Menander and New Comedy

Keyword(s):  
2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-133
Author(s):  
Elena Colla

Modern scholars have sometimes noticed in the Lysianic speeches some affinities with characters and plots of the (New) Comedy. Through a survey of the corpus, this paper resumes the critical data, adds some new elements of similarity, not only with Comedy, but generally with literature and suggests that Lysias usually worked in this way. If so, it could be preferable to suppose that the logographer took the cue not from comedy, but from everyday life; secondarily, that he sketched characters and plots starting from the particular (his client) to the general; finally, that these artistic elements were useful to jury's persuasion and not added to a following publication.


Pallas ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric W. Handley
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
David Konstan

New Comedy was a Panhellenic phenomenon. It may be that a performance in Athens was still the acme of a comic playwright’s career, but Athens was no longer the exclusive venue of the genre. Yet Athens, or an idealized version of Athens, remained the setting or backdrop for New Comedy, whatever its provenance or intended audience. New Comedy was thus an important vehicle for the dissemination of the Athenian polis model throughout the Hellenistic world, and it was a factor in what has been termed ‘the great convergence’. The role of New Comedy in projecting an idealized image of the city-state may be compared to that of Hollywood movies in conveying a similarly romanticized, but not altogether false, conception of American democracy to populations around the world.


Ramus ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 33 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 120-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siobhan McElduff

Michael Cronin once described translation as ‘what saves us from having to read the original’. To cite this statement at the start of any discussion of Terence is a little ironic given that critics have not infrequently used his comedies as an opaque glass through which, if only one squints hard enough, one can read the original Greek New Comedy. Noticeably, these lost originals usually live their imagined existences free from the dramatic flaws of Terence's adaptations. For example, Grant writes on the seeming abruptness of Micio's challenge to Demea at Adelphoe 829-31, that in the Greek original ‘the challenge would not have been as abrupt as it is in the Terentian adaptation. The probable reason for the abruptness is that Terence did not realize the difference between Attic and Roman law [on inheritance] in this respect.’ It is certainly possible that he is right, and that Terence omitted something in Menander which caused problems for the flow of his play. It is, however, also entirely possible that the original was similarly abrupt or that there was some other reason for the scene's choppiness than Terence's lamentable ignorance of the inheritance laws of Athens or his poor skills in translation.


Terence's Phormio, based on a Greek original by Apollodorus of Carystus, was produced towards the end of his short dramatic career in 161 BC. With its lively action, based on the traditional elements of love, deception and mistaken identity, the play provides an ideal introduction to the genre of New Comedy. What makes the Phormio unique amongst Terence's works is the central importance of the witty and scheming parasite who gives his name to the play and directs and controls its action throughout, even when absent from the stage. The use of the 'double' plot with its two young men in love and two contrasting fathers provides ample scope for depth and variety of characterisation. The aim of the present edition is to bring out to the full, Terence's skill in plot development and character portrayal which was to make the Phormio one of his most entertaining plays. The book consists of ludes Latin text with facing-page translation, introduction and commentary.


2001 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 254-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Vervain ◽  
David Wiles

In this article, David Wiles and Chris Vervain stake out the ground for a substantial programme of continuing research. Chris Vervain, coming from a background in visual and performance art, is in the first instance a maker of masks. She is also now writing a thesis on the masks of classical tragedy and their possibilities in modern performance, and, in association with the University of Glasgow, working on an AHRB research programme that involves testing the effect of Greek New Comedy masks in performance. David Wiles, Professor of Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London, has published books on the masks of Greek New Comedy and on Greek performance space, and lectured on Greek masks. Most recently, his Greek Theatre Performance: an Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2000) included an investigation of the classical mask and insights provided by the work of Lecoq. He is now planning a book on the classical Greek mask. Wiles and Vervain are both committed to the idea that the mask was the determining convention which gave Greek tragedy its identity in the ancient world, and is a valuable point of departure for modern practitioners engaging with the form. They anticipate that their research will in the near future incorporate a symposium and a further report on work-in-progress.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Tarwacka

El FORAS MULIER, VIZ. DIVORCE IN PLAUTUS’ COMEDIESSummary The Romans treated law as a very important element of everyday life. That is why their literature is so full of allusions to law.Plautus wrote his comedies for nearly 30 years, between 210 and 184B.C. His plays were based on the Greek Middle and New Comedy. It isnot always easy to distinguish the parts where he refers to Roman law fromthose where he simply translates the original text without making anychanges.In many of Plautus’ plays we can find information about divorce, though divorce was never shown on the stage for obvious moral reasons.In Menaechmi the husband threatens his wife with repudium because hefeels a slave in his own house - an ideal wife should - under no circumstances - spy on her husband or even ask him about his affairs. The position of a men in this relationship is rather weak - his wife brought a largedowry and he is simply afraid of what he could lose by ending his marriage. In Mercator Syra, a slave-woman, comments that husbans are allowed tohave sexual contacts with other women, whereas their wives can be easilyrepudiated even if seen outside their houses without a permission. Thereseems to have been no possibility for a woman to demand divorce in Romeof the III/II century B. C. Plautus uses this fact for comical purposes. InAmphitruo Alcumena speaks the formula of repudium as if backwords: tibihabeas res tuasy reddas meas, making it sound as if it was her husband to repudiate her.Plautus gives a lot of evidence that divorces were quite common in histimes and that the Romans knew perfectly all its legal aspects.


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