Comedy

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Comedy

Limitations. The origins of comedy as a formal genre of drama are even more obscure than those of tragedy. Aristotle’s Poetics (after 335 b.c.e.) is vague enough about the origins of the latter but explicitly says that much less is known about how comedy developed because in its early stages it was not taken seriously enough to warrant proper records being kept. Originally the performers in comedies were volunteers, and only at a comparatively late date did the medium win state support comparable to that of tragedy. Another source dates the earliest comic victory to one Chionides in 486 b.c.e. (thus, well after the traditional date of Thespis’s first victory in tragedy) and regular competitions in comedy are certainly established by 472 b.c.e., when an incomplete inscription recording dramatic victors in Athens begins. However, even this date is nearly fifty years before the first surviving comedy, so there is little information about what comedy was like when records began; a passing remark by Aristotle suggests that it may have been even more personally directed than the later, surviving comedy. All surviving comedies from Classical Greece were written by one man, Aristophanes, although there exist the names and fragments of more than fifty of his contemporary rivals, and thus any description of this comedy must be essentially based on his work.

Divisions. Ancient scholars had a tripartite division of comedy, dividing it into Old, Middle, and New. New Comedy, essentially domestic in focus, had enormous influence on Roman and thence later European comedy, but only one fairly complete play from it survives. Middle Comedy too has survived only tenuously, with the exception of the two final plays of Aristophanes. Only with Old Comedy is there a significant body of work on which to base generalizations; and it is best defined by its relationship to tragedy.

Qualities. By definition, tragedy is serious and comedy is funny. In the Greek context, the seriousness of tragedy is unrelieved by any of the sort of scenes which lighten even William Shakespeare’s darkest plays: perhaps there is only one real joke in all surviving Greek tragedy. Whether or not there is a corresponding complete lack of seriousness in Old Comedy allows of no certain answer, but its overwhelming preference for humor marks its most obvious difference from tragedy. The humor expressed itself often in ways that further distinguish this form of drama from its more respectable relation. Often Aristophanes refers in a highly explicit and self-conscious way to drama, both comic and tragic, and even to the play being performed: nothing nearly as explicit is ever found in tragedy, which keeps the dramatic illusion always intact if occasionally strained. This fact seems related to tragedy’s desire to be believed at some level, as if it can only achieve its goal if it somehow engages the sympathy of the audience, for which some kind of plausibility seems a prerequisite. Comedy, however, is manifestly not interested in being believed—as witnessed by its surreal plotlines.

Political Commentary. Much of the humor of Old Comedy is at the expense of political figures of the day, again marking a clear difference from tragedy. Tragedies are set in the distant past, or (exceptionally) in a faraway place; Old Comedy is set in the present and is peopled by the playwrights’ contemporaries. Not only political figures, like Pericles and Cleon, felt the sting of abuse: philosophers such as Socrates and tragedians such as Euripides are also held up to ridicule. So too are dozens of other Athenians who today are only names to us; democratic Old Comedy did not restrict its attacks to the rich and famous. Although ancient politics tended to be based more on personalities than on abstract policy issues, Aristophanes’ treatment of public figures does not concentrate solely on these personal elements. Whether attacking a politician or a poet, he takes account of ideological issues as well. However, the extent to which Aristophanes has anything really serious to say about political issues is a hotly debated subject. No doubt his chief concern was invariably to raise laughs, but there are certainly passages where he explicitly claims to be offering, and to have offered elsewhere, sound political advice. One school of thought would maintain that this claim to offer serious advice is itself humorous—and indeed it is sometimes presented in that light, such as when he claims that even the king of Persia was aware of the sensible advice he had been offering the Athenians! The trump card usually played by this school is the fact that Aristophanes’ Knights (424 b.c.e.), a vitriolic attack on the contemporary politician Cleon, was successful in dramatic competition shortly before the Athenian democratic assembly elected him to high office; the conclusion drawn is that the political elements were not meant seriously by the poet or taken as such by the audience. However, that conclusion is obviously only one of several possible ones. As the old saying goes, a week is a long time in politics; Cleon’s status may well have changed quickly. Again, it is quite possible that the judges of the festival did not accurately reflect the opinions of most of the audience—there is a similar discrepancy occurring with Aristophanes’ Clouds (423 b.c.e.) when the judges went against the audience’s vote. The apparent contradiction between the success of Knights and Cleon’s subsequent election to office means nothing definite as regards the political purpose or impact of Old Comedy.

Obscenity. The plethora of contemporary references in Old Comedy certainly distinguish the genre from Tragedy. Another striking difference is the role of obscenity, which is ubiquitous in Old Comedy but completely absent from the more respectable medium. Not only did the standard male costume include a visible phallos, or artificial penis, but the texts are richly embellished with references to bodily functions in a way that those of Tragedy are not, and these functions are described in language that is clearly vulgar slang. When philosophers and serious poets need to mention sex, for instance, they do so in language that is euphemistic and vague, and when contemporary medical writers need to be more explicit they use a different vocabulary from that found in Old Comedy. Some of the latter’s language is precisely the equivalent of modern “four letter words” and is used in similar contexts of aggression and transgression. This indulgence—indeed celebration—of transgression has been seen by some as an essential feature of Old Comedy, and parallels have been drawn with “carnival” practices in other cultures.

Fantasy. Old Comedy not only transgresses the boundaries of normal social restraint, but of common sense and rationality as well. Compelled to make up their own plots rather than rely on traditional myth, comic playwrights developed a rich and surreal fantasy element. In Wasps (422b.c.e.), where the chorus themselves are half-men and half-wasps, dogs put each other on trial, and even a cheese grater can be called to give evidence. Other plays show similar exuberance of imagination: a chorus of frogs sing of the joys of marsh life, the birds wage war against the gods by besieging the heavens and preventing sacrificial smoke from reaching them, and an ordinary citizen acquires a giant dung beetle on which he flies to Olympus to get Zeus to put an end to the Second Peloponnesian War (431-404 b.c.e.). The Ekkleziazousai is along these lines too—women actually exercise political power, which was for contemporary Athenian citizens nothing short of a ludicrous fantasy.

TRAGEDY’S ONLY JOKE?

Hecuba, the queen of the defeated Trojans, has been trying to convince Menelaus to kill his unfaithful wife Helen, the cause of so much misery to them both:

Menelaus: Attendants! Bring Helen to the ships to sail home.

Hecuba: Don’t let her sail in the same ship as you.

Menelaus: Why not? Has she put on so much weight?

Source: Euripides, Trojan Women, pp. 1047-1050

Stepping Forward. Structurally, the most important difference between Old Comedy and Tragedy lies in the presence of the parabasis (literally “stepping forward”), when the chorus addresses the audience directly, sometimes

in the persona of their own character (as wasps or birds), other times speaking directly for the poet in the first person. Frequently political and literary references occur in this context, both of which also distinguish the two genres. However differences also existed in production: a comic chorus had twenty-four members (versus twelve then later fifteen for tragedy), and comedy was also able to make use of four speaking actors at once (versus three for tragedy).

The Lênaia. Comedy played a subordinate role in Athens’ main drama festival, the Great (or City) Dionysia, in which five playwrights each offered a single comic play for competition. (Meanwhile there were a total of twelve plays written by three tragedians.) Yet, comedy had the major role in another Athenian festival from about the middle of the fifth century b.c.e., the Lênaia. Held in the middle of winter, this festival was a less cosmopolitan event and attracted fewer foreigners than the Great Dionysia and was also regarded as less important by the tragedians: two tragedians produced two plays each for any Lênaia festival, while the same number of comedians competed as in the larger festival.