"The play of characters in the fragments of Middle Comedy”, in M. De Poli - G. E. Rallo - B. Zimmermann (eds.), Sub palliolo sordido. Studi sulla commedia frammentaria greca e latina, Göttingen 2021, 143-190. (original) (raw)
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In this paper, I focus on a particular aspect of the dramaturgy of Philemon and Diphilus, Menander’s two greatest rivals: dramatic ethography, i.e. the construction and delineation of comic characters, especially secondary professional and auxiliary figures, such as soldiers, cooks, parasites, and also pimps, doctors, and philosophers – the figures who surrounded the central families of the main comic plot and provided colourful humorous effect and resonance to the dramatic intrigue. Comic characterography was one of the foremost fields in which Menander displayed his innovative poetics and endeavoured to metamorphose the heritage of his craft in a sustained manner. In a number of plays, Menander consistently strove to upturn the standard ethological constitution and dramaturgical operation of the professional figures, as known from the established traditions of the Greek comic stage. Philemon and Diphilus do not appear to have handled their character creations in a comparable manner. As far as can be discerned from their extant remains, they designed the professional types of their plays in accordance with the established patterns and models of the comic repertoire. They reproduced standard features of the characterological tradition, or they developed and enriched the personages with additional humorous ideas, but always in consonance with their standard ethological constitution and scenic behaviour, as known from the earlier comic theatre. In this respect, Philemon and Diphilus adopted a more conventional approach to dramatic characters by comparison to the radical ethological experiments of Menander. Philemon and Diphilus anchored their work firmly within the heritage of earlier comedy and exploited the traditional stock characters, retaining the core of their established dramatic identity and reproducing many of their emblematic traits. This does not mean that Philemon and Diphilus limited themselves to imitating the earlier characterological tradition in a sterile manner, or that they did not display innovation and creativity in this direction. On the contrary, they evolved the standard figures of the earlier repertoire, enlarged their ethological horizon, and enriched them with new humorous elements and original ethopoeic ideas. Occasionally, they even created eccentric or heretic character parts, figures that react or revolt vis-à-vis the earlier stock personas of their kind and disclaim some of the typical facets of their hereditary stage identity. In all these endeavours, nevertheless, Philemon and Diphilus kept themselves within the range of the comic tradition, even though occasionally broadening its scope and renegotiating its long-standing borders. Unlike Menander, they do not seem to have striven to radically uproot and upturn the established characterological standards, refuse the core and substance of their comic inheritance, or metamorphose the repertoire beyond the point of recognition. Unsurprisingly, Philemon’s and Diphilus’ poetics, due to their moderately inventive and creatively conventional approach, proved in many cases more seminal and influential for later comic theatre than Menander’s groundbreaking and experimental ethopoeia. Conceptions such as the encyclopedic cook offering an inventory of the comic canon, the scientific cook posing as a medical expert, the soldier that envisages himself as a great imperial marshal, or the revival of philosophical satire, set off trends and tendencies that would become more or less widespread in subsequent comic theatre, from the ripe Hellenistic period to the Roman palliata.
In Aristotle’s Poetics praise and blame are used as grammatological tools for the classification of poetic genres. Aristotle distinguishes two basic forms of blame poetry, iambus and comedy, and places them in a line of teleological development. The comic writers of fifth-century Athens (Cratinus, Aristophanes) expressed similar views through their theatrically enlivened poetological conceptions. In this respect, they may reflect theories of contemporary intellectuals, who had perceived the generic connection between iambic poetry and comedy. A determinative factor that points to an actual genetic connection between these forms is the protodramatic character of early iambography. Many iambic poems take the form of a poetic monologue delivered by an invented character or role, whom the performer of the poem impersonates before the audience, thus turning the iambic composition into monodrama. An interesting aspect shared by Archaic iambus and comedy is the depiction of humorous human types. The large but cowardly general (Archilochus fr. 114) forecasts the miles gloriosus of the comic stage. The taxiarch of Aristophanes’ Peace (1172‒1190) develops and enriches this Archilochean miniature. The flatterer or parasite, who appears uninvited at rich banquets, is sketched by Asius (fr. 14) and Archilochus (fr. 124). Eupolis (Kolakes fr. 172) places an analogous characterological sketch on the lips of the flatterers themselves, thus turning the iambic lampoon into sarcastic self-presentation. The humorous poem Margites, which was akin to iambic mockery, introduced the archetype of the foolish loser who fails in all his tasks; Hipponax describes similar failed characters, who fall victim to humiliating mishaps. Variants of the same type are developed in lampooning Aristophanic songs, such as the denunciation of the incompetent Antimachus (Acharnians 1150‒1173). The personages of the iambus are usually satirical portraits of individuals from the poet’s social milieu. However, the iambographer invests his characters with universality and upgrades them into diachronic characterological archetypes. In this respect, the iambus also forecasts the invective of Old Comedy.
