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Aristotelian Comedy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Malcolm heath
Malcolm heath
Affiliation:
University of leeds
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Extract

My aim in this paper is to reconsider a number of aspects of Aristotle's thinking on comedy in the light of the acknowledged Aristotelian corpus. I shall have nothing to say about the Tractatus Coislinianus, an obscure and contentious little document which must (despite Janko's energetic attempt to restore its credit) remain an inappropriate starting-point for discussion. There is still, I believe, something to be learnt from the extant works.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , December 1989 , pp. 344 - 354
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1989

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References

1 Janko, R., Aristotle on Comedy (London, 1984)Google Scholar, a book widely admired and disbelieved: see especially Arnott, W. G., CR 35 (1985), 304–6Google Scholar; Schenkeveld, D. M., Gnomon 58 (1986), 212–17Google Scholar; Fortenbaugh, W. W., CPh 82 (1987), 156–64Google Scholar. I am willing to believe that the Tractatus descends from an epitome of Poetics II, but fear that it has suffered more distortion – and is less useful – in detail than Janko contends; cf. Barnes, J., Phronesis 20 (1985), 103–6Google Scholar.

2 Halliwell, S., Aristotle's Poetics (London, 1986), p. 274Google Scholar.

3 Halliwell, S., The Poetics of Aristotle (London, 1987), p. 87 n. 2Google Scholar: ‘he mentions the contrast between older and newer styles of Athenian comedy, indicating his clear preference for the latter's more restrained style of humour’; cf. (e.g.) Lucas, D. W., Aristotle's Poetics (Oxford, 1968), p. 68Google Scholar; Ussher, R. G., G&R 24 (1977), 71Google Scholar; Segal, E., HSCP 77 (1973), 129Google Scholar (a very misleading article).

4 There is a partial ban in existing states, which Aristotle tentatively proposes to extend in EN 1128a3O–1: τỜ γάρ σκ⋯μμα λοιδόρημά τι ⋯στιν, οι δ⋯ νομοθέται ἒνια λοιδορειν κωλύουσιν. ἓδειδ' ισως και σκὡπτειν,. Janko (n. 1), 244 (‘he recognises some need for mockery’) overlooks the tense of ἒδει one must understand κωλ⋯ειν from the previous sentence.

5 Comedy, at least, is covered by the religious exemption; cf. Heath, M., Political Comedy in Aristophanes (Hypomnemata 87, Göttingen, 1987), pp. 26–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 A passage not always accurately reported. Else, G., Aristotle's Poetics (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), p. 188Google Scholar, cites it without noticing that comedy is exempted from the ban on αισχρολογια a point which demolishes his argument; Halliwell, op. cit. (n. 2), p. 274 n. 31, says that Aristotle ‘is ready to envisage restrictive legislation on stage-comedy’, citing EN 1128a30–1 (which does not mention stage-comedy) as well as this passage, which imposes restrictions on the potential audience – a very different thing.

7 Contrast the scepticism of Halliwell's retort (ibid.) to Lane Cooper, An Aristotelian Theory of Comedy (Oxford, 1924), pp. 121–3 (cf. pp. 19–20, 116–17).

8 Ussher, art. cit. (n. 3), 71, suggests that Aristotle ‘could not have raised a smile’ at a Dicaeopolis or a Trygaeus, because of their βωμολοχια, forgetting that precisely this kind of person is embraced by Aristotle's own definition of comedy. The illuminating comparison in that article between Aristophanic characters and Theophrastus' caricatures does not, therefore, mark a difference between Aristophanic or Theophrastean and Aristotelian comedy.

9 In this respect, as (I believe) in others, Plato's presentation in Symposium is verisimilar; cf. Heath, op. cit. (n. 5), pp. 10–11.

10 Archilochus, as well as Isocrates, is cited for this technique (to which I shall return in IV below); strangely, Else, op. cit. (n. 6), p. 149 n. 85, insinuates that the reference to Archilochus i here is implicitly disapproving, apparently on the sole evidence of ψέγει.

