Bloomsbury (2024) p/b 227pp £25.52 (ISBN 9781350440692)
This volume (the first of six devoted to the cultural history of comedy) is also the first chronologically, though not in terms of publication. The editor has divided the subject into eight separate topics, each dealt with individually by nine scholars: Form, Theory, Praxis, Identities, The Body, Politics and Power, Laughter, Ethics (split between Greek and Roman). The general approach is descriptive, making the book something of a vade-mecum, although potentially contentious issues are not avoided.
One such issue appears almost at once, in the Introduction by Ewans: he asserts that women were allowed to be present at the Great Dionysia (at the back of the theatre). He defends this briefly by citing Peace, lines 960ff, which would become ‘incomprehensible’ if women were not present. (Platnauer, in his Oxford ‘Red’ edition of Peace [1967], sees no such clarity). In a ‘cultural’ history, might not the subject have been looked at in a less cursory fashion? E. comments on Terence that ‘the content is often disturbing’, and we shall meet this topic again under Ethics in chapter eight.
In chapter 1, Gesine Manuwald guides us expertly through the types and development of ancient comedy in Greece and Rome, not omitting the less familiar fabula atellana, a kind of burlesque popular farce seemingly derived from the Osci, i.e. Campania, with stock figures representing various forms of boorishness: but we have only fragments, and M. draws from them as much as can legitimately be inferred. Another genre, Mime, also receives its due: the two poets associated with it are Decimus Laberius and the better known Publilius Syrus—worth mentioning because Seneca regarded the latter poet’s work as encompassing much that could be said in comedies and tragedies, or even in philosophical treatises. M. covers a wide field of literary endeavour in welcome clarity and detail.
In chapter 2, C.M.X. Dance takes us into the muddy waters of the Tractatus Coislinianus and even—less contentiously—Cicero’s De Oratore. D. cites Aristotle’s definition of comedy (komoidia) in Poetics ch. 3: ‘Comedy is an imitation of inferior people—not, however, with respect to every kind of badness: the laughable is a species of what is disgraceful’. However, another definition of komoidia is given in the Tractatus, a document that seems to derive from Aristotelian teachings on comedy. That superb scholar Richard Janko in 1984 saw the Tractatus as a ‘continuation of the Poetics of some sort’. That cannot be argued here, but as D. observes, the ‘evidence that the Tractatus derives from Aristotelian thought seems compelling’. D.’s summary becomes too detailed for summary here; but while the Tractatus does not claim a ‘proper pleasure of comedy’, it substitutes pleasure and laughter for tragedy’s pity and fear.
In this chapter, D. also takes the reader to ‘The Comedy of life in Plato’. Unique to Plato’s Philebus is the implication that comic characters may be thought of as ‘friends’ of spectators: D. cites the protagonist Dikaiopolis in Acharnians who addresses the spectators about his plans and appeals to the audience as friends (498-9, 513). More weightily, in the Laws, Plato offers revised versions (i.e. from previous dialogues) of Socrates’ remarks about the laughable and comedy: there is more, but D. sums up Platonic ideas about comedy in seven prescriptive sentences, several of which emerge in the Symposium. A somewhat technical section on Aristotle’s analogies in theories of tragedy follows: ‘his demonstrated familiarity with different styles of comedy raises the question of whether a unified theory of a diverse genre is possible … the strongest force behind attempts to discern a theory of comedy has been his description of tragedy’s impact’.
There follows a section (see above) on the Tractatus, and the chapter concludes with a brief look at comedy in Horace’s Satires and Epistles (a pity that when Horace describes the Satires as pretty close to speech, the Latin is given as sermoni propriora, a misprint for propiora.) More than ‘ridentem dicere verum’, comedy, D. sums up, ‘harnesses the laughable….to edify its audience, exercise their emotions, and provoke laughter and pleasure’, while the ‘line between comedy of the stage and the comedy of life occasionally dissolves’. This is a demanding chapter, and the reviewer is conscious that he has not done justice to its many subtleties: it calls for close reading and re-reading.
