Ancient Comedy and Reception: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Henderson 9781614511250, 9781614511663
This wide-ranging collection, consisting of 50 essays by leading international scholars in a variety of fields, provides
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Foreword
Ancient Comedy and Receptions
Exchanging Metaphors in Cratinus and Aristophanes
Comic Parrhêsia and the Paradoxes of Repression
Slipping One In: The Introduction of Obscene Lexical Items in Aristophanes
Ancient Comedy and Historiography: Aristophanes Meets Herodotus
Epiphany of a Serious Dionysus in a Comedy?
Toponimi e immaginario sessuale nella Lisistrata di Aristofane
Dionysus’ Choice in Frogs and Aristophanes’ Paraenetic Pedigree
Two Phaedras: Euripides and Aristophanes?
Plato’s Aristophanes
Menander’s Samia and the Phaedra Theme
Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Comedy: Menander’s Kolax in Three Roman Receptions (Naevius, Plautus and Terence’s Eunuchus)
Libera lingua loquemur ludis Liberalibus: Gnaeus Naevius as a Latin Aristophanes?
Plautus und die Techniken des Improvisationstheaters
Lege dura vivont mulieres: Syra’s Complaint about the Sexual Double Standard (Plautus Merc. 817–29)
“Letting It All Hang Out”: Lucian, Old Comedy and the Origins of Roman Satire
Old Comedy at Rome: Rhetorical Model and Satirical Problem
Inventing Everything: Comic and Performative Sources of Graeco-Roman Fiction
From Drama to Narrative: The Reception of Comedy in the Ancient Novel
Greek Culture as Images: Menander’s Comedies and Their Patrons in the Roman West and the Greek East
The Evidence of the Zeugma Synaristosai Mosaic for Imperial Performance of Menander
Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern Receptions
Medieval Vernacular Versions of Ancient Comedy: Geoffrey Chaucer, Eustache Deschamps, Vitalis of Blois and Plautus’ Amphitryon
Aristofane mascherato: Un secolo (1415–1504) di fortuna e ‘sfortuna’
L’influence de Plaute sur la définition du comique chez Giovanni Pontano
Strepsiades’ Latin Voice: Two Renaissance Translations of Aristophanes’ Clouds
The Trickster Onstage: The Cunning Slave from Plautus to Commedia dell’Arte
Aristophanes in England, 1500–1660
Exaggerating Terence’s Andria: Steele’s The Conscious Lovers, Bellamy’s The Perjur’d Devotee and Terentian Criticism
Roman Comedy and Renaissance Revenge Drama: Titus Andronicus as Exemplary Text
Molière and the Roman Comic Tradition
Jacob Masen’s Rusticus imperans (1657) and Ancient Theater
La recepción de Plauto y Terencio en la literatura española
Reform: A Farce Modernised from Aristophanes (1792)
Modern Receptions
Polos und Polis: Aristophanes’ Vögel und deren Bearbeitung durch Goethe, Karl Kraus und Peter Hacks
Translations of Aristophanes in Italy in the 19th century
Close Encounters of the Comic Kind: Aristophanes’ Frogs and Lysistrata in Athenian Mythological Burlesque of the 1880s
Rodgers and Hart’s The Boys from Syracuse: Shakespeare Made Plautine
She (Don’t) Gotta Have It: African-American Reception of Lysistrata
„Es ist, um aus der Rüstung zu fahren!“: Erich Kästners Adaption der Acharner des Aristophanes
Lysistrata on Broadway
“Attend, O Muse, Our Holy Dances and Come to Rejoice in Our Songs”: The Reception of Aristophanes in the Modern Musical Theater
Aristophanes at the BBC, 1940s–1960s
Cultural Politics and Aesthetic Debate in Two Modern Versions of Aristophanes’ Frogs
Ionesco’s New and Old Comedy
Aristophanes in the Cinema; or, the Metamorphoses of Lysistrata
Who’s Afraid of Aristophanes? The Troubled Life of Ancient Comedy in 20th-Century Italy
Aristophanes in Israel: Comedy, Theatricality, Politics
Culture, Education and Politics: Greek and Roman Comedy in Afrikaans
The Maculate Muse in the 21st Century: Recent Adaptations of Aristophanes’ Peace and Ecclesiazusae
Eschyle et Euripide entre tragédie et comédie: polyphonie et interprétation dans quelques traductions récentes des Grenouilles d’Aristophane
Business as Usual: Plautus’ Menaechmi in English Translation
Index of Names and Subjects
Recommend Papers
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Ancient Comedy and Reception
Ancient Comedy and Reception Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Henderson Edited by S. Douglas Olson
ISBN 978-1-61451-166-3 e-ISBN 978-1-61451-125-0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2014 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: © The Trustees of the British Museum Typesetting: jürgen ullrich typosatz, Nördlingen Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com
Foreword This volume represents an attempt to offer not a systematic history of the comic genre from Graeco-Roman times to today, but a series of interconnected studies of some of the most important moments and figures in that history. These studies are dedicated to Jeffrey Henderson, whose Maculate Muse (1975) and critical edition and commentary on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (1987)—among other major scholarly contributions— have decisively shaped the way Athenian “Old Comedy” is read and received today. The volume was conceived by Wolfgang Haase, Professor of Classical Studies at Boston University, who set its intellectual and geographic limits, issued the vast majority of the invitations to contribute, established the style-sheet and basic formatting standards, and did preliminary editorial work on a number of individual pieces. When Haase was forced to withdraw from the project for reasons of ill health at the end of 2012, I took over as general editor. My time and energy has been devoted primarily to line-editing material already in hand, making further organizing and formatting decisions and applying them throughout, and shepherding the project through the press. I would like to express my gratitude to the individual authors for consistently and cheerfully meeting the many deadlines set them in the course of this process. I would also like to thank Michiel Klein Swormink, De Gruyter’s Editorial Director for the Humanities (North America), and our project editor Emily Hough, for their assistance in bringing the volume into print. S. Douglas Olson Freiburg, August 2013
Contents S. Douglas Olson Foreword V
Ancient Comedy and Receptions Zachary P. Biles Exchanging Metaphors in Cratinus and Aristophanes Ralph M. Rosen Comic Parrhêsia and the Paradoxes of Repression
3
13
James Robson Slipping One In: The Introduction of Obscene Lexical Items in Aristophanes Heinz-Günther Nesselrath Ancient Comedy and Historiography: Aristophanes Meets Herodotus Oliver Taplin Epiphany of a Serious Dionysus in a Comedy?
62
Giuseppe Mastromarco Toponimi e immaginario sessuale nella Lisistrata di Aristofane
69
Mark Alonge Dionysus’ Choice in Frogs and Aristophanes’ Paraenetic Pedigree J.R. Green Two Phaedras: Euripides and Aristophanes? Charles Platter Plato’s Aristophanes
51
82
94
132
Alan H. Sommerstein Menander’s Samia and the Phaedra Theme
167
Michael Fontaine Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Comedy: Menander’s Kolax in Three Roman Receptions (Naevius, Plautus and Terence’s Eunuchus)
180
29
VIII
Contents
Simone Beta Libera lingua loquemur ludis Liberalibus: Gnaeus Naevius as a Latin Aristophanes?
203
Eckard Lefèvre Plautus und die Techniken des Improvisationstheaters
223
Boris Dunsch Lege dura vivont mulieres: Syra’s Complaint about the Sexual Double Standard (Plautus Merc. 817–29) 235 Keith Sidwell “Letting It All Hang Out”: Lucian, Old Comedy and the Origins of Roman Satire 259 Ian Ruffell Old Comedy at Rome: Rhetorical Model and Satirical Problem
275
Niall W. Slater Inventing Everything: Comic and Performative Sources of Graeco-Roman Fiction 309 Steven D. Smith From Drama to Narrative: The Reception of Comedy in the Ancient Novel
322
Sebastiana Nervegna Greek Culture as Images: Menander’s Comedies and Their Patrons in the Roman West and the Greek East 346 Niall W. Slater The Evidence of the Zeugma Synaristosai Mosaic for Imperial Performance of Menander 366
Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern Receptions Laura Kendrick Medieval Vernacular Versions of Ancient Comedy: Geoffrey Chaucer, Eustache Deschamps, Vitalis of Blois and Plautus’ Amphitryon 377 Ludovica Radif Aristofane mascherato: Un secolo (1415–1504) di fortuna e ‘sfortuna’
397
IX
Contents
Hélène Casanova-Robin L’influence de Plaute sur la définition du comique chez Giovanni Pontano
410
John Nassichuk Strepsiades’ Latin Voice: Two Renaissance Translations of Aristophanes’ Clouds 427 Francesca Schironi The Trickster Onstage: The Cunning Slave from Plautus to Commedia dell’Arte 447 Robert S. Miola Aristophanes in England, 1500–1660
479
Maik Goth Exaggerating Terence’s Andria: Steele’s The Conscious Lovers, Bellamy’s The Perjur’d Devotee and Terentian Criticism 503 Adele Scafuro Roman Comedy and Renaissance Revenge Drama: Titus Andronicus as Exemplary Text 537 Philip Ford Molière and the Roman Comic Tradition
565
Gesine Manuwald Jacob Masen’s Rusticus imperans (1657) and Ancient Theater
580
Benjamín García-Hernández, Rosario López Gregoris y Carmen González-Vázquez La recepción de Plauto y Terencio en la literatura española 606 Robert Tordoff Reform: A Farce Modernised from Aristophanes (1792)
654
Modern Receptions Bernhard Greiner Polos und Polis: Aristophanes’ Vögel und deren Bearbeitung durch Goethe, Karl Kraus und Peter Hacks 699
X
Contents
Maria Luisa Chirico Translations of Aristophanes in Italy in the 19th century
727
Gonda Van Steen Close Encounters of the Comic Kind: Aristophanes’ Frogs and Lysistrata in Athenian Mythological Burlesque of the 1880s 747 Timothy J. Moore Rodgers and Hart’s The Boys from Syracuse: Shakespeare Made Plautine Kevin J. Wetmore She (Don’t) Gotta Have It: African-American Reception of Lysistrata
786
Peter v. Möllendorff „Es ist, um aus der Rüstung zu fahren!“: Erich Kästners Adaption der Acharner des Aristophanes 797 Marina Kotzamani Lysistrata on Broadway
807
Simone Beta “Attend, O Muse, Our Holy Dances and Come to Rejoice in Our Songs”: The Reception of Aristophanes in the Modern Musical Theater 824 Amanda Wrigley Aristophanes at the BBC, 1940s–1960s
849
Graham Ley Cultural Politics and Aesthetic Debate in Two Modern Versions of Aristophanes’ Frogs 871 David Konstan Ionesco’s New and Old Comedy
887
Martin M. Winkler Aristophanes in the Cinema; or, the Metamorphoses of Lysistrata Martina Treu Who’s Afraid of Aristophanes? The Troubled Life of Ancient Comedy in 20th-Century Italy 945
894
762
XI
Contents
Nurit Yaari Aristophanes in Israel: Comedy, Theatricality, Politics
964
Betine van Zyl Smit Culture, Education and Politics: Greek and Roman Comedy in Afrikaans
984
Elizabeth Scharffenberger The Maculate Muse in the 21st Century: Recent Adaptations of Aristophanes’ Peace and Ecclesiazusae 1000 Myrto Gondicas Eschyle et Euripide entre tragédie et comédie: polyphonie et interprétation dans quelques traductions récentes des Grenouilles d’Aristophane 1022 J. Michael Walton Business as Usual: Plautus’ Menaechmi in English Translation
Index of Names and Subjects
1063
1040
Ancient Comedy and Receptions
Zachary P. Biles
Exchanging Metaphors in Cratinus and Aristophanes Abstract: Self-aggrandizing boasts and taunting exchanges between rivals are a noteworthy feature of comic poets’ response to the competitive format of dramatic production. While these exchanges are often couched in blunt, if imaginative, terms, close analysis of a series of passages (esp. Cratin. fr. 203; Ar. V. 1049–50; fr. 688) reveals a subtle antagonism based on adoption and control of the metaphors and flamboyant language rivals deploy to portray their poetic virtues for the audience. Underlying the discussion is an argument for expanding the content of Cratin. fr. 203 to include the first couplet of the Hellenistic epigram from which the words are drawn.
Cratinus fr. 203 in Kassel-Austin’s edition is drawn from the second line of a Hellenistic epigram:1 “οἶνός τοι χαρίεντι πέλει ταχὺς ἵππος ἀοιδῷ ὕδωρ δὲ πίνων οὐδὲν ἂν τέκοις σοφόν.” τοῦτ᾿ ἔλεγεν, Διόνυσε, καὶ ἔπνεεν οὐχ ἑνὸς ἀσκοῦ Κρατῖνος, ἀλλὰ παντὸς ὠδώδει πίθου. τοιγὰρ ὑπὸ στεφάνοις μέγας ἔβρυεν, εἶχε δὲ κισσῷ μέτωπον ὥσπερ καὶ σὺ κεκροκωμένον. “Wine, you know, is a fast horse for a graceful poet, and you could produce nothing clever by drinking water.” That, Dionysus, is what Cratinus used to say, and he had the whiff not of a single wineskin, but reeked of the entire cask. Thus did he burst forth into greatness beneath garlands, and he kept his forehead tinted yellow with ivy, just like you.
Whether a direct quotation of a Cratinean trimeter or an adaptation thereof, the verse suits the comic poet in light of contemporary (esp. Ar. Eq. 529–36) and later poets’ and
Among the many contributions Jeffrey Henderson has made to the study of Old Comedy is his attention, in his lexical work particularly, to the sophisticated use of vivid terms and the meanings they generate in different literary contexts. This study attempts to extend that effort to further enrich our understanding of the work of Aristophanes and his rivals. For Aristophanic passages, I offer the translations of Henderson’s Loebs throughout. 1 AP 13. 29; Asclep. 47. Authorship is variously ascribed in the sources for the epigram; see Alexander Sens (ed.), Asclepiades of Samos: Epigrams and Fragments (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 325–6.
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readers’ (Hor. Epist. 1.19.1–3; Lib. Ep. 1477.5) descriptions of his fondness for alcohol, and above all because a wine-induced inspiration was part of Cratinus’ own poetic identity.2 Moreover, as an iambic trimeter the second line can be easily ascribed to a specific play, Pytine (Dionysia 423 BCE), in which Cratinus notoriously made his alcoholism and poetic activity the centerpiece of the action in response to Aristo3 phanes’ taunts in Knights (ΣVEΓ Θ Eq. 400a = Pytine test. ii). This would explain why the statement does not take the form of an anapestic tetrameter or another long-line verse better suited to a self-reflexive poetic assertion in a parabasis.3 Kassel–Austin, however, scale back the text offered by Meineke and Meier, who accepted the entire first couplet of the epigram as a quotation or rendering of Cratinean material, a position that accords well with the implicit connection of the statement in v. 3–4 to everything said up to this point: “Cratinus used to say the preceding.”4 One detail that appears not to have been taken into account supports this conclusion. The description in v. 1 stipulates a “fast” horse, which seems to presuppose an equestrian competition as the envisioned comparandum driving the metaphorical treatment of wine. Not surprisingly, “fleet” is a common epithet of horses in epinician poetry, as also in epigrams commemorating victories in equestrian events.5 That characterization of a poet’s interests accordingly is not only a fitting description of the competitive ambience of the dramatic festivals as Cratinus experienced and reflected on them,6 but points to the Hellenistic epigrammatist’s likely source for the sentiment, namely a Cratinean parabasis or a passage with parabatic overtones, in which the playwright squared off with his rivals by making poetic claims
2 Ralph M. Rosen, “Cratinus’ Pytine and the construction of the comic self,” in: David Harvey, John Wilkins (eds.), The Rivals of Aristophanes: Studies in Athenian Old Comedy (London: Duckworth, 2000) 23–39; Zachary P. Biles, “Intertextual biography in the rivalry of Cratinus and Aristophanes,” American Journal of Philology 123 (2002), pp. 170–88; Ian Ruffell, “A total write–off: Aristophanes, Cratinus, and the rhetoric of comic competition,” Classical Quarterly NS 52 (2002), pp. 155–62; Emmanuela Bakola, “The drunk, the reformer and the teacher: agonistic poetics and the construction of persona in the comic poets of the fifth century,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 54 (2008), pp. 11–15; Cratinus and the Art of Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), Ch. 1 passim. 3 For the range of meters used in parabases, see e.g. James W. Poultney, “Eupolidean Verse,” American Journal of Philology 100 (1979), pp. 140–1; Riccardo Quaglia, “Elementi strutturali nelle commedie di Cratino,” Acme 51 (1998), pp. 58–62. For “Cratinus” in Pytine, cf. Sidwell, pp. 280–9 in this volume. 4 See Kassel–Austin ad loc., with attempts to recast the verse in an appropriate metrical form. Cf. Sens, Asclepiades (above, n. 1), pp. 327, 328–9. 5 Epinician: Pi. O. 1.110; P. 11.46–8; N. 1.5–6; Bacch. 3.4. Epigram: CEG nos. 302.3; 820.2; cf. 379. In Homer, the combination ἵππος ταχύς is mostly associated with the chariot race in Patroclus’ funeral games (Il. 23.347, 545, cf. 287; elsewhere at 5.356; 22.464); more regularly, fast horses in Homer are ώκύς (e.g. 3.263; 4.500; 23.516). 6 E.g. frr. 38; 342; 360; with Bakola, Cratinus (above, n. 2), pp. 24–9, 40–1, 48–9. Epinician imagery returns in the epigram’s final couplet with the image of Cratinus’ ivy-shadowed crown, for which cf. AP 13.28.4.
Exchanging Metaphors in Cratinus and Aristophanes
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about the virtues of alcohol, likely in response to criticism like that found in Knights (Lenaia 424 BCE).7 Indeed, a separate scholion tells us that Cratinus leveled specific charges of plagiarism against Aristophanes in Pytine.8 And while certainty is impossible, this play seems the likely place of origin for the ideas contained in the entire first couplet of the epigram, both because of its explicit concentration on poetry in such terms, and because the rivalry between Aristophanes and Cratinus probably reached its climax that year, shortly after which Cratinus ceased to compete at the Dionysian festivals.9 If both verses of the epigram’s opening couplet depend on Cratinean passages having to do with his rivalry with Aristophanes, it is worth considering how two other passages might fit within an antagonistic dialogue between the two poets. Commenting on the defeat of Clouds by Pytine (Nu. Hyp. II Dover) one year after the event, Aristophanes at Wasps 1049–50 attempts to explain the upset by recourse to a related metaphor: ὁ δὲ ποιητὴς οὐδὲν χείρων παρὰ τοῖσι σοφοῖς νενόμισται, εἰ παρελαύνων τοὺς ἀντιπάλους τὴν ἐπίνοιαν ξυνέτριψεν. Though our poet is no worse off in the eyes of the sagacious if, while overtaking his rivals with a novel conception, he took a spill.
Here too “the poet” is cast in a context of equestrian competition. Whereas the Cratinean passage only alluded to the competitive dynamic of dramatic performance, Aristophanes’ reference to his “rivals” at V. 1050 draws this function of the metaphor out into the open.10 The resonance is potentially more interesting, however, if Pytine is the source of the Hellenistic epigram, since in that case Aristophanes seems to be
7 Although I assume that the Hellenistic poet can be credited with some manipulation of metrical form, see Bakola, Cratinus (above, n. 2), pp. 163 n. 138 (for hexameters perhaps mixed with other meters in Cratinus), 39–59 (for the voice of “Cratinus” in fragments belonging to poetic structures other than the parabasis). 8 ΣVEΓΘMEq. 531a = Pytine fr. 213, alleging plagiarism by Aristophanes of Eupolidean material; see Ian C. Storey, Eupolis: Poet of Old Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 281–8; Natalia Kyriakidi, Aristophanes und Eupolis: zur Geschichte einer dichterischen Rivalität, Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte 85 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007), pp. 176–96. 9 See the cautionary remarks against such assumptions in Biles, “Intertextual biography” (above, n. 2), pp. 173–4, and Bakola, Cratinus (above, n. 2), pp. 56–7, although Biles, pp. 175–6, provides additional reasons for thinking that v. 2 of the epigram (fr. 203) belongs to Pytine. The report of Cratinus’ “death” at Pax 700–3 (City Dionysia 421 BCE), while almost certainly a distorted exaggeration of the true circumstances (see S. Douglas Olson (ed.), Aristophanes: Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), ad loc.), at least fits his disappearance from the didascalic evidence. Giuseppe Mastromarco, “L’invasione dei Laconi e la morte di Cratino (Ar. Pax, 700–703),” in: Luigi Torraca (ed.), Scritti in onore di Italo Gallo (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2002), pp. 395–403, believes that he remained active for a few more years. 10 For ἀντίπαλος in this sense, cf. Pax 739 with Olson, Peace (above, n. 9), ad loc.; CEG no. 811.
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claiming that his own play (Clouds), although defeated by Cratinus’ play, was in fact the “faster” of the two, which is to say “better.” This at least is the poetological implication of claiming that he “was driving past his rivals.”11 The responsive relationship between the passages may be closer still, since in Pytine Cratinus presumably used the metaphor, either directly or implicitly, to address his two consecutive defeats by Aristophanes’ Acharnians (Lenaia 425 BCE) and Knights (Lenaia 424 BCE).12 So too, Aristophanes’ obvious attempt to restore his relationship with the sophoi in the audience in V. 1049 and especially in the pnigos that follows (V. 1051–9), smacks of a rebuttal to the assault on his credentials as an (over-) sophisticated poet, which Cratinus (fr. 342) must have made before the audience in the recent past and which the defeat of Clouds is taken by Aristophanes to have endorsed (esp. Nu. 525–35).13 It makes sense, finally, that Aristophanes’ intellectualizing epinoia (V. 1050) both recalls dianoia, a term used to refer to Clouds and its defeat a few lines earlier (V. 1044), and replaces Cratinus’ wine as the vehicle that ought to bring a poet across the finish line in first place.14 The metaphor and its redeployment in a modified form thus amount to a pointed, sophisticated exchange between rivals as they strive to pick apart one another’s poetic claims and simultaneously promote their own, all in an effort to win over the audience, as the pnigos in Wasps makes plain by weaving together blatant requests for support and touting the virtues of Aristophanic-brand poetic sophia. A similar attempt to appropriate and control a feature of Cratinus’ poetic identity may exist in Ar. fr. 688. As part of a discussion of Pramnian wine, Athenaeus quotes Aristophanes as an authority for Athenian dislike of this vintage:15
11 Compare Aristophanes’ comments on Clouds’ superlative quality in relation to the shabby rivals who defeated him at Nu. 521–5 (cf. V. 1043–7). For παρελαύνων in this context, cf. Il. 23.345, 427; and see Roberto Campagner, Lessico agonistico di Aristofane (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 2001), pp. 255–6; Olimpia Imperio, Parabasi di Aristofane: Acarnesi, Cavalieri, Vespe, Uccelli (Bari: Adriatica Editrice, 2004), ad loc. 12 Ach. Hyp. I.38–9; Eq. Hyp. II.21–2 Wilson. 13 Aristophanes’ claim to a strategy of poetic retrenchment in Wasps, in response to his defeat with Clouds, is already adumbrated in the prologue, where terms activating his poetic persona as an “overly sophisticated” poet are prominent (esp. 64–6). 14 Cf. Imperio, Parabasi (above, n. 11), pp. 297–9. For possible explanations of what epinoia (cf. Eq. 539; Pax 750) implies for Aristophanean poetics, see Ruffell, “Total write–off” (above, n. 2), pp. 147– 50. 15 The fragment is transmitted without a play-title. Bergk assigned it to the lost Thesmophoriazusae, based on the mention of Pramnian and many other wine types in fr. 334 and flowery wine in fr. 351, but references to wine are ubiquitous in comedy; for Pramnian specifically, see also Eq. 107; Phryn. Com. fr. 68. The former passage may involve engagement with Cratinean comedy: Ruffell, “Total write–off” (above, n. 2), pp. 148–55. In any event, a date of production for the second Thesmophoriazusae within the period of Aristophanes’ rivalry with Cratinus is not impossible: James Butrica, “The lost Thesmophoriazusae of Aristophanes,” Phoenix 55 (2001), pp. 44–76; skeptical response in Colin Austin and
Exchanging Metaphors in Cratinus and Aristophanes
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τὸν Ἀθηναίων δῆμον οὔτε ποιηταῖς ἥδεσθαι σκληροῖς καὶ ἀστεμφέσιν οὔτε πραμνίοις {σκληροῖσιν} οἴνοις συνάγουσι τὰς ὀφρῦς16 τε καὶ τὴν κοιλίαν, ἀλλ᾿ οσμίαι καὶ πέπονι νεκταροσταγεῖ. [Aristophanes says that] the Athenian people enjoy neither poets who are hard and dry nor Pramnian wines that contract the brows and the bowels, but prefer a rich bouquet and a taste of nectar.
Although it is unclear how the metrical form of the passage should be restored,17 interest in the current Athenian preference for poets strongly suggests that Aristophanes’ own positioning for the audience’s favor is involved. That he uses a metaphor that connects wine with poetics may also point to rivalry with Cratinus, whose poetic biography, as noted above, included a claim of inspiration through wine that was readily identifiable by the audience.18 It may not be coincidence, in that case, that the characterization of Cratinus’ poetic style by Platonius includes the same qualitative term “harsh” to describe his penchant for abuse (αὐστηρὸς … ταῖς λοιδορίαις) that Athenaeus offers in his preface to the Aristophanic fragment to describe the “bitter” Pramnian poets/wine now out of fashion in Athens.19 At the very least, this point of comparison tends to confirm the literary critical interest of Ar. fr. 688.20 But Athenaeus’ prefatory remarks are also only a terse recasting of ideas that follow in the Aristophanic fragment itself,21 and it is accordingly worth recalling that the contribution of loidoria to Cratinus’ comic style attracted Aristophanes’ critical attention else-
S. Douglas Olson (eds.), Aristophanes: Thesmophoriazusae (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. lxxxv–vii. 16 The phrase συνάγουσι τὰς ὀφρῦς (cf. Antiph. fr. 217.2) appears also at Nu. 582, for the Clouds’ disapproval of the Athenians’ support of Cleon. 17 See Kassel–Austin ad loc. 18 Less likely, a reference to Aeschylus is assumed by Ferruccio Conti Bizzarro, Poetica e critica letteraria nei frammenti dei poeti comic greci (Naples: M. D’Auria Editore, 1999), p. 48, based on Ar. fr. 663, in which the tragic poet’s sklêrotês, i.e. “harshness” (on related terms for Cratinus, see below), is taken in the ancient scholarly tradition as the basis for Aristophanes’ likening him to “tough skin” (κόλλοπι). It is easier to believe that Aristophanes reserved the terms of approbation in fr. 688 for himself, and thus that the passage has to do with comedy; cf. the characterization of Aristophanes in Anon. De comoedia, Prolegomena de Comoedia III, p. 9.37 Koster, εὐφυίᾳ πάντας ὑπεραίρων (“surpassing all in genius”). But the connection with Aeschylus is perhaps not to be rejected entirely, given the use Cratinus may have made of Aeschylus in developing his own comic poetics: see Anon. De comoedia, Prolegomena de Comoedia III, p. 8.24 Koster; Bakola, Cratinus (above, n. 2), pp. 118–79. 19 De diff. char., Prolegomena de Comoedia II, p. 6.2 Koster. Platonius goes on to offer an immediate distinction from Aristophanes’ style in this regard, well in advance of his focus on the latter poet at the end of the passage, where Cratinus is described in similar terms as πικρὸς λίαν (p. 7.15). 20 So too in Phryn. Com. fr. 68, Pramnian wine is apparently used metaphorically to characterize Sophocles’ poetry; cf. Conti Bizzarro, Poetica (above, n. 18), p. 77. 21 ἔστι δὲ οὗτος γένος τι οἴνου καί ἐστιν οὗτος οὔτε γλυκὺς οὔτε παχύς, ἀλλ᾿ αὐστηρὸς καὶ σκληρὸς καὶ δύναμιν ἔχων διαφέρουσαν (“This is a type of wine, and it is neither sweet nor rich, but is bitter and harsh, as well as exceptionally potent”).
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where, most emphatically in Eq. 526–36, which simultaneously picks apart Cratinus’ adoption of the wine-poetry connection.22 The sheer, undiluted elemental power of Cratinus’ poetry is the point of the first part of the Knights passage,23 and that interest coincides with Athenaeus’ further description of Pramnian wine as “exceptionally potent”. And to the extent that in Knights Aristophanes is out to characterize overpowering loidoria as distinctive of his rival, the implicit claim is that his own poetry is not so extreme—the very point of De diff. char., which places Aristophanes at a balanced position between the poles of comic style represented by Cratinus and Eupolis.24 In the same treatise, moreover, Platonius makes Cratinus’ bitter style a byproduct of his emulation of Archilochus (ἅτε δὴ κατὰ τὰς Ἀρχιλόχου ζηλώσεις). Cratinus’ self-proclaimed dependence on alcohol appears to have been bound up with that literary debt, based on the archaic poet’s notorious self-description in fr. 120 West2:25 ὡς Διωνύσου ἄνακτος καλὸν ἐξάρξαι μέλος οἶδα διθύραμβον οἴνῳ συγκεραυνωθεὶς φρένας. I know how to initiate a fine song for Lord Dionysus, a dithyramb, when my wits are thunderstruck with wine.
In short, these various sources likely lead back to the same point of origin, in the poetic posturing and banter between Aristophanes and Cratinus, making the latter a good candidate to represent the Pramnian poetic style of fr. 688. Where the focus on Pramnian wine originated within this scenario, is impossible to say. It might go back to Cratinus himself,26 but it is equally likely that Aristophanes
22 Biles, “Intertextual biography” (above, n. 2), pp. 178–80; Bakola, “The drunk” (above, n. 2), pp. 11–15. 23 Thus the raging stream metaphor in 526–8: see Ralph M. Rosen, Old Comedy and the Iambographic Tradition, American Classical Studies 19 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), pp. 38–40; Imperio, Parabasi (above, n. 11), ad loc. Compare Platonius’ description of Cratinus’ frontal attacks: ἀλλ᾿ ἁπλῶς κατὰ τὴν παροιμίαν “γυμνῇ τῇ κεφαλῇ” τίθησι τὰς βλασφημίας κατὰ τῶν ἁμαρτανόντων (“but set out his abuse of those in the wrong directly and ‘with a naked head’, as the proverb goes”), where “those in the wrong” puts a moralizing spin on Cratinus’ chosen personal targets and thus matches τοὺς ἐχθρούς (Eq. 528). 24 Cf. Kyriakidi, Aristophanes und Eupolis (above, n. 8), p. 48. At V. 56–66, Aristophanes likewise positions Wasps between the extremes of his own (too) sophisticated brand of poetry and the low-brow humor of others, i.e. his rivals. A similar balance is at stake in Aristophanes’ claims in fr. 488 about his dependence on Euripides, as he defended it against Cratinus (fr. 342); cf. Ar. fr. 706. For Eupolis and charis, Storey, Eupolis (above, n. 9), pp. 44–5, and below. 25 The characterization of Archilochus’ style in [Longin.] De subl. 33.5 (cf. 32.4) also resonates with the stream metaphor for “Cratinus” in Eq. 526–8. Cf. Rosen, Old Comedy (above, n. 23), pp. 40–2; Biles, “Intertextual biography” (above, n. 2), pp. 172–3; Ruffell, “Total write–off” (above, n. 2), p. 146; Bakola, Cratinus (above, n. 2), pp. 17–18. 26 Fr. 195 eroticizes Mendaian wine in a way that suggested to Runkel that it comes from Pytine.
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recognized an opportunity to lend specificity to his older rival’s broad adoption of the metaphoric connection of poetic inspiration with wine and thereby turn the image against him. At any rate, in a way far more daring than was suggested above in the manipulation of the equestrian metaphor, in fr. 688 Aristophanes takes hold of what may have been the most significant facet of Cratinus’ literary identity and exploits weaknesses in the equation of wine with poetry that allow him to co-opt the metaphor and recast it in a way that suggests the superiority of his own plays. But Cratinus’ quiver contained the same technique for taking aim at rivals. The central claim of Pytine, that personified Comedy is the wife of “Cratinus”, essentially exploits and oneups the personification of Komoidodidaskalia as a desirable lover that Aristophanes used to mock Cratinus one year earlier at Eq. 514–17.27 That kind of manipulation, which is perhaps an underlying dynamic of almost all variations of the evolving literary repertoire comic poets had at their disposal,28 may help resolve one further detail in the relationship between Cratinus and the Hellenistic epigram with which I began. Cobet objected to attributing the first verse of the epigram to Cratinus because of the adjective χαρίεις: “sed si quis putat Cratinum se ipsum χαρίεντα ἀοιδὸν dicere potuisse, is nondum Κρατίνου τοῦ ταυροφάγου γλώττης βακχεῖ᾿ ἐτελέσθη.”29 The objection may seem justified by the testimony of Platonius’ De diff. char., cited above, which at several points attaches the quality of poetic charis to Eupolis as the polar opposite of Cratinus in style, with Aristophanes falling between them in a mixed form. But the only support Cobet offers for rejecting the thesis is the mystic call for holy silence at Ra. 357, and his position is thus based on a characterization of Cratinus by a rival long after his death, which also serves first and foremost the literary interests of Frogs itself.30 The possibility—even likelihood—of an underlying tone of irony or sophistication of some other sort in Cratinus’ assumed declaration makes Cobet’s sweeping rejection hazardous. And while we cannot know precisely what charieis contributed in its original Cratinean context, a sensible explanation exists. At Nu. 311–12, the chorus of Clouds sing of Athens, where in spring there is “the Bromian charis of melodious choruses competing” (Βρομία χάρις / εὐκελάδων τε χορῶν ἐρεθίσματα). “Grace” and the Graces have a well-established connection with 27 Cf. Biles, “Intertextual biography” (above, n. 2), pp. 184–6; Bakola, Cratinus (above, n. 2), pp. 280– 1. 28 Malcolm Heath, “Aristophanes and some of his rivals,” Greece & Rome 37 (1990), p. 152. 29 “But if anyone thinks that Cratinus could refer to himself as a “graceful poet”, he is not yet ‘initiated into the bacchic rites of bull-eating Cratinus’ tongue.” Carel G. Cobet, Novae lectiones quibus continentur observationes criticae in scriptores Graecos, Band I.1 (Leiden: Brill, 1858; reprint Hildesheim, 2005 [cited]), pp. 146–7. Kassel–Austin ad loc. tentatively assent, but sound a cautionary note based on χαρίεις ποιητής of Homer at Pl. Lg. 680c. 30 Especially the correlation of “Cratinus” with “Aeschylus” through bull imagery (804), mystic rites (887) and Bacchic associations (1259). Cf. Zachary P. Biles, Aristophanes and the Poetics of Competition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 225–32.
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musical performance,31 but the specific association of charis with competition at the Dionysian festivals here is reaffirmed by Ec. 582: ὡς τὸ ταχύνειν χαρίτων μετέχει πλεῖστον παρὰ τοῖσι θεαταῖς since haste wins the greatest amount of favor with the audience,
as well as by Ar. fr. 348 (from Thesmophoriazusae II): μήτε Μούσας ἀνακαλεῖν ἑλικοβοστρύχους μήτε Χάριτας βοᾶν ἐς χορὸν Ὀλυμπίας· ἐνθάδε γάρ εἰσιν, ὥς φησιν ὁ διδάσκαλος. nor summon the curly-tressed Muses nor yell for the Olympian Graces to the dance, for our producer says they’re already present.
Charis and the Graces, who had it in their power to confer this quality on poetry, were in other words essential to the ideals of performance to which a comic poet might aspire in an effort to please the audience and ultimately secure victory in the contest. Self-positioning against rivals is thus implicit in these passages, and that antagonism rises to the surface in the final one,32 since the poet as didaskalos comes forward none too subtly through his chorus to assert the superiority of his play.33 We can do little more than offer alternatives for how these assumptions might contribute to Cratinus’ portrayal of himself as a charieis poet, assuming the epigrammatist’s choice of terms in fact goes back to him. At a minimum, Cratinus might simply imply, like Aristophanes in fr. 348, that he is a legitimate candidate for the audience’s support. If, on the other hand, the association between charis and Eupolis in Platonius ultimately goes back to Eupolis’ own programmatic assertions, it may matter that he too fell within the ambit of Cratinus’ criticisms in Pytine (fr. 213).34 The adjective charieis might then allude to Cratinus’ attempt to usurp an element of a different rival’s poetic claims, although in that case the rhetoric of charis has left little mark in what
31 E.g. Od. 24.197–8; hAp. 194; hHom. 24. 5; Hes. Th. 64 with West ad loc.; Pi. fr. 141; E. IT 1147; V. 1278; Lys. 1279; Ra. 334 (with Dover ad loc., citing PMG 871). Cf. Sens, Asclepiades (above, n. 1), p. 329. 32 Perhaps from a second parabasis syzygy: M. Whittaker, “The comic fragments in their relation to the structure of Old Attic Comedy,” Classical Quarterly 29 (1935), p. 190; Gregory M. Sifakis, Parabasis and Animal Choruses; A Contribution to the History of Attic Comedy (London: Athlone Press, 1971), pp. 35–6. For metapoetic appeals for victory in the contests at this point in a play, cf. Nu. 1115–30; Av. 1101–17. 33 Contrast the poet’s swaggering confidence here with the more traditional stance in summoning the Graces at Lys. 1279. 34 Some scholars speculate that Eupolis and Aristophanes figured into a scene of poetic composition in Pytine, based on frr. 208–9; cf. Keith Sidwell, “Authorial collaboration? Aristophanes’ Knights and Eupolis,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 34 (1993), pp. 376–7.
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survives of Eupolis’ poetry.35 In any event, it ought to come as no surprise if Cratinus’ engagement with this other young, successful poet was every bit as intense and given to nuanced expression as his rivalry with Aristophanes. An example of the latter sort of appropriation is perhaps available in Cratinus frr. 203 and 360. The handling of sophia in these passages patently relies on the generic association of poetry with sophia in the Greek literary tradition.36 But there may be more to it, since in fr. 360 in particular the attempted vindication of “our sophia” (i.e. that of “Cratinus”) has a markedly self-assertive quality about it. Indeed, this resonance gains force in light of the conspicuous interest in this passage in the audience’s reception of Cratinus’ plays and the implication that they had recently preferred other poets.37 The claim of sophia may accordingly involve a tone of hostile antagonism or even sarcasm.38 The explanation is perhaps that sophistication was a significant component in Aristophanes’ poetic claims via terms such as dexios, sophos/sophia and the like,39 and that Aristophanes was also chiefly responsible for the downturn in Cratinus’ rate of agonistic success in the final years of his career.40 In other words, both elements of fr. 360 can easily be connected with Cratinus’ rivalry with Aristophanes. Finally, that Cratinus elsewhere took aim at Aristophanes’ claims to poetic sophistication (fr. 342) implies that this aspect of the latter’s poetic stance was “in play” in the tug-of-war between the two poets for the audience’s
35 Mentions of the Graces are found in Eup. frr. 16 (Goats) and 176 (Flatterers), neither obviously metapoetic. Charis makes a modest thematic contribution in fr. 172.5, 10, 12 (also Flatterers). Storey, Eupolis (above, n. 9), p. 367, believes that Platonius’ association of charis with Eupolis depends on attempts by (perhaps early) ancient scholars to impose a schematic division on the poets that has little or nothing to do with the poets themselves or their poetry. Be this true or not, ancient scholarly theories were often prompted by “information” taken direct from the poets themselves; see in general Mary R. Lefkowitz, The Lives of the Greek Poets (London: Duckworth, 1981) for a highly skeptical appraisal of the biographical content in these traditions (cf. Sidwell, p. 286 in this volume). 36 Cf. Mark Griffith, “Contest and contradiction in early Greek poetry,” in: Mark Griffith, Donald J. Mastronarde (eds.), Cabinet of the Muses: Essays on Classical and Comparative Literature in Honor of Thomas G. Rosenmeyer (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), pp. 188–90; K.J. Dover (ed.), Aristophanes: Frogs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 12–13. 37 For the situation, cf. Cratin. fr. 38 (Didaskaliai). At Eup. fr. 392, the poet makes similar complaints against the audience for past disfavor of Eupolis and preference for “foreign, clever poets” (τοὺς ξένους ποιητὰς σοφούς), the latter likely implying Aristophanes: cf. Storey, Eupolis (above, n. 9), pp. 302–3, with doubts raised by S. Douglas Olson, Broken Laughter: Select Fragments of Greek Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 113. 38 Cf. Matthew Wright, “Literary prizes and literary criticism in antiquity,” Classical Antiquity 28 (2009), p. 156. 39 E.g. Ach. 629; Nu. 520–22, 547–8, 561–2; V. 64–6, 1049–59. In support of this interpretation, this feature of Aristophanes’ poetic persona is most distinct in plays performed or originally composed in or close to the period of his rivalry with Cratinus. 40 This is the implicit point of the entire Knights parabasis; cf. Zachary P. Biles, “Aristophanes’ victory dance: old poets in the parabasis of Knights,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 136 (2001), pp. 195–200.
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favor.41 In short, Cratinus’ assertions of sophia in frr. 203 and 360 attempt to wrest back into the common pool a quality in which his rival had gained the upper hand by connecting it with himself. Cratinus’ attempt to associate himself with poetic charis may amount to a similar effort, albeit with Eupolis as the primary target. In addition, the adjective χαρίεις reactivates the terms of the rivalry between Aristophanes and Cratinus as set by the former in Knights, for the image at the center of Pytine (Cratinus’ marriage to Comedy) adopts and extends Aristophanes’ selfserving embodiment of comic production, Komoidodidaskalia, whose varying fascination with individual poets based on the pattern of sexual pursuit explains why they tend to lose more in the contests as they age. The critical explanation comes at Eq. 517: πολλῶν γὰρ δὴ πειρασάντων αὐτὴν ὀλίγοις χαρίσασθαι. for [although] many [comic poets] have courted this muse, few have enjoyed her favors.
Within this erotic paradigm,42 the bestowal of Komoidodidaskalia’s charis both rewards the poets’ sexual advances and simultaneously wins them audience support (518–19)—and thus ultimately the contest itself, as the remainder of the parabasis demonstrates, by describing the agonistic careers of Magnes, Cratinus and Crates (520–40). In other words, this passage develops differently the association of charis with poetic performance and poetic competition noted above, by layering on a new metaphorical component, sexual “favor”. The adjective charieis describing Cratinus in the Hellenistic epigram might then be authentic to Cratinus and even Pytine, in which case it served to reestablish Cratinus as a dapper and “pleasingly potent” comic poet in a play that looked to the reinvigoration of his relationship with Comedy and thereby reestablished him as a successful competitor.43 Aristophanes’ claim in fr. 688, finally, to know just “what sort of poets the Athenians now take pleasure in,” only reframes the assertions at stake in all these other contentious exchanges over poetic charis, so that his own poetry now exudes sweetness (νεκταροσταγεῖ). Altering terms and adjusting metaphors was one way poets sought to gain the upper hand over their rivals by taking advantage of unnoticed possibilities and reinvigorating debates about poetic merit. It also guaranteed that audiences would always be delighted by such displays.
41 Cf. again Eup. fr. 392. To some extent, the grafting of sophia onto sophrosyne in the parabasis of the revised Clouds (520–26, 529–37; cf. V. 56–66) can be seen as Aristophanes’ attempt to counteract the negative spin created by Cratinus’ jeers in fr. 342. Cf. Biles, Aristophanes (above, n. 30), pp. 208–10. 42 Cf. Hdt. iii.53.4. 43 For poetic “potency”, see e.g. Ra. 96; cf. Alan H. Sommerstein, “A lover of his art: the art–form as wife and mistress in Greek poetic imagery,” in: Emma Stafford, Judith Herrin (eds.), Personification in the Greek World: From Antiquity to Byzantium, Centre for Hellenic Studies, King’s College London, Publications no. 7 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 161–71; Bakola, Cratinus (above, n. 2), pp. 275–81.
Ralph M. Rosen
Comic Parrhêsia and the Paradoxes of Repression Abstract: Comic satirists such as Aristophanes thrive on the tension that arises from their need to ridicule prominent figures of contemporary society and the possibility that this ridicule will cause genuine offense. The history of satire is full of complaints by authors that they work in a dangerous profession, and that their detractors fail to appreciate their high-minded, often explicitly didactic intentions. In such moments, satirists attempt to leave the impression that those who try to repress their freedom to mock and abuse are unwelcome obstacles to their enterprise. It is precisely such allegations of risk and danger, however, that make for effective satire and allow satirists to present themselves as comically “heroic” in the first place. And if satire requires a fraught, antagonistic relationship between author and target, we cannot trust the satirist’s account of the relationship or accept the claim that the alleged oppression is unwelcome. This study begins with such conundra in Aristophanes, and examines comparative evidence from other periods and literary forms, including Homer’s Thersites, Horace, Socrates and Lenny Bruce.
In “The Dêmos and the Comic Competition,” one of the most significant studies on Aristophanes to appear in the last several decades, Jeffrey Henderson put his finger squarely on what is perhaps the central question at the heart not only of Athenian comedy but of all comic genres that specialize in satirical mockery and personal ridicule: “Among the honour-sensitive Athenians … the distinction between abuse and jesting often called for nice judgement … One man’s joke is another man’s slander, depending on the skill of the jester and the butt’s reaction. Comic poets, like orators, had to be able to sail very close to the wind.”1 Indeed, it is the moments of risk-taking on the comic stage that make the greatest impression on audiences, since this is where poets push the limits of social decorum or acceptable speech in their quest for laughs and literary supremacy. These moments of dramatized ridicule play to an audience’s taste for Schadenfreude against public figures and titillate them with words and actions normally repressed in daily life. Successful poets of comic satire, such as Aristophanes, generally learn how to walk the fine line between aggressive but benign humor with widespread audience appeal, and speech that offends rather than amuses, or even becomes legally actionable.
1 Jeffrey Henderson, “The Dêmos and the Comic Competition,” in J.J. Winkler and F.I. Zeitlin (eds.) Nothing to do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in its Social Context (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 301.
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Aristophanes was aware how deftly he had to manage his satire if he was to please audiences and win prizes at the dramatic festivals. But he also knew that any form of satire required the freedom to create plots and characters intended to address contemporary affairs and ridicule people who would have been known to the audience and may even have been present during a performance.2 Satirists work in a fundamentally didactic mode,3 whether explicitly or implicitly, and like the best teachers, they need to tell the truth about how the world is, even if this means making fun of reprehensible people in ways that might seem cruel and unfair in real life. When Aristophanes has Dicaeopolis tell the audience at Acharnians 501 that comedy speaks “what is just/true,” it is in a defensive moment, explaining why satirical comedy must sometimes say “shocking things” (deina) as well. The price the audience has to pay for hearing the truth, distorted as it may be in the service of the poet’s agenda, is tolerating speech that risks offense. This is why the chorus warns in the opening of the parodos of Frogs that anyone who is hyper-sensitive to comic ridicule should stay far away from the comic theater.4 The most famous example that Aristophanes himself offers of what can happen when a comic target fails to appreciate the satirist’s mockery is his supposed feud with the politician Cleon. Indeed, this narrative, recounted across three plays (Acharnians, Knights and Wasps), has become emblematic of the risks posed by free speech in the service of comedy’s notional goals of instruction and correction. In these early comedies, Aristophanes complains that Cleon took him to court, first for slandering the dêmos and its magistrates in front of foreigners present for the City Dionysia in 426 BCE, and then again—for unspecified reasons—after the performance of Knights in 424 BCE. We can only take Aristophanes’ (and a scholiast’s) word about the historical details of these lawsuits,5 but whatever happened between the two men, the story of
2 See the anecdote (late 2nd c. CE) in Aelian (VH 2.13) reporting that Socrates went to see Aristophanes’ Clouds and stood up for the entire play to identify himself as the figure represented onstage. See K.J. Dover (ed.), Aristophanes: Clouds (Clarendon: Oxford, 1968), p. xxxiii, and, on the comic potential that another character in Clouds, Megacles, might have been in the audience, Charles Platter, Aristophanes and the Carnival of Genres (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), p. 67 with n. 8. 3 As Aristophanes enjoys reminding us, as at e.g. Ach. 634–5 (the poet has prevented the Athenians from being deceived by foreigners) or Ra. 686–7 (the comic chorus “advises and teaches” the city). 4 Ra. 354–5 (“whoever is inexperienced with this sort of discourse … should stand apart from our choruses”). Aristophanes ends his list of people unsuited to appreciate his comedies by mentioning a political speaker (rhêtor) who tries to reduce the pay for poets after he has been mocked (kômôidêtheis) (367–8). Clearly such a man cannot take a joke and has no business at a comic performance. 5 The nature of and evidence for the relationship between Aristophanes and Cleon is well laid out by S. Douglas Olson, “Comedy, Politics and Society,” in: Gregory W. Dobrov (ed.), Brill’s Companion to the Study of Greek Comedy (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 41–5. See also Ralph M. Rosen, Old Comedy and the Iambographic Tradition (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), pp. 62–82; Malcolm Heath, Political Comedy in Aristophanes (Göttingen: Vandenhoek and Ruprecht, 1987; revised and updated in an online version, 2007, available at http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/3588/1/Political_Comedy_in_Aristophanes.pdf), pp. 14–26; C. Brockmann, Aristophanes und die Freiheit der Komödie: Untersuchungen zu den frühen
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their relationship effectively highlights the dilemma all satirists confront at one point or another in their careers. As Henderson has put it, “Cleon’s suit against Aristophanes for slander … may indicate either that Aristophanes’ abuse was seriously intended or that Cleon was over-sensitive to jesting.” The poet himself would surely say that both alternatives were true: he would claim that he was “serious”6 in his abuse of his target, but also that Cleon’s reaction to this abuse was unjustified and unfair. The protocols of Athenian dramatic festivals and the literary conventions of Old Comedy, after all, provide ample license for freewheeling mockery, so when a poet encounters significant pushback in the form of lawsuits, for example, his indignation is systemically and generically indicated. Indignation, in other words, becomes an expected part of an ongoing drama that pits the biting jests of a selfrighteous poet who claims the protection of comic license against targets who object to being the butt of his jokes. To hear a satirist such as Aristophanes tell his tale of woe, angry responses from injured targets or other offended listeners are, simply put, a bad thing. How dare anyone threaten, even censor him, when his only goal is to expose bad behavior and show his audience what is right and true while making them laugh? The position seems clear and simple, and it is easy to sympathize with the satirist’s plight. How nice it would be, if the Cleons of the world would disappear and stop harassing the poor poet, who could then get on with his work as a comedian! Such, at any rate, is the pretense of the poet’s complaints about the risks he claims to face in his work and the limitations on his speech he occasionally encounters. But how straightforward and serious are such complaints? Should we really believe that satirists would benefit from utterly unrestricted and indemnified freedom of expression, with guarantees that no one will seriously object to anything they say? This is a simple question but is rarely asked, even though it raises a host of questions about the very nature of comic satire. As I hope to show in what follows, constraints on speech are simultaneously reviled and embraced by satirists in what amounts to an intractable, often unsettling contradiction. In a very real sense, these genres could hardly exist—or at least they would have little rhetorical efficacy as satire—if they did not at least present themselves as constantly at risk.7 Indeed, to be actually harassed or prosecuted in the real world for one’s satire may turn out to be a desirable outcome for a literary career, since it vindicates the satirist’s original fears and makes the audience even more
Stücken unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Acharner (Munich and Leipzig: De Gruyter, 2003), pp. 147–56; and Rosen, “Aristophanes,” in: Dobrov, Brill’s Companion (above), pp. 234–5 with n. 19. 6 On the recent history of the debate about “seriousness” in Aristophanes, see Heath (above, n. 5), pp. 237–42. 7 See Thomas K. Hubbard, The Mask of Comedy: Aristophanes and the Intertextual Parabasis (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 61–3; Dobrov, in: Dobrov, Brill’s Companion (above, n. 5) p. 7 n. 13, on Aristophanes’ self–presentation as a risk-taker.
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sympathetic to his “causes.” But this situation also encourages the very question Henderson presses in his study of the interaction between the Old Comic poets and the Athenian dêmos, and in particular how “serious” poets such as Aristophanes were in their political comedy, which was rife with satire. Aristophanes certainly seems serious, and the dêmos seems receptive to his political humor (at least when he wins the competition). But since the relationship between poet and audience is structurally determined by the dynamics of satirical poetry even before the poet decides what bothers him about the world, how can we assess the actual content or truth of Aristophanes’ pretense of seriousness? If a satirist must always present himself as a bold risk-taker, willing to suffer for the sake of his comic métier, to what extent is the content of satire a function of the literary strategies a successful satirist must deploy, and to what extent is it a reflection of “sincere beliefs”? The generically embedded tension between a satirist’s desire for parrhêsia and his fear of its consequences suggests the possibility of some disingenuousness in the stance of beleaguerment typical of satirists in all periods. Was Aristophanes “really” upset (as Acharnians, Knights and Wasps claim he was) that Cleon prosecuted him for his unbridled personal and political attacks? Or did he adopt the rhetoric of danger and repression as a strategy of captatio benevolentiae, intended to affirm the potency of his work as a function of the risk parrhêsia might incur? As we shall see, a comparative approach to such questions makes it clear that such literary conundra affect satirical artists and genres well beyond Old Comedy. Precisely because Aristophanes purports to insert his own voice forcefully into his plays, and because these autobiographical flashes seem genuinely and persuasively wedded to contemporary reality, it is difficult to think abstractly about the poetics governing such moments. A comparative approach will free us for the moment from the historical particularity of an Aristophanic comedy, and allow us—if only as an ahistorical, synchronic experiment—to view his satirical enterprise as a function of an abstracted comic poetics of parrhêsia and repression. In the open societies of the West, where “freedom of speech” is often singled out as the main prerequisite of progress and justice, the idea that someone might welcome repression seems odd, if not even blasphemous. American culture offers a particularly strong version of this ideology; one thinks immediately of the First Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing the right of freedom of expression. Americans, at least, find it difficult to think of this right as anything other than positive. We recognize that in a few extreme contexts, such as when irresponsible speech will lead to explicit harm to others, constraint is called for and even legislated. But at root, Americans put a premium on their right to free speech, broadly defined; the fact that it has been difficult to legislate against hate speech in the United States, for example, suggests a belief that this abstract principle in the end trumps even considerations of civility and decorum. Most Americans would likely find it easy to sympathize with J.M. Coetzee’s position: “Nothing in either my experience or my reading persuades me that state censorship is not an inherently bad thing, the ills it embodies and the ills it fosters
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outweighing, in the long run and even in the medium run, whatever benefits may be claimed to flow from it.”8 Greek parrhêsia and Roman libertas or licentia were never conceptualized as rigidly or with the same uniformly positive evaluation as the free speech of the American First Amendment. The first occurrence of the term parrhêsia in Greek literature, in fact, is distinctly negative: at Euripides, Orestes 905, the messenger describes an orator as relying on his “ignorant free expression” (amathês parrhêsia). In other contexts, especially in the discourse of Athenian democracy, parrhêsia can be a positive term. But the number of negative assessments of parrhêsia in 5th- and 4th-century Greek literature is not negligible.9 In such cases—there are many in Plato, for example10—parrhêsia takes on the meaning “frankness,” with the implication that this is often indecorous or offensive to the audience. In all these cases, an author implies that someone’s “freedom of speech” ought to be suppressed, because the speech in question is illegitimate or offensive. In short, constraint of speech is regarded here as positive, and the offending parrhêsia is presented as negative.11 In such cases, the polarities are reasonably straightforward. Free expression is good as long as it is not offensive or harmful; when it becomes offensive, it becomes bad and should be constrained. But what happens when we hear the perspective of the person whose speech is constrained, and this constraint is presented as unjust, as often in satirical authors? Our first inclination in such cases is to recur to a traditional formulation with familiar premises: such a person is imagined to be claiming, “What I have to say is legitimate; I should be allowed to say it; this is freedom of expression, and it is ‘good.’ When some external force prevents me from saying what I want, this is unjust and therefore ‘bad’.” A long list of examples from classical satirists can be produced, beginning with Aristophanes’ complaints about Cleon in Acharnians. I discuss others in detail below, but for now it is worth pointing out that all such apologiae for offensive speech present the audience with the same paradox. Prima facie these authors want the audience to agree with them that the threat to their speech is bad and unfortunate, but the audience’s aesthetic experience of the work (chiefly, in the case of satire, laughter) is at the same time inextricably linked to the “badness” of the author’s alleged plight. Often in real life, and certainly in satirical literature, constraints on speech have consequences that defy the categories “posi-
8 J.M. Coetzee, Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 9. 9 See Ineke Sluiter and Ralph M. Rosen (eds.), Free Speech in Classical Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. 4–8. 10 See Marlein van Raalte, “Socratic Parrhêsia and its Sequel in Plato’s Laws,” in: Sluiter and Rosen, Free Speech (above, n. 9), pp. 279–312. Plato has Socrates in particular play with various conceptions of parrhêsia in his Gorgias, as van Raalte discusses in detail, especially in the interchanges with Callicles. 11 As e.g. with the drunken erômenos in Plato’s Phaedrus (240e), with his “wearisome and unrestrained explicit speech” (παρρησίᾳ κατακορεῖ καὶ ἀναπεπταμένῃ).
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tive” and “negative,” and that can be profound not only for the person whose speech is allegedly suppressed but also for audiences or readers—real or imagined—who happen to be listening when offended parties voice their indignation. For the discourse of repression, the moment when someone asserts that his or her free speech has been constrained contains yet another paradox: the absence of speech gives rise to a whole new discourse that not only contains traces of the suppressed speech (its own form of praeteritio) but takes on a life of its own as an autonomous production. A modern example will demonstrate what I mean. In the early 1960s, the stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce was continually dogged by obscenity charges. After Bruce was arrested for a single offensive word (“cocksucker”) used in his act at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco in 1961, District Attorneys across the country sent undercover agents to transcribe his speech crimes and prepare indictments. Why, one might ask, would someone use obscenity in any form of speech to begin with? We use the term “obscenity” to refer to speech that transgresses a linguistic norm and that, as such, implies the potential for its own suppression. Obscenity implies something one “should not say”—the Greeks called it aischrologia, implying that such words brought shame on speakers and listeners alike—and if one uses such a word, one can always imagine (whether or not this actually occurs) someone waiting to censor. In the case of Lenny Bruce, audiences (and here I mean the people who attended his performances voluntarily, not as agents of the law) laughed at his obscenities precisely because they knew he should not be using such words and that in doing so he was continually inviting the threat of censorship. The more real this threat became to him, as the indictments became increasingly costly to his wallet as well as his reputation, the more obsessed Bruce became with his those trying to silence him, and the more he worked this obsession into his act. Toward the end of his life, in fact, Bruce spent much of his time onstage rambling about his own research into First Amendment law. This did not play well as comedy,12 not because real life was crossing over into comic fiction and the line between the two had become blurred, but for the opposite reason, precisely because that line was now so sharply demarcated. Bruce’s disquisitions about the law were now obvious extensions of his actual life, no longer fodder for a fictional persona whose “real” identity would—when his comedy functioned normally —remain tantalizingly elusive. When Bruce died of a heroin overdose in 1966, he was a pitiable, abject figure.13 Even if we find ourselves sympathizing with his detractors, it is difficult not to see pathos in his demise. The constraints on his speech (actual or hypothetical) seem at first glance a “bad” thing; Bruce himself presented them as negative, and he assumes 12 See Gerald Nachman, Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s (New York: Pantheon, 2003), pp. 419–27. 13 See, among many accounts of Bruce’s final year, Ronald K.L. Collins and David M. Skover, The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Fall and Rise of An American Icon (Chicago: Sourcebooks Incorporated, 2002), pp. 336–42.
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that we, his audience, are sympathetic. The implication is that in a “better world” he would have had complete freedom to say what he wanted, with no worries about censorship or prosecution. But let us for a moment try to imagine what such an allegedly better place might be like for Bruce: imagine a milieu, for example, in which no one cared at all about obscenity, where District Attorneys were happy, paying customers instead of hostile informers, and so forth. What are we left with? Very little, for Bruce’s act can only exist so long as the threat of suppression looms large; when it does not, there would be no paying customers, let alone undercover agents of the law, because there would be no act to begin with. Bruce’s creativity, in short, like that of many comedians whose humor relies on scandalous speech, exists only as a function of the threat of constraint. How “bad” can it be, then, that Bruce was continually hauled before puritanical judges? It does little good to reply that these magistrates were mindless functionaries with no sense of humor. The fact is that Bruce must simultaneously collude with them and construct them as adversaries, if his speech is to have its intended transgressive effect. This is a recipe for disaster, and the consequences were tragic for Bruce; few at the time did not believe that his overdose was an indirect result of his legal battles. The suppression of free speech in fact proved lethal for him. The usual positive-negative binaries around parrhêsia and suppression are meaningless in the face of these constraints. Bruce lived his life symbiotically with the factors that eventually killed him, and although one might say that he died a martyr to the cause of free speech, it is perhaps more accurate to say that he died a martyr to the abjection he paradoxically sought and repudiated at the same time. Many readers may by now have begun to think of a figure from Greek literature with a strikingly similar career and a somewhat analogous death. I refer to Thersites, most famous from Homer’s depiction of him in Iliad 2, but a figure whose story had an equally interesting afterlife in other ancient authors and genres.14 Thersites appears early in Iliad 2, after Agamemnon has oddly decided to “test” his troops by disingenuously urging them to abandon Troy and leave for home. Odysseus manages to restore the soldiers’ resolve and muster them again for battle. But from the ranks, Thersites emerges to attack Agamemnon for softness and venality, in an speech of fierce mockery and invective (Il. 2.225–42). Odysseus responds not only with his own counterinvective but with physical blows that successfully humiliate Thersites and squelch further dissent from him. This passage is enormously rich,and has been analyzed in a variety of ways. Its narratological framework is particular complex, for Homer offers several competing perspectives on Thersites: Odysseus’, the narrator’s and Thersites’
14 See Josine Blok, The Early Amazons: Modern and Ancient Perspectives on a Persistent Myth (Leiden: Brill, 1995) pp. 200–10; Ralph M. Rosen, Making Mockery: The Poetics of Ancient Satire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 67–116; Marco Fantuzzi, Achilles in Love: Intertextual Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 267–86.
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own—and it makes a difference which perspective we adopt in deciding how to assess this famous episode of suppressed speech.15 Gregory Nagy first suggested that Thersites can be conceptualized in Homer as a “blame poet,” analogous to the Greek iambic poets Archilochus and Hipponax, who were infamous throughout antiquity as satirists.16 Thersites was not composing poetry in his fictionalized life as a soldier at Troy, of course, so calling him a “blame poet” is not entirely accurate. He is certainly “satiri cal” in his attack on Agamemnon, but whether he can be considered a bona fide “satirist” as he is depicted in Homer, is a tricky question we cannot pursue here. As I have argued elsewhere,17 insofar as true satirists blame from a stance of self-righteousness, from Homer’s perspective Thersites is more the target of blame than the self-righteous blamer himself—a role assumed (again, from Homer’s point of view) more by Odysseus. But leaving such narratological conundra aside, Thersites (from his perspective) would certainly regard himself as a satirist, and he employs typical satirical tropes: vituperative indignation at the hypocrisy of those in power, and an attempt (which fails here, as Homer tells it) to enlist the sympathies of his audience as an in-group.18 Like most satirists, moreover, Thersites constructs a persona of abjection, as Homer tells us at Iliad 2.212–16, here in Stanley Lombardo’s penetrating translation: … ἀμετροεπὴς ἐκολῴα, ὃς ἔπεα φρεσὶν ᾗσιν ἄκοσμά τε πολλά τε ᾔδη μάψ, ἀτὰρ οὐ κατὰ κόσμον, ἐριζέμεναι βασιλεῦσιν, ἀλλ’ ὅ τι οἱ εἴσαιτο γελοίϊον Ἀργείοισιν ἔμμεναι· … a blathering fool And a rabble rouser. This man had a repertory Of choice insults he used at random to revile the nobles, Saying anything he thought the soldiers would laugh at.
Thersites, at least, thought of himself as a comedian, and the blurred lines between performance and lived reality typical of satirists across the ages are visible here as well. But epic cannot comfortably sustain comedy for long, and Thersites is quickly silenced by Odysseus, who finds his outburst far from amusing. This is not the last time Thersites’ parrhêsia gets him into trouble. Like Lenny Bruce, he too was evidently drawn to a mode of expression that guaranteed censure from his targets. From the point of view of their detractors (which would include the narrator Homer in Thersites’ case, and judicial functionaries in Bruce’s), Thersites
15 See further Rosen, Making Mockery (above, n. 15), pp. 73–8. 16 Gregory Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry2 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, [1979] 2009), pp. 261–3. 17 See Rosen, Making Mockery (above, n. 15) pp. 67–116. 18 See Rosen, Making Mockery (above, n. 15), pp. 71–2.
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and Bruce practiced the kind of parrhêsia that would be translated as “indecorous, inappropriate frankness”—the negative form of the word. But from their own perspectives, it was something like “honest, open and self-righteous speaking.” If we allowed ourselves to imagine an interior life for Thersites, we would likely find that he characterized his own speech as legitimate, and Odysseus’ as a perfect example of the arrogance he was railing against in the first place. Both Thersites and Bruce, however, exercised their free speech knowing full well that they would receive— and, it seems, even require—rebuke from an antagonistic party. This is certainly what happened on the other occasion that epic records when Thersites’ parrhêsia took an unexpected turn, in the fragmentary Aethiopis, a narrative of events that occur after the Iliad. Here the ever-cantankerous Thersites engages in his final act of mockery, inciting his target Achilles to kill him in response. Proclus in his summary of the Aithiopis, which began where the Iliad left off (Chrestomathia p. 67.25–6 Bernabé = p. 47.7–12 Davies), offers the following outline of the story of Thersites’ death: καὶ Ἀχιλλεὺς Θερσίτην ἀναιρεῖ λοιδορηθεὶς πρὸς αὐτοῦ καὶ ὀνειδισθεὶς τὸν ἐπὶ τῇ Πενθεσιλείᾳ λεγόμενον ἔρωτα· καὶ ἐκ τούτου στάσις γίνεται τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς περὶ τοῦ Θερσίτου φόνου. μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα Ἀχιλλεὺς εἰς Λέσβον πλεῖ, καὶ θύσας μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα Ἀχιλλεὺς εἰς Λέσβον πλεῖ, καὶ θύσας Ἀπόλλωνι καὶ Ἀρτέμιδι καὶ Λητοῖ καθαίρεται τοῦ φόνου ὑπ’ Ὀδυσσέως. Achilles killed Thersites after having been reviled by him and reproached for the love he allegedly felt for Penthesileia. As a result, stasis arose among the Achaeans over the murder of Thersites. After this, Achilles sailed to Lesbos, and after making a sacrifice to Apollo, Artemis and Leto, he was then purified of the murder by Odysseus.
This depicts a situation rather different from the one in Iliad 2, for there Thersites’ opposition to Agamemnon was cast by the narrator as a self-generated minority view, whereas in the Aithiopis Thersites evidently takes up the popular critical opinion on a pre-existing controversial issue of the day—the report that Achilles had fallen in love with an enemy warrior—and repackages it as a form of comic mockery directed at the main perpetrator.19 Like all good satirists, Thersites ridicules a conspicuous lapse of a prominent figure, pointing out that Achilles, smitten with an erotic attraction to the dead Penthesileia, came close to compromising his heroic stature, and so to jeopardizing the entire Greek mission. Nevertheless, like Bruce’s persecutors, Achilles failed to “get it,” and the consequences were the ultimate in suppression: homicide. A number of interesting details about this story lie beyond our scope, but it does indicate that some Greeks did view Thersites here as a true satirist, and his murder by Achilles as unjust. And just as the governor of New York, in an act of public expiation, formally pardoned Lenny Bruce on 23 December 2003, thirty-seven years
19 See now Fantuzzi, Achilles in Love (above, n. 15), pp. 271–3.
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after his death, Achilles too had to seek ritual purification for his crime against Thersites.20 We might ask Thersites the hypothetical question we posed for Lenny Bruce—what would happen if we granted him complete parrhêsia with no consequences whatsoever? “Go ahead, say what you like with impunity about Agamemnon and Achilles; no one will care and no one will stop you.” Is this what he craved? It might seem almost an absurdity to contemplate the matter, partly because Homer placed Thersites in a narrative context in which unbridled parrhêsia is unthinkable, but also because such a character cannot exist except as a figure someone will want to censor. Homer curiously acknowledges that Thersites was conscious of his constructed, performative persona, when he notes that he would say “anything he thought the soldiers would laugh at,” and one can only conclude that for Thersites to have been Thersites, he cannot really have wanted to speak without inviting at least the threat of constraint. Our hypothetical question may in the end seem too artificial to ask of those already identified as parrhesiasts suffering for speaking freely. But a few centuries later we find an actual example of someone who comes close to asking this question of himself: the Roman poet Horace in his capacity as the author of his two books of satires, the Sermones. All the Roman satirists, certainly those after Lucilius, thematize the dilemma of the parrhesiast in one way or another: they claim to compose satire because their indignation at the state of the world compels them to, but they also (claim to) fear the retaliation of their targets and detractors.21 Both Horace and Juvenal look back to Lucilius as an author who was relatively unconstrained—for them, he lived in a kind of romanticized Golden Age of free speech, when a satirist could excoriate the unjust and wicked with impunity. In Serm. 1.4, Horace famously traces this tradition in turn to the poets of Athenian Old Comedy, who could speak multa cum libertate. How free these predecessors actually were is a topic for a different study, but Horace certainly constructs them as a contrast to the constraints he claims to feel in his own time. To judge from this attitude, one might think that Horace would answer our hypothetical question in the affirmative, and say that, yes, he would give anything to be like Eupolis or Lucilius, who could say whatever they wanted without repercussions. But what parrhesiasts—in literature or real life—really want their speech not to ruffle feathers? And what satirist can be considered genuinely successful if he cannot at least claim to have upset the status quo? One suspects that Horace’s
20 For a more detailed discussion of Thersites’ death, dealing with different aspects of the story and its afterlife, see Rosen, Making Mockery, pp. 67–116. 21 See Susanna Morton Braund, “Libertas or Licentia? Freedom and Criticism in Roman Satire,” in: Sluiter and Rosen, Free Speech (above, n. 9), pp. 409–28, who discusses the tension between the libertas all Roman satirists craved, and the accusations of licentia (the Roman equivalent to the “bad” parrhêsia discussed above). Braund concludes (p. 426): “Satire likes to have it both ways. It draws attention to the tension between libertas and licentia not to resolve that tension but to replay it, over and over.”
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nostalgia for the good old days of “safe satire” really amounts to a strategy to highlight his own stance of comic abjection and the ultimate efficacy of his own parrhêsia. In Serm. 2.1, Horace all but confirms this, depicting a conversation with a lawyer friend named Trebatius, in which the poet asks Trebatius how he should respond to popular criticism of his satire: sunt quibus in satura uidear nimis acer et ultra legem tendere opus; sine neruis altera, quidquid composui, pars esse putat similisque meorum mille die uersus deduci posse. Some people think that I’m too sharp in my satire, and that my work transgresses its laws; but another group thinks whatever I compose is anemic, and that a thousand verses like mine could be spun out in a single day.