11 See Vahlen, J., Aristotelis de arte poetica liber 3 (Leipzig, 1885), pp. 104, 106Google Scholar.

12 So Smith, K. K., CW 21 (1928), 147Google Scholar; cf. Goulden, L., AJP 107 (1986), 441Google Scholar, reviewing Janko, op. cit. (n. 1), who discusses the point on p. 154. There are serious problems with the definition of comedy in the Tractatus, but this is not one.

13 For the connection between abuse, comedy and τ⋯ γελοιο–936b, where too the opposite is τ⋯ σπουδαιον (935b3); unlike Aristotle, Plato does impose restrictions on the content of comedy.

14 Not the character of the poets: cf. Else, op. cit. (n. 6), pp. 136–7, although I cannot accept all his arguments, nor the interpretation of the broader context which he proposes.

15 In 48b28–9 τοιο⋯τον ποιημα must refer to the broader class of poems imitating morally inferior actions, not specifically to Ψόγοι, since the Margites was not a Ψόγος (48b37). Since this poem is cited here simply as an instance of the broad class (its exceptional qualities only come into question at 48b34ff.), τά τοια⋯τα and έν οις (48b30) will likewise refer to the class as a whole, not to poems like Margites in particular; hence ι⋯μβιξον ⋯λλ⋯λους (48b32), which is hardly applicable to Margites.

16 παραΦανεισης (49a2) surely does not mean (as it is taken by Else, op. cit. [n. 6], pp. 146–7) ‘glimpsed in passing’ (sc. in the Homeric adumbrations: the implication of transience, stressed by Else, is by no means always present) but ‘come into view’ (sc. in the earliest stages of the development of the dramatic genres themselves, before their full potential was realised). That is to say, the absolute clause takes up the preceding references to comedy and tragedy in order to introduce a new topic.

17 If one assumes that Aristotle placed tragedy in a continuous line of evolution with Homer (e.g. Halliwell, op. cit. [n. 3], p. 81, cf. op. cit. [n. 2], pp. 254–6), then the separate emergence of drama from improvisatory beginnings (1449a9–10) is bound to seem obscure and even contradictory; but Aristotle does not say this, only that Homer anticipated the later form. On the further question of the dithyrambic/satyric origins of tragedy, and the difficulty of squaring this with Aristotle's σπουδαιον/ distinction, see Seaford, R., Euripides Cyclops (Oxford, 1984), 10–11Google Scholar.

18 These σχ⋯ματα include a plurality of actors (1449b5): for the reason, cf. Heath, M., The Poetics of Greek Tragedy (London, 1987), p. 138 n. 32Google Scholar.

19 In the technical sense, it would not: my performance would lack artistic form and crucially – the setting of an established social practice which would legitimise the αισχρολογια (cf. I above). But this does not affect the point with which I am concerned here.

20 In Heath, op. cit. (n. 5), p. 53 n. Ill, I described the ‘iambic ιδέα’ as ‘non-mimetic’– a blunder: primitive ψόγοι were already mimetic (1448b25–7); the latter part of the note, referring to a ‘continuous and complete plot’, was more accurately expressed.

21 Halliwell, , op. cit. (n. 3), p. 85Google Scholar, the standard interpretation.

22 cf. Heath, , op. cit. (n. 5), p. 50Google Scholar, distinguishing (after Rau) between ‘dramatic economy’ and ‘comic intention'.

23 See Hunter, R. L., Eubulus (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 22–30Google Scholar (but the number of mythological burlesques declined in the latter part of the fourth century: see Hunter, , pp. 23f., and Webster, T. B. L., Studies in Later Greek Comedy 2 [Manchester, 1970], p. 85)Google Scholar. Halliwell, , op. cit. (n. 2), p. 274 n. 32Google Scholar, speculates, on tenuous evidence, that Aristotle may have favoured mythological subjects for comedy. Note that even mythological comedies admitted abusive references to real contemporaries: Hunter, p. 25.

