HUMA250 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Trochee, Euripides, Aeschylus
HUMA250 Lecture Notes Wednesday 13th September 2017
The Frogs
Periods of Comedy
- Divided up by ancient scholars into three periods
- Old comedy (c.486-389 B.C.E)
- Middle comedy (c.
- New comedy (c.321-263 B.C.E)
Old Comedy
- Larger number of characters than tragedy
- Episodic
- Main characters interact with a number of minor characters
- Aristophanes – most extant texts available
- Costumes made he wearers look ludicrous
- Vulgar vernacular language, clever word play and puns
Middle Comedy
- No complete extant texts but assumed 800 were written
- Difficult to define qualities
- Possibly affected by Athenian defeat in the Peloponnesian war
- No single playwright
- Dealt with everyday life
New Comedy
- Meander – famous playwright of the time.
- Very different systematically from Old comedy – subject matter – situations from
everyday life, especially relationships
- Action occurs outside two neighbours’ dwellings and plot revolves arounds a couple
in love and the obstacles that would keep them apart
- Chorus role lessened
- Stock situation and characters
The Frogs (Old Comedy)
- Unlike the tragedies, we are left with one surviving dramatist – Aristophanes.
- Little evidence of the stages comedy went through
- It was highly political and highly topical
- Evidence comes from the writings of Aristotle and other ancient commentators and
vases, sculptures and surviving comedies
- Aristotle made the following points
o Athenian comedy may have had a Dorian origin originating from Megarian
comedy
o Both comedy and tragedy derives from Homer
o Comedy came from those who led the phallic songs
Old Comedies
- Aristophanes, Kratinos, and Eupolis – comedian triad
- Linked together for their political themes, powerful and indecent and personal
humour
- 11 existing comedies of Aristophanes.
- Only Women of Thesmorphia has a linear ploy line of a modern comedy
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