These are charges Horace himself made against Lucilius in the first book of the Sermones,22 and he now complains that people accuse him of the same thing. Trebatius offers a simple, rational bit of advice: if you feel oppressed, don’t write satire: quiescas. But Horace implies that what he really wants—since he proceeds to claim that he would be unable to sleep if he gave up satire—is to speak with impunity as Lucilius could. He knows he cannot have this, but he refuses to abandon the licentia he feels constitutionally compelled to adopt in his writing. Adopting a disingenuous no-first-strike policy typical of satirists, Horace claims that he is harmless as long as no one annoys him (2.1.39–40): sed hic stilus haud petet ultro quemquam animantem et me ueluti custodiet ensis uagina tectus. But this pen will not of its own accord attack any person who’s alive, and it will protect me like a sword kept in its sheath.
Whoever crosses him, however, is in for trouble (2.1.44–6): at ille, qui me commorit (melius non tangere, clamo), flebit et insignis tota cantabitur urbe. But that one who stirs me up (I shout out, “It’s better not to lay a hand on me!”) will weep and be sung about, an infamous figure in the whole city.
22 Serm. 1.4.9–13, 1.10.1–2.
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Trebatius warns Horace later, however, that if he persists in speaking out in his verses, he might well meet an early death, at least metaphorically speaking, since he could jeopardize the delicate social relationships he depends on (2.1.60–2), and he even reminds him of the existence of specific laws against defamation (2.1.82–3): si mala condiderit in quem quis carmina ius est iudiciumque. If someone shall have composed bad verses23 against another, there’s always the law and the lawcourts.
The tone of this satire is lighthearted and ironic, and the issue of constraint and verbal libertas is deployed more as a trope than as a somber cri de coeur. But the trope derives from some of the paradoxes of suppression we have been considering, in which a person might feel an almost perverse thrill at the threat of constraint or censorship even as he complains about it, and at the peculiar co-dependent relationship that can develop with the censoring agent. Up to this point, I have focused on characters who seem to invite suppression, taunting and almost daring an antagonist to try to keep them from speaking. These characters have been drawn largely from literature, where generic forces often explain the behavior of a narrator or character whose fictional roles are supposed to mimic historical realities. As my final example will show, however, even with bona fide historical characters, suppression of speech implies a complex relationship between the suppressor and the suppressed with consequences that can be as productive as they are unintended. The case of Socrates and the indictment against him for “corrupting the youth of Athens and introducing foreign deities” is usefully considered in the context of the paradoxes of repression isolated above. The defense Plato puts in Socrates’ mouth in the Apology makes it clear that this is a essentially a case about free speech. The charges leveled against Socrates are certainly motivated by political and ideological undercurrents, as is often noted, but what his accusers really want is to shut him up for good. Socrates knows that what irks them most is his relentless questioning and his attempts to convince people to pay attention to the moral condition of their souls: “I spend my time,” he says at Ap. 30b, “wandering around trying to persuade young and old not to bother about their physical or financial well-being until they’ve worked on making their souls as good as possible.” Not unlike the satirist’s recurrent claim that he feels compelled to speak his mind in the face of a morally degenerate world, Socrates maintains that he has no choice: the gods themselves command him to
23 The pun on mala (“bad” = “hostile, aggressive” or “bad verses”) has been noted by e.g. Kirk Freudenburg, Satires of Rome: Threatening Poses from Lucilius to Juvenal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 105–9.
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“examine men,”24 e.g. at Ap. 33c: “in oracles and in dreams and in every way in which the divine ever commands a man to do something.” It was Socrates’ speech—indeed, the relentlessness of it, which was a form of “bad” parrhêsia for the Athenians—that made him a dangerous man. When he imagines for a moment (Ap. 29c) what he might say if the court allowed him to go free on the condition that he give up the practice of philosophy—which is to say, that he accept restrictions on his speech—he regards this as unthinkable. And with a resolve that has resonated across the ages, he says at Ap. 30c that he would not change his ways even if were “to die many deaths.” In the two famous Platonic dialogues that address the charges explicitly, the Apology and the Crito, Socrates displays a complex and, to us, often frustrating attitude toward his speech and the constraints upon it. In the end, he almost makes us feel that his predicament was not only inevitable but even welcome. Much of the Crito, in fact, poses a variation on the question that we have hypothetically asked the other victims of suppression considered above: Socrates’ influential friends offer him the opportunity to escape prison and go into exile abroad. Crito even tells Socrates (Cr. 45c) that if he goes to Thessaly, he has friends there who can see to it that no one disturbs him (implying that if Socrates set up shop elsewhere, his parrhesiastic ways will soon make him as unpopular there as he is in Athens). Readers have often found Socrates’ response both utterly predictable and almost perverse: he rules out escape and willingly submits to the legal procedures ahead of him. The response is predictable in the sense that escape would imply a fear of death, something Socrates strenuously repudiated in the courtroom speech recounted in the Apology, so he would naturally want to avoid charges of cowardice and hypocrisy. But it is perverse in that the indictment and conviction were so clearly unjust (at least to hear Plato recount it) that it is difficult to understand why, with a viable option of escape, one would actively choose to submit to the verdict, especially when the outcome will be death. But Socrates’ objection to Crito’s proposal is subtle and seemingly recognizes that even failed parrhêsia can in the end have the power of exemplarity. We may remember that Plato has Socrates close the Crito by imagining the Laws of Athens taking on human form to address him as he contemplates escape. Socrates conceptualizes the laws as stern parents or masters, and citizens as children or slaves. As such, Socrates is duty-bound to respect the Laws and not retaliate even if he feels that they have treated him unjustly. The central principle he imagines the laws to have on their side is that—in their capacity as laws in an “open” society—they have provided citizens like Socrates a lifetime of privileges and benefits, making it unjust for him to try to destroy them if he grows displeased with their conduct. Ultimately, the Laws say, one ought to honor one’s country and its laws even more than one’s real
24 On the motif of satiric “compulsion,” see Ralph M. Rosen and Victoria Baines, “‘I Am Whatever You Say I Am…’: Satiric Program in Juvenal and Eminem,” Classical and Modern Literature 22 (2002), pp. 107–13.
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parents, and “yield to it and flatter it when it is angry at you even more than you would a father” (Cr. 51b). As they say, citizens have ample opportunity to leave Athens voluntarily if they do not like what the Laws stand for. Chief among the benefits they cite, is the opportunity to persuade them that they are acting unjustly (51c): “In war and in the lawcourt and everywhere, you must do whatever your state and your country tell you to do, or you must persuade them that their commands are unjust.” Given the circumstances, these are poignant words: Socrates has spent his life trying to persuade his fellow citizens to avoid the trappings most men regard as the keys to virtue—status, money, glibness of speech, material possessions—trying, in other words, to persuade them to live a good and just life if he sensed that they were not. Something has gone wrong, however, since the very people who made and administered the laws remained sufficiently un-persuaded by his discourse to turn them against him and prosecute him unjustly. At the end of Crito, therefore, Socrates is proud and brave, as Plato surely wanted him to be, but also melancholic and abject, like an indignant satirist but without the palliative effects of humor. He has availed himself of the freedom of speech Athens offers, but he seems to have little to show for it. Or does he? It now becomes clearer why Socrates, like other figures whose speech is suppressed, could never choose the hypothetical “second chance” we have offered them, with their free speech assured and no one to bother them about what they say. If this were the case for Socrates in his life, it would mean that the people he talked to in the streets of Athens—about goodness and justice and their morally corrupt lifestyle—simply would not care. They would ignore him and go about their existence just as before. Since Socrates’ stance is essentially antagonistic and censorious, as soon as they began to pay attention and care, their reaction would be at least some degree of irritation, and in extreme cases, a desire to suppress his speech entirely. Callicles in the Gorgias famously predicted just such an outcome for anyone who insisted on practicing philosophy into adulthood.25 In a very real sense, therefore, Socrates requires the threat of the suppression he suffers, because it means that his philosophizing is having some effect. He may not be converting souls to justice, but his speech is hitting home with others. For Socrates not to have felt compelled to engage in the parrhêsia that led to his demise, Athenians would have had to be thoroughly just—an obvious adynaton. In the end, therefore, he does have something to show for his suffering, for his death validates the need for the very thing that got him into trouble, a need for unconstrained, freewheeling philosophic dialectic in response to the moral deficiencies of his interlocutors. Socrates’ martyrdom to the cause of parrhêsia demonstrates why he would not— even could not—change how he conducted his life if given the chance, and his escape is unthinkable precisely because he gains more by submitting to silence than by
25 See Pl. Grg. 485e–6d, esp. 486a.
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escaping and continuing to speak. His parrhêsia may ultimately have failed him, in that he failed to persuade much of the Athenian public to live justly. But his trial and death illustrate that he was right all along to think that the Athenians were in critical need of moral instruction, and he must have thought that this legacy would have enormous staying power—as it has. In a breezy passage, easy to miss, in Plato’s Republic, Socrates seems to acknowledge this desire for his failure at persuasion to serve nonetheless as an emblem of the philosophical enterprise. At 498c–d, he has been arguing for the importance of philosophy in a person’s education; his interlocutors are mildly incredulous, and point out that someone like Thrasymachus will surely object to such a view. Socrates responds: μὴ διάβαλλε … ἐμὲ καὶ Θρασύμαχον ἀρτιφίλους γεγονότας, οὐδὲ πρὸ τοῦ ἐχθροὺς ὄντας. πείρας γὰρ οὐδὲν ἀνήσομεν, ἕως ἂν ἢ πείσωμεν καὶ τοῦτον καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους, ἢ προὔργου τι ποιήσωμεν εἰς ἐκεῖνον τὸν βίον, ὅταν αὖθις γενόμενοι τοῖς τοιούτοις ἐντύχωσι λόγοις. Don’t rile up me and Thrasymachus … who have just recently become friends—though we weren’t enemies before. I’ll never give up my efforts until I either convince him [πείσωμεν] and others, or do something that will be useful for that life when people of future generations may encounter words like these.
This is a variation of what we see in Crito—the necessity Socrates feels to persuade his interlocutors of what he believes to be just, and never to give up, even (as Crito makes clear) if that means having to face death. In the Republic passage, however, Socrates is more explicit about what he imagines might happen if his attempts at persuasion fail. In that case, he will at least be satisfied if his antagonists remember that they once sparred in conversation with Socrates and perhaps take away from the experience some understanding of dialectic. Socrates was not a professional satirist in the way that Aristophanes, Lenny Bruce, Horace and even Thersites were. The telos of his strategies of mockery and irony was not so much laughter as moral instruction. But like Aristophanes or Lenny Bruce, Socrates too cannot be effective without imagining a constant threat of constraint. The difference between the comic satirist and the satirical philosopher on this point comes down to the nature of their respective claims to moral didacticism and more generally their “seriousness.” Despite an apparent wariness of Socrates himself,26 Aristophanes would claim that comedy was in some sense “philosophical” or at least “moral” (τὰ δίκαια), and he would want the audience to believe that he is fully serious when he ridicules politicians such as Cleon for their misbehavior. Dicaeopolis, at any rate, speaking explicitly for the poet in Acharnians, is willing to put his head
26 A wariness obvious from the plot of Clouds or the mocking reference to Socrates at the end of Frogs 1491–5. See in general Martha Nussbaum, “Aristophanes and Socrates on Learning and Practical Wisdom,” Yale Classical Studies 23 (1980), pp. 43–97.
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literally on the chopping-block for the comic cause—telling it like it is, performing his self-righteousness on the Athenian comic stage. Dicaeopolis in this scene presents himself as every bit as much the martyr as Plato’s Socrates in Apology and Crito. The difference is that Dicaeopolis does not end up dead, either in real life or even within the comic plot, while Socrates does. Comic satire, in short, plays at being philosophical and mimics moral posturing, but gets its laughs—wins its prizes at the competition—from its thwarted didacticism. Cleon may well have prosecuted Aristophanes in real life in an attempt to punish him for speaking out with his characteristically self-righteous didactic mockery, but in the comic world, this cannot be the end of the story. The comic poet Aristophanes, now “victimized,” must have the last word, a position that paradoxically gives him the upper hand with his audience even at the moment when he has been effectively smacked down by a greater power. The same holds true for Socrates: only through his own experience of repression can he too have the final word, making evident what his detractors attempted to silence. The difference between the two, however, reflects a difference between two major genres of discourse, the comic and the philosophical. While some “good” seems to arise from being repressed for each of them, Aristophanes, like all satirists of his ilk, will continually feed his audiences as much evidence of repression as he can, even if he must exaggerate or fictionalize to do so. The consequence is that every claim to seriousness of purpose behind his ridicule is complicated (one might even say “tainted”) by the possibility that he is motivated by the purely ludic forces at the foundation of satiric performances. There is no call to deny Aristophanes, or any other comic performer, his own personal beliefs and political opinions.27 The question is rather whether these beliefs and opinions are truly accessible from a work of literary satire, or perhaps even more important, whether it matters much to any audience that they are.
27 An interview conducted by Fox News Network’s Chris Wallace with the comedian Jon Stewart (June 2011) is instructive on this point. Wallace charges Stewart with ideological partisanship in his comedy, something Stewart continually denies, even as he freely admits that his personal views “inform” his act. Consider this exchange: Wallace: “I think … you’re pushing more of an ideological agenda than you pretend to.” Stewart: “I disagree with you. I think that I’m pushing comedy and my ideological agenda informs it, at all times.” Elsewhere in the interview, Stewart retorts to one of Wallace’s attempts to get Stewart to commit to promoting a political agenda of his own, by saying, “I’m not an activist, I’m a comedian.” I discuss this interview at greater length in Ralph M. Rosen, “Efficacy and Meaning in Ancient and Modern Political Satire: Aristophanes, Lenny Bruce and Jon Stewart,” Social Research 79.1 (2012), pp. 22–5.
James Robson
Slipping One In: The Introduction of Obscene Lexical Items in Aristophanes Abstract: This chapter examines the way in which Aristophanes introduces obscene words into his comedies both at the beginning of the plays and subsequently, following more heightened and/or more sober sequences. The Aristophanic norm is to introduce obscenity unsignaled, the “obscenity out of nowhere” technique, often employed to signal abuse, crudeness, buffoonery and/or freedom from inhibitions. Alternatively, the poet sometimes employs the “build-up” technique, in which double entendres and sexual allusions occur with increasing intensity before a climactic primary obscenity is finally introduced. Examples of both techniques are analysed, and some of the challenges that Aristophanic obscenity present and the relationship between obscenity and paratragedy are explored.
The publication of Jeffery Henderson’s The Maculate Muse in 1975 marked something of a turning point in Aristophanic studies.1 Scholars like Kenneth Dover may have paved the way for the frank discussion of classical sex and sexuality in English,2 but Henderson provided the Anglophone world with something novel and distinct: its first book-length treatment of obscene language in Old Comedy. As he outlines in the introduction to the 1991 reprint of the book, Henderson met resistance from a number of academics when he embarked on the project in the early 1970s, including advice to write in Latin and the indignant question from one professor, “How could you do this to Aristophanes?”3 But Henderson’s work was part of a cultural shift that would change the landscape of Aristophanic studies forever. The propensity of previous generations of classicists “annoyingly [to] offer no comment on obscene passages” (as one of Henderson’s reviewers put it) gave way to a new wave of scholarship that embraced the erotic and scatological scurri-
1 J. Henderson, The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975; 2nd ed. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). 2 Dover’s publications include: “Classical Greek Attitudes to Sexual Behaviour,” Arethusa 6 (1973), pp. 59–73, and Aristophanic Comedy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972). 3 Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 1), p. vii. The conditions under which K.J. Dover’s Greek Homosexuality (London: Duckworth, 1978) was produced serve as a useful reminder of the legal situation regarding obscenity that prevailed in the U.K. at the time. I am reliably informed that Duckworth, the book’s publishers, sent staff to the British Museum to collect the images to be used in Greek Homosexuality in person for fear that, by sending them by post, the firm might be prosecuted under Section 11 of the Post Office Act 1953 (United Kingdom).
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lity of the plays.4 Times were changing and The Maculate Muse blazed a trail for others to follow. The continuing influence of The Maculate Muse is apparent to contemporary students of Aristophanes and Greek sexuality alike. Nearly 40 years after its first publication, the book is still widely cited by those working on topics such as gender, sex and language both in Old Comedy in particular and antiquity in general. But for all the avenues of enquiry The Maculate Muse has opened up for scholars of the classical world, one topic has remained relatively underexplored since its publication: obscene language itself.5 This is regrettable, since where scholars have looked into obscene language post-Henderson, rich studies have emerged, such as those that investigate the precise meaning of obscene lexical items and document their occurrence in literary sources,6 and others that focus on the gendered use of obscenity in Aristophanes and beyond.7 It is nonetheless intriguing that more has not been written on obscenity itself, not least because obscene expression is a distinctive, central component of Old Comedy and potentially a productive area of academic enquiry.
4 H. Lloyd-Jones, Classical Philology 71 (1976), pp. 356–9, who from among Henderson’s predecessors singles out only Dover and Taillardat for praise for openly tackling obscene topics (p. 356). K.K. Hulley, Classical Journal 71 (1976), p. 369, likewise commends Henderson’s “marked frankness,” as does J. Vaio, Gnomon 51 (1979), p. 692, noting his “exemplary candor and energy.” That Henderson saw fit to criticize Dover and Taillardat in the introduction to The Maculate Muse—albeit in what seem to me the mildest of terms (pp. xiii–xiv)—provoked harsh words from both Lloyd-Jones (p. 356) and Vaio (p. 693). 5 Aristophanic obscenity is a topic I have tackled myself in Humour, Obscenity and Aristophanes (Tübingen: Narr, 2006), pp. 70–94, and Aristophanes: An Introduction (London: Duckworth, 2009), pp. 120–40. The most important studies of Roman obscenity remain J.N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London: Duckworth, 1982) and A. Richlin, The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). Adams famously dismisses Henderson’s work out of hand (p. 1 n. 2). 6 Important discussions of ancient obscenity include H.D. Jocelyn, “A Greek indecency and its students: ΛΑΙΚΑΖΕΙΝ,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 26 (1980), pp. 12–66, and “Attic ΒΙΝΕΙΝ and English F…,” Liverpool Classical Monthly 5.3 (1980), pp. 65–7; D. Bain, “Six Verbs of Sexual Congress,” Classical Quarterly NS 41 (1991), pp. 51–77. For an overview of bibliography on Aristophanic obscenity, see A. Willi, “The Language of Greek Comedy: Introduction and Bibliographical Sketch,” in: A. Willi (ed.), The Language of Greek Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 10–11. 7 A.H. Sommerstein, “The Language of Athenian Women,” in: F. De Martino and A.H. Sommerstein (eds.), Lo spettacolo delle voci (Bari: Levante Editori, 1995), Part 2, pp. 61–85; L.K. McClure, Spoken Like a Woman: Speech and Gender in Athenian Drama (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); A.H. Sommerstein, “Nudity, Obscenity, and Power: Modes of female assertiveness in Aristophanes,” in: S. Carlson and J.F. McGlew (eds.), Performing the Politics of European Comic Drama (= European Studies Journal 17.2–18.1) (2000–2001), pp. 9–24; L. O’Higgins, Women and Humor in Classical Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). On female obscenity, see also A. Willi, The Languages of Aristophanes: Aspects of Linguistic Variation in Classical Attic Greek (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 188.
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After all, the presence of words representing taboo objects and acts in a theatrical performance—the most public of contexts—raises fascinating issues concerning the boundaries between public and private in classical Athens and how the audience might have assimilated and responded to the plays when they were staged. In this chapter, I examine a very specific topic pertaining to this public/private divide and the way the audience is invited to engage with Old Comedy in performance, by focusing on how Aristophanes introduces obscene words into his plays— hence the “slipping one in” of the title. As Henderson’s own analyses demonstrate, obscene language is not a constant presence in any surviving Old Comic play but a variable one.8 In other words, risqué and obscene expression is a tap Aristophanes can turn on—either gradually or suddenly, as we shall see—but also off, leaving long sections of his plays obscenity-free. My key area of interest, then, is how the poet introduces obscene language into the beginnings of his plays (how does he slip the first obscenity in?) and how he reintroduces it following heightened and/or more sober sequences (how does he slip one in later?). The bulk of this chapter is given over to the examination of individual passages, in order to gain an impression of the range of techniques Aristophanes employs when handling obscene language. To anticipate my conclusions, an important point of interest is the way the shock obscenities can cause is either exploited or, alternatively, avoided. As we shall see, patterns emerge not only in how obscene language is introduced and reintroduced, but also in how obscenity is juxtaposed with highregister—often tragic—language on the one hand and low-register, risqué linguistic features such as double entendres on the other. Before looking at individual passages in detail, however, I first outline what is to be understood by obscenity for the purposes of this discussion, and consider some of the challenges of defining and categorizing obscene expression in a classical Athenian context.9
Defining Obscenity One of the first tasks Henderson sets himself in The Maculate Muse is to outline his definition of obscenity.10
8 Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 1), pp. 56–107, discusses the shifting, thematic use of obscenity in the extant plays. A striking example of the flow of obscenity being checked is the final third of Birds where, Henderson remarks, “there is no obscenity at all” (p. 85). 9 In this chapter, all quotations of Greek are accompanied by an English translation (either taken directly or adapted from Sommerstein’s Aris and Phillips editions of the plays). Greek words have been transliterated in the main text but kept in the original in parentheses and footnotes. Key items of obscene vocabulary are also given in transliterated form within the English translations, allowing the Greekless reader better to engage with the discussion. 10 Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 1), p. 2.
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By obscenity we mean verbal reference to areas of human activity or parts of the human body that are protected by certain taboos agreed upon by prevailing custom and subject to emotional aversion or inhibition. These are in fact the sexual and excremental areas. In order to be obscene, such a reference must be made by explicit expression that is itself subject to the same inhibitions as the thing it describes. Thus, to utter one of the numerous words, to be found in any language, which openly (noneuphemistically) describe the tabooed organs or actions is tantamount to exposing what should be hidden.
Henderson goes on to differentiate between our modern concept of obscenity and the Greek concept of aischros, “shameful,” the shame connected with taboo words resulting from the fact that not only the deeds and objects themselves but also the words that represent those deeds and objects “stand for what one keeps to oneself.”11 He also suggests that what he calls “primary obscenities”—words like peos, “cock,” and kusthos, “cunt”—can be usefully distinguished from other forms of expression referring to the same objects. These include both medical terms, such as phallos, “penis,” and metaphorical expressions and double entendres, such as balanos, “pin,” and kerkos, “tail” (used as a double entendres for “penis” at Lys. 410 and Ach. 785, respectively), which characteristically evoke the objects and actions to which they refer in a less direct way. As Henderson remarks, “there was no special term” in classical Greek for taboo words.12 Faute de mieux, I shall nevertheless follow the practice of other scholars by using the terms “obscenity” and “obscene” in the context of Aristophanic as well as contemporary expression. We have already begun to list some of the obscene words that feature in the passages discussed in this chapter, but what other lexical items in Aristophanes can be usefully categorized as primary obscenities? The Maculate Muse only goes part way to answering this question; indeed, as Sommerstein comments when considering obscenity in his study of “The Language of Athenian Women,” the lengthy catalogue of sexual and scatological terms in Henderson’s book “(very properly, given its aims) includes many euphemistic and/or metaphorical expressions which taken literally are not obscene at all.”13 For the purposes of his own survey, Sommerstein therefore draws up a list of 16 words he regards as primary obscenities, distilled from the three “women” plays that concern him (Lysistrata, Thesmophoriazusae and Assemblywomen)—a list which, in addition to the obscene terms already encountered (peos, “cock,” and kusthos, “cunt”), includes binein (plus its derivatives), kinein (in its sexual sense), proskineisthai, lēkan and splekoun (all signifying “to fuck/screw”); psōlos/psōlē (“hard-on”) and stuesthai (“to have a hard on”); dephesthai (“to wank/
11 Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 1), p. 5, who later develops this idea by introducing the Freudian concept of “exposure” into his discussion (pp. 10–13). 12 Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 1), p. 5. 13 Sommerstein, “Language of Athenian Women” (above, n. 7), p. 78.
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jerk off”); laikazein (“to suck cock”);14 katapugōn (“bugger”) and pugizein (“to bugger”); prōktos (“ass(hole),” plus its derivatives and compounds); perdesthai (“to fart”); and chezein (“to shit,” plus its compounds).15 In characteristically pragmatic fashion, Sommerstein thus creates two neat categories: primary obscenities on the one hand and all remaining lexical items on the other. Sommerstein’s approach has practical benefits, since it allows him to specify with admirable clarity which terms his discussion will cover. But drawing a sharp distinction between obscene and non-obscene items begs an important question: in addition to black and white, did obscene lexical items not come in various shades of gray for classical Athenians? Indeed, even Sommerstein’s short list throws up interesting issues concerning the relative obscenity of certain terms. For example, it includes both binein, “to fuck,” and its near-homonym kinein (in its sexual sense, that is; kinein can also boast a whole range of non-sexual meanings, such as “set in motion,” “remove,” “stir up,” etc.).16 As Bain notes when discussing these verbs, “there must be some difference between an outright vulgar word [viz. binein] which has virtually no secondary connotations … and a word [viz. kinein] which is extremely common in contexts without a sexual reference and which is used because it suggests the other word.”17 In a similar vein, the fact that dephesthai, “to wank/jerk off,” has an active form, dephein, which simply means “to soften,” potentially sets it apart from verbs like stuesthai, “to have a hard-on,” and chezein, “to shit,” whose field of reference is exclusively obscene.18 Furthermore, one might legitimately ask whether perdesthai, “to fart,” and the activity it describes, would have attracted the same quality of taboo in ancient Athens as a verb like laikazein, “to suck cock.”19 To be
14 On the meaning of this verb, see Jocelyn, “ΛΑΙΚΑΖΕΙΝ” (above, n. 6); cf. Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 1), pp. 153–4 n. 12, and Bain, “Six Verbs” (above, n. 6), pp. 74–7. 15 Sommerstein, “Language of Athenian Women” (above, n. 7), p. 79. McClure, Spoken Like a Woman (above, n. 7), pp. 208–9, reuses Sommerstein’s list of primary obscenities for her analysis of female obscenity in the same three plays. 16 On the range of meanings of κινέω, see J. Chadwick, Lexicographica Graeca: Contributions to the Lexicography of Ancient Greek (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), pp. 183–8. Cf. Bain, “Six Verbs” (above, n. 6), pp. 63–6. 17 Bain, “Six Verbs” (above, n. 6), p. 64; see also Robson, Humour, Obscenity and Aristophanes (above, n. 5), p. 175. 18 For the distribution of στύω and χέζω outside Old Comedy, see Bain, “Six Verbs” (above, n. 6), p. 52. 19 Interestingly, Jocelyn, “ΛΑΙΚΑΖΕΙΝ” (above, n. 6), p. 15, collectively dubs the verbs βδεῖν, πέρδεσθαι, χέζειν and βινεῖν “mild obscenities” in comparison to λαικάζειν. For data on the spread of κύσθος, πέος, πέρδομαι, πρωκτός, στύω, χέζω, ψωλή/ψωλ-, βινέω, κινέω, προσκινέομαι, πυγίζω, ληκῶ, οἴφω and λαικάζω in extant literature and beyond, see Bain, “Six Verbs” (above, n. 6), p. 53, who comments that “some no doubt were regarded as more or less offensive than others.” In the 11 extant plays, πέρδεσθαι occurs seven times: Ach. 30; Eq. 115; Nu. 9; V. 1177; Ec. 78, 464; Pl. 176. cf. ἀνταποπέρδεσθαι (Nu. 293); ἀποπέρδεσθαι (V. 394; Av. 792; Ra. 10; Pl. 699); ἐπιπέρδεσθαι (Eq. 639); καταπέρδεσθαι (V. 618; Pax 547; Pl. 618), προσπέρδεσθαι (Ra. 1074) and ὑποπέρδεσθαι (Ra. 1097).
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sure, with no native speakers to interrogate, we can never be certain of the precise resonance a particular term or expression might have possessed at any given time (and different speakers may well have varied in their opinions in any case). We are thus faced with the challenge of judging from what is often meager data (frequency of use in literary sources, distribution, context) what the relative force of different obscenities was. Seen in this light, obscenity becomes a more slippery linguistic category than Sommerstein’s simple division between obscene and non-obscene allows, so that the investigation proposed here is rendered more challenging, its results more tentative. But it remains possible, I suggest, to use Henderson’s catalogue and Sommerstein’s list productively as starting points for identifying such primary obscenities, metaphorical expressions and double entendres as occur in Aristophanes. Lastly, it is necessary to stress the relative prevalence of obscene language in modern Anglophone culture compared to that of classical Greece. The situations in which obscenity is found in Greek culture are few and far between: iambic poetry, the rites connected with certain cults and festivals (chiefly Demeter and Dionysus), curse tablets, magical texts, graffiti—and, of course Old Comedy.20 These contexts also raise the important issue of the uses to which obscenity was put in classical Greek culture. In the introduction to The Maculate Muse, Henderson emphasizes the ability of taboo words to “shock, anger and amuse,”21 and further functions of obscenity are usefully set out by Adams (albeit in the context of Latin material), whose four major categories are “apotropaic and ritual” purposes, “aggression and humiliation,” “humour and outrageousness” and “titillation.”22 The special festival license the Old Comic poets enjoyed is also relevant. Indeed, much of what follows amounts to an investigation of how this license was both carefully negotiated and mercilessly exploited by Aristophanes in his plays to surprise and shock his audiences.
The “Obscenity out of Nowhere” Let us first remind ourselves of the most common way Aristophanes introduces obscenities into his plays, that is to say, abruptly and largely unsignaled—a technique I will call the “obscenity out of nowhere.” The unsignaled introduction of an obscenity par excellence comes early in the action of the Thesmophoriazusae, the item in
20 Bain, “Six Verbs” (above, n. 6), p. 53. For obscenity as a feature of cultic activities, see Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 1), pp. 13–17; O’Higgins, Women and Humor (above, n. 7), esp. pp. 15–36. For obscenity in graffiti and inscriptions, see Jocelyn, “ΛΑΙΚΑΖΕΙΝ” (above, n. 6), p. 15; K. Tsantsanoglou, “Two Obscene Vase-Inscriptions,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 173 (2010), pp. 32–4. 21 Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 1), p. 7. 22 Adams, Latin Sexual Vocabulary (above, n. 5), pp. 4–8.
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question being binein, “to fuck.”23 Euripides and his unnamed relative are outside the house of the tragic poet Agathon, where they have the following exchange (Th. 29–35). Ευ. Κη. Ευ. Κη. Ευ. Κη. Ευ. Κη. Ευ.
ἐνταῦθ’ Ἀγάθων ὁ κλεινὸς οἰκὼν τυγχάνει ὁ τραγῳδοποιός. ποῖος οὗτος ἁγάθων; ἔστιν τις Ἀγάθων— μῶν ὁ μέλας, ὁ καρτερός; οὔκ, ἀλλ’ ἕτερός τις· οὐχ ἑόρακας πώποτε; μῶν ὁ δασυπώγων; οὐχ ἑόρακας πώποτε. οὔτοι μὰ τὸν Δί’ ὥστε κἀμέ γ’ εἰδέναι. καὶ μὴν βεβίνηκας σύ γ’· ἀλλ’ οὐκ οἶσθ’ ἵσως.
Eur. Inlaw Eur. Inlaw Eur. Inlaw Eur. Inlaw Eur.
This is where the famous Agathon has his residence, the tragic poet. What Agathon is that? There is one Agathon— You don’t mean the bronzed, muscular one? No, a different one; haven’t you ever seen him? Not the one with the bushy beard? You haven’t ever seen him! I certainly haven’t—at least not that I know of. And yet you’ve fucked him (bebinēkas)—but perhaps you’re not aware of the fact!
This passage comes at almost the beginning of the play and there is little in the preceding discussion to suggest that Euripides will utter the obscene “fuck” in 35. Indeed, Silk chooses this very moment to illustrate the concept of what he calls a “recreational” figure (as opposed to a “realist” figure); that is, a figure whose character and speech are liable to change drastically, or as Silk succinctly puts it, are “inconsistently inconsistent.”24 Up to this point Euripides … has spoken in a restrained idiom. His remarks to Mnesilochus [i.e. the Inlaw] have been equable in tone, and there is nothing now to suggest that his mood has changed. Nor is there anything in his characterization to come which would suggest that obscenity is a feature of his idiom, as it is, by contrast, of Mnesilochus’.
23 For a brief overview of the 15 uses of βινεῖν in Aristophanes, see Robson, Humour, Obscenity and Aristophanes (above, n. 5), pp. 179–80 n. 146. See also Chadwick, Lexicographica (above, n. 16), s.v. βινέω, and cf. Bain, “Six Verbs” (above, n. 6), pp. 54–62. The appearance of βινεῖν in a Solonian law code (Solon test. Vet. 448 Martina) has spawned debate to as the extent to which the verb is truly obscene: see Jocelyn, “ΛΑΙΚΑΖΕΙΝ” (above, n. 6), pp. 65–7, and contra M.S. Silk, “The People of Aristophanes,” in: C. Pelling (ed.), Characterization and Individuality in Greek Literature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), p. 153 n. 4. 24 M. Silk, Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 243; quote that follows, p. 210.
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This unsignaled introduction of an obscenity no doubt serves to attack and undermine the figure of Agathon.25 It is noteworthy, too, that once one obscenity has been delivered (at 35), others follow in quick succession (βινεῖσθαι, “to be fucked,” 50; λαικάζει, “he is sucking cock,” 57; πέος, “cock,” 62). The principle that an “obscenity out of nowhere” can be used to attack and undermine also holds good for the Sausage-seller’s snipe at Paphlagon at Eq. 1010, “he can go bite his cock (peos)” (τὸ πέος οὐτοσὶ δάκοι), or Dicaeopolis’ use of the words “cock-suckers” and “buggers” (λαικαστάς and καταπύγονας) at Ach. 79 in response to the self-important Athenian amabassador. The memorable exchange at Nu. 733–4 is perhaps a variation on this theme—a hostile deflation rather than an allout attack. The obscenity comes when Strepsiades (who is lying under a cover in bed) is asked by Socrates whether he has had any intelligent thoughts: Σω. Στ. Σω. Στ.
ἔχεις τι;
Socr. Streps. Socr. Streps.
Have you managed to get hold of anything? No, I really haven’t. Nothing at all? Nothing—except my cock (peos) in my right hand.
μὰ Δί’ οὐ δῆτ’ ἔγωγ’. οὐδὲν πάνυ; οὐδέν γε, πλὴν ἢ τὸ πέος ἐν τῇ δεξιᾷ.
Attack and deflation are not the only uses to which “obscenities out of nowhere” are put. They can also serve to emphasize a figure’s non-conformity with social conventions and/or lack of social sophistication. Indeed, Nu. 734 is a good example of this, in that Strepsiades’ crudeness and rusticity (in contrast to the high-minded Socrates) is underlined by his masturbation and use of the word “cock.”26 The relative freedom with which Demos’ slaves use obscenity in the prologue of Knights no doubt contributes to their characterization as both lowly figures and would-be iconoclasts (δεφόμενος, 24, and δεφομένων 29, “wanking”; χέζομεν, “we shit,” 70; πρωκτός, “ass-hole,” 78; λαικάσεις, “you will suck cocks,” 167), whereas the Sausage-Seller’s obscenities underline his status as a crude aggressor and challenger of Paphlagon (ἐγὼ δὲ βυνήσω γέ σου τὸν πρωκτὸν ἀντὶ φύσκης, “I’ll stuff your ass like a sausage case,” Eq. 364). Indeed, as Henderson notes, a number of key figures in Aristophanes’
25 Something commentators’ remarks on these passages serve to confirm. C. Austin and S.D. Olson (eds.), Aristophanes Thesmophoriazusae (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) note that at Th. 35 “[t]he joke is … entirely on Agathon.” Commenting on Av. 556–60, N. Dunbar (ed.), Aristophanes Birds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) observes that “[t]he divine dignity is undermined” by the use of “coarse” language. 26 On Aristophanic masturbation and its vocabulary, see E.J. Stafford, “Clutching the Chickpea: Private Pleasures of the Bad Boyfriend,” in: S.D. Lambert (ed.), Sociable Man: Essays on Ancient Greek Social Behaviour in Honour of Nick Fisher (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2011), pp. 338–42.
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plays from the 420s “make use of … outrageous mechanisms in accomplishing their overturning of society” including “the unrestrained use of obscene language.”27 Nor are obscenities out of nowhere uttered only by characters with major roles in the plays. At Ach. 1052, for example, an obscenity of this sort is voiced by a figure quite tangential to the action, a Groomsman who appeals for a newly-wed husband to be granted a share in Dicaeopolis’ private peace so that he can “can stay at home and fuck” (βινοίη μένων) rather than go off to war.28 Nor are such obscenities voiced only by socially inferior or downtrodden characters: at V. 739, for example, Bdelycleon suddenly announces that he will provide his father with πόρνην, ἥτις τὸ πέος τρίψει, “a whore to massage his cock.” The buffoonery of Dionysus and Xanthias is also brought out by the abrupt use of obscenity in the arresting comic sequence that opens Frogs. In a comment addressed to Xanthias, Dionysus uses chezêtiais, “you need a crap” (Ra. 8), Xanthias’ response to which contains the scurrilous apopardêsomai, “I’ll have an ass-burst” (Ra. 10). In short, obscenities out of nowhere (and the further obscenities that often follow in their wake) are used in a wide variety of contexts. These are the Aristophanic norm.
Obscenity and the Deflation of High-Flown Language One particular use to which “obscenities out of nowhere” are put is to deflate highflown—most often tragic—language. A good example comes at Lys. 706–15, where the high tone established by a passage of tragic pastiche is neatly thrown into relief by the sudden introduction of an obscene lexical item. The effect is that of humor para prosdokian.29 Χο.γρ Λυ. Χο.γρ Λυ. Χο.γρ
ἄνασσα πράγους τοῦδε καὶ βουλεύματος, τί μοι σκυθρωπὸς ἐξελήλυθας δόμων … κακῶν γυναικῶν ἔργα καὶ θήλεια φρὴν ποιεῖ μ’ ἀθυμεῖν περιπατεῖν τ’ ἄνω κάτω. τί φής … τί φής … ἀληθῆ, ἀληθῆ. τί δ’ ἐστὶ δεινόν … φράζε ταῖς σαυτῆς φίλαις.
27 Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 1), p. 58, who identifies similar figures in all of Aristophanes’ early plays. 28 A request soon followed by the Bride’s appeal (reported by Dicaeopolis) for her husband’s cock (πέος) to stay at home (Ach. 1060). 29 As J. Henderson (ed.), Aristophanes Lysistrata (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987) ad loc., observes, while the address ἄνασσα πράγους (709) and the dilemma expressed in lines 713–14 are, according to the scholiast, borrowed from Euripides’ Telephus, “the whole passage is typically tragic and we need not suppose that the spectators were supposed to recall any particular source(s).” Tragic features identified by Henderson include the omission of the article in 707 and 708 and the suspense-building kommata of 710–11. Elsewhere, however, περιπατεῖν (709) is attested only in prose.
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Λυ. Χο.γρ Λυ.
ἀλλ’ αἰσχρὸν εἰπεῖν καὶ σιωπῆσαι βαρύ. μή νύν με κρύψῃς ὅ τι πεπόνθαμεν κακόν. βινητιῶμεν, ᾖ βράχιστον τοῦ λόγου.
Women’s Leader. O Sovereign of this action and this scheme, Pray, why cross-visaged com’st thou from thy halls? Lys. ’Tis worthless women’s deeds and female hearts That make me walk despondent to and fro. Women’s leader. What say’st thou? What say’st thou? Lys. ’Tis true, ’tis true. Women’s leader. What is ’t that troubles thee? Speak to thy friends. Lys. ’Tis shame to say, yet grievous to conceal. Women’s leader. Then do not hide from me the ill we suffer. Lys. In brief the tale to tell—we need a fuck.
This Aristophanic technique of establishing an elevated, tragic tone only to deflate it with obscenity has parallels elsewhere. In the prologue of Peace, for example, a paratragic exchange between Trygaeus and his slave gives way to a short lyric that starts tonally high but then dips low (an example of what Silk calls “hybrid lyrics” or “low lyrics plus”).30 The flight of Trygaeus’ dung-beetle to heaven is inspired by that of Pegasus in Euripides’ Bellerophon, and paratragic resonances run throughout the play’s prologue.31 Here, however, the worlds of tragedy and excrement collide spectacularly (91–101). Τρ. Οι.β Τρ. Οι.β Τρ.
Tryg. Slave Tryg.
σίγα σίγα. ποῖ δῆτ’ ἄλλως μετεωροκοπεῖς; ὑπὲρ Ἑλλήνων πάντων πέτομαι τόλμημα νέον παλαμησάμενος. τί πέτει; τί μάτην οὐχ ὑγαίνεις; εὐφημεῖν χρὴ καὶ μὴ φλαῦρον μηδὲν γρύζειν, ἀλλ’ ὀλολύζειν τοῖς τ’ ἀνθρώποισι φράσον σιγᾶν, τούς τε κοπρῶνας καὶ τὰς λαύρας καιναῖς πλίνθοισιν ἀποικοδομεῖν καὶ τοὺς πρωκτοὺς ἐπικλῄειν. Be silent, be silent! Then why are you senselessly beating the air? I am making a flight on behalf of all the Greeks; I have planned a venture without precedent.
30 M.S. Silk, “Aristophanes as a Lyric Poet,” Yale Classical Studies 26 (1980), pp. 129–42; Aristophanes and the Definition (above, n. 24), pp. 180–201. The principle of undercutting high-flown language is the very essence of “hybrid” lyrics as defined by Silk (p. 189); interestingly, however, his examples show that the subversion of high-register expression does not routinely involve obscene expression. 31 See S.D. Olson (ed.), Aristophanes Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. xxxiv.
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Slave Tryg.
39
Why are you flying? Why are you sick with mad folly? You should speak fair and not utter the least ill-omened sound, but shout for joy; and bid all men keep silence, and as for the privies and the alleys shut them off with new brickwork – and close up their asses (prôktous).
As in the Lysistrata passage, Aristophanes here stakes a claim to high-flown expression only to undermine it with obscenity. Interestingly, however, the bump down to earth is softened a little: the tragic spell begins to fade with the introduction of “privies” (κοπρῶνας), which is in turn followed by some more rather than less prosaic words: “alleys” (λαύρας), “shut off” (ἀποικοδομεῖν) and “brickwork” (πλίνθοισιν). Something similar occurs in miniature in a much-cited passage from the beginning of Acharnians (27–30). ὢ πόλις πόλις. ἐγὼ δ’ ἀεὶ πρώτιστος εἰς ἐκκλησίαν νοστῶν κάθημαι· κᾆτ’, ἐπειδὰν ὦ μόνος, στένω, κέχηνα, σκορδινῶμαι, πέρδομαι. O my city, my city! For myself, I always make my way to the Assembly before anyone else and sit here; then, when I’m alone, I sigh and yawn, stretch and fart.
As Silk has demonstrated, this paratragic ὢ πόλις πόλις is built up to carefully: the lexical restraint (as well as the tightened meter) that proceed it make it into a miniature tragic moment—one that blends with and grows out of Dicaeopolis’ wistful laments to create a heightened moment of urgent poignancy.32 But the elevation is rapidly undercut by a series of increasingly colloquial items, until within three lines we reach the earthy (semi-obscene?) perdomai, “I fart.”33 In contrast to the abrupt “obscenities out of nowhere” encountered previously, in the last two extracts there is
32 See Silk, Aristophanes and the Definition (above, n. 24), pp. 33–7. Aristophanes presumably employs tragedy and tragic language in contrast to obscenity for a number of reasons. For example, tragic language (and indeed other poetic and heightened language) provides a clear counterpoint to obscenity: the two lie at either end of a spectrum, and the proximity of tragic language in the text highlights obscenity’s sheer crudeness and heightens its potential for bathos. A further reason is no doubt that tragic poets and tragic language and idiom—along with other high genres—may conveniently be cast as something pompous to be deflated by obscenity. 33 According to Olson, Peace (above, n. 31), on 28–31, for example, πρώτιστος (28) is “almost exclusively poetic,” appearing in both comedy and tragedy, while the parallels he cites for κέχηνα and σκορδινῶμαι are purely comic. Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 1), p. 195, talks of the “harmless … and sometimes even … netural” tone of fart jokes,” which indicate “rusticity and vulgarity” [Henderson’s emphasis].
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certainly a bump down to earth produced by the juxtaposition of tragic language and low expression, but one that is ever so slightly softened. In sum, obscenities out of nowhere come in an array of forms, ranging from “abrupt” at one extreme to “softened” at the other.
Building up to a Climax: Lysistrata’s meaty peos Let us now turn to an introduction of an obscenity that is very different in kind from those examined so far, by looking at what is arguably one of the most celebrated uses of a primary obscenity in Old Comedy, in the prologue of Lysistrata. Lysistrata herself utters the first obscene lexical item of the play, as she reveals her plan for peace (Lys. 119–24): Λυ.
Κα. Λυ. Κα. Λυ. Lys.
Cal. Lys. Cal. Lys.
λέγοιμ’ ἄν· οὐ δεῖ γὰρ κεκρύφθαι τὸν λόγον. ἡμῖν γάρ, ὦ γυναῖκες, εἴπερ μέλλομεν ἀναγκάσειν τοὺς ἄνδρας εἰρήνην ἄγειν, ἀφεκτέ’ ἐστι – τοῦ; φράσον. ποιήσετ’ οὖν; ποιήσομεν, κἂν ἀποθανεῖν ἡμᾶς δέῃ. ἀφεκτέα τοίνυν ἐστὶν ἡμῖν τοῦ πέους. I will say it: there’s no need for the idea to stay hidden. What we must do, women, if we mean to compel the men to live in peace, is to abstain— From what? Tell us. You’ll do it then? We’ll do it, even if we have to give our lives. Well then: we must abstain from—cock (peos).
Lysistrata’s utterance is a prime example of obscenity used for humorous purposes.34 Not just the nature of the proposition—a quest for peace—but also its scope, involving all the women in Greece, endow her plan with a certain gravitas. What is more, this gravitas is heightened by the women’s comments directly preceding this passage: Calonice asserts, “I’d split myself in two” (115–16), Lampito that she would “climb to the top of Mount Taÿgetus” (117–18), if that would bring peace. In the passage quoted above, Calonice acts as the women’s spokesperson, enthusiastically agreeing to Lysistrata’s plan even before it has been articulated (123). The women’s comments also add
34 On the use of πέος in Aristophanes, see Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 1), pp. 108–9, who speaks of the word’s “shock value” and “blunt force” (p. 108). On the use of πέος outside Old Comedy, see Bain, “Six Verbs” (above, n. 6), p. 52.
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to the suspense that has been building since the beginning of the play. The action has been gearing up to this moment, but even now Aristophanes does not have Lysistrata reveal her plan straightaway—instead, Calonice interrupts. At long last, the climax is reached: the plan is revealed and we meet peos, the first primary obscenity of the play. The tension created by the suspense is released, and at the same moment the world inhabited by such noble projects as plans for panhellenic peace collides with the lowly world of taboo vocabulary. In one sense, then, peos at Lys. 124 comes as a surprise. But to introduce a distinction, the introduction of an item of taboo vocabulary into the play at this stage can hardly be said to come as a shock. There have been no primary obscenities so far, but scurrility has nevertheless abounded. In the lines leading up to this passage, the audience has been tantalized by the prospect of the women sitting at home wearing make-up and sexually enticing clothing (such as saffron gowns and exotic shoes, 42–8) and has had its attention drawn to the fine Spartan “backside” (πυγά, 82)35 and “breasts” (τιτθῶν, 83)36 of Lampito. More risqué still are double entendres such as those concerning the Boeotian woman’s “fine lowland region” (καλὸν … πεδίον, 88) with its mint-shoots neatly plucked (89),37 or the women from the island of Salamis who have been conscientiously “crossing in boats”/”bestriding their mounts” since early morning so as to get to the meeting (ἐπὶ τῶν κελήτων διαβεβήκασ’, 59–60).38 To top all this, we have Lysistrata’s nostalgia for adulterers (μοιχοῦ) and Milesian dildos (ὄλισβον) at 107–9, both of which are said to be in short supply because of the war. In fact, the trail of lewdness can be traced back over 100 lines, to the point where Calonice originally asks Lysistrata the purpose of the meeting (21–5): Κα.
τί δ’ ἐστίν, ὦ φίλη Λυσιστράτη, ἐφ’ ὅ τι ποθ’ ἡμᾶς τὰς γυναῖκας ξυγκαλεῖς; τί τὸ πρᾶγμα; πηλίκον τι;
35 Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 1) describes πύγη as a direct (p. 40) but “mild word” (p. 69), “often with no more vulgarity of tone than English ‘rump’” (p. 201). Sommerstein, “Language of Athenian Women” (above, n. 7), p. 79 n. 52, and McClure, Spoken Like a Woman (above, n. 7), p. 208, agree that πύγη is not obscene (but cf. πυγίζω, “bugger”). 36 I discuss the spread of τιτθός in classical literature in Humour, Obscenity and Aristophanes (above, n. 5), pp.168–9, where I conclude that it is “neutral” in tone (and therefore roughly analogous to English “breast” or “bosom”). 37 On the removal of pubic hair, see M. Kilmer, Greek Erotica on Attic Red-Figure Vases (London: Duckworth, 1993), pp. 133–41. 38 A complex joke, relying on the multiple meanings of κέλης, which could signify a “racing-horse,” a type of “yacht,” and a sexual position for which the man lay down and was straddled by the woman. The act was notoriously expensive when performed by a prostitute (Pl. Com. Fr. 188.17–18; cf. Ath. 13.581c–f). A.H. Sommerstein (ed.), The Comedies of Aristophanes: Vol. 7, Lysistrata (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1990) translates this phrase “working over on their pinnaces” (with a pun on “penis” and “pinnace” [a kind of boat]). Cf. also Pax 900.
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Λυ. Κα. Λυ. Κα. Λυ. Cal.
Lys. Cal. Lys. Cal. Lys.
μέγα – μῶν καὶ παχύ;39 —καὶ νὴ Δία παχύ. κᾆτα πῶς οὐχ ἥκομεν; οὐχ οὗτος ὁ τρόπος· ταχὺ γὰρ ἂν ξυνήλθομεν. What actually is it, Lysistrata dear, that you’re calling us women together for? What is this thing? What’s the size of it? It’s big— You don’t mean meaty (pachus) too? —and meaty too, I tell you. Then how come we’re not all here? Not in that sense! We’d have assembled fast enough if it was.
Having followed this trail of double entendres, sexual allusions and risqué references, we can plausibly claim that the audience has, in an important sense, been prepared for the advent of the obscene peos at 124. Nor is the principle of risqué foreplay restricted to this instance, this play or indeed this lexical item.
Selling Pigs, Telling Porkies: The choiroi of Acharnians To broaden our canvas, let us turn to Acharnians and another scene notorious for its sexual content and obscene language. The relevant passage is Ach. 729–835, where the starving Megarian comes to Dicaeopolis’ new, makeshift marketplace with his two daughters. Within a few lines of his arrival, the Megarian announces his plan to disguise and sell the girls as choiroi (739). At this stage, it is not clear whether the feminine noun hē choiros, “piglet,” is meant or the masculine ho choiros, a “popular slang expression” for female genitalia.40 The stage action, however, with the girls dressing themselves in false hooves and snouts, provides a firm steer that choiros signifies “piglet.” Initially, then, the exploitation of choiros as a double entendre that occurs later in the scene is only a tantalizing possibility. Once the girls are disguised, Dicaeopolis enters, and he and the Megarian discuss various matters briefly before turning their attention to the girls (764). When the
39 μέγας and παχύς are also in conjunction to describe the male member at Ach. 787, Pax 1351 and Ec. 1047–8. On the use of παχύς in these lines, see also Dover, Aristophanic Comedy (above, n. 2), p. 61. 40 Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 1), p. 131. On the (essentially comic) spread of χοῖρος in extant literature, see S.D. Olson (ed.), Aristophanes Acharnians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 261 (who further states that there is no primary evidence to support Henderson’s claim—based on Ach. 781–2—that the word designates “the pink, hairless cunt of young girls”).
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Megarian brings one of his daughters out of the sack in which she has been concealed, Dicaeopolis reacts incredulously to the assertion that these are choirous … mustikas, “pigs for the Mysteries,” the feminine adjective here indicating that choiros is to be understood “piglet.” As the conversation progresses, however, and Dicaeopolis continues to express doubts about his interlocutor’s claim that the girls are piglets, the gender of choiros is mostly left unspecified.41 The scene is thus set for the comic denouement at 771–3, where the Megarian says: ἀλλὰ μάν, αἰ λῇς, περίδου μοι παρὶ θυμιτιδᾶν ἀλῶν, αἰ μή ’στιν οὗτος χοῖρος Ἑλλάνων νόμῳ. I tell you what: if you like, I’ll bet you some salt flavored with thyme that this is a porker, according to Hellenic usage.
This time choiros is used in apposition to the masculine pronoun houtos (“this”), suggesting that the word is to be understood in its sexual sense—a point reinforced by the Megarian’s appeal to “Hellenic usage” (Ἑλλάνων νόμῳ).42 This episode thus features an intricate build-up to the point where the earthy sense of choiros is revealed. Not that this use of a crude double entendre will necessarily have come as a huge surprise to the audience. In particular, the very presence of the girls must have raised expectations that sexual language was on its way (cf. the “mute nude female characters” discussed by Zweig who routinely appear as sexual objects in Aristophanes).43 It is striking, however, that only now—following this playful choiros
41 While no gender is specified at 767, the Megarian does use a feminine adjective in 768, Μεγαρικά, in answer to Dicaeopolis’ question, “Where is this piglet from?” (ποδαπὴ χοῖρος ἥδε;). In 769, 770 and 771, while no definite article or adjective indicates the gender of χοῖρος, the word is nevertheless to be found (teasingly?) in apposition to versions of the feminine pronoun, ἥδε. On these lines, see Dover, Aristophanic Comedy (above, n. 2), pp. 63–5. 42 I thus find myself slightly at odds with Olson, Acharnians (above, n. 40) ad loc., who suggests that the masculine οὗτος of 773 amounts only to a “tacit … acknowledgement” of the sexual meaning of χοῖρος, with “explicit acknowledgement” delayed until 782. Certainly it is possible that some members of the audience will have got the joke sooner than others—perhaps even creating the kind of divided laughter that S. Goldhill, “The Thrill of Misplaced Laughter,” in” E. Medda, M. S. Mirto, M. P. Pattoni (eds.), ΚΩΜΩΙΔΟΤΡΑΓΩΙΔΙΑ: Intersezioni del tragico e del comico nel V secolo a.c. (Pisa: Einaudi, 2006), pp. 96–9, suggests was potentially provoked by comic moments in tragedy. 43 See B. Zweig, “The Mute, Nude Female Characters in Aristophanes’ Plays,” in: A. Richlin (ed.), Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 73–89, esp. 77–8; A.H. Sommerstein, “Nudity, Obscenity, Power” (above, n. 7). Aristophanes’ playful use of language, allusion and metaphor throughout Acharnians may also serve to heighten the audience’s awareness of the punning possibilities of choiros: certainly the initial exchange between Dicaeopolis and the Megarian is characterized by word-play and apparent misunderstanding.
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sequence—does Aristophanes get really dirty and introduce a primary obscenity, kusthos, “cunt” (Ach. 781–2).44 Με. Δι.
αὕτα ’στὶ χοῖρος; νῦν γε χοῖρος φαίνεται· ἀτὰρ ἐκτραφείς γε κύσθος ἔσται.
Sommerstein, somewhat tamely, translates: Meg. Dic.
Is that a porker? It’s got the look of a “porker’ now; but when it’s mature, it’ll be a beaver (kusthos).
Here, then, in a different play and with a different lexical item, we find a pattern similar to the one in Lysistrata. To spell this out once more, double entendres and sexual allusions are employed with increasing intensity before the primary obscenity is introduced. Put another way, the obscene word is only “slipped in” after extensive lubrication.
“Build-up,” Climax and Continuation It may come as little surprise that this pattern is repeated throughout Aristophanes’ plays. Indeed, other obscene lexical items in Lysistrata occur in similar circumstances. There is a lengthy build-up to Cinesias’ use of peos, for instance, while in his state of sexual desperation (928),45 and the Proboulos’ use of the same word at 414 holds particular interest, since it might be usefully thought of as an example of the phenomenon in miniature. In his speech, which is replete with double entendres, the Proboulos imitates how husbands unwittingly ask to be cuckolded (408–18). “ὦ χρυσοχόε, τὸν ὅρμον ὃν ἑπεσκεύασας, ὀρχουμένης μου τῆς γυναικὸς ἑσπέρας ἡ βάλανος ἐκπέπτωκεν ἐκ τοῦ τρήματος. ἐμοὶ μὲν οὖν ἔστ’ εἰς Σαλαμῖνα πλευστέα· σὺ δ’ ἢν σχολάσῃς, πάσῃ τέχνῃ πρὸς ἑσπέραν
44 κύσθος appears just four times in Aristophanes: twice in this passage and at Lys. 1158 and Ra. 430. See further Bain, “Six Verbs” (above, n. 6), p. 52; Robson, Humour, Obscenity and Aristophanes (above, n. 5), p. 179 n. 146. 45 The obscenity prior to this one, ἔστυκα (869), is addressed by Cinesias to Lysistrata in absentia. Once the conversation between Myrrhine and Cinesias begins at Lys. 870, sexual matters are discussed only in euphemistic terms prior to 928, e.g. “the rites of Aphrodite” (τὰ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης ἱέρ’, 898) and “lying down” (κακλίνηθι, 904; κατακλίνης, 906; κακακλινεῖ, 910; κατακλινῶ, 918). That said, Cinesias presumably has an erect phallus during the scene, to which attention is specifically drawn at 937 (and possibly 876).
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ἐλθὼν ἐκείνῃ τὴν βάλανον ἐνάρμοσον.” ἕτερος δέ τις πρὸς σκυτοτόμον ταδὶ λέγει νεανίαν καὶ πέος ἔχοντ’ οὐ παιδικόν· “ὦ σκυτοτόμε, τῆς μου γυναικὸς τοῦ ποδὸς τὸ δακτυλίδιον πιέζει τὸ ζυγόν, ἅθ’ ἁπαλὸν ὄν· τοῦτ’ οὖν σὺ τῆς μεσημβρίας ἐλθὼν χάλασον, ὅπως ἂν εὐρυτέρως ἔχῃ.” “Goldsmith, that necklace you mended— last night my wife was dancing, and the pin’s slipped out of the hole. Now I’ve got to cross over to Salamis; so if you’re free, could you without fail come over in the evening and fit a pin in her hole, please?” Another man talks like this to a strapping shoemaker A young man with a cock (peos) that’s certainly no chicken: “Shoemaker, it’s my wife’s foot— the strap is hurting her little piggy-wiggy, because it’s tender; so, in the middle of the day, could you come over and loosen it up so as to make it wider?”
Worthy of note in this short passage is how the sexual language is sustained—albeit briefly—once the primary obscenity, peos, is introduced.46 The Proboulos’ speech contains a single obscene lexical item, which is both built up to and followed by double entendres. But as with obscenities out of nowhere, when the build-up technique is employed, it is also common for one obscenity to follow hot on the heels of another. After the peos of Lys. 124, for example, we find another peos just 10 lines later. Calonice says (133–5): ἄλλ’ ἄλλ’ ὅ τι βούλει. κἂν με χρῂ, διὰ τοῦ πυρὸς ἐθέλω βαδίζειν· τοῦτο μᾶλλον τοῦ πέους. οὐδὲν γὰρ οἷον, ὦ φίλη Λυσιστράτη. Anything else you want—anything! And if need be, I’m willing to walk through fire—rather that than cock (peos)! There is nothing like it, Lysistrata dear!
Similarly, following the kusthos of Ach. 782 there is a flurry of risqué expression—including the punning use of choiros once more and kerkos, “tail,” as a
46 It is shortly after this speech, too, that we find the much-discussed threat of Lys. 440, where one of the old women tells the Proboulos that if the archers lay a hand on Lysistrata, “you’ll get such a pasting you’ll shit (ἐπιχεσεῖ) all over the place!” As Sommerstein, “Nudity, Obscenity, Power” (above, n. 7), p. 13, notes, this is the only instance outside Ec. (and only one of four examples in the whole of Aristophanes) where a woman utters an obscenity in the presence of men; cf. McClure, Spoken Like a Woman (above, n. 7), pp. 210–11. To be sure, the Proboulos’ πέος is not as climactic as the other “buildup” obscenities discussed here.
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double entendre for “penis”47—capped by another kusthos just seven lines later (784–9). Δι. Με. Δι. Με.
Δι. Dic. Meg. Dic. Meg.
Dic.
ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ θύσιμός ἐστι αὑτηγί; σά μάν; πᾷ δ’ οὐχὶ θύσιμός ἐστι; κέρκον οὐκ ἔχει. νέα γάρ ἐστιν. ἀλλὰ δελφακουμένα ἑξεῖ μεγάλαν τε καὶ παχεῖαν κἠρυθράν. ἀλλ’ αἰ τράφειν λῇς, ἅδε τοι χοῖρος καλά. ὡς ξυγγενὴς ὁ κύσθος αὐτῆς θατέρᾳ. [Inspecting one of the “piglets”] But this one isn’t even fit for sacrifice. Why not? How isn’t it fit for sacrifice? It’s got no tail. No, it’s young. When it’s full-grown it’ll have a long, thick, red one. [Bringing out the other girl] But if you want one to rear, here’s a fine porker. What a family resemblance her cunt (kusthos) has to the other one’s!
In both the Lysistrata and Acharnians passages, then, the introduction of the primary obscenity is followed by further obscenity and sexual allusion. That is to say, once Aristophanes has used a lengthy build-up technique to slip one dirty word in, he routinely finds room for at least one more.
Harvest and Holiday: The Blessings of Peace In light of this observation—and to take matters a stage further—let us look at one last scene in which Aristophanes carefully builds up to the introduction of a primary obscenity, Peace 819–908.48 In this passage, which follows directly after the parabasis, Trygaeus arrives back from heaven bringing with him two young women, Opora and Theoria (or as Olson suggests, “Harvest” and “Holiday”).49 With the presence on stage of “mute nude female characters,” expectations of obscene expression are surely raised.50 Trygaeus’ slave arrives at 824, and the subsequent exchange initially takes the form of a question-and-answer routine between the stooge slave and the funny-man, Trygaeus, the tone of which may be judged from its beginning (824–6):
47 Pace L. Edmunds, “Aristophanes’ Acharnians,” Yale Classical Studies 26 (1980), p. 17, who suggests that “tail” here stands for “clitoris.” 48 For a sustained discussion of this passage, see Robson, Humour, Obscenity and Aristophanes (above, n. 5), pp. 132–86. 49 Olson, Peace (above, n. 31), on 819–20. 50 See n. 43 above.
Slipping One In: The Introduction of Obscene Lexical Items in Aristophanes
Οι. Τρ. Οι. Τρ.
47
ὦ δέσποθ’, ἥκεις; ὥς γ’ ἐγὼ ’πυθόμην τινός. τί δ’ ἔπαθες; ἤλγουν τὼ σκέλει μακρὰν ὁδὸν διεληλυθώς.
Slave Tryg. Slave Tryg.
Master, you’re back! That’s what I’m told. What happened? I got sore legs from the long walk.
The banter continues in a similar vein for 20 lines before the presence of the girls is acknowledged (842). At this point, Trygaeus announces that he is going to marry Opora, and instructs his slave to take her inside and begin preparations for the wedding. (Marriage has its own erotic connotations, reinforced here by reference to the κουρίδιον λέχος, “nuptial couch,” at 844).51 Once introduced, the sexual theme is developed further in the lines that follow, with the slave (who has now assumed the role of funny-man) suggesting that the gods perhaps act as pimps (πορνοβοσκοῦσ’, 849), if Opora and Theoria have been residing in heaven.52 So far, the sexuality has been muted, but in 851–5 the expectations raised by the presence of the naked women are finally realized, when the audience is treated to its first full-blown double entendre. Οι.
εἰπέ μοι, δῶ καταφαγεῖν ταύτῃ τι;
Τρ.
Οι. Slave Tryg.
Slave
μηδέν· οὐ γὰρ ἐθελήσει φαγεῖν οὔτ’ ἄρτον οὔτε μᾶζαν, εἰωθυῖ’ ἀεὶ παρὰ τοῖς θεοῖσιν ἀμβροσίαν λείχειν ἄνω. λείχειν ἄρ’ αὑτῇ κἀνθάδε σκευαστέον. Tell me, should I give her something to feed on? No, nothing: she won’t want to eat Wheat-bread or barley cake, since she’s used to licking ambrosia up there with the gods. Then we’ll have to give her something to lick down here, too.53
51 In vase painting, for example, the bride becomes an increasingly eroticized figure in wedding imagery as the 5th century progresses: thus R.F. Sutton Jr., “Pornography and Persuasion on Attic Poetry,” in: Richlin, Pornography and Representation (above, n. 43), pp. 19–20. 52 On the significance of this switch and the sexuality of these lines in general, see D. Walin, “An Aristophanic Slave: Peace 819–1126,” Classical Quarterly NS 59 (2009), pp. 30–7. 53 Λείχειν is used elsewhere in Aristophanes to denote cunnilingus (e.g. Eq. 1285; cf. fr. 425). With this double entendre, the slave presumably points at his phallus: thus Robson, Humour, Obscenity and Aristophanes (above, n. 5), p. 161.
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The dialogue reaches something of a climax here, marked by a brief sung exchange between the chorus and Trygaeus, in which the bridegroom-to-be looks forward to sleeping with (ξυνών) Opora while holding her “titties” (τιτθίων, 863) close,54 while the chorus offer up a risqué kinein (“screw”?, 867).55 After this, the slave and Trygaeus resume their dialogue, and the obscenity comes thick and fast. In a now familiar pattern, we find peos, “cock,” three lines into their exchange (870), followed by a welter of double entendres, sexual allusions and, significantly, further primary obscenities: “quadrennial ass” (πρωκτοπεντετηρίδα, 876), “cock” (πέει, 880 and 898), a risqué “thrust against during sex” (προσκινήσεται, 902)56 and an obscene “with retracted foreskin”/“with a hard-on” (ἀπεψωλημένοι, 903).57 These last three items occur within a wild and lengthy sexual assault fantasy voiced by Trygaeus and focused on the mute, nude Theoria.58 In this scene from Peace, we thus have an extended example of what was observed earlier: sexual language and obscenity being sustained once an initial primary obscenity has been carefully introduced. The pattern comprises build-up, climax and continuation. In these lengthy build-up sequences, it is as if the right to use obscene language must be carefully fought for, but once the battle is won, the victory is fully exploited.
Further Reflections on the “Build-up” Technique The advantages to Aristophanes of this “build-up” technique are numerous. With it, he is able to tantalize his audience, indulge in extended word-play, create expectation and then achieve a verbal climax which he can go on to extend and exploit. Why the poet uses this technique on some occasions and not on others is less clear, and it may be most useful to speak in terms of tendencies, which link some but not all the passages concerned. First, the “build-up” technique tends to be used when sexualized —often mute and nude—female characters are onstage. The Peace passage fits this model, as does the scene from the end of Acharnians in which Dicaeopolis and his
54 On the (restrained) tone of ξυνών and τιτθίων, see Robson, Humour, Obscenity and Aristophanes (above, n. 5), pp. 168–9. Olson, Peace (above, n. 31), on 863, comments that this diminutive of τιτθός “often has erotic connotations.” 55 It is often the case that manuscripts offer variant readings when it comes to βινεῖν/κινεῖν, but as Bain, “Six Verbs” (above, n. 6), p. 64, points out, no manuscript offers βινεῖν in this instance. 56 See above on the cognate κινεῖν and nn. 16 and 17. προσκινεῖν is also used in a sexual sense at Lys. 227, Pherecr. fr. 138.3 and Xenarch. fr. 4.24: see Bain, “Six Verbs” (above, n. 6), p. 66–7. 57 Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 1), p. 110, comments that ἀποψωλεῖν “appears in uniformly coarse contexts:” cf. Ach. 161, 592; Lys. 1136; Pl. 295. 58 On which, see J.E. Robson, “Fantastic Sex: Fantasies of Sexual Assault in Aristophanes,” in: M. Masterson, N.S. Rabinowitz and J.E. Robson (eds.), Sex in Antiquity: New Essays on Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World (London and New York: Routledge, forthcoming).
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49
naked prostitutes share the stage with the wounded Lamachus (Ach. 1190–1226; cf. e.g. V. 1326–85); the Lysistrata passage too features women, albeit fully clothed, and sexualized girls also feature in the choiros-scene from Acharnians in the form of the Megarian’s dressed-up daughters. Second, the technique tends to be used when sexuality is simply part of the plot, most notably in Lysistrata, where obscenity accompanies the proposal for the sex strike and Cinesias’ sexual frustration as he is teased by his wife (870–928). But while the “build-up” technique is characteristically employed in such circumstances, obscenity is not always built up to in this way.59 Aristophanes’ literary techniques are rarely predictable or uniform throughout the plays, and both the “obscenity out of nowhere” and the “build-up” technique are arguably best viewed as resources on which he is wont to draw but by which his dramatic vision is neither restricted nor compromised. The length and intricacy of the build-up sequences also vary greatly, but this is perhaps only what we should expect from a poet who is not only responsive to dramatic context (as most playwrights surely are) but for whose art diversity and unpredictability are central features.
Conclusion To conclude, I hope to have made some headway in mapping how Aristophanes “slips in” obscene words into his plays and to have identified two significant patterns: the “obscenity out of nowhere” (both “abrupt” and “softened”) and the “build-up” technique. As well as being revealing of Aristophanes’ dramatic and artistic practices, this analysis puts center stage the issues raised at the beginning of the chapter regarding how the audience is invited to engage with drama in performance. One key point is just how conscious Aristophanes is at times to manipulate spectator response, either warming the audience up and tantalizing them as he builds up to a climactic obscenity, or shocking them to signal abuse, attack, crudeness, freedom from inhibition, buffoonery or the like. A second is the challenge of assessing the relative taboo connected to different “obscene” lexical items. While Adams is no doubt right that “[i]n a dead language it is not possible to classify the degrees of offensiveness with any precision,”60 there is nevertheless scope for further research here, our main methods of assessing the resonance of lexical items being data on their distribution in extant literary texts (such as Bain compiles in “Six Verbs of Sexual Congress”) and careful observation of the context in which obscenities find use.61 I hope to have made a preliminary contribution to such discussions by suggesting one lens through which 59 See Lys. 1115-88, for example, where Diallage’s presence elicits obscenities at 1136 (ἀπεψωλημένος) and 1148 (πρωκτός) that contrast starkly with Lysistrata’s sombre speech. 60 Adams, Latin Sexual Vocabulary (above, n. 5), p. 2. 61 Bain, “Six Verbs” (above, n. 6).
