Aristophanic Comedy Connection between democracy & drama



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Aristophanic Comedy
Connection between democracy & drama

  • Most of the audience watching the plays would on make crucial decisions in the Assembly

  • In the background of the comedies was the Peloponnesian War

    • added power and pathos to cries for peace and sanity in each play

  • When Sparta defeated Athens and abolished democracy, the vital link was broken.

  • Comedy became more domestic in nature, limited in scope & force.


Features of Attic Old Comedy

  • Emphasis on bawdiness deriving from fertility origins

  • A structure centred upon the parados, agon and parabasis

  • Satirical attacks on current trends and members of the community

  • The festivals and the element of competition

  • Serious and educative purpose of the plays

  • Importance of chorus and masks and animal costumes


Links to Dionysus

  • Was the God of Wine, ecstatic release, fertility and theatre

  • Both actor & drunkard have lost their normal personalities

  • The Greeks explained being under influence of strong passions as temporarily possessed by a god

  • Actors wore masks and costumes that covered them from head to foot so their normal personalities were obscured, allowing the power of the god to shine through.


Fertility Festival Origins

  • The earliest form of the worship of Dionysus were annual processions where the god’s image was taken from his temple behind the theatre of Dionysus to Eleusis

  • Many wore masks

  • In the countryside, hymns were sung, animals were sacrificed and the celebrants drank wine.

  • After the feast, they retired by the roadside on beds of ivy leaves, drinking and merrymaking.

  • At nightfall, the procession returned to the city by torchlight and the image of the god was set up on an altar in the middle of the open-air theatre.

  • This re-enacted the coming of the god to Athens

  • In the komos or phallic procession through country villages, worship of Dionysus was again expressed mainly through song and dance that clearly showed the gods connection with fertility religions

    • A flute player led the way, followed by women singing hymns to Dionysus, carrying the phallus pole or human puppet with a large phallus

    • Behind marched phallic choruses of men, wearing masks representing drunkenness, who asked bystanders to make way for the god.

    • They would scoff at the bystanders, purifying the community by attacking prominent or unpopular individuals and scaring away evil.

  • Phallic rites were not by nature obscene.

  • Their function was religious: to purify and renew the community, to scare away evil

  • Although Attic Old Comedy contains much satire and personal attack, it is not poisonous or vicious.

  • Aristophanes attacks war and stupidity with laughter.


Importance of the Chorus

  • Comedy began when the chorus leader separated himself off from other singers as they told stories of the god , then two more actors were added, chorus numbers were fixed at 24

  • Some of the earliest comedies were given titles with animal names

    • May account for Aristophanes’ titles like Wasps, Birds or Frogs

  • Very first masks may have been the purple faces of worshippers of the god of wine, who had smeared their faces with lees from the wine jars

  • The chorus sings, dances, judges the agon, and is often disguised in animal costumes

  • Enhance the play’s impact on the audience

  • Could represent public opinion & shape the audience’s response

  • Conveyed political messages and make themes of the play more accessible to the audience



Structure of the Plays

  • In open-air theatres the chorus acts as a curtain would in modern theatres: choruses sung between scenes mark passing of time and the division of action.

  • Importance of the chorus can be seen in the three-part structure of Attic Old Comedy

    • The parados –the processional entry of the chorus into the theatre

    • The agon – the debate on values between two main characters judged by the chorus

    • The parabasis – the chorus stepped out of role, unmasked and talked to the audience on behalf of their author, explaining the significance of their animal costume and the play’s themes.

  • Threefold pattern may also reflect the themes of the plays, which all seem to include

    • A sick society mad on war, lawsuits, money and political and military domination of Greece

    • A fantastic deed done by the hero – in Wasps, the fantasy trial of the dogs – in Frogs, the descent into the underworld. The fantastic deed propels us into a never-never world of peace, reconciliation and fulfilment.

    • The rejoicing with which the play ends.

  • Super-imposed on the parados, agon and parabasis were scenes of spoken dialogue added later, as the chorus came before the actors. They were:

    • The prologue. Introduces the protagonist and explains his predicament. Sources of sickness affecting the city made clearer. Much verbal humour.

    • Scenes after the parados. A series of comic episodes leading up to the Agon.

    • Encounter scenes. Occur after the Agon. Generally consist of a series of episodes in which the hero drives away a succession of unwelcome visitors who would all like an unearned share of the peace and plenty earned by the hero through his fantastic deed.

    • Exodos. The choral finale and the exit of the chorus.

    • Many scenes were separated by short, sung interludes. Some of the plays end with a gamos, or marriage scene, an appropriate end to celebrations of fertility and creativeness.