24 Comedy can in fact use an invented name, and still satirise an identifiable individual: e.g. Paphlagon in Knights; but this play is still (irrespective of the name) περι τό καθόλου in Aristotle's sense, since it dramatises a single set of necessary or probable occurrences involving Cleon (51b8–9), not τι…ἔπραξεν ἢ τι ἓπαθεν (51bll).

25 The generalisation about tragic practice in 145lbl5–16 is explicitly qualified in 19–21, where the qualification is relevant to Aristotle's argument; I see no reason to doubt that he would have admitted an analogous qualification about comic practice, but there was no reason in this context to make it explicit.

26 Contradictions arise if one introduces the real/fictive distinction into this passage: cf. Halliwell, , op. cit. (n. 3), p. 105Google Scholar n. 1.

27 See the comments on the plot of the Odyssey in 1451a24–9 (where ἃπαντα ὂσα αὐτῷ συν⋯βη corresponds to τι 'αλκιβιάδης ἒπραξεν ἣ τι ἓπαθεν in 1451bll).Pace Else, op. cit. (n. 6), p. 313, the choice of Alcibiades as an example does not refer to comedy (which would spoil the development of the argument), but is still part of the allusion to historiography.

28 Kassel, with most other editors, prints A's τ⋯ν (a minority adopt B's τ⋯ν), but τ⋯ (the inferred reading of William of Moerbeke's lost ms: ‘circa particulare faciunt’) is preferable (A has the same error a t 51 b 10, where editors rightly adopt τ⋯ from B). Not e first that the only parallel for τ⋯ν καθ' ἒκαστον seems to be Rhet. 1380b21–2(ἠ γ⋯ρ ⋯ργ⋯ περι τ⋯ν καθ' ἒκαστόν ⋯στι)which Kassel deletes; contrast 1382a 5 ⋯ μέν όργ⋯ ⋯ει περι τ⋯ καθ' ἓκαστα, οιον καλλιαν ἣ σωκράτη7nu;. Secondly, since τ⋯ εικ⋯τα in 51bl 3 is equivalent to τἣ καθ⋯λου (cf. 51a38, 51b9 etc.) the antithesis between comedy and iambus should rest on the opposites συστ⋯σαντες τ⋯ν μ⋯θον διά τ⋯ν εικότων and περι τ⋯ καθ' ἓκαστον ποιο⋯σιν :comedy's use of’ rando m names ‘is cited (as I suggested above) as evidence of the universality of comic plots, but is not itself the main point of contrast, Thirdly, this interpretation secures the parallel with 49b8–9, where mature comedy and the ‘iambic ιδ⋯α’ are distinguished precisely in terms of καθ⋯λου ποιεινλ⋯γους. The logic o f the passage, therefore, is: poetry is universal; in the case of comedy (which is περι τ⋯ καθ⋯λου in its plot-construction, whereas iambus is περι τ⋯ καθ' ἔκαστον) this is clear from its use of invented names; it does not, however, follow that tragedy is not also περι τ⋯ καθ⋯λου, since its practice of using real names is explicable on other grounds.

29 See Halliwell, op. cit. (n. 2), p. 273 n. 30, on the fragments, and note Proleg. in 30 Koster, on Pherecrates: και αỨ το⋯ μέ λοιδρειν ⋯πέστη, where Koster interprets α⋯ as ‘in vicem; ut iam Crates’ (unfortunately this suggestion is itself based partly on the standard misinterpretation of Aristotle's allusion to Crates). In Heath, op. cit. (n. 5), p. 53, it was rash to cite the notice of Pherecrates in relation to Crates’ plot-structures; the sentence continues simply: πρ⋯γματα δέ εισηγούμενου γενόμενου μύθων. This source does comment on the care which poets of Middle Comedy – by which he means Antiphanes el al.– took over plot: κατασχολο⋯νται δέ πάντευ περι τ⋯υ ύποθ⋯σειυ, III 44.