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to view the use of obscenities in Aristophanes.62 What the preceding discussion most effectively underlines, however, is the extent to which Jeffrey Henderson’s work still inspires and underpins scholarship on Old Comic obscenity. 40 years after its publication, The Maculate Muse not only remains a vital point of reference, but continues to stimulate new research and generate fresh perspectives on Aristophanes and his dirty words.
62 The fact that Aristophanes considers items such as πέος and suitable candidates to feature as the climax of the build-up technique plausibly suggests that they should be placed toward the more obscene end of the spectrum, for example (i.e. worth building up to)—notwithstanding the fact that both items are elsewhere used more casually, too, as “obscenities out of nowhere,” e.g. πέος at Nu. 734 (discussed above) and the Chorus’ κύσθος at Ra. 430.
Heinz-Günther Nesselrath
Ancient Comedy and Historiography: Aristophanes Meets Herodotus Abstract: This paper is mainly concerned with two passages in Aristophanes (Ach. 524– 9 and Av. 1124–62) in which the comic poet is often presumed to have alluded to or even parodied Herodotus. While in the case of the Acharnians passage this has been much contested, there is almost no contestation in the case of Birds. I try to show that in Acharnians Aristophanes relied on the knowledge of a lecture—or lectures—by Herodotus, while for Birds he used a written text of Herodotus’ work. I then evaluate what this might mean for Herodotus’ publication date and his general standing in late 5th-century Athens.
1. Herodotus’ impact on contemporary Athenian culture Few things can be considered reasonably certain regarding the place and time in which Herodotus is supposed to have written his Histories, the first fully preserved Greek prose work of truly impressive size. A majority of scholars nowadays seems to agree that Herodotus gave the work its final shape during the final years of his life,1 but there is no agreement as to when these final years should be dated: in the first years of the Archidamian War, in its final years, or even after its end?2 Nor is the place
1 See e.g. Wolfgang Rösler, “The Histories and writing,” in: Egbert J. Bakker / Irene J. F. de Jong / Hans van Wees (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Herodotus (Leiden: Brill, 2002), p. 81. 2 In recent decades the most vocal proponent for a late publication date of the Histories (after 421 BCE) has been Charles Fornara, “Evidence for the date of Herodotus’ publication,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 91 (1971), pp. 32–4, basing his argument on (a) three Herodotean passages that in his opinion could not have been written before 424 or 421 BCE, respectively (in 6.98.2, Herodotus presents a comprehensive view of the reigns of three Persian kings, Darius, Xerxes and Artaxerxes, the last of whom died in 424 BCE; in 7.235.2, the consideration of an anti-Spartan epiteichismos of the island of Cythera is presumably connected with Nicias’ occupation of Cythera in 424 BCE; 9.73.3 evokes the fact that the Attic deme Deceleia was spared from Spartan destructions during the Archidamian War, a statement that could only have been made after the peace of 421 BCE had been concluded); (b) denying any Herodotus parody in Acharnians (Fornara, “Evidence,” pp. 24–8; see also Charles Fornara, “Herodotus’ knowledge of the Archidamian War,” Hermes 109 (1981), pp. 153–5), while affirming extensive parody of Herodotus in Birds (Fornara, “Evidence,” p. 29), and concluding from this that Herodotus’ works became known only shortly before the staging of the latter; (c) trying to show that Euripides too shows a knowledge of Herodotus in plays written and staged in the years 414–412 BCE (Electra, Iphigenia in Tauris and Helen; Fornara, “Evidence,” pp. 30–1). Against Fornara, Justus Cobet, “Wann wurde Herodots Darstellung der Perserkriege publiziert?,” Hermes 105 (1977), pp. 2–27 (see also by the same
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of Herodotus’ final literary activities clear: Did he, as ancient biographical tradition tells us, leave Mainland Greece for good in 444/3 BCE and settle down in Thurii for the rest of his life?3 Or did he come back to Athens (or other places on the mainland) for shorter or even longer periods? Certainly, as Robert Fowler has pointed out,4 “nothing precludes return visits to Athens.” There is also more or less general agreement that Herodotus’ visit to Periclean Athens—i.e. at a time when the city was at the height of its political power and cultural influence in the Pentecontaetia—had a decisive impact on his outlook and work.5 The reverse, however, seems to be true as well: Herodotus—and what he had to say about the history (and geography and customs) of both Greeks and non-Greeks—had an impact on Athenian intellectuals. Herodotean influence on Attic Tragedy is widely acknowledged:6 there is the famous case of Sophocles’ Antigone privileging even her
author “Philologische Stringenz und die Evidenz für Herodots Publikationsdatum,” Athenaeum 65 [1987, pp. 508–11) and James Allan Stewart Evans, “Herodotus’ publication date,” Athenaeum 57 (1979), pp. 145–6 (= James Allan Evans, The Beginnings of History. Herodotus and the Persian Wars [Campbellville: Kent, 2006], pp. 89–90) have reaffirmed the classic case made by Felix Jacoby, “Herodotos,” RE Suppl. 2 (1913), pp. 231–2, that Herodotus ended his work on the Histories before (or in any case not later than) 424 BCE, as otherwise he would have mentioned the killing of Aeginetan oligarchs in that year (see Thuc. 4.57), which he does not. Evans, “Publication date,” pp. 149–51 (= Evans, Beginnings, pp. 90–2; see also James Allan Stewart Evans, “Herodotus 9.73.3 and the publication date of the Histories,” Classical Philology 82 (1987), pp. 226–8 = Evans, Beginnings, pp. 99–100) has also argued that the three Herodotean passages on which Fornara builds his case do not necessitate a dating after 424 or 421 BCE, and I tend to agree. Still, scholars like John Moles, “Herodotus and Athens,” in: Bakker et al., Companion, (above, n. 1) p. 34 n. 13 (“both c. 426 and c. 415 have arguments”) and Christopher Pelling, Literary texts and the Greek historian (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 154 (“the text of Herodotus’ Histories suggests knowledge of events later than 425”) either cautiously avoid taking sides or even seemingly favor Fornara’s position. 3 The inhabitants of Thurii in any case used to show Herodotus’ grave to foreigners (see Jacoby, “Herodotos” [above, n. 2], p. 214). 4 Robert Fowler, “Herodotus and Athens,” in: Peter Derow, Robert Parker (eds.), Herodotus and his world: essays from a conference in memory of George Forrest (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 305. 5 Moles, “Herodotus” (above, n. 2), p. 33 n. 3, has judged “untenable” the extreme assumption by A.J. Podlecki (“Herodotus in Athens?,” in: Konrad H. Kinzl (ed.), Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean in Ancient History and Prehistory. Studies presented to Fritz Schachermeyr (Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 1977), pp. 246–65) that Herodotus might never have visited Athens. 6 See most recently Simon Hornblower, “Herodotus’ influence in antiquity,” in: Carolyn Dewald, John Marincola (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, reprinted with corrections 2008), pp. 306–7. The efforts of Fornara, “Evidence” (above, n. 2), pp. 30–1, to show that several plays of Euripides exhibit knowledge of Herodotus have already been mentioned (above, n. 2), although his attempt to use this as an argument for a late publication date has rightly been greeted with scepticism (see Hornblower, “Herodotus’ influence,” p. 307: “Talk of Euripides’ ‘sudden awareness of Herodotus’ is much too strong”). An unknown tragic poet made a play out of Herodotus’ tale about Candaules and Gyges (Hdt. 1.7.1–13.2; TrGF adesp. 664). There has been much controversy in the past as to whether this tragedy might even have pre-dated Herodotus (see Asheri in:
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dead brother over other relatives along the lines of argument by which the wife of the Persian noble Intaphrenes chooses not to save her husband but her brother.7
2. Herodotus and Aristophanic Comedy I: Acharnians Can we find similar traces in Attic Comedy? There are in fact two plays by Aristophanes in which scholars believe they have found evidence for the use of Herodotus by the comic playwright: Acharnians of 425 BCE and Birds of 414 BCE. The following pages take a closer look at these cases. Acharnians is a controversial case. Older commentators believed that a considerable number of passages in the play pointed toward Herodotus, starting with verses 85–7 and 91–2,8 both from the report of the Athenian ambassadors returning from
David Asheri, Virginio Antelami, Erodoto, Le storie, vol. I: Libro I (Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1988), p. 269 [= David Asheri, Alan B. Lloyd, Aldo Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus I–IV. Edited by Oswyn Murray and Alfonso Moreno (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 81] who does not take sides). But there are compelling arguments that this poet belonged to Hellenistic times (see Albin Lesky, “Das hellenistische Gyges-Drama,” Hermes 81 (1953), pp. 1–10; Rudolf Kassel, “Herodot und Gygesdrama,” in: Kleine Schriften (Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 1991), p. 319 [originally Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 14 (1974), p. 226]). 7 See David Asheri, Silvio M. Medaglia, Augusto Fraschetti, Erodoto, Le storie, vol. III: Libro III: la Persia (Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1990, p. 336 (= Asheri et al., Commentary [above, n. 6], p. 506); Stephanie R. West, “Sophocles’ Antigone and Herodotus Book Three,” in: Jasper Griffin (ed.), Sophocles Revisited. Essays presented to Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 109–10, 129–31; and most recently Hornblower, “Herodotus’ influence” (above, n. 6), pp. 306–7. Several scholars (most recently Peter Riemer, Sophokles, Antigone—Götterwille und menschliche Freiheit, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz, Abhandlungen der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse 1991 no. 12, p. 45 n. 85) have drawn attention to the fact that the reasoning of Intaphrenes’ wife in Hdt. 3.119.6 is also found in Eur. Alc. 293–4 (Gustav Adolf Seeck, Euripides, Alkestis, Hrsg., übers. und kommentiert [Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 2008], p. 99, notes the similarity of these verses to Soph. Ant. 905–12). Alcestis was staged in 438 BCE, and for Sophocles’ Antigone a date in the late 440s BCE is usually assumed (based on Soph. test. 25 Radt = Argum. I Soph. Ant.), although also contested (see e.g. Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Sophocles, Ajax /Electra /Oedipus Tyrannus [Cambridge Mass., London: Harvard University Press, 1994], p. 8). Taken together, however, these curious traces of an argument from Hdt. 3.119.6 surfacing in both Antigone and Alcestis might point to the fact that the Intaphrenes story became known around these years in Athens via Herodotus. See also Carolyn Dewald, Rachel Kitzinger, “Herodotus, Sophocles and the woman who wanted her brother saved,” in: Dewald et al., Cambridge Companion (above, n. 6), pp. 122–9. 8 See e.g. Jan van Leeuwen (ed.), Aristophanis Acharnenses cum prolegomenis et commentariis (Leiden: Sijthoff, 1901), p. 23. William J.M. Starkie (ed.), The Acharnians of Aristophanes (London: Macmillan, 1909), p. 30, regarded Aristophanes as a “student of the history of Herodotus (cf. 70, 74, 86nn.).” Joseph Wells, Studies in Herodotus (Oxford: Blackwell, 1923), pp. 172–7, also detected echos of Herodotus in Ach. 86–7, 91–2. Gennaro Perrotta, “Erodoto parodiato da Aristofane,” Rendiconti dell’ Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere 59 (1926), pp. 111–12, tried to detect a whole series of parodic allusions to Herodotus in Ach. 80–6: The Athenian ambassadors’ report that it took them three years to reach the
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their mission to Persia: in 85–7 they mention as a colorful detail that they were served “oxen baked whole in the oven” (trans. Sommerstein), to which one can compare Hdt. 1.133.1 (where wealthy Persians are said to entertain guests on their birthdays with “ox, horse, camel and ass,” ὅλους ὀπτοὺς ἐν καμίνοισι), while in 92 they introduce a Persian ambassador as “the Eye of the King,” which can be connected with Hdt. 1.114.2 (where young Cyrus plays at being king, designating one of his companions ὀφθαλμὸν βασιλέος εἶναι). More recent scholarship has rightly been suspicious of making too much of these connections;9 surely Athenians of Aristophanes’ time did not need Herodotus to tell them that certain high functionaries of the Persian imperial administration were called “eyes of the king” and that well-to-do Persians baked whole animals in their ovens.10 The case is different with Ach. 524–9, which are part of Dicaeopolis’ great speech in which he defends his decision to seek an individual peace with the Spartans, while all of Athens is (and continues to be) at war with them. After assuring his audience— both the hostile Acharnian charcoal-burners and the Athenians in the Theater—that there is no love lost between himself and the Spartans (509–12), Dicaeopolis points out that certain Athenian “bent, ill-struck pieces of humanity” (517; trans. Sommerstein) took the first step toward the outbreak of the current war by making imports
Great King’s palace (ἔτει τετάρτῳ δ᾿ εἰς τὰ βασίλει᾿ ἤλθομεν) in Ach. 80 is compared by him to Herodotus’ statement in 5.53 that it takes three months (“ninety days”) to travel from Sardis to the King’s palace at Susa. The ambassadors’ follow-up detail—that on their arrival the king was absent because he had retreated to the privy for eight months (Ach. 81–2 ἀλλ᾿ εἰς ἀπόπατον ᾤχετο στρατιὰν λαβών, / κἄχεζεν ὀκτὼ μῆνας ἐπὶ χρυσῶν ὀρῶν)—is connected by Perrotta with Herodotus’ observation in 1.192 that the whole of Asia provides nourishment to the King for eight months of the year. Then follows the detail of “oxen baked whole in the oven” (see above) in Ach. 86, while in the big bird called phenax in Ach. 88–9 (καὶ ναὶ μὰ Δί᾿ ὄρνιν τριπλάσιον Κλεωνύμου / παρέθηκεν ἡμῖν· ὄνομα δ᾿ ἦν αὐτῷ φέναξ) Perrotta detects a cunning allusion to the description of the phoinix in Herodotus’ Egyptian Logos (2.73). All this leads Perrotta to conclude: “tutta la scena dell’ ambasciatore è fatta a spese di Erodoto” (112). In several cases, however, these allusions are far from obvious, and we might well ask how long it has taken Perrotta himself to find them out—surely much longer than an Athenian in the Theatre had to hit upon them while the play was swiftly moving on. 9 Alan H. Sommerstein (ed.), Aristophanes, Acharnians (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1980), pp. 161, 162 only mentions the Herodotean parallels without drawing conclusions; Asheri, Erodoto I (above, n. 6), p. 337 (= Asheri et al., Commentary [above, n. 6], p. 160) on Hdt. 1.114.2, does not even mention the Herodotean parallel (and points out that the title “Eye of the King” was known to the Greeks at least since the time of Aeschylus), while Asheri, Erodoto I, p. 344 (= Asheri et al., Commentary, p. 168) on Hdt. 1.133.1, judges the hypothesis of an Aristophanic parody of this passage to have little weight. S. Douglas Olson (ed.), Aristophanes, Acharnians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. liii–iv, also sees little significance in these coincidences. A lone dissenter is Evans, “Publication date” (above, n. 2), p. 146 (= Evans, Beginnings [above, n. 2], 90), who regards Ach. 85–7 and 92 as “admitted parodies”. 10 See also Hornblower, “Herodotus’ influence” (above, n. 6), p. 307 (“More controversial are the supposedly Herodotean passages near the beginning of Acharnians of 425. Little weight can be put on these …”).
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from Megara illegal (515–22), and that the next phase of escalation was started by some drunk young Athenians who went to Megara and “stole” the prostitute Simaetha from there (524–5). After that, the Megarians retaliated by abducting two hookers from the household of Aspasia, the consort of the Athenian political leader Pericles (526–7), and this led to the start of the war (528–9), because Pericles enacted sweeping legislation against Megara, and the hard-pressed Megarians turned to the Spartans for help. This sketch of reciprocal abductions of females leading into a major military confrontation has reminded many scholars of the famous opening chapters of Herodotus’ Histories (1.1–5), in which one abduction of a Greek princess (Io) by Phoenicians (1.1.1–4) is countered by two abductions of a Phoenician princess (Europa) and a Colchian one (Medea) by Greeks (1.2.1–3). This in turn prompts a non-Greek abduction (by the Trojan prince Paris) of a Greek queen (Helen; 1.3.1–2), to which the Greeks respond with all-out war against Troy (1.4.1–3). Commentators on both Aristophanes11 and Herodotus12 have assumed that Ach. 524–9 parodies Hdt. 1.1–5, but in recent times several interpreters have voiced objections. Fornara denied that Aristophanes intended parody of Herodotus in Ach. 524–9 (not least because this would undercut his attempt to date the publication of Herodotus’ work only shortly before Birds in 414 BCE).13 MacDowell believes that “it is most unlikely that many Athenians were familiar enough with it [i.e. Herodotus’ book] to be able to recognize a parody of one particular part of it unless Aristophanes had given very obvious signals indeed to warn them that a parody of Herodotos was coming. But in fact there are no such signals … Dikaiopolis does not use any Herodotean vocabulary or turns of phrase … There is really nothing in the speech which bears any resemblance to Herodotos at all.”14 Johnson points out that Dicaeopolis’ story about tit-for-tat abductions leading
11 Van Leeuwen, Acharnenses (above, n. 8), p. 91 ad Ach. 524; Olson, Acharnians (above, n. 9), pp. liii (“almost certainly a parody of Hdt. i.1–5.2”), 209 (“seemingly … a parody of Hdt. i.1–5.2”). Starkie, Acharnians (above, n. 8), p. 109, however, was “not convinced that it [i.e. the allusion to Herodotus in Ach. 524–9] is intentional.” Interestingly, Sommerstein, Acharnians (above, n. 8) does not mention Herodotus when commenting on this passage. 12 Heinrich Stein (ed.), Herodotos6, vol. 1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1901), p. 7; Walter Wybergh How / Joseph Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus2, vol. I (Oxford: Clarendon, 1928), p. 55. Asheri, Erodoto I (above, n. 6), p. 263 (= Asheri et al., Commentary [above, n. 6], p. 74), however, strongly denies that the Aristophanes passage parodies Herodotus (see also Asheri, Erodoto I, p. LXIII = Asheri et al., Commentary, p. 51). 13 Fornara, “Evidence” (above, n. 2), p. 28, and “Herodotus’ knowledge” (above, n. 2), pp. 153–5. In the latter paper, Fornara even considers the possibility that Herodotus might have taken his string of reciprocal abductions of women from Acharnians—a clear case of special pleading for transparent reasons. 14 Douglas MacDowell, “The nature of Aristophanes’ Akharnians,” Greece & Rome 30 (1983), p. 151. David Sansone, “The date of Herodotus’ publication,” Illinois Classical Studies 10 (1985), pp. 6–7, has tried to counter MacDowell’s argument by finding elements of style in the Aristophanes passage which might point to Herodotus after all. The only such element, however, he comes up with is the particle
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to war “makes sense and is humorous without any knowledge of Herodotus.”15 Most recently, Pelling has underlined (like McDowell) “the difficulty of thinking that Aristophanes could have expected his audience … to catch the parody;”16 he accordingly argues that “we should see not so much Aristophanes parodying Herodotus, but rather Herodotus and Aristophanes doing the same thing here. Both are ‘parodying’ popular mentality … That pattern of popular historical explanation is what matters here.”17 The critics just quoted rightly stress that there are no unequivocal signs18 in the wording of the Acharnians passage that would make a parody of Herodotus in this passage a water-tight certainty. On the other hand, it remains tempting to see here a clever reworking of the Herodotean sequence by Aristophanes. Not only is the framing of the respective passages similar—both are set within a discussion about who is the guilty party in the development of a major war—but the core of the narrative sequence (abduction followed by abduction, finally followed by war19) shows remarkable parallels, possibly too remarkable to be coincidence. Moreover, both authors apply a similar “procedure of debasement” to their material. Herodotus strips his heroines of their mythical aura and debases them into more or less passive objects of their male abductors: Aristophanes tops this by replacing the princesses with prostitutes.20 As long as we can point to no other stories of similar content (and no such story seems to have been pointed out so far), it remains plausible that Aristophanes did not develop his abduction sequence by himself but took inspiration from Herodotus. The argument put forward by McDowell and Pelling, that many (or even all) Athenians would
combination μὲν δή in Ach. 523, which is found only four times (not five, as Sansone states) in all of Aristophanes while being ubiquitous in Herodotus. But is this enough to state that Aristophanes “is using a characteristically and recognizably Herodotean idiom” in these lines? The combination is in fact far from uniquely Herodotean: it is already found (and quite often in the better preserved authors) in Homer, Mimnermus, Semonides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Cratinus and Eupolis. There is thus no real “Herodotean idiom” in Ach. 523–9. 15 William A. Johnson, “Oral performance and the composition of Herodotus’ Histories,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 35 (1994), p. 244, although he hastens to add: “This is not necessarily an argument against the passage as a parody of Herodotus.” 16 Pelling, Literary texts (above, n. 2), p. 154. 17 Pelling, Literary texts (above, n. 2), p. 155. 18 For the unsuccessful attempt of Sansone, “Date,” to detect such signs, see above, n. 14. 19 Surely the Aristophanic sequence (two abductions) is less elaborate than the Herodotean one (four abductions), but this may be accounted for by the fact that Dicaeopolis’ plea in front of the hostile Acharnians had to proceed at a swifter pace than Herodotus’ nicely developed tales. Perrotta, Erodoto parodiato (above, n. 8), p. 108 has pointed out that the fact that in Aristophanes the Megarians abduct two Athenian hookers in retaliation for the Athenians’ abduction of one of theirs may not be fortuitous but consciously reflect that in Herodotus one abduction of a Greek woman (Io) is followed by the abduction of two non-Greek ones (Europa and Medea), before the Asian side retaliates by abducting Helena. 20 This, too, has already been pointed out by Perrotta, “Erodoto parodiato” (above, n. 8), p. 108.
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not have been able to recognize this Herodotean inspiration in Acharnians is in the last resort only the statement of a belief that is difficult to prove. Certainly many Athenians would not have recognized the Herodotus parallel and could still have enjoyed Dicaeopolis’ colourful tale of how abducted women of dubious propriety unleashed the Peloponnesian War. But the same might be claimed for many other Aristophanic parodies, i.e. that even if their sometimes subtle “intertextual” dimension was not discovered, the play could be enjoyed nonetheless. Even today we can grasp the fun in Thesmophoriazusae without having to read exhaustive commentaries on all the Euripides parodies contained in the play. The absence of any verbal echo of Herodotus in the Acharnians passage may nonetheless be significant, namely for the way in which Aristophanes (and other Athenians besides) had got to know Herodotus’ tale about mythical heroines’ abductions leading to war. There are various reports from antiquity to the effect that Herodotus gave lectures about the contents of his work. The reliability of these reports has been called into question, but the fact itself can hardly be doubted, as there are e.g. still indications in the extant Histories that Herodotus inserted comparisons of geographical features in Asia Minor, Attica and Southern Italy to give the audiences he lectured to in Asia, Attica or Southern Italy an understanding of similar features in lands unknown to them.21 There has also been debate about the relationship between these lectures and the extant text of the Histories,22 but there seems to be widespread agreement that Herodotus presented at least part of the material he (later) put together in the Histories in earlier lectures.23 In fact, one might regard the
21 See Jacoby, “Herodotos” (above, n. 2), p. 278. 22 Johnson, “Oral performance” (above, n. 15) has argued forcefully against the idea that Herodotus’ lectures were based more or less on the text of the Histories as we still have them (244: “A public performance by Herodotus based on his Histories simply cannot be demonstrated”). Johnson, however, nowhere considers the possibility that Herodotus may have based his lectures on texts he had written down much earlier, perhaps already in the 440s, and which might have been considerably different in structure and size from the Histories we possess. On this, see the sensible positions of Michael A. Flower, John Marincola (eds.), Herodotus, Histories Book IX (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 3 (“it is … likely that his work became known to the public largely through recitations by the author … much of his work would have been known from oral delivery”) and Angus M. Bowie (ed.), Herodotus, Histories Book VIII (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 30 (“we might guess that like the sophists he made money by peripatetic lecturing … presumably it was then [i.e. “after his departure for Thurii”] that he shaped what had been the material for successful lectures into a continuous narrative”). 23 See Evans, Beginnings (above, n. 2), p. 89: “It is entirely possible that portions of the Histories were in the public domain as early as the 440s B.C. because by then Herodotus had already published them orally;” Simon Hornblower, A commentary on Thucydides II: Books IV–V 24 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 26: “I do believe in the recitation hypothesis,” citing Oswyn Murray, “Herodotus and Oral History,” in: A. Kuhrt, H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg, Achaemenid History II: The Greek sources (Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 1987), pp. 93–115, and James Allan Stewart Evans, Herodotus, explorer of the past: Three essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 90, in
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theme of his opening chapters as well-suited to a public lecture, especially in an environment that may have debated such questions with alacrity and eagerness and that was very much in the habit of looking for mythic-aetiological causes of present conditions. With his clever treatment of the “war guilt”-question, Herodotus might first have pandered to such expectations and then strikingly turned them on their head, first giving his listeners a vivid series of abduction tales (with some titillating details thrown in, like Io’s fear of having become pregnant by the Phoenician ship captain or the Persians’ sneering remark that women would not be abducted if they did not want it), and then telling his excited audience that all these tales are just that, i.e. tales, and that he, Herodotus, will now present the one historical figure who “really” started the wrongdoing against Greeks. Such a lecture might well be remembered for its humorous24 but also provocative content, and might therefore have been regarded by Aristophanes as well as something suitable to be reworked and integrated into a comedy.
3. Herodotus and Aristophanic Comedy II: Birds While the parodic content of Ach. 524–9 has been much contested, there is well-nigh unanimous agreement that a passage in the second half of Birds was meant to parody passages in Herodotus.25 After Peisetaerus has proposed that the united birds build a great wall in the middle of the air, explicitly comparing it to the walls of Babylon (Av. 551–2), the completion of the monumental enterprise is reported in Av. 1124–62. In both passages there are unmistakable signs that not only Herodotus’ description of the building of the walls of Babylon (1.178–9) but other parts of his work as well are targeted. Already in 552 it is said that the birds’ wall is to be built πλίνθοις ὀπταῖς, and kiln-baked bricks figure prominently in Hdt. 1.179.1.26 In the description of the wall building beginning in Av. 1124, Herodotean echos become more numerous, and
support (“both … assume or argue for extensive pre-publication of the Histories”); Olson, Acharnians (above, n. 9), p. liv, also thinks it possible “that Aristophanes may have been acquainted with some portions of Book I, perhaps as a result of recent public readings by Herodotus in Athens.” 24 Although Jacoby, “Herodotos” (above, n. 2), p. 484, would have none of it, humor is certainly an ingredient in Herodotus’ opening chapters; see most recently Carolyn Dewald, “Humour and danger in Herodotus,” in: Dewald et al., Cambridge Companion (above, n. 6), pp. 145–7. 25 A lone dissenter is Asheri, Erodoto I (above, n. 6), p. 370 = Asheri et al., Commentary (above, n. 6), p. 199. 26 It may also be no coincidence that the word πόλισμα in Av. 553, here referring to the result of the proposed construction, is found twice just at the beginning of Herodotus’ Babylon passage (1.178.1, 2), where it is used for Babylon and other Mesopotamian cities. Nan Dunbar (ed.), Aristophanes, Birds (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 377, claims that πόλισμα is “common in trag[edy]”, but in fact the word is just as frequent in Herodotus (six times) as in Sophocles and Euripides combined (if we discount Prometheus Bound, even Aeschylus has only five attestations).
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what is most interesting, they do not come from just one Herodotus passage but several.27 1125: The messenger calls the completed wall a κάλλιστον ἔργον καὶ μεγαλοπρεπέστατον (the sole instance of the latter superlative in Aristophanes): Herodotus uses μεγαλοπρεπέστατος—which in classical times is very rare—in 7.57.1.28 1127: The birds’ wall is so broad that it can accommodate two chariots drawn by horses the size of the Trojan Horse: this is clearly meant to outdo Herodotus’ statement (1.179.3) that the wall of Babylon was so broad that it could accommodate a chariot drawn by four horses.29 1130: The messenger assures Peisetaerus that he himself measured the enormous height of the wall (ἐμέτρησ’ αὔτ’ ἐγώ): Herodotus gives similar assurances in 2.127.1 (ταῦτα … καὶ ἡμεῖς ἐμετρήσαμεν) with regard to the pyramids of Cheops and Chephren.30 1131: The measure given for this height (ἑκατοντορόγυιον) is again meant to outdo Herodotus, as it is twice as high as the ὕψος … διηκοσίων πήχεων given by Hdt. 1.178.3 for the height of the Babylonian wall. 1133–4: The messenger boasts that no Αἰγύπτιος / πλινθοφόρος took part in the building of the birds’ wall; the birds did it all by themselves. The “Egyptian brickcarrier” is singled out because Herodotus’ second book is full of Egyptians building impressive monuments. The majority of these monuments are built in stone, but in 2.136.3 King Anysis aims to outdo his predecessors in pyramid-building by erecting an entire pyramid ἐκ πλίνθων. 1135: The messenger confesses his own astonishment and wonder at the birds building this mighty wall by themselves (ὥστε θαυμάζειν ἐμέ). It is a truism that θαυμάζειν also plays a large part in Herodotus’ work: his very first sentence professes the intention of giving ἔργα μεγάλα τε καὶ θωμαστά their due praise.31 1136–7 (τρισμύριαι / γέρανοι) and 1139 (πελαργοὶ μύριοι): The large numbers of cranes and storks participating in the building are surely to be extended to the other species of birds that take part as well. These numbers again recall the multitude of
27 The following paragraphs are much indebted to Dunbar, Birds (above, n. 26), pp. 595–600. 28 And possibly a second time, if 6.122.2 is genuine. For the combination of κάλλιστος with another superlative, see Hdt. 1.37.2; 2.136.1, 160.1; 3.20.1, 114, 116.3; 4.53.2, 91.2 (twice); 5.92.ζ.2; 7.9.β.1. 29 Giuseppe Mastromarco, “Le mura di Temistocle e le mura di Nubicuculia,” Quaderni di Storia 3.6 (1977), pp. 41–50, thinks that the detail of the two chariots points instead to Thucydides 1.93.5 (description of how the Piraeus wall was built by the Athenians at the instigation of Themistocles), but the wording there does not say that two chariots or wagons actually passed beside each other on the top of the wall; see the sceptical commentary of Antonio Maddalena (ed.), Thucydidis Historiarum Liber Primus, Vol. 2 (Florence: La nuova Italia, 1952), p. 208. It is also questionable whether Thucydides’ History (or this part of it) was already published in 414 BCE (when Thucydides himself was in exile). 30 Compare also 4.86.4: Herodotus gives his measurements of the Black Sea, Bosporus and Hellespont (οὕτω … μοι μεμετρέαται). 31 Herodotus speaks of his own θωμάζειν with regard to Egyptian monuments in 2.148.6, 155.3, 175.3.
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Egyptians involved in the building of the pyramids: in Hdt. 2.124.3, 100,000 men are employed at any one time to build Cheops’ pyramid. 1144: The messenger praises the clever way the birds got clay into basins to make bricks (τοῦτ’ … ἐξηύρητο … σοφώτατα); likewise Herodotus repeatedly stresses a particularly clever way of doing something (e.g. 1.63.2, 125.2; 2.4.2; 4.46.2). 1145: A very special reference is the word ὑποτύπτοντες (‘striking under’) used within the description of how bricks are made; the same word is used in Hdt. 2.136.4 for the same process. The preceding list shows that Herodotean echoes in this Birds passage are surprisingly numerous and, moreover, that they do not take their cue only from one specific passage in the Histories (i.e. the one describing the walls of Babylon) but throw in allusions to Herodotus’ Egyptian logos (especially to where Herodotus refers to Egyptian monuments and their construction) and even contain elements of typically Herodotean writing found in other parts of the Histories as well. These observations make the conclusion that Aristophanes had access to a written edition of Herodotus’ work as a source so that he could put all all these details into the Birds passage all but inevitable.
4. The consequences for the dating of Herodotus If the lines of the preceding argument—that it is plausible that Aristophanes had in mind a lecture by Herodotus about mythical and “real” origins of the enmity between Persians and Greeks and the war against one other that ensued, when he composed Dicaeopolis’ speech in Acharnians about the “real” origins of the Peloponnesian War in 425 BCE, while 11 years later he made use of a written copy of Herodotus’ Histories when composing the description how birds built the mighty wall in the air in Birds— are correct, what conclusions can be drawn regarding the early “editorial history” of Herodotus’ work? Do these findings tip the balance in favor of Fornara’s position (that the Histories were published only a short time before Birds, so that the play could be the first piece of literature influenced by the “new” written Herodotus) or in favor of the position championed already by Jacoby (that the writing down of the Histories was finished by 424 BCE)? At first sight the argument that Aristophanes in 425 BCE made use only of an orally received Herodotus, while in 414 BCE he used a written one, might seem to favor Fornara. But on second thought, Jacoby’s position remains possible: Acharnians would then have been composed while the “written” Herodotus was still in its finishing stages and not yet available. This would, incidentally, tie in nicely with Evans’ position that “the evidence cited thus far would support a date for publication as late as 424 B.C., but not much later.”32
32 Evans, “Publication date” (above, n. 2), p. 149 = Evans, Beginnings (above, n. 6), p. 93.
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If Evans’ dating is right, we need not be much concerned about the fact that Aristophanes would in this case have waited nine or ten years before making use of the written Herodotus—why should a poet have to use a new work immediately after its publication and not when it suits him? There is, in fact, some evidence that Aristophanes “remembered” Herodotus also in plays after Birds. In verse 675 of Lysistrata (staged in 411 BCE) there is a reference to the Carian queen Artemisia,33 who had a prominent position in Xerxes’ invasion fleet in 480 BCE, and Herodotus gives her considerable room in his later books;34 so Aristophanes may once again got his clue from Herodotus’ narrative. All in all, Herodotus seems to have left his imprint on at least three comedies by Aristophanes in the years 425–411 BCE.35 That is not a bad yield, considering that for the poets of Old Comedy, whose overriding subject-matter was the historical present, a historian whose theme is a time that ended about 50 years earlier is not an obvious choice. It is surely to Herodotus’ credit that his work in itself was interesting enough that Aristophanes felt repeatedly compelled to draw inspiration from him.
33 For this reference, see Hornblower, “Herodotus’ influence” (above, n. 6), p. 307. His suggestion that the enticing young prostitute Artemisia, whom Euripides uses in Thesmophoriazusae to lure the Scythian archer away from his kinsman (Th. 1172–1202; the name “Artemisia” is introduced only in 1200) is also named after Herodotus’ Carian warrior-queen is less convincing; see, however, Jan van Leeuwen, Aristophanis Thesmophoriazusae cum prolegomenis et commentariis (Leiden: Sijthoff, 1904), p. 150; Alan H. Sommerstein (ed.), Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1994), p. 235; Colin Austin, S. Douglas Olson (eds.), Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 345–6. 34 See 7.99; 8.68–9, 87–8, 93, 101–3. 35 The yield might be higher if more plays of Aristophanes were extant.
Oliver Taplin
Epiphany of a Serious Dionysus in a Comedy?
1
Abstract: The painting on Cleveland 1989.73, which shows a beautiful monumental head of Dionysus framed by two comic actors, has generally been interpreted as having purely religious significance, with no direct relation to the actual theater. I argue that the epiphany of the goddess Eirene in Aristophanes’ Peace may have been presented in a similar way, and that we probably have here the evocation of a specific scene from an otherwise unknown comedy.
Toward the end of his long life, A.D. Trendall, the great expert on pottery from the Greek West, identified a new artist: the Choregos Painter, as he dubbed him, deserves to be recognised as one of the most talented craftsmen to decorate earlier Apulian redfigured vases.2 Quite apart from the minutiae of technique on which such attributions are based, this painter shows a fine confidence in draftsmanship and in well-laid-out composition, and a nice yet uncluttered sense of detail. Regrettably, Trendall could firmly identify only three pieces by his superior hand. He included them in the first, chronologically earliest chapter of RVAp, Supp 2, but dated them to probably nearer 380 than 400 BCE.3 Two of these three bell-kraters are explicit scenes of comic theater (or “phlyax vases,” as they used to be known). One was excavated at Ruvo di Puglia in 18834 and is now in the Museo Civico Archeologico in Milan: the well-known “Milan Cake-eaters,”5
1 An earlier version of this piece was published in Dioniso, Nuova Serie 1 (2011) 120–30. I am most grateful to Dick Green, Martin Revermann and Alan Sommerstein, and especially Douglas Olson, for their improving comments on that first shot (which was originally written for this Jeff Henderson offering). 2 See A.D. Trendall and A. Cambitoglou, Second Supplement to The Red-Figured Vases of Apulia (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1991–2) (hereafter RVAp, Supp 2), pp. 7–8, 495. (I might add that it is not clear, in my amateur opinion, that a firm distinction can be made between early Apulian and Lucanian vase-painting; both labels are anachronistic.) 3 He thought (p. 8) that a bell-crater with a domestic scene in the Laing Museum, Newcastle might be by the same painter, see A.D. Trendall and A. Cambitoglou, The Red-Figured Vases of Apulia vol. 1: Early and Middle Apulian/vol. 2: Late Apulian, Oxford Monographs on Classical Archaeology (Oxford: Clarendon; New York: Oxford University Press, 1978–1982), vol. 1, p. 121 (hereafter RVAp). There is also another comic vase that might possibly, it seems to me, be his work: British Museum F 151, “Cheiron on the steps” (RVAp 4/252, where it is attributed to the McDaniel Painter). 4 See A.C. Montanaro, Ruvo di Puglia e il suo territorio: Le necropoli. I corredi funerari tra la documentazione del XIX secolo e gli scavi moderni, Studia archaeologica 160 (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2007), no. 321.1, pp. 928–9. 5 This is what I called it in O. Taplin, Comic Angels and Other Approaches to Greek Drama through Vase Paintings (Oxford: Clarendon; New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 56 (plate 12.5). A.D. Tren-
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a delightful domestic scene with a couple (Philotimides and Charis), probably husband and wife, enjoying a tray of patisserie, while a slave (Xanthias) is purloining one of the cakes. They are on a stage supported on three columns, with a door to the left. All three have their names incised in a clear, confident hand.6 The second, which led to the “Choregos” soubriquet, was first published in RVAp, Supp 2 in 1991.7 Here four figures, all clearly labeled, stand on a skillfully painted wooden stage with steps at the front and a door to the left side. Whatever is going on, I would insist that the presence of “Aigisthos” is in no way incidental or marginal; his feet are firmly on the stage, so this “tragic” figure is somehow integral to the comedy. The subject of this chapter is the third vase firmly attributed to the Choregos Painter (fig. 1). It scraped into RVAp, Supp 2 as an addition on p. 495 in volume 3 (1992); in the same year, Trendall published it in The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, with color pictures on the front and back covers.8 A good picture and description were published more recently in the book that accompanied the exhibit of theater-related art at the Getty Museum in 2010.9 The reverse shows a procession of Dionysus with thyrsus preceded by a maenad with a tympanon and a satyr playing the aulos, a not uncommon kind of iconography with no evident theatrical association. The main side (the obverse) is more unusual—in fact unique. The scene is dominated by a monumental head-and-shoulders portrayal of Dionysus, which has an almost eerie beauty about it. It is perhaps especially the eyes, painted with dilute brown irises and large black pupils, that give this youthful three-quarters bust its sense of superhuman calm and inscrutability. Around the thyrsus sloping over Dionysus’ shoulder twines a stem, which branches across the top of the composition into two spreading vines heavy with grape bunches.
dall, Phlyax Vases, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement 19 (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1959), no. 45, p. 38, called it “the eaters of dainties.” 6 An unusual feature of this vase is that the other side also has a specific scene, and one that might well be related to a satyr play: satyrs steal Heracles’ weapons while he holds up the globe for Atlas. 7 See Taplin, Comic Angels (above, n. 5), pp. 55–63 (plate 9.1). Among later discussions I would single out M. Schmidt, “Komische Teufel und andere Gesellen auf der griechischen Komödienbühne,” Antike Kunst 41 (1998), pp. 17 ff. This is one of the vases returned to Italy by the Getty Museum (where it was 96.AE.29), so it lacks a firm location label at present. (It was included in the exhibition called NOSTOI mounted in Rome and in Athens in 2008.) 8 The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art (January 1992), pp. 1–15. The accession number is Cleveland 1989.73. It is also documented in J. Neils and G. Walberg (eds.), Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, USA, fasc. 35 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 50 with plates 92–3. 9 M.L. Hart (ed.), The Art of Ancient Greek Theater (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010), no. 3 on pp. 16–17.
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Fig. 1: Early-fourth century crater with bust of Dionysus and comic actors.
While there are no explicit stage-set features, the figures on either side of the god are unmistakably theatrical. To the left, beside a lighted thymaterion suggestive of a sacred setting, stands a typical comic actor in full outfit. He wears a wreath and is standing on tip-toe, looking up, not toward the god but to a bunch of grapes, which he is admiring and probably about to pick. On the other side of Dionysus, a bent figure stands on a block to gain some height and holds out a large skyphos decorated with “stick figures” such as are usual on “vases-on-vases.” It is unclear whether he is offering the vessel to the god or holding it under the particularly large bunch of grapes above. At first sight, one might describe this figure as Silenus or Papposilenus, the father of the satyrs, the standard character in satyr-plays. This portrayal clearly indicates, however, that this is not Silenus himself but a comic actor dressed up as
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him. The decisive signals are his mask and the phallus that dangles between his legs; his rather battered tragic-style boots may also be a feature of his comic costume. Generic interplay between comedy and satyr-play is a documentable phenomenon, as has been well shown recently by Revermann and Bakola, both of whom bring this vase to bear on the topic.10 So how are we to interpret this scene? There has not been much discussion since Trendall’s original publication in 1992, followed up with elaboration by J.R. Green soon after. Both saw it as primarily a scene of religious significance. For Trendall, it conveys with “considerable sensitivity … the three essential elements of the divinity of Dionysos;” by these he meant “god of the mysteries,” “god of wine” and “god of drama.”11 He was quite clear that we do not have a theatrical scene here: “it is also the earliest example of a phlyax vase which has no direct connection with the stage.”12 Green put this in a larger context, expressing no doubt that here, “we have actors outside performance” in a pioneering example of how “actors become intermediaries between the world of the ordinary mortal and the more fortunate world of Dionysos … the companions of the god in the same manner as satyrs.”13 Since then, there has been general acquiescence in this “sacred companion” interpretation. The unrivaled expertise of Trendall and Green may in this case, I suggest, have led them to a misplaced interpretation. Because they are so familiar with the common later iconography, particularly from Paestum, which shows comic actors as part of Dionysus’ retinue, they have classified this as a forerunner of this pattern, indeed as “the earliest example” of such a scene. But this association has led them to neglect two substantial differences between this and the later groups. The less pressing is that, generally speaking, later Dionysiac actors are (as Green emphasizes) companions: they are not doing anything distinctly independent, such as reaching to grapes or holding out vessels. Much more important, the god himself in the standard iconography is of human size and usually walking in the company of his companions —as he is indeed on the reverse of this vase. What we have on the Cleveland vase is quite different, namely a gigantic, static bust.
10 M. Revermann, Comic Business: Theatricality, Dramatic Technique, and Performance Contexts of Aristophanic Comedy (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 153–4, and passages indexed under “satyr-play, appropriated by comedy;” A. Bakola, Cratinus and the Art of Comedy (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 81–117, esp. 102–12. 11 RVAp, Supp 2 (above, n. 2), with quotes from pp. 13 and 3. 12 RVAp, Supp 2 (above, n. 2), p. 495. 13 The first quote is from J.R. Green, “Theatrical Motifs in Non-theatrical Contexts On Vases of the Later Fifth and Fourth Centuries,” in: A. Griffiths (ed.), Stage Directions: essays in ancient drama in honour of E.W. Handley, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement 66 (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1995), p. 103, cf. 119; the other two are from J.R. Green, “Theatre Production: 1987– 1995,” Lustrum 37 (1995), p. 150; cf. also Theatre in Ancient Greek Society (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 87–8.
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The denial of any direct allusion to any actual play is shared by the rather different, characteristically playful interpretation of François Lissarrague.14 He sums up: “we have here at least three levels of representation: the god, as an epiphanic bust; the theater, through the presence of two different kinds of actors; the painted picture in the picture, on the skyphos. No specific play, or even theatrical performance is referred to here …” My mission now is to question this almost universal acceptance of the “sacred companion” interpretation and its refusal of any specific theatricality.15 The other two vases firmly attributed to the Choregos Painter are, as noted above, both explicit, scene-specific evocations of comic theater. So it must be at least worth exploring the alternative hypothesis that that is what we have here as well. If so, what might be happening in this comedy? The first step toward an answer is to observe that in Greek iconography, when figures are shown as only partly above the lower borderframe of the composition, this often signifies that they are emerging from the earth or have recently done so. There are, for example, several such “anodos”-scenes involving satyrs with hammers, who are astonished to see a female figure emerging from the ground.16 So might this Dionysus be an image of the god that has somehow emerged or protruded from the ground? Might it be a huge statue? Once that question has been put, a scene from the surviving comedies of Aristophanes comes importunately to mind. In Aristophanes’ Peace, the hero Trygaeus coordinates the chorus of men, especially farmers, drawn from all over Greece, to pull the goddess Eirene from a pit or cavern in which she has been buried with rocks piled on top (223–6). After clearing the stones, they all pull together on ropes (458–519). The task is spoken of as “moving” (490 κινοῦμεν, 509–10 χωρεῖ), as “pulling her out” (294, 511 ἐξελκύσαι) and as “pulling up to the light” (307 εἰς τὸ φῶς ἀνελκύσαι). Eventually, at line 520, the goddess emerges. However this was stage-managed, and whatever form she takes, Eirene never moves, unless she somehow literally turns her head away at 682.17 Her two attendants, Opora and Theoria, by contrast, are clearly played by human actors and are involved in quite a bit of physical horseplay, especially at 871–908. They were presumably enacted by men decked out with the usual comic caricature of female
14 Art of Ancient Greek Theater (above, n. 9), p. 55. 15 I note, however, that the two recent discussions already cited keep their options open. Revermann, Comic Business (above, n. 10), p. 153 says, “regardless of whether the iconography is scene-specific or generic;” and Bakola, Cratinus (above, n. 10), p. 112 writes, “Although we cannot be sure whether this painting represents a scene from inside or outside a performance (it could do either).” 16 These have often been associated with Sophocles’ satyr-play Pandora; see e.g. A.D. Trendall and T.B.L. Webster, Illustrations of Greek Drama (London: Phaidon, 1971), vol. II, pp. 7–10. But this is far from secure; see Bakola, Cratinus (above, n. 10), pp. 109–10. 17 S.D. Olson (ed.), Aristophanes: Peace (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. xliv, maintains that this movement was actually staged.
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allure.18 It is generally and plausibly supposed that Eirene, on the other hand, was represented by a statue (or a flat painting of a statue); it may be that she was portrayed as genuinely beautiful, since there would not be the same point in making her comically hyper-eroticized, and there is recurrent emphasis on her beauty and fragrance. An internal indication of the size of this statue may be the prolonged play at 657ff. with the idea that Eirene is whispering in Hermes’ ear. If the actor playing Hermes could pretend this on stage, Eirene’s mouth was likely more or less on a level with his ear. There is no indication of any comic by-play with Hermes stooping or kneeling to hear her, so probably she was represented by a human-size statue. Or else by a mega-statue that has only partially emerged? The latter may be suggested by Trygaeus’ prayer at 987–90 that Eirene reveal herself in her entirety (ἀπόφηνον ὅλην σαυτήν). Indeed, might a half-revealed statue have effectively suggested a peace settlement that had not yet, in historical reality, been fully achieved?19 A half-revealed statue might, then, have been something rather like the Dionysus on the Cleveland vase. While the internal evidence cannot settle which of these alternative stagings was the case, there is one important piece of external evidence. We are told by a scholion on Plato Apology 19c that this statue in Peace was so peculiar that is was made fun of by two other comedians, Eupolis and Plato Comicus: κωμῳδεῖται δὲ καὶ τὸ τῆς εἰρήνης κολοσσικὸν ἐξῇρεν ἄγαλμα. There is no consensus on which element within this sentence it was that Aristophanes’ rivals found mockworthy and hence what that means for the staging of the statue in Peace. Sommerstein thinks that the point lay in the combination of a statue with live attendants, i.e. in ἄγαλμα; Olson is inclined to home in on ἐξῇρεν, taking the joke to have lain in the way the statue was brought on.20 The problem with both interpretations is that they fail to account both for the inclusion of the epithet κολοσσικόν and for the word-order, which suggests that the target of the fun-making was the way the ἄγαλμα was κολοσσικόν. Olson insists that this is not necessarily anything to do with the size of the statue, because the noun κολοσσός could denote plastic images any size, especially in the Classical period.21 But the adjectives κολοσσικός and κολοσσαιός are not found before the 2nd century BCE and do seem to have always been used specifically of giant size (perhaps in the aftermath of the “Colossus of Rhodes”?). So, while we cannot be sure that this is what was meant by Eupolis and Plato, the scholiast evidently supposes that they took the statue in Peace to have been monumentally large, and that that was what attracted their ridicule.
18 The now classic discussion is J. Henderson (ed.), Aristophanes: Lysistrata (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1987) on Lys. 1106–27 (pp. 195–6). On comic uglification, see also Revermann, Comic Business (above, n. 10), pp. 145–59. 19 I owe this suggestion to Alan Sommerstein. 20 A. Sommerstein (ed.), Peace, The Comedies of Aristophanes 5 (Warminster, Wiltshire: Aris & Phillips, 1985), p. xvii; Olson, Peace (above, n. 18), p. xliv. 21 Olson, Peace (above, n. 18); hence his use of “mannequin” on p. 183.
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To return to the Aristophanes, the pulling out or up of the statue is given a big build-up; indeed, Trygaeus summons the chorus at 292–300 for this very purpose. It then takes a long time to get Hermes onside and to make preliminary prayers, but then there is heave-ing and ho-ing from line 459 onward, more than 60 lines before the eventual emergence of the statue. If after all this fuss Eirene had been e.g. small, primitive or aniconic, this would surely have been indicated in the text; what is emphasized is instead her beauty and lovability. While it remains far from certain, the most likely explanation of the κολοσσικὸν ἄγαλμα, and of its mockability, is that it was represented by a giant image. And in that case it is at least possible (remember the whispering to Hermes) that, instead of extracting the whole monumental image, only its head and shoulders were revealed on stage. In that case, it would have been this part-revelation that attracted jibes from Eupolis and Plato. How this was staged, we cannot (of course) say with confidence. Perhaps a deep enough space was provided under a platform to store the bust until it was pulled out; or, as many scholars suppose, it was extruded from the door on the ekkyklema; or it was hidden behind some sort of screen that was then removed; or the bust was two-dimensional rather that three-, and was pulled up from lying flat. I slightly incline to this last solution. If what I have argued about Peace is along the right lines, at any rate, and however the colossal statue was staged, it would provide a precedent for a comedy with a giant head-and-shoulders of Dionysus, an image represented as beautiful and partly out of the ground. In other words, it would be a precedent and parallel for the scene-specific evocation of a comedy on the Cleveland Dionysus vase. In that case, we are seeing the upper part of a giant statue that has been drawn up or pulled out or revealed. The thymaterion would seem to indicate cultic invocation, so the comic actor interested in the grapes, and the comic Silenus with his empty vessel might well be attendants on the epiphanic Dionysus, not unlike Opora and Theoria in Peace. Such a comedy would probably have been Athenian in origin.22 I am unaware of any other evidence bearing on it, although others may be able to shed more light. In any case, the striking inventiveness and atmosphere of the scene will be in part owed to the comic dramatist, who daringly followed in the footsteps of Aristophanes’ Peace, despite the mockery of the statue there. This is not to deny “religious sensitivity”23 to the artist, but to insist that the picture arises not simply from his personal spirituality but from his witnessing and celebrating comedy. This “vulgar” association does not reduce the artistic achievement of the Choregos Painter; to the contrary, it adds an extra complexity of tone and reference. And this is all part of the larger debate about what constitutes “comic” and “serious,” and about how the two are blended in Greek comedy.
22 It is worth recalling that the spelling of the name labels on the two other comic vases by the Choregos Painter are compatible with Attic dialect (and incompatible with Doric). 23 See Trendall, RV Ap, Supp 2 (above, n. 2), as quoted above.
Giuseppe Mastromarco
Toponimi e immaginario sessuale nella Lisistrata di Aristofane Abstract: In iambic poetry and Old Comedy, closely related genres, there are toponyms with a plain sexual meaning. In this paper, I consider nine examples from Aristophanes’ Lysistrata in which this poetical element is well attested, and suggest a new interpretation, with a sexual meaning, of the mention of the city of Pellene at 996.
1. In Ipponatte sono citati due toponimi che hanno una chiara valenza sessuale: nel fr. 4b Degani2, Σινδικὸν διάσφαγμα, «fessura sindica», indica metaforicamente il sesso femminile;1 e, nel fr. 95 Degani2, al v. 2, l’avverbio πυγιστί, da πυγή, «natica», è un hapax «ludricamente formato sui vari λυδιστί (‘in lidio’), δωριστί (‘in dorico’) e simili»,2 e, al v. 15, il locativo τοῦ Πυγέλησι, letteralmente «di Pigela» (città ionica sita nei pressi di Efeso e Clazomene), assume il significato metaforico di «deretano».3 Ed è probabile che, se si accoglie l’integrazione di Diehl Στρυμ[όνος ῥέεθρ᾽ ἁγνοῦ, al v. 1 del fr. 83 Degani2, ci troviamo dinanzi a un’altra sconcia metafora di natura geografica, in quanto lo Strimone vi avrà indicato «l’abnorme ‘apertura’ anale di un cinedo […] forse grottescamente equiparata all’estuario del fiume divino».4 2. È merito principalmente di Enzo Degani aver dimostrato, in vari contributi, che giambografia arcaica e commedia attica antica furono cognata genera, generi affini, e,
1 Cfr. Jeffrey Henderson, The Maculate Muse (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 19912), pp. 21, 23, 243; e si vedano Aldo Bartalucci, “Hipponacteae Interpretatiunculae,” Maia XVI (1964), p. 245 n. 10; H. Akbar Khan, “On Machon, Fr. 15 (Gow) and Other Passages,” Hermes 98 (1970), p. 151. Fuor di metafora, Σινδικὸν διάσφαγμα indicava lo ‘stretto’ che univa il Ponto alla Meotide, vale a dire il Bosforo Cimmerio: i Sindi erano infatti stanziati ai bordi della Sarmazia, di fronte alla Crimea. 2 Ipponatte. Frammenti. Introduzione, traduzione e note di Enzo Degani. Premessa di Gabriele Burzacchini. Aggiornamenti di Anika Nicolosi, Eikasmos. Quaderni Bolognesi di Filologia Classica. Studi, 15 (Bologna: Pàtron Editore, 2007), p. 122. 3 Cfr. Degani, Ipponatte (cit. in n. 2), p. 123; e si vedano già Bartalucci, “Hipponacteae” (cit. in n. 1), p. 245 n. 10; Henderson, Maculate (cit. in n. 1), pp. 21, 23. È verosimile che con τοῦ Πυγέλησι Ipponatte abbia voluto alludere scherzosamente a un’antica tradizione (di cui sono testimoni Strabone, XIV, 1,20 ed Etymologicum Magnum 695, 27–31) secondo cui il nome di quella città deriverebbe dalla circostanza che alcuni soldati di Agamennone vi avevano contratto una πυγαλγία, un «mal di natiche»: cfr. e.g. Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher, “Die ‘Hundekrankheit’ (κύων) der Pandareostöchter und andere mythische Krankheiten,” Rheinisches Museum 53 (1898), pp. 183–5; Michel B. Sakellariou, La migration grecque en Ionie, Collection de l’Institut Français d’Athènes 17 (Athènes: Presse de l’Institut Français d’Athènes, 1958), pp. 116–23. 4 Degani, Ipponatte (cit. in n. 2), p. 120.
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di conseguenza, che significativi elementi della poetica ipponattea ispirarono la musa aristofanea:5 si comprende, dunque, perché metafore sessuali di origine geografica siano ben attestate anche nella produzione superstite di Aristofane. In questa sede mi limiterò a esaminare questo elemento di poetica in una commedia, la Lisistrata, che presenta un cospicuo numero di termini, espressioni, metafore, topoi pertinenti alla sfera del sesso. (1) vv. 56–60 (Salamina): (Λυ.) ἀλλ’, ὦ μέλ’, ὄψει τοι σφόδρ’ αὐτὰς Ἀττικάς, ἅπαντα δρώσας τοῦ δέοντος ὕστερον. ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ Παράλων οὐδεμία γυνὴ πάρα, οὐδ’ ἐκ Σαλαμῖνος. (Κα.) ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖναί γ’ οἶδ’ ὅτι ἐπὶ τῶν κελήτων διαβεβήκασ’ ὄρθριαι. LI. Mia cara, ti puoi rendere conto che sono delle vere donne attiche: fanno tutto in ritardo. E non c’è neppure una donna della costa, né di Salamina. CA. Ma so bene che quelle si sono messe in viaggio, a cavalcioni dei loro … uomini, ancora prima dell’alba.
Il sostantivo κέλης può significare sia «small boat used by pirates»6 sia «cavallo (da corsa)»; per cui appare chiaro il gioco polisemico sotteso al v. 60: da una parte, κέλης indicherà il mezzo di trasporto navale con cui le donne di Salamina giungeranno ad Atene; dall’altra alluderà a uno schêma erotico (la donna che monta a cavallo dell’uomo), dal momento che il suo verbo denominale κελητίζειν ricorre anche altrove in Aristofane con questo significato sessuale.7 E inoltre, come è provato da un altro passo aristofaneo (Ecclesiazuse 38–9), gli uomini di Salamina avevano fama di essere amanti instancabili, per cui il nome di quell’isola doveva essere sentito, nell’immaginario comune dei Greci, come «synonymous with
5 Il risultato più organico e maturo delle ricerche di Degani sui rapporti tra la giambografia arcaica e la commedia aristofanea è rappresentato dalla relazione che, tenuta alla «Fondation Hardt» nell’agosto 1991, è stata pubblicata, con il titolo Aristofane e la tradizione dell’invettiva personale in Grecia, in: Jan M. Bremer et Eric W. Handley (eds.), Aristophane (Vandœuvres-Genève: Fondation Hardt, 1993), pp. 1–36 (la «Discussion» sulla relazione di Degani è alle pp. 37–49), ed è stata ristampata in Filologia e storia. Scritti di Enzo Degani, Spudasmata 95 (Hildesheim, Zürich, New York: Olms, 2004), I, pp. 414– 49 (la «Discussion» è alle pp. 450–62). 6 J.S. Morrison and R.T. Williams, Greek Oared Ships 900–322 B.C. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 245. 7 Cfr. Vespe 500–2; Lisistrata 678; Tesmoforiazuse 153. Un’ampia documentazione iconografica di questa figura Veneris è in Roberto Pretagostini, “L’omosessualità di Agatone nelle Tesmoforiazuse di Aristofane e la figura del κελητίζειν (V. 153),” in: ΜΟΥΣΑ. Scritti in onore di Giuseppe Morelli, Edizioni e saggi universitari di filologia classica (Bologna: Pàtron Editore, 1997), pp. 117–22.
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sex»:8 si spiega così perché in Lisistrata 60 il sostantivo κέλης sia messo in relazione con le donne di Salamina. (2) vv. 85–9 (Beozia): (Λυ.) ἡδὶ δὲ ποδαπή ’σθ’ ἡ νεᾶνις ἡτέρα; (Λα.) πρέσβειρά τοι ναὶ τὼ σιὼ Βοιωτία ἵκει ποθ’ ὑμέ. (Μυ.) νὴ Δί’ ὡς Βοιωτία καλόν γ’ ἔχουσα τὸ πεδίον. (Κα.) καὶ νὴ Δία κομψότατα τὴν βληχώ γε παρατετιλμένη. LI. E questa ragazza di dov’è? LA. Per i due dèi, è una nobile beota: viene a visitarvi. MI. Sì, per Zeus, è proprio una che viene dalla pianura della Beozia: ha un bel campo da… seminare. CA. [alzandole la tunica] E, per Zeus, l’erbetta se l’è depilata con cura.
La Beozia è regione pianeggiante: ben si attaglia perciò alla ragazza beota il doppio senso fondato su πεδίον (vv. 87b–8a), che propriamente significa «pianura», ma che, metaforicamente, può indicare l’«organo genitale femminile».9 E di origine agricola è la metafora del successivo v. 89: βληχώ, «mentuccia» (erba aromatica molto diffusa in Beozia) poteva assumere il significato metaforico di peli del pube femminile.10
8 Elizabeth Craik, Sexual imagery and innuendo in Troades, in: Anton Powell (ed.), Euripides, women, and sexuality (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 10. 9 Per πεδίον metafora del sesso femminile si veda anche Uccelli 506–7; e cfr. Henderson, Maculate Muse (cit. in n. 1), p. 136. 10 Cfr. Henderson, Maculate Muse (cit. in n. 1), p. 135. L’affermazione di Calonice al v. 89 si spiega con la prassi, cara alle donne greche, della depilazione del pube: cfr. Aristofane, Lisistrata 151, 824–8; Tesmoforiazuse 236–9, 590–1; Rane 516; Ecclesiazuse 13–14, 723–4; Ferecrate, fr. 113.28–9; Platone Comico, fr. 188.14–15; e si veda Ignacio Alfageme, “Higiene, cosmética y dietética en la comedia ática,” Cuadernos de Filología Clásica 9 (1975), p. 263. La depilazione poteva aver luogo col metodo della bruciatura (con la lucerna o con la torcia) ovvero con il metodo dello strappo; ed è stato argomentato che, depilandosi, le donne non si proponessero di eliminare del tutto i peli della regione genitale, ma intendessero dare ai peli una forma (esemplare quella ‘a delta’, di cui si parla in Lisistrata 151) che, mettendo in evidenza la vulva, fosse in grado di accrescerne l’attrazione sessuale: cfr. Martin F. Kilmer, “Genital Phobia and Depilation,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 102 (1982), pp. 104–12; Greek Erotica on Attic Red-Figure Vases (London: Duckworth, 1993), pp. 133–54; David M. Bain, “καταωνάκην τὸν χοῖρον ἀποτετιλμένας (Aristophanes, Ekklesiazousai 724),” Liverpool Classical Monthly 7 (1982), pp. 7– 10. A un taglio drastico dei peli pubici, dettato da una sorta di fobia che, nella Grecia classica, i maschi avrebbero avuto nei confronti dell’organo genitale femminile, pensa invece, meno convincentemente, Philip E. Slater, The Glory of Hera. Greek Mythology and the Greek Family (Boston: Beacon, 1968), pp. 12–13.
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(3) vv. 107–10 (Mileto): (Κα.) ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ μοιχοῦ καταλέλειπται φεψάλυξ. ἐξ οὗ γὰρ ἡμᾶς προὔδοσαν Μιλήσιοι, οὐκ εἶδον οὐδ’ ὄλισβον ὀκτωδάκτυλον, ὃς ἦν ἂν ἡμῖν σκυτίνη ’πικουρία CA. E di amanti non c’è rimasto nemmeno uno straccio. Da quando i Milesi ci hanno tradito, non ho visto neppure un fallo di otto dita che ci desse un sollievo … di cuoio.
Nell’estate del 412, Mileto si era ribellata agli alleati della Lega delio-attica (cfr. Tucidide, 8, 17), e la defezione aveva provocato, tra l’altro, una penuria in Atene degli ólisboi, i falli di cuoio, prodotto tipico di quell’area dell’Asia Minore di cui Mileto era uno dei centri più importanti.11 I falli di cuoio, detti anche baubônes (cfr. Eronda, 6, 19), ispirarono scene di commedia e di mimo, ed erano molto ricercati non solo da prostitute, ma anche da donne sole, particolarmente numerose in tempo di guerra.12 La misura a cui si fa qui riferimento (otto dita) sembra essere troppo piccola rispetto alle misure canoniche di quegli oggetti: è perciò probabile che Lisistrata si stia lamentando del fatto che sono introvabili persino falli di cuoio di piccola misura (e, dunque, poco ricercati).13 (4) vv. 149–54 (Amorgo): εἰ γὰρ καθῄμεθ’ ἔνδον ἐντετριμμέναι, κἀν τοῖς χιτωνίοισι τοῖς Ἀμοργίνοις γυμναὶ παρίοιμεν δέλτα παρατετιλμέναι, στύοιντο δ’ ἅνδρες κἀπιθυμοῖεν σπλεκοῦν, ἡμεῖς δὲ μὴ προσίοιμεν, ἀλλ’ ἀπεχοίμεθα, σπονδὰς ποιήσαιντ’ ἂν ταχέως, εὖ οἶδ’ ὅτι. LI. Se ce ne stessimo nelle nostre case tutte imbellettate, e ci mostrassimo nude, sotto le nostre sottovesti di Amorgo, con il pube depilato alla perfezione, a delta, gli uomini si arraperebbero e avrebbero una gran voglia di scopare; e se noi non ci avvicinassimo a
11 Cfr. Maria Grazia Tibiletti Bruno, “Un confronto greco-anatolico,” Athenaeum 47 (1969), pp. 302– 12. 12 Sui falli di cuoio si vedano, tra gli altri, Hans Licht, Sexual Life in Ancient Greece, trans. J.H. Freese, ed. L.H. Dawson (London: Routledge, 1932), pp. 314–15; Alfred Körte, in RE XVII 2 (Stuttgart: Druckenmüller, 1937), s.v. Olisbos, coll. 2480–2; Kilmer, Greek Erotica (cit. in n. 10), pp. 98–102. Dei falli di cuoio abbiamo varie rappresentazioni vascolari: cfr. e.g. Eva C. Keuls, Il regno della fallocrazia. La politica sessuale ad Atene, prefazione di B. Gentili [trad. it., a cura di M. Carpi, di: The Reign of the Phallus. Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens (New York: Harper & Row, 1985)] (Milano: A. Mondadori Editore, 1988), pp. 93–7 (con figg. 72–80). 13 Cfr. Jeffrey Henderson (ed.), Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 81.
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loro, ma li tenessimo a distanza, immediatamente stipulerebbero la pace: ne sono certa.14
Amorgo, isola delle Cicladi, celebre per la produzione di lino, avrà avuto, tra il quinto e il quarto secolo a.C., un ruolo importante nell’immaginario sessuale degli Ateniesi in virtù delle sue «sottovesti (χιτώνια)», delle quali parla anche Platone nella tredicesima Lettera, indirizzata a Dionisio di Siracusa (363a). Per l’analoga immagine di «fanciulle in vesti di velo sottile, con le rose depilate (κόραι δ᾽ἐν ἀμπεχόναις τριχάπτοις … / τὰ ῥόδα κεκαρμέναι)», si veda Ferecrate, Minatori, fr. 113.28–9.15 (5) vv. 850–2 (Peonide): (Κι.) πρὸς τῶν θεῶν νυν ἐκκάλεσόν μοι Μυρρίνην. (Λυ.) ἰδού, καλέσω ’γὼ Μυρρίνην σοι; σὺ δὲ τίς εἶ; (Κι.) ἁνὴρ ἐκείνης, Παιονίδης Κινησίας. CI. Per gli dèi, chiamami Mirrine: falla uscire. LI. Come? Dovrei chiamarti Mirrine? Ma tu chi sei? CI. Suo marito, Cinesia del demo di Pe…nonia.
Con «Pe…nonia» ho cercato di rendere, al v. 852, l’intraducibile gioco di parole tra il verbo παίειν (spesso attestato in Aristofane nella sua accezione oscena di «sbattere») e il nome del demo (Paionídai).16 Questa paretimologia è complementare all’altro gioco verbale che percorre tutta la scena: pur essendo un nome storicamente attestato nell’Atene del quinto secolo (si pensi, per citare solo un esempio, al celebre ditirambo-
14 Al v. 153, accolgo, con la maggioranza degli editori, la lezione, tràdita dal Ravennate, προσίοιμεν, della cui valenza erotica sono testimoni i vv. 214–15 della stessa Lisistrata. Giova comunque ricordare che un frammento papiraceo (PKöln 14), proveniente da un codice del IV secolo, attesta la variante προσίδο[ιμεν, che è stata difesa da Franca Perusino (“Il contributo dei papiri alla Lisistrata di Aristofane. Note al P. Colon. 14,” in: Pascal Thiercy et Michel Menu [eds.], Aristophane: la langue, la scène, la cité. Actes du colloque de Toulouse 17–19 mars 1994 [Bari: Levante Editori, 1997], pp. 67–70) sulla base delle seguenti argomentazioni: (a) il verbo προσιδεῖν «evidenzia e in un certo modo visualizza l’indifferenza delle donne: esse non degnano di uno sguardo i mariti vogliosi e si tengono in disparte» (p. 68); (b) προσίδοιμεν «si impone anche come lectio difficilior nei confronti della più banale opposizione προσίοιμεν / ἀπεχοίμεθα» (p. 70). 15 Il frammento ferecrateo presenta significative analogie con i vv. 515–16 delle Rane aristofanee: cfr. M. Pellegrino, Utopie e immagini gastronomiche nei frammenti dell’archaia, Eikasmos, Quaderni Bolognesi di Filologia Classica, Studi 4 (Bologna: Pàtron Editore, 2000), pp. 105–7. 16 Per παίειν con significato sessuale, cfr. Henderson, Maculate Muse (cit. in n. 1), p. 171: erra, dunque, lo scoliaste (ad Lys. 852 Hangard) quando afferma che il gioco paretimologico è tra il nome del demo e il sostantivo πέος. Sul demo di Peonide, cfr. John S. Traill, The Political Organization of Attica. A Study of the Demes, Trittyes, and Phylai, and their Representation in the Athenian Council, Hesperia Supplement 14 (Princeton: William Clowes and Sons, 1975), p. 127; David Whitehead, The Demes of Attica 508/7 – ca. 250 B.C. A political and social study (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 371.
