Personal Humour in Aristophanes

Personal humour in Aristophanes

Poets, Politicians and PervertsIan Storey

Trent UniversityPeterboroughOntario

CLASSICS IRELAND

1998 Volume 5
University College Dublin, Ireland

http://www.ucd.ie/classics/98/Storey98.html

(I) Introduction

Old Comedy is not the sort of comedy that we are familiar with, i.e. situation comedy, comedy of errors and manners, of misassumptions and mistaken identities, of type characters, plot and sub-plot, with a romantic interest and an emphasis on the familial and the domestic. All of this depends on Greek New Comedy, the comedy of Menander (career: 325-290 B.C.) which was adapted by the Romans (Plautus and Terence) and through Shakespeare and others became the form of Western Comedy as we know it.

I would ask you to imagine (if you can) in dramatic form a combination of: the slapstick of the Three Stooges, the song & dance of a Broadway musical, the verbal wit of a television show like Cheers or Frasier, the exuberance of Mardi Gras, the parody of a Mel Brooks movie, the outrageous sexuality of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, the political satire of Doonesbury or your favourite editorial cartoonist, the fantastic imagination of J.R.R. Tolkien, all wrapped up in the format of a Monty Python movie. Such a creature might be closer to a comedy of the Aristophanic sort.

Old Comedy is fantasy or farce rather than what we might understand by "comedy"; it depends not on complicated plot or subtle interaction of characters, but on the working out of a "great idea" (the more bizarre, the better - e.g. a "private peace" with Sparta [Acharnians], the establishment of Cloudcuckooland [Birds], the "sex strike" that stops the War [Lysistrate]. Imagine a fantastic idea, bring it to pass, and watch the logical (or illogical) conclusions that follow. "Plot" is not a useful word in Aristophanic criticism; of the eleven extant comedies, only Thesmophoriazousai has anything like the linear plot of a modern comedy. The background is always topical and immediate, although we can notice in Ploutos, his last surviving comedy (388), a shift from the problems of Athens to those of all Greece.

In the very best sense of the word, then, assuming that there is a "best sense", Old Comedy is political, rooted in and centred on the polis of Athens in a particular place in time; Aristophanes (and the other comedians of this period, roughly 440-380[1]) make their comedy from the ideas, people, events and issues of the day; his plays are full of politics and politicians, thoughts and thinkers, poets and their poetry, as well as more than the occasional 'pervert', whose private life could be twisted by comedy for humorous effect. And nowhere is this topical nature more apparent than in personal humour (a rendering of the Greek to onomasti komodein --"to make fun of by name"), jokes against real people familiar to the audience and very likely sitting in the theatre on that day. One of the great uncertainties is how the 'victim' reacted. Was one just expected to take the joke in the festival atmosphere?[2] Was there ever a response against a comic poet (in the case of Kleon and Aristophanes, the answer appears to be "yes")? Was there even perhaps a perverse delight in being singled out, the sign that one had 'arrived' by becoming prominent enough for public mention?

In Aristophanes the verb komodein is used in three different ways (1) "to make fun, fool around" (as at Plout. 557), (2) "to include something in a comedy" (as at Ach. 655), and (3) "to make fun of <someone/something> (the most common usage, see Ach. 631, Peace 751, Frogs 368); a useful related term will be komodoumenoi ("those made fun of in comedy"). Both words occur as technical terms in the scholiastic tradition; ancient writers wrote books of komodoumenoi in the various comedians (see Galen de lib. propr. 17). If the "Old Oligarch" (= [Xen.] Ath. Pol.) is in fact a fifth-century text, it is interesting to note that both komodein and komodoumenoi are used in their technical senses as early as the time of the comedians (II.18).

