Aristophanes' Nachleben and Other Post-Renaissance Disasters

Abstract

With a view to contrast them with Aristophanes, the three post-elassical poets Menander, Plautus and Terence are provisionally lumped together as authors of a subgenre called New Comedy. This is not to deny that there are important differences between these three poets with respect to, e.g., originality of plot, unity of plot, depth of characterisation, or the depiction of women (for which see Castellani 1988;Dobrov 1988;Anderson 1995), or that Terence is Menander's proper heir in terms of 'serious' comedy, whereas Plautus contains much more slapstick, farce, sexual innuendo, fantasy, and metatheatrical games. My purpose here is primarily to differentiate between elements common to Greek and Roman New Comedy and its post-Reaaissance successors, on the one hand, and Old Comedy, on the other. In view of the paucity of extant Greek New Comedy plays in unfragmented form (one by Menancler; none by his colleagues Philemon and Diphilos), 'New Comedy' will mostly refer to Roman New Comedy. The triad of Old Comedy poets has been canonised by Hol'llCe(Sill. 1.4): EIIpoUs alqlle Cnui1lllS Aristop1lllnesqae poetae •.• 11IIIltaaun libertole notobanl ("The poets Eupolis and Cratinus and Aristophanes .•. branded [their victims] with much freedom of speech"). Since, however, Aristophanes is the only Old Comedy poet of whom UI1fnIBmentedplays are extant, 'Aristophanes' and 'Old Comedy' will be used interchangeably in the discussion that follows, and his preference for political themes will be talcen u representative of Old Comedy. If the fmgmmts of Aristophanes and his rivals are also considered, however, it becomes clear that other themes were also treated by Old Comedy poets. Kratinos, for instance, combined