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grafo contemporaneo, figlio del citarodo Melete), Cinesia, nel presente contesto, svolge la funzione comica di nome parlante, con esplicita valenza sessuale, in quanto è evidentemente messo in relazione paretimologica con il verbo κινεῖν, «fare l’amore», e, più precisamente, con κινητιᾶν, il cui suffisso (-ιᾶν) è specifico dei verbi indicanti una malattia: il nome Cinesia indicherà dunque chi è in uno stato di sofferenza in quanto non è in condizione di fare l’amore.17 D’altra parte, in questo contesto anche Mirrine, che pure era un nome storico,18 va messo in relazione etimologica con la pianta del mirto, dal momento che propriamente significa «Piccolo Mirto»; e, come è stato ben messo in evidenza da Marcel Detienne, il nome del mirto «è ricco di riferimenti erotici. Infatti è con i rami di questo cespuglio aromatico che in Attica s’intrecciano le corone degli sposi. Il nome di questa pianta, sacra ad Afrodite, serve a indicare sia la clitoride, sia il sesso femminile».19 (6–9) vv. 1161–71 (Pilo; Echinunte; Golfo Maliaco; Megara): (Λυ.) τί δ’ οὐ διηλλάγητε; φέρε, τί τοὐμποδών; (Λα.) ἁμές γα λῶμες, αἴ τις ἁμὶν τὤγκυκλον λῇ τοῦτ’ ἀποδόμεν. (Λυ.) ποῖον, ὦ τᾶν; (Λα.) τὰν Πύλον, τᾶσπερ πάλαι δεόμεθα καὶ βλιμάδδομες. (Αθ.) μὰ τὸν Ποσειδῶ τοῦτο μέν γ’ οὐ δράσετε. (Λυ.) ἄφετ’, ὦγάθ’, αὐτοῖς. (Αθ.) κᾆτα τίνα κινήσομεν; (Λυ.) ἕτερόν γ’ ἀπαιτεῖτ’ ἀντὶ τούτου χωρίον. (Αθ.) τὸ δεῖνα τοίνυν, παράδοθ’ ἡμῖν τουτονὶ πρώτιστα τὸν Ἐχινοῦντα καὶ τὸν Μηλιᾶ κόλπον τὸν ὄπισθεν καὶ τὰ Μεγαρικὰ σκέλη. (Λα.) οὐ τὼ σιὼ οὐχὶ πάντα γ’, ὦ λισσάνιε. LI. E allora, perché non vi riconciliate? Suvvia, cosa ve lo impedisce? AMB. SP. Noi in verità lo vorremmo: a condizione che ci restituiscano questo coso tondo [indica il sedere di Riconciliazione]. LI. Quale, mio caro? AMB. SP. La fortezza di Pilo: è da tanto che ne abbiamo voglia e la tocchiamo. I AMB. AT. No, per Posidone, questo non lo potete fare.
17 Cfr. Michel Casevitz, “Sur la fonction de la médicine dans le théâtre d’Aristophane,” Cahiers des Études Anciennes 15 (1983), pp. 5–6. Non convince l’ipotesi di Whitehead, Demes of Attica (cit. in n. 16), p. 335 e n. 35, che il Cinesia della Lisistrata fosse un personaggio reale. 18 In Attica il nome Μυρρίνη è attestato una cinquantina di volte: cfr. Michael J. Osborne and Sean G. Byrne (eds.), A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names II: Attica (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 323. 19 Marcel Detienne, I Giardini di Adone. I miti della seduzione erotica [trad. it., a cura di L. Berrini Pajetta, di: Les Jardins d’Adonis. La mythologie des aromates en Grèce (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1972)] (Torino: Einaudi, 1975), p. 84; la valenza erotica del nome Mirrine era stata colta già da Hugo Steiger, Der Eigenname in der attischen Komödie (Diss. Erlangen: Druck von Junge und Sohn, 1888), p. 8; e, sul mirto come metafora sessuale, si veda Henderson, Maculate Muse (cit. in n. 1), pp. 134–5, 248.
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LI. Lasciatela a loro, mio caro. I AMB. AT. E noi chi ci sbatteremo? LI. In cambio di questa… località, chiedetene un’altra. I AMB. AT. E allora, per cominciare, dateci Echinunte: è qui [indica il pube di Riconciliazione]; e dateci il Golfo Maliaco, che sta dietro, e le gambe di Megara. AMB. SP. Per i Dioscuri, non se ne parla affatto, mio caro.
In questa scena ha luogo un fitto gioco di doppi sensi sessuali, fondati su nomi geografici, di cui sono protagonisti Lisistrata, l’Ambasciatore spartano e il primo Ambasciatore ateniese. Al v. 1162, con ἔγκυκλον, l’ampio, pesante mantello femminile, di forma arrotondata, che veniva confezionato con una stoffa bianca oppure colorata,20 viene avviato un doppio senso che si realizza al verso successivo con la menzione della città di Pilo (τὰν Πύλον): in virtù della sua forma, l’ἔγκυκλον non solo doveva richiamare alla mente degli spettatori la città peloponnesiaca (in quanto circondata da mura), ma si prestava anche a una maliziosa allusione al sedere di Riconciliazione; e l’allusione è resa ancora più esplicita dalla circostanza che Πύλος richiama, per assonanza, il termine πύλη, «porta», che in commedia può assumere i significati metaforici di organo sessuale femminile e di ano.21 Al v. 1169, la città tessala di Echinunte (τὸν Ἐχινοῦντα) richiama, per assonanza, il termine ἐχῖνος, «riccio», che, nell’immaginario sessuale dei Greci, indicava il pube femminile.22 La menzione, ai vv. 1169–70, del Golfo Maliaco (τὸν Μηλιᾶ / κόλπον), una evidente forzatura geografica, dal momento che, per quanti vi arrivano dall’Attica o dal Peloponneso, esso si trova non «dietro» (ὄπισθεν, v. 1170), ma dinanzi alla costa dove era ubicata Echinunte, prova che esso viene qui menzionato perché il termine κόλπος, che di norma significa «golfo», può anche indicare, nel linguaggio specialistico della medicina, la «vagina» (la quale si trova appunto dietro al pube);23 e, per giunta, Μηλιᾶ richiama, ancora per assonanza, μῆλα, termine che, oltre al significato proprio di «mele», assume i significati metaforici di «seni» e di «natiche».24 E, infine, il reciso diniego opposto dall’Ambasciatore spartano al v. 1171 alla richiesta dell’Ambasciatore ateniese di riprendersi le «gambe megaresi» (τὰ Μεγαρικὰ σκέλη, v. 1170), le doppie mura che, collegando Megara al porto di Nisea, evocavano l’immagine di due lunghe gambe, si spiega alla luce della circostanza che, nei rapporti omosessuali (praticati specialmente a Sparta), le gambe, e in particolare le cosce, assolvevano un ruolo di assoluto rilievo.25
20 Cfr. Franca Perusino, “L’ἔγκυκλον, un mantello femminile nelle commedie di Aristofane,” Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 72 (2002), p. 131. 21 Cfr. Henderson, Maculate Muse (cit. in n. 1), pp. 137, 202. 22 Cfr. Henderson, Maculate Muse (cit. in n. 1), p. 142. 23 Per tale significato del γυναικεῖος κόλπος, cfr. Polluce 2.222. 24 Cfr. Henderson, Maculate Muse (cit. in n. 1), p. 149 e n. 211. 25 Cfr. Stefan L. Radt, “Zu Aristophanes’ Lysistrate,” Mnemosyne 27 (1974), p. 15; sul ruolo erotico delle gambe, cfr. e.g. Solone, fr. 16 Gent.–Pr.2; Anacreonte, fr. 43 Gent.; Eschilo frr. 135, **136; Sofocle,
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Nella Lisistrata sono dunque presenti nove toponimi che hanno una evidente valenza sessuale; ma è possibile che anche la città di Pellene, menzionata al v. 996, possa essere messa in relazione con la sfera del sesso.26 Ai vv. 993–6, si ha il seguente scambio di battute tra Cinesia e un Araldo spartano, comparso in scena al v. 980: (Κυ.) ἀλλ’ ὡς πρὸς εἰδότ’ ἐμὲ σὺ τἀληθῆ λέγε. τί τὰ πράγμαθ’ ὑμῖν ἐστι τἀν Λακεδαίμονι; (Κη.) ὀρσὰ Λακεδαίμων πᾶἁ καὶ τοὶ σύμμαχοι ἅπαντες ἐστύκαντι· Πελλάνας δὲ δεῖ. CI. Ma dimmi la verità, ché tanto la conosco: come vi vanno le cose a Sparta? AR. Tutta Sparta è in stato di eccitazione, e gli alleati, nessuno escluso, l’hanno duro: c’è bisogno di Pellene.
Il significato della frase Πελλάνας δὲ δεῖ è oscuro, e nessuna delle varie proposte interpretative che sono state suggerite per chiarirlo appare convincente, prive come sono del conforto di adeguate argomentazioni.27 Un’eccezione, in tal senso, è rappresentata da un contributo di Enzo Degani, che prende le mosse dall’interpretazione suggerita da Q. Septimius Florens Christianus in una delle sue note critiche pubblicate postume nell’edizione ginevrina di Aristofane curata da Emilio Porto.28 Come attestano Pindaro (Olimpica 9, 97–8; Nemea 10, 44) e Simonide (PMG 514),29 Pellene
fr. 345; e si vedano Félix Buffière, Eros adolescent. La pédérastie dans la Grèce antique (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1980), pp. 307–8; Kenneth J. Dover, L’omosessualità nella Grecia antica [trad. it., a cura di M. Menghi, di: Greek Homosexuality (London: Duckworth, 1978)] (Torino: Einaudi, 1985), p. 74. Giova ricordare che, come attesta Plutarco, Cimone 13, 6, anche le due lunghe mura che congiungevano Atene con i suoi porti (il Pireo e il Falero) erano chiamate «gambe» (σκέλη). 26 Su Pellene, città dell’Acaia settentrionale (il cui nome suonava in dorico Πελλάνα, e in ionico-attico Πελλήνη), cfr. Mogens H. Hansen and Thomas H. Nielsen, An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 484–5 nr. 240. 27 Per una puntuale disamina delle interpretazioni precedenti, cfr. Enzo Degani, “Aristophane et les manteaux de Pellène,” in: Thiercy et Menu, Aristophane (cit. in n. 14), pp. 107–10 (= Filologia e storia [cit. in n. 5], pp. 468–71). Non mancano studiosi i quali affermano drasticamente che è impossibile cogliere il senso dell’allusione a Pellene in Lisistrata 996: per esempio, a parere di Thomas G. Rosenmeyer, ci troviamo dinanzi a una «topical allusion to which we have lost the key» (“Notes on Aristophanes’ Birds,” American Journal of Philology 93 [1972], p. 237 n. 28). 28 Cfr. Aemilius F. Portus, Aristophanis Comoediae Undecim (Aureliae Allobrogum: Sumptibus Caldorianae Societatis, 1607), p. 898. Il contributo di Degani è stato pubblicato in italiano (Ancora su Aristoph. Lys. 996), in: Rosa M. Aguilar, Mercedes López Salvá, Ignacio Rodríguez Alfageme (eds.), Homenaje a Luis Gil (Madrid: Editorial Complutense, 1994), pp. 327–31, e in francese (Aristophane et les manteaux [cit. in n. 27], pp. 107–12 (= Filologia e storia [cit. in n. 5], pp. 468–73). 29 Un riferimento ai mantelli di Pellene andrà verosimilmente individuato già in Ipponatte, fr. 43 Degani2: cfr. Enzo Degani, Studi su Ipponatte (Bari: Adriatica Editrice, 1984), p. 169 (= Enzo Degani, Studi su Ipponatte. Nuova edizione anastaticamente riprodotta, Spudasmata 89 [Hildesheim: Olms Verlag, 2002], p. 169).
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era celebre in tutto il mondo greco per i suoi mantelli, che, dati in dono agli atleti vittoriosi alle feste che si celebravano nella città achea in onore del dio Ermete, erano divenuti così celebri da essere passati in proverbio;30 affermando, dunque, che «c’è bisogno di Pellene», l’Araldo spartano intenderà alludere, a parere di Degani, ai rinomati mantelli della città achea: «È infatti proprio la costante preoccupazione di nascondere con lo ἱμάτιον il proprio stato di ἐστυκότες il tratto comico che caratterizza gli uomini, da quando gli effetti della ‘serrata’ sessuale cominciano a farsi sentire […] Di qui l’opportunità—rilevata dal Coro—di coprire con gli ἱμάτια tali vergogne (v. 1093 εἰ σωφρονεῖτε θαἰμάτια λήψεσθε), prima che possano attirare le mire di qualche ermocopida […] a Sparta e nelle città alleate la situazione è tale che, per nasconderne le priapiche conseguenze, sarebbero necessari—mero ma indispensabile palliativo—gli ampli mantelli di Pellene. Ché la caratteristica veste nazionale spartana, il succinto τρίβων, non poteva che rivelarsi assolutamente inadatta allo scopo».31 E, a conforto della sua interpretazione, Degani rimanda a un passo degli Uccelli in cui a un Sicofante, il quale indossa un leggero mantello che non gli consente di ripararsi adeguatamente dal freddo, Pisetero chiede: «Pensi di volare diritto a Pellene? (μῶν εὐθὺ Πελλήνης πέτεσθαι διανοεῖ;)» (v. 1421), alludendo così alla circostanza che nella città achea avrebbe trovato i morbidi, caldi mantelli che là venivano confezionati. In definitiva, secondo Degani, Leitmotiv comico dei vv. 980–1013 e 1072–96 della Lisistrata sarà la necessità, degli Ateniesi e degli Spartani, di indossare i mantelli di Pellene per coprire i loro membri in erezione. Orbene, che da siffatto motivo comico siano regolati i vv. 1072–96 è indubbio: non appena compaiono in scena, gli Ambasciatori spartani si fanno notare per il notevole gonfiore all’altezza dell’inguine, sicché il Corifeo si chiede se non abbiano «una gabbia di porcelli intorno alle cosce» (v. 1073); e, dopo che lo stesso Corifeo chiede agli Ambasciatori quali siano le loro condizioni dopo il viaggio da Sparta ad Atene, essi mostrano i loro falli eretti («C’è bisogno di un lungo discorso? Lo potete vedere da voi in quali condizioni siamo arrivati (ὁρῆν γὰρ ἔξεσθ᾽ ὡς ἔχοντες ἵκομες)», vv. 1076–7), suscitando l’attonito commento del Corifeo («Accidenti! Questa irritazione al nervo è davvero terribile, e si direbbe che l’infiammazione vada peggiorando», vv. 1078–9); poi, al v. 1082, compaiono in scena gli Ambasciatori ateniesi che, afferma il corifeo, «al pari dei lottatori, portano i mantelli scostati dai ventri: sembrerebbero malati di… ascite (ὥσπερ παλαιστὰς ἄνδρας, ἀπὸ τῶν γαστέρων / θαἰμάτι᾽ ἀποστέλλοντας· ὥστε φαίνεται / ἀσκητικὸν τὸ χρῆμα τοῦ νοσήματος)» (vv. 1083–5);32 e, dopo che, al
30 Cfr. Apostol. XVI.6 = Suda π 943. Sui passi che attestano la fortuna delle χλαῖναι Πελληνικαί, cfr. Degani, Aristophane et les manteaux (cit. in n. 27), p. 110 (= Filologia e storia [cit. in n. 5], p. 471). 31 Ancora su Aristoph. (cit. in n. 28), pp. 330–1 (cfr. Aristophane et les manteaux [cit. in n. 27], pp. 111– 12 = Filologia e storia [cit. in n. 5], pp. 472–3). 32 Etimologicamente connesso con askós, «otre», il termine medico «ascite» indica il versamento, causato da differenti patologie, di una eccessiva quantità di liquido (talora anche di vari litri) nella cavità peritoneale, sicché l’addome, tumefatto, assume la forma di un otre. Il riferimento, al v. 1083, ai
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v. 1087, gli Ambasciatori ateniesi si tolgono i mantelli per mostrare la forma di malattia che li affligge, il Corifeo li invita a indossare di nuovo il mantello: «Se avete senno, rimettetevi il mantello: non vorrei che vi vedesse qualcuno degli ermocopidi… (εἰ σωφρονεῖτε, θαἰμάτια λήψεσθ᾽, ὅπως/ τῶν ἑρμοκοπιδῶν μή τις ὑμᾶς ὄψεται)» (vv. 1093–4). L’Ambasciatore ateniese accoglie, al pari dei suoi compagni, l’invito del Corifeo («Hai ragione, per Zeus», v. 1095a), ed è immediatamente imitato dall’Ambasciatore spartano e dai suoi compagni («Assolutamente sì, per i Dioscuri: rimettiamoci il mantello (ναὶ τὼ σιὼ / παντᾷ γα. φέρε τὸ ἔσθος ἀμβαλώμεθα)», vv. 1095b–6). Diverso è il gioco comico cui si ispira il dialogo tra l’Araldo spartano e Cinesia: dopo il goffo tentativo dell’Araldo di nascondere il proprio membro in erezione che fuoriesce dal mantello (vv. 985–92),33 il dialogo, a partire dal v. 993, verte sullo stato di eccitazione sessuale in cui versano gli uomini a causa dello sciopero messo in atto dalle donne. Alla domanda, postagli da Cinesia, circa le conseguenze che quello sciopero sta provocando sugli Spartani e i loro alleati (vv. 993–4), l’Araldo risponde, ai vv. 995–6, con la frase del cui significato ci stiamo ora occupando; e, dopo che Cinesia gli chiede se sia stato Pan a procurargli quel malessere (vv. 997–8a), l’Araldo dà notizia delle forme con cui le donne spartane, guidate da Lampitò, stanno conducendo il loro sciopero: «e poi le altre donne di Sparta, tutte insieme, come se fossero scattate a un segnale di partenza, hanno scacciato i mariti dalle loro pelose (ἁμᾶ / γυναῖκες ᾇπερ ἀπὸ μιᾶς ὑσπλαγίδος / ἀπήλαἁν τὼς ἄνδρας ἀπὸ τῶν ὑσσάκων)» (vv. 999–1001); e a Cinesia, che gli chiede quali siano le loro condizioni (v. 1002a), l’Araldo risponde: «Soffriamo: andiamo in giro per la città tutti curvi, come se portassimo delle lanterne. E le donne le loro rose non ci permettono neppure di sfiorarle (ταὶ γὰρ γυναῖκες οὐδὲ τῶ μύρτω σιγῆν / ἐῶντι), se prima, tutti d’accordo, non facciamo la pace con il resto della Grecia» (vv. 1002b–6).34 Preso dunque atto che la congiura delle donne sta dilagando (cfr. vv. 1007–8a), Cinesia, ai vv. 1009–10,
«lottatori» si spiegherebbe—come argomenta Fernando García Romero, “Metáforas deportivas en las comedias de Aristófanes,” Cuadernos de Filología Clásica. Estudios griegos e indoeuropeos 6 (1996), pp. 102–3—con la circostanza che gli allenamenti e la ricca dieta a cui essi si sottoponevano li portavano ad avere ventri particolarmente prominenti. 33 Sull’azione scenica che si svolge in questi versi si veda Laura M. Stone, Costume in Aristophanic Poetry (New York: Arno Press, 1981), pp. 86–7, 116–17 nn. 53–6. Analogo motivo comico è presente nella movimentata scena di Tesmoforiazuse 636–48, allorché, allertate da Clistene, le Donne tolgono al Parente il reggiseno e, resesi conto che costui «non ha le tette come noi» (v. 640), gli sollevano il krokotós, rendendo così visibile il fallo che il vecchio tenterà inutilmente di nascondere alla vista delle donne: (Clistene): «Sta’ diritto: sotto dove nascondi il cazzo?»; (Donna I): «Eccolo, spunta di qua, ed ha proprio un bel colorito, mio caro!»; (Clistene): «Ma dov’è?»; (Donna I): «Ora è passato di nuovo avanti»; (Clistene): «Ma qui non c’è»; (Donna I): «È qui, è tornato indietro» (vv. 643–6). 34 Ho tradotto μύρτω con «rosa», dal momento che il mirto non ha in italiano (né, a quanto mi risulta, in altre lingue moderne) il significato metaforico di «organo sessuale femminile» che invece poteva assumere in greco (cfr. n. 19), laddove la rosa è ben attestata come metafora sessuale in greco (cfr. Henderson, Maculate Muse [cit. in n. 1], p. 135), al pari che in italiano e in altre lingue moderne.
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invita l’Araldo a tornare a Sparta, affinché il suo governo possa inviare al più presto in Atene degli «ambasciatori con pieni poteri (πρέσβεις αὐτοκράτορας)» per trattare la pace.35 L’affermazione dell’Araldo ai vv. 995–6 si inserisce, dunque, in un contesto incentrato sulla necessità degli Spartani e dei loro alleati di dare sfogo ai loro impellenti bisogni sessuali. Stando così le cose, appare evidente che la menzione di Pellene non riguarderà la necessità di coprirsi il membro in erezione, ma andrà coerentemente messa in relazione con lo stato di eccitazione sessuale in cui versano gli Spartani e i loro alleati: la necessità, affermata dall’Araldo al v. 996b, di ricorrere a Pellene (Πελλάνας δὲ δεῖ) suggella la risposta (espressa ai vv. 995–6a in termini che rientrano esplicitamente nella sfera linguistica del sesso: ὀρσά, v. 995; ἐστύκαντι, v. 996) con cui egli reagisce alla domanda che, postagli da Cinesia al v. 994, si fonda, a sua volta, sul doppio senso sessuale del termine πράγματα.36 Si conferma così l’interpretazione in chiave sessuale del v. 996b: condivisa da vari studiosi, essa è stata fatta propria di recente da Jeffrey Henderson, a parere del quale Πελλάνας indicherà «either a place name with a sexual significance now lost, or a pun on an unattested word meaning vagina or anus».37 Si può dunque conclu-
35 Al v. 1013 l’Araldo abbandona di corsa il teatro; e, in seguito, al v. 1072, compaiono in scena degli «ambasciatori provenienti da Sparta (ἀπὸ τῆς Σπάρτης οἱδὶ πρέσβεις)». 36 Per πρᾶγμα, con il significato metaforico, al pari dell’inglese thing, di «organo genitale maschile», si veda Henderson, Maculate Muse (cit. in n. 1), p. 116; e, circa il valore eufemistico di πρᾶγμα, Alan H. Sommerstein afferma che Lisistrata 994 «is likely to contain a phallic pun at all» (The Anatomy of Euphemism in Aristophanic Comedy, in: F. De Martino e A.H. Sommerstein (eds.), Studi sull’eufemismo [Bari: Levante Editori, 1999], p. 205). Come è stato felicemente osservato a proposito dei vv. 995–6, «la estructura de toda la argumentación del Heraldo de los lacedemonios y su chistoso y obsceno final es en todo similar a la de los versos 868–70 de la Paz: ἡ παῖς λέλουται καὶ τὰ τῆς πυγῆς καλά· / ὁ πλακοῦς πέπεπται, σησαμῆ ξυμπλάττεται, / καὶ τἄλλ᾽ ἁπαξάπαντα· τοῦ πέους δὲ δεῖ» (Antonio López Eire [ed.], Aristófanes. Lisístrata [Salamanca: Hespéerides, 1994], p. 232 n. 706). 37 Jeffrey Henderson (ed.), Aristophanes. Birds, Lysistrata, Women at Thesmophoria, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 405 n. 91. Nell’edizione oxoniense del 1987 lo studioso aveva stampato πελλάνας con la iniziale minuscola, limitandosi a suggerire che si trattasse di «an otherwise unattested (Lakonian) word for vagina (or anus)» (Henderson, Lysistrata [cit. in n. 13], p. 187). Una interpretazione in chiave sessuale di Πελλάνας δὲ δεῖ aveva proposto già un antico scoliaste, il quale però riteneva che Pellene fosse il nome di una prostituta: ἧν γὰρ παρ᾽ αὐτοῖς πόρνη Πελλήνη τοὔνομα. ἐπιθυμοῦσιν οὖν τῆς πόρνης (ad v. 996b Hangard); un’ipotesi, quella dell’antico scoliaste, che in tempi recenti è stata ripresa da Hubert Ashton Holden, Onomasticon Aristophaneum. Sive Index Nominum quae apud Aristophanem leguntur (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19022), p. 908, e da Jean Taillardat (“Aristophane (Lys. 996) et la Pallène en 412/411,” in: Mélanges de Linguistique et de Philologie Grecques, offerts à Pierre Chantraine [Paris: Éditions Klincksieck, 1972], pp. 256–7). Che la menzione di Pellene alludesse a una oscenità («Zote») per lui incomprensibile riteneva Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff in Aristoteles und Athen (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1893), I, p. 287 n. 37; e Victor Coulon, proponendo, in luogo del tràdito πελλάνας, l’improbabile congettura τὰν , così interpretava il v. 996b: «unsere Spermapötte brauchen wir» (“Beiträge zur Interpretation des Aristophanes,” Rheinisches Museum 106 [1963],
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dere che il tràdito Πελλάνας / πελλάνας alluda a un evento relativo alla città achea ovvero a un oggetto o a una parte del corpo umano comunque pertinenti alla sfera del sesso. E tuttavia, se, come è opinione prevalente presso gli studiosi, l’Araldo spartano sta menzionando Pellene, resta da chiederci perché mai la menzione della città achea potesse agevolmente evocare, negli spettatori presenti alla rappresentazione della Lisistrata, un significato sessuale che a noi risulta oscuro. E, sia pure con la dovuta cautela che richiede l’interpretazione di un passo tanto controverso, mi pare lecito proporre un’ipotesi che si fonda su una testimonianza di non meglio identificati esegeti antichi; testimonianza che è riportata in un papiro ossirinchita del secondo secolo d.C., che contiene, oltre a un elenco di bibliotecari alessandrini, varie notizie storiche e mitologiche.38 Ai righi 2–12 della terza colonna del papiro, l’ignoto compilatore del trattato, «a characteristic product of the Alexandrian erudition which exercised itself in antiquarian research and tabulation»,39 dà notizia di un terribile avvenimento che avrebbe avuto come protagonista la città di Pellene, allorché, nel sesto secolo a.C., fu conquistata dall’esercito di Clistene di Sicione: Αρι[στοτελης δε περι Πελληνη[ν φησι πρω την τουτο συμβεβ[ηκεναι τινες δε ου μονον [εξανδρα ποδισθηναι φασιν τ[ην Πελλη νην υπο Κλεισθεν[ους οτ ε στρατευσεν μετα Σικ[υωνι ων αλλα και τας γυναι[κας αυ των και τας θυγατερα[ς αιχμα λωτισθεισας κατα[πορνευθη ναι.40
5
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A quanto afferma Aristotele, Pellene fu la prima città a cui capitò un siffatto evento [l’andrapodismós]; ma alcuni dicono che Pellene non solo fu ridotta in schiavitù da Clistene quando fece la spedizione con i
pp. 154–5). È il caso, infine, di ricordare che Édouard Biset, nei suoi Scholia vetera, pubblicati postumi ap. Portus, Aristophanis Comoediae (cit. in n. 28), mettendo in relazione Pellene con i suoi celebri, villosi mantelli, giungeva alla conclusione che la città achea, in quanto produttrice di «χλᾶναι μαλλωταὶ καὶ τριχώδεις καὶ δασεῖαι», avesse assunto il significato metaforico di γυναικεῖον αἰδοῖον (p. 898). 38 Si tratta del P.Oxy. 1241 (= MP3 2069 = CPF 64T), edito da Bernard P. Grenfell e Arthur S. Hunt nel decimo volume degli Oxyrhynchus Papyri (London: Horace Hart, 1914), pp. 99–112. 39 Grenfell and Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri (cit. in n. 38), p. 100. 40 L’integrazione Αρι[στοτελης (r. 2), che si deve agli editori principi del papiro (cfr. Grenfell and Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri [cit. in n. 38], p. 109), è molto probabile, dal momento che lo Stagirita scrisse una Costituzione di Pellene (fr. 567 Rose), che era posseduta anche da Cicerone (cfr. Epistulae ad Atticum 2, 2); κατα[πορνευθη]ναι (rr. 11–12) è invece integrazione di Wilamowitz (cfr. Grenfell and Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri [cit. in n. 38], p. 109).
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Sicioni, ma che anche le loro mogli e le loro figlie, rese schiave, furono costrette a prostituirsi.
Allo stesso evento fa riferimento Eliano in Storie Varie 6, 1: Σικυώνιοι δὲ Πελλήνην ἑλόντες τάς τε γυναῖκας τῶν Πελληνέων καὶ τὰς θυγατέρας ἐπ᾽οἰκήματος ἔστησαν. ἀγριώτατα ταῦτα, ὦ θεοὶ Ἑλλήνιοι, καὶ οὐδὲ ἐν βαρβάροις καλὰ κατά γε ἐμὴν μνείαν. I Sicioni, avendo conquistato Pellene, rinchiusero in bordelli le mogli e le figlie degli abitanti di quella città. Questo bel comportamento, o dèi degli Elleni, è del tutto disumano, e, a mia memoria, non trova riscontro neppure tra i barbari.
Non sappiamo se la forzata prostituzione delle donne di Pellene sia un evento storicamente fondato; e tuttavia è verosimile che, se anche si tratta di un aneddoto originatosi in una data successiva all’asservimento che della popolazione di quella città operò Clistene di Sicione dopo averla conquistata, esso sia entrato a farte parte della tradizione storica popolare relativa a Pellene, e, di conseguenza, dell’immaginario sessuale degli abitanti del Peloponneso e, più in generale, della Grecia. Ed è forse alla luce di questo episodio che può illuminarsi la battuta, a chiaro sfondo sessuale, dei vv. 995–6: riferendo a Cinesia che, in seguito allo sciopero sessuale delle donne, i suoi concittadini e i loro alleati soffrono di una sorta di priapismo, l’Araldo spartano come rimedio contro siffatta sofferenza avrà pensato a Pellene, la città che, nell’immaginario sessuale dei Greci, doveva avere assunto il significato antonomastico di ‘grande bordello’.41
41 Giova ricordare che, discostandosi dall’interpretazione che di Πελλάνας δὲ δεῖ aveva proposto nel 1893 (cfr. n. 37), anni dopo Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff suggeriva l’ipotesi che quella enigmatica espressione «verbirgt etwas historisch Wichtiges» (Platon. Beilagen und Textkritik. 3. Auflage [Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1919], II, p. 177 n. 1).
Mark Alonge
Dionysus’ Choice in Frogs and Aristophanes’ Paraenetic Pedigree Abstract: The parabasis of Frogs appropriates the diction and substance of Greek advice poetry (parainesis), best represented by Theognis. Aristophanes’ adaptation of parainesis serves to situate his poetry within a long-standing tradition of poets who offered political advice to their cities. The borrowing of paraenetic tropes in the parabasis of Frogs anticipates the contest between Euripides and Aeschylus, which ultimately turns on the question of which poet can better advise Athens. Aristophanes’ characterization of both tragic poets is sufficiently negative to raise doubts about the viability of either as an effective teacher of the city and, by extension, about the didactic effectiveness of the tragic genre as a whole. Through his mastery of the paraenetic tradition, Aristophanes presents comedy as the superior poetic medium for civic wisdom.
In Frogs, Aristophanes employs motifs from Greek didactic poetry to stake a claim to a particular literary pedigree, the tradition of delivering political and moral advice through poetry, or parainesis. In doing so, he distinguishes comedy from tragedy, which cannot provide the teacher Athens needs, as becomes apparent during the contest between Aeschylus and Euripides. While Dionysus does not want to return to the world of the living empty-handed, neither tragic poet passes his ultimate test by proving his ability to give Athens proper counsel about her current political challenges. While Frogs is perhaps first and foremost a drama of literary criticism, it is nevertheless also a political play. Moreover, it is in Aristophanes’ development of the political dimension of the play that we find a solution to its problematic ending, Dionysus’ choice of Aeschylus over Euripides. Instead of one of the two tragic poets, Aristophanes presents himself as the best teacher of the city, by writing himself into the literary history of parainesis. It is primarily in the parabasis that Aristophanes appropriates the paraenetic tradition. Here the chorus, speaking on behalf of its poet, offers political commentary and advice. In effect, the chorus anticipates Dionysus’ change of criteria at the end of the agôn between the two tragic poets, from literary to political, giving the audience a chance to weigh Aristophanes’ ability to give good counsel against what Aeschylus and Euripides have been able to do. The parabasis epirrhema begins with the chorus
I am greatly indebted to Wolfgang Haase for his invitation to contribute to this volume and for his advice at the early stages, and to Douglas Olson for taking the helm and providing invaluable editorial guidance and feedback. Great thanks are due to Jeff Henderson, a model colleague for a young academic and a supportive friend.
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declaring its right “to join in counseling (symparainein) and to teach (didaskein) the city what’s good.”1 Accordingly, the chorus goes on to dispense advice in the succeeding lines (687–705): citizenship should be reinstated for those Athenians who participated in the oligarchic revolution of 411 BCE; in 405 BCE, with Athens “in the embrace of waves,”2 the city needs all hands on deck, and the recently treasonous served Athens well before, as did their ancestors. Moreover, the lack of magnanimity toward fellow-citizens stands in stark contrast to the recent elevation to citizen status of slaves who fought for Athens at Arginusae in 406 BCE. While the chorus expresses its opinion in the epirrhema in a straightforward manner, the corresponding antepirrhema (718–37) presents essentially the same advice, but couched in language and imagery familiar from paraenetic poetry. The antepirrhema contains several tropes of parainesis found, for example, in the surviving verses of Theognis, the Greek advice poet par excellence. While Aristophanes cannot be said to borrow directly from Theognis, Theognis’ poetry can safely stand in as a proxy for the paraenetic tradition. Rather than quoting Theognis or alluding to him or any other poet in particular, Aristophanes seems to recall the paraenetic tradition for his audience by cobbling together several clichés of the genre, presenting something approaching a caricature of archaic advice poetry. Most notably, he weaves together—in an innovative way, in fact—two “Theognidean” motifs: the division of the populace into “noble” and “base” citizens, and the use of the language of coinage to talk about personal moral excellence or the lack thereof.3 Aristophanes thus effectively marks himself as the heir to that poetic tradition—in contrast, as will be seen below, to the tragedians. In the antepirrhema, the chorus speaks as follows: πολλάκις γ᾿ ἡμῖν ἔδοξεν ἡ πόλις πεπονθέναι ταὐτὸν εἴς τε τῶν πολιτῶν τοὺς καλούς τε κἀγαθοὺς εἴς τε τἀρχαῖον νόμισμα καὶ τὸ καινὸν χρυσίον. οὔτε γὰρ τούτοισιν οὖσιν οὐ κεκιβδηλευμένοις, ἀλλὰ καλλίστοις ἁπάντων, ὡς δοκεῖ, νομισμάτων καὶ μόνοις ὀρθῶς κοπεῖσι καὶ κεκωδωνισμένοις ἔν τε τοῖς Ἕλλησι καὶ τοῖς βαρβάροισι πανταχοῦ χρώμεθ᾿ οὐδέν, ἀλλὰ τούτοις τοῖς πονηροῖς χαλκίοις χθές τε καὶ πρώην κοπεῖσι τῷ κακίστῳ κόμματι. τῶν πολιτῶν θ᾿ οὓς μὲν ἴσμεν εὐγενεῖς καὶ σώφρονας ἄνδρας ὄντας καὶ δικαίους καὶ καλούς τε κἀγαθοὺς
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1 686–7 τὸν ἱερὸν χορὸν δίκαιόν ἐστι χρηστὰ τῇ πόλει / ξυμπαραινεῖν καὶ διδάσκειν. 2 704 κυμάτων ἐν ἀγκάλαις, borrowed from Archil. fr. 213 West2. 3 On the ideological discourse of coinage and metals in ancient Greece, see Leslie Kurke, Coins, Bodies, Games, and Gold: the Politics of Meaning in Archaic Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); Richard Seaford, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
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καὶ τραφέντας ἐν παλαίστραις καὶ χοροῖς καὶ μουσικῇ, προυσελοῦμεν, τοῖς δὲ χαλκοῖς καὶ ξένοις καὶ πυρρίαις καὶ πονηροῖς κἀκ πονηρῶν εἰς ἅπαντα χρώμεθα ὑστάτοις ἀφιγμένοισιν, οἷσιν ἡ πόλις πρὸ τοῦ οὐδὲ φαρμακοῖσιν εἰκῇ ῥᾳδίως ἐχρήσατ᾿ ἄν. ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν, ὦνόητοι, μεταβαλόντες τοὺς τρόπους χρῆσθε τοῖς χρηστοῖσιν αὖθις· καὶ κατορθώσασι γὰρ εὔλογον, κἄν τι σφαλῆτ᾿, ἐξ ἀξίου γοῦν τοῦ ξύλου, ἤν τι καὶ πάσχητε, πάσχειν τοῖς σοφοῖς δοκήσετε.
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It has often struck us that the city behaves the same toward those of its citizens who are fine and upstanding as it does with respect to the old coinage and the new gold. Though both of these coinages are unalloyed, indeed are considered the finest of all coins, the only coinages that are minted true and tested everywhere among the Greeks and among the barbarians alike, we don’t use them; instead we use these crummy coppers, struck yesterday or the day before with a stamp of the lowest quality. Just so with our citizens: the ones we acknowledge to be well-born, well-behaved, just, fine, and outstanding men, men brought up in wrestling schools, choruses, and the arts, we treat them shabbily, while for all purposes we choose the coppers, the aliens, the redheads, bad people with bad ancestors, the latest arrivals, whom formerly the city wouldn’t readily have used even as scapegoats. But even at this late hour, you fools, do change your ways and once again choose the good people. You’ll be congratulated for it if you’re successful, and if you take a fall, at least the intelligent will say if something does happen to you, you’re hanged from a worthy tree.4
The chorus bemoans Athens’ neglect of her “good” citizens, the chrêstoi, i.e. the oligarchic revolutionaries, and her recent reliance on the ponêroi, the “low,” i.e. newly emancipated and enfranchised slaves. Reversing this recent habit, the citizens should put their trust in their most talented compatriots; if the Athenians still lose the war, at least they will have no regrets about the leadership upon which they relied. The chorus’ criticism of the mistreatment of the Athenian elite, passed over in favor of a new group of citizens of dubious origin, is reminiscent of a well-known passage from the Theognidean corpus that expresses a similar concern (53–8): Κύρνε, πόλις μὲν ἔθ’ ἥδε πόλις, λαοὶ δὲ δὴ ἄλλοι, οἳ πρόσθ’ οὔτε δίκας ᾔδεσαν οὔτε νόμους, ἀλλ’ ἀμφὶ πλευραῖσι δορὰς αἰγῶν κατέτριβον,
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4 Translations of Frogs adapted from Jeffrey Henderson (trans.), Aristophanes: Frogs (Newburyport: Focus, 2008).
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ἔξω δ’ ὥστ’ ἔλαφοι τῆσδ’ ἐνέμοντο πόλεος. καὶ νῦν εἰσ’ ἀγαθοί, Πολυπαΐδη· οἱ δὲ πρὶν ἐσθλοὶ νῦν δειλοί. τίς κεν ταῦτ’ ἀνέχοιτ’ ἐσορῶν; Cyrnus, this city is still our city, but the people are different; they are those who formerly knew neither legal cases nor laws but wore out goatskins around their sides, and they grazed outside this city like deer. But now they are “noble” (agathoi), son of Polypaos, while the formerly good are now “base” (deiloi). Who could put up with seeing this?
As in the Frogs parabasis, Theognis bemoans the overturning of the old social order and the elevation of new citizens to high political status at the expense of traditionally better-established individuals. As is typical of the Theognidean corpus, and of the majority of social commentary in archaic poetry for that matter, an aristocratic perspective represents the division between mass and elite in strongly moral terms: the agathoi/esthloi are the well-bred and worthy elite, while the kakoi/deiloi represent the rest of the populace, who are characterized as dishonorable and inferior.5 The Theognidean corpus is particularly full of such terminology, although its use is widespread among archaic poets. Both Theognis and Aristophanes criticize a mistaken preference for the worse over the better, the new-fangled over the customary. By Aristophanes’ day, usage had evolved, as other late 5th- and 4th-century texts also show, with the dichotomy of chrêstoi versus ponêroi replacing that of agathoi versus kakoi.6 While evoking archaic parainesis, however, Aristophanes “translates” the pre-classical terminology of moral and social valuation, ”noble vs. base,” into his audience’s Greek.7 He also adapts his application of this opposition to fit the situation the chorus is complaining about; while the chrêstoi in the parabasis correspond to the traditional aristocratically-minded elite of Athens, Aristophanes singles out only the ex-slaves as ponêroi, while his contemporaries, adhering more closely to their archaic predecessors’ use of kakoi and deiloi, call all non-elite citizens ponêroi. What Aristophanes does in the parabasis that is particularly striking and goes beyond his paraenetic predecessors, is to weave the ”noble vs. base” topos together
5 On agathos and kakos, see Walter Donlan, The Aristocratic Ideal in Ancient Greece: Attitudes of Superiority from Homer to the End of the Fifth Century (Lawrence: Coronado, 1980). 6 E.g. [Xenophon], Constitution of the Athenians 1.6 and Hellenica Oxyrhynchia 6.3. 7 Robin Osborne, “An Other View: An Essay in Political History,” in: Beth Cohen (ed.), Not the Classical Ideal: Athens and the Construction of the Other in Greek Art (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2000), pp. 21–42, esp. 23–8, explains this shift from agathos/kakos to chrêstos/ponêros as an elite response to the polis’ appropriation of the term agathos to mean “beneficial to the state.” Since agathos and kakos were now used with a utilitarian connotation, the elite had to find another set of socially evaluative terms.
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with the language of coins and metals, the use of which here marks a departure from convention. The poetic tradition from which Aristophanes draws uses the language of metals in meditations on personal moral integrity.8 Theognis, for example, contrasts the ease with which we test the purity and consistency of metal with the difficulty of assessing individual character: do thoughts and intentions match outward behavior, or is the person “counterfeit” (kibdêlos)? χρυσοῦ κιβδήλοιο καὶ ἀργύρου ἀνσχετὸς ἄτη, Κύρνε, καὶ ἐξευρεῖν ῥᾴδιον ἀνδρὶ σοφῷ· εἰ δὲ φίλου νόος ἀνδρὸς ἐνὶ στήθεσσι λελήθῃ ψυδρὸς ἐών, δόλιον δ᾿ ἐν φρεσὶν ἦτορ ἔχῃ, τοῦτο θεὸς κιβδηλότατον ποίησε βροτοῖσιν, καὶ γνῶναι πάντων τοῦτ᾿ ἀνιηρότατον. οὐδὲ γὰρ εἰδείης ἀνδρὸς νόον οὔτε γυναικός, πρὶν πειρηθείης ὥσπερ ὑποζυγίου, οὐδέ κεν εἰκάσσαις †ὥσπερ ποτ᾿ ἐς ὥριον ἐλθών·† πολλάκι γὰρ γνώμην ἐξαπατῶσ᾿ ἰδέαι. (Thgn. 119–28)9
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The ruin that results from counterfeit gold and silver is endurable, Cyrnus, and it is easy for an expert to find out (that they are counterfeit). But if a friend’s intent is false and lies undetected in his breast, and if he has a treacherous heart, this is the most counterfeit object the god has made for mortals, and to recognize it costs the greatest pain of all. For you cannot know the intent of a man or a woman until you make trial of it like a beast of burden, nor can you form an estimate of it by coming as it were at the right time (?), since appearances often deceive one’s judgment.
Similar concerns about rooting out untrustworthy “counterfeit” individuals are voiced elsewhere in the Theognidean corpus: κιβδήλου δ᾿ ἀνδρὸς γνῶναι χαλεπώτερον οὐδέν, Κύρν', οὐδ᾿ εὐλαβίης ἐστὶ περὶ πλέονος. (117–18) Nothing, Cyrnus, is more difficult to recognize than a counterfeit man, and nothing is more important than being on guard against him.
8 Hesiod does use the language of metals to characterize whole generations in Works and Days. But the paraenetic tradition does not follow his lead by e.g. mapping the decline from the Golden Age to Silver to Bronze onto unwelcome political changes, like the usurpation of the political power of the agathoi by the kakoi. It is perhaps possible that Aristophanes drew inspiration from Hesiod. 9 Translations adapted from Douglas E. Gerber (ed.), Greek Elegiac Poetry, Loeb Classical Library 258 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).
Dionysus’ Choice in Frogs and Aristophanes’ Paraenetic Pedigree
μήποτ᾿ ἐπαινήσῃς, πρὶν ἂν εἰδῇς ἄνδρα σαφηνέως, ὀργὴν καὶ ῥυθμὸν καὶ τρόπον ὅστις ἂν ᾖ. πολλοί τοι κίβδηλον ἐπίκλοπον ἦθος ἔχοντες κρύπτουσ᾿ ἐνθέμενοι θυμὸν ἐφημέριον.10 (963–6)
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Never praise a man until you know clearly what he is in temperament, disposition and way of life. Many in fact have a false, thievish character but keep it hidden, taking on an attitude appropriate to the day.
Anxiety over the difficulty of judging a person’s inner substance is also a popular sentiment in Greek poetry, and finds expression, for example, in a drinking song in which the speaker expresses a desire to open a friend’s chest to know his heart (PMG 889), and in Euripides’ Electra, where Orestes delivers a speech about the difficulty of assessing character (El. 368–90).11 While a “counterfeit” person in Theognis, for example, is untrustworthy, in the parabasis of Frogs “counterfeit” (kekibdêloumenois 721) does not mean simply fraudulent, but suggests inferior quality.12 This new slant on a venerable poetic metaphor takes its cue from the contemporary monetary crisis in Athens, in which debased coins with a bronze core replaced the old reliable Athenian “owls” of pure silver. Following the Spartan establishment of a garrison at Decelea in 413 BCE, access to the silver mines at Laurium was cut off. Because of the resulting silver shortage, Athens resorted to using gold from dedications on the Acropolis, as well as silver-plated bronze coins. That situation provides the impetus for applying the imagery of metals to the Athenian political climate: the city has turned away from its best and brightest citizens, just as it has rejected “the old [silver] coinage and the new gold currency” (720). The analogy is imperfect. The gold coins are of unquestionably high value, and they accordingly complicate the point the chorus is trying to make: it is a mistake to rely on new and inferior citizens (and coins) in place of unimpeachable citizens (and coins) of long standing. But gold qua metal was above reproach in ancient Greece, and lumping gold in with bronze would make the analogy almost impossible to maintain. Aristophanes does his best to smooth over—or pass over—this awkwardness by repeatedly emphasizing the base and the bronze, while letting gold drop by the wayside.
10 Testing men is equated (or contrasted) with testing metals also in Theognis 415–18, 447–52, 499– 502, 1105–6. Theognis also asserts that a reliable friend is worth his weight in gold or silver (77–8). 11 On kibdêlos and verifying a person’s character (a word itself originally meaning a “stamp of approval” on Greek coinage), see Seaford, Money (above, n. 3), pp. 153–5. 12 While kibdêlos is rare in archaic poetry, Theognis is probably at most an indirect source for Aristophanes’ kekibdêloumenois (721). The paraenetic tradition remained current in Athens during the late 5th century, and Aristophanes need not have had a specific predecessor or poem in mind. Words with the kibd- root also appear several times in Euripidean tragedy (Med. 516; Hipp. 616; El. 550; Ba. 475), one of the subjects of Frogs.
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Neither in Theognis nor in other Greek advice poetry do we find the explicit correlation of “noble” to “pure” and “despicable” to “counterfeit” apparent in the parabasis of Frogs. But since Greek aristocratic discourse does attribute personal moral excellence at least in part to pedigree, the notion that someone of inferior birth might be of inherently dubious character must have been familiar to Aristophanes’ audience.13 The poet underlines the parallel between Athens’ use of inferior coinage and her disenfranchisement of the kaloi kagathoi, and between the two paraenetic topoi he has borrowed, at the verbal level by repeating significant words when describing the two scenarios in close succession. The chorus first rails against “worthless bronze coins” (725 ponêrois chalkiois) and then criticizes the wretched new citizens in the same terms: inter alia they are “bronze” (730 chalkois) and “worthless and from worthless fathers” (731 ponêrois kak ponêrôn). The Johnny-come-lately status of both the debased coins and the ignoble new citizens is also driven home by being repeated in both halves of the antepirrhema: the coins were struck only yesterday or the day before (726), while the citizens getting all the attention are “the latest arrivals” (732). While Aristophanes may have Theognis specifically in mind, the purpose of the parabasis is not to quote the archaic poet per se, but to conjure up in the audience’s minds parainesis as a genre. What remains to be considered, is why Aristophanes referenced the archaic paraenetic tradition. His invocation of advice poetry in the parabasis can be meaningfully incorporated into a reading of the play as a whole and sheds light on the outcome of the contest between the two tragic poets at the end. At the end of Frogs, after the long but exasperatingly inconclusive agôn between Euripides and Aeschylus, Dionysus seemingly out of the blue announces a new criterion for judging the contest, one that is political and paraenetic rather than literary and aesthetic: “Whichever of you is going to give some good advice to the city” will be taken back to the world of the living (1420–1 ὁπότερος οὖν ἂν τῇ πόλει παραινέσειν / μέλλῃ τι χρηστόν). Here we are surely meant to recall the chorus’ claim in the parabasis to advise the city, with which Dionysus’ announcement shares unmistakable verbal echoes (686–7 τὸν ἱερὸν χορὸν δίκαιόν ἐστι χρηστὰ τῇ πόλει / ξυμπαραινεῖν καὶ διδάσκειν). Just as the chorus claims its right and duty to teach the city well, Dionysus is looking for a poet who can do the same; as Aeschylus himself says, as teachers instruct children, so poets instruct adults.14 But when Dionysus finally makes his choice between Aeschylus and Euripides, it is not clear that the poets’ answers to his political questions have been decisive. Dionysus tells them, “I will pick the one my psychê wants” (1468),15 and his psychê apparently prefers Aeschylus (1471). Only a little earlier, Dionysus was unwilling to choose one tragedian 13 Personal moral character, good or bad, is innate in Theognis 429–38; on the anxiety about diluting the aristocracy through breeding with inferior but wealthy families, see Theognis 183–92. 14 1054–5 τοῖς μὲν γὰρ παιδαρίοισίν / ἐστὶ διδάσκαλος ὅστις φράζει, τοῖσιν δ᾿ ἡβῶσι ποιηταί. 15 1468 αἱρήσομαι γὰρ ὅνπερ ἡ ψυχὴ θέλει.
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over the other (1411),16 and nothing has changed in 60 lines to prepare the audience for the selection of Aeschylus. Some scholars, including Dover and Sommerstein, question whether Dionysus has found a good reason for choosing Aeschylus, and suggest that the god means to distance himself from the choice of Aeschylus by invoking his psychê.17 Attempts to understand Dionysus’ choice are complicated by the textual problems that plague the final agôn of political advice, especially 1435–66, which seem to consist of a mix of lines from two different productions of the play.18 While these verses have understandably been the focus of attention in scholarly examinations of Dionsysus’ choice of Aeschylus, the questions about the text, especially which tragic poet speaks which advice and in what order—and in which performance—are probably insoluble. Moreover, the proposed restorations are problematized by the interpretive assumptions that motivate them. In this vein, Riu criticizes those who have reconstructed this scene “motivated by the need to justify Dionysus’ choice: if he takes Aeschylus, this must be because Aeschylus gives the best advice to the city.”19 Building an argument about Dionysus’ choice on any reconstruction of these lines thus risks circularity. What I take to be the best solution, however, to the problem of Dionysus’ choice fortuitously skirts the textual problems that plague the final round of the contest. As I argue below, by the end of the play any preference Dionysus might express would seem arbitrary, or even beside the point, because of the beating both tragic poets take during the agôn. Dover rightly characterizes Dionysus’ obedience to his psychê as “one more admission of inability to decide” and “an arbitrary, intuitive judgement, divorced from rational assessment of the poets’ answers to the questions he has just put to them,” and astutely compares this impulse of the god’s psychê to the pothos for Euripides that he says “struck my heart” (53–4) and inspired his journey to Hades in the first place.20 But Dover does not explore why Aristophanes presents 16 1411 ἅνδρες φίλοι, κἀγὼ μὲν αὐτοὺς οὐ κρινῶ. 17 K.J. Dover (ed.), Aristophanes. Frogs (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 19–20; Alan H. Sommerstein (ed.), Aristophanes. Frogs, The Comedies of Aristophanes 9 (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1996), on 1468. The strongest case in favor of Dionysus’ sincerity in choosing Aeschylus is presented by Zachary P. Biles, Aristophanes and the Poetics of Competition (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 211–56, who argues that Aristophanes favors Aeschylus and even identifies his own poetics with Aeschylus’, rather than pitting himself against both tragedians, as is argued below. Eissen and Gondicas (pp. 1022–39) examine how recent translations of Frogs reflect the translators’ interpretation of Aristophanes’ attitude toward Euripides and Aeschylus. 18 See esp. Sommerstein, Frogs (above, n. 17), pp. 286–8; also W.B. Stanford (ed.), Aristophanes. Frogs (London, New York: Macmillan, 1958), pp. 194–5; Dover, Frogs (above, n. 17), pp. 373–6. 19 Xavier Riu, Dionysism and Comedy (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), p. 126. Riu, p. 140, singles out Konstan in particular for “starting from the assumption that Aeschylus is the correct choice;” see David Konstan, “Politique, poétique et rituel dans les Grenouilles d’Aristophane,” Metis 1 (1987), pp. 291–308 (translated as Greek Comedy and Ideology [Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995], pp. 61–74). 20 Sommerstein, Frogs (above, n. 17), p. 292, makes a similar observation.
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Dionysus’ decision as arbitrary. What matters most about the final round of the agôn—and the textual problems of the scene do not detract from this point—is Dionysus’ new political yardstick for measuring the poets’ worthiness. His emphasis on politics at the end of Frogs is crucial for fitting the paraenetic pedigree of the parabasis into an interpretation of the play as a whole. Throughout the agôn, the characterization of both tragedians is sufficiently negative that in the end neither is redeemable as an adequate solution to Dionysus’ and Athens’ real need, for sage advice.21 Dionysus does distance himself from his psychê’s preference for Aeschylus, but the choice of Euripides would have been no less inexplicable. The harsh criticisms hurled back and forth by Euripides and Aeschylus, and at both by the chorus, raise serious doubts about either’s viability as an effective teacher of the city. In the end, the contest between the tragic poets proves something of a sham. To defend this interpretation, we must examine in detail the critiques of each tragic poet in the agôn. The pre-agonic choral song (814–29) and the preliminaries of the agôn proper (830–904) establish the main points of difference between Euripides and Aeschylus and the major lines of criticism elaborated throughout the contest. When the chorus introduces the two contestants (814–29), they are left unnamed, but it does not take long to figure out who is who. The ill-tempered “thunderer” (814 ἐριβρεμέτας) subject to bouts of “terrible madness” (816–17) can be no one but Aeschylus. His rage is compared to the destructive power of a storm: “with a roar he will hurl utterances bolted together, tearing off timbers with his gigantic blast” (823–5). The blustery storm is a recurring metaphor for Aeschylus’ poetic style, employed even by Dionysus, who calls for the sacrifice of a black lamb to appease “the whirlwind” (847–8 τυφώς) and warns Euripides to avoid Aeschylus’ “hailstorm” (852–3 τῶν χαλαζῶν). Euripides for his part is described as “sharp-talking” (815 ὀξύλαλον), a poet with an over-refined, slick style, and defined entirely by his tongue, which is “smooth, mouth-working, word-testing … and utterance-dissecting.”22 Moreover, the ridiculously hyperbolic, mock-epic tone of the chorus’ words before the competition contribute to the proceedings a feeling that the imminent contest should not be taken too seriously.23
21 At the same time, there is no need to descend to false equivalency. I agree with Biles, Aristophanes (above, n. 17), p. 250 n. 155, that Aeschylus does seem to win on points, even comfortably so. Yet Dionysus hesitates. The agôn between Better Argument and Worse Argument in Clouds presents a similar dynamic. Even if the values Better Argument represents have the Chorus’ (and our) sympathy, he is hardly impressive and his defeat is not undeserved; “Neither side in the great debate is given an admirable champion” (Jeffrey Henderson (trans.), Aristophanes: Acharnians, Lysistrata, Clouds [Newburyport: Focus, 1997], p. 154). 22 826–8 στοματουργὸς ἐπῶν βασανίστρια λίσπη / γλῶσσ᾿ … / ῥήματα δαιομένη. 23 For example 818–21 ἔσται δ᾿ ὑψιλόφων τε λόγων κορυθαίολα νείκη / σχινδάλαμοί τε παραξονίων σμιλεύματά τ᾿ ἔργων / φωτὸς ἀμυνομένου φρενοτέκτονος ἀνδρὸς ῥήμαθ᾿ ἱπποβάμονα (“We’ll have helmet-glinting struggles of tall-crested words, we’ll have linchpin-shavings and chisel-parings of artworks as a man fends off a thought-building hero’s galloping utterances.”).
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The first words of the two tragedians anticipate the lines of attack they pursue against one other throughout the agôn. Euripides accuses Aeschylus of putting on airs (833 ἀποσεμνυνεῖται) and “marvel-making” (834 ἐτερατεύετο)—what Hubbard calls Aeschylus’ “preoccupation with the fantastic and unnatural.”24 Euripides returns to this critique when he defends his staging of domestic plots as something with which the audience is familiar and as a basis on which his skill can accordingly be tested (959–61). The same cannot be said for Aeschylus’ subject matter, which drove people out of their minds and scared them (961–3). Euripides is most comfortable, however, attacking Aeschylus for his style, which is raw, undisciplined and unclear (837–9). The incomprehensibility of Aeschylus’ language is highlighted at 923–30, where “his pretentious and recherché diction,”25 filled with strange compound words, is “unknown to the audience” (925 ἄγνωτα τοῖς θεωμένοις) and “not easy to understand” (930 ἃ ξυμβαλεῖν οὐ ῥᾴδι᾿ ἦν).26 Euripides is able to get Dionysus to agree on this point: “By heaven, I myself have lain awake through long stretches of night trying to figure out the kind of bird a tawny horsecock is” (930–2). Aeschylus’ initial reaction is to counterattack, not on the ground of style as initiated by Euripides, but on content and morality. Euripides is criticized for debasing tragedy, for putting inappropriate and unworthy characters on stage. With characteristically absurd compounds, Aeschylus calls him a “gossip-gatherer, beggar-maker and rag-stitcher” (841–2 ὦ στωμυλιοσυλλεκτάδη / καὶ πτωχοποιὲ καὶ ῥακιοσυρραπτάδη) and then “the cripple-creator” (846 τὸν χωλοποιόν). Euripides is also accused of corrupting his audience with immoral stories, for example by “introducing unholy marriages into our craft” (850). While Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes taught the audience to want to be fierce in battle (1021–2), Euripides’ “whores,” Phaedra and Stheneboea, are improper role models for Athenian women (1043–51). According to Aeschylus, “the poet should hide what’s base (ponêron), not introduce it and not teach it” (1053–4). But Euripides responds by questioning whether the audience could ever understand Aeschylus’ instruction, obscured as it is by over-lofty expression (1056–60), to which Aeschylus responds by accusing Euripides of dubious subject matter (1061–6), and so on and so on. This pattern of Euripides emphasizing style and Aeschylus subject matter is consistent throughout the contest, and shows where each tragedian thinks the superiority of his technê lies. But it is also the reason the contest goes nowhere, never reaching a productive conclusion. Even the “weighing of words,” in which Aeschylus is the clear victor, fails to produce a winner. The meandering, aimless quality of the contest is caused in part by each poet choosing a different criterion by which to define the contest of who is “more talented in the art of poetry.”27 24 Thomas K. Hubbard, The Mask of Comedy: Aristophanes and the Intertextual Parabasis (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 211. 25 Hubbard, Mask (above, n. 24), p. 212. 26 Euripides twice describes Aeschylus as “unclear” (927 σαφὲς δ᾿ ἂν εἶπεν οὐδὲ ἕν, 1122 ἀσαφής). 27 767, 780 τὴν τέχνην σοφώτερος. Similar expressions at 770, 831.
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As the tragic poets talk past one another and run over the same ground again and again, they become increasingly petty and irritating, and the contest becomes more pointless and tiresome. From the beginning of the contest, the dominant strategy of the two rivals is established. Euripides wastes no time going on the offensive: “Very well, as for myself, what kind of poet I am, I’ll reveal in my final remarks; but first I’ll expose my opponent for the charlatan and quack that he was, and how he hoodwinked his audiences, whom he took over from Phrynichus already raised to be morons” (907– 10). Neither tragedian makes a serious effort to defend himself; both merely retaliate with counter-criticism. Aristophanes has arranged the contest this way, having the tragedians focus on one another’s faults, to maintain an overall negative tone, while allowing the respective merits of Aeschylus and Euripides to be passed over in virtual silence. This emphasis on “badness,” as Rosen calls it, allows Aristophanes to appropriate the virtues of each tragic poet’s sophia without praising either.28 While Aeschylus gets the better of Euripides in their exchanges, especially in the debate over prologues and in the weighing of words, he hardly emerges unscathed and is still roundly criticized by both the chorus and Dionysus, as was noted above. These exchanges between the competitors, and the often sarcastic comments by the onlookers, combine to undermine Euripides and Aeschylus alike. Even Dionysus’ praise of the dueling poets only serves to underline their inadequacies. Each has poetic talent, but it is incomplete. While Euripides is pleasing and Aeschylus wise,29 the implication here and throughout the contest is that neither is both. As was argued above, in the poets’ own speeches this polarity holds true: Aeschylus is preoccupied with moral issues and criticizes Euripides purely on such grounds, while Euripides focuses on the aesthetic aspects of tragedy, language and style. With the stature of both tragic poets diminished, and given these two and only these two options, Dionysus’ choice has been rendered irrelevant and the contest moot.30 But to say that both Aeschylus and Euripides fail as potential teachers of the city is to beg the question of who does qualify. In Frogs, Aristophanes claims that role for himself,31 and his use of paraenetic material, like that in Theognis, the teacher-poet
28 Ralph M. Rosen, “Badness and Intentionality in Aristophanes’ Frogs,” in: Ineke Sluiter, Ralph M. Rosen (eds.), Kakos: Badness and Anti-value in Classical Antiquity, Mnemosyne Supplements 307 (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2008), pp. 143–68. 29 1413 τὸν μὲν γὰρ ἡγοῦμαι σοφόν, τῷ δ᾿ ἥδομαι. 30 The animated television series South Park offers a modern parallel in an episode that parodies the 2004 US presidential election as a pointless choice between a “giant douche” and a “turd sandwich” (Season 8, Episode 8). 31 Bruce Heiden, “Tragedy and Comedy in the Frogs of Aristophanes,” Ramus 20 (1991), pp. 95–111, reaches the same conclusion. While Ralph M. Rosen, “Aristophanes’ Frogs and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 134 (2004), pp. 295–322, agrees that there is no clear winner in the agôn, he sees the play as a critique of reducing the evaluation of poetic artistry to didaxis (esp. pp. 314–20); see also Rosen, “Badness” (above, n. 28).
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par excellence, bolsters that claim. In the parabasis, Aristophanes proves that he is a competent heir to the legacy of didactic poetry Theognis represents. By convention, the parabasis represents the poet’s voice, and Aristophanes has chosen that opportunity in Frogs to “step aside” from the dramatic action and to anticipate Dionysus’ political concerns at the end of the agôn, by offering his own advice for Athens’ current political problems in quite “Theognidean” terms. And by adapting paraenetic themes, he shows his acquaintance with the poetic tradition he hopes to inherit and continue. Ultimately, Aristophanes’ critique of the contest between Aeschylus and Euripides is a critique of tragedy as a genre. Where both Aeschylus and Euripides fail, in possessing a complete poetic art that comprises both the aesthetic and the moral, the “pleasing” and the “wise,” as Dionysus defines it (1413), Aristophanes succeeds. As Hubbard points out, Aristophanes, ironically, defines his poetics as a mix of the Aeschylean and the Euripidean: “Aristophanes’ own drama aims to embrace Aeschylus’ fantastic imagination and moral purpose without his obscurantism and seeming authoritarianism; it favors Euripides’ everyday realism without his apparent moral indifference.”32 To reiterate a point made earlier, Aristophanes’ strategy of arranging a contest that amounts to little more than mutual slander allows him to borrow the positive elements of the two tragedians’ sophia, but without acknowledging their Aeschylean or Euripidean pedigree. Aeschylus, for example, speaks in accord with the chorus’ advice in the parabasis: he rejects putting “what’s base” (ponêron 1053) on stage, while they urge Athens to put an end to the political influence of the ponêroi. Aeschylus’ wisdom is never in doubt. But his style was an inappropriate vehicle for instruction, at least by the end of the 5th century. The chorus confirm Aristophanes’ poetic program when they pray to Demeter for the ability “to say many funny things (polla geloia) and many serious things (polla spoudaia)” (389–90). Aristophanes seems to be arguing throughout Frogs that precisely this two-fold character of comedy, its ability to entertain and to advise wisely, makes it better suited than tragedy, as defined by its poles, Aeschylus and Euripides, to be the new poetic medium of civic wisdom, following in Theognis’ footsteps. Dionysus’ attempt to resolve Athens’ political crisis by reviving one of the deceased tragic poets has been a waste of energy; he is looking in the wrong place, or perhaps, we might say, on the wrong stage. The city’s solutions are to be found in the other dramatic genre, in comedy, or at least in Aristophanes’ brand of it.
32 Hubbard, Mask (above, n. 24), p. 218.
J.R. Green
Two Phaedras: Euripides and Aristophanes? Abstract: A “new” vase with a comic scene at the Nicholson Museum in Sydney is unique in its subject-matter. It shows a parody of tragedy, arguably of Phaedra and her Nurse from Euripides’ Hippolytus. It should be dated to about 400 BC or even a little before. While important for its own sake, it also prompts discussion of the staging of Euripides’ play.
The Nicholson Museum at the University of Sydney has recently been presented with a Lucanian red-figured bell-krater that bears an unusual comic scene (Figs 1–4).1 It is 28.3cm high and has a diameter at the lip of 28.8/29.1cm.2 The vase has been put
I am happy to express my debt to Francesca Silvestrelli for her help on issues relating to early Lucanian red-figure, as well as to Sophie Morton in Sydney for much practical assistance in the preparation of this article. Alan Sommerstein has made invaluable comments on an earlier version of this article. I also make grateful acknowledgement to the following for photographs and permission to publish them: S. Paspalas and C. Avronidaki (Athens), M. Fodor (Boston), H. Pflug (Heidelberg), C. Sutherns (London), L. Grissom (Malibu), T.E. Cinquantaquattro, S. Saviana and A. Villone (Naples), A. Taylor (Oxford), T. Leroux (Paris), A. Pavone (Taranto), K.B. Zimmer (Tübingen) and I. Jung (Vienna). Abbreviations: Green-Handley, Images = R. Green and E. Handley, Images of the Greek Theatre (London: British Museum Press, 1995) Hart, Art Theater = M.L. Hart, The Art of Ancient Greek Theater (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010) IGD = A.D. Trendall and T.B.L. Webster, Illustrations of Greek Drama (London: Phaidon, 1971) LCS Suppl. 3 = A.D. Trendall, The Red-Figured Vases of Lucania, Campania and Sicily, Supplement 3, BICS Suppl. 41 (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1983) MNC = J.R. Green and A. Seeberg, revised and enlarged edition of T.B.L. Webster’s Monuments Illustrating New Comedy, i–ii, BICS Suppl. 50 (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1995) Rusten, Birth of Comedy = J. Rusten (ed.), The Birth of Comedy. Texts, Documents and Art from the Athenian Comic Competitions, 486–280 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011) RVAp = A.D. Trendall and A. Cambitoglou, The Red-Figured Vases of Apulia, i (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), ii (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982) Taplin, Pots & Plays = O. Taplin, Pots & Plays. Interactions between Tragedy and Greek Vase-painting of the Fourth Century B . C . (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007) Wieseler, Theatergebäude = F. Wieseler, Theatergebäude und Denkmäler des Bühnenwesens bei den Griechen und Römern (Göttingen: Vandenhoech & Ruprecht, 1851) 1 Inv. 2013.2, presented by James Ede in my honor. I seek to repay his kindness in acknowledging his help and friendship (and that of his father) over many years. The photographs and the profile drawing are by Rowan Conroy. I am grateful too to Michael Turner for facilitating my access to the vase. 2 The difference is due to the pressure exerted on the sides of the vase by the application of the handles while the vase was leather-hard.
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together from four or perhaps five large, sharp-edged fragments. Fortunately the joins do not occur at any critical points so far as the decoration is concerned. On the front, a break runs through the thighs of the right-hand figure; there is possibly some slight surface damage to the right hand of the left figure. On the reverse, an angled line runs through the right arm and shoulder of the left youth; there is some minor surface wear to the stele; on the right youth, a near-vertical line comes across his head, through his shoulder and down to the toes of his left foot. None of this makes any serious difference; in effect, the vase is near intact and in good condition.
Fig. 1: Lucanian red-figure bell-krater, University of Sydney, Nicholson Museum 2013.2, gift of James Ede in honour of Professor J.R. Green.
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Fig. 2: Detail of Fig. 1.
Fig. 3: Reverse of Fig. 1.
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Fig. 4: Profile drawing of the bell-krater.
The shape of the vessel is clear from the drawing (Fig. 4). In terms of its attribution and dating, we should note a pronounced in-curve in the upper wall. The zone running round the upper wall below the lip is offset above and below. There is a sharp edge at the top of the inner face of the lip. The handles are just slightly in-turned (a useful chronological indicator). The inner face of the foot meets the underside of the floor at a sharp angle, and there is also a fairly sharp carination at what one might call the shoulder of the inner face. The clay is well worked, without obvious inclusions, and has a smooth finish; it is a pale reddish brown (Munsell 7.5YR 6/4 light brown). There are faint traces of a preliminary sketch for the right-hand figure, particularly in the area of her raised arm, but its use is not readily detectable elsewhere. The black glaze is lustrous and fairly thickly applied, although less so on the handles, where it has fired more metallic. There is some crackling of the glaze in the
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area below the bed on side A, and the glaze is slightly misfired in an area behind the upper body of the left-hand figure. Reserved are the inner faces of the handles and the handle-zones, a band at the junction of upper wall and lip on the inner face, and another just within the edge of the lip; also bands above and below the raised zone below the lip, an incised groove at the junction of stem and foot, the vertical face of the foot and the whole of the underside. There is no evidence of added color in the figure-work, nor is there any trace of labels for the figures. All the reserved surfaces are reddened, in places somewhat unevenly, except for the underside where there are, however, two short strokes of strong red, probably ancient, on either side of the floor; their purpose is uncertain. There is also a modern drilled hole where a clay sample has been taken. There are no graffiti. Side A has a two-figure composition with a female figure moving across from the left toward a woman who leans back on a bed. Their clothing comes to the ground, so that one sees nothing of their feet. The hands are simply done. There is plentiful use of relief line for details, and we may note it especially for the webbing on the horizontal frame of the bed and to show the roughness of the hair of the figure on the left. There is no relief contour. The reverse has two cloaked youths about a stele. The hair of the left youth is curlier than that of the right. The form of his ear is original and not due to damage. On the reverse, the right youth has obvious footwear; for the left figure, shoes are indicated only by an oblique line on the left foot. (What seems to be a line on the right foot is in fact a minor crack.) Note that the outer edges of their cloaks are vertical so as to provide a clear edge to the scenes. The right youth has a zigzag in the bunch of drapery hanging behind him. In the laurel above the head of the left youth is a blob of miltos with a fine glaze line about it at the right. I do not know what, if anything, it was meant to represent. There is a band of maeander with two saltire squares under the figure-scenes on each side; they do not extend around the vase, nor is there any decoration below the handles. Running round the vase in the zone below the lip is a band of laurel.3 To try to pin down the vase’s date and stylistic context, it is worth looking briefly for other works by the same hand. Since the principal scene is so individual, it is easier to begin with the reverse, which has a standard scheme of cloaked youths facing each other about a stele. The hand seems to be the same as that on the bellkrater in the Getty Museum, 80.AE.139.2 (Fig. 5a).4 Compare the handling of the
3 I use the term “laurel” in a conventional sense, regardless of whether it is laurel, olive or myrtle. 4 LCS Suppl. 3, 22 no. 306e, pl. 3, 4–5; CVA (4) pl. 213. For work on early South Italian vase-painting since Trendall, see e.g. M. Denoyelle and M. Iozzo, La céramique grecque d’Italie méridionale et de Sicile : Productions coloniales et apparentées du VIIIe au IIIe siècle av. J.-C., Vol. 4 (Paris: Picard 2009); M. Denoyelle, “La ceramica. Appunti sulla nascita delle produzioni italiote,” in: Atene e la Magna Grecia dall’età arcaica all’ellenismo. Atti del quarantasettesimo convegno di studi sulla Magna Grecia (Taranto 27–30 settembre 2007) (Taranto: Istituto per la storia e l’archeologia della Magna Grecia,
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drapery, the treatment of the hair, the drawing of the eyes, the slightly curious form of the ears, the placement of the ear of the left-hand figure, even the style of the band of maeander below. The front of the vase (Fig. 5b) also has a number of elements in common with what we see on the Sydney piece. The footwear of the right-hand figure of the reverse and the satyr of the front is of a kind common in this stylistic area. Trendall thought the Getty vase was probably “by a follower of the Amykos Painter nearing the Creusa Painter.” Elements of the drawing, for example the “dropped ear,” occur in work by the Creusa Painter. The drawing on the reverse of our vase is also close to that of a fragmentary bell-krater in the Getty, 82.AE.39.7 (Fig. 6).5 Trendall, quoting a number of parallels, saw this as early work by the Creusa Painter himself. The drawing of the eyes in this case is comparable with that seen in his more developed work. Another piece that comes close is the bell-krater formerly in the Borowski collection on which one of the youths on side B pours wine from a chous. (Side A has an experimental but not very successful scene of Dionysus attended by a satyr and maenad). Trendall saw it as a useful example of the painter’s early work, particularly in the handling of the youths on the reverse.6 The drawing on our vase seems to me to stand very close to the early work of the Creusa Painter. It would therefore date to around 400 BC or even a little before. Such an attribution and date are supported by analysis of the shape of the vase which, as Francesca Silvestrelli points out to me, seems to be consistent with bell-kraters produced in the later stages of the Amykos workshop, as is also suggested by the slightly up-turned handles. Those decorated by the Creusa and Dolon Painters in general represent something of a later development. The Creusa Painter himself seems normally not to have left the vertical edge of the foot of the vase reserved, except in his earliest work, and one may notice the unusual direction of the laurel on the lip.
