop Frye put it, “In Aristophanes there is usually a central figure who constructs his (or her) own society in the teeth of strong opposition”.[8] The diminished role of the protagonist (and chorus) in his latest works marks a point of transition to the Middle comedy.[9]

Later influence/parallels
  • Horace claimed a formative role for the Old Comedy in the making of Roman satire.[10]

See also

References
  1. Mastromarco (1994) p.12
  2. S Halliwell, Aristophanes: Birds and other plays (Oxford 1998) p. xvii and p. x
  3. S Halliwell, Aristophanes: Birds and other plays (Oxford 1998) p. xxx-i
  4. J Boardman ed., The Oxford History of the Classical World (Oxford 1986) p. 176
  5. H Nettleship, A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (London 1894) p. 67
  6. I Ousby ed., The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (Cambridge 1995) p. 195
  7. S H Butcher, Harvard Lectures on Greek Subjects (London 1904) p. 175 and p. 181-4
  8. N Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton 1971) p. 43
  9. S Halliwell, Aristophanes: Birds and other plays (Oxford 1998) p. 202
  10. A Palmer ed., The Satires of Horace (London 1920) p. 18 and p. 156
  11. S Halliwell, Aristophanes: Birds and other plays (Oxford 1998) p. lx
  12. Seth Lerer, Comedy through the Ages (recorded lecture series), Springfield, Virginia: The Teaching Company, 2000.

Further reading
Library resources about
Old Comedy
  • Barrett, David (1964) The Frogs and Other Plays Penguin Books
  • Barrett, David and Alan Sommerstein (eds)(2003) The Birds and Other plays Penguin Classics
  • Mastromarco, Giuseppe (1994) Introduzione a Aristofane (Sesta edizione: Roma-Bari 2004). ISBN 88-420-4448-2
  • Dobrov, Gregory W., ed. 1995. Beyond Aristophanes: Transition and Diversity in Greek Comedy. American Classical Studies 38. Atlanta: Scholars Press.
  • Ehrenberg, Victor. 1962. The People of Aristophanes: A Sociology of Old Attic Comedy. 3d ed. New York: Schocken.
  • Harvey, David, and John Wilkins, eds. 2000. The Rivals of Aristophanes: Studies in Athenian Old Comedy. London: Duckworth and the Classical Press of Wales.
  • Henderson, Jeffrey. 1993. Problems in Greek Literary History: The Case of Aristophanes’ Clouds. In Nomodeiktes: Greek Studies in Honor of Martin Ostwald. Edited by Ralph M. Rosen and Joseph Farrell, 591–601. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.
  • Rosen, Ralph M. 2015. “Aischrology in Old Comedy and the Question of ‘Ritual Obscenity’” In Ancient Obscenities: Their Nature and Use in the Ancient Greek and Roman Worlds. Edited by Dutsch, D. and A. Suter, 71-90. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
  • Rosen, Ralph M. 1988. Old Comedy and the Iambographic Tradition. American Classical Studies 19. Atlanta: Scholars Press.
  • Rothwell, Kenneth S., Jr. 2007. Nature, Culture, and the Origins of Greek Comedy: A Study of Animal Choruses. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  • Rusten, Jeffrey. 2006. "Who “Invented” Comedy? The Ancient Candidates for the Origins of Comedy and the Visual Evidence." American Journal of Philology 127.1: 37–66.
  • Sifakis, Grigoris M. 2006. "From Mythological Parody to Political Satire: Some Stages in the Evolution of Old Comedy." Classica et Mediaevalia 57:19–48.
  • Sommerstein, Alan. 2011. "Hinc Omnis Pendet?: Old Comedy and Roman Satire." Classical World 105.1: 25-38.
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