Satire

  • Attic Old Comedy includes much satire on unpopular individuals.

  • Perhaps trying to curry favour with the audiences

  • Wasps includes more personal attacks than any other, perhaps due to Clouds’ failure (year before)

    • Gender jokes, making fun of the feminine looking Cleisthenes

    • Vicious running jokes that turn a real person into a living legend in his own lifetime, such as jokes about Cleonymus ‘the great shield dropper’ that went on for fourteen years. This despite Athenian laws on slander that specifically said that you couldn’t say a man threw away his shield in battle

    • One-liners such e.g. Cleon has humble origins and ‘stinks of the tanner’s yard’

  • Ancient writers saw such personal attacks as an important dimension of Attic Old Comedy

  • Attacks upon current trends like the new education and the emphasis upon fashion of the modern generation and attacks upon individuals are an attempt to purify and renew that community in time of war and desperation.

  • The real emphasis is on getting back to the old ways, on peace and fertility and the proper worship of the gods.



Festivals and the Importance of Competition

  • Outdoor dramatic festivals in honour of the fertility god Dionysus were celebrated in winter, the time when the earth was preparing the new season’s crops

  • The City Dionysia

    • Nation-wide festival

    • Celebrated in the last week of March, or Early April marking the arrival of the wine-god in Athens

    • Recreates the journey of the god from his earliest centre of worship, Eleusis, to Athens, where his statue stood in his own theatre for the festival

    • Three days were devoted to tragedy. Each tragic poet produced three tragedies and one satyr play

    • A comic play produced in the afternoons, after the tragedies and the satyr play

    • A fourth day may have been scheduled for comedy

  • The Lenaea

    • Celebrated in January a time of year which discouraged sea travel

    • Local Athenian festival

    • Probably held in the theatre of Dionysus

    • Comic competitions introduced in 442BCE

    • Less important than the City Dionysia

    • With no allies and foreigners present, the poets could be more outspoken about what was wrong with the state

    • Important for the production of new comedies

    • 5 comic poets were chosen annually, though in time of war cut down to 3

  • These were competitive - Greeks saw the power of the gods behind the winner of a competition.

  • Choosing of judges by lot from audience was a way of giving gods a say in outcome of the festival


Themes

  • Aristophanes despite his conservatism, also attacked his own party and class

  • Longed for the days when the Marathon Men led Greece to victory over the Persians

  • But also realised if Athens was now full of intellectual corruption and fraud, this had happened because the traditionalists had allowed themselves to become weak, playing into the hands of people like Cleon

  • Cleon and his like had become strong and influential because they lacked principals

  • The traditionalists were weak because they had stupidly allowed the moral standards that might have protected them against people like Cleon to deteriorate

  • There are faults on both sides, but always 2 contrasting groups of ideas, those that are being celebrated and those that are being attacked.

  • For:

    • The old

    • The countryside

    • Peace and fertility

    • Poetry and creativity

  • Against

    • The new

    • The city

    • War

    • Logic and new education

  • Shown in Wasps

    • Procleon is old, fought against the Persians and is fill of energy, delight, life and poetry.

    • he’s a great one for the old songs’

    • He is also much more of a man than his son will ever be

    • We approve of him

    • Are forced to admit he has been stupid and allowed himself through greed to be duped by Cleon’s influence into bringing down suspect decisions in the law courts

    • Represented as sick of a sickness that is deep rooted in the whole of Athens – a sickness which his son is trying to cure by keeping him locked up & away from the law courts

    • Although Anticleon is a modern, long haired ‘namby-pamby’, he is literally Anti-Cleon, pro-peace and truly cares for his father’s well-being

    • The structure reveals faults and strengths on both sides.

    • A true healthy Athenian would possess the strengths but not the weaknesses of both father and son.


Use of Masks

Purposes

  • Masks neutralised the actor’s own personality

  • Gaping mouth intended to produce resonance

  • Exaggerated features so they could be seen from the back of the theatre


Disadvantages

  • Allowed no changing of facial expressions, freezing the actor into a single, unchanged appearance


Advantages

  • Allowed one actor to switch roles and overcame problem of only 3 speaking actors per play

  • Allowed male actors to play female parts.