In the extant eleven plays and the several hundreds of fragments of Aristophanes, there are at least 300 such komodoumenoi; these we can be reasonably sure are real people, and not just names thrown in by the poet with no intended reference. Add such mere names (e.g. the members of the chorus in Acharnians or Wasps or Ekkl.) and we reach perhaps 400 in all. The fragments of the other comic poets might raise this to about 500 -- in most cases the fragments of other poets yield komodoumenoi already familiar to us, as the scholiast (or whoever) cites Eupolis et al. for another reference to a man mentioned by Aristophanes (an example cited below will be Syrakosios at S Birds 1297). The komodoumenoi range from such well-known figures as Sokrates, Perikles, Kleon, and Euripides through instances where more than one identification with a known Athenian is possible (e.g., Antiphon, Lysistratos, Phrynichos at Wasps 1299ff.) to allusions to utterly known persons (e.g., Orsilochos at Lysist. 725 or Myrmex at Frogs 1506). I am currently at work on the preparation of a data-base covering the komodoumenoi in Aristophanes; formally titled, "A Critical Prospography to Aristophanes", but informally "Poets, Politicians, and Perverts".

(II) Examples and types of joke

(i) By far the most common sort of personal joke in Aristophanes is the one-liner, the quick jab that hardly disturbs the flow of the action -- I try to avoid the word "plot" in dealing with Aristophanic comedy. Three examples will illustrate this:

(1) Lysist. 283:

"these women whom god and Euripides hate"

(2) Clouds 399f. [explaining the nature of thunder]:

STR. Isn't the thunderbolt Zeus striking down the wicked?
SOKR. You fool, if he's striking down the wicked, how come he hasn't hit Simon yet, or Kleonymos or Theoros?

(3) Ach. 136-40 with reference to Theognis, nicknamed the "frigid" (psychros), a tragedian whose plays really "left one cold" - the scene is a mission returning from the North, the speaker its leader Theoros:

TH. We wouldn't have spent so much time in Thrace... DIK. (...if you hadn't been drawing full pay)
TH. ... if it hadn't been for a snow-storm that covered all of Thrace and froze the rivers solid.
DIK. That must have been around the time of the Dionysia, when Theognis was putting on his plays.

(ii) What I call variations on a malicious theme -- a series of brief jokes at various people, but with a connecting theme. Once the theme is established and as the lists goes on, audience expectation is assured. A good modern parallel is David Letterman's "Top Ten ...", where an expanding sequence on a common theme engages the audience's interest. Again I cite three examples:

(1) In the prologue of Wasps, the slaves have three dreams, each about politicians (demagogues in fact), set in a public place and involved with public matters, each having a transformation of a politician into an animal form, and depending for the punch on a bad Aristophanic pun. In its own right, the sequence is highly imaginative, but also sets the political mood for what will be a very political comedy.

(2) At Clouds 347-55, the chorus of Clouds enters, dressed as women. The ensuing conversation explains their guise, since the Clouds appear in imitation of whomever they see:

SOKR. The clouds become whomever they want. If they see one of those long-haired sex-fiends, like the son of Xenophantos, to mock him they turn into centaurs.[3]
STR. Suppose they catch sight of Simon, who's been robbing the public treasury, what do they do?
SOKR. To show his nature, they turn into wolves.
STR. So seeing Kleonymos yesterday, the man who threw his shield away, they became deer.
SOKR. So that's why they're women, they've just seen Kleisthenes.

This is a classic instance of the sequence with each appropriate element building to the final punch-line, the joke at Kleisthenes, the man most made fun of as a woman in Old Comedy, also the only man allowed into the council of the women in Thesmophoriazousai

(3) At Birds 1290ff. Athenians have become so bird-crazy that they have turned into whatever bird is appropriate for each (if X were a bird, what bird would he be?). This is quite a long list, sometimes with the human first, sometimes the bird. Again the audience would wait in anticipation, especially if the speech were punctuated with appropriate and pregnant pauses, even suggestions from the audience.

(iii) Sometimes an entire song, usually in a break between episodes or in the parabasis, is devoted to a developed attack upon one person (or a related group); one could quote several; here are two. In the first the birds describe their sights they have seen (Birds 1470-91, tr. Arrowsmith):

Many the marvels I've seen/the wonders on land and sea
But the oddest thing I ever saw/was the strange Kleonymos-tree.
It grows in faraway places,/its lumber looks quite stout,
But the wood is good for nothing/as its heart is rotten out.
In spring this tree grows law-shoots/of sycophantic green,
And bitter buds of slander/on every bough are seen.
But when like war cold winter comes,/the strange Kleonymos yields
Instead of leaves, like other trees,/a crop of coward's shields.

