Aristophanic Comedy Connection between democracy & drama

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  Shown in Wasps
  
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    Procleon is old, fought against the Persians and is fill of energy, delight, life and poetry.
    
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    ‘he’s a great one for the old songs’
    
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    He is also much more of a man than his son will ever be
    
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    We approve of him
    
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    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
    
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    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
    
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    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
    
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    The structure reveals faults and strengths on both sides.
    
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    A true healthy Athenian would possess the strengths but not the weaknesses of both father and son.
    

Use of Masks

Purposes

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  Masks neutralised the actor’s own personality
  
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  Gaping mouth intended to produce resonance
  
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  Exaggerated features so they could be seen from the back of the theatre
  

Disadvantages

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

Advantages

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  Allowed one actor to switch roles and overcame problem of only 3 speaking actors per play
  
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  Allowed male actors to play female parts.
  
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  Allowed faces to be seen easily at a distance because of the bold painting
  
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  Enhanced grotesque foolishness of comic characters
  
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  Allowed well-known Athenians to be deliberately caricatured
  

Costumes

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  Costumes provided a vivid splash of colour, e.g. the chorus in the orchestra in their exotic costumes
  
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  ‘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
  
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  Over their tights actors wore a sleeveless belted garment called a chiton
  
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  Over the chiton might be worn a cloak, the himation, which was long enough to cover the phallus
  
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  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
  
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  The chorus didn’t wear the phallus though there is a possibility that the Wasps had a sting-phallus
  
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  All the members of the comic chorus probably wore identical masks and costumes.
  

Conditions of Production

Poets

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  Playwrights chosen by archons – probably chose those with already established reputations
  
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  The Archon Eponymous presided over the City Dionysia
  
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  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.
  
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  Paid for their work
  

Actors

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  Paid for by the state
  
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  Allocated for their performance so there would be no favouritism
  

Choregos

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  Assigned to each play
  
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  Job to hire, train and fit out at his own expense the chorus
  
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  Dramatists produced their own plays but separate producers were not unknown
  
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  Richest citizens were asked in turn to become choregoi
  
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  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

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  Very elaborate
  
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  Judges seem to have sworn an oath to be fair
  
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  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
  
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  At the end of each day, each judge placed his verdict in an urn, five of the urns were opened, the rest ignored.
  
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  Made bribery very difficult, while the players were judged by average citizens not experts.
  
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  The system of allotment allowed the gods a role in the judging
  

Prizes

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  There were 3 prizes for comedy
  
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  Since the number of plays had been reduced from 5 to 3 as a wartime austerity measure to receive 3^rd prize was no great honour
  
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  The winning dramatist, choregos and actors were awarded garlands of ivy
  
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  Probably there was financial award for the winning comic dramatist
  

Aims of Aristophanic Comedy:
To win the Dramatic Competition

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  Importance of this seen in the parabasis of Wasps:
  
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  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.
  
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  This refers to Clouds which was a failure the year before.
  
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  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

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  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”
  
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  Milking dramatic conventions the audience was familiar with provided fun
  
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  E.g. in trial of the dog in Wasps, the dog not speaking
  
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  The characterisation of Aristophanes is innovative
  
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    Viewpoint on Procleon changes more facets of fertile/fascinating character revealed
    
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    Dionysus develops: At beginning is fragmented/uncertain, but reborn at end.
    
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  Aristophanes’ staging is innovative.
  
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    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
    
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  Aristophanes’ structure is innovative
  
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    The use of two agons in frogs
    
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    In Wasps, there is a second parabasis dealing with Cleon the Tanner
    
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    In Frogs the second, Xanthias actor, is as important as the first, Dionysus actor
    
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    In Frogs, the fourth actor speaks
    
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    The use of two choruses in Frogs is unusual, (but are frogs seen onstage?)
    

To Teach

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  Wanted to teach Athens the value of peace and a stable, secure and ordered community
  
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  Recognised the value of cleverness
  
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  In the agon of Frogs, Dionysus has the trouble deciding between the old-fashioned values of Aeschylus and the new morality of Euripides
  
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  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

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  “Part in earnest, part in jest”
  “To amuse you citizens and advise”
  
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  Humour, verbal, visual, slapstick, and bawdy made his lessons memorable.
  