  • Allowed faces to be seen easily at a distance because of the bold painting

  • Enhanced grotesque foolishness of comic characters

  • Allowed well-known Athenians to be deliberately caricatured


Costumes

  • Costumes provided a vivid splash of colour, e.g. the chorus in the orchestra in their exotic costumes

  • ‘Skin’ of the three male actors consisted of tights. Their stomachs were grotesquely padded. If playing a male role, a large leather phallus generally a long floppy affair, was stitched to tights

  • Over their tights actors wore a sleeveless belted garment called a chiton

  • Over the chiton might be worn a cloak, the himation, which was long enough to cover the phallus

  • Actors playing a female role wore a whitened mask, a long flowing chiton that reached to the ground, often yellow in colour. The himation over the chiton was normally worn as a sort of hood

  • The chorus didn’t wear the phallus though there is a possibility that the Wasps had a sting-phallus

  • All the members of the comic chorus probably wore identical masks and costumes.


Conditions of Production

Poets

  • Playwrights chosen by archons – probably chose those with already established reputations

  • The Archon Eponymous presided over the City Dionysia

  • Dramatists did not submit completed plays, but offered a detailed account of what they had in mind and perhaps also read specimens of their work.

  • Paid for their work


Actors

  • Paid for by the state

  • Allocated for their performance so there would be no favouritism


Choregos

  • Assigned to each play

  • Job to hire, train and fit out at his own expense the chorus

  • Dramatists produced their own plays but separate producers were not unknown

  • Richest citizens were asked in turn to become choregoi

  • In 406 and 405 the duties of each choregos in both tragedy and comedy were divided between two men, because of economic conditions caused by the war


Judging

  • Very elaborate

  • Judges seem to have sworn an oath to be fair

  • 10 judges were chosen by lot when the competition opened from a hundred candidates who had in turn been chosen from an even larger number

  • At the end of each day, each judge placed his verdict in an urn, five of the urns were opened, the rest ignored.

  • Made bribery very difficult, while the players were judged by average citizens not experts.

  • The system of allotment allowed the gods a role in the judging


Prizes

  • There were 3 prizes for comedy

  • Since the number of plays had been reduced from 5 to 3 as a wartime austerity measure to receive 3rd prize was no great honour

  • The winning dramatist, choregos and actors were awarded garlands of ivy

  • Probably there was financial award for the winning comic dramatist


Aims of Aristophanic Comedy:
To win the Dramatic Competition

  • Importance of this seen in the parabasis of Wasps:

  • So, once again, your champion fought for you
    And sought to purge the land of grievous ills
    And what did you do then? You let him down.


  • This refers to Clouds which was a failure the year before.

  • Frogs reminds us of the competition as the chorus sings to Demeter:
    Queen Demeter stand before us,
    Smile upon your favourite chorus!
    Grant that when we dance and play
    As befits your holy day,
    Part in earnest, part in jest,
    We may shine above the rest
    And our play in all men’s eyes
    Favour find and win the prize



To be innovative

  • In the parabasis of Wasps, Aristophanes talks of “sowing a crop of new ideas”, and in the Prologue claims we will not be given “the usual Megaran stuff”

  • Milking dramatic conventions the audience was familiar with provided fun

  • E.g. in trial of the dog in Wasps, the dog not speaking

  • The characterisation of Aristophanes is innovative

    • Viewpoint on Procleon changes more facets of fertile/fascinating character revealed

    • Dionysus develops: At beginning is fragmented/uncertain, but reborn at end.

  • Aristophanes’ staging is innovative.

    • The dancing circle in Frogs turned into the bottomless lake of Hades, skene is palace of Heracles, then when re-cross orchestra it is palace of Pluto

  • Aristophanes’ structure is innovative

    • The use of two agons in frogs

    • In Wasps, there is a second parabasis dealing with Cleon the Tanner

    • In Frogs the second, Xanthias actor, is as important as the first, Dionysus actor

    • In Frogs, the fourth actor speaks

    • The use of two choruses in Frogs is unusual, (but are frogs seen onstage?)

To Teach

  • Wanted to teach Athens the value of peace and a stable, secure and ordered community

  • Recognised the value of cleverness

  • In the agon of Frogs, Dionysus has the trouble deciding between the old-fashioned values of Aeschylus and the new morality of Euripides

  • Wasps is “just a little fable with a moral, while in Frogs, the theme of education is everywhere: “A poet should teach a lesson, make people into better citizens


To Entertain

  • Part in earnest, part in jest”
    “To amuse you citizens and advise”


  • Humour, verbal, visual, slapstick, and bawdy made his lessons memorable.


Social Satire

  • Accords with the purpose of O.A.C to purify the community

  • In Wasps attacks evidential standards and irrelevancies in jury trials.

  • The parabasis of Frogs argues for social justicec and clemency in the face of the enemy

  • Often worked through caricature, the living man became a myth in his own right. E.g. Cleonymus

  • Attacks the greed of the Athenians

  • In Wasps Procleon’s daughter attempts to get the 3 obols out of his mouth while kissing him

  • Corpse in Frogs demands 2 drachmas to carry Dionysus’ luggage to hell. Inflation is rampant.