Knights is devoted to a major developed attack on the politician Kleon (a demagogue whom Aristophanes loathed, and about whom more later). In the play he is usually called "Paphlagon", a name that combines foreign extraction (Paphlagon = "from Paphalgonia", and would denote a slave from that region, cf. "Thratta" ["Thracian woman"]) with his distinctive manner of speaking (from the verb paphalzein ["to splutter']),[4] but once (and only once) is his real name used in a bright little song that begins (vv. 973-6):

The brightest sunrise it will be
for Athenians now living
and for those to come,
when Kleon is destroyed.

We know that songs from drama entered the public domain on their own as separate "hits" (see Kn. 529-30); I agree with Rogers that here Aristophanes is creating his own song that (he hopes) will leave the play and be on everyone's lips, especially with the elections only weeks away.

(iv) The final sort of personal joke employs a rather different technique; instead of attacking from the stage persons in the community outside, the poet can bring on real people as characters in his plays, actors who would represent real Athenians of the day. The best and most notorious example is of course Sokrates in Clouds (I shall deal with later the caricature of this revered thinker and the problems which it has raised). But other major examples are Euripides (in Thesm., Frogs), Kleon in Knights thinly disguised as "Paphlagon", and perhaps also Lysistrate whom Lewis argued was based on Lysimache (priestess of Athene), the best-known woman in Athens possibly and one known for what she was, not as anyone's mother, wife, daughter or sister.[5] But there are also minor "cameo"-scenes with real persons appearing for a short scene, e.g. the appearance of Euripides in Acharnians , the trial of the dogs in Wasps. (where the dogs Labes ["Snatcher"] and Kyon ["Dog"] are in fact the rival politicians, Laches and Kleon), and the presence of Kinesias (a new-age poet) and Meton (a city-planner) among those seeking entry to the city of the Birds. Each comedy from Acharnians to Frogs has at least one; Acharnians in fact has five or even six.[6]

(III) Later views of Old Comedy:

The ancient critics (especially the Romans) regarded Old Comedy with a mixture of fascination and horror, in particular where the freedom to attack real people was concerned. For later critics personal humour become the heart and soul of Old Comedy. To explain the origin of Old Comedy, one explained where personal jokes came from, i.e. as Aristotle does in Poetics 3-5, from the iambic tradition; to explain the change of Old Comedy, a law on comic freedom is postulated or an alteration in the political situation. This means that often all the other features that strike us so forcibly and with such pleasure, the fantasy, the parody, the social values, the language, the style were ignored in favour of the notion that Old Comedy was a sort of personal satire.

I have selected a number of passages from later authors; much of the serious study will have begun with the Alexandrian critics of 3rd c., but the Romans are the first we have in any detail.[7]

(1) Horace Ars Poetica 281-4:

Then there came Old Comedy, not without a considerable reputation. But its freedom degenerated into licence, and into a violence that had to be curbed by law. A law was passed and the chorus became quiet, having lost its right of shameful abuse.

I would note the association of comedy with freedom that became licence, the need for a law to curtail the "shameful abuse", and the grudging admission "not without a considerable reputation". This was popular, Horace admits; it still retains a reputation, but...

(2) Horace Satires I.4.1-7:

Eupolis and Cratinus and Aristophanes and the other poets of Old Comedy, if there was anyone deserving of being pointed out as a wicked man or a thief or an adulterer or murderer or as notorious in any way, would single him out with great freedom.

Here for the first time are set out the "Big Three" of Old Comedy, the triad of Eupolis (career: 429-411) and Kratinos and Aristophanes (an Alexandrian attempt to match the famous tragic triad of Aeschylus, Sophokles, and Euripides?). Two points stand out here. First, comedy is being viewed by Horace as the literary ancestor of satire and thus provides authority for Horace's own poems;[8] second we can find "redeeming moral value" for comedy in selecting deserving targets. Here we encounter what will become a frequent assumption in both ancient and modern criticism that the victims deserved their ridicule at the hands of the comedians.