2008), pp. 339–49; F. Silvestrelli, “L’officina dei pittori di Creusa, di Dolone e dell’Anabates a Metaponto,” in: E. Lippolis (ed.), Arte e artigianato in Magna Grecia (Naples: Electa Napoli, 1996), pp. 400– 2; and, “Le fasi iniziali della ceramica a figure rosse nel Kerameikos di Metaponto,” in: M. Denoyelle, E. Lippolis, M. Mazzei, C. Pouzadoux (eds.), La céramique apulienne. Bilan et perspectives. Actes de la Table Ronde organisée par l’École française de Rome en collaboration avec la Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Puglia et le Centre Jean Bérard de Naples (Naples, Centre Jean Bérard, 30 novembre– 2 décembre 2000) (Naples: Centre Jean Bérard, 2005), pp. 113–23. One should also bring Trendall’s no. 306f into the equation, not least for its reverse which is close to ours. It stands in a similar relationship to earliest Creusa Painter. 5 LCS Suppl. 3, 46 no. C31; CVA (4) pl. 214. 6 LCS Suppl. 1, 15 no. 422a, pl. 5, 1–2; LCS Suppl 3, 44 no. C4; N. Leipen et al., Glimpses of Excellence (Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1984) no. 18; Royal-Athena Galleries (New York), Art of the Ancient World XII (2001) no. 239 and currently (2013) back with Royal-Athena. The form of this bell-krater is of the broader type with spreading wall.
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Fig. 5a–b: Lucanian red-figure bell-krater, Malibu. J. Paul Getty Museum, Villa Collection 80.AE.139.2. Gift of Robert Blaugrund.
Fig. 6: Fragmentary Lucanian red-figure bell-krater, Malibu. J. Paul Getty Museum, Villa Collection 82.AE.39.7. Gift of Herbert L. Lucas.
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We cannot for the moment demonstrate that the scene on the front is by the same hand as the reverse. Vase-painters in this part of the world sometimes collaborated on a single vessel, at times even on a single side of a single vessel; but even if the two sides turn out to be by two different hands, it is a reasonable asumption that the work was carried out in physical proximity, in a single shop within the space of a single day.7 That the vase was made in Metaponto rather than Taranto, for example, is important in many respects. For one, in a continuation of Adamesteanu’s exploration of the site in the 1960s, which included the discovery of potters’ workshops, serious work is going on at the moment defining and exploring the local product, and it is increasingly clear that at this period, the years shortly before and after 400 BC , the city was just as active as Taranto and just as closely in touch with Athens in terms of both vase-painting and performances of theater.8 We may now look more closely at the front of the vase (Fig. 2). The style and the detail of the figures make it clear that we are dealing with a scene from contemporary comedy. The composition is simple: a female moving forward from the left (her left leg is forward) toward a woman who appears to be falling back on a bed with a pillow at its head. The scene is unique, and this is itself worth emphasizing. There is no other example of a scene of this date anywhere that concentrates on women in this way. Indeed, the absence of women from representations of comedy at this period, as distinct from later, has been noticed by both Jeffrey Henderson and me.9 Most of what we have from this phase is male-dominated and often depicts physical action, with figures running around and hitting one another (or threatening to). One thinks of the little
7 For collaboration on a single vase in Metaponto, see e.g. M. Denoyelle, “Style individuel, style local et centres de production: retour sur le cratère des ‘Karneia’,” Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome. Antiquité 114 (2002), pp. 587–609. For collaboration on a single side of a single vase in Metaponto, see M. Denoyelle and F. Silvestrelli, MMJ, forthcoming. 8 For a recent discussion of theatrical links between Athens and Metaponto, see M. Nafissi, “Atene e Metaponto: ancora sulla Melanippe Desmotis e i Neleidi,” Ostraka 6 (1997), pp. 337–57. For reference to tragic themes in this area in early South Italian red-figure, see in addition to Taplin, Pots & Plays, M. Denoyelle, “Il mito greco in Occidente nel V. secolo: Metaponto ed Herakleia,” in: Immagine e mito nella Basilicata antica (Potenza, Museo Provinciale, dicembre 2002–marzo 2003) (Venosa: Osanna edizioni d’arte, 2002), pp. 104–12. 9 J. Henderson, “Pherekrates and the Women of Old Comedy,” in: D. Harvey and J. Wilkins (eds.), The Rivals of Aristophanes. Studies in Athenian Old Comedy (London: Classical Press of Wales, 2000), pp. 135–50, examines the slowness of female characters to appear, and in doing so points out that what we have of Aristophanes is the political plays. Henderson includes a checklist of plays in which women seem likely to have had speaking-parts, grouped by character-types or role. In “Strumpets on Stage: The Early Comic Hetaera,” Dioniso 1 (2002), pp. 78–87, he gives an overview of the use of hetairai on the stage of Old Comedy. There is nothing in particular on staging or physical presentation here, but the article forms a handy general point of reference on the literary evidence. I independently made some comments on the same issues from the point of view of the material evidence in “Comic Cuts: Snippets of Action on the Greek Comic Stage,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 45 (2001), pp. 37–64.
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Lucanian calyx-krater in Berlin with one figure making as if to hit another, whom he holds tethered by a rope round his neck;10 the vigorous scene from the so-called Goose Play on the calyx-krater in New York (now being shown to have Metapontine connections);11 the Apulian bell-krater in Sydney with a pretend Heracles pursuing a real Heracles as he runs off with a piece of bread or cake;12 and the old man Chiron being heaved up the steps to the stage on the bell-krater in the British Museum.13 Even the Choregos Vase seems to show lively argument involving movement about the stage.14
10 Berlin F 3043, said to be from Apulia; AZ 7 (1849), pp. 42–3, pl. 5, 1 (Panofka); M. Bieber, Die Denkmäler zum Theaterwesen im Altertum (Berlin, Leipzig: Vereinigung wissenschaftlicher Verleger, 1920), p. 152 no. 154, pl. 85d; and The History of the Greek and Roman Theater (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 19612), p. 140 fig. 513; LCS p. 43 no. 212, pl. 16, 5–6; Hart, Art Theater, p. 106 fig. 3.2; L. Todisco, La ceramica a figure rosse delle Magna Grecia e della Sicilia (Roma: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 2010), pl. 8, 5; K. Bosher (ed.), Theater outside Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 293 fig. 14.1 (Green). The subject made Panofka think of Pherecrates’ Doulodidaskalos. He had bought it in Naples in 1847. I made something of the same point about styles of presentation in P. Easterling and E. Hall (eds.), Greek and Roman Actors. Aspects of an Ancient Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 93–126. 11 New York 1924.97.104, from Ruvo; AJA 56 (1952), pp. 193–5, pl. 32 (Beazley); EAA iii, 706–7 figs. 864–5 (Trendall); Phoenix 51 (1997), pl. 2b (Csapo); Antike Kunst 41 (1998), pl. 5, 2 and pl. 6, 1 (Schmidt); A.C. Montanaro, Ruvo di Puglia e il suo territorio. Le necropoli (Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 2007), pp. 910–11 no. 324.5, fig. 876; C.A. Picon et al., Art of the Classical World in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yale University Press, 2007), p. 158 fig. 179 (color); Taplin, Pots & Plays, p. 13 fig. 5 (color); Brill’s Companion to the Study of Greek Comedy (Leiden: Brill, 2010), p. 76 fig. 3 (Green); Hart, Art Theater, p. 112 no. 50 (color ill.); Rusten, Birth of Comedy, p. 454 (ill.); RVAp i, 46 no. 3/7. Martine Denoyelle and Francesca Silvestrelli demonstrate in an article forthcoming in MMJ that the vase is not by the Tarporley Painter, as has long been believed, but by the Dolon Painter, who was normally based in Metaponto. 12 Sydney, Nicholson Museum 88.02, A.D. Trendall, “A Phlyax Bell-Krater by the Lecce Painter,” in: A. Cambitoglou and E.G.D. Robinson (eds.), Classical Art in the Nicholson Museum (Mainz: von Zabern, 1995), pp. 125–31, pll. 39, 40, 1 and color pl. 5, 1; Easterling and Hall, Greek and Roman Actors (above, n. 10), p. 112 fig. 21 (Green); Green et al., Ancient Voices, Modern Echoes. Theatre in the Greek World (Exhib.Cat., Sydney: Nicholson Museum, 2003), pp. 49–50 no. 17 (color ills.); CVA (1) pll. 16–17; RVAp Suppl. ii, 28 no. 5/200b. Ian Storey, “The Curious Matter of the Lenaia of 422 BC,” in: D.J. Phillips and D. Pritchard (eds.), Sport and Festival in the Ancient Greek World (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2003), pp. 281–92, would link the scene with Leukon’s Presbeis, but the grounds seem to me tenuous. 13 London 1849.6–20.13 (F 151), e.g. Wieseler, Theatergebäude, p. 60, pl. IX, 13; Bieber, Denkmäler (above, n. 10), pl. 145 no. 109, 82; LIMC iii, Cheiron *103; Taplin, Comic Angels, pl. 12, no. 6; GreenHandley, Images, p. 54 fig. 28 (color); M. McDonald and J.M. Walton (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 259 fig. 27; Hart, Art Theater, p. 116 no. 53; Rusten, Birth of Comedy, p. 441 (ill.); Bosher, Theater outside Athens (above, n. 10), p. 297 fig. 14.3 (Green); RVAp i, 100 no. 4/252. 14 In Rome, on deposit with the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali. RVAp Suppl. ii, 7–8 no. 1/ 124, pl. 1, 3; A Passion for Antiquities: Ancient Art from the Collection of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman (Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1994), pp. 125–8 no. 56 (color ill.); Green, Theatre in Ancient Greek Society (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 46, fig. 2.21; P.E. Easterling (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 75 fig. 9 (Taplin); Antike Kunst 41
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From Athens itself around 415–410 BC we have the set of polychrome jugs with a range of lively topics including a man rowing a fish, two running obeliaphoroi, a running parasite and two gesticulating naked figures named Dionysos and Phor[mio].15 Because of the limits imposed by the available space on our vase, the scene is more compact or squashed together than it would have been onstage. Thus the woman on the right is lying or in the act of falling back on her bed, which would of course have been longer onstage in the original performance. Indeed, the director of the play would doubtless have used a real bed rather than something specially constructed and abnormally short. The bed is of a type still seen quite commonly on the Indian subcontinent, little more than a frame with cross-webbing. The figure approaching from the left must be a servant or slave. She wears a simple garment without any tie around the waist, and more particularly, her mask is ugly and her hair rough—very close in appearance to that of male slaves. She has never been near a hairdresser (even within the house). As part of the definition of her character, she is given large ears, a sure sign of stupidity for contemporary Athenians. Her patent stupidity alone is probably enough to make for humorous dialogue, even if we cannot know how well she spoke Greek.16 We may note in passing the way the actor’s sleeves come down to the wrist (as also on the left arm of the woman on the bed); this is standard costume as well as further confirmation, should it be needed, that we are dealing with a comic performance.
(1998), pl. 7, 1–2 (Schmidt); Colloque Le théâtre grec antique: la tragédie. Actes, Cahiers de la Villa ‘Kérylos’ no. 8 (Paris, 1998), p. 202 fig. 5 (color) (Pasquier); Taplin, Pots & Plays, p. 28 fig. 7 (color); McDonald and Walton, Cambridge Companion (above, n. 13), p. 213 fig. 17; L. Godart and S. De Caro (eds.), Nostoi. Capolavori ritrovati: Roma, Palazzo del Quirinale, Galleria di Alessandro VII, 21 dicembre 2007–2 marzo 2008 ([Rome]: Segretariato generale della Presidenza della Repubblica, 2007), no. 45 (color ill.); Repatriated Masterpieces. Nostoi; New Acropolis Museum, 24–9 to 31–12–2008 (Athens: Ministry of Culture, General Directorate of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage, 2008), no. 51 (color ill.). 15 M. Crosby, Hesperia 24 (1955), pp. 76–84; T.B.L. Webster, Hesperia 29 (1960), pp. 261–3. 16 For barbarian slaves in comedy, see V. Ehrenberg, The People of Aristophanes. A Sociology of Old Attic Comedy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1951), pp. 165–91 (still valuable); T. Long, Barbarians in Greek Comedy (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986), pp. 108–25. Thracian nurses were famous, and one thinks of the women named Thratta, real or imagined, at Ach. 273, V. 828, Th. 279ff. But while male slaves were often given ethnic names or names like Xanthias and Pyrrhias in comedy, females normally were not; see e.g. D. Wiles, “Greek Theatre and the Legitimation of Slavery,” in: L.J. Archer (ed.), Slavery and Other forms of Unfree Labour (London: Routledge, 1988), pp. 53–67; I.E. Stefanis, Ο δούλος στις κωμωδίες του Αριστοφάνη. Ο ρόλος του και η μορφή του (Thessalonike: Aristotelio Panepistemio Thessalonikes, 1990). Cf. D. Lewis, Classical Quarterly NS 61 (2011), p. 94. The costume and masks of Old to Middle Comedy gave great attention to grooming in distinguishing characters, and upper-class free men have carefully barbered hair, whereas that of slaves is rough and spiky. For comparable aspects of real life, see S. Lewis, “Barbers’ Shops and Perfume Shops. ‘Symposia without Wine’,” in: A. Powell (ed.), The Greek World (London – New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 432– 41. On the barber’s as a favorite place for male gossip, see also V. Hunter, “Gossip and the Politics of Reputation in Classical Athens,” Phoenix 44 (1990), pp. 299–325.
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Fig. 7: Apulian red-figure oinochoe with comic scene, University of Sydney, Nicholson Museum 75.02.
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Fig. 8: Apulian red-figure bell-krater with comic scene, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum IV 466.
To return to the woman on the bed, within the terms of the depiction, her dress is finer and more elegant, and there is a headband around her curly hair. She is not beautiful: she has the mask of a wife. In Greek comedy of the later 5th and the 4th centuries, wives (as distinct from lovers or what one might describe as women wanted as wives) are never beautiful or attractive. They are given blunt noses, not straight ones. Their hair is usually shown as a tight curly mop without elegance or style and is often held by a simple, undecorated band around the head. Their mouths are wide with heavy lips. And in some scenes, such as that on an Apulian red-figure jug also in the Nicholson Museum (Fig. 7), made a generation or two later, they talk a lot and can be domineering.17 One might compare an amusing scene on a bell-krater in Vienna 17 Sydney 75.02, Münzen und Medaillen (Basle), Auktion 51 (14 March 1975), no. 177 (ill.); U. Höckmann & A. Krug (eds.), Festschrift für Frank Brommer (Mainz 1977), pp. 67–76, pl. 22 (Cambitoglou); Green et al., Ancient Voices (above, n. 12), p. 52 no. 19 (color ill.); CVA (1) pll. 48–9; RVAp i, 118 no. 5/ 141, pl. 39, 5. Attributed to the Truro Painter; toward the middle of the 4th century.
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of the second quarter of the 4th century (Fig. 8),18 or the man wearing a pilos in confrontation with his wife on an oinochoe in Taranto (Fig. 9).19 Compare also the wife on a fragment of a bell-krater in Tübingen (Fig. 10).20 Another point these examples demonstrate is that despite the paucity of representations of housewives in the surviving evidence for comedy at the transition from Old to Middle Comedy, the mask-type was already firmly established and changed little over the next half-century. As an aside, it is interesting that Helen is given the same hairstyle, if a very different kind of face, as she sits on Leda’s knee holding the egg of Nemesis (from which she was born) on an Apulian red-figure calyx-krater in Taranto (Fig. 11).21 The vase dates to the beginning of the 4th century. Although Helen must in point of fact have been regarded as young here and still as it were “at home,” the painter nonetheless thought of her as the wife of Menelaus who appears in the upper part of the scene with Thersites. The body language exhibited on our vase is fascinating. The painter is attempting to convey to the viewer the character, movement, action and even dialogue as they were enacted. In doing so, since he cannot show a sequence of gestures, he gives a compacted view. Two arms, two gestures, all in addition to the way the body is shown. As we have seen, the servant is given a short, stocky body; she is graceless. The gesture of her left hand, toward the chin, is a common one of shock or dismay, prompted here by the sight of her mistress’ condition. With her right hand, she makes 18 Vienna IV 466, PhV2 47 no. 66; G. von Lücken, Gr.Vasen (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1923), pl. 119; A. Bernhard-Walcher (ed.), Alltag, Feste, Religion. Antikes Leben auf griechischen Vasen (Exhib.Cat. Innsbruck-Klagenfurt-Vienna-Linz: Kunsthistorisches Museum, 1991–1992), pp. 120–1 no. 62 (ill.); M.M. Grewenig (ed.), Antike Welten. Meisterwerke griechischer Malerei aus dem Kunsthistorischen Museum Wien (Ostfildern-Ruit: Verlag Gerd Hatje, 1998), p. 73 (color ill.); RVAp i, 265 no. 10/36, pl. 88, 1–2. Attributed to the Painter of Heidelberg U 6. 19 Taranto 54724, from Taranto, via Duca degli Abruzzi t. 50. PhV2 64 no. 121; BdA 49 (1964), p. 18 fig. 7 (Lo Porto); O. Touchefeu-Meynier, Thèmes odysséens dans l’art antique (Paris: De Boccard, 1968), p. 234 n. 20, pl. 36; A. Alessio et al., Catalogo del Museo Nazionale di Taranto I, 2 (Taranto: La Colomba, 1990), pl. 6b (color); B. Andreae and C.P. Presicce (eds.), Ulisse. Il mito e la memoria (Exhib.Cat. Rome: Progetti Museali, 1996), p. 440 no. 6.12 (color ill.); A. Hoffmann, Grabritual und Gesellschaft: Gefäßformen, Bildthemen und Funktionen unteritalisch-rotfiguriger Keramik aus der Nekropole von Tarent, Internationale Archäologie Band 76 (Rahden/Westf.: Lidorf, 2002), p. 236, Grave 252 no. 1, pl. 31, 2; A. D’Amicis et al., Attori e maschere del teatro antico. La documentazione del Museo di Taranto (Exhib. Cat. Taranto: Museo Archeologico Nazionale, 2004–2005), p. 36 upper left. Sometimes taken, e.g. by Lo Porto, to be Odysseus and Penelope (or Calypso), but the fact that the man wears a pilos need not make him Odysseus. The woman certainly cannot be Calypso. I take the man to be a traveler returned home; note that he wears a wreath. 20 Tübingen S./10 1680, from Taranto. PhV2 72 no. 150; CVA (7) pl. 3, 4. Mid-4th century; perhaps to be attributed to the Cotugno Painter. 21 Taranto 52230, from Via G. Giovine, 4 August 1952. Attributed to the workshop of the Painter of the Birth of Dionysos. E. Paribeni, Immagini di vasi apuli (Rome: Associazione fra le Casse di Risparmio Italiane, 1964), no. 11, pll. 12–13; RVAp i, 39, 2/25, pl. 12, 2a–b; Lippolis, Arte e artigianato (above, n. 4), pp. 415–16 no. 354. Both Leda and Helen are labeled.
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the well-known gesture of asking a question that really needs an answer, indeed a positive answer. The gesture still survives in Greek lands and to some extent elsewhere.22 The wife leans or collapses back against her pillow, this in itself indicating weakness or a lack of authority in front of her servant, or else giving some sense of fainting, whether for joy or grief or both. Her left hand for some reason (the stupidity of her servant? the hopelessness of her own situation?) makes a gesture of despair. Her right hand comes over the back of her head. This gesture with her right hand is well known from representations of the symposium, particularly when there is music in addition to the wine. It describes a condition one might describe as swooning (to use an old-fashioned term) or (metaphorically) being carried away. There are many examples from the heyday of symposium-scenes in Athens in the early 5th century. An example from near the time of our vase is an extract from a symposium on an Attic red-figure bell-krater fragment found in Naukratis (Fig. 12).23 Our woman is thus at the very least carried away, in a high emotional state. Whether she is fainting for joy, in ecstatic pleasure or in grief at tragic news, is a question we must leave open for the moment. The painter is employing gestures well known in art to convey what is happening. We cannot guarantee that the actor on stage on the occasion the painter recalls made identical gestures, but in broad terms it seems likely. Gestures in art recall gestures in life, and if an actor in a Greek theater wanted to make his meaning clear, he would tend to use the same conventions. He was acting to a large audience in a large space, and was wearing a mask that did not permit facial expression. While a good actor could persuade people to see change of expression by the way he angled the mask to the light (of the sun) and shifted his shoulders, he would reinforce it with gesture, not least for the members of the audience sitting in the top rows. Who is this emotional woman? Aristophanes and visual sources suggest two prime candidates from the tragic stage: Stheneboea and Phaedra. Both fancied men who were portrayed as innocent of wrong-doing, who indeed had their minds elsewhere. In her passion for Bellerophon, Stheneboea was not only contemplating adultery, but breaking the codes of honor in a situation of guest-friendship. In order for the story to continue with Bellerophon’s encounter with the Chimaera in Lycia, her false accusation to her husband Proetus was a necessary component, but she seems generally to have been presented as filled with lust and then spite, without much soul-searching such as we seem to have in our parody.
22 On the gesture of this style of question, see my notes in “Comic Cuts” (above, n. 6). 23 Oxford, Ashmolean Museum AN 1896-1908-G.732, CVA (2) pl. 67, 8. The item is listed, described and illustrated with the registration number AshmLoan.350 in the British Museum’s website Naukratis: Greeks in Egypt, compiled by a group led by Alexandra Villing (see “online research catalogues”). It is dated to about 410 BC .
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Fig. 9a–b: Apulian red-figure oinochoe with comic scene, Taranto 54724, from Taranto. Su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali – Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Puglia – Archivio fotografico.
Fig. 10: Fragment of Apulian red-figure bell-krater with comic scene, Tübingen S./10 1680, from Taranto.
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Fig. 11: Apulian red-figure calyx-krater, Taranto 52230, from Taranto. Detail with Leda and Helen. Su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali – Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Puglia – Archivio fotografico.
Fig. 12: Attic red-figure bell-krater fragment. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum AN 1896-1908-G.732, from Naukratis. © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. Photography by British Museum staff.
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Fig. 13: Apulian red-figure stamnos, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 1900.349, from Gela. Stheneboea, Proetos, Bellerophon and Pegasus. Photograph © 2013. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Although Euripides’ Stheneboea does not survive, it was evidently hugely popular. In 2007, Taplin in his Pots & Plays counted about 20 examples of the story, many doubtless inspired by the play at one level or another.24 Euripides’ tragedy, probably produced around 430 BC , became notorious for its portrayal of an adulterous woman. The best-known depiction is probably the Ariadne Painter’s stamnos in Boston of about 400 BC or soon after (Fig. 13).25 It shows Proetus handing the letter to Bellero-
24 Taplin, Pots & Plays, pp. 201–4. See earlier IGD III.3, 44–6. 25 Boston 1900.349, from Gela. RVAp 1/104; LIMC vii, s.v. Proitos 3*; IGD III.3, 45; J.M. Padgett et al., Vase-Painting in Italy (Boston: MFA, 1993), no. 8, 62–4 and color pl. 2; N. Kaltsas (ed.), Agon (Exhib.Cat. Athens: Hypourgeio Politismou, Ethniko Archaiologiko Mouseio, 2004), pp. 302–3 no. 179; Taplin, Pots & Plays, p. 202 no. 72 (ill.).
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phon as a lively Pegasus waits ready. Stheneboea stands in front of a doorway, her left hand forward, her right hand plucking at the shoulder of her chiton. Aphrodite does something similar as she attracts or enjoys Adonis’ attention on the squat lekythos in Paris decorated by Aison.26 Stheneboea’s head is not covered (unlike the goddess Aphrodite’s). A relationship to a doorway is a common convention in the depiction of wives and hetairai, indicating a relationship to the/a house in general or indeed to the doorway to her quarters from the courtyard within the house or palace. In this case, this must be the principal door, as the context makes clear. At the same time, the depiction of her head is interesting, with all it implies about her character (see below), as is the way she pulls at her clothing. The case of Phaedra was not dissimilar. There is again a passion for another man present in the household, although in this case Hippolytus, her husband’s son by his earlier relationship with Antiope, is present as a member of the household. In this case, however, the wife’s pretence of a relationship with the presumably handsome young man prompts Theseus’ curse and Hippolytus’ death. This outcome is integral to the story, and fore-knowledge of it prompts a different attitude on the part of the audience toward the sequence of events and the behavior of Phaedra. Euripides wrote two Hippolytus plays. In the first version, Hippolytus Calyptomenus, he is said to have taken a traditional line and to have presented Phaedra as a wicked woman. A number of his early plays seem to have involved “bad women,” including Aigeus, Phoinix and Peleus as well as Stheneboea and Bellerophon.27 In his surviving Hippolytus (Stephanephorus) of 428 BC , Euripides rehabilitated Phaedra, as Gorgias was to do with Helen within a few years’ time and Euripides with his Helen of 412 BC . 28 In this case, Euripides made it Aphrodite who prompted Phaedra to fall in love with Hippolytus against her natural instincts and upbringing. At first Phaedra resists, in that major scene at lines 170ff, finally admitting her dilemma to her nurse. The latter then tells Hippolytus, and the poet has him launch into a fierce denunciation of women, a passage that became something of a locus classicus for misogyny. It is tempting to see our lady as Phaedra, both because of her highly emotional state and because of the involvement of the servant or nurse: she is important here, whereas she has no visible involvement in the Bellerophon story.29
26 Paris, Louvre MNB 2109, from Athens, ARV2 1175, 7; L. Burn, The Meidias Painter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pl. 25b–d; H.A. Shapiro, Personifications in Greek Art (Zurich: Akanthus, 1993), figs. 137–8. 27 The last cannot be later than 426 BC because of the reference in Acharnians. See for example T.B.L. Webster, The Tragedies of Euripides (London: Methuen, 1967), pp. 77–86. 28 There is also Isocrates to consider. On these issues and their relative chronology, see recently I.C. Storey, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 55.2 (2012), pp. 1–19, esp. 12. 29 The apparent agony, not to say aporia of the woman suggests the surviving Hippolytus as the play and scene parodied rather than Euripides’ earlier version.
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Fig. 14: Apulian red-figure calyx-krater, London 1870.7-10.2 (F 272), from Anzi. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
In interpreting the scene on our vase, we are concerned not so much with Euripides’ play and our reactions to it—a matter on which there is a huge bibliography—but with contemporary ancient reactions. Kovacs, for example, has explicitly pursued such an approach in his discussions of the play.30 In terms of the material evidence, a fine vase in the British Museum takes us some way, even though it is half a century or more later than ours (Fig. 14).31 The decoration on the front is divided into two registers. In the lower part are centaurs behaving badly at the wedding of Peirithous,
30 D. Kovacs, The Heroic Muse: Studies in the Hippolytus and Hecuba of Euripides (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), esp. pp. 9–10. 31 British Museum 1870.7–10.2 (F 272), from Anzi. E. Bielefeld, Zur griechischen Vasenmalerei des 6. bis 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. (Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1952), fig. 45; A.D. Trendall, South Italian Vase Painting (London: British Museum, 1966), color pl. A; IGD III.3, 24; D. Williams, Greek Vases (London: British Museum Press, 1985), p. 61 fig. 69 (color); A.D. Trendall, Red Figure Vases of South Italy and Sicily
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the friend of Theseus, and the theme (although obvious) is identified by labels. The upper register (Fig. 15), despite a number of difficulties, has often been interpreted as reflecting the theme of Euripides’ Hippolytus. (The link between the two levels is perhaps to be found in Theseus himself and problems with the marital condition.) In this respect, it is interesting that the object in the middle of the upper scene is the royal marriage-bed—and there we can already detect a link with our vase. Oliver Taplin followed Trendall in arguing that the female posing extravagantly in front of it is the goddess Aphrodite, and although I cannot agree with all aspects of his interpretation, he is surely correct in this. Note her long curling hair, and contrast it with the hair of the other women, which is covered and shorter (apart from that of the servant or slave on the far left, who in these terms does not count). Her hair is also gathered on top of her head, a mark of a physically attractive woman and a style often given to Eros in this period.32 Note too the prominent earrings and the necklace, the pose and the diaphanous drapery that shows off her body. The vase-painter reasonably took Aphrodite to be the driving force behind this story, and it is instructive that he saw the play this way; indeed, this is an important link between pot and play.33 The goddess speaks the prologue, and her annoyance at Hippolytus’ devotion to Artemis and his disregard of her underpins the storyline. The old servant to the right (visible in Fig. 14) has a crucial role in the later part of the play, when he vividly reports the disaster that overtook Hippolytus as he tried to escape (Hipp. 1173–1254).34 It is interesting that the majority of the seven or eight known depictions of the scene imagined from this report belong to the middle and
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1989), fig. 195; LIMC vii, Phaidra *11; RVAp ii, 480–1 no. 18/14, pl. 171.1–3: Laodamia Painter. Ca. 350–340 BC . 32 In the 4th century, a version of it is used for the mask of the type of hetaira that eventually becomes known as the pseudokorê (Mask V). 33 Cf. D. Kovacs, “Euripides Hippolytus 100 and the Meaning of the Prologue,” Classical Philology 75 (1980), pp. 130–7, for a fuller discussion of the role of Aphrodite. 34 There are several depictions in both Apulian and Sicilian red-figure that are based on this messenger-speech: for discussions, see J.H. Oakley, “‘The Death of Hippolytus’ in South Italian VasePainting,” Numismatica e antichità classiche 20 (1991), pp. 63–83; Taplin, Pots & Plays, pp. 135–8. Add the example published by M.-C. Chevallier, “La mort d’Hippolyte sur un vase apulien inédit,” Histoire de l’art 46 (juin 2000), pp. 3–12. See earlier IGD III.3, 22–4. The most vivid but unfortunately least well preserved is the large calyx-krater in Lipari, inv. 340 bis, where the incident occurs under Aphrodite’s gaze. The waves and shore are shown at the bottom of the scene; Hippolytus attempts to retain control as the yoke breaks, his chariot collapses and the horses run wild. The horses are shown alternately in white, red-figure, purple and red-figure: LCS Suppl. 3, 275 no. 46h (with refs.); LIMC ii, s.v. Aphrodite 1527 = v, s.v. Hippolytus-1, 102; L. Bernabò Brea and M. Cavalier, La ceramica figurata della Sicilia e della Magna Grecia nella lipàra del IV sec. a.C. (Muggiò: Oreste Ragusi Editore, 1997), pp. 72–5 figs 67–8 (color); U. Spigo, “Composizione e racconto: documenti di cultura pittorica nella ceramica siceliota del IV secolo a.C. dalla necropoli di Lipàra,” in: M. Barra Bagnasco & M.C. Conti (eds.), Studi di Archeologia Classica dedicati a Giorgo Gullini per i quaranti anni di insegnamento (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 1999), pp. 175–95, fig. 2.
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third quarters of the 4th century, when popular interest had shifted to messengerspeeches and tour-de-force presentations by skilled actors.35 Reception reflects the interests of its period. The key figure for us is seated on the left (Fig. 15). This is Phaedra, and she is attended by the fluttering figure of Eros together with her old nurse, whose hands are raised in surprise and/or dismay. As a wife, Phaedra has bunched, curly hair held with a single band, a more elegant version of the style discussed earlier. Her shawl is drawn up over the back of her head, exhibiting modesty, and one recalls that the script of the play has her wanting it off her head, then on again. She uses a small chest as a footrest and sits on an elaborate, decorated stool. The chest, like this kind of stool, is of a kind regularly shown in depictions of women in their own quarters in both Attic and South Italian red-figure.36 It occurs with women on their own, in scenes of mistress and maid, carried by Nike presumably as an intended gift for a woman, and in wedding scenes. In Apulian, it is also shown with women in naiskos scenes as a characteristic item. Such chests must typically have held objects precious to a woman, including jewelry.37 Whatever the case in Apulian, in Attic and therefore, one may suppose, on the Athenian stage, a chest of this type is associated with the women’s quarters within the house, the implication being that it appears here as a piece of paraphernalia in an indoor scene.
35 See e.g. Green, “Tragedy and the Spectacle of the Mind: Messenger Speeches, Actors, Narrative, and Audience Imagination in Fourth-Century Vase-Painting,” in: B. Bergmann and C. Kondoleon (eds.), The Art of Ancient Spectacle, Studies in the History of Art 56, National Gallery of Art, Symposium Papers XXXIV (Washington: Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, 1999), pp. 36–63. 36 On the role of such items, see E. Brummer, “Griechische Truhenbehalter, ” Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 100 (1985), pp. 1–168; H. Cassimatis, “Cosmétique et funéraire sur les vases apuliens,” in: S. Marchegay, M.-T. Le Dinahet and J.-F. Salles (eds.), Nécropoles et pouvoir. Idéologies, pratiques et interprétations. Actes du colloque … Lyon 21–25 janvier 1995 (Paris: De Boccard, 1998), pp. 155–66; and most importantly F. Lissarrague, “Women, Boxes, Containers: Some Signs and Metaphors,” in: E.D. Reeder (ed.), Pandora. Women in Classical Greece (Baltimore–Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 91–101. A woman holds one in what is taken to be a wedding context on a red-figure lekythos attributed to the Phiale Painter published by G. Schwarz, “Hochzeitsbilder der Parthenonzeit. Die Bostoner Loutrophoros und zwei Lekythen des Phialemalers,” in: W. Alzinger and G.C. Neeb (eds.), Pro Arte Antiqua. Festschrift H. Kenner, ii (Vienna: 1985), pp. 319–25 with pll. 52–3. 37 On the red-figure lekythos in the Louvre, CA 2220, such a chest seems to have held a substantial papyrus roll that is being read by a female. She is often taken to be a muse, but because of the chest it is tempting to see her as a mortal. Attributed to the Klügmann Painter. ARV2 1199, 25; Paralipomena, p. 462; Addenda2, p. 343; F. Lissarrague, Greek Vases, The Athenians and their Images (New York: Riverside Book Company, 2001), p. 59 fig. 49 (color). There is a chest drawn in just the same way in a domestic scene with two women on a lekythos by the same painter, formerly in the Bastis collection, then with Dimitri Bizoumis, Los Angeles: ARV2 1200, 2; Paralipomena, p. 462; B. von Bothmer et al., Antiquities from the Collection of Christos G. Bastis (Mainz: von Zabern, 1987), no. 168 (ill.); Sotheby’s (New York), Sale Cat., 9 December 1999, no. 140 (color ill.).
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Fig. 15: Detail of Fig. 14 with the characters from Hippolytus.
Fig. 16: Fragment of an Apulian red-figure bell-krater. Antikenmuseum der Universität Heidelberg. 26.87. Patroclus outside Troy. Courtesy of the Institute for Classical Archaeology, University of Heidelberg. Foto: Hubert Vögele.
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Fig. 17: Lucanian red-figure amphora of panathenaic shape, Naples 82140. Electra at the grave of Agamemnon.
At the same time, we must not let the representation mislead us; sitting with one leg over the other and with fingers interlaced about the upper knee is not a relaxed pose, as we might suppose from a modern Western standpoint. In the classical world, the posture revealed inner tension. We see it, for example, in a depiction of the embassy to Achilles on his refusal to re-enter the field of battle outside Troy (Fig. 16).38 He sits
38 Fragment of an Apulian red-figure bell-krater. Heidelberg 26.87, attributed to the Sarpedon Painter, ca. 380 BC . M. Robertson, History of Greek Art (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975), fig. 134a; Die
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on a couch playing a lyre, his armor hanging behind. Odysseus, Ajax and Phoenix stand to the left; it must be Patroclus who sits on a chair in this pose. A satyr sits in such a pose on a red-figure pelike attributed to the Syriskos Painter of about 470 BC . He is worried at the prospect of a more dominant satyr confronting him on the other side of the vase.39 One thinks also of Ares, god of war, on the east frieze of the Parthenon,40 but nearer our concerns and the date of our vase is the anxiety of Electra as she sits on the steps of the tomb of her father Agamemnon, unaware of the approach of her brother Orestes (Fig. 17).41 The intertwining of fingers also appears not uncommonly among the surviving family members shown on Attic grave reliefs of the 4th century.42 Later, in a painting from Herculaneum thought to reflect a Hellenistic original, the interlaced fingers of Medea, prominently placed, reveal her tension as she holds the sword with which she will kill her children (Fig. 18).43 We may also recall that, in discussing figurines of slaves of New Comedy, Bieber took clasped hands and feet crossed at the ankle as symptoms of “fear and anguish or at least a tense mood.”44
griechische Klassik: Idee oder Wirklichkeit; eine Ausstellung im Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, 1. März– 2. Juni 2002 und in der Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, 5. Juli– 6. Oktober 2002 (Mainz: von Zabern, 2002), p. 343 no. 228; RVAp i, 165 no. 7/5. For Attic examples on this theme, see recently E. Langridge-Noti, “Sourcing Stories: the Embassy to Achilles on Attic Pottery,” in: J.H. Oakley and O. Palagia (eds.), Athenian Potters and Painters, Volume II (Oxford: Oxbow, 2009), pp. 125–33, with earlier refs. 39 Genoa inv. 1150, ARV2 262, 37; F. Gherchanoc and V. Huet (eds.), Vêtements antiques. S’habiller, se déshabiller dans les mondes anciens (Arles: Editions Errance, 2012), p. 172 (Lissarrague). 40 East IV.27. See also A.M. Nicgorski, “Interlaced Fingers and Knotted Limbs: The Hostile Posture of Quarrelsome Ares on the Parthenon Frieze,” in: A.P. Chapin (ed.), Charis. Essays in Honor of Sara A. Immerwahr, Hesperia Suppl. 33 (Princeton: American School of Classical Studies, 2004), pp. 291– 303. 41 Lucanian red-figure amphora of panathenaic shape, Naples 82140 (H 1755), connected with the Brooklyn-Budapest Painter. Ht 66cm. About 380 BC . LCS 115 no. 597; A.W. Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens (Oxford: Clarendon, 1953), fig. 178; J.-M. Moret, “Un ancêtre du phylactère: le pilier inscrit des vases italiotes,” Revue archéologique (1979), p. 235 no. 20, figs. 2–3; Knoepfler, Les imagiers de l’Orestie (Kilchberg: Akanthus, 1993), p. 61, pl. 9; Taplin, Pots & Plays, p. 52; Hart, Art Theater, p. 64, no. 21 (color ill.). 42 T. Dohrn, “Gefaltete und verschränkte Hände. Eine Studie über die Gebärde in der griechischen Kunst,” Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 70 (1955), pp. 50–80. 43 Naples 8976, e.g. E. Pfuhl, Malerei und Zeichnung der Griechen (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1923), p. 102 fig. 134; LIMC vi, s.v. Medea, no. *11 (M. Schmidt); R. Ling, Roman Painting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 137 fig. 141; G. Sena Chiesa and E.A. Arslan (eds.), Miti greci (Milan: Electa, 2004), pp. 40–1 no. 4 (color ill.); J.-M. Croisille, La peinture romaine (Paris: Picard, 2005), pl. 14, 1. For others that seem to reflect the same archetype, see LIMC nos. *21 and *22. 44 M. Bieber, “A Bronze Statuette of a Comic Actor,” Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 9.2 (1950), p. 10.
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Fig. 18: Wall-painting from Herculaneum, Naples 8976. Medea contemplating the death of her children.
Margot Schmidt showed that a calyx-krater once in a private collection in Geneva reflects the Hippolytus (Fig. 19).45 It has been dated to ca. 335–330 BC and attributed to the Darius Painter as work of his mature period. In the upper register are Aphrodite being wreathed by Eros, Athena with her armor, and Hermes who, the gesture of his
45 Whereabouts unknown, formerly Geneva, coll. Sciclounoff. M. Schmidt, Journal of Hellenic Studies 106 (1986), p. 256 (review of RVAp and Suppl. 1); RVAp Suppl. 1, 74 and 79, no. 18/64b, pl. 13, 1–2; C. Aellen – A. Cambitoglou – J. Chamay, Le peintre de Darius et son milieu (Geneva: Hellas et Roma, 1986), pp. 161–5; LIMC Hermes *680, Hippolytos I, 77; Taplin, Pots & Plays, pp. 133–4, fig. 40. Schmidt’s argument is developed by Taplin.
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right hand suggests, is addressing the others, perhaps reporting events in the world of mortals. It may be significant that Aphrodite holds a iynx, an instrument used for love-spells. At the more constricted lower, human level we have, from right to left, Hippolytus, Phaedra and the nurse. The young hero is given a naked body, a horseman’s cloak, a broad-brimmed hat (petasos) and the club-ended stick (lagobolon) often used by young hunters. Phaedra is associated with a piece of furniture, presumably indicating her quarters but neatly separating her from Hippolytus, who occupies a separate space. She is wrapped modestly in her shawl, which also covers her head, while from the left the white-haired nurse gestures to her, asking a question. An incense-burner (thymiaterion) stands between them; its significance for the moment remains obscure.46 As with our other example, the vase does not attempt to depict an actual scene, but rather pictures the key characters of the play. On the other hand, as Schmidt pointed out, the way Phaedra’s head is covered indicates her shame at the passion that has overtaken her, and it could be taken as recalling her words at 243ff— but that may be too precise an interpretation. The scene is framed by Ionic columns carrying victory tripods. They may indicate a sanctuary (and thus perhaps account for the thymiaterion), but given the use of such columns in Athenian and then Apulian vase-painting from the late 5th century on, they perhaps indicate specifically the sanctuary of Dionysus, bringing to the viewer’s mind dedications after successful performances in the theater and thus specifically Euripides’ play rather than the myth of Hippolytus generally. This vase tells us less than the other, but there is nonetheless an emphasis on Phaedra’s torment. Another piece of evidence is the well-known exchange between Aeschylus and Euripides in the second half of Aristophanes’ Frogs of 406/405 BC . From around line 1040, Aristophanes has the character Aeschylus list a number of paradeigmatic heroes who appeared in his plays and then say, “But by god I never created Stheneboeas or Phaedras as harlots, nor did I ever create a character of a woman in love,” to which the character Euripides replies (1046), “No indeed, you never gave any part to Aphrodite.” And so on. A great deal has been written about this passage over the years, but for our purposes we may note that Euripides’ treatment of these two women seems to have remained notorious in 405 BC , 20 years or more after their initial presentation. We cannot know how often the plays were re-performed in deme theaters in the interim or whether Aristophanes and others had played their part in keeping the memory alive, as a kind of short-hand reference for these kinds of attitudes to women and/or playwrights. At the very least, Aristophanes must have found some resonance with the audience.
46 There are useful observations on the presence of thymiateria by E. Simon, “Archäologisches zu Spende und Gebet in Griechenland und Rom,” in: F. Graf (ed.), Ansichten griechischer Rituale. Geburtstags-Symposium für Walter Burkert (Stuttgart–Leipzig: Teubner, 1998), pp. 127–42, 495–500.
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Fig. 19: Apulian red-figure calyx-krater, Switzerland, priv. coll. The characters of Euripides, Hippolytus. After C. Aellen et al., Le peintre de Darius et son milieu.
There is another important point in these representations. The calyx-kraters in Figs. 15 and 19 depict Phaedra as relatively modest, her head and shoulders covered as they should be for a “proper” married woman.47 They give her the appropriate hairstyle. By and large, the same is not true of Stheneboea, who is much closer in appearance to a hetaira (see e.g. Fig. 13). Indeed, if one did not know the story, one would be hard-
47 Even if the Phaedra of Fig. 15 wears earrings, necklace and bangles. Note the important article by E.B. Harrison, “Hellenic Identity and Athenian Identity in the Fifth Century B.C.,” in: S.J. Barnes and W.S. Melion (eds.), Cultural Differentiation and Cultural Identity in the Visual Arts (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1989), pp. 41–61, esp. 53, who points out in her discussion of the Parthenon frieze that maidens wear their back hair long, whereas married women appearing in public have their hair bound up and covered with a kerchief.
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pressed to believe that she is a wife. The woman on our vase (Fig. 3b) is patently a wife, as we have seen; this is another reason for believing her to be Phaedra rather than Stheneboea. The comic scene represented on our vase is surely a parody of the key scene at Hippolytus 170ff. with its dialogue between Phaedra and the nurse. It exaggerates and simplifies the nature of the scene, as parody regularly does, an aspect made clear by comparison with the vase in the British Museum (Fig. 15). It is also an example of the way this kind of treatment, much like mythological comedy, seeks to expose “reality” by delivering it in everyday, lower-class human terms. Another point that must be made now is that although the acting is outdoors, onstage, the scene is set indoors. This seems obvious enough from the bed, but it is also emphasized by the fact that the mistress has her arms exposed and her hair uncovered, even if it is bound.48 No respectable woman would go out, into the public gaze, not fully dressed. There is much one could say about the perception of hair and hairstyles in the ancient Greek world, and these conventions were regularly employed on the comic stage, even if in a simplistic form, to indicate the character or style of the person concerned, especially when women were presented. To show an indoor scene on the ancient stage, the playwrights made use of a platform that was rolled out through the central doorway, the ekkyklêma. In terms of staging, it seems highly likely that the scene, both in the original Euripidean production and as a consequence in this parody, involved use of the ekkyklêma.49 Many literary critics object to this, consciously or unconsciously influenced by Pickard-Cambridge’s view of the “purity” of Athenian performance, but their grounds are outweighed by other considerations.50 For one, it is serious business to ignore the authority of Aristophanes of Byzantium when he tells us that the ekkyklêma was used here. This is not a late scholiast making banal deductions from the text; Aristophanes knew about theater performance, at least at a general level even if he
48 There are good observations on the underlying issues of exposing the private life of women onstage by B. Seidensticker, “Die Frau auf der attischen Bühne,” Humanistische Bildung 11 (1987), pp. 7–42, esp. 16–17. 49 For an authoritative survey of identified cases of the use of the ekkyklêma, see E. Csapo and W.J. Slater, The Context of Ancient Drama (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), pp. 270–3, under nos. 78 and 79. Earlier, see A.W. Pickard-Cambridge, The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946), pp. 100–22, 111–12, on this passage. 50 In the late 1940s, some scholars still refused to acknowledge what they saw as the unacceptably rude nature of comic costume. We may discount too Pickard-Cambridge’s idea that Phaedra was wheeled out on the couch. It was improbable enough in the first place, but now we can be sure that the parody would have made fun of such an oddity as a couch on wheels. Nevertheless, V. Di Benedetto and E. Medda, La tragedia sulla scena. La tragedia greca in quanto spettacolo teatrale (Turin: Einaudi, 1997), pp. 22–4, bizarrely extend this idea, to have Euripides and Agathon emerge through the door on wheeled couches in Acharnians and Thesmophoriazousae, respectively. It would be interesting to see a contemporary illustration of such a thing.
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had not seen Hippolytus performed. Indeed it can be argued that he is more convincing precisely because this is not a self-evident case; he had a point to make, as even the somewhat corrupt text makes clear.51 There has been continuing discussion of the question, including important contributions from Newiger, Hölscher and Russo.52 In her discussion of the use of the ekkyklêma, I am not sure that Belardinelli takes Webster’s argument in the spirit in which it was written.53 He was in fact reacting in a not-atypical way to what he saw as Barrett’s pedestrian or even pedantic insistence (in his note on Hipp. 811) that the ekkyklêma is used only to bring the interior of a house into view. (If one is going to be silly, let’s give a silly answer.) Webster therefore suggested that if one is arguing at that sort of level, Alcestis and Phaedra move from an inner room into the courtyard of the palace and the ekkyklêma brings the courtyard into view. Indeed, the well-known remark of Σ Acharnians 408 explaining the ekkyklêma could not unreasonably be taken as a general rule about the presentation of scenes thought of as taking place indoors.54 In addition, the fundamental point is that it was hardly proper for a woman to be brought out on her bed (wheeled or carried) into what is effectively the street (and certainly public view), as she would be thought to be if she were brought out of the stage-door (the door of the palace), especially in the case of an upper-class woman like Phaedra. Whatever exceptions one might make in particular circumstances, the prevailing view was that “citizen” women, and especially women of the upper levels of society, belonged in the house and that the world of women was not a public one.55 There were limits as to what a married woman might do on foot;
51 On the difficulty of the text, see W.J. Slater, Aristophanis Byzantii Fragmenta (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1986), pp. 150–1 no. 390; Csapo and Slater, Context (above, n. 48), p. 271 on 78E. I too would favor their first alternative, that Ar. Byz. found Euripides’ κομίζουσ᾿ redundant. 52 H.-J. Newiger, “Ekkyklema e mechané nella messa in scena del dramma greco,” Dioniso 59 (1989), pp. 173–85 (= “Ekkyklema und Mechané in der Inszenierung des griechischen Dramas,” Würzburger Jahrbücher für die Altertumswissenschaft 16 (1990), pp. 33–42); U. Hölscher, “Schrecken und Lachen. Über Ekkyklema-Szenen im attischen Drama,” in: A. Bierl and P. von Möllendorf (eds.), Orchestra. Drama, Mythos, Bühne (Festschrift H. Flaschar, Stuttgart-Leipzig: Teubner, 1994), pp. 84–96; C.F. Russo, Aristophanes, an Author for the Stage (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 51–5, 58, 257 n. 7. M.G. Bonanno, “L’ekkyklema di Aristofane: un dispositivo paratragico?,” in: E. Medda, M.S. Mirto, and M.P. Pattoni (eds.), Komoidotragoidia: intersezioni del tragico e del comico nel teatro del V secolo a.C. (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2006), pp. 69–82, provides a somewhat restricted state-of-play. 53 A.M. Belardinelli, “A proposito dell’uso dell’ekkyklema: Eur. Hipp. 170–266, 808–1101; Men. Asp. 309–399, Dysc. 689–758a,” Seminari Romani di cultura greca 3 (2000), p. 247; T.B.L. Webster, The Tragedies of Euripides (London: Methuen, 1967), pp. 49–50. 54 ἐκκύκλημα δὲ λέγεται μηχάνημα ξύλινον τροχοὺς ἔχον, ὅπερ περιστρεφόμενον τὰ ἔνδον ὡς ἐν οἰκίᾳ δοκούντα διαπράττεσθαι καὶ τοῖς ἔξω ἐδείκνυε, λέγω δὴ τοῖς θεαταῖς. 55 On what one might term the exceptions, see e.g. W. Scheidel, “The Most Silent Women of Greece and Rome: Rural Labour and Women’s Life in the Ancient World,” Greece and Rome 42 (1995), pp. 202– 17, and 43 (1996), pp. 1–10. For the world of women’s religion, see e.g. M. Dillon, Girls and Women in
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compare, for example, what Rhode’s husband has to say to her in Menander fr. 813, or even more striking, Lycurgus In Leocratem 40, on the city’s women going out into the street anxiously seeking news of their loved ones in the aftermath of Chaeronea. When it came to women on a bed—respectable women that is—the wider world, whether in the form of the audience in the theater or the larger community, was not supposed to witness such a thing.56 Males ideally did not see women other than members of their own family in bed or even in their own quarters, as Lysias 3.6, for example, makes clear from the women’s point of view: “They (the speaker’s sister and nieces) are ashamed to be seen even by their kinsmen.” Even from the changed world of the later 4th century and the male viewpoint, one finds Dyscolus 871–3, where Gorgias expresses embarrassment at the idea of being in the same room as the women, to which Sostratus says not to be silly, it’s all family now. Inspired by the work of Elam, Luigi Enrico Rossi has touched on the question of spatial codes in performance insofar as they grow out of such codes specific to the social interaction of particular communities or groups (even groups within communities), but he did not deal with this point.57 A systematic study along these lines would be valuable. As a number of modern commentators, including Kovacs and Scodel, have emphasized, at this point in Euripides’ play Phaedra was constructed and perceived as a proper, well-behaved woman, protective of her social standing.58 The attitudes
Classical Greek Religion (London: Routledge, 2002); J.B. Connelly, Portrait of a Priestess. Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); but all this needs to be seen within the parameters well put by J.P. Gould, “Law, Custom and Myth. Aspects of the Social Position of Women in Classical Athens,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 100 (1980), pp. 38–59, e.g. 48–9 on how poor women went to work. F.I. Zeitlin, Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 243, makes some excellent points on Euripides’ exploitation of the scenic conventions of inside and outside, and on how being outside allows dramatic action in Hippolytus. 56 A point deserving more consideration is that we have no scenes involving the marriage-bed on drinking vessels. 57 L.E. Rossi, “Livelli di lingua, gestualità, rapporti di spazio e situazione drammatica sulla scena attica,” in: L. De Finis (ed.), Scena e spettacolo nell’antichità. Atti del Convegno … Trento 1988 (Florence: Olschki, 1989), pp. 63–78; K. Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama (London–New York: Methuen, 1980). More recently, note the introductory section of A.K. Petrides, “Proxemics and Structural Symmetry in Euripides’ Medea,” Logeion 2 (2012), pp. 35–48. 58 Kovacs, Heroic Muse (above, n. 30); R. Scodel, An Introduction to Greek Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Also M.R. Halleran (ed.), Hippolytus Euripides (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1995), pp. 43–5, the section “Reputation, Shame, and Honor.” See earlier D. Kovacs, “Shame, Pleasure, and Honor in Phaedra’s Great Speech (Euripides, Hippolytus 375–87),” American Journal of Philology 101 (1980), pp. 287–303, and esp. his conclusions. K.J. Dover, Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), pp. 226–9, remains fundamental. For the “ideal” woman, see e.g. E. Specht, Schön zu sein und gut zu sein. Mädchenbildung und Frauensozialisation im antiken Griechenland (Vienna: Wiener Frauenverlag, 1989); S. Moraw, “Unvereinbare Gegensätze? Frauengemachbilder des 4. Jahrhunderts v.Chr. und das Ideal der bürgerlichen Frau,” in: R. von den
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ascribed to her are in line with contemporary concepts and personifications of Eukleia and Eunomia as seen on pottery of this period that seems to have been designed for a female market, and perhaps a relatively well-to-do one at that.59 Even if we reckon that there was nothing particularly new about it, behavior that incorporated such values seems to have been brought to the fore at this period, possibly in response to the difficult conditions and threats to stability experienced in the community as a result of the War. If nothing else, Euripides was surely taking these attitudes into account in creating this Phaedra. Given all that, even the wellintentioned if somewhat challenged nurse would never be conceived as dragging her out into public gaze as envisaged in the production. The only way for the audience to see her was to use the ekkyklêma, to bring the inside out. Just as Euripides was perceived as over-doing use of the crane (mêchanê), so too he was thought to be over-clever in his attempts to make interior scenes, traditionally reported rather than seen, visible, rendering the impossible possible, playing games with accepted standards.60 It is worth pursuing the issue of the bed a little further. If we take depictions on contemporary red-figure pottery as generally reflecting the attitudes of Athenian society, or at least the attitudes of those classes that might be thought to have used elaborate decorated pottery, beds (as distinct from the couches found at symposia or on which poets recline with their feet up) are shown in only a limited range of circumstances. They primarily depict the marriage bed and are a not-infrequent element of wedding scenes on vases of the last third of the 5th century, contemporary with our plays. A select list of representations includes:
Hoff and S. Schmidt, Konstruktionen von Wirklichkeit. Bilder im Griechenland des 5. und 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2001), pp. 211–23. 59 The route was marked out by H.A. Shapiro, Personifications in Greek Art. The Representation of Abstract Concepts 600–400 B.C. (Kilchberg: Akanthus, 1993), pp. 70–85 (on Eukleia and Eunomia). Others have followed, including B.E. Borg, “Eunomia or ‘Make Love Not War’? Meidian Personifications Reconsidered,” in: E. Stafford and J. Herrin (eds.), Personification in the Greek World: from Antiquity to Byzantium (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 193–210; A.C. Smith, Polis and Personification in Classical Athenian Art, Monumenta Graeca et Romana 19 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 71–6. See also in the context of weddings and marriages Chr. Avronidaki, “Η Εύκλεια και η Ευνομία σε ένα θραύσμα αρυβαλλοειδούς ληκύθου από τον κύκλο του Ζωγράφου του Μειδία,” in: Κεραμέως παῖδες. Αντίδωρο στον Καθηγητή Μιχάλη Τιβέριο από τους μαθητές του (Thessalonike: Hetaireia Andrion Epistemonon, 2012), pp. 109–16. 60 For ancient references to the mechanê, see in addition to Newiger, “Ekkyklema e mechané” (above, n. 51), Csapo and Slater (above, n. 48), pp. 268–70 under no. 77. For a good overview of the physical aspects of what can now be known of the construction and management of the crane in the Theater of Dionysus at Athens, see C. Papastamati – von Moock, “The Theatre of Dionysus Eleuthereus in Athens: New Data and Observations on its ‘Lycurgan’ Phase,” in: E. Csapo, J.R. Green, H. Goette, P. Wilson (eds.), The Greek Theatre in the Fourth Century BC (Berlin, forthcoming). There is also evidence forthcoming from the theater at Sicyon.
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1.
Epinetron attributed to the Eretria Painter. Athens NM 1629, from Eretria. (Fig. 20) ARV2 1250-1, 34; P.E. Arias, M. Hirmer, B.B. Shefton, A History of Greek Vase Painting (London: Thames and Hudson, 1962), pl. 203a; A. Lezzi-Hafter, Der Eretria-Maler (Mainz: von Zabern, 1988), pll. 168–9; C. Reinsberg, Ehe, Hetärentum und Knabenliebe im antiken Griechenland (Munich: Beck, 1989), p. 69 fig. 24; A. Kauffmann-Samaras, “Le lit d’Héra dans l’Héraion d’Argos,” Ktema 15 (1990 [1994]) pp. 185–94, pl. 2, 6; J.H. Oakley and R. Sinos, The Wedding in Ancient Athens (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), pp. 127–8 figs. 128–30; R. Kousser, “The World of Aphrodite in the Late Fifth Century B.C.,” in: C. Marconi (ed.), Greek Vases: Images, Contexts and Controversies: Proceedings of the Conference sponsored by the Center for the Ancient Mediterranean at Columbia University, 23–24 March 2002 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. 97–112 with fig. 8.1. Alcestis at the bedchamber, leaning against the bed. Ca. 420 BC .
2.
Loutrophoros. Boston 03.802 R.F. Sutton Jr., “On the Classical Athenian Wedding,” in: R.F. Sutton Jr. (ed.), Daidalikon: Studies in Memory of Raymond V. Schoder, S.J. (Wauconda: BolchazyCarducci, 1989), pp. 336 pl. 29, 341 pl. 32; Oakley and Sinos (above, item 1), pp. 109–11 figs. 105–7, with fig. 107 showing the doorway with the bed inside; M. Baggio, “La sera delle nozze,” in: I. Colpo, I. Favaretto and F. Ghedini (eds.), Iconografia 2001. Studi sull’immagine (Atti del Convegno di Padova 30 maggio– 1 giugno 2001) (Rome: Quasar, 2002), p. 195 fig. 5. The groom leading his bride to the bed-chamber. Ca. 425–420 BC .
3.
Loutrophoros attributed to the Painter of Würzburg 537. Würzburg L. 506 ARV2 1224, 2; E. Langlotz, Griechische Vasen in Würzburg (Munich: J.B. Obernetter, 1932), pl. 174; Reinsberg, Ehe, Hetärentum (above, item 1), p. 79 fig. 31. Bed in the context of a wedding, with the youth holding out a box or small chest. Last quarter of the 5th century BC .
4. Loutrophoros hydria attributed to the Marlay Painter. Athens, Benaki Museum 35495 ARV2 1277, 17; CVA (1) pl. 27; N. Kaltsas and A. Shapiro (eds.), Worshiping Women. Ritual and Reality in Classical Athens (New York: Onassis Foundation, 2008), pp. 320–1 no. 143 (color ills., with further refs.). The bed visible within the bed-chamber.? Ca. 430–420 BC . 5.
Lebes gamikos. Quebec, Musée national des beaux-arts 66.226 J.H. Oakley, “Classical Athenian Ritual Vases,” in: J. M. Fossey and J.E. Francis (eds.), The Diniacopoulos Collection in Québec (Montreal: Concordia, 2004),
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pp. 40–1 fig. 3.5, cat. no. 21; Kaltsas and Shapiro, (above, item 4), p. 293 fig. 3a–b. (Sabetai). Doorway with bed within (groom leading the bride to the bedchamber). Ca. 440 BC . 6.
Pointed amphora attributed to the Copenhagen Ptr. New York, priv. coll. D. von Bothmer, (ed.), Glories of the Past, Ancient Art from the Shelby White and Leon Levy Collection (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991), pp. 168–70 no. 121 (color ills.); H.A. Shapiro, Myth into Art, Poet and Painter in Classical Athens (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 103 figs. 68–9; E.D. Reeder (ed.), Pandora. Women in Classical Greece (Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery, 1995), p. 348 no. 109; LIMC vii, s.v. Peleus no. *210; Oakley and Sinos (above, item 1), pp. 112–14 figs. 108–11. Chiron greeting the divine procession bringing Peleus and Thetis to the bridal chamber. The bed is shown as within the building, a torch-bearer in front of it; richly decorated coverlets. Note battle of Lapiths and Centaurs on the shoulder. Ca. 480–470 BC .
7.
Calyx-krater attributed to the Nekyia Painter. Vienna IV 1026 ARV2 1087, 2; CVA (3) pll. 102–3, 104, 1–2; Oakley and Sinos (above, item 1), figs. 46– 9; F. Lissarrague, “Regards sur le mariage grec,” in: O. Cavalier (ed.), Silence et fureur. La femme et le mariage en Grèce. Les antiquités grecques du Musée Calvet (Avignon: Fondation du Muséum Calvet, 1997), p. 431 fig. D (roll-out drawing). Battle with the Centaurs at the wedding of Peirithous and Hippodameia; the bed showing through a partially open door ? Ca. 450–440 BC .
8. Squat lekythos attributed to the Painter of the Frankfurt Acorn. Malibu, Getty Museum 91.AE.1o (formerly Lausanne, priv. coll.) ARV2 1317, 3; LIMC ii, s.v. Aphrodite, no. *1192; B. Gilman (ed.), Masterpieces of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Antiquities (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1997) no. 47; Baggio, “La sera delle nozze” (above, item 2), pp. 190 fig. 2, 192 fig. 4. Perhaps an end-view of a bed by a doorway. Ca. 410 BC . 9.
Relief squat lekythos. Once Berlin A. Brueckner, Anakalypteria (64. BWPr, 1904) pl. 1; whence Reinsberg, Ehe, Hetärentum (above, item 1), p. 65 fig. 20. Bridal couple on the bed, accompanied by attendants and Eros. Mid-4th century BC . We may also note:61
61 I am not sure if the piece of furniture on which a bride is sitting on the pyxis attributed to the Washing Painter, Würzburg 541, from Attica, is a matrimonial bed rather than a fine couch: ARV2 1133, 196; Robertson fig. 235; A. Kauffmann–Samaras, “Le lit d’Héra dans l’Héraion d’Argos,” Ktema 15 (1990 [1994]), pl. 2, 7; Oakley and Sinos, p. 65 figs. 24–5.
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Fig. 20: Attic red-figure epinetron, Athens NM 1629. Detail with Alcestis by her bridal chamber. © Hellenic Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, Culture and Sports/Archaeological Receipts Fund.
Fig. 21: Attic red-figure pyxis, Paris, Louvre CA 587. A wife seated in her quarters. © RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre)/Les frères Chuzeville.