In chapter 3, Michael Ewans turns to the nature of ancient performance—performance occasions, the playing space, actors, masks, costumes and properties, audience address, and movement and ‘blocking’. E. assumes the existence of Middle Comedy (404-320 BC), although its ‘existence as a separate genre is vigorously debated’—and not a single play survives. Your reviewer suspects that a kind of Darwinian evolution occurred during the 4th C BC to which it is convenient to attach a name; hence, as a later contributor (V. Cinaglia) to this book says, ‘a thematic subdivision over a chronological one is preferred’. E. concludes that that although Menander and Terence have been enormously influential in the history of comedy since the early modern period, it is their relative realism which has led to their ‘being eclipsed by many modern comic forms from rom. com. to soap opera’: evolution, again? In Old Comedy, of course, frequent suspension of disbelief must have been essential.
Chapter 4 sees Natalia Tsoumpra tackling a huge subject: the role of identity in Greek and Roman comedy under the following categories: class, nationhood and language, comic typology and stock characters, and gender (including comic costume). Arguably—or unarguably—gender identity and violence against women are two central subjects: ‘In contrast to Old Comedy, homosexuality and pederasty make no appearance in New Comedy. Sexual violence against women is still a favourite motif, but it no longer functions as a symbol of comic exuberance … Rape is portrayed as a contextless act of overwhelming sexual passion, only being problematized if the young man concerned fails to take responsibility for his actions’. (The Greek for rape is hubrizein, but only if the rapist commits the offence at a religious festival is he likely to face a penalty, including execution: preserving the bloodline, however, is key—see also Lysias 1). T. says, with justice, that in Menander’s Epitrepontes and Terence’s Eunuchus it is significant that both the criticism of the act and the expression of sympathy come from two female subordinate characters. This is a lively chapter, in which T. deals fully with male comic costume (illustration on p.32) and its intermittent problems. She cites Lysistrata for male disempowerment, whereas the final scene in Old Comedy per contra oftens displays a symbol of the ‘institutionalized shamelessness that defines the comic genre’. There will be more consideration of a relevant and related topic in Chapter 8 on Ethics.
In chapter 5, Louise Peacock looks, she tells us, at the ‘shifting patterns in the way in which the body of the performer is used to generate comedy’—at its most viscerally comical in Aristophanes. There is discussion of the phallus, which it is suggested became less prominent over time, as did the heavily padded bodies. ‘The Plautine Mask is a vexed topic’ but the view here is that often the comedy is better supported if the actors are masked—especially in the case of twins, e.g. in the cases of Amphitruo, Bacchides and Menaechmi and additionally in the case of Casina, where Chalinus’ revelation that he is Casina takes place on stage—highlighting the falseness of Casina’s femininity to the audience. P. shows how disguise and eavesdropping were other ways used by the playwrights to create comedy—none more so than in Frogs (Dionysus assuming the identity of his brother Heracles and probably looking ludicrously inept). As time went by, the tenor of plays changed: as P. says, by the time we reach Terence, verbal wit has taken over from Aristophanic (or Plautine ) buffoonery. This incidentally raises a more general problem: by what means did audiences know whom the actors were representing? In Birds the names of the protagonists are not known until several hundred lines have been spoken.
Chapter 6: Isabel Ruffell’s level-headed account shows that comedy was politically engaged almost from its inception, characterised by ‘free-wheeling plots and political invective and satire’. R tells us that Cratinus was the ‘most famous representative of this generation.’ A point arises: we learn that Cratinus won no fewer than 27 prizes, mostly at the Lenaia—far more than the 7 or 8 won by Aristophanes. Was Aristophanes somehow viewed unfavourably? After all, in both him and Cratinus ‘the utopian theme is heavily implicated in the political plot’. But we must also remember that not a single play from Cratinus has survived; we can perhaps accept that Cratinus satirised Pericles in his Dionysalexandros while Aristophanes notably attacked Cleon (Knights, Wasps), and also attacked self-interested and corrupt Athenian politicians (Acharnians). Personal abuse (onomasti komoidein) appears regularly—especially against Cleon. R. concludes that Old Comedy was ultimately an honest form of ‘democratic critique’.
