What Are The Most Effective Aspects Of

Aristophanes’ Comic Technique In : Essay, Research Paper

Aristophanes’ play “Qesmoforiazogsai” (”The Poet and the Women”) is an excellent comedy. Standing the test of time and the often diminishing process of translation into English it remains amusing today just as it doubtlessly was to its original Athenian audience. It is a well-controlled comedy with a fluent plot, striking dialogue and intelligent characterisation. But above all it passes the fundamental test of its genre in that it is funny. Aristophanes employs a rich and diverse array of comic techniques and devices to prevent the play from ever going stale; some are satirical; some are obscene; some are visual, for it is important to remember that “The Poet and the Women” is a play and hence meant for performance to a live audience. “The Poet and the Women”, to use a modern term, is essentially a situation comedy. Much of the humour comes from the incredible and bizarre situations into which the protagonists are delivered. Creating an amusing situation, out of which comes the other humour, provides the backbone for the comedy. It is essential that the most amusing events occur to the most humorous character and the Old Man’s (1) response and reaction to the predicament in which he finds himself is the mainstay of the comedy. The comedy of Aristophanes is on several levels. Of the higher, more intellectual techniques that he employs is the parody of Euripides. The playwright attempts to imagine how the great contrived devices of Euripides’ tragic heroes would work in another context. Of course the situations Aristophanes creates for his ‘heroes’ are equally contrived but for comic effect. The particular scenes which Aristophanes parodies add to the humour content. That Helen, the most beautiful mortal of the ancient world, should be mimicked by the Old Man, loosely disguised as an old woman, is ridiculous and therefore funny. That Euripides is not recognised when he appears as Meneleus by the very people who have been conspiring against him adds further to the amusement. The hopelessness of their futile attempts to use this dramatic device to free the Old Man is revealed in the dialogue. It is clear from the outset that they are not fooling anyone. THIRD WOMAN: You mustn’t believe a word he says: I tell you he’s talking nonsense. This is the Thesmophorion- you are in Athens EURIPIDES: Is Proteus now at home or is he out . THIRD WOMAN : You must be suffering from seasickness. I keep telling you, Proteus is dead. (page131) (2) Of course it is just as funny when they do fool someone, the Scythian, with the parody of the Echo scene in the now lost Euripides play Andromeda. Again the Old Man is cast as a maiden, totally incongruous with his own character or the presented himself as at the assembly. Still the plan ends in failure because the Scythian uses brute force as his defence against Euripides’ trickeries. The parodies of Euripides plays are essentially the raison d’etre of the play. We should remember that they would be more funny to the original Athenian audience than to the modern day reader since the comedy was only performed after the trilogy of tragedies so the audience would be immediately familiar with the situations upon which the burlesques are based. Two of the plays Aristophanes parodies, Andromeda and Helen, were only produced at the Dionysia the previous year, 412 BC, so the storylines would be relatively fresh in the audience’s minds. The first parody of a play,”Telephus” , in The Poet and the Women is one of the funniest scenes in the play when the Old Man snatches the ‘baby’ which turns out to be a skin of wine. This is funny because although it is the Old Man who creates the parody by seizing the bundle it is the women who maintain the ridiculousness by claiming that it is a baby. Even when the sack is stabbed they continue the pretence: FIRST WOMAN: My child, my child! Quick Manya , the bowl- at least I’ll catch my baby’s blood. (page125) The parodies are without doubt one of the most effective comic techniques used in the play by Aristophanes. But there are others also which contribute to the overall comic effect of the play. Another aspect which relates closely to the situation comedy theme is the notion of humour being derived from another person’s misfortune. The scenes in which the Old Man and Euripides appear are equivalent to ones which were tragic for characters in other plays. But by making the situation ridiculous, placing a comic character in the predicament and by writing into the plot some idea that the characters have brought this misfortune upon themselves creates a funny situation.(”Well this is a fine mess I’ve got myself into”. : Old Man page122). For the Old Man the catalogue of misfortune gets worse, starting with a singeing, being caught out and tied up and guarded over by a Scythian thug. Given that comedy relies upon the bizarre and the unusual, the reversal of traditional roles gives wide scope for comic effects. The most obvious example of this is the Old Man who dresses up as a woman in order to disguise himself at the Thesmophoria. However there are other examples such as Agathon who cross dresses in order to “merge his whole personality into what he is describing”. (page105) The effeminate Cleisthenes is also a comic character because he is accepted into the women’s assembly where men are strictly forbidden and has, therefore, in a sense, taken on the role of an honorary woman. F