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10. Pyxis attributed to the Painter of the Louvre Centauromachy. Paris, Louvre CA 587, from Greece (Fig. 21) ARV2 1094, 104; Bazant, Les citoyens sur les vases athéniens (Prague: Rozpravy Československé akademie vĕd. Rada společenských vĕd 95,2, 1985), pl. 24, 39; American Journal of Archaeology 87 (1983), pl. 16, 8 (L. Clark); P. Veyne, F. Lissarrague and F. Frontisi-Ducroux, Les mystères du gynécée (Paris: Gallimard, 1998), p. 162 figs. 16a–b. Woman (wife, not hetaira) seated with mirror in her quarters, bed visible through doorway in background. The bed identifies her status. Ca. 440 BC . 11. Calyx-krater attributed to the Triptolemos Painter. St Petersburg B 1602 (St. 1723), said to be from Cerveteri ARV2 360, 1; Reeder, Pandora (above, item 6), pp. 269–70 (with many refs.); J.-J. Maffre, “Une nouvelle représentation de Danaé reçevant la pluie d’or,” in: E. Böhr and W. Martini (eds.), Studien zu Mythologie und Vasenmalerei. Festschrift für Konrad Schauenburg zum 65. Geburtstag am 16.4.1986 (Mainz: von Zabern, 1986), pp. 71–4; F. Lissarrague, “Danaé, métamorphoses d’un mythe,” in: S. Georgoudi and J.-P. Vernant (eds.), Mythes grecs au figuré de l’antiquité au Baroque (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), pp. 105–33. Danae receiving the shower of golden rain. Although she is imprisoned in an underground chamber, through the action of Zeus the bed becomes her marriagebed, shown as elaborate with fine coverings. Ca. 490–480 BC . 12. Hydria attributed to the Nausicaa Painter. New York 25.28. ARV2 1110, 41; Shapiro, Myth into Art (above, item 6), p. 109 fig. 75; T. Mannack, The Late Mannerists in Athenian Vase-Painting (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pl. 3; J. Neils and J.H. Oakley (eds.), Coming of Age in Ancient Greece, Images of Childhood from the Classical Past (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 70, 212 no. 10 (color ill.); J. Mertens, How to Read Greek Vases (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010), pp. 121, 123. Heracles and Iphicles with the snakes on the marriage bed between Amphitryon and Alcmene, Athena standing by. Ca. 460–450 BC . The bed recalls the closeness of Amphitryon and Alcmene despite the intervention of Zeus, as well as its importance in the myth. 13. Calyx-krater attributed to the Group of Polygnotos. Tarquinia RC 4197 ARV2 1057, 96; CVA (2) pl. 16, 1–3; F.W. Hamdorf, Dionysos, Bacchus: Kult und Wandlungen des Weingottes (Munich: Callwey, 1986), p. 63, pl. 18; J. Boardman, Athenian Red Figure Vases, The Classical Period (London: Thames and Hudson, 1989), fig. 163; Reinsberg, Ehe, Hetärentum (above, item 1), p. 211, fig. 120; S.B. Matheson, Polygnotos and Vase Painting in Classical Athens (Madison: Uni-
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versity of Wisconsin Press, 1995) p. 162, pl. 141; Kaltsas and Shapiro, Worshiping Women (above, item 4), p. 271 fig. 2 (Chryssoulaki). Dionysus with satyrs approaching a house-door, within which a young woman awaits on a couch or bed; sometimes thought to recall the sacred marriage (although the god, staggering as he carries his kantharos, is manifestly under the influence of his wine). Ca. 440 BC . These images demonstrate a perception of the symbolism of the matrimonial bed in the Athenian mind not only in abstract terms but in visual terms as well. With this in mind, I would argue that in terms of staging, Euripides’ use of the bed had more significance than many literary critics have allowed. It was not incorporated into the staging simply because the lady was unwell.62 It was a symbol of Phaedra’s married status, a status she was vainly attempting to protect.63 This is why it is placed centrally with Aphrodite on the calyx-krater in the British Museum (Fig. 15), while on the calyx-krater in Switzerland (Fig. 19) it is tempting to see the piece of furniture in the center, separating Phaedra from Hippolytus, as an end-on view of the bed. Such a view would be appropriate in such a crowded composition. We should also bear in mind that marriage as an institution was a fundamental component of the social fabric of the community, playing a vital role in the distribution and transmission of property and thus in social relations as well as wealth. It needed to be protected as a key element in the maintenance of the structure of society. The beds of these and other heroic/mythical figures are decorated and elaborate; the bed on the Sydney vase is willfully plain, again indicating the link between parody and mythological comedy. In terms of the further impact of Euripides bringing Phaedra onstage on her bed, it is clear that he created something of a pattern even if later examples (as so often) lack the full impact of the original; one thinks, for example, of the illustrated scene from Orestes64 and, perhaps more interesting, later echoes in staging, e.g. the reliefs on 2nd-century AD lamp-discs with a youthful figure from comedy reclining on a couch
62 See among others A.M. Dale, Wiener Studien 69 (1956), p. 101 n. 7, who says of Agathon at Th. 96ff., “wheeled out for his health, like Phaedra.” Poets reclined on couches (not beds), like those pictured in the Hellenistic and later theoxenia reliefs. C.W. Dearden, The Stage of Aristophanes (London: Athlone Press, 1976), p. 59, in his section on the ekkyklêma, echoed Dale’s words: “where Phaedra is wheeled out for the sake of her health.” They rely on the script and not the whole performance. 63 A wheeled contraption would have been even more ridiculous. The bed famously had a symbolic role already in Odyssey 23. One thinks too of Pindar, Ol. 7.1–6 and its ὁμόφρονος εὐνᾶς, or of Alcestis’ address of her marriage-bed (E. Alc. 177–82). There are useful observations by J. Redfield, “Notes on the Greek Wedding,” Arethusa 15 (1982), pp. 181–201. Kauffmann–Samaras, “Le lit d’Héra” (above, n. 60), pp. 185–94, makes good observations on the symbolic value placed on the matrimonial bed. 64 For the Orestes scene, e.g. V.M. Strocka, Die Wandmalerei der Hanghäuser in Ephesos, Forschungen in Ephesos viii.1 (Vienna 1977), p. 48, no. 65 (ill.); Green–Handley, Images, fig. 71; F. Krinzinger (ed.), Ein Dach für Ephesos. Der Schutzbau für das Hanghaus 2, Österreichisches Arch. Inst. Sonderschrift 34
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and another seated,65 or the well-known moulds from Athens and Ostia with a woman or youth on a couch and a slave seated at its foot, the piece in Athens associated with the Herulian destruction of AD 267.66 In literature, equally well known today is the case of Cnemon in Dyscolus 690ff., where εἰσκ]υκλεῖτ᾿ εἴσω με might reasonably be restored at 758. There are also Aspis, Synaristosae and Phasma, as Jacques has demonstrated.67 This is a preliminary publication, and I leave it to others to speculate on the authorship of our parody. It seems to me for many reasons likely to be Aristophanes: there are hints of his style, and he certainly liked to play with and have his characters express strong feelings on Euripidean themes, including Phaedra, as Frogs demonstrates. One might see our scene as parallel to those in Acharnians of 425 BC and Thesmophoriazousai of 411 BC , which offer a likely period, given the date of our vase. The theme also falls within the restricted range of Aristophanes’ favorite plays for this kind of attention: Telephus, Alcestis and Hippolytus.68 If the author is Aristophanes, we can point to his exaggeration (or wicked simplification) in Frogs in putting Euripides’ Phaedra in the same bracket as his Stheneboea. Whatever the tragedian may have done with his earlier version of the woman, by the time of Frogs his later version had taken hold, and indeed this parody patently depicts the later Phaedra, the good woman in agony rather than the tart. As we have seen, this is clear from her hairstyle and costume if nothing else. On the other hand, we may overrate the importance of Frogs, simply because we have it, and our author could be some other poet, not least Strattis, given his apparent fondness for tragic parody. An argument against this is that the chronology would be tight, although not impossible.69
(Vienna, 2000), p. 28; N. Zimmermann and S. Ladstätter, Wandmalerei in Ephesos: von hellenistischer bis in byzantinische Zeit (Vienna: Phoibos, 2010), p. 117 fig. 205 (color). 65 MNC3 6FL 4a-b (with refs.); El Teatro Romano. La puesta en escena. La Lonja, Zaragoza, abril–junio 2003 (Zaragoza – Barcelona: Ayuntamiento de Zaragoza, 2004), p. 159 (color ill.); N. Savarese (ed.), In scaena. Il teatro di Roma antica, The Theater in Ancient Rome (Rome: Electa, 2007), p. 139 left (ill.). 66 MNC3 6FL 2. The example from Ostia (6FL 2c) is now also published in El Teatro Romano (see the last note), p. 160 (color ill.). 67 J.-M. Jacques, “La comédie nouvelle a-t-elle utilisé l’eccyclème?,” Pallas 54 (2000), pp. 89–101. On the impact of the Phaedra story in the construction of the Samia, see Sommerstein in this volume. 68 See G. Mastromarco, “La paratragodia, il libro, la memoria,” in: E. Medda, M.S. Mirto and M.P. Pattoni (eds.), Komoidotragoidia: intersezioni del tragico e del comico nel teatro del V secolo a.C. (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2006), pp. 137–91. Inter alia he shows that the audience’s knowledge of the tragedies was based on the experience of performance rather than reading, and that it was expected to recall the music as well as the all-important element of staging. See also the same author’s “Trame allusive e memoria del pubblico (Acarn. 300–301 — Caval. 314),” in: S. Boldrini et al. (eds.), Filologia e forme letterarie: studi offerti a Francesco Della Corte, i (Urbino: Università degli studi, 1988), pp. 239– 43. For statistics, see R. Harriott, “Aristophanes and the Plays of Euripides,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 9 (1962), pp. 1–8. 69 On the dates of Strattis’ activity, see e.g. C. Orth, Strattis. Die Fragmente. Ein Kommentar (Berlin: Antike e. K., 2009), pp. 18–20; S. Miles, Strattis, Tragedy, and Comedy (Diss. Nottingham, 2009),
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Others may wish to speculate on the identity of the play, or to pursue fragments that would fit in such a scene. One attractive and potentially humorous possibility is Aristophanes fr. 616 αἰσχρὸν νέᾳ γυναικὶ πρεσβύτης ἀνήρ, on the horrors for a young wife of having an old man for a husband. Theseus, now into his second marriage, might easily have been referred to in that way in a context such as this, as an element of the parody. As Kassel–Austin observed, similarly sententious lines were popular with Euripides; they note frr. 317 γυναικί τ᾿ ἐχθρὸν χρῆμα πρεσβύτης ἀνήρ and 804.3 = Th. 410ff (esp. 413) δέσποινα γὰρ γέροντι νυμφίῳ γυνή. As Eric Handley and I once observed, there is another such pair of lines on the underside of a Gnathia oinochoe we found on New York’s East Side (but manufactured in South Italy’s Materano in the later part of the 4th century), and it may be added to the examples provided in the standard grammars.70 But this is by the way. A more light-hearted suggestion involves Michael Vicker’s idea that in Hippolytus, Euripides was playing a game with the notion that Aspasia (Phaedra) as wife of Pericles (Theseus) had an unrequited passion for Alcibiades (Hippolytus).71 Perhaps not, but it is surely possible that a comic poet borrowed this striking scene for a parody in such terms. For now, however, Aristophanes can have the last word (Th. 497–8):72 εἰ δὲ Φαίδραν λοιδορεῖ, ἡμῖν τί τοῦτ᾿ ἔστ᾿;
Appendix 1 (http://etheses.nottingham.ac.uk/887/). L. Fiorentini, Studi sul commediografo Strattide (Diss. Ferrara, 2009), p. 76, sees a reference to Hippolytus. For speedy transmission to the West, compare the cases of Euripides, Heracleidae, Antiope and Cyclops: W. Allan, “Euripides in Megale Hellas: Some Aspects of the Early Reception of Tragedy,” Greece and Rome 48 (2001), pp. 67–86; O. Taplin, “Spreading the Word through Performance,” in: S. Goldhill and R. Osborne (eds.), Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 33–57; and “Narrative Variation in Vase-Painting and Tragedy. The Example of Dirke,” Antike Kunst 41 (1998), pp. 33–9. On the place of paratragedy on the comic stage of the later 5th century, there are instructive comments by A. Hartwig, “The Evolution of Comedy in the Fourth Century,” in: Csapo et al., Greek Theatre (above, n. 59). 70 J.R. Green and E.W. Handley, “Gnomic Gnathia,” in: S. Gödde and T. Heinze (eds.), Skenika. Beiträge zum antiken Theater und seiner Rezeption. Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Horst-Dieter Blume (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2000), pp. 247–52. We referred to R. Kühner – B. Gerth, Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache, I (repr. Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 19554) 158ff; Halleran on Hippolytus 191–7 refers to W. Schmid and O. Stählin, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur. I.3. Die klassische Periode (Munich: Beck, 1929–1948), p. 769 n. 7. 71 M. Vickers, “Alcibiades and Aspasia: Notes on the ‘Hippolytus’,” Dialogues d’histoire ancienne 26.2 (2000), pp. 7–17. 72 See recently R. Cowan, Classical Quarterly NS 58 (2008), pp. 315–20.
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Plato’s Aristophanes Abstract: At Apology 19c, Socrates calls out Aristophanes as one of the “first accusers,” who turned public opinion against him and created the climate that led to his trial. Socrates’ claim should not be taken literally, for comic playwrights had mocked Socrates before Clouds and would do so again. In addition, the Symposium presents a friendly relationship between Aristophanes and Socrates and supports the idea that we should see them as perhaps competitors but not as enemies. Even if Clouds was able to serve as a metonymical stand-in for the “first accusers” of Socrates, it is impossible to believe that nearly a quarter-century after its production the comedy played an important role in bringing about his indictment. Moreover, exaggerated focus on the Apology for deciphering the relationship between Plato and Aristophanes distorts conclusions drawn from the many links between the Platonic dialogues and Old Comedy. The Phaedo, for example, shows Socrates engaged with Old Comedy, its themes and a closely-related genre (Aesopic fable) in the last hours of his life. Finally, the Republic engages the themes of Ecclesiazusae, dramatizing the conflict between comedy and philosophy over which is best able to enlighten its audience.
Although biographical approaches to the interpretation of literary texts have generally fallen out of favor,1 they continue to be influential in Platonic studies, driven by ongoing interest in the life of the historical Socrates.2 Although different types of evidence—the works of Xenophon, Aristotle and the anecdotal tradition represented by writers like Diogenes Laertius—are brought to bear on this question, Plato’s dialogues continue to be the most important. The biography of Socrates thus obtained
1 This essay is written an an expression of admiration for Jeffrey Henderson, whose work has done so much to expand our understanding of Old Comedy. Many thanks also to Wolfgang Haase and S. Douglas Olson for helpful comments on earlier versions of this chapter. For biographical readings in ancient literary criticism, see Mary Lefkowitz, The Lives of the Greek Poets (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981). For a critique of the impulse, see Paul Allen Miller, Lyric Texts and Lyric Consciousness: The Birth of a Genre from Archaic Greece to Augustan Rome (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 1–51. In Aristophanes and the Carnival of Genres (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), pp. 94–8, I use the “Socratic Question” as a parallel for the problems raised by the “autobiographical” parabasis of Aristophanic Comedy. On this issue, see also Gregory W. Dobrov, “The Poet’s Voice in the Evolution of Dramatic Dialogism,” in: Dobrov (ed.), Beyond Aristophanes: Transition and Diversity in Greek Comedy (Atlanta: Scholars’ Press, 1995), pp. 47–97. 2 For the positivist version (deemed “the argument from outraged propriety” by Guthrie), see John Burnet (ed.), Plato’s Phaedo (Oxford: Clarendon, 1911), pp. xi–xii. Recent commentators are more inclined to emphasize the rhetorical nature of Plato’s Socrates. See e.g. Gabriel Danzig, Apologizing for Socrates: How Plato and Xenophon Created Our Socrates (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2010).
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can then be used to reconstruct the attitude of his devoted student. Of particular importance for this project is Socrates’ dramatic calling out of Aristophanes in the Apology as one of the “earlier accusers” indirectly responsible for the indictment against him.3 The dialogues of Plato can be read to confirm this impression. Beginning with the unifying (auto-)biographical portrait of Socrates in the Apology, which presents Aristophanes as one of Socrates’ chief antagonists, we can continue to the Phaedo, which alludes directly to Clouds (70b–c).4 The Symposium has been interpreted as confirming the point by making Aristophanes look foolish.5 Platonic discussions of comedy can be seen as further reinforcing the same idea. Socrates expresses skepticism about laughter generally in the Republic, for example in his recommendation that the Guardians not be prone to it (388e), although the entire narrative frame of the dialogue takes place within the scope of Socratic irony. In the Laws (935e–6b), the Athenian Stranger forbids comedy and allied genres to mock any citizen, under penalty of fine or exile unless they receive prior permission from the Guardians to do so. Thus framed, the Platonic reception of Aristophanes appears internally consistent. Aristophanes’ Clouds is identified in the Apology as a major cause of the slander against Socrates. This judgment receives additional support from Phaedo 70c–d, which can be read as a bitter recollection of the Clouds portrait. Plato gets some measure of revenge in the Symposium, on this view. Aristophanes’ contribution (189c–d), like those of the other participants, is marginalized by Socrates’ Diotima logos (201d–12c), which both caps them and exposes their relative shallowness.6 Finally, Aristophanes is unwilling or unable to respond to Socrates’ closing argument that portrays both him and Agathon as flawed poets (223c–d). The negative assessment of comedy is perceptible in other works as well. In the Republic, the scope for
3 Cf. Apol. 19c. Louis E. Lord, Aristophanes: His Plays and His Influence (New York: Cooper Square, 1963) sees Aristophanes as the primary cause of Socrates’ indictment. Thomas H. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, Socrates on Trial (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 110–11, take Socrates’ words at face value, in keeping with their general position that the Apology is substantially based on fact, although they do not go so far as to make Clouds the only cause of the διαβολή. They nevertheless see the implied charges of Aristophanes as serious accusations: “Since the essence of the ‘first’ accusers is the charge that Socrates is in some way or other a dangerous innovator against established religious beliefs and a corrupter of youth—that is, the sense of these charges is the same as that of those lodged by the ‘later’ accusers—these ‘later accusers have every reason to believe that their accusations will be seen as important and serious ones.” 4 The clearest reference is to Clouds 1480 and 1485. For discussion of these lines and other relevant passages, see below on Phaedo’s ἄτοπόν τι πάθος. 5 For an example of such a reading, see Victor Brochard, “Sur le Banquet de Platon,” in: Victor Delbos (ed.), Études de philosophie ancienne et de philosophie moderne, Bibliothèque de philosophie contemporaine (Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1912), pp. 72, 89–90. 6 For the contrast between Aristophanes’ speech and Diotima’s, see Kenneth Dover, “Aristophanes’ Speech in Plato’s Symposium,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 86 (1966), pp. 41–50, esp. 47–8.
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laughter is restricted in the hypothetical best city, while in the Laws Platonic ambivalence about laughter results in the prohibition of direct mockery of citizens, both passages being arguably oblique references to the representation of Clouds in the Apology. Yet caution is advised before accepting this conclusion without qualification. The Apology passage does not attempt to contextualize the practice of mocking prominent individuals, which is an important part of Old Comedy, and comic writers do not appear to limit their mockery to matters factual.7 It presents the comic depiction of Socrates as an act without precedent or successor, rhetorically magnifying the arbitrariness of its accusations and the intensity of its results. Within the Apology, this tactic makes sense as part of Socrates’ attempt to portray the desperate circumstances of his case as the result of an inherited prejudice created by individuals who, except for Aristophanes, are anonymous and thus cannot be refuted. At the same time, although contemporary readers of the Apology would have recognized Socrates’ reference to Clouds (423 BCE), they would also have known that this was not the only Aristophanic play to mock Socrates, and that other writers used him as a comic figure as well. Plato himself (b. 448) was born into an age intimately familiar with the conventions of Old Comedy. Indeed, he might well have been in the audience when the original Clouds was staged. In any case, it is reasonable to wonder if the charge he puts in the mouth of Socrates in the Apology should be read as rhetorical or ironic rather than as a statement of fact. Nor are negative assessments in Plato themselves always reliable, and not simply because the dialogue form precludes the presence of an authoritative narrative voice.8 Plato’s critiques of poetry in the Republic (376d–98b, 595a–608b) and of writing in the Phaedrus (274b–7a) must be balanced against his own mimetic practice in the dialogues, a type of writing described by Aristotle as half-way between poetry and prose (fr. 43 Rose3).9 Moreover, these works attest to Plato’s interest in the creative arts in
7 See also “Aristophanes’ Influence” (below). Ralph Rosen, Old Comedy and the Iambographic Tradition (Atlanta: Scholar’s Press, 1988), esp. pp. 59–82, argues that Aristophanes’portrait of the demagogue Cleon was informed as much by literary as historical considerations. See also Stephen Halliwell, “The Uses of Laughter in Greek Culture,” Classical Quarterly 41 (1991), pp. 279–96; and Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), esp. pp. 243–63; Platter, Aristophanes and the Carnival (above, n. 1), pp. 34–5. For the ubiquity of ad hominem aeschrologia in Old Comedy, see Rosen (above), pp. 9–36. 8 There is of course no appeal to the authority of Socrates, who wrote nothing. This absence created a situation in which authors were free to produce Socratic logoi at will. See Alice Riginos, Platonica: The Anecdotes Concerning the Life and Writings of Plato (Leiden: Brill, 1976), esp. pp. 53–60. 9 See also Poetics 1447b10 for the similarity of the Socratic dialogue to the mimes of Sophron. Diogenes Laertius 3.18 asserts that Plato was responsible for popularizing Sophron in Athens, and claims that his books were discovered under Plato’s pillow. The 6th-century CE Neoplatonic writer Olympiodorus (Vita Platonis) preserves a revisionist version of the anecdote in which copies of both Sophron and Aristophanes were found.
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general and to their philosophical significance. Ancient commentators saw, or invented, a biographical link to explain this interest, the fact that Plato himself was an artist (the genre differs according to the source) who gave up poetry for philosophy under the influence of Socrates.10 Whatever the reliability of these testimonia, comedy was evidently a concern for Plato as well. In the Philebus, Socrates analyzes the experience of an audience member at a comic performance (48a).11 He also casts Aristophanes as an active participant in the Symposium, and has Alcibiades quote his description of Socrates directly (221b). What we see in these examples, is a Plato interested in and engaged with comedy, beyond or in addition to any animus he may have borne against Aristophanes for the death of Socrates. These considerations make clear that exclusive reliance on the Apology threatens to skew our understanding of Plato’s understanding of and engagement with Aristophanes. In what follows, biographical readings of Plato and Aristophanes will not play a large part. I will also insist that the literary qualities of the Apology problematize its use as a source for establishing unequivocal biographical facts, and will argue that Aristophanes’ responsibility for creating hostility to Socrates has been much exaggerated. A literary approach to the dialogues also brings into view Plato’s persistent engagement with both Aristophanes and the tropes of Old Comedy generally. Plato appreciated the significance of Aristophanes and often appropriated him and his work, without showing any particular animus against him for his portrayal of Socrates. My argument proceeds in two unequal parts. The first examines the charges Plato has Socrates make in the Apology, as well as the influence Aristophanes can be presumed to have exerted over Athenian policy-making. This examination will begin to cast doubt on Socrates’ attempt to single out Clouds. It is followed by a section on the representation of Socrates as a sophist in Clouds and elsewhere. This section, with the one that follows on the representation of Socrates in comedy outside of Clouds, shows that the comic Socrates was a common property, with numerous comic poets making use of the same tropes. All this tends to confirm doubts about the ability of Clouds to have been as significant as Socrates maintains, even if it was possible for Plato to use the play as a metaphor for the popular understanding of philosophy. The second part of the chapter begins by developing a context for Plato’s relationship with Aristophanes by examining the representation of the comic poet in the Symposium, and then discusses other uses Plato makes of comedy in the dialogues, concluding with an attempt to read Republic 5 as a response to Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae.
10 E.g. Diogenes Laertius 3.4. For the sources, see Riginos, Platonica (above, n. 8), pp. 43–51. Riginos argues that the stories about Plato’s literary efforts go back to Aristotle’s student Dicaearchus and are derived from a biographical reading of Books 3 and 10 of the Republic. 11 See also Rep. 606c.
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I. Slandering Socrates Old and New Accusers It will be useful to begin by looking briefly at the indictment of Socrates as it appears in the Apology, then at Socrates’ modification of it to include Aristophanes and the rest of the “old accusers”: Σωκράτη φησὶν ἀδικεῖν τούς τε νέους διαφθείροντα καὶ θεοὺς οὓς ἡ πόλις νομίζει οὐ νομίζοντα, ἕτερα δὲ δαιμόνια καινά. [It] says that Socrates is guilty of corrupting the minds of the young and of believing in deities of his own invention instead of the gods recognized by the state. (24b)12
Other versions of the indictment are preserved by Xenophon at the beginning of the Memorabilia (1.1) and by Diogenes Laertius (2.40), but these are in general agreement with Plato’s version. The charge is in two parts. The first deals with Socrates’ corruption of the young. Although there is no evidence of other Athenians being charged with such an offense, the 4th-century orator Aeschines (1.6–12) refers to existing rules designed to prevent the corruption of young men as laws of Solon—i.e. of sufficient antiquity to be plausibly associated with the early 6th-century lawgiver.13 In any case, for anyone familiar with the Socrates of Plato’s dialogues, the significance of the charge is clear: we are meant to imagine the young men who associate with Socrates, listening to him question their elders about the ethical basis of their actions and hearing them reply with convoluted and self-contradictory responses. Later in the Apology, we hear that these same young men not only are present when their elders are critiqued by Socrates, but try their hands at the process as well (33c). Such actions no doubt made Socrates unpopular among tradition-minded Athenians, who expected sons to obey their fathers without question.14 The first part of the indictment
12 References from the Platonic dialogues are taken from John Burnet (ed.), Platonis Opera (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900–1907). Translations from the Apology are from Hugh Tredennick, in: Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (eds.), The Collected Dialogues of Plato (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 3–26. 13 He is concerned with σωφροσύνη (1.6) and εὐκοσμία (1.8). For the laws in question, see Nick Fisher (ed.), Aeschines, Against Timarchos (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 127–35. The issue is thematic within the speech, however, and specifically relevant to the Apology. Later Aeschines will remind the audience about what happened to Socrates when he “was shown” (ἐφάνη) to have been the teacher of Critias, and will suggest that Demosthenes’ bad influence merits an equal response by the state (1.173). See also Fisher (above), pp. 319–21. 14 Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.2.51, who also suggests that Critias and Alcibiades were attracted to these Socratic attributes to gain power (1.2.13–16). See also Barry S. Strauss, Fathers and Sons in Athens (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 61–99, for expectations for filial behavior. For an extreme case, see Aeschines, Against Timarchos (1.13).
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thus appears to be a response to Socrates’ habitual style of questioning rather than to a unique act of wrongdoing. The second part of the accusation is more specific: Socrates invents new gods. This portion of the accusation is understood in two ways. On the one hand, Socrates later goads his accuser Meletus into saying that he is altogether an atheist, a charge Socrates dismisses with a brief argument. On the other—and this is confirmed by Plato’s Euthyphro (3b)—the accusation that Socrates invents new gods refers to his belief in a divine sign or daimonion, which, as Plato represents it, at any rate, dissuades Socrates from certain courses of action but never encourages him toward anything. Although the charges against Socrates appear to be based on a way of life he does not deny, he does not appear to set much store by them. More important, he suggests, is the lingering bias created by men he refers to as the “first accusers,” who have been saying that: ὡς ἔστιν τις Σωκράτης σοφὸς ἀνήρ, τὰ τε μετέωρα φροντιστὴς καὶ τὰ ὑπὸ γῆς πάντα ἀνεζητηκὼς καὶ τὸν ἥττω λόγον κρείττω ποιῶν. There is a wise man called Socrates who has theories about the heavens and has investigated everything below the earth, and can make the weaker argument defeat the stronger. (18b)
A little later, Socrates repackages this summary as what a legal indictment brought by the first accusers would look like if it existed: Σωκράτης ἀδικεῖ καὶ περιεργάζεται ζητῶν τὰ τε ὑπὸ γῆς καὶ οὐράνια καὶ τὸν ἥττω λόγον κρείττω ποιῶν καὶ ἄλλους ταὐτὰ ταῦτα διδάσκων. Socrates is guilty of criminal meddling, in that he enquires into things below the earth and in the sky, making the weaker argument defeat the stronger, and teaching others to follow his example. (19b–c, translation slightly adapted)
Although Socrates does not mention Aristophanes at this point, his “first accusers” must have been in the audience when Clouds was performed, for their opinions read like a précis of the play.15 Both passages refer to Socrates’ ”making the weaker 15 Many commentators have thought that there is a reference to political prejudice against Socrates for having been associated with Critias, Charmides and Alcibiades during this period. See Brickhouse and Smith, Socrates on Trial (above, n. 3), pp. 69–87. Whether or not the reference to the “first accusers” should be so understood, the Apology appears to acknowledge that such accusations were not new, in light of the lengths Socrates goes to deny that he was anyone’s teacher, and to emphasize that during his career he alienated democrats and oligarchs alike (32a–e). See also Theaetetus 149–50, for midwifery as an alternative image of Socratic practice. Whether we interpret the metaphor as originating with Socrates or Plato depends in part on how much weight is placed on Socrates’ choice of words. He says that those pregnant with wisdom who leave his care too early “miscarry” (150e ἐξήμβλωσαν), a striking expression in the context of Clouds 137, where the student faults Strepsiades for having knocked so loudly at the door that he caused an idea to miscarry (ἐξήμβλωκας). Kenneth
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argument [the] stronger” (τὸν ἥττω λόγον κρείττω ποιῶν), that is, using clever argumentation to defeat a just argument. The phrase itself does not occur frequently, but the idea is ubiquitous in the 5th-century Athenian imagination, as Socrates seems to imply later (23d). This complex attitude toward rhetoric is symptomatic of the clash between traditional power elites whose status is based on lineage, and talented outsiders (or ambitious men from the traditional elite, like Alcibiades) who have learned that persuasive speaking is a short cut to political influence in Athens.16 This conflict produces linguistic ambivalence. What practitioners might call “effective public speaking” is anathema to less able antagonists, who call it “making the weaker argument stronger.” Socrates could be perceived as enabling the former by his emphasis on careful definition and dialectical exchanges. In the fictional world the Apology maintains, Socrates reminds the judges that one accuser warned them not to be deceived by him ὡς δεινοῦ ὄντος λέγειν (“because I am a clever speaker”) (17b).17 As
Dover (ed.), Clouds (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968), pp. xlii–xliii, rejects the possibility that Aristophanes preserves here an authentic Socratic metaphor, on the ground that Aristophanes cannot expect the details of Socratic terminology to be known to all. But Dover’s standard is not the right one, in my estimation, for many Aristophanic passages can be funny to sections of the audience who understand them in different ways. The possible connection between the two passages thus remains suggestive. See also Platter, Aristophanes and the Carnival (above, n. 1), pp. 65–7. 16 The comment of E.R. Dodds (ed.), Plato, Gorgias (Oxford: Clarendon, 1959), p. 10, on the Gorgias is apt: “Men like Callicles did not pay high fees to Gorgias because they enjoyed playing tricks with words, but because they were hungry for power and the new education was αἴτιον τοῦ ἄλλων ἄρχειν ἐν τῇ πόλει (452d).” In Clouds, Socrates is represented as an educator of such men but cannot be the only one. Aristophanes represents the interest in oratory as characteristic of a generation. In Acharnians, for example, the old men complain of the evils they suffer: οἵτινες γέροντας ἄνδρας ἐμβαλόντες εἰς γραφὰς ὑπὸ νεανίσκων ἐᾶτε καταγελᾶσθαι ῥητόρων, οὐδὲν ὄντας, ἀλλὰ κωφοὺς καὶ παρεξηυλημένους You throw aged men into lawsuits and let them be the sport of stripling speechmakers, old men who are finished, soundless and played out. (679–81) References to the complete plays of Aristophanes are taken from N.G. Wilson (ed.), Aristophanis Fabulae (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Unless otherwise indicated, translations are from Jeffrey Henderson, Aristophanes Acharnians, Knights, Loeb Classical Library 178 (London and Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), Aristophanes Clouds, Wasps, Peace, Loeb Classical Library 488 (London and Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), Birds, Lysistrata, Thesmophoriazusae, Loeb Classical Library 179 (London and Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), and Aristophanes Frogs, Assemblywomen, Wealth, Loeb Classical Library 180 (London and Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002). 17 See Dover, Clouds (above, n. 15), pp. xxxvii–xxxvix. For the perceived importance of public speaking in 5th-century Athens, see G.B. Kerferd The Sophistic Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 15–20.
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one of the “first accusers,” Aristophanes expresses this resentment. It is no accident, on this view, that Socrates’ school has a personification of the “Unjust Speech” on its payroll. The other activities associated with Socrates by the first accusers tie him even more directly to Aristophanes. He is depicted as a thinker about the heavens and as someone who has investigated everything underground (τά τε μετέωρα φροντιστὴς καὶ τὰ ὑπὸ γῆς πάντα ἀνεζητηκώς). At first sight, this might appear to be a general reference to theorizing about the natural world—and indeed, that possibility cannot be wholly excluded; a number of Socrates’ predecessors were believed to have done just that.18 But given that we have already been reminded of comedy, the repeated remark must be connected with a memorable series of jokes in Clouds, when Strepsiades first knocks on the door of the school and is met by a student who criticizes him for causing one of Socrates’ clever ideas to abort.19 Later, Strepsiades is shocked at the various poses of the students who emerge, some of whom appear to be standing with their faces near the ground (191); the student explains that they are wandering in the darkness beneath Tartarus. Strepsiades, more interested in the contortions of the students’ bodies than their speculations, asks why are “their assholes are looking up at the sky (τὸν οὐρανόν),” to which the student responds, “They’re teaching themselves astronomy” (191–3). Thus Socrates’ two remarks in the Apology about the earth and the heavens seem largely to be derived from Clouds, even if he does not say so immediately. Socrates’ coyness about the identity of the comic playwright and the specificity of his references to Clouds soon comes to an end: ταῦτα γὰρ ἑωρᾶτε καὶ αὐτοὶ ἐν τῇ Ἀριστοφάνους κωμῳδίᾳ, Σωκράτη τινὰ ἐκεῖ περιφερόμενον, φάσκοντά τε ἀεροβατεῖν καὶ ἄλλην πολλὴν φλυαρίαν φλυαροῦντα, ὧν ἐγὼ οὐδὲν οὔτε μέγα οὔτε μικρὸν πέρι ἐπαΐω. You have seen it for yourselves in the comedy by Aristophanes, where Socrates goes whirling round, proclaiming that he is walking on air, and uttering a great deal of other nonsense about things of which I know nothing whatsoever (19c, translation slightly adapted).
Socrates’ description refers precisely to the arrival of the Aristophanic Socrates on stage. After being introduced to the school, Strepsiades notices a man suspended in a basket. In practice, this would have been accomplished by a theatrical crane that
18 Herodotus (1.4.2) records the belief that Thales of Miletus foretold an eclipse. For relevant bibliography, see David Asheri, et al., A Commentary on Herodotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 134–5. The astronomical theories of Anaxagoras are mentioned at Apology 26d. Although in the Apology Socrates denies any interest in such matters, his remarks in the Phaedo (97b–8a) imply at least some curiosity about τὰ μετέωρα. Xenophon, however, sees Socrates’ interest as having been more narrowly practical (Memorabilia 4.7.4–5). 19 See above, n. 15.
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swung the actor out across the stage, hence περιφερόμενον. Likewise, “proclaiming that he is walking on air” refers to Socrates’ explanation of his position: ἀεροβατῶ καὶ περιφρονῶ τὸν ἥλιον (“I tread the air and scrutinize the sun”) (225). In addition, to explain his reluctance to pursue his efforts from the ground, the Aristophanic Socrates offers an elaborate theory about the earth dessicating thought just as it does the cardamon plant (232–34). In several different ways, then, Socrates’ references to investigating earth and heaven are derived from Aristophanes’ representation of his activities in Clouds. What remains to be seen, is how seriously Socrates and Plato expect their respective audiences to take such statements. To address this question, we must first consider briefly the influence wielded by Aristophanes within the decision-making process of the city.
Aristophanes’ Influence It is hard to know whether it is more remarkable that all of Socrates’ early detractors but Aristophanes should be unknown in a modest-sized city like Athens, or that Socrates calls out Aristophanes as someone who has injured his reputation to such a degree that he is now on trial for his life. After all, Clouds was performed nearly a quarter of a century before the trial. Is it conceivable that the negative representation nurtured the διαβολή that has grown into the indictment? Some evidence suggests that the idea is not entirely far-fetched.20 Aristophanes, after all, styles himself a teacher of the demos. In Acharnians, the chorus asserts that he has educated the Athenians so that they are no longer taken in by the words of foreign embassies that excited them previously.21 The link between comic wisdom and political policy is emphasized again a few lines later, when the chorus reports a conversation involving the Persian king, who in the conflict between Athens and Sparta predicts victory for whichever side has Aristophanes as advisor (649). Similar declarations of Aristophanes’ political savvy occur in other plays, especially in the repeated attacks on Cleon, who was apparently ridiculed in the lost Babylonians (426 BCE) and appears frequently thereafter in plays from the 420s. In Acharnians (425 BCE), we hear of a prosecution brought by Cleon against Aristophanes in
20 Questions about the political content of Aristophanic comedy have not yet produced a consensus. Many discussions are nevertheless predicated on a particular understanding of this issue. For a critical discussion of modern debates concerning the political stance of Aristophanic comedy see S. Douglas Olson, “Comedy, Politics, and Society,” in: Gregory W. Dobrov (ed.), Brill’s Companion to the Study of Greek Comedy (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2010), pp. 35–69. 21 The reference to “foreign speeches” (634 ξενικοῖσι λόγοις) was thought by Bergk to allude to the embassy of Gorgias to Athens to request aid for Leontini, a famous occasion that forms the basis for Plato’s Gorgias. On the embassy, see Diodorus Siculus 12.53. For the Acharnians passage, see S. Douglas Olson (ed.), Aristophanes Acharnians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 237–9.
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response.22 The most bitter and sustained attack on Cleon (perhaps even with a portrait mask) was in Knights (424 BCE), where he is represented as Paphlagon, a blustering slave who steals shamelessly from his master Demos, the people of Athens, until deposed by an even more depraved character, a sausage-seller.23 The chorus of Clouds (423 BCE) criticizes the Athenians for electing Cleon general, and urges them to convict him of accepting bribes and theft (581–94), and in Wasps (422 BCE) he is a dog that prosecutes another dog for theft. Pronouncements regarding the war with Sparta are also a major feature of Aristophanic comedy. Acharnians, Peace and Lysistrata all use ending the war as a major plot device. Even as late as Frogs (405 BCE), the chorus urges the city to restore the civic rights of exiles and so save the city. Throughout his career, then, Aristophanes declares the wisdom of comedy and makes specific policy recommendations to his fellow-citizens. The repeated insistence of Aristophanic comedy on its own political relevance compels us to take seriously the link Socrates draws between Aristophanic comedy and real life. At the same time, as Stow pointed out, despite Aristophanes’ implications to the contrary, there is little evidence that he exercised much influence on the direction of public policy.24 The peace plays do not seem to have had any effect on Athenian determination to continue the war with Sparta. Even the attacks on Cleon appear to have gone nowhere; the year after Aristophanes’ bitter portrayal of him in Knights, Cleon was elected general, apparently by the same people who enjoyed the send-up of him on stage.25 The conclusion thus seems inescapable that Athenian audiences, although accustomed to and reveling in the scandalous abuse of public figures in Old Comedy, did not act as if the representations of those figures in comedy had implications for evaluating the way an individual conducted his public duties. Here, as in so many places, Aristophanes is long on grandiose allegation but short on direct demonstration.26 To return to the case of Socrates, the implications are clear. If Cleon could move from public honor to public honor, despite having recently been pilloried before a large chunk of the citizen body, it is unreasonable to believe that Aristophanes’ substantially gentler treatment of Socrates in Clouds was so damaging that its reper-
22 See Olson, Acharnians (above, n. 22), pp. xlvi–lii; Rosen, Old Comedy and the Iambographic Tradition (above, n. 7), p. 64. 23 See Knights 230–3. A scholiast on the passage reports a tradition that Aristophanes himself played the role of Paphlagon/Cleon. 24 H. Lloyd Stow, “Aristophanes’ Influence upon Public Opinion,” Classical Journal 38 (1942), pp. 82– 92. 25 There is no clear evidence that comic mockery had long-term personal or political ramifications, a fact that must have given some consolation to many komodoumenoi. For the prominence of komodoumenoi at Athens, see Alan H. Sommerstein, “How to Avoid Being a Komodoumenos,” Classical Quarterly NS 46 (1996), pp. 327–56. 26 Olson, “Comedy, Politics, and Society” (above, n. 21), pp. 46–47, 57, discusses in detail the lack of effect that Aristophanes’ political statements seem to have had.
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cussions were still felt over 20 years later. Moreover, although the Apology’s identification of Clouds as a significant cause of anti-Socratic bias is explicit, it appears nowhere else in the Platonic corpus, even where Plato has Socrates allude to Clouds. In the Phaedo, Socrates says that not even a comic poet would say ὡς ἀδολεσχῶ καὶ οὐ περὶ προσηκόντων τοὺς λόγους ποιοῦμαι (“that I talk aimlessly and don’t make my speeches about appropriate matters”) (70b–c). ἀδολεσχῶ here alludes to Strepsiades’ realization that he has been “out of [his] mind because of aimless speech” (παρανοήσαντος ἀδολεσχίᾳ, 1480) through much of the play, and to his characterization of Socrates’ school as τὴν οἰκίαν τῶν ἀδολεσχῶν (“the house of the aimless talkers”) (1484–85).27 Although Socrates acknowledges the Clouds passage, however, he does so with his customary urbane irony and says nothing to suggest that it had an effect on his reputation. Nor does Xenophon mention Aristophanes or Clouds in his Apology. In the Memorabilia, he takes pains to distinguish Socrates from men who talk about the nature of the universe (1.1.11, 14 περὶ τῆς τῶν πάντων φύσεως). The latter reference admittedly occurs in the context of Xenophon’s general discussion of the charges against Socrates, but there is little to suggest that he has Clouds especially in mind. His primary source for the account in his Apology is the testimony of Hermogenes (1.1.1) about the attitude of Socrates both before and during the trial.28 Moreover, the context within which Xenophon’s remarks occur is a description not of the subject of Socrates’ teaching but of how all his activities took place in public (1.1.10 ἐν τῷ φανερῷ). Xenophon makes this point to argue that if Socrates had discussed subjects contrary to traditional religious beliefs, his actions would have been perceived by everyone. Moreover, Xenophon maintains that Socrates never said or did anything impious or unholy (1.1.11 οὐδὲν ἀσεβὲς οὐδὲ ἀνόσιον), and he cites his abstention from discussions of nature and cosmology as evidence for this.29 Xenophon thus does not appear to allude to any damage done to Socrates’ reputation by Clouds, merely to the ridiculousness of the impiety charge. We can conclude, then, that the charge Plato has Socrates make against Aristophanes’ play was not viewed by contemporaries as significant enough to be worth mentioning.30
27 See also Theaetetus 195c for what is perhaps a rehabilitated sense of the term. 28 Hermogenes the son of Hipponicus, half brother of Callias, was a close associate of Socrates. For the testimonia, see Debra Nails, The People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato and Other Socratics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), pp. 162–4. 29 He goes further, according to Xenophon, regarding those who paid attention to such issues as fools (1.1.12 μωραίνοντας) and comparing them to madmen (1.1.14). 30 It should also be noted that the degree to which Socrates was mentioned in the plays of other playwrights would have diluted the special significance of Clouds in coloring his reputation. See especially Christopher Carey, “Old Comedy and the Sophists,” in: David Harvey and John Wilkins (eds.), The Rivals of Aristophanes: Studies in Athenian Old Comedy (London and Swansea: Duckworth and The Classical Press of Wales, 2000), pp. 419–36. See also below, “Socrates Komoidoumenos.”
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“The Sophist Socrates” This conclusion should not surprise us, for the Socrates of 425 BCE was not yet the Socrates Plato and two millenia of commentary have bequeathed to us. In fact, he was probably indistinguishable from the Sophists in the eyes of a substantial subset of the theatre-going population of Athens.31 His overall antinomianism, which made him a target of other comic writers, would only have made the connection to another group of outsiders easier for spectators with no close association to rhetoric or politics.32 The Platonic dialogues as a whole are intent on establishing a negative portrait of the Sophists and making it clear how Socrates differed from them.33 The Apology is especially insistent on this point. Unlike the Sophists, who were reputed to demand huge sums of money for their lessons,34 Socrates received no fees from pupils (19e) and in fact denied that he taught anyone. Moreover, he claimed to pursue a life devoted to discussion in order to test the oracle from Apollo that no one was wiser than he (20d–1a). He came to interpret the oracle to mean that human wisdom was worth little or nothing and that his wisdom, such as it was, consisted in the recognition of his ignorance (23a–b). The Apology’s conclusion on Socrates is therefore clear: no wisdom, nothing to teach, not a Sophist; Clouds got it wrong. The full story is murkier. Within the Platonic dialogues, an implied definition of a Sophist would be a professional teacher who profited from the rhetorical culture that accompanied the development of Athenian democracy at both the deliberative and the judicial levels.35 Since it was important to speak well to be influential with the demos, men with disposable income—like Socrates’ acquaintance Callias, whose home is the setting of the Protagoras—paid “top dollar” for teachers. Plato’s dialogues regularly stage conversations between Socrates and these Sophists. Gorgias and Protagoras have dialogues named after them; two more feature Hippias; Thrasymachus gets most of the first book of the Republic; and Euthydemus depicts Socrates in a contest against two brothers whose special delight is reducing interlocutors to hopeless confusion by arguing both sides of a question. Plato’s Socrates views this sort of intellectual virtuosity with skepticism. An important theme of these conversations is
31 For Socrates as sophist, see Kerferd, Sophistic Movement (above, n. 17), pp. 55–7. For the orientation of Aristophanic comedy toward arguably accurate representations, as opposed to genuinely accurate ones, see Platter, Aristophanes and the Carnival (above, n. 1), esp. pp. 65–7. 32 The most prominent sophists were non-Athenians: Gorgias was from Sicily, Prodicus from Ceos, Hippias from Elis and Euenus from Paros. They are mentioned or alluded to at Apology 19c–20b. Protagoras was from Abdera and appears prominently in the dialogue that bears his name. 33 The testimonia for sophists who come within the purview of the Platonic dialogues are collected under the individual entries for each in Nails, People of Plato (above, n. 29). 34 Plato, Hippias Maior 282b–c. Elsewhere, Socrates expresses regret at having been unable to attend the 50-drachma lectures of Prodicus (Cratylus 304a–c). Cf. also Aristotle, Rhetoric 1415b15. 35 This explains the scene at the beginning of Plato’s Protagoras, where Socrates’ ambitious acquaintance Hippocrates is giddy at the thought of visiting Protagoras (312d).
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the juxtaposition of seeming and being: Sophists who are satisfied with producing pleasant or persuasive images (seeming) are pitted against Socrates, who is focused exclusively on truth (being). This distinction is epitomized in the Gorgias, in which Socrates compares Gorgias to a cook who seeks to create gustatory pleasure but is indifferent to whether a food is healthy or unhealthy (462d–e). Later in the same work, Socrates reprises the image in words that also recall the Apology, imagining how his speeches, aimed not at pleasurable appearances but at the truth, would fare in court: κρινοῦμαι γὰρ ὡς ἐν παιδίοις ἰατρὸς ἂν κρίνοιτο κατηγοροῦντος ὀψοποιοῦ. σκόπει γάρ, τί ἂν ἀπολογοῖτο ὁ τοιοῦτος ἄνθρωπος ἐν τούτοις ληφθείς, εἰ αὐτοῦ κατηγοροῖ τις λέγων ὅτι, “῏Ω παῖδες, πολλὰ ὑμᾶς καὶ κακὰ ὅδε εἴργασται ἀνὴρ καὶ αὐτούς, καὶ τοὺς νεωτάτους ὑμῶν διαφθείρει τέμνων τε καὶ κάων, καὶ ἰσχναίνων καὶ πνίγων ἀπορεῖν ποιεῖ, πικρότατα πώματα διδοὺς καὶ πεινῆν καὶ διψῆν ἀναγκάζων, οὐχ ὥσπερ ἐγὼ πολλὰ καὶ ἡδέα καὶ παντοδαπὰ ηὐώχουν ὑμᾶς. For I will be like a doctor tried by a bench of children on a charge brought by a cook. Just consider what defense a person like that would make at such a pass, if the prosecutor should speak against him thus: Children, this fellow has done you all a great deal of personal mischief, and he destroys even the youngest of you by cutting and burning, and starves and chokes you to distraction, giving you nasty bitter draughts, and forcing you to fast and thirst; not like me, who used to gorge you with abundance of nice things of every sort (521e–2c).36
Thus in Gorgias and throughout the dialogues, the work of rhetoric, to which the Sophists contribute part of their intellectual labor, is wholly directed at producing pleasure, as opposed to the less popular Socratic practice of seeking truth within the limitations of human ignorance. Plato’s picture of Socrates and the Sophists has won many adherents over the centuries, so extraordinary was the personality of Socrates and so skillful Plato’s own writing. For this reason we must also be cautious, lest Socratic/Platonic θέλξις sway us unfairly. The Platonic dialogues could perhaps be described as a precursor-genre of ancient biography, and they partake of the same hagiographic impulse to shape the subject’s reputation. Plato’s insistence on disassociating Socrates from the Sophists and from formal teaching of all sorts is important for showing that it was unjust of Aristophanes, and no doubt others, to portray Socrates as the teacher of Critias, Charmides and Alcibiades.37 From this perspective, Plato’s separation of Socrates from the Sophists makes rhetorical sense, for the issue is relevant to the polemics that
36 Translation by W.R.M. Lamb, Plato, Lysis, Symposium, Gorgias, Loeb Classical Library 166 (Cambridge Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1925). 37 Thus Plato is careful to emphasize both Socrates’ close friendship with the democrat Chaerephon (20e–1a) and his unwillingness to collaborate with the Thirty (32c–e). Plato’s Charmides tackles the same problem along different lines, by showing Socrates discussing sophrosyne with Critias and his charge Charmides in an attempt to turn them to a philosophical understanding of the idea. Cf. also the Seventh Letter (325a) for Plato’s own disassociation from the Thirty.
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occupied Plato and others after Socrates’ death.38 From the internal frame of the Apology, however, it is more difficult to maintain the absolute separation between Socrates and the Sophists. Kerferd makes the point that in the eyes of a substantial subset of the theater-going population of Athens, Socrates was probably indistinguishable from them. Moreover, the representation of Socrates as a kind of Sophist seems to have been enduring. Aeschines the orator cites Socrates as a parallel for the corrupting effect of Demosthenes: ἔπειθ’ ὑμεῖς, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, Σωκράτην μὲν τὸν σοφιστὴν ἀπεκτείνατε, ὅτι Κριτίαν ἐφάνη πεπαιδευκώς, ἕνα τῶν τριάκοντα τῶν τὸν δῆμον καταλυσάντων, Δημοσθένης δ’ ὑμῖν ἑταίρους ἐξαιτήσεται, ὁ τηλικαύτας τιμωρίας λαμβάνων παρὰ τῶν ἰδιωτῶν καὶ δημοτικῶν ἀνθρώπων ὑπὲρ τῆς ἰσηγορίας; So then, Athenians, did you put Socrates the sophist to death because he was shown to have educated Critias, one of the Thirty who had overthrown the democracy, and will Demosthenes then beg off his companions from you, a man who inflicted revenges of that sort on private individuals who showed their popular concern by defending free speech?39
Significant portions of the Aristophanic representation of Socrates are preserved intact here by Aeschines, who uses him as an example of men whose rhetorical practice has a bad influence on their associates.40 It is thus clear that a full generation after the death of Socrates, his name could be used to conjure up the image of a Sophist in the minds of jurors and to emphasize the deleterious consequences of consorting with such a man. The term Sophist clearly had a pejorative connotation in the 5th century, one that was resilient enough to need no special justification in the 4th. For this reqason, it will not do simply to accept Plato’s version of events, which portrays Socrates as the anti-Sophist extraordinaire. For the interpretation of Aristophanes, however, deciding whether or not Socrates was technically a Sophist is of limited consequence. As Old Comedy knew and Aeschines abundantly illustrates, plausible allegation is as important as fact. The question has seemed more pressing for modern scholars. Many have thought that Aristophanes misunderstood Socrates’ subtleties.41 Others, like Kenneth Dover, argue
38 Danzig, Apologizing (above, n. 2), pp. 19–68, emphasizes Plato’s use of the biography of Socrates to shape his legacy in the years after the execution. 39 Against Timarchos 173. The translation is taken from Fisher, Aeschines Against Timarchos (above, n. 13). Cf. also Alciphron (4.7.7), a fictional letter from a hetaira who touts the educational record of her fellow-practitioners by comparing the student of Aspasia (Pericles) with the student of Σωκράτην τὴν σοφιστὴν (Critias). 40 For the ramifications of being called a sophist, see Josiah Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 170–4. 41 See Martha Nussbaum, “Aristophanes and Socrates on Learning Practical Wisdom,” Yale Classical Studies 26 (1980), pp. 43–97, esp. 46–50. Nussbaum argues that the Aristophanic representation of Socrates was not generic at all but was specifically directed not so much at Socrates the Sophist as at Socrates the antinomian thinker, whose opinions and practices undermined traditional forms of
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that Aristophanes chose self-consciously to amalgamate Socrates with the Sophists, on the ground that the differences between them were too subtle to be effectively represented onstage. In Dover’s view, Aristophanes probably understood that Socrates was not a Sophist in the Platonic sense, but given that he was a popular figure who had been represented in comedy as an idiosyncratic intellectual who might well associate with such men, Aristophanes chose to pile on and make Socrates a fullfledged member of the Sophists’ club. This position needs to be qualified, for there are numerous aspects of the representation of Socrates in Clouds that do not seem generic at all. The idea that he was interested in the natural sciences has already been mentioned and may be reflected both in Strepsiades’ interview with the student (160–74) and in his initial encounter with Socrates.42 Likewise, in contrast to the typical sophist extracting huge fees from his clientele, the poverty of Socrates, emphasized in the Apology (38b), appears to be alluded to in the conversation between the student and Strepsiades: Μα. ἐχθὲς δέ γ’ ἡμῖν δεῖπνον οὐκ ἦν ἑσπέρας. Στ. εἶεν. τί οὖν πρὸς τἄλφιτ’ ἐπαλαμήσατο; Μα. κατὰ τῆς τραπέζας καταπάσας λεπτὴν τέφραν, κάμψας ὀβελίσκον, εἶτα διαβήτην λαβών, ἐκ τῆς παλαίστρας θοἰμάτιον ὑφείλετο. Student. And yesterday evening we had no dinner. Strep. So, how did he get your barley? Student. He sprinkled a fine layer of ash on the table, bent a skewer, then took the compass and snatched a little cloak from the wrestling school. (175–9)43
At the same time, there is no reason why Aristophanes would have shied away from exploiting the well-known eccentric traits of Socrates and augmenting them with characteristics drawn from Sophists and other intellectuals.44 More important, when Old Comedy brings onstage or mentions a Euripides, Cleon, Socrates or even Aristophanes, these historical individuals become comic characters whose stage attributes
behavior—filial obedience, for example—with no regard for social consequences. While Dover regards Aristophanes as a writer dedicated to getting the most out of his comic material, Nussbaum regards him as offering essentially a philosophical appraisal of what it means for a society to tolerate people like Socrates. Her argument is rich and complex but hard to contextualize as a part of the standard practices of Old Comedy. 42 See also n. 15. 43 The translation is mine. Cf. Ameipsias fr. 9, which also makes use of the poverty of Socrates; Eupolis fr. 395. Translations of comic fragments are from Jeffrey Rusten (ed.), The Birth of Comedy: Texts, Documents, and Art from Athenian Comic Competitions, 486–280 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011). 44 See Dover, Clouds (above, n. 15), p. xlv.
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are only accidentally relevant to the reality of their lives.45 Claims that Cleon was guilty of theft (Nu. 591) and that Cleonymus abandoned his shield (Nu. 353) do not require much plausibility, if the play itself sows no seeds for doubt.46 This allows the comic poet to “get away with murder,” as Cleon himself may have learned, if he really tried to prosecute Aristophanes. This separation of the character from his real-world double complements the separateness of festival laughter from everyday life, and helps explains how the mockery of the festival, bitter as it sometimes seems, does not rise to the level of “consequential laughter,” which is perceived as having a negative effect on the reputation of its target.47 As a result, Aristophanes’ technique, and presumably that of his peers, was to exploit whatever possibilities for laughter existed. To have the uniqueness of the historical Socrates generalized into the characteristics of a stereotypical Sophist thus does not require Aristophanes or his rivals to do away with details that come from the man himself. Socrates the Sophist is a part of the comic exploitation of the unusual way of life of Socrates the Athenian. In the next section, I consider other aspects of that portrait.
Socrates Komoidoumenos I have argued that there is little evidence to conclude that the representation of Socrates in Clouds, however amusing and unfair it may have been at the time of its performance, had a lasting effect on his reputation. It may have been possible for Aristophanes to imply that Socrates was a Sophist, if by the word we mean only someone able to argue a point by making fine distinctions, a skill that had been less important when political rank based on class was firmly established, but which grew ever more important as the demos adjusted to new political realities. For Athenians who perceived Socrates as such a man, Plato’s insistence that he did not take money, had no official students and emphasized “being” over “seeming,” might seem to miss the point. Within this context, the portrait of Socrates in Clouds might have had an important influence, if it were unique and therefore memorable. But this was hardly the case. Aristophanes’ attack was only one of many by the writers of Old Comedy, who found his eccentricities lowhanging fruit and did not hesitate to make use of them in their plays. By focusing on their mockery of Socrates, as well as other instances from the Aristophanic corpus, we
45 For the necessity of this separation, see Platter, Aristophanes and the Carnival (above, n. 1), pp. 65– 7, 94–8. 46 The first reference to Cleonymus and his shield is at Knights 1372. For a summary of his many appearances in the plays of Aristophanes, see Douglas M. MacDowell (ed.), Aristophanes Wasps (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 130. 47 For consequential and inconsequential laughter in the context of Old Comedy, see Halliwell, “Uses of Laughter” (above, n. 7).
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can begin to understand Clouds’ take on Socrates in a way that does not presume its uniqueness. Although it is impossible to identify the earliest mention of Socrates in Old Comedy,48 Callias fr. 15 is often cited.49 The fragment is preserved by Diogenes Laertius (2.18), who attributes it to Pedetai (Captives): (Α.) τί δὴ σὺ σεμνὴ καὶ φρονεῖς οὕτω μέγα; (Β.) ἔξεστι γάρ μοι· Σωκράτης γὰρ αἴτιος. (A.) Why are you so stuck-up and proud? (B.) I’m entitled to it: Socrates is responsible.
The plot of Pedetai is unknown, but Diogenes quotes the lines to illustrate the rumor that Socrates assisted Euripides in composing his plays.50 The fragment also illustrates the perception of Socrates as aloof, suggesting as well the overall perniciousness of his influence, especially in a society with egalitarian assumptions.51 Moreover, if the fragment is as early as some scholars think, it suggests that Aristophanes was
48 The parody of quasi-philosophical ideas, however, was thought to go back as far as Epicharmus (fr. 276, quoted by Diogenes Laetius 3.2, but relegated by Kassel–Austin to the Pseudepicharmeia). For commentary on Callias 15, as well as the other comic fragments that mention Socrates, see S. Douglas Olson, Broken Laughter: Select Fragments of Greek Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 234–8. For Callias fr. 15, see also Olimpia Imperio, “Callia,” in: Anna Maria Belardinelli et al., Tessere, frammenti della commedia greca: studi e commenti, Studi e commenti 12 (Bari: Adriatica Editrice, 1998), pp. 101–2. 49 For the date, see Imperio, “Callia” (above, n. 49), pp. 195–6. The early date for Callias’ fragments (430s BCE) is questioned by Ian Storey, “The Date of Kallias’ Pedetai,” Hermes 116 (1988), pp. 379–83. On the basis of the komoidoumenoi in the fragments, Storey thinks a more likely date is 420–415 BCE. If the earlier date is correct, it can be taken to imply that there were also other pre-Aristophanic representations of Socrates in comedy. If not, it becomes possible (though hardly necessary) that Aristophanes’ Clouds and the Connus of Ameipsias (both produced in 423) mark his entrance into the ranks of komoidoumenoi. 50 The link between Socrates and Euripides is probably based on their mutual emphasis on argument and the novelty of their ideas. See also Telecleides fr. 41: Μνησίλοχός ἐστ’ ἐκεῖνος φρύγει τι δρᾶμα καινὸν Εὐριπίδῃ, καὶ Σωκράτης τὰ φρύγαν’ ὑποτίθησιν. Mnesilochus is the man who cooks up a new play for Euripides, and Socrates stokes the fire. 51 For the aloofness of Socrates, see Clouds 363 σεμνοπροσωπεῖς, in the context of a passage quoted approvingly by Alcibiades in the Symposium (221b). σεμναί is also used as an epithet of the Clouds themselves (291). See also Frogs 1496. For the implications of egalitarian ideology, see Ober, Mass and Elite (above, n. 41), pp. 189–90.
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not an innovator in exploiting Socrates’ comic potential but was working in an established tradition when he wrote Clouds. A number of passages concerning Socrates come from Aristophanes himself. The earliest are from Clouds, although it is generally impossible to say whether a line is from the original version of the play (423 BCE) or the revised one (before the ostracism of Hyperbolus in 416 BCE). Diogenes Laertius (2.18) quotes a pair of lines from the first version (fr. 392): Εὐριπίδῃ δ’ ὁ τὰς τραγῳδίας ποιῶν τὰς περιλαλούσας οὗτός ἐστι τὰς σοφά. That’s the one who makes the chattering, clever tragedies for Euripides.
Although Socrates is not mentioned by name, Diogenes quotes this passage together with the similarly-themed Callias fr. 15.52 The fragments thus show two comic poets making use of the same topos related to Socrates, diluting the idea of a unique effect of Clouds.53 In addition to Clouds, Socrates is mentioned in Birds (414 BCE) and Frogs (405 BCE), the production dates of which are themselves significant, because they attest to a tradition of mockery lasting over a significant part of Aristophanes’ career. The passages are also interesting because they show Aristophanes, just as in fr. 392 (above), working with the same set of tropes as his competitors in his representation of Socrates, and not as an outlier.54 In Birds, a herald arrives in the newly-founded Cloudcuckooland to describe life in Athens, which is now dominated by frenzied aping of bird life (1283–1303). Previously, the messenger reminds Peisthetairus (1281–3), ἐλακωνομάνουν ἅπαντες ἄνθρωποι τότε, ἐκόμων, ἐπείνων, ἐρρύπων, ἐσωκράτων, ἐσκυταλιοφόρουν Mankind was crazy about the Spartans: they wore their hair long, went hungry, never bathed, acted like Socrates, brandished batons.55
52 For additional commentary on the fragment, see Andreas Patzer, “Sokrates in den Fragmenten der Attischen Komödie,” in: Anton Bierl and Peter von Moellendorff (eds.), Orchestra: Drama Mythos Bühne (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1994), pp. 50–81. 53 Euripides appears in the revised Clouds (1361–79; also 1415) as the representative of the kind of amoral stories and impious ideas that find a ready audience among the young men of the day; his poetry provides the impetus that brings father and son to blows. 54 This will be true whether or not one believes that comic poets worked collaboratively to a greater or lesser degree. For the issue, see Stephen Halliwell, “Authorial Collaboration in the Athenian Theater,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 30 (1989), pp. 15–28. 55 Translation adapted.
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Of particular interest here is the neologism ἐσωκράτων, “imitated” or perhaps “tried to imitate Socrates.” In the context of the passage, it suggests that “Socratizing” is similar to affecting Spartan characteristics and dress, and reminiscent of the traditional Spartan indifference to suffering.56 Socrates appears a second time in Birds in a choral song that precedes the entrance of the embassy from Zeus to negotiate with Cloudcuckooland (1553–64). In a passage based on the Νέκυια of Odyssey 9, “unwashed Socrates” (ἄλουτος … Σωκράτης) raises the dead (ψυχαγωγεῖ) near the land of the Shadowfeet.57 The raising of ghosts by Socrates may go back to Aristophanes’ representation of the students of the phrontisterion in Clouds, whose pallor is noticed by Strepsiades (184–6; cf. also 1171), while the manipulation of souls of suggests a link with the Phaedrus (261a), where rhetoric is described as a τέχνη ψυχαγωγία τις.58 Equally significant is the fact that Socrates is “unwashed,” for this detail not only appears elsewhere as part of the comic repertoire for describing him, but is consistent with his life as it is represented in the Platonic dialogues.59 In Frogs as well, Aristophanes returns to well-worn attacks (1491–9): χαρίεν οὖν μὴ Σωκράτει παρακαθήμενον λαλεῖν ἀποβαλόντα μουσικὴν τά τε μέγιστα παραλιπόντα τῆς τραγῳδικῆς τέχνης τὸ δ’ ἐπὶ σεμνοῖσιν λόγοις καὶ σκαριφησμοῖσι λήρων διατριβὴν ἀργὸν ποιεῖσθαι παραφρονοῦντος ἀνδρός. So what’s stylish is not to sit beside Socrates and chatter, casting the arts aside and ignoring the best of the tragedian’s craft.
56 There is also a suggestion of aristocratic political dissidence. See Nan Dunbar (ed.), Aristophanes Birds (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), pp. 636–8. The herald hints that reaction against democratic πολυπραγμοσύνη, which once took the form of Laconizing and brought about the foundation of Cloudcuckooland (Av. 44), has now found expression in bird-mania. For political ἀπραγμοσύνη, see L.B. Carter, The Quiet Athenian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 26–51. Nevertheless, “Socratizing” in this sense is downplayed here. 57 There is likely a connection to Aeschylus’ Ψυχαγωγοί as well; see Dunbar, Birds (above, n. 57), pp. 711–12. 58 On the passage, see Harvey Yunis (ed.), Plato Phaedrus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 183. 59 Cf. Symposium 174a, where Apollodorus expresses astonishment at meeting Socrates λελουμένον. Note also the characterization of Aristodemus, the Socrates manqué, as ἀνυπόδητος ἀεί (173b).
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To hang around killing time in pretentitious conversation and hairsplitting twaddle is the mark of a man who’s lost his mind.
This song comes immediately after Dionysus decides to bring Aeschylus back to life. The chorus sings, first praising the fate of the wise man (1482–90), then contrasting him to the fool who sits by Socrates and parses slivers of words. In the context of Euripides’ recent defeat—indeed, he could well remain onstage for the song—the quoted part of the song can clearly be taken to refer to him. The passage thus reprises a number of popular tropes: Socrates as Euripides’ collaborator (see above, n. 48), the excessively verbal character of his genius and the inappropriately elevated manner of his λόγοι σεμνοί, and all of these are derived from the consistent characterization of Socrates in the work of Aristophanes and his rivals. The ideas Aristophanes uses to make fun of Socrates in Clouds are thus not original with him, and seem to have appeared regularly in the work of his rivals. This is particularly apparent in the case of Eupolis, who the Aldine scholiast on Clouds 96, citing fr. 386, claims attacked Socrates “more” than Aristophanes:60 μισῶ δὲ καὶ Σωκράτην τὸν πτωχὸν ἀδολέσχην, ὃς τἆλλα μὲν πεφρόντικεν, ὁπόθεν δὲ καταφαγεῖν ἔχοι τούτου κατημέληκεν I hate Socrates, too, the chattering beggar who has thought through everything else but has not cared for how to feed himself.
The scholiast’s claim reminds us that the absence of extant Old Comedy plays from writers other than Aristophanes means that much of the evidence for the tradition of Socratic representation is lost. Still, Eupolis fr. 386, with its active expression of hatred, is significantly more direct than anything in Aristophanes. Eupolis also includes Socratic traits seen in Aristophanes. Socrates’ poverty has already been mentioned in the context of Clouds 175–9, and here he is a beggar whose inability to earn a living is at odds with his profound speculations. Similar ideas appear in Ameipsias fr. 9:
60 See Ian Storey, Eupolis: Poet of Old Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 34–51, for discussion of the ancient testimonia regarding Eupolis. For the scholia and the fragment itself, see Storey, pp. 324–26; Carey, “Old Comedy and the Sophists,” in: Harvey and Wilkins (eds.), The Rivals of Aristophanes (above, n. 31), pp. 428–9; Olson, Broken Laughter (above, n. 49), pp. 234–5.
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(Α.) Σωκράτης ἀνδρῶν βέλτιστ’ ὀλίγων, πολλῶν δὲ ματαιόταθ’ ἥκεις καὶ σὺ πρὸς ἡμᾶς; καρτερικός γ’ εἰ. πόθεν ἄν σοι χλαῖνα γένοιτο; (Β.) τουτὶ τὸ κακὸν τῶν σκυτοτόμων κατ’ ἐπήρειαν γεγένηται. (Α.) οὗτος μέντοι πεινῶν οὕτως οὐπώποτ’ ἔτλη κολακεῦσαι (A.) Socrates, best of men who are few, of men who are many the most foolish, have you come to visit us? You must be chilly. How are you going to get a cloak? (B.) This misfortune is the detriment of the shoemakers. (A.) This is a man who even though he is starving won’t bring himself to flatter.61
It is thus clear that while his Socrates was memorable for its literary merits, Aristophanes had not cornered the market on such material. Moreover, there was certainly more that has not survived.62 All this makes it more difficult to accept the idea that a single play could have exerted the influence the Apology suggests. Indeed, if the scholiast on Clouds 96 is correct, the plays of Eupolis were viewed as a harsher indictment.63 We thus need not feel sorry for an Aristophanes wracked with guilt because, in the words of Stanford, he “could hardly have foreseen that his comic attacks on Socrates would help to bring on his indictment and execution.”64 Instead, Socrates seems to have been a regular onstage, meaning that audiences who watched Clouds would have come to the play with certain expectations, and those expectations would have been confirmed to a large degree, making the play an extension not an exposé.65
II. Old Comedy and Platonic Dialogue Plato was fully conscious of the conventions of Old Comedy, even if there are passages in which his characters call its practices into question. Indeed, Plato himself became a target for poets of the Middle Comedy, although to a lesser degree than Socrates.66
61 For discussion of the passage, see Piero Totaro, “Amipsia,” in: Tessere (above, n. 47), pp. 157–67; Olson, Broken Laughter (above n. 49), pp. 236–7. 62 The Emperor Julian (4th century CE) includes Socrates in his list of ὀνόματα … πολλάκις κωμῳδούμενα (Mis. 353b). 63 Cf. n. 62. 64 W.B. Stanford (ed.), Aristophanes: The Frogs (London: MacMillan, 1958), p. 198. 65 If we accept my contention that Plato cannot have expected his audience to take Aristophanes’ responsibility for Socrates’ reputation seriously, why does Plato mention Clouds so prominently in the Apology? The question is not unanswerable. Nevertheless, Rosen argues elsewhere in this volume (pp. 13–28) that in the case of Aristophanes and later comedians, the adversary of a satirist, far from frustrating his aims, is necessary for establishing his status as a defender of the audience’s values. Socratic social criticism may also require an adversary. 66 E.g. Epicrates fr. 10. For commentary on this and other comic attacks on Plato, see Olson, Broken Laughter (above, n. 49), pp. 238–45.
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When he includes passages in the dialogues where ludicrous scenes, the vocabulary of Old Comedy, or even Aristophanes himself intrude, therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that he does so with literary and philosophical purposes in mind. This supposition does not commit us to the idea that the intentions behind Plato’s use of comedy will be transparent. Indeed, in his hands the dialogue becomes a genre particularly adept at incorporating others within it and subjugating them to its larger purposes, many of which may be idiosyncratic.67 We can nevertheless say that Plato gave considerable thought to Aristophanic comedy, which accordingly shows up in a number of interesting places within the corpus.68 The most striking is the Symposium, a work given over largely to speeches in praise of the god Eros. Among the guests is Aristophanes, who offers a lavishly detailed account of the creation of humans, which took place when Zeus divided their four-armed, four-legged ancestors into separate beings, who subsequently long to reclaim their lost wholeness. The symptom of this irrecoverable loss is Eros. I begin with a look at the Aristophanes of the Symposium, then comment on Plato’s practice of reworking Aristophanic elements in other dialogues.
Aristophanes in the Symposium It is sometimes argued by those eager to make the Symposium consistent with the Apology’s account of the old accusers that the story is an expression of Platonic φθόνος in reaction to the representation of Socrates in Clouds and is intended to make Aristophanes look foolish.69 The comic character of Aristophanes’ speech, however, and the comic actions of Aristophanes the guest, in themselves require no explanation, for in the Symposium Plato exploits the fictional specialties of the guests to produce their speeches. Eryximachus gives a speech that draws on his medical knowledge (186a–b), Agathon a self-consciously poetic one.70 Moreover, numerous features of the scene point not only to Aristophanes’ generally laughable explanations for human behavior but to the practices of Old Comedy. Eryximachus, who gave his
67 See Andrea Nightengale, Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construct of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 3–12. Nightingale also notes a deep link between the Platonic dialogue and Aristophanic comedy via their shared appreciation of “mixed, or multi-generic, form” (pp. 191–2). For Plato as inheriting but perfecting the dialogue form, see Diogenes Laertius 3.48. 68 See Roger Brock, “Plato and Comedy,” in: E.M. Craik (ed.), “Owls to Athens”: Essays on Classical Subjects Presented to Sir Kenneth Dover (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 39–49. 69 E.g. Brochard, “Sur le Banquet” (above, n. 5). Ultimately, however, such arguments are unconvincing, if only because there is no hint of animosity between Aristophanes and Socrates in the text. The final scene, recounted imperfectly by the sleepy Apollodorus, indicates no preference for Agathon over Aristophanes. 70 See Kenneth Dover (ed.), Plato, Symposium (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 123–4.
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speech out of turn to accommodate Aristophanes’ hiccups, complains that the fit of sneezing that previously sidelined Aristophanes was itself a piece of comic invention, and Aristophanes himself comments that anything in his speech that is γελοῖον (“laughable”) will be “native” (189b) to his Muse.71 In addition, Aristophanes’ attack of hiccups and the sneezing cure he undertakes mean that the ponderous speech of Eryximachus should be imagined as accompanied by snorting and sneezing.72 This disruption is invisible to us until we pay attention to the auditory dimension Plato builds into the work, but it mimics well Aristophanic comedy’s proclivity for debasing elevated sentiments by juxtaposing them with expressions of material bodily phenomena.73 For these reasons, a comic speech in the mouth of Aristophanes should surprise no one, and attempts such as Brochard’s to characterize the move as an attack are unpersuasive. Nor is the comic dimension of the Symposium limited to Aristophanes’ speech.74 A point of particular interest is the entrance of the drunken Alcibiades, whose speech in praise of Socrates is full of comic moments, including his characterization of Socrates as a Silenus-statue, ugly on the outside but full of beautiful objects within. In addition, his description of Socrates retreating with the army from the Battle of Delium is doubly comic:
71 See the discussion of Diskin Clay, “The Tragic and Comic Poet of the Symposium,” Arion 2 (1975), pp. 236–61, especially 241–4. Aristophanes’ speech is full of comic echoes. In the discussion, for example, of Zeus’ decision to bisect proto-humans, Aristophanes describes the resulting creature as τετμημένος ὥσπερ αἱ ψῆτται (191d), a comparison redolent of Lysistrata, where Myrrhine reacts to Lysistrata’s call for help in ending the war: ἐγὼ δέ γ’ ἄν, κἂν ὡσπερεὶ ψῆτταν δοκῶ δοῦναι ἂν ἐμαυτῆς παρατεμοῦσα θἤμισυ. As for me, I’d even cut myself in two like a flounder and donate half to the cause. (115–16) 72 Note that Eryximachus accuses him at this point of inciting laughter even before he begins to speak (189a γελωτοποιεῖς μέλλων λέγειν). 73 The phenomenon is relevant for Aristophanes’ speech as well. See Harry Newman, “On the Comedy of Plato’s Aristophanes,” American Journal of Philology 87 (1966), pp. 420–6. For the phenomenon as characteristic of carnivalized literature, see Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems in Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 123. See also Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1984), pp. 30–1 and passim. For application of the principle to Aristophanes, see Peter von Möllendorff, Grundlagen einer Ästhetik der alten Komödie: Untersuchungen zu Aristophanes und Michail Bachtin, Classica Monacensia 9 (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1995), pp. 74–109. 74 For additional comic aspects of the Symposium, see Ian Ruffell, Politics and Anti-Realism in Athenian Old Comedy: The Art of the Impossible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 17.
