Aristophanes, Cratinus & Eupolis: Old Athenian Comedy

Introduction

There are three genres of Athenian Drama: satire, tragedy, and comedy. Each of these genres has been explored in an effort to discover their origins and their impacts on modern drama. For the purposes of this discussion, the focus will be on the extant works and fragments of comedy. Comedy and the comic are essential to the world of literature and theatrical performance. As François Lissarague once observed, "the comic is the province of comedy, which belongs to the theatrical context of a festival and employs a whole range of tones . . . equal use of present reality, especially politics, and caricatures of living figures. . . . [C]omedy undercuts theatrical illusion and plays with the various levels of fiction" (Lissarague, quoted in Dubrov 2007, 252). An exhaustive investigation of the extant and fragmented comedies of Aristophanes, Cratinus, and Eupolis reveals a shared devotion to mythology, intertextual influence, and rivalry.

Comedy performances began in Athens at the Lenaia festival sometime around 442 B.C. These performances also took place at the Dionysia festival in 487 or 486 B.C. However, the exact origin of the comedy genre is unclear, and many scholars believe its origins will never be fully understood. Originally, volunteers — not professional actors — performed in comedies, and such performances were sponsored by the state. It is also believed that the comedy genre developed out of "introductions to phallic songs" (O'Bryhim 3, 2001). These phallic songs were associated with the Rural Dionysia and are referenced onstage in Acharnians, lines 237–79 (O'Bryhim 3, 2001).

History of Comedy

Aristotle further suggests that

"the Greek word komoidia ('comedy'), the second part of which certainly means 'song,' is derived either from kóme, an (originally non-Athenian?) term for a rural village, or from kómos, 'a drunken band of revelers' (Poetics 1448a35–38). The notion that at least some of the roots of Athenian Old Comedy must be sought in informal, local festival traditions also finds support in a number of vase paintings from late-sixth-century Athens that depict groups of men dressed up as animals, as Aristophanic and other early comic choruses often are" (O'Bryhim 3, 2001).

Within the genre of comedy there are several prolific playwrights whose work has survived either in its totality or in fragments. For the purpose of this discussion, the works of Aristophanes, Cratinus, and Eupolis will be examined in the context of their extant fragments.

Aristophanes was a Greek dramatist revered as the father of Old Comedy. He authored nearly 40 comedies, 11 of which are extant. These eleven works are the only Greek comedies to have survived in their entirety. His influence on drama has not been as significant as his impact on literature, largely because of the highly localized subject matter explored in his works. However, his influence in the field of literature has been considerable, particularly as it relates to authors such as Rabelais and Fielding.

Aristophanes and the Structure of Old Comedy

Aristophanes' early plays are largely devoid of conventional plot. Instead, the writer focused on preposterous situations — usually having direct reference to some political or social problem of the time — which are briefly sketched and then exploited in a series of loosely connected scenes. For example, in The Acharnians,

"an Athenian citizen, weary of the war, makes a private treaty with the enemy and consequently enjoys the advantages of trading with them. The iambic scenes develop the ludicrous possibilities of the invention, and enable Aristophanes to hit out at people he dislikes — politicians, busybodies, philosophers. Characters are often burlesques of contemporary Athenians, and even the gods. These earlier plays are an astonishing mixture of fantasy, unsparing (and often violently unfair) satire, brilliant verbal wit, obscenity, literary and musical parody, exquisite lyrics, hard-hitting political propaganda, and uproarious farce. Aristophanes was essentially a popular dramatist, fond of slapstick and comic business. The Frogs marks the transition to a quieter form of comedy in which personal and political invective plays a smaller part and the plot is more elaborate" (Whitaker, 1935).

According to Whitaker (1935), two divisions are present in Aristophanic Comedy: episodic and epirrhematic. The episodic division is "a very simple method of composition consisting of short iambic scenes, connected by choral stasima which are more or less relevant to the action. As a general rule these episodes occupy the second half of the play between the Parabasis and Exodos, and, since they show the hero enjoying the fruits of his earlier struggles, contribute little to the development of the plot" (Whitaker 1935, 181). A great deal of the comic fragments written in trimeters have been extracted from episodes; however, any effort to categorize them would be largely irrelevant to understanding a play from a structural viewpoint.

The epirrhematic parts of comedy, on the other hand, possess a more complicated structure, which is evident in the use of the syzygy pattern. This pattern indicates

"the correspondence of odes and epirrhemes on the plan abab and also the use of the tetrameter, which is confined to these sections. They may be further differentiated among themselves by the metre used. In the Parodos, anapaests, iambs and trochees are found; in the Agon, iambs and anapaests; in the parabatic syzygy, only trochees; in the anapestic and aeolic tetrameters" (Whitaker 1935, 181).

If the utilization of the tetrameter is viewed as a guide, it can be concluded that certain aspects of the comic fragments — their subject matter and the criterion of metre — give some indication of the particular epirrhematic section from which they were extracted. In addition, the Prologue and Exodos are external to the scheme of both episodic and epirrhematic work because each is structurally self-contained. "The former consists of iambic trimeters — not a simple means of differentiation — but sometimes subject matter affords convincing points of analogy with the Aristophanic Prologue. The Exodos shows a great variety of metres, but here again subject matter and Aristophanic analogy are of great value in classification" (Whitaker 1935, 181).

Much has been written concerning the work of Aristophanes and his influence on his contemporaries and on modern writers. His writing style and the performances arising from his work were dynamic and had a profound impact on the literary world. Many of Aristophanes' contemporaries both despised his work and were influenced by it — a paradox most clearly illustrated by his relationship with Cratinus, whose work and comic competition with Aristophanes will be examined in the section that follows.

Conclusion

Recommendations for this topic also extend to exploring the extent to which Old Comedy influenced New Comedy and how it has shaped modern writers. A thorough understanding of this connection can assist contemporary writers in appreciating and incorporating stylistic patterns similar to those found in Old Comedy, encouraging writers to extend their abilities and master their craft.

Finally, there must be a definitive collection of the extant works of Old Comedy writers. Compiling such a collection is essential not only to preserving the history of ancient Greek culture but also for the purposes of educating future generations. This genre of writing has played an essential role in the development of literature and performance theatre, and every effort must be made to better understand and preserve it.

Overall, the research and subsequent discussion have revealed the extent to which Old Comedy was significant to the people of ancient Greece. The themes and issues explored in the works of Aristophanes, Cratinus, and Eupolis reflect a world that was changing and growing. Aristophanes' works have been greatly celebrated and dissected by scholars because of the availability of his complete manuscripts. Cratinus and Eupolis, although not as extensively researched, have also shown themselves to be masters of the Old Comedy genre. Each of these authors contributed a great deal to the world through their literary endeavors, and none of them shied away from topics and themes that were localized and reflected the ideology of their day.

Throughout this investigation it has been demonstrated that these authors were devoted to using mythology in their works, injecting it into their narratives to describe the social and political issues of their time. There was also a great deal of rivalry among the writers, reflected in their intertextual interactions — yet despite this rivalry, they influenced one another considerably, and that influence is evident in each of their works. An exhaustive investigation of the extant and fragmented comedies of Aristophanes, Cratinus, and Eupolis ultimately reveals a devotion to mythology, intertextual influence, and rivalry. These works will continue to be important to the preservation of Greek culture and literature.