Menander

Menander (c.342–293 BC), classical Greek dramatist, the leading writer of Athenian New Comedy, as distinct from the Old Comedy of Aristophanes. In spite of his evident popularity, very little of his work survived, except in fragments and passages quoted by later writers, such as St Paul (Corinthians 15: 33): ‘Evil communications corrupt good manners’. But in 1905, 1955, and 1965 considerable portions of a number of plays were discovered. Of these, The Rape of the Locks and The Arbitration were edited and translated by Gilbert Murray in 1941 and 1945. It is in these plays that the stock characters—the irascible old man, the greedy slave, the cruel guardian, the garrulous pedant—first appear in guises which, in the opinion of some critics, link them to the ‘masks’ of the commedia dell'arte. But it is a debatable point. All we know for certain is that Menander was responsible for the evolution of a new type of comedy which did away with the chorus and was based on minute observation of contemporary man and manners. It was this aspect of Menander's work which appealed most strongly to the Hellenistic age. Menander was praised most highly by ancient critics for his fidelity to nature. If nowadays this ‘fidelity’ is questioned on the grounds that his plots are contrived and his characters stereotypes, it should be remembered that he stands at the head of a long succession of comic writers, beginning with the Romans, whose works have been brilliantly adapted to their own times, through Molière and Goldoni to Pinero, Coward, Ayckbourn, and Neil Simon. Menander is, in a very real sense, the father of modern comedy.