Old Comedy and Aristophanes’ Lysistrata The genre of comedy  Old comedy is not Aristophanes alone  A long-lived and VERY rapidly evolving genre Aristophanes: ONE OF 60 AROUND POETS 427 BC 386 BC 486 BC 400 BC 300 BC • 11 PLAYS OF ARISTOPHANES SURVIVE (and thousands of fragments) out of ca. 800 plays which were composed in the fifth century • 1% of the total output of the period ! Let us contextualise What was the ‘other’ comedy like? How similar or how different was it? The rich variety of styles of comedy, especially in the fifth and the fourth centuries BC  The conventional distinction ‘Old comedy’, ‘Middle comedy’, ‘New comedy’ A convenient, but ultimately false classification: Old Comedy (5th century comedy) = political comedy with lots of obscenity Middle Comedy (early 4th century comedy) = mythological burlesque with little interest in politics and only some obscenity New Comedy (late 4th century comedy) = domestic comedy with little interest in both politics and obscenity Aristotle, Poetics 1449a32-49b9 (Characteristics and early history of comedy): The composition of plots originally came from Sicily; at Athens, it was Crates (ca 450-440BC) who began to depart from the form of the lampoon and compose general stories and plots. Prolegomena on Comedy III Koster (On the poets of Old Comedy; Pherecrates, ca. 440-430) He was like Crates … and he too refrained from verbal abuse. He was very successful at introducing new subjects, being inventive with plots. Σ D. T. p. 18 Hilgard (Prolegomena on Comedy XVIIIa p. 71 Koster) [Old Comedy] was open in its exposure [of the evil individuals] from the start. There were many representatives of Old Comedy, the leading one among whom was Cratinus (450-420BC); he did that, too. “Platonius,” On the distinctions among comedies (Prolegomena on Comedy I, pp. 3-6 Koster) At any rate, Cratinus’ Odysseuses contains criticism of no one, but parody of Homer’s Odyssey. Such were the plots of Middle Comedy... Pherecrates Corianno fr. 77 (a New comedy-like situation) On the contrary, it is I who should be the lover; Your time is past. So: Granted, there are dominant trends in every period of Greek comedy. But many styles are to be found in all three periods: political comedy and mythological comedy and domestic comedy, etc etc, are popular styles from the start W hy is comedy so varied at any one time – and why does it evolve so quickly?  COMPETITIVENESS is a feature which comedy endorses enthusiastically from the start: intense competition between poets for INNOVATION  The relentless EXPERIMENTATION on the part of the poets; and the two-way relationship with audiences  The SELF-REFLEXIVITY of comedy: obsession to explore and DEFINE itself (as a genre) and its place in society……………….. The REFLECTIVENESS of comedy  ANYTHING, really anything that happens in the Athens of the 5th century BC and (often) in the Greek world more generally is potentially to be found reflected upon in a comedy – and/or, given the state of the evidence, in the thousands of comic fragments; comedy is often the principal contemporary analyst of big historical and cultural changes of the era (but beware of the distorting mirror of comedy!)  Imagine its value for the discovery of new knowledge for the crowded 5th century An crucial aspect of comic REFLECTIVENESS: SELF-REFLEXIVITY  This characteristic is behind much of what happens in the comedies (including Frogs), and above all behind their tendency to ENGAGE WITH TRAGEDY  The main tool of comedy’s ‘art’ of self- searching and self-definition: the world of tragedy  Old Comedy defines itself against a world familiar to the audience. It openly rivals it, imitates it, rejects/endorses it, alludes to it, distorts it and even subverts it. For Aristophanes, this world is almost always tragedy. In the case of other poets, other genres (not only tragedy) are used to this end.  And yes: tragedy in Thesmophoriazousae and Frogs is to a large degree about self-definition. Even Lysistrata, as we will see, has tragedy’s fingerprints all over. Example of overt, metapoetic engagement with tragedy: Aristophanes Acharnians (425 BC)  The comic hero Dicaeopolis strives to secure a peace treaty for Athens, which has been tormented by 6 years of continuous war. For this, he has to fight official corruption and public apathy. Exasperated by these obstacles, he is forced to make a private peace for himself alone, while the rest of Attica remains in war. In one scene, he has to deal with his fellow Athenians who oppose him and want the war to go on. He dresses up as the tragic hero Telephos and in a long scene that parodies Euripides’ eponymous play, he tries to persuade them that he is concerned with the good of the city not only as a citizen of Athens but also as an agent of comedy, or, more accurately, trygedy.  He says: “trygoidia knows what is right, too” ?  What characteristic of comedy does “too” point to?