Social Satire

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  Accords with the purpose of O.A.C to purify the community
  
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  In Wasps attacks evidential standards and irrelevancies in jury trials.
  
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  The parabasis of Frogs argues for social justicec and clemency in the face of the enemy
  
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  Often worked through caricature, the living man became a myth in his own right. E.g. Cleonymus
  
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  Attacks the greed of the Athenians
  
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  In Wasps Procleon’s daughter attempts to get the 3 obols out of his mouth while kissing him
  
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  Corpse in Frogs demands 2 drachmas to carry Dionysus’ luggage to hell. Inflation is rampant.
  
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  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

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  Aristophanes wishes Athenians to recognise their stupidity towards:
  
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  The Peloponnesian war
  
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  The aftermath of Arginusae
  
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  The Oligarchic revolution of 411 BCE
  
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  Cleon and other politicians
  

To celebrate creativity and fertility

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  Would like a return to traditional values of times of Marathon Men: peace, prosperity & fertility
  
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  Treatment of Procleon’s poneria: outrageous wickedness so full of life he can only be admired
  
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  Larger than life. Many faceted, protean character & reveals aspects of his character
  
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    At first seems a slapstick clown
    
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    Then see him sing in a high tragic manner
    
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    By the end he is an expert dancer
    
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  Though he is old, he can still knock his son down
  
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  Cured of jury-mania, his appetites become normal once more, except for gargantuan scale
  
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  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

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  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
  
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  Euripides replaced kings and battles with household things, but can be viewed as realistic
  
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  Euripides removed the Aeschylean red carpet and purple passes, used simple dialogue, ‘put tragedy on a diet’
  
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  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?
  
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  Euripides removed choral drama from stage – a chorus might decorate a palace, but looks peculiar among ordinary people
  
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  Helps explain the claim that Aristophanes makes in agon of Frogs – Euripides killed tragedy!
  

What makes Aristophanes funny?
Subtle verbal humour

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  Puns
  
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    Wasps – Alcibiades’ lisp is attacked:
    
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    “Look, Thothiath, theowuth ith twanthformed. He’th a waven… A’wavin’ to hith powerful fwendth of courth”
    
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    Translator tried to capture the Greek pun on ‘korax’ a raven and ‘kolax’, a flatterer
    
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  Made-up words or neologisms
  
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    The unwieldy multi-syllabic tongue breaker in Greek, “sweet-sticky-and-antique”
    

Obvious Visual Humour

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  Much originates in the animal disguises of the phallic processions.
  
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    Striped costumes of the chorus with large stings symbolise the power of those under Cleon’s influence to harm the community
    
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  Masks allowed the producer to parody a physical or mental characteristic of a well-known person
  

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  Chaerophon appears in yellow masks, because he was famed for sallow complexion
  
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  Phallus a form of visual exaggeration
  
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    45cm long, made of leather & a red tip
    
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    Long floppy affair, as when Procleon asks flute girl to climb up it
    
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    Because of the huge size of the theatre, phallus felt to be in proportion
    
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  Costumes padded & strategically painted
  
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    Naked flute girl in Wasps.
    
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    “H’m. What’s this dark patch in the middle?”
    
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    “And what’s this lump at the back? Feels uncommonly like a bottom to me.”
    
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    Humour may have been funnier because the actor was obviously male.
    
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    Frogs, ridiculous sight of Dionysus dressed as his Heracles but own nightshirt under
    

Slapstick or Farce

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  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

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  After Procleon’s cure; Anticleon reform & teach him polite behaviour of modern Athenians
  
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  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
  
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  “just like one of your wealthy friends, eh.” (adopting a mincing gait)
  

Tragic Parody

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  High-flown language & rhythms remind audience of tragic seriousness in wildly absurd new situation
  
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  E.g. where Procleon, shit inside and unable to go to court, sings like a heroine of Euripides
  

Burlesque of Epic and Myth

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  Recalling famous myths/legends not parody, but reveal by contrast: sickness/greed/viciousness of modern Athens under Cleon
  
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  Procleon’s attempts to escape under the donkey cannot compare to Odysseus’ exploits
  
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  “oh the disgusting old rascal. Look where he’s stuffed his head.”
  

Bawdy

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