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ἔπειτα ἔμοιγ’ ἐδόκει, ὦ Ἀριστόφανες, τὸ σὸν δὴ τοῦτο, καὶ ἐκεῖ διαπορεύεσθαι ὥσπερ καὶ ἐνθάδε, βρενθυόμενος καὶ τὠφθαλμὼ παραβάλλων Then, Aristophanes, as you yourself wrote, he seemed to walk there as he does here, “swaggering and casting his eyes from side to side. (Symp. 221b)
Socrates certainly cuts a comic figure, and Alcibiades repeatedly comments on how laughable he is. Moreover, as Alcibiades notes, the description quoted above comes straight out of Clouds, the play that supposedly led to Socrates’ death. Early in that play, the chorus of Cloud-goddesses addresses Socrates, praising him as their secondfavorite sophist “because you swagger in the streets and look from side to side” (ὅτι βρενθύεις τ’ ἐν ταῖς ὁδοῖς καὶ τὠφθαλμὼ παραβάλλεις, 362). Alcibiades’ description is almost an exact quotation, simply recast as a participial phrase. By taking over Aristophanes’ line, Alcibiades/Plato implicitly validates it as a description of Socrates. Nor is there any implication that the evocation of Clouds within the fictional world of the Symposium might raise bad feelings between Socrates and Aristophanes, despite the fact that the dramatic date of the Symposium is 416 BCE, just a few years after the original performance of Clouds.75 The implication of these passages is clear: the Symposium recreates a situation in which Socrates and Aristophanes socialize amicably. Fellow-symposiasts say nothing to imply that there is tension between them, and Alcibiades takes it as a matter of course that a quotation from Clouds will be received with equanimity, an understanding that seems confirmed by the final scene (223d).76 It should be clear that if Plato believed Aristophanes was responsible for the death of Socrates, he went out of his way here to disguise the fact. What is more remarkable, is the degree to which Aristophanes and Aristophanic comedy are so integrated into the Symposium as to be virtually indispensible for it. Such an outcome might have been necessary, it could be argued, once the decision had been made to include Aristophanes as a guest. The phenomenon cannot be explained away so easily, however, for significant engagement with comedy is not confined to the Symposium. Important subtexts or echoes occur in several dialogues, including Gorgias, Protagoras and Euthydemus.77 Even in the Phaedo, Plato’s most emotion-laden dialogue, containing the death of Socrates, a comic sub-text is persistent.
75 This is not accidental. By linking the Symposium to Agathon’s first tragic victory in 416 (cf. Athenaeus 217b) and making Alcibiades refer explicitly to Clouds, he foregrounds the play within the world of the Symposium. 76 If there is any swipe at Aristophanes at all, it is in Socrates’ unrefuted claim that the same poet should be able to write both comedy and tragedy. The assertion hits at both the tragedian Agathon and the comic poet Aristophanes, who, overcome by sleep, suggest the comic equivalent of “the desire and pursuit of the whole” (cf. 193a). 77 Aeschrologia is prominent in Gorgias, e.g. 494b–e, where Socrates compares the hedonistic life to that of a bird that eats and defecates continually, to someone afflicted with perpetual itching and to a
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Phaedo’s ἄτοπόν τι πάθος Stephen Halliwell has drawn attention to the complex role of laughter in the Platonic corpus, in which it has an important if ambiguous place, most often as a result of Socrates’ frequent use of irony.78 In the Apology, for example, Socrates undermines the prosecution’s claim that he is a clever speaker (δεινὸς λέγειν), but adds the ironic qualification εἰ μὴ ἄρα δεινὸν καλοῦσιν οὗτοι λέγειν τὸν τἀληθῆ λέγοντα (“unless by ‘clever speaker’ they mean someone speaking the truth”) (17b). Examples of this sort of feigned innocence could be multiplied, and while they are characteristic of Socrates as Plato represents him, they are also very much at home in the relaxed conversational situations the dialogues often represent. In addition, the conventions of public laughter, and with it the world of Aristophanes, intrude into the world of Socrates in places where we might least expect it. The Phaedo illustrates this well. Indeed, the dialogue contains its own ironic reference to Aristophanes. As Socrates and his interlocutors prepare to discuss the fate of the soul, Socrates offers the following mock justification (70b–c): “οὔκουν γ’ ἂν οἶμαι,” ἦ δ’ ὃς ὁ Σωκράτης, “εἰπεῖν τινα νῦν ἀκούσαντα, οὐδ’ εἰ κωμῳδοποιὸς εἴη, ὡς ἀδολεσχῶ καὶ οὐ περὶ προκηκόντων τοὺς λόγους ποιοῦμαι.” “Well,” said Socrates, “I do not believe anyone who heard us now, even if he were a comic poet, would say that I am chattering and talking about things that don’t concern me.”79
The link to comedy is evident. Of particular importance is the verb ἀδολεσχῶ, which, given the prominence of Clouds in the Apology, seems to resonate with Clouds 1480, where Strepsiades diagnoses his condition as παρανοήσαντος ἀδολεσχίᾳ (“being out of his mind with idle talk”) an idea he returns to a few lines later (1484) in his plea to Hermes to be his ally in burning down “the house of the idle talkers” (τὴν οἰκίαν τῶν ἀδολεσχῶν).80 In this way, by beginning with an explicit reference to comic poetry,
cinaedus. See also the doorkeeper scene (and the comic description of the sophists arranged in the house of Callias) at the beginning of Protagoras (235c–e), which looks as if it were built on scenes like that of Strepsiades and the student in Clouds, and the comic presentation of Socrates as a late learner and student of Connus in the Euthydemus (272c; cf also Menex. 235e). Note also that Aristophanes’ rival Ameipsias wrote a Connus in which Socrates may have appeared, and to which Ameipsias fr. 9 (see above) is assigned. For the play, see Totaro, in: Tessere (above, n. 49), pp. 149–65. 78 Halliwell, Greek Laughter (above, n. 7), esp. pp. 276–302. 79 Translation of passages from the Phaedo are from H.N. Fowler, Plato Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Loeb Classical Library 36 (London and New York: William Heinemann and MacMillan, 1913). 80 The idea does not belong exclusively to Aristophanes. See Eupolis fr. 386, where Socrates is described as τὸν πτωχὸν ἀδολέσχην. Jeff Mitscherling, “Socrates and the Comic Poets,” Apeiron 36 (2003), pp. 67–72, following Olympiodorus, unpersuasively argues that the allusion is to Eupolis, on
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Plato signals in advance that the laughter of comedy will contribute to Phaedo’s “strange experience” as he recalls the events of Socrates’ last day. At the beginning of the dialogue, Phaedo remarks on the uncanny serenity of Socrates as he prepared to die, and describes the strange emotions felt by himself and his companions (59a): διὰ δὴ ταῦτα οὐδὲν πάνυ μοι ἐλεεινὸν εἰσῄιει, ὡς εἰκὸς ἂν δόξειεν εἶναι παρόντι πένθει· οὔτε αὖ ἡδονὴ ὡς ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ ἡμῶν ὄντων ὥσπερ εἰώθεμεν … ἀλλ’ ἀτεχνῶς ἄτοπόν τί μοι πάθος παρῆν καί τις ἀήθης κρᾶσις ἀπὸ τε τῆς ἡδονῆς συγκεκραμένη ὁμοῦ καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς λύπης, ἐνθυμουμένῳ ὅτι αὐτίκα ἐκεῖνος ἔμελλε τελευτᾶν. And for this reason I was not at all filled with pity, as might seem natural when I was present at a scene of mourning. Nor on the other hand did I feel pleasure because we were occupied with philosophy, as was our custom … but a very strange feeling came over me, an unaccustomed mixture of pleasure and of pain together, when I thought that Socrates was presently to die.
Phaedo’s recollection of his experience adds a layer of sentimentalism to a dialogue in which similar expressions alternate with intense exploration of the soul and its ultimate fate (e.g. at 89a–c). It is nevertheless remarkable to what degree the laughable intrudes into a situation from which customary pleasures had disappeared (οὔτε αὖ ἡδονὴ ὡς ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ ἡμῶν ὄντων ὥσπερ εἰώθεμεν), replaced by the overwhelming πένθος represented by the imminent death of Socrates. This pairing of pleasure and pain is thematic for the dialogue and reappears a few lines later, now with a literary resonance. As Socrates’ painful chains are removed, pleasure follows immediately. He remarks on the strangeness of the conjunction of pleasure and pain in words that recall Phaedo’s atopic experience, and continues (60c): καί μοι δοκεῖ … εἰ ἐνενόησεν αὐτὰ Αἴσωπος μῦθον ἂν συνθεῖναι ὡς ὁ θεὸς βουλόμενος αὐτὰ διαλλάξαι πολεμοῦντα, ἐπειδὴ οὐκ ἐδύνατο, συνῆψεν εἰς ταὐτὸν αὐτοῖς τὰς κορυφάς, καὶ διὰ ταῦτα, ᾧ ἂν τὸ ἕτερον παραγένηται ἐπακολουθεῖ ὕστερον καὶ τὸ ἕτερον. “And I think,” he said, “that if Aesop had thought of them he would have made a fable telling of how they were at war, and god wished to reconcile them, and when he could not do that he fastened their heads together, and for that reason, when one of them comes to anyone, the other follows after. ”
Socrates’ interest in the conjunction of opposites looks ahead to the discussion of even and odd that follows in the conversation about the immortality of the soul. Here the co-presence of pleasure and pain inspires him to think in the manner of Aesop: he
the basis of the possible allusion to Eupolis fr. 102 at Phaedo 91c. Both interpretations, however, correctly emphasize Plato’s engagement with Old Comedy.
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imagines a ludicrous situation in which pleasure and pain are bound together at the head by the god as a remedy for their mutual antagonism.81 The reference to Aesop is of particular interest, since this is the only passage in Plato where Aesop is mentioned—despite the fact that he would seem a natural doppelgänger for Socrates himself. A critic of conventional mores who positions himself as an outsider, and whose characteristic approach is to deflate the pretensions of mankind by comparing human beings to animals, Aesop bears a great likeness to the man who understands Apollo to have directed him to expose the pretensions to wisdom of his fellow citizens.82 However this may be, there are many reasons for thinking that Aesop’s cameo in the Phaedo forms part of the dialogue’s affiliation with Aristophanes. The god, joining together the heads of pleasure and pain to produce the co-presence of both, looks like a variation of Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium. There Hephaestus, at the behest of Zeus, orders the first humans with their round, four-legged, four-armed bodies to be cut into halves (189c–93d).83 In both passages, a divinity intervenes to address disruptive behavior. In Socrates’ fable, pleasure and pain are at war (πολεμοῦντα). In the Symposium, φρονήματα μεγάλα lead the first humans to make an assault on the gods themselves (190b).84 The two stories are also linked by the process of division and separation. Socrates’ unknown god joins together the heads of the divisive elements, while Zeus directs Hephaestus to take apart early humans, beginning with their conjoined heads. In this way, the Aesopic elements in the Phaedo help make a connection with the Symposium that is suggestive for its evocation of Aristophanes. In so doing, Plato adds details to the dialogue that build on Phaedo’s remark about the atopic presence of laughter and sorrow, to look ahead to the discussion of oppositeness that occupies much of the dialogue. Socrates’ Aesopic fable provides a second link to Aristophanes. Although Platonic references to Aesop are limited to the Phaedo, the fable and specific references to Aesop are also at home in Aristophanes.85 In Wasps, Bdelycleon attempts to educate his father
81 The Socratic resonance of ἄτοπον is itself interesting, particularly in view of the discussion of likenesses below. At the end of his speech in the Symposium (221d), Alcibiades elaborates on Socrates’ unique character (ἀτοπία) by claiming that he excludes the conventional comparisons, whereby individuals are praised by assimilating them to an epic precursor (distinguished soldiers like Brasidas to Achilles, Pericles to Nestor or Antenor). In the Apology, Socrates imagines an opinion that his entire philosophic life could be summed up by ἄτοπον (32c). 82 For Aesop and the Aesopic tradition, see Leslie Kurke, Aesopic Conversations: Popular Tradition, Cultural Dialogue, and the Invention of Greek Prose (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), pp. 43–6. 83 The chronology of the two dialogues is unknown. Modern consensus puts both in the “middle period” of Plato’s work, although there is no non-arbitrary way to determine which came first. For us as readers, then, this will not be a case of determining temporal priority and assessing development, but of pointing out the intertextual dimension that links the two by way of Aristophanes. 84 Their behavior is also characterized by ἀσελγία (cf. 190c ἀσελγαίνειν) and ἀκολασία (190e) 85 See Silvio Schirru, La Favola in Aristofane (Berlin: Verlag Antike, 2009), esp. pp. 56–70.
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Philocleon on proper symposiastic behavior. After Philocleon expresses concern that drunkenness will lead to charges of assault and battery, his son explains that if that happens, one of the καλοὶ κἀγαθοί in attendance will typically ask the victim’s pardon (1257). Failing that, he says, Aesopic language comes in handy (1258–61): ἢ λόγον ἔλεξας αὐτὸς ἀστεῖόν τινα, Αἰσωπικὸν γέλοιον ἢ Συβαριτικόν, ὧν ἔμαθες ἐν τῷ συμποσίῳ· κᾆτ᾿ εἰς γέλων τὸ πρᾶγμα ἔτρεψας, ὥστ᾿ ἀφείς σ’ ἀποίχεται. Or else you yourself can tell him some witty story, something funny by Aesop or about Sybaris, one of the stories you learned at the party, and then you’ve turned the whole thing into a joke, so he lets you off and goes on his merry way.
In Bdelycleon’s mind, Aesopic language is part of the shared cultural experience of men of a certain social class (characterized by καλοκαγαθία) that allows them to mediate conflicts. Just as the intercession of a fellow-guest defuses the high-stakes confrontation between the perceived wrongdoer and his victim, by making the violation of decorum a matter of collective interest to the group, so the well-timed introduction of Aesopica suggests a cultured reply (λόγον … ἀστεῖον) that can mollify someone who feels they have been wronged. Of course, the adroit deployment of such tactics presupposes antagonists who know the cultural logic of such mediation; for those who do not, the resolution of the matter εἰς γέλων is far from certain. Indeed, much of the humor of this passage lies in what must be the immediate expectation of the audience, that Philocleon’s society debut is bound to go terribly wrong, as indeed it does, and that Aesop alone will be insufficient to extricate him (e.g. at 1446–8). Socrates’ appropriation of the Aesopic fable seems calculated to suggest that the linkage of pleasure and pain is part of the common experience of human beings (as also in Wasps), and so fits easily into the tradition of folk wisdom. Still, the copresence of opposites has already been described by Phaedo as uncommon, an ἄτοπόν τι πάθος, the exception rather than the rule. A similar incommensurability characterizes Socrates’ second Aesopic moment. His improvised fable recalls to Cebes the rumor he heard from Evenus about poetic compositions Socrates has undertaken in prison (60d): “νὴ τὸν Δία, ὦ Σώκρατες,” ἔφη, “εὖ γ’ ἐποίησας ἀναμνήσας με. περὶ γάρ τοι τῶν ποιημάτων ὧν πεποίηκας ἐντείνας τοὺς τοῦ Αἰσώπου λόγους καὶ τὸ εἰς τὸν Ἀπόλλω προοίμιον καὶ ἄλλοι τινές με ἤδη ἤροντο, ἀτὰρ καὶ Εὔηνος πρῴην, ὅτι ποτὲ διανοηθείς, ἐπειδὴ δεῦρο ἦλθες , ἐποίησας αὐτὰ, πρότερον οὐδὲν πώποτε ποιήσας.” “By Zeus, Socrates,” he said. “I am glad you reminded me. Several others have asked about poems you have composed, the metrical versions of Aesop’s fables and the hymn to Apollo, and Evenus asked me the day before yesterday why you, who never wrote any poetry before, composed these verses after you came to prison.” (Fowler’s translation [above, n. 74] slightly adapted)
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Socrates replies that he has been testing the meaning of a recurring dream that told him (60e), “μουσικὴν ποιοῦ καὶ ἐργάζου” (“make music and work at it”). Previously he thought that the command to “make μουσική” was a way of encouraging him to continue what he was already doing, just as crowds cheer on runners, thinking as he did that philosophy was the greatest music (61a). Socrates’ Aesopic compositions are thus represented as both positive and negative. They are positive to the degree that he at least pretends to consider them equivalent to philosophy. As already noted, this is not altogether off the mark, inasmuch as Phaedo’s recollection of the day as one during which their emotions oscillated between the pleasure of laughter and the pain of weeping is suggested by Socrates himself to provide the basis for one of Aesop’s fables. At the same time, Socrates’ deathbed conversion to Aesopic poetry (and to the hymn) necessarily threatens the integrity of the Socratic way of life, defended so insistently in the Apology, for if he misinterpreted the dream, which gave him ample opportunity to adjust his behavior, his prior philosophizing would have been misdirected and his present efforts almost certainly negligible.86 That he does not take this possibility seriously is clear both from the context and from the ironic tone with which Evenus and his question are regarded. Even so, the Aesopic fable in both passages points to a different path for philosophy, one aligning it with the comic wisdomtradition that precedes it. That Plato chose this event in the life of Socrates to invest with explicit links to Aristophanic comedy is striking, and suggests that the Platonic dialogue systematically exploits its inheritance from Old Comedy to enhance its pervasive philosophic spoudogeloia.
Republic and Ecclesiazusae I have argued against the idea that Plato offers a serious historical explanation for the trial and execution of Socrates in the Apology by attributing to Aristophanes’ Clouds the creation of a long-simmering prejudice among the Athenians. Part of the justification for this position is Plato’s complex use of Aristophanes himself as a character in the Symposium, and his use of comic lines and motifs elsewhere in the dialogues, none of which bears the kind of animus against Aristophanes necessary to support an interpretation that takes seriously the claims at Apology 18b–d. Nevertheless, if the persistence of Plato’s engagement with Aristophanes indicates does not indicate hostility, the Aristophanic intertext is still an important part of the generic battle staged by Plato depicting philosophy as up against a competitor with a claim to be the authentic voice of wisdom.
86 Indeed, an acknowledged misinterpretation of this divine sign would also throw into doubt his decision to interpret Chaerephon’s oracle as a challenge to interrogate everyone in order to make clear the limits of human wisdom.
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All this points to a complex relationship between the status of philosophy as Plato conceives it and the kind of civic influence and approval that Aristophanic comedy appears to consider right and proper. These goals are only partly symmetrical. Both authors attempt to inculcate a critical spirit, but they do so in quite different ways. The Socratic way of life, based on the dictum that the unexamined life is not worth living (38a), seeks to orient the soul away from the appearance of good in the direction of the good itself. The kind of reeducation promulgated by Aristophanes, by contrast, is directed toward fostering a critical response to current events. The chorus of Acharnians announces that his tutelage has taught the Athenians not to be deceived by ξενικοῖσι λόγοις (634) and to perceive the inner workings of the Athenian democracy (642), which hitherto had been obscured by the deceptive rhetoric of politicians.87 Both Platonic and Aristophanic orientations, however, court a dangerous antinomianism produced by the relentless debunking of “the official story,” whether by Aristophanes’ exposés of deceptive rhetoric or Socrates’ subjection of νόμος to the scrutiny of rational thought. Both then risk emptying out the values that undergird the city in pursuit of the image of the truth they represent. Plato’s project is to some degree recuperative—it aims at presenting a Socrates who succeeds in at least partially in grounding his transhistorical philosophical project in a public behavior that acknowledges the importance of the city’s νόμοι (in contrast to the way Aristophanes represents him in Clouds).88 Aristophanic comedy, by contrast, is grounded by its presence in the city-sponsored festivals of Athens, and in the much-repeated fiction that the comic poet is a purveyor of practical advice to his audience. As an instance of these differing approaches and the interpretive difficulties their intersection presents, I conclude with the remarkable convergence of Republic Book 5, in which Socrates suggests a communal approach to women and children for the Guardians of the ideal state, with Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae, in which Praxagora elaborates the new gynocratic order she has brought about in Athens. Although no ancient authors refer to a relationship between the two texts, the similarities are
87 On ξενικοῖσι λόγοις see above, n. 21. The chorus’ idea is well expressed by Josiah Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 125 : His audience and judges (the demos and its lotteried representatives) expected him to exercise an extreme form of the citizen’s privilege of free speech, to search out and expose to public view things that were ordinarily hidden or tacitly ignored by the rest of the citizenry. See also Jeffrey Henderson, “The Demos and Comic Competition,” in: John J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin (eds.), Nothing to Do with Dionysus? : Athenian Drama in Its Social Context (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 271–2. 88 So also Xenophon , e.g. Memorabilia 1.1.2: θύων τε γὰρ φανερὸς ἦν πολλάκις μὲν οἴκοι, πολλάκις δὲ ἐπὶ τῶν κοινῶν τῆς πόλεως βωμῶν, καὶ μαντικῇ χρώμενος οὐκ ἀφανὴς ἦν, “He was often to be seen sacrificing at home and at the common altars of the city, and he openly made use of divination.”
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striking.89 In addition to the proposal that adult males share women (457c; Ec. 614– 15) and cease to recognize children as their own (457d; Ec. 635–6), younger people will recognize all elders as parents (461d–e; Eccl. 636–7) and property will be held in common (416d; Eccl. 590–610). The direction of influence is clear enough. Although the date of Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae is uncertain, allusions to current events suggest the late 390s.90 At any rate, although the date of Plato’s Republic is likewise problematic, there is little support today for the idea that it was available to Aristophanes for parody.91 It is sometimes suggested that an oral version of the Republic might have been circulating in the 390s, but there is no real evidence for this. The date is early for the Republic in any form, unless we are prepared to move up the dates of Plato’s literary activity into the lifetime of Socrates. Moreover, it would be odd if the promulgation of such a revolutionary doctrine by a well-known and well-connected Athenian left no more trace on the cultural landscape that an unattributed appearance in a play by Aristophanes.92 Although the idea of a robust oral culture providing the foundation for ideas that later appear in writing is consistent with what we know of Athenian life, therefore, there are obstacles to believing that orality provides the missing link between the “serious” proposals of Plato’s Socrates and Aristophanes putative reworking of them.93 It has also been conjectured that both Aristophanes and Plato are drawing on a common source. It is well known, after all, that various 5th-century authors knew of or imagined societies with social practices that challenged Greek ones.94 With such ideas in the air, it is possible that both Aristophanes and Plato draw on an earlier writer, although there is once again no direct evidence for such a source and, as Tordoff rightly emphasizes, Aristotle’s statement in the Politics that Plato’s commu-
89 For a summary of earlier opinions on the subject, see J. Adam, The Republic of Plato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), Vol. i, pp. 345–55. For a useful table of similarities, see Alan H. Sommerstein (ed. and trans.), Aristophanes Ecclesiazusae (Aris & Phillips: Warminster, 1998), p. 14. 90 There are no didascalia for the play, nor any external evidence for the play’s production. The most recent examination of the question is Sommerstein, Ecclesiazusae (above, n. 91), pp. 1–8, who argues for a date no earlier than 391 BCE. See also R.G. Ussher (ed.), Aristophanes: Ecclesiazusae (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973), pp. xx–xxv, who dates the play to 393 BCE. 91 See Gerard E. Ledger, Re-counting Plato: A Computer Analysis of Plato’s Style (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 212–25, who argues for a date later than 380 BCE. 92 For the family of Plato, see Debra Nails, The People of Plato (above, n. 29), pp. 243–6. 93 Just how seriously Plato meant Kallipolis to be taken still provokes debate. The most common view is to take Plato’s proposals seriously, but not everyone is convinced. For a new look at the question, see Harry Berger, The Perils of Uglytown: Studies in Structural Misanthropology from Plato to Rembrandt (New York: Fordham Press, forthcoming). 94 See also 4.180 and 4.184, both describing societies that are said to practice indiscriminate sexuality with or without cohabitation. Cf. also Euripides, Protesilaos fr. 653 κοινὸν γὰρ εἶναι χρῆν γυναικεῖον λέχος, quoted by Clement of Alexandria in regard to Book five of the Republic.
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nistic proposals were unique testifies against the possibility (1266a31–6, 1274b9– 10).95 That a common source lies behind Aristophanes’ and Plato’s communism thus remains to be proven. In any case, the question of a prior source is arguably is a red herring. Its existence would be an intriguing addition to the literature of νόμος in the 5th century but would not affect the question under discussion. As we have seen, Plato was keenly (if uneasily) interested in comedy and often incorporates it into his own work, both thematically in the form of comic scenes, and intertextually in the form of closely quoted references. Although he does not appear to quote or otherwise allude specifically to Ecclesiazusae, the most likely surmise is that Plato was aware of the play and its contents. If this assumption is granted, our question would shift only slightly in the face of the discovery of a shared source for both authors, inasmuch as Plato’s work would have to be understood not as a straight reworking but as his own reading of the source filtered through his awareness of its Aristophanic history.96 If we are not persuaded that a prior source influenced both Aristophanes and Plato, or that an oral version of the Republic circulated in the 390s, we are left with the likelihood that Republic 5 responds to Ecclesiazusae.97 Andrea Nightingale has pointed out that in Republic Book 5 Plato expresses significant anxiety about the effects of mockery on the discourse at hand.98 As Tordoff puts it, the comic treatment of important political concepts may be taken by some to offer a serious and important critique of an issue, in which case Athenians might think they have extracted from comedy the answers that Plato claims only philosophy can provide.99
95 Robert Tordoff, “Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen and Plato, Republic, Book Five,” in: Robin Osbourne (ed.), Debating the Athenian Cultural Revolution: Art, Literature, Philosophy, and Politics 430– 380 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 243–4. Whether Aristotle’s omission of the Ecclesiazusae here should be taken to imply that he did not regard Aristophanes’ work as a serious contribution to political theory is a separate question. On the issue of a prior source, see also Ussher, Ecclesiazusae (above, n. 85), pp. xvii–xx. 96 Similarly, Aristophanes’ own return to the Telephus-story in Thesmophoriazusae does not engage simply with Euripides’ play of 438 BCE but with his own extensive reworking of it in Acharnians. See Platter, Aristophanes and the Carnival (above, n. 1), pp. 144–5. 97 It is nevertheless possible that the situation is more complicated than we imagine, for Ecclesiazusae-like themes may have appeared elsewhere in Middle Comedy, as well in Aristophanes. We know that Theopompus wrote a Stratiotides in which women must have taken over the army, and the fragments suggest social innovation (frr. 56–7). That there were other such plays is not hard to imagine. Inasmuch as Plato himself is mentioned unflatteringly by Middle Comedy writers, it is also possible that his sensitivity to comedy in Republic 5 reflects his discomfort with them rather than with Aristophanes. On Middle Comedy titles and themes, see Arnott, “Middle Comedy” (above, n. 21), pp. 279–331. 98 Nightingale, Genres in Dialogue (above, n. 69), pp. 176–8. On this point see also Tordoff, “Aristophanes Assemblywomen” (above, n. 97), pp. 257–9. 99 Tordoff, “Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen” (above, n. 97), p. 262.
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In this sense, Plato’s engagement with the Aristophanic text recapitulates the distinction raised earlier between the critical rhetoric of comedy, with its leveling egalitarian spirit, and the Platonic, rooted in the daily life of Athenians but directed teleologically toward the good. Plato’s implicit criticism implies his acknowledgement of the continuing importance of Aristophanic comedy in creating a citizen body capable of reacting critically to forces ready to exploit it. At the same time, comedy is potentially a threat to progress in philosophy, due to the imperative that drives it to debunk everything. Nevertheless, Plato’s serious complaint is expressed tacitly, with neither the poet’s name, summaries of his work, nor identifiable quotations included to make his target explicit. The tactic is consistent with Plato’s careful treatment of Aristophanes throughout the dialogues. This reticence may thus be Plato’s way of acknowledging in Republic Book 5 the source of his critique, while not emphasizing the direct responsibility of Aristophanes.100
III. Conclusion The attempt to understand Plato’s response to Aristophanes forces readers to contend with the paradoxical formulation the dialogues themselves present. On the one hand, philosophy is held up as a desirable way of life—indeed, the only one worth living (Apol. 38a). We regularly see it arising out of the everyday conversations of a fairly broad range of people, and we are introduced to that way of life through the work of a guide of uncommon intelligence and literary talent. We thus seem well prepared to approach the philosophical life ourselves. A second look at the dialogues, however, reminds us that matters are not quite as they seem. Most significant, our prospective leader is absent. We find instead (usually) his character Socrates, whose precise relationship to Plato is never entirely clarified. Unequivocal claims about what Plato the author thought about complex issues (or people) are thus difficult to justify without arbitrarily asserting that Plato’s opinions and Socrates’ are one. We are thrown back on the text itself, which we must interpret without extra-textual guidance from the author. We may all be called to the philosophic life, but it will be a mostly selfguided tour. The approach of this essay is similarly constrained. Aristophanic comedy appears frequently in Plato’s work, and Socrates in the Apology appears to state unequivocally that Aristophanes’ Clouds was indirectly responsible for popular resentment directed at him and for the accusations laid against him and, eventually, his execution at the hands of the Athenian state. Yet the story that Socrates tells is not easily believed.
100 In addition, naming Aristophanes here carries its own set of rhetorical dangers, for by portraying a man attempting seriously to found a city on the basis of Aristophanes’ fantastic comic plot, he would virtually turn Socrates into a comic character once again.
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Indeed, if we accept it at face value we are compelled to reject everything we know about the political ramifications (few, it seems) of Aristophanic comedy in particular and Old Comedy in general. Alternately, we might concede that the representation of Athenians in Old Comedy did not typically have negative social and political consequences for the komoidoumenoi, but that the case of Socrates was somehow exceptional. Neither conclusion is justified by the evidence we have, which suggests that Athenians were habituated to the ridicule of prominent individuals in comedy, and that their experience as spectators did not exert a pivotal role in other decisions. Nor do the references to Aristophanes in the other dialogues support this conclusion. If Plato did not expect Socrates’ remarks in the Apology to be taken seriously by themselves, they must be interpreted within the context of his engagement with Aristophanes and with comic poetry as a whole throughout the dialogues. That such passages are scattered and that there is no Platonic de comoedia might be taken to imply that Plato did not take comedy seriously enough to have a comprehensive opinion about Aristophanes. As the Seventh Letter reminds us, there is also no de sophia,101 and the references to comedy, although distributed widely throughout the corpus, are of a sufficient intensity to allow us to conclude that Plato saw Aristophanes as someone whose pedagogical claims could be treated in a variety of ways: through irony (as in the Apology and Symposium) and as part of the dialogue’s identification with the tradition of folk wisdom (in the Phaedo). In other places, like Ecclesiazusae, comedy occupies a particularly ambivalent role, as Socrates’ tacit evocation of Aristophanes’ revolutionary socio-political changes elevates comic discourse and imagines it operating at the level of city-foundation (a process already anticipated in Birds), while encouraging an anxiety about laughter that attempts not so much to lessen comedy’s ability to sting those who are truly deserving of ridicule as to restrain it from deploying its venom against the good with equal verve.
101 Cf. Plato, Seventh Letter, 341c–d.
Alan H. Sommerstein
Menander’s Samia and the Phaedra Theme Abstract: Attention has long been drawn to intertextual connections between Menander’s Samia and Euripides’ Hippolytus (Stephanephoros), and links have also been noticed with the same tragedian’s lost Phoenix. With the help of a papyrus Hypothesis, it can now be seen that the audience of Samia would also have seen and heard much that would remind them of Euripides’ other play about Hippolytus (Kalyptomenos), which was almost if not quite equally well known to the authors and spectators of 5thand 4th-century comic drama.
There have been many discussions of the relationship between Menander’s Samia and Euripides’ Hippolytus.1 In both plays, a quick-tempered father, returning from abroad, wrongly comes to believe that in his absence his son (a bastard in one case, an adopted son in the other) has slept with his (the father’s) wife or concubine. In both plays, the son is proud of his virtuous character. In both, owing partly to deception, partly to the father’s “over-confidence in his own reasoning,”2 the situation develops in such a way that the son finds it impossible to convince his father that his suspicions are groundless. Many detailed parallels have also been perceived, most notably between Samia 452–538 and Hippolytus 902–1101, but also elsewhere (especially by Troupi). Since Menander’s play is a comedy, the truth comes out in time to prevent any truly evil consequences, although the young man, Moschion, is left somewhat aggrieved with his father.3 There are many other reversals. The Hippolytus and Phaedra figures—Moschion and Chrysis—are never hostile to one another; in fact,
1 To name only a few: A.G. Katsouris, Tragic Patterns in Menander (Athens: Hellenic Society for Humanistic Studies, 1975), pp. 131–5; V.N. Jarkho, “Menander’s Girl from Samos or Euripides Inside Out” [in Russian], VDI 141 (1977), pp. 35–51; S. Jäkel, “Euripideische Handlungsstrukturen in der Samia des Menander,” Arctos 16 (1982), pp. 19–31; S.R. West, “Notes on the Samia,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 88 (1991), pp. 16–22; M. Lamagna, Menandro: La donna di Samo (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1998), pp. 64–7; K.J. Gutzwiller, “The Tragic Mask of Comedy: Metatheatricality in Menander,” Classical Antiquity 19 (2000), pp. 109–10; L.P.E. Parker, “Where is Phaedra?,” Greece & Rome 48 (2001), p. 49; C. Cusset, Ménandre ou la comédie tragique (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2003), pp. 163–8; M. Troupi, Menander, Euripides, Aristophanes: Intertextual Transformations of Genre and Gender (Diss. Royal Holloway, 2006), pp. 48–77; R. Omitowoju, “Performing traditions: relations and relationships in Menander and tragedy, ” in: A.K. Petrides and S. Papaioannou (eds.), New Perspectives on Postclassical Comedy (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), pp. 125–45. 2 West (above, n. 1), p. 18. 3 Even at the very end (724–5)—in strong contrast to Hippolytus’ noble forgiving of a vastly greater injury (Hipp. 1405–11, 1449–52), and this although Demeas, as soon as he became aware of the truth, freely admitted that he had wronged his son (Sam. 537–8). See West (above, n. 1), pp. 21–2.
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they are allies in a scheme to deceive Moschion’s father Demeas, and Moschion intensifies Demeas’ suspicions of himself by speaking in defence of Chrysis. Hippolytus is falsely accused of rape; Moschion is actually guilty of it, but is never suspected (in regard to Plangon, that is) until he confesses.4 And whereas Theseus is convinced that Hippolytus’ professions of virtue are bogus, Demeas long takes it for granted that Moschion is virtuous—more virtuous, indeed, than he is. It is striking, too, that whereas Demeas, and also his neighbour Niceratus, are very free in referring to mythological figures and stories which they see as paralleling the events they are passing through—Helen, Tereus, Oedipus, Thyestes, Amyntor (father of Phoenix), Acrisius and Danaë5—it never occurs to either to think of Phaedra or Hippolytus.6 Another contrast between the two plays, less often noted,7 arises from the difference between Hippolytus’ and Moschion’s statuses in their families. Hippolytus is in a sense a surplus son,8 once Theseus has married and fathered two legitimate male offspring; he is not his father’s heir and can indeed be perceived as a potential threat to his half-brothers (Hipp. 304–10, cf. 1010–20). Moschion, on the other hand, is Demeas’ only child. We know that from the very fact that he was adopted: a man who had a son could not adopt another, and a man who had a daughter could normally adopt a son only if the adoptee also married the daughter.9 Moschion therefore represents the entirety of Demeas’ hopes for the future of his oikos, and this will make Demeas particularly reluctant to believe any ill of him. It will also be (and Moschion
4 Cf. Troupi (above, n. 1), pp. 52–3. 5 Sam. 337, 495–500, 589–98. 6 Lamagna (above, n. 1), p. 66; Gutzwiller (above, n. 1), p. 109. 7 Though cf. West (above, n. 1), p. 18 n. 37—who, however, does not contrast the relationship of Moschion and Demeas with that of Theseus and Hippolytus. The discussion of Moschion’s adoptive status by E.C. Keuls, “The Samia of Menander: An Interpretation of its Plot and Theme,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 10 (1973), pp. 1–20, is flawed by her belief (p. 8) that an adoptive son was “free to criticize his father and to accept or reject him by act of will” in a way a biological son was not. 8 Demeas too had probably begotten a surplus son if, as is generally believed to have been stated in the lacuna after line 57 (see e.g. Lamagna [above, n. 1], pp. 200–2), Chrysis had given birth in his absence and the baby died. Demeas, however, had in any case made it clear to Chrysis that any child she bore should be exposed (cf. 130–5, 374–5). Cf. Troupi (above, n. 1), p. 54. 9 Evidence in A.R.W. Harrison, The Law of Athens I: The Family and Property (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 84–9 (note esp. Isaeus 3.68). Harrison does not discuss the unusual situation that arises in Dyscolus 729–39. Here Knemon wishes to adopt his stepson Gorgias as his son, but Gorgias cannot marry Knemon’s daughter, since they are children of the same mother; he is instead instructed to supply her with a husband (giving her half of Knemon’s property as a dowry), and does so immediately. Possibly there was a special legal provision for this kind of case, which would certainly arise from time to time in real life (so D.M. MacDowell, “Love versus the Law: An Essay on Menander’s Aspis,” Greece and & Rome 29 [1982], p. 46); it is at least equally likely, however, that Menander expected his audience not to concern themselves with legal issues (cf. P.G.McC. Brown, “Menander’s Dramatic Technique and the Law of Athens,” Classical Quarterly NS 33 [1983], pp. 412–20) but merely to welcome an arrangement that is manifestly in the best interests of all concerned.
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doubtless means it to be) particularly hurtful to Demeas when Moschion pretends to be about to go abroad as a mercenary soldier, possibly never to return—a voluntary and fictitious departure that corresponds to the genuine and enforced departure of Hippolytus for exile at his father’s command, which to him did not seem to involve any special danger but which led almost immediately to his death.10 But Euripides’ surviving Hippolytus (Hippolytos Stephanephoros, henceforth HippS) was not the only famous dramatization of the Phaedra-Hippolytus myth. Euripides wrote another Hippolytus play (Hippolytos Kalyptomenos, henceforth HippK), in which certain aspects of the story, including the character of Phaedra, were presented very differently; Sophocles too had handled the subject in Phaedra.11 In addition, two other plays ascribed to Euripides involved the same story-pattern,12 Phoenix13 and Tennes; and, as we shall see, it has long been recognized that Samia contains reminiscences of one of these. In this article, I wish to extend slightly the evidence for Phoenix as an intertext for Samia, and to suggest that HippK should be recognized as another.14 Not long after the first substantial parts of Samia were recovered thanks to the Cairo codex, Emil Sehrt15 drew attention to parallels between its plot and that of
10 See Troupi (above, n. 1), p. 69 n. 183. Hippolytus’ exile is echoed in another way by the expulsion of Chrysis from Demeas’ house (Troupi [above, n. 1], p. 69). She could have saved herself by telling the truth about the baby, as Hippolytus could perhaps have saved himself by breaking his oath of secrecy —but unlike Hippolytus (Hipp. 1060–3), she does not even think of unsealing her lips (see Keuls [above, n. 7], pp. 16–17; Troupi [above, n. 1], p. 55). This is one of numerous instances noted by Troupi in which it can be argued that a feature of character or action is associated with one of the three main dramatis personae (the father, the son, the woman) in Hippolytus and with a different one in Samia. 11 Cusset (above, n. 1), p. 165, recognizes that “la prédominance que nous accordons au second Hippolyte d’Euripide est sans doute trompeuse” because we cannot fully assess the use Menander made of the other two Phaedra-Hippolytus plays; we can, however, as we shall see, detect much more than Cusset allows, at least in the case of HippK. 12 I have discussed this story-pattern, often called that of “Potiphar’s wife,” in connection with its implications about Athenian attitudes to rape in “Rape and Consent in Athenian Tragedy,” in: D.L. Cairns and V. Liapis (eds.), Dionysalexandros: Essays on Aeschylus and his Fellow Tragedians in Honour of Alexander F. Garvie (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2006), pp. 234–7. 13 Sophocles too wrote a Phoenix, but there is no evidence that it dealt with the same part of the title character’s life story as Euripides’ play did. 14 Tennes—which has an alternative ascription to Critias—is too poorly attested for us to be able to detect any relationship between it and Samia; nor have I been able to find any such relationship in what is known or can reasonably be inferred about Sophocles’ Phaedra (on which, see T.H. Talboy and A.H. Sommerstein, “Phaedra,” in: A.H. Sommerstein et al., Sophocles: Selected Fragmentary Plays I [Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2006], pp. 248–317)—unless, as Cusset (above, n. 1), p. 167 n. 20, suggests, Demeas’ visit to a land where the sun hardly shone (Sam. 107–11) might recall Theseus’ visit to the Underworld, from which he returned unexpectedly during the action of Phaedra (Soph. frr. 686–7; in HippK Theseus had apparently been visiting Thessaly, see PMich inv. 6222A fr. A 7). 15 Ae[milius] Sehrt, De Menandro Euripidis imitatore (Diss. Giessen, 1912), pp. 29–31.
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Euripides’ Phoenix, and much later J.-M. Jacques16 pointed out that one passage was very close in sense to a surviving fragment of the latter play. Having discovered, as he supposes, that Chrysis has given birth to a baby in his absence, and having further discovered, by accidentally overhearing some unguarded remarks by Moschion’s former nurse, that Moschion is the father of the child, he soon decides that Chrysis, not Moschion, must have been the seducer in the affair. Part of the argument by which he convinces himself of this runs as follows: οὐδενὶ τρόπωι γὰρ πιθανὸν εἶναί μοι δοκεῖ τὸν εἰς ἅπαντας κόσμιον καὶ σώφρονα τοὺς ἀλλοτρίους εἰς ἐμὲ τοιοῦτον γεγονέναι, οὐδ’ εἰ δεκάκις ποητός ἐστι, μὴ γόνωι ἐμὸς ὑός· οὐ γὰρ τοῦτο, τὸν τρόπον δ’ ὁρῶ. I don’t find it at all credible that one who behaves decently and modestly toward all outsiders should have treated me like this—not even if he were ten times adopted and not my biological son. I don’t look to that, I look to his character. (Samia 343–7 [formerly 128–132])
This makes the same point as a passage (Eur. fr. 812.1–6) quoted from Phoenix by Aeschines (1.152) and described as coming from a defence of Phoenix “against the accusation that was made to his father” (sc. of having raped the latter’s concubine): ἤδη δὲ πολλῶν ᾑρέθην λόγων κριτὴς καὶ πόλλ’ ἁμιλληθέντα μαρτύρων ὕπο τἀναντί’ ἔγνων συμφορᾶς μιᾶς πέρι. κἀγὼ μὲν οὕτω χὥστις ἔστ’ ἀνὴρ σοφὸς λογίζομαι τἀληθές, εἰς ἀνδρὸς φύσιν σκοπῶν δίαιτάν θ’ ἥντιν’ ἡμερεύεται. I have often been chosen to judge between rival contentions, and found that many competing and contradictory tales were told by witnesses about a single event. Accordingly I assess the truth—and so does any wise man—by looking to a person’s nature and the way of life that he pursues.17
We shall see later that another Euripidean fragment, sometimes ascribed to Phoenix, comes even closer to Samia 343–7—but I shall be arguing that it actually belongs to HippK. The publication of the Bodmer papyrus made it certain that in writing Samia, Menander had Phoenix in mind, for it included the lines now numbered 498–500. By this point, Demeas has come to believe that Moschion is at least as guilty as Chrysis. Niceratus, who has been listening to their conversation, breaks in with a wild accusa16 J.-M. Jacques, Ménandre: La Samienne (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1971), p. xxiv. 17 Cusset (above, n. 1), p. 165 n. 7, points out that a phrase from a later part of Aeschines’ quotation (ὅστις δ᾿ ὁμιλῶν ἥδεται, “whoever enjoys keeping company with …”) is echoed in another play of Menander (fr. 308, from Plokion).
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tion against Moschion, saying that he has made all the great sexual immoralities of myth seem trivial, and then continues: τοῦτ’ ἐτόλμησας σὺ πρᾶξαι, τοῦτ’ ἔτλης; Ἀμύντορος νῦν ἐχρῆν ὀργὴν λαβεῖν σε, Δημέα, καὶ τουτονὶ ἐκτυφλῶσαι. Did you dare to do that? Did you dare? Demeas, you should now have taken on the anger of Amyntor, and blinded this fellow!
There is also at least one other respect in which Samia seems to contain specific recollection of Phoenix.18 In Euripides’ play, a great deal was made of the fact that Amyntor was an old man, and of the age difference between himself and his new wife. Eur. fr. 804 is either lacunose or corrupt, but in its latter part it certainly speaks of a man “who marries when he is no longer of an age to do so” (ὅστις οὐκέθ’ ὡραῖος γαμεῖ), and says that “an elderly bridegroom is a slave to his wife” (δέσποινα γὰρ γέροντι νυμφίῳ γυνή). Elsewhere in the play, the same situation was seen from the woman’s point of view (fr. 807 πικρὸν νέᾳ γυναικὶ πρεσβύτης ἀνήρ, “an elderly husband is a painful thing for a young woman to have”),19 and Amyntor complained (fr. 805) “Old age, what an evil you are to those who live in you!” (ὦ γῆρας, οἷον τοῖς ἔχουσιν εἶ κακόν). Demeas in Samia is also an old man (361) who has taken a much younger partner; he had been “ashamed” of his passion for her and tried to conceal it from his son (23, 27). Theseus, on the other hand, is never to our knowledge spoken of as an old man in any of the Hippolytus-Phaedra plays.20 There may well have been other echoes of Phoenix in Samia that we cannot now detect, not least because we know little of the structure of the play’s plot. From HippK, in addition to about 19 quoted fragments, we have the precious if enigmatic assistance of two tattered papyri presenting slightly different versions of a Hypothesis to the play. From these, combined with the quotations and statements in other sources about Euripides’ treatment of the story that are incompatible with HippS, we can infer the outline of the plot with fair assurance.21 The scene, as in
18 As briefly noted by F. Jouan and H. van Looy, Euripide VIII: Fragments (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1998–2003), vol. iii p. 327, and by Cusset (above, n. 1), p. 165 n. 7. 19 Both remarks were quoted (the latter in a slightly modified form) by Aristophanes (Th. 413 and fr. 616, respectively). 20 In HippS, indeed, his maternal grandfather Pittheus is assumed to be still alive (794–6); and his mother Aethra lived till after the fall of Troy (Little Iliad fr. 17 West; Sack of Troy Arg. §4 West). Katsouris (above, n. 1), p. 131, and West (above, n. 1), p. 17, are wrong to speak of Theseus and Demeas as “the two old men.” 21 For a detailed justification of the following partial reconstruction, see Talboy and Sommerstein (above, n. 14), pp. 255–72 (updates in A.H. Sommerstein and T.H. Talboy, Sophocles: Selected Fragmentary Plays II [Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2012], pp. 265–6). Other recent discussions of HippK include W.S. Barrett, Euripides: Hippolytos (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), pp. 10–45; W. Luppe, “Die Hy-
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HippS, was Troezen. At the beginning of the play, Theseus was away in Thessaly, probably visiting Peirithous. Phaedra made a direct approach to Hippolytus, proposing not only an adulterous affair but also that he should attempt to seize political power. Being rebuffed, and doubtless fearing he would denounce her, she then on Theseus’ return accused Hippolytus of rape and of plotting to overthrow him. Hippolytus was given a chance to defend himself, but as in HippS he was unable to do so effectively because Phaedra had bound him by an oath of secrecy. Theseus, even more convinced now of Hippolytus’ guilt, banished his son from his dominions and prayed to his father Poseidon to destroy him. After Hippolytus had driven away in his chariot, Theseus began to have second thoughts, perhaps prompted by a slave22 who advised him not to believe a woman “even when she tells the truth” (fr. 440), and he decided to test Phaedra (who did not know of Hippolytus’ departure). He dressed the slave in Hippolytus’ clothes and had him approach Phaedra, with his face covered, and ask for true proof of her love; this induced Phaedra to utter words that revealed the truth about her passion. But the discovery came too late to save Hippolytus, whose death through the action of Poseidon’s bull was now reported. Phaedra committed suicide,
pothesis zum ersten ‘Hippolytos’ (P.Mich. inv. 6222A),” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 102 (1994), pp. 23–39; “Doppelfassungen von Euripides-Dramen,” Eos 84 (1996), pp. 231–6; “Vermischung zweier Euripides-Hypotheseis?,” Philologus 142 (1998), pp. 173–5; “Nochmals zur Hypothesis des ersten ‘Hippolytos’,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 143 (2003), pp. 23–6; “Zu Daten und Reihenfolge der beiden Hippolytos-Dramen des Euripides,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 151 (2005), pp. 11–14; “Die Hypothesis zum ersten Hippolytos: Ein Versuch der Zusammenführung des P.Mich. inv. 6222A und des P.Oxy. LXVIII 4640,” in: G. Bastianini and A. Casanova (eds.), Euripide e i papiri (Florence: Istituto Papirologico G. Vitelli, 2005), pp. 87–96; M.R. Halleran, Euripides: Hippolytos (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1996), pp. 25–37; J.C. Gibert, “Euripides’ Hippolytus Plays: Which Came First?,” Classical Quarterly NS 47 (1997), pp. 85–97; H.M. Roisman, “The Veiled Hippolytus and Phaedra,” Hermes 127 (1999), pp. 397–409; Nothing is as it Seems: The Tragedy of the Implicit in Euripides’ Hippolytus (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), pp. 9–18; Jouan & van Looy (above, n. 18), vol. ii, pp. 231–49; M. van Rossum-Steenbeek, “4640: Hypotheses to a Theseus and Hippolytus?,” in: N. Gonis et al. (eds.), The Oxyrhynchus Papyri: Volume LXVIII (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 2003), pp. 7–22; O. Zwierlein, Lucubrationes Philologae (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004), vol. i, pp. 57–136; G.O. Hutchinson, “Euripides’ Other Hippolytus,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 149 (2004), pp. 15–28; M. Magnani, “P.Mich. inv. 6222A e P.Oxy. LXVIII 4640 c. II,” Eikasmos 15 (2004), pp. 227–40; “Le Fedre euripidee,” in: R. Degl’Innocenti Pierini et al. (eds.), Fedra: versioni e riscritture di un mito classico (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2007), pp. 39–55; M.J. Cropp and G. Fick, “On the Date of the Extant Hipppolytus,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 154 (2005), pp. 43–5; C. Collard and M.J. Cropp, Euripides: Fragments (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008), vol. i, pp. 466–90; M. de Fátima Silva, “La Fedra de Eurípides: ecos de un escándalo,” in: A. Pociña and A. López (eds.) Fedras de ayer y de hoy (Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada, 2008), pp. 105–23, esp. 108–11; J. Gregory, “A Father’s Curse in Euripides’ Hippolytus,” in: J.R.C. Cousland and J.R. Hume (eds.), The Play of Texts and Fragments: Essays in Honour of Martin Cropp (Leiden: Brill), pp. 35–48. 22 Not the chorus (Collard and Cropp [above, n. 21], vol. i, p. 469), since fr. 429 shows that the chorus consisted of women.
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Hippolytus’ body was brought back for burial, and a god or goddess ordained the establishment of a cult in his honour. I wish to argue that at least four features of Samia are specifically and strongly reminiscent of HippK rather than of HippS or any other tragedy. (1) In HippK, Theseus learns the truth from the unguarded words of Phaedra, spoken indoors (“at the hearth,” according to the Hypothesis) when she is unaware that potentially unfriendly ears are listening; he was probably himself eavesdropping from a concealed position on her conversation with the disguised slave, since he would hardly wish to condemn his wife (and imperil the reputation of her children, his heirs) on evidence obtained at second hand when he could obtain it himself. In Samia, Demeas learns the truth—or rather a misleading portion of the truth—by overhearing, indoors, the unguarded words of a woman (Moschion’s old nurse). There is, to be sure, an eavesdropping/overhearing scene in HippS (565–668): Phaedra hears Hippolytus shouting inside the house, listens at the door to hear more, realizes that her nurse has (with the best of intentions) betrayed her to Hippolytus, and then stands unnoticed as he comes outside and denounces her and all women in unrestrained terms. This has been associated with the Samia scene by Parker,23 but it has much less in common with Samia than the HippK scene had. In HippS the listener (Phaedra) is outdoors, onstage; in HippK and in Samia, the listener (Theseus and Demeas, respectively) is inside—and therefore in HippK, as in Samia, he must have come out afterward and narrated what he had heard. In HippS, the speaker (Hippolytus) is extremely angry and shouting, and does not care who hears him; in Samia, and likewise in HippK if our reconstruction is correct, there was no anger, the voice of the speaker (the nurse and Phaedra, respectively) can be assumed not to have been raised, and she will have supposed on reasonable grounds that no one not in the secret was within earshot. In HippK and in Samia, the speaker, by being overheard, (unintentionally) reveals what should have been kept secret; in HippS, the speaker is the person to whom the secret has been (intentionally) revealed, and his words are not heard by anyone not already privy to the secret. I conclude that in this scene of Samia, Menander was thinking—and expected his audience to be thinking—primarily of the episode of Phaedra and the disguised slave in HippK. (2) Demeas, believing that Chrysis has had a child by Moschion, is led by his judgement of Moschion’s character (and also, we are doubtless meant to infer, by other causes which he does not avow and may not be consciously aware of, such as the love and hope he has invested in his adopted son) to conclude that Chrysis must be the villain in the affair—that she seduced Moschion, not vice versa. It is also attractively suggested, by Lamagna,24 that when Demeas at that point calls Chrysis 23 Parker (above, n. 1), pp. 48–9. In the same article, Parker argues that several other Menandrian scenes, in Dyscolus and Epitrepontes, were inspired by this scene from HippS; I am not here taking any position for or against that view. 24 Lamagna (above, n. 1) on 336–7.
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τὴν ἐμὴν Ἑλένην, “my Helen”, many in the audience may have been expecting him to say τὴν ἐμὴν Φαίδραν, “my Phaedra.” But of the two Euripidean plays, only in HippK is Phaedra a villain, and only in HippK does Theseus ever believe her to be one. In HippS, despite her desperate passion, she has no adulterous intentions and specifically forbids her nurse to reveal her love to Hippolytus. While she does in the end make a (posthumous) accusation against Hippolytus that she expects to result (as it does) in his death (cf. 720–1), and while she does so partly from a “desire to hit back and give hurt in return for hurt,”25 she also has the motive of protecting her reputation and that of her children (717) from the accusations she expects him to make when Theseus returns (690–2, 720–1)—accusations that will be false, although Hippolytus does not know that. And when Theseus eventually learns of Hippolytus’ innocence, he at the same time learns—and from Artemis, Hippolytus’ own patron goddess—of Phaedra’s innocence as well (1300–5), and Hippolytus himself is prepared to see Phaedra—who in Athenian law, but for her suicide, could have been prosecuted and convicted for his murder—as being as much a victim (of Aphrodite) as he is himself (1403). (3) In HippS, as we have seen, Theseus learns the truth only from Artemis, almost at the end of the play. In HippK, he apparently began to suspect it much sooner (although still, as it turned out, too late), thanks to a shrewd slave.26 In Samia, two humble characters are candidates for the role of this slave, but neither is allowed to take it successfully, in both cases because of Demeas’ fierce temper. The first is Parmenon, who knows the truth but, when questioned, at first assumes (Sam. 313–15) that his duty is to stick to the false story that Chrysis is the baby’s mother. When Demeas tells him that he knows Moschion is the father, Parmenon may or may not be on the point of revealing the full truth (320)—but we never find out, because Demeas interrupts and at once prepares to flog him, in response to which he runs away, not to be seen again until after the truth has emerged by other means. The other is the Cook, who knows only that the wedding celebration for which he has been hired is in danger of being cancelled; he makes two attempts to dissuade Demeas from expelling Chrysis from his home, but Demeas each time cuts him off before he has spoken more than one or two words (384, 388). The Theseus of HippK, we know, despite his anger against Hippolytus, was prepared to listen to the slave and to recognize that he might himself be mistaken. (4) It was noted above that Demeas’ words at Samia 343–7 have been seen as reminiscent of Eur. fr. 812 (from Phoenix). But another Euripidean fragment (fr. 1067 =
25 Barrett (above, n. 21) on 728–31. 26 In HippS, another slave (the Messenger) declares his firm conviction that Hippolytus is not a wicked man (1250–4). Although Theseus realizes, however, that it had been unseemly for him to rejoice over the death of his own child (1257–60), he remains certain of Hippolytus’ guilt and wants him brought back to Troezen so that he can use the divinely-caused chariot-wreck to “confute this man who denies he defiled my bed” (1265–7).
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Stobaeus 4.29.47) comes even closer to the Samia passage, and does in fact appear to contain verbal echoes of it: τὸν σὸν δὲ παῖδα σωφρονοῦντ’ ἐπίσταμαι χρηστοῖς θ’ ὁμιλοῦντ’ εὐσεβεῖν τ’ ἠσκηκότα. πῶς οὖν ἂν ἐκ τοιοῦδε †σώματος† κακὸς γένοιτ’ ἄν; οὐδεὶς τοῦτό μ’ ἂν πίθοι ποτέ. I know that your son behaves modestly, associates with good men, and practises piety. How then, from such a †body†, could he become wicked? No one could ever persuade me of that27.
Of recent editors, Kannicht28 and Collard and Cropp have judged it possible, without emending the transmitted text, to understand these words as referring entirely to the son of the addressee and as arguing that, given his previous excellent character, he could not have committed the wicked act of which he apparently stands accused. In this case, the fragment would be appropriate in the mouth of a third party addressing Amyntor in defence of Phoenix,29 and it was assigned to Phoenix by Bergk, “haud improbabiliter” in Kannicht’s view.30 I very much doubt, however, whether the text as it stands is capable of such an interpretation. Kannicht renders σώματος as “personae,” and similarly Collard and Cropp translate the phrase that contains it as “from the kind of person he is.” But none of the parallels cited by Kannicht31 come near showing that σῶμα can denote a person with special reference to his mental or ethical qualities, i.e. can bear the meaning of ψυχή or νοῦς. If it cannot, as Jouan and van Looy have seen,32 the speaker would have to be addressing someone whose grandson (not son) is under accusation, and telling the addressee that, in view of the known virtues of his son (the accused man’s father), it is unlikely that one “ of such a person” would act wickedly. We may add that Stobaeus himself clearly believed that the passage was an assertion of the heritability of ethical qualities (rather than of the constancy of individual character),
27 Somewhat similar language is used in the ineffective plea at HippS 1250–4 (see n. 26): “I shall never be able to believe (πιθέσθαι) that your son is a bad man, not even if all the women on earth were to hang themselves … because I know he is good.” This passage is referred to by Ch. Dedoussi, Μενάνδρου Σαμία (Athens: Ακαδημία Αθηνῶν, 2006), p. 187. 28 R. Kannicht, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (TrGF), Vol. 5: Euripides (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), ad loc. 29 Collard & Cropp (above, n. 21), vol. ii, p. 406, suggest that Cheiron may have made such a speech in Euripides’ play; cf. [Apollod.] Bib. 3.13.8. 30 Kannicht (above, n. 28), p. 848. 31 Alc. 636; Andr. 315; Supp. 223–4; frr. 752h.23; 792a.3. At Supp. 223–4, to be sure, Theseus speaks of mixing σώματα ἄδικα δικαίοις; but at that point he is condemning Adrastus for marrying his daughters to evil men (Polyneices and Tydeus), i.e. of literally mingling “unrighteous bodies with righteous ones.” 32 Jouan & van Looy (above, n. 18), vol. iv, p. 99.
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for he placed it in a section (4.29.40–53) with the heading ὅτι εὐγενεῖς οἱ ἀπὸ χρηστῶν πατέρων ἢ δυνατῶν ἢ ἐνδόξων (“That the offspring of virtuous, powerful or famous fathers are of noble character”). And there is no evidence, and no probability, that Phoenix’s grandfather (Amyntor’s father Ormenus33) was even alive at the time the accusation against Phoenix was made. We must therefore either find an appropriate grandfather-father-son trio, or assume that the text is corrupt (and was already corrupt when it came into Stobaeus’ hands). Only the latter option is viable. We know enough about Euripides’ lost tragedies to be almost certain34 that only one contained both a young adult male character and his paternal grandfather. This was Oeneus, in which the title-character was rescued from hardship and oppression by his grandson Diomedes;35 and there is no evidence that Diomedes was at any point in the play suspected of wrongdoing by his grandfather – and even if he had been, no one could have argued in his defence by referring to the virtues of his father Tydeus, who had been exiled from Calydon, the scene of the action, for killing a relative or relatives (Eur. fr. 558). It follows that the whole of fr. 1067 must be about a son, not a grandson, and that σώματος must be corrupt;36 the most plausible conjecture is λήματος, “character”37 (Düntzer). The corruption may have been caused by a copyist’s eye or mind wandering to σωφρονοῦντ’ two lines above. But there remains a further and more serious objection to Bergk’s ascription of the fragment to Phoenix. In Stobaeus’ text, as has long been noted,38 this is one of a group of ten successive Euripidean extracts (4.29.40–9), eight of which are cited from specific plays, all these (except the first, no. 41, from Temenidae) appearing in alphabetical order of play-titles. Our passage is preceded by one from Heracleidae (297–304) and followed by two from Ino (Eur. frr. 404–5); this prima facie indicates that it comes from a play whose title begins with theta or iota39—Theseus, Thyestes,
33 See Iliad 9.448; Strabo 9.5.18. 34 Unless, in the poorly known Pleisthenes, both Pleisthenes’ father Atreus and one or both of his sons Agamemnon and Menelaus were characters; but we know of no tradition in which either of the latter was accused of any misdeed during Atreus’ lifetime. 35 ΣREΓ Ar. Ach. 418; Hyginus Fab. 175. See Collard and Cropp (above, n. 21), vol. ii, pp. 28–39. 36 Note also that on the “grandson” interpretation, the sentence πῶς οὖν ἂν ἐκ τοιοῦδε σώματος κακὸς γένοιτ’ ἄν; lacks any subject (unless κακός, “wicked” is taken, abnormally, as equivalent to κακὸς ἀνήρ, “a wicked man”), whereas with Düntzer’s emendation the subject is easily understood as “your son,” the topic (although not the grammatical subject) of the previous sentence. 37 When used in a favourable sense, λῆμα can refer to other virtues besides courage; cf. Eur. Med. 348 (Creon says that his λῆμα is “far from tyrannical” and that he has if anything an excess of αἰδώς), Eur. fr. 657.4 (spoken of Laodameia, who committed suicide out of loyalty to her husband). 38 First by O. Hense in (C. Wachsmuth and) O. Hense, Ioannis Stobaei Anthologium v (Berlin: Weidmann, 1912), p. 721. 39 Not eta, since no titles of lost Euripidean plays begin with this letter.
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Ixion or HippK.40 Of these four plays, only one contained, as significant figures in the drama, a father and an adult son. That one is HippK—to which our fragment was ascribed as long ago as 1813.41 It would work very well as part of the same scene (perhaps the same speech) as Eur. fr. 440, the slave trying to persuade Theseus that Hippolytus is innocent and that he should reject Phaedra’s charge. I suggest that this is indeed the source of Eur. fr. 1067, and that Samia 343–7 is primarily modelled on it. There will certainly have been other features of Samia that will made some spectators think of HippK, some of HippS, and some perhaps of both. Some of these features can still be identified. One, already mentioned, is Moschion’s pretence that he is going abroad as a soldier, which corresponds to Hippolytus’ departure for exile in both Euripidean plays.42 Another is his interest in horses and in hunting (14–15), “traditionnellement [les occupations] des jeunes gens riches.”43 A third, long perceived and much discussed, is his virtuous (σώφρων) and orderly (κόσμιος) character, as described by both himself (18) and his adoptive father (273–4, 343–7)—although neither his actions in the recent past nor those during the play itself entirely bear out the description. In HippS, Hippolytus frequently lays claim to these qualities with pride, though others are less impressed—his servant thinks him disrespectful to Aphrodite (88–120), as of course does Aphrodite herself; Phaedra thinks that he has a good deal to learn about being σώφρων (730–1); and Theseus, after reading Phaedra’s accusation, tells him that his claim to virtue has been exposed as bogus (948–57), though he learns better in the end (1454). In HippK, we know for certain that Hippolytus was promised cultic honours because of his virtue (σωφροσύνη), excellence (ἀρετή) and piety (εὐσεβία) (fr. 446); if the argument advanced above regarding fr. 1067 is accepted, that passage can be added to the evidence. It would not be surprising if a dramatist wishing to call Euripides’ Phaedra and Hippolytus to mind set out to stir memories of both HippK and HippS. We know that HippS was well enough remembered, long after its performance, for some lines to become famous or notorious apart from their contexts, above all the line that could be taken as excusing perjury (Hipp. 612, quoted or paraphrased by Ar. Th. 275–6 and
40 Presumably not Ino, since the next extract is attributed to that play by name; and certainly not the satyr-play Theristai, which did not survive into Hellenistic times (Hypothesis II to Medea) and is never quoted by any author. 41 J.H. Monk, Εὐριπίδου Ἱππόλυτος Στεφανηφόρος / Euripidis Hippolytus Coronifer2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1813), p. 154 (on Hipp. 1249 [now 1254]). 42 Hippolytus certainly departed from Troezen in HippK, and in a hurry—we hear that he “rushed straight to the stables” (Eur. fr. 442). That he was not merely fleeing in panic or shame, but had been condemned to exile, is an inference from Eur. fr. 432: “Do something yourself, and then call on the gods: god helps those who help themselves!”—which sounds like a taunting response to Theseus’ curse (cf. HippS 1086–7, after Theseus has ordered his servants to drag Hippolytus away: “They’ll regret it if any of them touches me; thrust me out of the country yourself, if you have the heart!”). 43 Cusset (above, n. 1), p. 166.
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Frogs 101–2, 1471), but also the much less striking Hipp. 345 (= Ar. Knights 16).44 But broader, vaguer references to Euripides’ treatment of the story always seem to privilege HippK. Of eight mentions of Phaedra in comedy, seven treat her as a wicked or whorish woman (Ar. Th. 153, 497, 547, 550; Frogs 1043, 1052; Eubulus fr. 115.12); the Phaedra of HippS, who would rather die than be guilty of infidelity to her husband, makes no impression at all.45 The eighth passage (Ar. fr. 469) may actually be a reference to HippK. It comes from Aristophanes’ Polyidus, a play one would expect to be set (like those of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, on the story of the seer Polyidus and his raising of Minos’ son Glaucus from the dead) at the court of Minos, Phaedra’s father. It was presumably Minos himself who in this fragment effected the betrothal of Phaedra;46 after pronouncing the formula of betrothal, he continues, ἐπὶ πῦρ δὲ πῦρ ἔοιχ’ ἥκειν ἄγων (“It looks as though I’m coming bringing fire to fire”). It is unclear whether he means that Phaedra and her new husband will (as we would say) make an explosive mix, or whether (if we assume that the bridegroom is Theseus) he is saying that he might be seen as asking for trouble after Theseus’ previous treatment of his other daughter Ariadne. But what I am particularly concerned to note is the apparent echo of a passage from HippK (fr. 429), in which a chorus of women describe womankind as ἀντὶ πυρὸς … ἄλλο πῦρ μεῖζον … πολὺ δυσμαχώτερον (“in place of fire … a different fire, greater and much harder to fight”). Kassel and Austin on Ar. fr. 469 see no connection (“minus apte comparatur”), but Collard and Cropp on Eur. fr. 429 take the Aristophanic fragment as “almost certainly an allusion” to the HippK passage.47
44 For a fuller list of quotations of and allusions to HippS (specifically passages connected with Phaedra) in comedy, see Gibert (above, n. 21), p. 96 n. 47. See also Green in this volume for important new evidence of an extended parody of HippS in a late 5th-century comedy. 45 Gibert (above, n. 21), pp. 95–6, argues unconvincingly that the Phaedra of HippS could also have been seen as a wicked woman, because (i) some characters “reproach” her [yes, and others, including Artemis—and finally Hippolytus himself—see her as an innocent victim], (ii) “the mere fact of [her] immoral desire … is enough to account for Aeschylus’ [calling her a ‘whore’]” [although she is determined to resist this desire at the cost of her life?], and (iii) even to call her a “whore” (πόρνη) is no more outrageous than to call the Euripidean Melanippe “wicked” (πονηρά) (Ar. Th. 546–7) [this assumes that Melanippe had been raped by Poseidon, which is far from clear; see Sommerstein (above, n. 12), p. 240]. It might, of course, be possible to conflate the two Phaedras into one for comic purposes, and perhaps this was done in the play that inspired the Sydney vase described by Green (see previous note). 46 The text does not reveal the identity of her future husband. Βut no source speaks of her having ever been married or betrothed to anyone other than Theseus, and there is no reason why a comic dramatist should not have imagined Theseus making a (second) visit to Crete for this purpose at the time of the Polyidus-Glaucus episode. 47 Jouan & van Looy (above, n. 18), vol. ii, p. 243, take an intermediate position: “Aristophane se réfère peut-être à ces vers.” There is probably another allusion to HippK, much nearer Menander’s time, in Alexis fr. 236.5–6, where it is said that lovers have to be εὐπόρους ἐν τοῖς ἀπόροις (“resourceful in an impasse”), cf. Eur. fr. 430, where Phaedra says that Eros is ἐν τοῖς ἀμηχάνοισιν εὐπορώτατον (“most
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Whether they are right or not, it is clear that HippK, like HippS, was well known to 5th- and 4th-century comic poets and their audiences. Menander in Samia appears to have made use of both of them—and of Phoenix too—and to have expected that many in his audience would appreciate reminiscences of all three.48
resourceful where there seems no resource”). See W.G. Arnott, Alexis: The Fragments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 665–6; Cusset (above, n. 1), p. 47 n. 82. 48 An abridged version of this chapter will appear as section 6 of the introduction to my forthcoming edition of Samia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). I am happy to offer this chapter as a tribute to Jeff Henderson, who has done so much to earn the gratitude of every student of ancient Greek literature.
Michael Fontaine
Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Comedy: Menander’s Kolax in Three Roman Receptions (Naevius, Plautus and Terence’s Eunuchus) Abstract: In the prologue to Eunuchus (a reworking of Menander’s Eunouchos), Terence acknowledges that he has retrofitted in two characters—the parasite and the soldier—from Menander’s Kolax, a separate comedy. Relying on recent theorization of poetic memory consolidated by Stephen Hinds, I discuss three passages that feature these two characters (Eunuchus 244–53, 419–29, 799–801). I contend that in them Terence’s characters self-consciously encode reflections on the problematics of poetic memory inherent in the genre of Roman comedy. In my view, Terence aims to explore creative appropriation and its rhetoric of primacy and coming after, rhetoric recently pioneered by Ennius in his Annals and later repeatedly cultivated by the Neoteric and Augustan poets, especially Ovid. Unlike these later poets, Terence’s experiment failed, and in conclusion I suggest several reasons why. An appendix discusses the difference between a parasitus colax and a parasitus edax.