30 His source may have been the third-century Alexandrian scholar Dionysiades of Mallos: Pfeiffer, R., History of Classical Scholarship (Oxford, 1968), p. 160Google Scholar.

31 cf. Heath, , op. cit. (n. 5), pp. 43–54Google Scholar.

32 Pickard-Cambridge, A. W., Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy (Oxford, 1927), p. 404Google Scholar (= p. 277 in the revised edition): ‘Aristotle would hardly have given the title of μύθρι to any but more or less coherent or connected structures’; but 1451b33–5, on episodic μύθρι, refutes this claim. μύθρυ was not in itself a term of approbation for Aristotle; hence the importance he attaches to defining the criteria of good plots.

33 For a detailed examination of Aristotle's theory of unity see chapter 4 of my Unity in Greek Poetics (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar; a brief discussion, with application to Aristophanes, in Heath, , op. cit. (n. 5), pp. 51–4Google Scholar.

34 cf. Rhel. 1386a7ff. for ⋯δυνηρ⋯ και Φθαρτικά in the analysis of pity.

35 If Orestes were reconciled with Aegisthus, this would indeed be αισχρόν in Greek eyes, the kind of behaviour one would expect of a morally inferior person. For the possibility that a real burlesque of the myth may be in question – for example, Alexis, Orestes – cf. Halliwell, op. cit. [n. 2], p. 272Google Scholar n. 28 (see also Webster, T. B. L., Hermes 82 [1954], 296)Google Scholar.

36 Halliwell, , op. cit. (n. 3), p. 85Google Scholar. Note the substitution of ‘truly comic’ (excluding some kinds of laughter) for Aristotle's quite general term ‘the laughable’. For a defence of this reading of the passage as a ‘persuasive definition’ see Held, G. F., TAPA 114 (1984), 161–6Google Scholar; I remain unconvinced.

37 cf. Gomme, A. W. and Sandbach, F. H., Menander (Oxford, 1973), p. 268Google Scholar: ‘The tormenting of a man who is physically incapacitated, even if he is less badly injured than he believes, would, if played quite seriously, be unpleasant.’ (I note that this example is cited also by Held, , art. cit. [n. 36], 163)Google Scholar.

38 If a wicked character suffers, this will satisfy our moral sense and evoke no fear or pity; cf. 1453al–4, with Moles, J., Phoenix 38 (1984), 325–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on Φιλάνθρωπρν But Rhet. 1377b31–8al should remind us that our judgements of moral character are not made in abstraction from other prejudicial factors – my formulation in the text tries to take account of this; cf. Heath, , op. cit. (n. 18), p. 80–4Google Scholar.

39 On this speech see Sommerstein, A. H., CQ 28 (1978), 390–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 The γάρ in 1453a36 seems somewhat elliptical; but the decisive point is clear: the two plot-kinds characterised as appropriate to comedy have in common the absence not of a painful or destructive πάθος, but of one evocative of fear and pity; 1449a34–5 must be read in an accordingly qualified sense.

41 Still excepting the Tractatus Coislinianus: see n. 1.

42 cf. Janko, , op. cit. (n. 1), p. 249Google Scholar, followed by Bremer, J. M., Mnemosyne 41 (1988), 167Google Scholar; cf. Else, , op. cit. (n. 6), p. 105Google Scholar (who is characteristically suspicious of authenticity); contra (e.g.) Halliwell, , op. cit. (n. 2), p. 273Google Scholar and n. 30.

43 I am indebted to Roger Brock for illuminating discussion of an early version of this paper; Stephen Halliwell and Geoffrey Arnott commented helpfully on subsequent drafts.