Interestingly, R believes that the distinctiveness of ‘Middle Comedy’ comes from no more than ‘straightforward periodization’—a theme she develops on p.128f., pointing out the growth of formal rhetoric and philosophy and the ‘growth of drama as an international phenomenon’. In her final sections (Menander and Roman Comedy), R sums up Menander’s plays as offering a ‘comforting set of outcomes for characters that largely mirror their audiences’—despite the ‘dangerous, complex’ world of Alexander’s successors (which) keeps ‘intruding’ into the real world. Two points in particular emerge from R’s account of Roman Comedy: first, the expansion of the role of the slave (see especially Fraenkel’s masterly and justly famed Plautine Elements in Plautus, in English translation since 2007), and secondly the importance of the emergence of Mime (mentioned earlier) in the mid-first century. In the late Republic, when a more formal variant became prevalent, Mime provided a vehicle for political engagement: Decimus Laberius (mentioned earlier) even seems to have become embroiled with Julius Caesar.
Chapter seven by the Danish scholar M.L. Lech, focuses on ‘the laughter elicited from consciously constructed humorous texts, whether performed as comedy or mainly for readers’. The chapter is both interesting and dense (in a good sense) and summary of its 20 pages would not do it justice. L. (among much else) points out that laughter is not visible where actors are masked (so comic laughter was first and foremost a bodily thing—especially, says L., in Aristophanes—but laughing audiences must have been a fact (because Plato and Aristotle mix conversational laughter with the laughter of the comic stage). The chapter is helpfully supplied with citations from Aristophanes, Plautus and Terence.
Chapter 8 is divided into two sections—'Ethics in Greek Comedy’ by Valeria Cinaglia, and in ‘Roman Comedy’, by Serena S. Witzke.
When C. writes ‘It is difficult (in Aristophanes) to identify a development in the figures’ ethical character’, one can only agree. By contrast, Menander seems to show a ‘specific interest in the ethical progression of the figures on stage’; even earlier, in ‘Middle Comedy’, C. speculates that comedy had an interest in describing ‘the consequences of peoples’ ethical failings and their resolution through an improved ethical understanding’—but of course we have little enough of New Comedy, and only fragments of ‘Middle Comedy’ (if the 4th C BC may be so designated). C. has striven bravely to pronounce upon a period which is rather dimly lit—except for Aristophanes, whose worth as a lamplighter needs to be examined with caution.
Witzke has a more promising field in Roman Comedy, with 20 plays by Plautus and Terence’s six plays to go on (and let us not forget that Terence started life as a slave), Here there is all too plentiful evidence of mistreatment of slaves (and the threat of ‘torture’—did this actually happen, in Athens or Rome?). Women—especially ‘sex labourers’—were harshly treated, both on the stage and, surely, in real life, with W. criticizing the institution of slavery ‘and its iniquity’. In Eunuchus, for example, two young men exploit meretrices and bully, beat and traffick enslaved persons. In Andria, Chrysis is driven by poverty into prostitution and death. We have seen rape come up earlier: it was not treated as a personal violation of a body but as crime against citizen men’s ownership and authority. As already noted, in Cistellaria and Epidicus Plautus subtly criticizes elite masculine citizen privilege; men rape women and flee the consequences; only later in life do the rapists do the ‘right thing’. W. has a big target to aim at and hits it.
The editor has carried out a difficult job admirably, with a minimum of repetition in the separate chapters. The reviewer would have welcomed more on the subject of admission (or not) of women to the theatre than a reference to a passage in Peace, itself not as decisive as the editor believes. However, another point arises: the protagonist of Birds was identified by Dobree in the 18th century as Peisetairos, now universally accepted (by [e.g.] Nigel Wilson in his OCT and Nan Dunbar in her distinguished commentary): so the reviewer was surprised to see the rejected form P(e)isthetairos also appearing once or twice without editorial or authorial comment.
There are useful notes, a list of the plays of the four main playwrights, a generous bibliography and an Index (though no Index nominum or locorum).
Colin Leach