  • Confusion between the world of the dead in Frogs and the people of Athens who are morally dead. The chaos in hell that follows Euripides’ arrival mirrors the world of Athens as the Peloponnesian war drew to its inevitable end.


Political Comment

  • Aristophanes wishes Athenians to recognise their stupidity towards:

  • The Peloponnesian war

  • The aftermath of Arginusae

  • The Oligarchic revolution of 411 BCE

  • Cleon and other politicians


To celebrate creativity and fertility

  • Would like a return to traditional values of times of Marathon Men: peace, prosperity & fertility

  • Treatment of Procleon’s poneria: outrageous wickedness so full of life he can only be admired

  • Larger than life. Many faceted, protean character & reveals aspects of his character

  • Though he is old, he can still knock his son down

  • Cured of jury-mania, his appetites become normal once more, except for gargantuan scale

  • The creative fertile quality is also seen in the bawdy, the outrageous, superhuman fantasies by which his characters overcome obstacles between them and peace, well being & prosperity


To offer literary criticism

  • Ancients likened to progress of Great Drama to the fire relay at the Pan-Athenaic festival: Aeschylus handed the torch to Sophocles, who brightened its splendour and handed it to Euripides but he was too weak to carry the torch, let alone keep tragedy alive

  • Euripides replaced kings and battles with household things, but can be viewed as realistic

  • Euripides removed the Aeschylean red carpet and purple passes, used simple dialogue, ‘put tragedy on a diet’

  • In Frogs he says to Aeschylus:
    “And you think the right and proper way to teach them is to write your kind of high flown Olympic language, instead of talking like a human being?

  • Euripides removed choral drama from stage – a chorus might decorate a palace, but looks peculiar among ordinary people

  • Helps explain the claim that Aristophanes makes in agon of Frogs – Euripides killed tragedy!


What makes Aristophanes funny?
Subtle verbal humour

  • Puns

    • Wasps – Alcibiades’ lisp is attacked:

    • Look, Thothiath, theowuth ith twanthformed. He’th a waven… A’wavin’ to hith powerful fwendth of courth”

    • Translator tried to capture the Greek pun on ‘korax’ a raven and ‘kolax’, a flatterer

  • Made-up words or neologisms

    • The unwieldy multi-syllabic tongue breaker in Greek, “sweet-sticky-and-antique”


Obvious Visual Humour

  • Much originates in the animal disguises of the phallic processions.

    • Striped costumes of the chorus with large stings symbolise the power of those under Cleon’s influence to harm the community

  • Masks allowed the producer to parody a physical or mental characteristic of a well-known person

    • Chaerophon appears in yellow masks, because he was famed for sallow complexion

  • Phallus a form of visual exaggeration

    • 45cm long, made of leather & a red tip

    • Long floppy affair, as when Procleon asks flute girl to climb up it

    • Because of the huge size of the theatre, phallus felt to be in proportion

  • Costumes padded & strategically painted

    • Naked flute girl in Wasps.

    • H’m. What’s this dark patch in the middle?”

    • And what’s this lump at the back? Feels uncommonly like a bottom to me.”

    • Humour may have been funnier because the actor was obviously male.

    • Frogs, ridiculous sight of Dionysus dressed as his Heracles but own nightshirt under


Slapstick or Farce

  • Procleon’s increasingly absurd attempts to escape the house via door, waste pipe, chimney, roof-tiles, and underneath the donkey which prompts feverish running about by his jailers, locking doors and ramming tiles and smoke hole covers down on him.


Miming or Visual Parody

  • After Procleon’s cure; Anticleon reform & teach him polite behaviour of modern Athenians

  • Procleon’s poneria and vitality too vigorous to be bound by artificial social rules. Clumsy attempts to copy polite table manners, conversation and bearing are hilarious

  • just like one of your wealthy friends, eh.” (adopting a mincing gait)


Tragic Parody

  • High-flown language & rhythms remind audience of tragic seriousness in wildly absurd new situation

  • E.g. where Procleon, shit inside and unable to go to court, sings like a heroine of Euripides


Burlesque of Epic and Myth

  • Recalling famous myths/legends not parody, but reveal by contrast: sickness/greed/viciousness of modern Athens under Cleon

  • Procleon’s attempts to escape under the donkey cannot compare to Odysseus’ exploits

  • oh the disgusting old rascal. Look where he’s stuffed his head.”


Bawdy



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