Papyri - Volume 5 - Theatre of the absurd: When tragic turns into absurd through irony
Papyri - Scientific Journal
STELLA KOULANDROU, National Kapodistrian University of Athens ***_ The situation after the World War II caused the complete change of the way of thinking and the way of living. Tragedy –with the known form– cannot survive in an era when the heroism, the great feelings and the great words had been sinked in blood and lie. It is difficult for a literary kind so formal to survive in a society who calls everything into question: the coherence, the values, the meaning, the extistence itself. Disaster became more casual and commonplace to portray it in ways which imply an alternative. However, the generalized climate of fear, panic and terrorism after the war was the reason for a renewed attention to the tragic. The article examines the ways in which modern tragedy appears from an unexpected space and with other form and other function: Modern tragedy does not come back from where we waited it, where we were looking for it –in the world of heroes and gods– but from the opposite side, as it is in comic where it finds its origin and especially in the inferior form of comic: parody, farce, irony. Theatre of the absurd is the modern anti-tragedy, as it presents the tragic world inverted: from the exceptional ancient hero we are leading to the usual or less inferior than usual antihero of theatre of the absurd, from the logical structure to the grotesque, from the poetic and logical language to liché and slogan, or words reduced to pure agglomerates of sound, from the faith to the divine justice to the sense of an inexplicable unhappiness, of the submission on the malevolence of some pitiless being. Modern tragedy most of all despises the “grandeur” of ancient tragedy. In its place it puts dark humour, which works in the same way, remarking the disaster, the lamentation, the absurdity.
The popular farces of Doric Greek regions represented a form of traditional folk theatre, based on the performers’ oral improvisations, without fixed scripts. The various local species of Doric folk drama seem to have shared a common heritage and background of basic motifs, amusing situations, and typified personages. Scattered testimonia of ancient antiquarians and polymaths allow a glimpse into these early comic performances, which seem to have developed a rudimentary typology of theatrical characters, who recurred in the improvised scenarios and maintained a standard dramatic function. The stock ethological types of Doric farce included the trickster, a perpetrator of deceptions usually preoccupied with stealing food; the alazon, who posed as a connoisseur of intricate skills and expressed himself in bizarre language; the glutton, intent on satisfying the demands of his belly; the funny pair of the cook and his servant; and the poor jack-of-all-trades. From the confrontations and interactions between these characters a number of equally stereotypical, elementary routines arose, which functioned as minimal plot units and were combined for the construction of a dramatic plotline. Many of these dramatic figures look like rough sketches or archetypical forerunners of the standard personages which will later populate the stage of the literary Sicilian and Attic comedy. Early Doric farces offer a primordial “comedy of characters” in the making. The development of a system of stock types and situations was natural for those forms of improvised folk drama, which needed strong codes to provide a stable supportive infrastructure for the players’ extemporizations.
Characters and comic situations in Roman comedy: the Atellanfarce and Mime
2010
This study suggests how to examine two genres of Roman comedy, especially the preserved fragments, offering a more precise description and analysis of the comic characters in the Atellan farce and mime. For such a comparison it is important to focus on the few elements which appear throughout all the genres of Roman comedy; here, the characters and situations resulting from their interaction are examined. We should also compare all the characters that can be found in both the atellana and mimus (even the stock characters) in order to discern possible concordance between them. It is evident that in both genres the same situations are repeated and they result from the interactions between comic characters, featuring a wide variety of vulgar people. In addition to these rude folk, their failed relatives and crude work occupations are depicted in the fragments.
Fools, clowns, jesters: An attempt to understand certain low comic heroes in Shakespeare
Philologica Canariensia, 2005
Shakespeare creó tantos personajes cómicos-no sólo en sus comedias sino también en sus obras más trágicas-que intentar clasificarlos parece una tarea imposible. Sin embargo, con la ayuda de parte de la reciente investigación en las comedias de Shakespeare, y limitándonos en este ensayo al estudio de los "héroes cómicos" que podríamos denominar "fools", (el "fool" oficial que suele ser más inteligente y cuerdo que el resto de los personajes, y que aparece en King Lear o tal vez Feste; el simplón, aquel upo de personaje más limitado mentalmente como los "mecánicos" en Midsummer Night's Dream, los "tedious fools" tipo Pollonius y finalmente todos aquellos que no pertenecen a ninguna de las tres clases mencionadas).