Roman comedy frequently embarrasses Latinists: not in the sense that it makes them blush, but in that they do not really know what to do with it. Although produced in the same years and often by the same authors as Latin epic was (in particular, Livius Andronicus’ Odyssey, Naevius’ Punic War and Ennius’ Annals), it is usually seen as an outlier, a misfit that does not really belong with the rest of Latin literature. It thus tends to be ignored, and when it is not, one senses a trend among scholars to archaize Plautus, to push him further back in the past than he really was. Even more absurd, the same sometimes goes for Terence, Plautus’ younger peer, even though Terence’s plays all date to later in the same decade that Ennius, the sophisticated father of Roman poetry, died. And because there is a gap in the literature of about 90 years between Terence and Catullus, we tend to see Plautus and Terence as moving in totally different ambits from Catullus and the Neoterics, Lucretius and the Augustans. My goal in this paper is to try to close this gap a little. I aim to show that Terence, if not Plautus and the other fragmentary comedians, prefigures the sophisticated literary moves of the Neoterics and the Augustans in many ways we tend to think of as quintessentially Neoteric and Augustan. My basis for this claim is Terence’s treatment of Menander’s (lost) comedy Kolax, “The Flatterer.” Kolax was a popular play in antiquity. Staged originally ca. 315 BCE, portions of it probably lived on in Hellenistic symposia, and one scene is seemingly represented in a now-lost Pompeian wall painting. Of greater interest to students of ancient Rome, Kolax went on to enjoy, uniquely, a triple reception in Latin literature, a fact that
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seems to have excited insufficient appreciation among both Latinists and scholars of intertextuality. The play was adapted entirely or partially by Naevius, Plautus and Terence. And since Terence’s Eunuchus comes last in this series, it offers an excellent specimen for studying the dynamics of appropriation in Roman comedy.1 This final phrase, which is the title of my paper, is a nod to the subtitle of Stephen Hinds’ Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry.2 That is intentional, for while Hinds discusses Latin literature of many kinds, he ignores Roman comedy almost entirely. I hope to supplement his work by showing that in his Eunuchus Terence explores the same concepts of literary self-awareness, textual and poetic memory, tendentious reading, the rhetoric of primacy and appropriation in Roman comedy, and the like familiar to us from later Latin authors. For reasons discussed below, this sort of investigation has rarely if ever been attempted. But anyone who wants to honor Jeffrey Henderson’s many contributions to our understanding of ancient comedy should also emulate his unbending courage; this thus seems a suitable occasion to attempt a novel interpretation of Terence and his poetics.
1. Menander’s Kolax in Terentian Hindsight: Alexandrian footnotes, reflexive annotations and tendentious readings Terence begins Eunuchus with a prologue that concludes with a plea for the audience to pay careful attention to what his play, as a literary construct, is up to (44–5 date operam, cum silentio animum attendite, / ut pernoscatis quid sibi Eunuchus velit, “Pay attention and listen carefully in silence, so that you may understand what Εὐνοῦχος has to say”). We will do exactly this presently, but before delving into the text, let us recapitulate some of Hinds’ premises. Consolidating and refining important earlier work by a number of scholars, Allusion and Intertext begins (pp. 1–5) by reintroducing the notion of what we now call an “Alexandrian footnote:” an allusion a Latin poet or narrator introduces in his own voice with a vague word such as dicunt(ur), ferunt(ur), perhibent or ut fama est, meaning “they say” or “the story goes”. Despite their auditory quality, these markers
1 Date of Kolax: Matthias Johannes Pernerstorfer, Menanders Kolax: ein Beitrag zu Rekonstruktion und Interpretation der Komödie; mit Edition und Übersetzung der Fragmente und Testimonien sowie einem dramaturgischen Kommentar (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2009), pp. 147–9. For basic information on Naevius, Plautus and Terence, see Werner Suerbaum (ed.), Handbuch der lateinischen Literatur der Antike, vol. 1: Die archaische Literatur von den Anfängen bis Sullas Tod (Munich: Beck, 2002), pp. 107–9, 183–228, 232–54. 2 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
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tend to refer to a prior literary treatment, and they direct our thoughts to that text or texts. Hinds goes on to distinguish these narrator-imposed allusions, which intrude on the text, from allusions that are more refined or deeply encoded in a narrative. In these more sophisticated allusions, an earlier text is evoked or “reflected” not by the narrator but by a character within the narrative who makes use of embedded language of recall, recognition, memory, repetition and imitation—that is, the character retrieves a sense of what he or she perceived in past experience. Ovid loves this sort of allusion, so the procedure can be mostly succinctly illustrated by briefly revisiting the two classic passages of Ovid that Hinds himself takes as his starting point for discussion. First is Ariadne’s monologue in Fasti 3.471–476: “en iterum, fluctus, similes audite querellas. en iterum lacrimas accipe, harena, meas. dicebam, memini, ‘periure et perfide Theseu!’ ille abiit, eadem crimina Bacchus habet. nunc quoque ‘nulla viro’ clamabo ‘femina credit;’ nomine mutato causa relata mea est.”
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“Again, o waves, hear a complaint! Again, o sands, receive my tears! I used to say, I remember, ‘Perjured and faithless Theseus!’ He has gone; now Bacchus incurs the same charge. Once again I will cry, ‘Let no woman trust a man!’ My case is a repeat; only the name has changed.” (trans. Hinds)
Ovid’s Ariadne is remembering (memini) the lament she uttered while sobbing on the shore in an earlier, textual incarnation of herself—viz. in Catullus 64 (130–5, 143–4, also a monologue): atque haec extremis maestam dixisse querellis, frigidulos udo singultus ore cientem: “sicine me patriis avectam, perfide, ab aris perfide, deserto liquisti in litore, Theseu? sicine discedens neglecto numine divum, immemor a! devota domum periuria portas?… nunc iam nulla viro iuranti femina credat, nulla viri speret sermones esse fideles;”
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And this last complaint did she mournfully utter, with chill sobs and tearful face: “After carrying me off from my father’s home, is this how you have left me, faithless, faithless Theseus, on the lonely shore? thus departing, all unmindful, without regard for the will of the gods, do you carry home the curse of perjury? … Henceforth let no woman trust a man’s oath, or look for good faith in a man’s speeches.” (trans. Hinds)
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As Hinds points out (p. 4), memini in Ovid is not the poet’s word but Ariadne’s, and her iterum helps direct our thoughts to the earlier text. The second example is Ovid Met. 14.812–16, where Mars reminds Jupiter of a promise: “tu mihi concilio quondam praesente deorum (nam memoro memorique animo pia verba notavi) ‘unus erit quem tu tolles in caerula caeli’ dixisti.”
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“Once, in full council of gods, you said to me (I recorded the gracious words in my memory’s seat, and now remind you), ‘There will be one whom you will raise to heaven’s azure blue.’” (trans. Hinds)
Verse 814 is an all but unattributed quotation of Ennius’ Annals 54–5 Skutsch unus erit quem tu tolles in caerula caeli / templa. This is where and when Jupiter made the promise; and this is where Ovid’s Mars, a literary construct, is recalling the promise from. Hinds calls these allusions that are troped via words of memory, imitation or repetition “reflexive (self-) annotations,” and, as noted, they are most closely associated with Ovid.3 In Hinds’ opinion, ancient poets’ “tendentious” readings of their predecessors (i.e. deliberate misinterpretations or distortions of a text) are “something constitutive of allusive writing and of the alluding poet’s emplotment of his work in literary tradition” (p. 100). Spotting these reflexive annotations has become a major industry in the study of Augustan and later Latin poetry. Those who work in these areas will already be well acquainted with both these classic examples. But while Hinds’ ideas have made no inroads at all in the study of Roman comedy, these same dynamics are vibrantly at work in Terence’s Eunuchus. Let me give an example of what I mean, beginning with a line from the Captivi of Terence’s great predecessor, Plautus.
2. Terentian tendentiousness: A reading of Plautus’ Captivi In v. 768 of Plautus’ Captivi, the parasite Ergasilus comes rushing onstage in jubilant haste in hope of finding his patron, a senex named Hegio. Hegio, meanwhile, enters from the opposite side. From there, Hegio watches his parasite, in explicit and
3 See Hinds, Allusion and Intertext (above, n. 2), chapter 1 and general index s.v. “allusion: reflexive (self-) annotation in ch. I.”
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announced imitation of a comedic servus currens (778–9), racing around and threatening to knock aside any and all who stand in his way (quemque offendero, 798). At v. 800, the parasite in his enthusiasm boldly proclaims: faciam ut huius diei locique meique semper meminerit. I’ll make him [sc. anyone I run into] remember this day and this place and me forever.
This brash display of confidence prompts the senex—who in v. 835 is the only person the parasite actually will run into—to turn aside from the dramatic illusion and ask (801), “What giant undertaking is this guy up to, with such gigantic threats as these?” (quid hic homo tantum incipissit facere cum tantis minis?). Compare the words of an adulescens in Terence’s Eunuchus who is strangely misnamed Chremes (normally the name of a senex). In v. 801, he offers the soldier an uncharacteristically bold threat. “If you cause the slightest trouble here today,” he warns Thraso (801): faciam ut huius loci dieique meique semper memineris.4 I’ll make you remember this place and this day and me forever.
Except for the slight change of meminerit from third- to second-person and the lightly altered word order, the lines are virtually identical—so much so that this line seems to be the only certain reminiscence of Plautus in all of Terence.5 What does it mean? In his commentary on Captivi, W.M. Lindsay (1858–1937), the eminent editor of Plautus and Terence, offers what remains the most nuanced interpretation of the situation I have encountered. With great confidence of his own, Lindsay simply pronounces, “This line is stolen by Terence Eun. 801.”6 He says no more. Whether or not theft was Terence’s motive—I discuss the question below—there is no reason to suspect that either verse is interpolated, and given the proverbial “vagaries of textual transmission”—dare I suggest it?—it may also be significant that the line numbers are
4 Unless otherwise indicated, citations of Terence’s play are from John Barsby (ed.), Terence, Eunuchus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999; see pp. 178–9 on Chremes’ puzzling name), translations from Barsby’s 2-volume Loeb edition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), occasionally modified. 5 This negative claim rests on the evidence in Leopold Hermann Fischer, De Terentio priorum comicorum latinorum inprimis Plauti sectatore quaestiones selectae (Diss. Halle: Karras, 1875), pp. 43–57, esp. 43–7. 6 (Ed.), The Captivi of Plautus (London: Methuen, 1900), p. 300 on v. 800.
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almost identical.7 To repeat: What does this, the only certain reminiscence of Plautus in Terence, mean? I suggest that what we see here is Terence tendentiously misinterpreting Plautus’ Captivi. Terence is positioning the parasite’s words there as a prophetic reflection on his own, later, senex-named adulescens, in order to suggest where the misnamed poltroon might have learned such tough talk—tough enough to stand up to a soldier! To put it a little differently, by converting prophecy into memory, Terence’s character comes in fulfillment of the Plautine scriptures. The self-interested interpretation of prophecy is a trick well known to messiahs and charlatans alike. In a more impressively “Ovidian” move, however, Terence quietly but retroactively tropes the threat of a memory (“… I’ll make him remember …”) as a memory, in order to imply something wry about the recyclability of comedic roles in Roman comedy—namely that the senex in Plautus’ old play just might be the pseudo-senex in Terence’s new play, and that “this day and this place” in Captivi means not “Aetolia” (the setting of the play) but “this fictional palliata world,” or “this stage in Rome.” Likewise, the victims implied by quemque offendero (798) might now mean not just “anyone on stage” but also “anyone and everyone out there in the audience,” on whose memories the parasite will impinge. To adopt a Hindsian formulation, on a Terentian reading, Ergasilus’ faciam … meminerit become a “cletic” threat sent forward across intertextual time and space, which duly elicits a “memory” from the “senex” of Eunuchus, who needs to summon the courage to bluster beyond his capabilities.8 I am suggesting that Terence is creating a subtle bit of dramatic continuity in the Roman palliata world by alluding to Plautus. If this were Augustan poetry, no one would be either much impressed with or offended by this conclusion. But Roman comedy is not like most Roman poetry. The comedies are not free creations but explicitly adapted versions of Greek source texts, at times approaching little more than verbatim translations.9 This means my conclusion is not only unorthodox, it is also more problematic than it would be in other types of poetry. The primary reason is that adaptation theory and allusion theory do not go easily hand in hand: we seem never to
7 On “stichometric intertextuality,” i.e. allusions whose line numbers match, see Hinds, Allusion and Intertext (above, n. 2), p. 92 n. 80 and Dunstan Lowe, “Women Scorned: A New Stichometric Allusion in the Aeneid,” Classical Quarterly NS 63 (2013), pp. 442-5. 8 See Hinds, Allusion and Intertext (above, n. 2), p. 119, on the retroactive “cletic” summons in Ovid. I add here that Ergasilus’ language is not a topos (commonplace). There is a superficially striking parallel, the only such in Plautus, in Persa 494–5, where a conspiring slave tells the pimp that he hopes to entrap faciam ut mei memineris, dum vitam / vivas. But apart from smaller differences, the Persa passage is ostensibly an optimistic prediction, only ironically a threat, and rather than a direct address to the audience as in Captivi and Eunuchus, it is spoken within the dramatic illusion. 9 Several sample texts are reprinted in my chapter on “The Reception of Greek Comedy in Rome,” in: Martin Revermann (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
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be able to ensure that what we read as an intentional allusion is not simply an artifact of the translated source text. (I will return to this question later.) Let me therefore hasten to defend my problematic proposition about Terence’s treatment of Plautus. In the prologue of Eunuchus, we learn that Thraso, the just-mentioned soldier who interacts with Terence’s intertextual Chremes, and his companion, a parasite named Gnatho, come not from Menander’s Eunouchos but from his Kolax—an entirely different play. Later we will examine the prologue in greater detail; for now, let us back up and look more closely at these two characters as they appear in the play, for I suggest that through them we can chart the dynamics of allusion in Roman comedy.
3. A parasite’s boast At v. 232, the parasite Gnatho makes his first appearance. In jaunty, singsong trochaic septenarii he begins a monologue with a seemingly rhetorical question: “What makes one man better than another?” (homini homo quid praestat?). He immediately proceeds to reflect on the question by describing an encounter he had with a man in the street, a man of his own rank and order. Like Gnatho, the other fellow squandered his inheritance; unlike Gnatho, he is pannis annisque obsitum (236): a bum covered in rags, aging badly, reduced to beggary, abandoned by his friends. This Achaemenides would make a perfect parasite; but, as Gnatho reports, he has so far refused the option. Here is how Gnatho dramatizes their conversation (244–53; he begins by quoting the bum): “‘at ego infelix neque ridiculus esse neque plagas pati possum.’ quid? tu his rebus credis fieri? tota erras via. olim isti fuit generi quondam quaestus apud saeclum prius. hoc novomst aucupium; ego adeo hanc primus inveni viam. est genus hominum qui esse primos se omnium rerum volunt nec sunt. hos consector; hisce ego non paro me ut rideant, sed eis ultro arrideo et eorum ingenia admiror simul. quidquid dicunt laudo; id rursum si negant, laudo id quoque; negat quis, nego; ait, aio. postremo imperavi egomet mihi omnia assentari. is quaestus nunc est multo uberrimus.”
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“‘But—alas!—I can’t play the buffoon or take a beating.’ What? Is that how you suppose it’s done? You’re on totally the wrong track. 245 Once upon a time, long ago, in the prior generation that was the way our type earned a living. There’s this new snare—and what’s more, I’m the one who first discovered this way: There’s a class of men who want to be excellent in everything, but aren’t; they’re the ones I go after. I don’t make myself the entertainment for them; I’m the one who laughs at their jokes, and I praise their wit, too. 250 Whatever they say, I applaud; or if they say the opposite, I applaud that too. If someone says no, I say no; if yes, I say yes. In short, I’ve ordered myself to agree to everything. It’s the job with by far the biggest money nowadays.”
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Most parasites in Roman comedy are jesters, buffoons. They represent what the Greeks call a γελωτοποιός, a witty entertainer who cracks jokes and accepts abuse to earn his keep. As he explains here, however, Gnatho is on to something different—he has developed a new way of catching parasitic prey by means of assentatio, a translation of κολακεία (“flattery”), and obtaining dinner invitations from them (cf. 259). In v. 246, he even boasts of being “the original inventor” of this new via (“method, aim, approach”)—a claim that should immediately draw attention. Scholars typically see Gnatho’s boast as a pompous, comical extension (so Barsby) or parody (so Maltby) of the πρῶτος εὑρετής (“first inventor”) motif.10 But an examination of this motif in comedy suggests that more is going on. In New and Roman comedy, it typically appears when a character curses the remote primus inventor or repertor, whoever he be, of a motif, technology, institution or other device. A.S. Gratwick11 has assembled the relevant examples: (a) Plautus fr. 22 Monda (Boeotia), a parasite speaking: ut illum di perdant primus qui horas repperit quique adeo primus statuit hic solarium…! May the gods damn the man that first invented hours, Yes, and who first set up a sundial here …! (b) Plautus Menaechmi 451–2, a parasite speaking: qui illum di omnes perduint, qui primus commentust ⋃ × contionem habere…! May all the gods damn the man who first devised the holding of public meetings…! (c) Naevius com. 18 Ribbeck3 = 18 Warmington (Apella): ut illum di perdant, qui primus holitor caepam protulit. May the gods damn the kitchen-gardener who first produced an onion! (d) Menander fr. 119 (Ἐμπιμπραμένη): ⋃ – ⋃ ἐξώλης ἀπόλοιθ’ ὅστις ποτὲ ὁ πρῶτος ἦν γήμας… Damn him, whatever man was the first to marry…!
But in all of these, the primus inventor is an unknown figure, some damnable bastard of the fabled past, and never the speaker himself. By contrast, Terence’s Gnatho is boasting pride of place for himself, in the here-and-now, as the primus inventor of
10 Barsby (1999) (above, n. 4), p. 131 n. ad loc.; Robert Maltby, “The Distribution of Imagery by Plays and Characters in Terence,” in: Peter Kruschwitz, Widu-Wolfgang Ehlers and Fritz Felgentreu (eds.), Terentius Poeta (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2007), p. 152; similarly Alessandra Minarini, Il monologo di Gnatone: spunti e appunti sul metateatro terenziano (Bologna: Pàtron, 1995), p. 30. 11 “Sundials, Parasites, and Girls from Boeotia,” Classical Quarterly NS 29 (1979), p. 313.
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adapting the technique of flattery to the already-existing, customary framework for parasitism, which (to repeat) was based on γελωτοποιία, or jesterism, and the capacity to tolerate physical abuse. This observation suggests that we turn our attention in a different direction. As Latinists well know, the claim of primacy in some achievement—often one of adaptation or transplantation of an idea to new ground—is common in Roman literature; modern scholars call it the “primus (ego) motif.” But the motif is not frequent in Greek literature, including comedy; a cook’s boast in Euphro fr. 1.14–15 (Ἀδελφοί) of being the first to figure out how to steal food, ἐγὼ … εὗρον τὸ κλέπτειν πρῶτος (“I … first discovered stealing”) is the only such in extant Greek comedy, and is only a specious parallel. By contrast, primus (ego) claims seem to be a mainstay not only of Latin literature but of Roman society as a whole.12 And this suggests that in a very Roman-sounding boast, Terence’s Greek parasite is claiming primacy in adapting the method of κολακεία to parasitism (which, to repeat, normally involved being a jester, a γελωτοποιός). How can this be? From either a Greek or a Roman point of view, Gnatho’s boast is demonstrably false. Every commentator on Eunuchus points this out. We do not know whether the parasite in Menander’s Kolax made the same claim,13 but if he did, the chorus of Eupolis’ (Old Comedic) Kolakes (fr. 172) will have invalidated it. What is worse for Terence, from the Roman point of view Gnatho’s claim is absurdly, even “code model” disqualified by the character Artotrogus, the parasite that appears in the opening scene of Plautus’ famous Miles Gloriosus (1–78). Exactly as in Eunuchus, that scene showcases precisely a parasite employing κολακεία on his braggart soldierpatron.14 Moreover, it is incredible to suppose that Terence did not know or know of this play, famous in antiquity not least for a perceived allusion to the ongoing imprisonment of Naevius, the great predecessor comedian admired and emulated by Plautus and Terence alike.15 But it gets worse. Some oddly suspicious language also undermines Gnatho’s claim. The words he attributes to his downtrodden interlocutor are reminiscent of wording in Plautus’ Captivi—the play from which (to quote Lindsay once again) a “line
12 David Meban, “Temple Building, Primus Language, and the Proem to Virgil’s Third Georgic,” Classical Philology 103 (2008), pp. 150–74. 13 Maybe; doxography in Andrea Antonsen-Resch, Von Gnathon zu Saturio: Die Parasitenfigur und das Verhältnis der römischen Komödie zur griechischen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004), pp. 205–6 n. 880. 14 On “code models” and rival formulations, see Hinds, Allusion and Intertext (above, n. 2), p. 42 n. 148 and passim. I gather and discuss competing explanations for some similarities among Miles, Eunuchus and Menander’s Kolax in “Colax Menandrist…,” Classical Review NS 60 (2010), pp. 379–80 (review of Pernerstorfer 2009 [above, n. 1]). 15 Perceived allusion: Miles 211–12 with Festus (from Paulus) 32.14–16 Lindsay; Terence’s admiration: Andria 18–20 (discussed in the text below). Although hardly conclusive, it has been argued that Terence’s Adelphoe 35–8 evokes Miles 719–22 and that Plautus’ Asinaria 68–73 evokes plot points in Miles; on the latter see A.S. Gratwick, “Curculio’s Last Bow: Plautus, Trinummus iv. 3,” Mnemosyne 34 (1981), p. 342 n. 4.
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is stolen by Terence” in Eunuchus. That play is distinguished among Plautus’ output in part by the memorable parasite Ergasilus, a character to which, as I argued above, Terence alludes in this play. What is more, at several points Ergasilus even soliloquizes reflectively and self-consciously on his craft of being both a ridiculus (“jester, buffoon”) and a plagipatida (“human punching-bag”) (88–90, 469–77). Both are roles that, he implies, any parasite must take, and both words recur in Eunuchus 244. Likewise, Gnatho’s boast of his new method in v. 252 recalls the language of a parasite in Plautus’ Menaechmi (Eun. 252 negat quis, nego; ait, aio ~ Men. 162 id enim quod tu vis, id aio atque id nego). From the Roman point of view, this is not necessarily a problem, if we suppose that Terence is having Gnatho warp the dramatic illusion. As Gnatho explains, these were the methods in use apud saeclum prius—which, in Terence’s day in the 160s BCE, would be Plautus’ time—perhaps even 205 BCE, the year to which Miles Gloriosus is conventionally dated. One commentator in fact accepts this purely non-illusory interpretation.16 But on the whole, this unambiguously Roman intrusion would be hard to square with the otherwise Greek setting of the play, and what is more problematic— indeed, crisis-inducing—is Gnatho’s capping claim (252–3) postremo imperavi egomet mihi omnia assentari, which evokes Artotrogus’ aside in Plautus’ Miles 35 et adsentandumst quidquid hic (i.e. his companion, the miles gloriosus) mentibitur; for this character, as has been said, is the example that proves Gnatho’s claim most absurdly false. Since the entire thrust of Gnatho’s monologue is that the idea of using assentatio (flattery) is his own invention, none of this confusion, I submit, can be accidental. Yet the paradox is also hardly an oversight. What is going on? How can we escape?
4. Primus ego …: Paradoxical Claims of Primacy Chapter 3 of Allusion and Intertext has provided a new basis for making sense of these strange claims.17 As Hinds discusses at length, from a factual point of view many Roman claims of primacy in adaptation are manifestly ludicrous. And not just that. What is stranger but certain, is that Roman poets enjoy alluding to a prior author whose claim of primacy or authority they hope to supersede—that is, these poets tend to advertise the paradoxical nature of their claim by alluding to the very text that invalidates it, usually by borrowing the language of the prior claim. The archetypal example is the proem of Georgics 3. Here Virgil declares that omnia iam vulgata (“everything is a topos [commonplace]) these days”—for who does not by now know Eurystheus and Busiris and Hylas and Pelops and the other characters of 16 So Philip Corbett in The Scurra, Scottish Classical Studies 2 (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1986), p. 20; cf. n. 19 below. 17 See Hinds, Allusion and Intertext (above, n. 2), esp. pp. 52–63, “Diachrony: literary history and its narratives, I. Importing the Muse.”
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Greek mythology all too well (3–8)? In these autumnal circumstances, what is a young poet to do? Virgil must, he resolves, strike out in a different direction (8–11): temptanda via est, qua me quoque possim tollere humo victorque virum volitare per ora. primus ego in patriam mecum, modo vita supersit, Aonio rediens deducam vertice Musas …
10
I too must try a path, whereby I may raise myself from the ground and fly victorious on the lips of men. I shall be the first, returning from the Aonian peak, to draw down the Muses with me into my fatherland, provided life remain … (trans. Hinds).
As Hinds notes (pp. 53–4), Virgil’s aspiration to be the first to import the Greek Muses to Italy is couched in language that alludes, paradoxically, to a previous claim of Ennius, the father of Roman epic, to do precisely this (Lucretius DRN 1.117–19 and Ennius Ann. 208–10 Skutsch = 233–5 Warmington). Virgil even flags the allusion to Ennius (whose own claim is itself problematic) with the words victorque virum volitare per ora (9), which, by means of an implicit pun on victus (~ vīctus), evoke Ennius’ epitaph, volito vivŏs per ora virum (“I fly alive on the lips of men;” Ennius min. 46 Courtney).18 Here is how Hinds interprets the paradox (p. 55): At a more complex level it [i.e. the paradox] tells us something about how Hellenizing revolutions often operate in Roman poetry and in Roman literary self-fashioning in the last centuries BCE : they operate through a revision of previous Hellenizing revolutions, a revision which can be simultaneously an appropriation and a denial.
Agreed: Roman poets expropriate their predecessors while simultaneously ensuring that these predecessors are given a sort of homage. But whereas Hinds’ treatment of Roman poets is largely restricted to more elevated genres, I think that we can take a more expansive view and consider his remarks equally suitable to Terence as well. For if we return to Terence and to Gnatho’s claim of primacy, we note immediately the thematic similarity of both via (8: like Virgil’s, quasi-philosophical but also perhaps an image of Daedalus) and especially of primus ego (10, 12). I suggest that Gnatho is making precisely the same claim Virgil does, but within his own generic sphere. His claim to be first is in a sense authorized by allusions to a prior text that strictly invalidates it, and that text is not Menander’s (Greek) Kolax but the opening scene of Plautus’ Roman Miles Gloriosus. In other words, Terence’s Gnatho adapts a primus inventor claim to make a primus ego claim, but to do so he alludes to his great predecessor, the character Artotrogus in Plautus’ Miles Gloriosus. Gnatho thereby 18 For other reflexive pun-allusions such as victor ~ vivŏs (i.e. vivus, nominative), see Hinds, Allusion and Intertext (above, n. 2), pp. 57 (pes), 61 (versutus), 73 (hirsutus ~ hircosus), and esp. 115 (trepident ~ tepidi, tremerent), cf. 112 n. 22, and n. 21 below on insector. This practice arouses my suspicion that parasti in Eun. 240 is meant to evoke parasit(-us) in some other text.
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intends to stake a supersessionist claim on being the parasitus colax par excellence. Or, to put the matter in Hindsian terms (p. 55), what Terence’s parasite’s assertion of primacy does is not so much proclaim a beginning for Gnatho as proclaim an end for the old characters; this is a polemic that “itself entails an act of homage.”19 Why? One explanation might be that Gnatho is posing as a Roman poet, an Ennius, Horace, Virgil, Lucretius or Propertius—or, indeed, a Terence, recalling themes of poetic primacy and secondariness brought up in the prologue of Eunuchus.20 But I doubt it. My own view is that Gnatho is wryly telling us that he is aware that he is a literary character. In Hindsian terms, Terence has encoded the primus ego claim more deeply than Virgil does and has made Gnatho “annotate” it self-reflexively. This observation allows us to amplify the allusion in Terence by revisiting and reinterpreting more of what Gnatho says in the surrounding lines as reflexive selfannotations on the mask of the comedic parasite. Recall that immediately after disparaging parasites apud saeclum prius (“in the prior generation”), Gnatho continues (247–9): ego adeo hanc primus inveni viam. est genus hominum qui esse primos se omnium rerum volunt nec sunt. hos consector … and what’s more, I primus discovered this way. There’s a class of men who want to be primus in everything, but aren’t; they’re the ones I consector …
Apart from the ostensible reference in primos (“foremost,” untendentiously translated “excellent” above) to such stolid blowhards as Thraso, his soldier-patron, I suggest that Gnatho is ironically describing himself. He is commenting in full self-awareness on his own secondary place in the Roman literary tradition by militating against (while paying homage to) Plautus’ Artotrogus, his obvious predecessor on the Roman stage. The same irony applies to hos consector in 249. Gnatho does not mean only “I pursue them” but also “I emulate them” (OLD s.v. consector 3)—“them” being his forerunners, those who actually were first.21 Indeed we might even go a step further and retrospectively reinterpret Gnatho’s use of prae(-) in both 232 (the rhetorical question with which he begins the monologue), “what makes one man stand prae another …,” and 239 (“I scorned him prae myself”) as self-reflexive meditations on temporal literary priority. I should stress that I am not merely arguing that Gnatho is a metaphor for Terence himself. I am rather arguing that, like Ovid’s Ariadne, Gnatho speaks as a self-aware
19 Hinds, Allusion and Intertext (above, n. 2), p. 66. By a very different and incredible route, Corbett (1986) (above, n. 16), pp. 19–22, touches nearly on this point but then proceeds in a different direction. 20 Gnatho as Terence: so Minarini (1995) (above, n. 10), p. 37. Themes in the prologue: Eun. 35–43. 21 Cf. Hinds, Allusion and Intertext (above, n. 2), p. 71, on Horace’s punning use of insector (Epist. 2.1.71) to “track” insece in Livius Andronicus’ Odyssey 1.1.
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literary character. My hope is that these dynamics are beginning to look suspiciously like the ideals of Augustan poetry—and I can add more examples to the argument.
5. Enter the Soldier In a memorable scene later in Eunuchus, Gnatho appears alongside Thraso, his soldier-patron. The parasite displays his mastery of the art of flattery, even warping the dramatic illusion at one point to reassure us in an aside that nothing he is telling the soldier is sincere. In the following excerpt we encounter another claim of primacy, but this time it is met with a challenge (419–29): Thr.
Gna. Thr.
Gna. Thr. Gna. Thr. Gna. Thr. Thr
Gna. Thr.
Gna. Thr. Gna. Thr. Gna. Thr.
quid illud, Gnatho? quo pacto Rhodium tetigerim in convivio, numquam tibi dixi? numquam; sed narra, obsecro. plus miliens audivi. una in convivio erat hic quem dico Rhodius adulescentulus. forte habui scortum. coepit ad id adludere et me irridere. “quid ais,” inquam “homo inpudens? lepus tute’s: pulpamentum quaeris?” hahahae! quid est? facete, lepide, laute, nil supra. tuomne, obsecro te, hoc dictum erat? vetus credidi. audieras? saepe, et fertur in primis. meumst.
420
425
428
429
And what about how I zinged the Rhodian at the dinner party— 420 did I never tell you? Never. But do tell me, I implore you. (aside) I’ve heard it more than a thousand times. This Rhodian youth I’m talking about was with me at a dinner party. As it happened I had a woman with me. He began to flirt with her and make fun of me. “Answer me this,” I said, “you impudent fellow: You’re a honeybunny yourself: are you hunting whitetail?” (laughing uproariously) hahahahaha! (slightly taken aback) What’s the matter? Witty, clever, neat, couldn’t be better! Was that your witticism, for goodness’ sake? I thought it was an old one. Had you heard it? Often. It’s known as one of the best. It’s mine.
425
428
429
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In an act of pure appropriation, the exchange ends with Thraso claiming a well-worn joke (428 vetus) for himself (429 meumst), a joke Gnatho had heard before (422 plus miliens audivi). Where had Gnatho heard it? “From Thraso.” Doubtful—429 suggests otherwise. “From Roman soldiers.” No— it is true that in his appropriative claim, Thraso sounds much like the decommissioned veteran in Virgil’s ninth Eclogue (v. 4 “haec mea sunt!”), but we must remember that we are watching a mimesis of Greek life set in Athens a century before Terence’s time, and Thraso and Gnatho are trapped in it. “From everybody, then”—i.e. this is a commonplace—“and saepe in 429 supports it.” Maybe, but I think there is a different source—and not Menander’s play. In fact, this specific joke, lepus tute es: pulpamentum quaeris, comes from a comedy written by Livius Andronicus, Terence’s earliest predecessor (fr. 6 Warmington = 8 Ribbeck3 [incert.]). The words are an example of the extreme form of allusion— a pure quotation. Moreover, they stand out as unusual because they appear as an asyndetic, riddling “identification motif,”22 a form of expression found frequently in Plautus but nowhere else in Terence; and they are introduced by audieras, the “footnote” marker par excellence for an auditory genre. I accordingly venture to suggest that one of the places Gnatho has heard this joke is in an earlier comedy. In this virtuoso self-reflexive annotation, Gnatho’s vetus credidi (“I believed it was an old one”) alludes to Livius’ comedy; and like Ovid’s Mars or Ariadne, the words strengthen the impression that Gnatho is aware of both his status as a literary character and his rank in Latin literary history.23 Let me go a step further. Gnatho’s assurance that he had heard this joke “more than a thousand times” (421—an idiomatic expression) is made in an aside—that is, the parasite is speaking directly to the audience when he says this. This suggests that the terms in which he describes Livius’ joke are working on two levels. Fertur here is of course ostensibly equivalent to laudatur (“is praised”: cf. Lucilius fr. 1013 Marx; otherwise, “is spoken of (as)”: OLD s.v. fero 34.b). But as an ancient scholium already observed, the expression fertur in primis might equally well mean dictum ab antiquis (“it was said by the ancients”).24 This suggests that, as elsewhere (e.g. Aeneid 6.893; 7.735), in this context too fertur (sc. esse) also functions as an “Alexandrian footnote” equivalent to ferunt (“they relate”). The combination fertur in primis, which within the dramatic illusion means “it’s praised as one of the best,” will on a higher, ironic plane thus also mean “the joke is related in the earliest comedies” (where primis partially =
22 On the punctuation, see John Wright, Dancing in Chains: The Stylistic Unity of the Comoedia Palliata, Papers and Monographs of the American Academy in Rome 25 (Rome: American Academy in Rome, 1974), pp. 24–7. 23 In addition to Fasti 3.471 and 472 (quoted above), with saepe (sc. audivi) compare Hinds, Allusion and Intertext (above, n. 2), p. 114 and n. 26, on iterum as a reflexive annotation. 24 Friedrich Schlee, Scholia Terentiana (Leipzig: Teubner, 1893), p. 102 (commentarius antiquior).
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priscis), that is in the comedies of Livius, the founder of stage drama and the first poet of ancient Rome.25 Is this a tendentious interpretation of my own? Let me anticipate the objection by revealing a bit of information already known to commentators—that with this joke, Terence departs from his model.26 Greek has a proverb practically identical to the Livian-Thrasonian joke about being a hare (δασύπους ὢν κρέως ἐπιθυμεῖς, “being a hare, do you desire meat?” [Diogenianus 4.12 (CPG 1, p. 234); Apostolius 5.85 (CPG 2, p. 357)]), and this is presumably the proverb Livius found in the model of his play. But this is not the joke that was in Menander. Rather than a reference to the Isle of Rhodes or its comely young men, Menander’s play contained a different innuendo, one that emerges from comparing the later exchange between Gnatho and Thraso at Eun. 497– 8—where memory is again at issue—with Kolax fr. 3. First Terence: Gna. hahahae! Thr. quid rides? Gna. istuc quod dixti modo, et illud de Rhodio dictum quom in mentem venit. Gna. Hahahahaha! Thr. (suspiciously) What are you laughing at? Gna. What you just said— and the one about the Rhodian, when I think of it.
Kolax fr. 3 offers a more compressed version of this exchange. Strouthias, the parasite, tells Bias, the soldier: γελῶ τὸ πρὸς τὸν Κύπριον ἐννούμενος. I’m laughing because I’m reflecting on that one about the Cypriot.
From Kolax fr. 8 and the source that quotes it, we learn that βοῦς Κύπριος is a covert way of saying “you’re a σκατόφαγος,” i.e. a shit eater. (Whatever its tone, the insult and the related verb σκατοφαγεῖν [“to eat shit”] are not uncommon in any period of Greek Comedy.27) Greek proverbial wisdom held that the oxen in Cyprus eat excrement, which is apparently the reference of τὸ πρὸς τὸν Κύπριον (“that one about the Cypriot”) that causes Strouthias to laugh.
25 Similarly Diogenes Laertius Vitae Phil. 3.25 [Plato] ἐν δὲ τῷ πρώτῳ τῶν Ἀπομνημονευμάτων Φαβωρίνου φέρεται ὅτι κτλ (“In the first book of Favorinus’ Memoirs it is related that …”). 26 For references in this section, see Barsby (1999) (above, n. 4), pp. 162–4 nn. on 420 and 426. 27 See Epicharmus (fr. 56.2), Aristophanes (Pl. 706), Crobylus (fr. 7.2), Antiphanes (fr. 124.4) and Menander (Dysc. 488, Perik. 394, Samia 427 and 550 [all Arnott], and fr. 571). Since terms of abuse are highly marked culturally, it is unsurprising that nothing similar is found in Roman comedy; the closest we come is arguably an allusion to merdicus (“shitty”) in Plautus’ Poenulus 1304–6 (see my Funny Words in Plautine Comedy [New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010], pp. 155–7).
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One might instinctively suspect that Terence changed Menander’s joke because the allusion to Cypriot bulls would have been unintelligible to a Roman audience, but surprisingly, this cannot be the reason. As Peter Brown has pointed out, the scatophagic habits of Cypriot bulls were known in the Rome of Terence’s time; in fact, they had recently been celebrated in an extant line of Ennius’ Sotas, which must have been penned before 169 BCE (the year of Ennius’ death).28 Terence must therefore have had another reason. I suggest that while in Menander’s Kolax the parasite simply remembers (ἐννούμενος) “the one about the Cypriot” from earlier in the play, presumably when the soldier told the joke in the passage that corresponds to Eunuchus 419–29, in Terence’s play “the one about the Rhodian” is “coming to Gnatho’s mind” (in mentem vĕnit) not only from earlier in this play but also—in another example of virtuoso reflexive encoding—from Livius’ comedy. My conclusion that Gnatho is once more highly conscious in this passage of his epigonal place in the increasingly large tradition of Roman comedy also suggests we reconsider Thraso, the soldier whose telling of the joke sets the exchange in motion. I venture to suggest that in similar fashion, Thraso’s own move to appropriate the vetus dictum is simultaneously a move by Terence to appropriate or usurp a dictum of Livius.29 Like Ovid’s Ariadne or Mars, Terence’s parasite and his soldier are both troping the textual reminiscences of Livius’ comedy that inform their speech as they attempt to renegotiate Roman literary history. I do not want to give the impression that the examples of self-conscious allusion I have isolated in this paper are several among many in Terence’s Eunuchus. They are in fact the only ones I have discovered. There may be more. Donatus, the 4th-c. CE commentator on Eunuchus, cryptically remarks on v. 11 that … multa in hanc (sc. fabulam) translata sint ex multis poetis Latinis, “… many things have been imported into this play (i.e. Eunuchus) from many Latin poets” (Wessner 1962–3, 1, p. 267). This obviously supports my own thesis, and I would gladly have mentioned it earlier, but since Donatus gives not the slightest evidence to support his claim it is hard to believe him, and I leave his assertion aside in describing the dynamics I see at work in Terence’s play. Still, I hope my examples cumulatively provide a basis for extrapolating some general conclusions and broader theoretical reflections on the dynamics of appropriation and allusion in Roman comedy.
28 Fr. 1 Warmington = Varia 26 Vahlen3 Cyprio bovi merendam (“lunch for a Cypriot ox”) with Paulus (from Festus) 51.23–5 Lindsay; P.G.McC. Brown, “Menander, Fragments 745 and 746 K–T, Menander’s Kolax and Parasites and Flatterers in Greek Comedy,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 92 (1992), p. 94 n. 8. 29 Compare Hinds, Allusion and Intertext (above, n. 2), pp. 113–14 (with n. 23), on suus used in a similar intertextual fashion.
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6. Palingenesis in the Palliata and Terentian Originality: Some Conclusions What I have been trying to describe in this essay is not “metatheater” as it is conventionally understood and regularly applied to (especially) Plautine and (occasionally, and lately) Terentian criticism. It is closer to “Neotericism” or “Augustanism”—the familiar ideals of conventional Latin poetry of the 1st century BCE and beyond, and (behind that, but earlier than Terence) the Alexandrianism of Callimachus.30 Readers conversant with these currents may by now be thinking—“Hell, this is all kind of obvious; so what?” My argument, however, is that Terence is a missing link between the largely non-allusive and non-self-conscious genre of Roman comedy and the densely allusive, self-conscious Latin poetry of the higher genres of epic or tragedy. In Eunuchus, he attempts to press the reset button on one manifestation of the parasite, the parasitus colax, and thus has his character make a paradoxical claim of primacy. In doing so, Terence attempts to renegotiate the Greco-Roman literarycultural contract in his own favor. Or, to put the matter in Hindsian terms, Terence, like Virgil, makes a bid for teleological control: rather than seeing himself as a derivative epigone of Plautus, Livius and the rest, he tendentiously positions them as precursors to his supersessionist self.31 This dynamic should not completely surprise us. In Andria 18–20, Terence announces that he esteems and wants to emulate the poetics of Plautus, Naevius and even Ennius (Naevium, Plautum, Ennium … aemulari exoptat). The final name comes as a surprise. Ennius died eight years before Eunuchus was staged, and although he had written a few comedies, he was and would be and is today much more famous for his more elevated works—specifically his Annals and his tragedies. It is he who pioneered in his Annals the technique of honorifically eliding the same authors—both Livius and Naevius—in their non-comedic texts that Terence does in his Eunuchus.32 (Indeed, combined with the Andria passage, Terence’s polemics against Livius and Plautus in Eunuchus correspond strikingly well, in the genre of comedy, to the poets involved in the telologies of epic poetry in Cicero [Brutus 71–6] and Horace [Epist. 2.1.50–75], which pass from Livius to Naevius to Ennius.33) So perhaps in saying he
30 Alison Sharrock, Reading Roman Comedy: Poetics and Playfulness in Plautus and Terence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 78–83, has argued that Terence’s prologues allude to programmatic passages of Callimachean poetry. Although I part ways significantly with her application of intertextual theory to Roman comedy, including her analysis of Eunuchus, this idea merits further exploration. 31 See Hinds, Allusion and Intertext (above, n. 2), p. 106. 32 Cf. Cicero, Brutus 75–6 and 71 with Hinds, Allusion and Intertext (above, n. 2), pp. 56–74. 33 See Hinds, Allusion and Intertext (above, n. 2), pp. 63–71, on “old poets.” Incidentally, Hinds’ valuable observations on “new” poets (pp. 74–83) do not apply to Terence, since although novus, he
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wished to emulate Ennius, Terence was not thinking of his comedies so much as of the sophisticated literary dynamics of the Annals.34 If Hinds has taught us anything, it is that words like imitari are rarely used in Latin poetry for imitation of only a single or the most obvious kind.35 Why does no one see it that way? My answer is that the reflexivity misfires, causing Terence’s experiment to blow up in his face. Why? First, Roman comedy is a fundamentally adapted genre, so that its literary dynamics are inherently ill-equipped to handle the sort of move Terence is attempting. Roman comedy is unlike most other Hellenizing Latin poetry. Most Roman authors write original material that engages with previous works only occasionally, but Roman comedy is typically based, explicitly so, on a Greek model. Moreover, with Roman comedy the difference of language (Greek vs. Latin) is secondary to the less obvious consideration that, whereas Greek New Comedy was largely a prosaic, mimetic genre, Roman comedy is essentially a musical adaptation of it. This brings Roman comedy in some ways close to the Hellenistic notion of “metaphrasis,” or elegant versification of prose material, as it was practiced by the contemporary poets Aratus, Nicander and (once more) Ennius in his minor works.36 And as expected in adapted literature, in some places Roman comedies track their sources in the closest possible fashion, verbatim translation. In one sense, then, the ever-present specter of the “models” from which all Roman comedies derive inevitably dooms the artistic moves to appropriate or respond to other Roman comedies that Terence attempts.37 Added to this, not every seeming Alexandrian footnote or self-annotation is really charged with self-conscious allusive capacity.38
seeks to align and establish himself, like Ovid, as a continuator of the respected veteres: cf. Eun. 43. Still, the four-part teleology of comedians Terence constructs here (Naevius – Plautus – Ennius – Terence) corresponds remarkably well to that which Ovid constructs for himself as an elegist in Tristia 4.10.51–4 (Tibullus – Gallus – Propertius – Ovid). 34 I thus disagree with Wright (1974) (above, n. 22), p. 126, who thinks that Terence is merely “pay[ing] lip service to earlier playwrights as part of the captatio beneuolentiae of his prologues.” 35 Cf. e.g. Hinds, Allusion and Intertext (above, n. 2), pp. 4–5, on Ovid’s imitatrix ales. Frederick Ahl sees a potentially more explosive instance in Quintilian’s recommendation that Lucan is “more to be imitated by orators than poets” (I.O. 10.1.90), a recommendation that could evoke the Pisonian conspiracy; see his “Quintilian and Lucan,” in: Nicola Hömke and Christiane Reitz (eds.), Lucan’s Bellum Civile: Between Epic Tradition and Aesthetic Innovation (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2010), pp. 1–16. 36 I defend this emphasis on adaptation theory in Fontaine, “Reception” (above, n. 9). 37 In this respect, the genre as a whole in its points of faithful translation brings us close to a Borgesian thought experiment Hinds discusses. He wonders what it would mean for poetic reception if in his Little Aeneid episode Ovid had incorporated the totality of Virgil’s Aeneid, verbatim, into his Metamorphoses (1998) (above, n. 2), pp. 120–1. 38 Plautus’ Stichus 24–5 (perhibentur), for instance, certainly does not look back to Aristophanes’ Acharnians 82, even though Stichus contains another seeming reminiscence of Acharnians (Stichus 630 ~ Acharnians 606: Gela-, Katagela-: see Beta, p. 216 elsewhere in this volume). In fact, none of Plautus’ characters reflexively self-annotate beyond the confines of their play; in the few cases where one could
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These are just two of the constraints and complications under which Roman comedians might allude, if they wish, to prior texts. Terence is well aware of the general problem. The Eunuchus prologue ends with a forthright reflection on his secondary position, one that shows that in this respect Terence thought he differed remarkably little from Virgil at the start of Georgics 3 (vv. 1–8 ~ Eun. 35–41). Coming as he does to the Roman stage relatively late, Terence finds a 75-year-old genre with a limited stock of source material and characters, and this presents him with fewer options for creativity than he might like. In this connection, it is worth reviving a forgotten insight of A.S. Gratwick, who coined the term “the second mythology” to denote “that gallery of fictional persons with names and ἤθη [dispositions] but no specific stories drawn from the personae of the New Comedy.”39 As I argued above regarding Terence’s wry reflection encoded in Eun. 801 on the continuity and recyclability of comedic roles, Gratwick’s underworked term gets it exactly right, and it deserves serious consideration in the future as a term for negotiating these dynamics. Coming to the scene a bit late would be bad enough, but because Terence sought to make his polemically allusive parasite and soldier literarily self-conscious, matters are worse. Roman comedy as a genre had a limited supply of source material, so the unwitting resurrection or reincarnation of characters was bound to happen eventually. I began by quoting only the very end of the Eunuchus prologue, in which Terence’s advocate pleads with us to interpret the play on its own terms (44–5). So far, I have not mentioned the far more famous part of the prologue, in which we learn that a rival comedian somehow got a chance to watch an advance rehearsal. According to the prologue, after this performance began the rival interrupted and expressed significant displeasure with what he was seeing (Eunuchus 23–6): exclamat furem non poetam fabulam dedisse, et nil dedisse verborum tamen. Colacem esse Naevi et Plauti veterem fabulam: parasiti personam inde ablatam et militis.
25
He shouted that the play was the work of a thief, not a playwright, but that the attempt to deceive had not worked. There was, he claimed, a Κόλαξ of Naevius, and one of Plautus, one of his early plays,40 and the character of the parasite and the soldier had been stolen from these.
25
argue that they do—e.g. Asinaria 920–6 ~ Menaechmi 621–6 (meministi in As. 926) or possis … cognoscere in As. 878–9 (~ Men. 563)—the argument feels sophistic. Nor does Artotrogus’ memory, which forms an incidental theme in Plautus’ Miles Gloriosus (16, 37, 42, 48), carry any perceptibly allusive charge—which is not to say that Plautus’ poetics were always so unsophisticated. 39 “A Pious Drop of Vitriol: Perses A. P. VII. 487,” Hermes 110 (1982), p. 125. 40 I make the usual assumption that in v. 25 Terence refers either to separate Colax plays by Naevius and Plautus or to Plautus’ revision of Naevius’ Colax, but that in either event Terence is not talking about Plautus’ Miles Gloriosus. On this insoluble question, see esp. Markus Stein, “Der Dichter und sein Kritiker. Interpretationsprobleme im Prolog des terenzischen Eunuchus,” Rheinisches Museum für
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This sounds familiar. The charge of plagiarism always lies close by when allusion is in question, but here is how Terence goes on to explain the facts (30–4): Κόλαξ Menandrist: in east parasitus colax et miles gloriosus. eas se non negat personas transtulisse in Eunuchum suam ex Graeca. sed eas fabulas factas prius Latinas scisse sese, id vero pernegat.
30
There is a Κόλαξ of Menander, in which there is a fawning parasite and a swaggering soldier. The playwright does not deny that he has imported these characters into his Εὐνοῦχος from the Greek play. But he does most definitely deny any knowledge of the prior existence of the Latin versions.
30
Scholarship invariably debates the insoluble question of whether Terence is telling the truth or whether he is a plagiarist. Given the frankness of his admission and the vehemence of his denial, let us suppose that he is telling the truth rather than being ironic for some reason. Fragments of both Naevius’ Colax and Plautus’ Colax are preserved for us, and although Naevius’ bear almost no similarity to the fragments of Menander’s Κόλαξ, Plautus’ Colax or Terence’s Eunuchus (and this remains a problem41), a longer fragment attributed to Plautus’ Colax matches up with Menander’s in a way that puts it beyond reasonable doubt that Plautus did rework Menander’s play42 (Colax fr. 2 Lindsay = 2 Monda ~ Kolax 96–100 Pernerstorfer = C195–C199 Arnott; a slave probably cautions his master): qui data fide firmata fidentem fefellerint, subdoli subsentatores, regi qui sunt proxumi, qui aliter regi dictis dicunt, aliter in animo habent. They give their solemn word, then trick him when he takes it, the maneuvering mealymouthers that keep closest to their king, who tell their king one thing while they’re thinking another. ὅσοι τύραννοι πώποτ᾽, ὅστις ἡγεμὼν μέγας, σατράπ[ης], φρούραρχ[ο]ς, οἰκιστὴς τόπου, στρατηγός—οὐ [γὰρ] ἀλλὰ τοὺς τελέως λέγω
Philologie 146 (2003), pp. 212–17, and my appendix below; Pernerstorfer (2009) (above, n. 1), p. 24, gives a doxography of older views. 41 Naevius com. 27–35 Ribbeck3. Despite Friedrich Ritschl’s popular hypothesis that Plautus’s Colax is a rifacimento of Naevius’, some have even asked whether Naevius’ play might derive from a Κόλαξ poorly attested for Philemon (cf. Pernerstorfer 2009 [above, n. 1], pp. 25, 95–6). Silvia Paponi, Per una nuova edizione di Nevio comico (Pisa: ETS, 2005), pp. 134–6, barely touches on the question. 42 So Viktor Jarcho, “Über die Bruchstücke des plautinischen Kolax,” in: Mario Capasso (ed.), Papiri letterari greci e latini, Papyrologica Lupiensia 1 (Lecce: Congedo, 1992), pp. 325–30.
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ἀπολωλότας [νῦν— τ]οῦτ’ ἀνῄρηκεν μόνον, οἱ κόλακες. οὗτοι δ’ εἰσὶν αὐτοῖς ἄθλιοι. All the tyrants that’ve ever been, every mighty leader, satrap, garrison commander, city founder, general—those very ones, that is, who’ve now been totally ruined—they’ve all been destroyed by this one thing alone: the flatterers—they the ones who’ve caused their misery!43
For the study of intertextuality, meanwhile, I do not think it has been appreciated how extraordinary an artifact and test-case we have in Terence’s Eunuchus. In exploring the dynamics of allusion, we can positively shut out the question of intentionality. These various models and intertexts—which Terence tells us he did not intend for us to know about, because he did not know about them himself—offer us a unique standpoint from which to study the negotiation and renegotiation of literary history in Roman comedy. This is because the rival poet’s sudden revelation of the prior Latin versions of the parasite and soldier, these unwanted intertexts, injects as it were two extra pinballs that come violently rushing in, colliding uncontrollably with Eunuchus and ricocheting in unplanned directions, knocking Terence’s carefully tended shots off target. They interfere with and obscure his intentions—which were complicated enough to begin with. Gnatho’s Terentian claim of primacy, meant to undermine Artotrogus’ claim in the Plautine Miles, is itself suddenly undermined in turn by Plautus’ (and perhaps Naevius’) prior use of the same characters in their Colax plays— characters which, even allowing for differences in individual Roman playwrights’ adaptation methods, the rival playwright feels sure, were recognizably the same as Terence’s own. Gnatho is himself unwittingly invalidated by an earlier Plautine and Naevian incarnation of himself; so his claim of primacy seems not just strange but positively suspect. It becomes not merely an encoded Alexandrian footnote but a selfreflexive annotation that does not work. If Terence is telling the truth, this dynamic is neither plagiarism nor intentional allusion; it is intertextuality pure and proper. As Lucretius knew (DRN 3.847–61), repetition of ourselves without memory of our former selves is no true resurrection. 43 Compare Henry Garnet ca. 1595 A Treatise of Equivocation (ed. David Jardine [London: Longman, 1851], p. 54, spelling modernized): “For you shall find some more inconstant then Proteus, more variable than the chameleon, more deceitful than Sinon [Sinon Fontaine : Simon Jardine], who in all their speeches will equivocate. These amongst strangers will be flatterers, amongst their friends are scoffers and jesters, toward their superiors double dissemblers, and toward their equals or inferiors deceitful cozeners; you shall never know where to find them, how to credit them in their assertions, or to trust them in their promises. These persons, as they are not fit for any honest conversation, so may they be, and that not seldom, pernicious to any commonwealth.” This is a striking parallel—but pure coincidence, as the source of Plautus’ fragment (Marcus Aurelius’ letters to Fronto) would not be rediscovered in the West until 1815, more than two centuries after Garnett wrote these words (ca. 1592– 1595).
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This makes the intertextual dynamics totally different from those at play in, say, the Athenian tragedians’ multiple treatments of Electra, including Euripides’ selfconscious version of her. Reincarnation without memory, without awareness of one’s prior self, is a different matter. Although explaining this might have exonerated Terence, if I am right in what I have been arguing, he is catastrophically unclear about his program. In reply to the charge of plagiarism, he merely goes on to offer a clumsy disjunctive choice between ignorance (imprudentia, 26) and deliberate plagiarism (furtum facere studuerit, 27) to explain his unintended allusions to these Colax intertexts. His reply in the prologue thus forces us to assume that the Colax intertexts are relevant when they neither are nor were meant to be, and forces us—to put the matter once more in Hindsian terms—to buy into a MeandroNaevioPlautocentric and specifically Kolakocentric history. In an awful peripeteia, Terence’s planned teleology is unintentionally and suddenly inverted to culminate not in his Eunuchus but in Menander’s Kolax. His appeal to his audience to interpret his play on its own terms fails, inviting a charge of plagiarism that haunts him still. In failing to wrest control of Roman comedy from Plautus, Terence inadvertently sealed his reputation as derivative.44 If, however, we take the advice to ignore those intertexts (the Colax plays) and instead look at Terence’s Eunuchus on its own terms, as I have attempted to do in this paper, we find a surprisingly avant-guard poetics. It may then be worth turning our backs on the models of Terence’s other plays to see what they, too, have to say for themselves.
Appendix: parasitus colax ~ parasitus edax After his appeal to reusing “the same characters” (Eun. 35 isdem personis), Terence’s repetition of gloriosum militem (32, 38) seems to imply that a parasitus col-ax (31) is either the same as a parasitus ed-ax (38), as some scholars assume, or perhaps its opposite, as others assume. Stranger still, because edax is mostly a redundant epithet (σιτ-εῖσθαι ~ ed-ere) applicable to all parasites in ancient comedy, and parasitus edax a set phrase applied to parasites of many types,45 the shift seems contrived. Why? Not, I think, for a bit of rhetorical exornatio of the type the oratorical handbooks regularly prescribe, and as Terence favors in this prologue (23–4 ~ Rhet. Her. 4.21.1; 30 Κόλαξ ~ colax, Rhet. Her. 4.29.2), which Quintilian claims (I. O. 9.3.66) convertit in se 44 Cf. Hinds, Allusion and Intertext (above, n. 2), pp. 91–8, for a similar failure on the part of Statius, pp. 67–8, for a similar disruption (though not outright inversion) of a self-interested teleology in Cicero’s Brutus. 45 George Duckworth, The Nature of Roman Comedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952), p. 266 and n. 61.
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aures et animos excitat. In that case, Terence would probably have juxtaposed colax and edax closely to advertise the wordplay, as he does in Eun. 42 and Andria 20–1, as Menander does in Epitrepontes 319 οὐχ εὕρεσις τοῦτ’ ἔστιν ἀλλ’ ἀφαίρεσις (“this isn’t discovery, it’s robbery”; a pun, as αι was probably already pronounced ε46), and as Plautus does in Aulularia 297 (puméx ~ senéx) and Amph. 984 (concedite atque abscedite). Sebastiano Timpanaro suggests five other explanations for subtler shifts such as this: (1) (Terence’s) faulty memory, (2) scribal corruption, (3) a slip of (Terence’s) pen, (4) a facetiously feigned slip of the tongue, and finally (5) legalistic chicanery or obfuscation, such as that practiced by Euripides’ sophistic Tiresias in Bacchae 286– 97, Aristophanes’ Socrates in Clouds, or (to take a more proximate example) George Smathers (1913–2007), the American politician who before a benighted rural audience apocryphally “smeared” his opponent as “a shameless extrovert” and his sister as a “thespian.”47 Nothing favors (1), (2), (3) or (4); as for (5), the ancient maxim quoted by Timpanaro (p. 57), excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta (“an unsolicited excuse is a manifest [self-] accusation”), suggests that those in the audience who took Gnatho’s claim of primacy literally—among them perhaps the rival comedian, who only mentions a parasitus (26, no adjective)—thought Terence was legalistically dodging a charge of which he was obviously guilty. I have tried to show that a different dynamic is at work, but the apparent slippage cannot have helped Terence’s cause.
46 Cf. Fontaine, Funny Words (above, n. 27), pp. 131–2. 47 The Freudian Slip: Psychoanalysis and Textual Criticism, trans. Kate Soper (London: New Left Books, 1976 [= Il Lapsus Freudiano: psicanalisi e critica testuale (Florence: La Nuova Italia), 1974]), pp. 63–9, 128, 146.
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Libera lingua loquemur ludis Liberalibus: Gnaeus Naevius as a Latin Aristophanes? Abstract: Even if Greek Old Comedy exerted no direct influence on Latin comic theater, Naevius’ theatrical production shows that he was well acquaintanted with the plays of the Archaia. Through close scrutiny of a few Naevian fragments and analysis of the plots and the titles of some of his comedies, this paper attempts to demonstrate that, even if Naevius never wrote an Old Comedy in the Aristophanic mode, he was powerfully influenced by the work of his ancient Greek predecessors.
1. In the first years of the 2nd century CE, Pliny the Younger wrote a letter to his friend Caninius Rufus lauding the copious literary production of Vergilius Romanus. Among his contemporary’s many works, Pliny mentions a play written on the model of an ancient Greek comedy; Vergilius Romanus, he says, is not only (chronologically speaking) the first person in the history of Latin literature to achieve this, but he has also proved that he is no amateur, because his play possesses remarkable qualities such as strength, majesty, delicacy, softness, poignancy and wit. Moreover, by making use of feigned names with propriety and of real ones with justice, he has been able to celebrate virtue and lash vice.1 Unfortunately, this comedy has not come down to us, although Pliny swears to his friend that he will do his best to persuade Vergilius Romanus to send him a copy, and no other Latin writer mentions either the work or its otherwise unknown author. Since we are unable to read this vetus comoedia, we cannot take a stand on Pliny’s enthusiastic report. What we can do, however, is question his statement that this Vergilius was the first Latin poet to test himself in vetere comoedia. Even if Aristophanic comedy exerted no direct influence on Latin theater, there was a writer whose theatrical production shows that he was well acquainted with the comedies of the most famous poet of the Archaia: Gnaeus Naevius. By scrutinizing his fragments, this paper will attempt to demonstrate that, even if Naevius never wrote an Old Comedy in the Aristophanic mode (something that would have been impossible in Rome), he was powerfully influenced by the work of his Greek predecessor.
1 Pliny the Younger Ep. 6.21. On Vergilius Romanus, see Ruffell, pp. 336–7 in this volume. Although my chapter focuses on a very specific subject, it places itself in the same thematic field dealt with by Ruffell’s more wide-ranging piece, hence the frequent cross-references between the two.
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2. Eupolis atque Cratinus Aristophanesque poetae have a scanty presence in Latin literature. The names of Aristophanes’ two most celebrated contemporaries are seldom mentioned by Latin writers, and their comedies do not seem to have been read with any frequency.2 Of Aristophanes’ 44 comedies, only a passage from Acharnians on Pericles’ eloquence is quoted in a Latin translation by Cicero, Pliny and Quintilian;3 the isolated allusions to famous plays (Clouds, Frogs and Women at the Thesmophoria) and less famous ones (Lemnian Women, Seasons and Merchantships) strengthen the hypothesis that Old Comedy left few traces on the production of Latin authors.4 Moreover, it is well known that even Latin playwrights were mostly attracted by Greek authors other than Aristophanes: the chief model for Plautus and Terence was Menander, together with his contemporaries Diphilus and Philemon, the main representatives of the so-called “New Comedy,” all of whom lived between the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 3rd century BCE, many years after Aristophanes’ time.5 Among the ancient Latin playwrights, however, Naevius appears to be an exception. While his colleagues were never involved either personally or through their plays in the social and political battles of Republican Rome, Naevius’ life and works were strongly affected by the tension between the patricii and the plebeii in the years between the first two Punic Wars. Gellius writes that Naevius was imprisoned by the triumviri because of the maledicentia and probra (“abuses and insults”) he hurled at the most illustrious citizens de Graecorum poetarum more (“after the manner of the Greek poets”).6 This statement is connected with the well-known controversy between
2 Horace (to whom we owe the above mentioned line, S. 1.4.1) mentions a well-known maxim of priscus Cratinus (Ep. 1.19.2-3: “Anything written by people who drink water can’t possibly be any good or last very long”), probably a quotation from Wineflask, Cratinus’ last comedy (fr. 203); cf. S. Douglas Olson (ed.), Broken Laughter. Select Fragments of Greek Comedy (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 86–7; Emmanuela Bakola, Cratinus and the Art of Comedy (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 56–7. Persius compares himself to audax Cratinus and iratus Eupolis (1.121–5); Quintilian (Inst. 1.10.18) mentions a comedy by Eupolis (Maricas, which mocked the demagogue Hyperbolus). 3 Cic. Orat. 9.29; Plin. Ep. 1.20.17; Quint. Inst. 12.10.24 and 65. But, as Anna Maria Mesturini, “Aristofane-Eupoli e Diodoro. A proposito di una citazione ciceroniana,” Maia 35 (1983), pp. 195–204, has demonstrated, the quotation (Ach. 531) comes from a passage of the Greek historian Ephorus and is not derived from direct knowledge of the comedy. 4 Seneca (Vit. Beat. 27.2) and Quintilian (Inst. 2.16.3) know that Socrates was one of the protagonists of Clouds; in his Attic Nights (Preface 20–1; 1.15.19; 13.25.7; 15.20.7; 19.13.3), Gellius quotes four passages from Frogs (354–6, 369–71, 837–9, 1154–9), three lines from the Women at the Thesmophoria (453–6), and one word from the lost Merchantships (fr. 441); Cicero seems to have read an Aristophanic comedy (Lemnian Women or Seasons) in which the poet attacked the introduction of the cults of alien gods such as Sabazius (Leg. 2.15.37). 5 The only exception to this custom is Plautus’ Poenulus, modeled on the Carchedonius of Alexis, a poet of the so-called “Middle Comedy” active in the 4th century. 6 Gel. 3.3.15.
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the poet and Lucius Caecilius Metellus, provoked by the ambiguous verse Fato Metelli Romae fiunt consules (either “destiny makes Metelli consuls at Rome” or “Metelli become consuls unluckily for Rome”) and followed by Metellus’ revenge, both poetic (malum dabunt Metelli Naevio poetae, a verse that can mean “the Metelli will give an apple to the poet Naevius” and also, less innocently, “the Metelli will hurt the poet Naevius”) and effective, because the poet was then sent into exile to Utica, where he probably died.7 Modern scholars have stressed the similarity between Naevius’ and Aristophanes’ lives: the strong position taken by the Roman poet against the ambitious members of some eminent Roman families does not look much different from the attacks launched by Aristophanes against the warmongering politics of the demagogue Cleon (portrayed in Knights as the mischievous head of the slaves of “Demos,” the personification of the Athenian people), those of Cratinus against Pericles, and those of Eupolis against Hyperbolus.8 Metellus is not the only go-getting leader who falls under the whip of the comic poet: just as Aristophanes made fun of other prominent politicians such as Alcibiades and Cleophon, in another Naevian fragment we read that Etiam qui res magnas saepe gessit gloriose, cuius facta viva nunc vigent, qui apud gentes solus praestat, eum suus pater cum palliod unod ab amica abduxit9
Gellius, who quotes this fragment, writes that the communis opinio was these lines concern the young Scipio, the scion of the noble family who a few years became famous for winning the Second Punic War.10 Although the first two lines consist of a long, commendatory preamble on Scipio’s military prowess and political success—or
7 The poetic tit-for-tat is witnessed by Asconius Pedianus in his commentary on Cicero’s first speech against Verres (1.10.29, p. 215 Stangl); Eric H. Warmington (ed.), Remains of Old Latin, vol. 2: Livius Andronicus, Naevius, Pacuvius, Accius, Loeb Classical Library 314 (Cambridge Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1936) puts the Metellus fragment in a section of “varia” before the poet’s epitaph. On the question of the Metelli, see Enzo V. Marmorale (ed.), Naevius poeta, Biblioteca di studi superiori 8 (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 19502), pp. 58–88. In one of his infrequent allusions to contemporary events, Plautus recalls his colleague’s misfortune by describing him as “with a pillared face while a couple of guardians always lie on him hour after hour” (Mil. 211–12). St. Jerome’s Chronicle (p. 135 H) acquaints us with news of Naevius’ death in exile. 8 See e.g. Friedrich Leo, Geschichte der römischen Literatur, Bd. 1, Die archaische Literatur (Berlin: Weidmann, 1913), p. 77. 9 Naevius 1–3 Warmington (henceforth W.; unless otherwise noted, I use Warmington’s translations throughout) ex incertis fabulis: “Even him whose hand did oft / accomplish mighty exploits gloriously, / whose deeds wane not but live on to this day, / the one outstanding man in all the world, / him, with a single mantle, his own father / dragged from a lady-love’s arms.” Marino Barchiesi, La Tarentilla rivisitata. Studi su Nevio comico, Biblioteca degli studi classici e orientali 12 (Pisa: Giardini, 1978), p. 54, suggests that the fragment may come from “The Tarentine Maid.” 10 Gel. 7.8.5.
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perhaps precisely because of such a preamble—the final line with its sarcastic conclusion sounds more effective and cutting.11 Unlike the Greek poets of the Archaia, Naevius was not allowed to name his targets openly, for Athenian parrhêsia (“freedom of speech”) did not exist in Rome.12 But even without mentioning names, the Latin poet was able to make the audience understand whom he was speaking of. By using a typical comic situation, Naevius succeeded in making fun of one of the most influential politicians of his day.13 This is why, just as Aristophanes uses the chorus as his spokesman in the parabasis of the Wasps to proclaim himself proud of assaulting the greatest monsters with a spirit like that of Heracles,14 Naevius either in the prologue (probably through the dominus gregis) or inside the play (surely through the character of a slave) could rightly boast of his “free tongue.” The fragment I refer to is “Libera lingua loquemur ludis Liberalibus” (“At Liber’s Games we’ll talk with tongues at liberty”), one of the most famous Naevian verses. The alliteration strengthens the meaning; the mention of the festival of the god Liber, the Roman equivalent of Dionysus, the god of the Athenian theater, underlines the close relationship Naevius saw between himself and his Greek predecessors, who used their plays as weapons against errors supposedly committed by the democracy.15 Democracy was not the political system in which Naevius lived and wrote his plays: the factions in Rome that were fighting for supremacy both belonged to the aristocracy. Their disagreement lay in the different political structure the two parties wanted to build, either a kind of Hellenistic empire aiming to conquer other countries, or a traditional kingdom founded on the ancient mores and open to the Italic allies. But even in a state in which the aristocrats kept tight hold of the reins of political power, Naevius wanted to use his comedies to express his political ideas freely. The earnestness with which he conducted his theatrical profession without forgetting his duties as a citizen is witnessed by another fragment, a controversial one:
11 On the relationship between Naevius and Scipio, see Marmorale, Naevius (above, n. 7), pp. 91–104. 12 On this point, see also below. 13 The same embarrassing situation is described in a papyrus fragment assigned to the choral poet Bacchylides (fr. 19 Maehler: “… and you run away to your dear wife wearing only your tunic”). For reasons connected with dialect, meter and content, some scholars take the author to be Anacreon instead. 14 Ar. V. 1030. The boast is repeated almost verbatim in the parabasis of Peace, performed in the following year (l. 752). 15 Naevius 27 W. ex incertis fabulis. Not every scholar is inclined to see political double entendres in this and other Naevian fragments; see John Wright, Dancing in Chains: The Stylistic Unity of the Comoedia Palliata, Papers and Monographs of the American Academy in Rome XXV (Rome: American Academy, 1974), p. 56.
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Quae ego in theatro hic meis probavi plausibus, ea non audere quemquam regem rumpere, quanto libertatem hanc hic superat servitus.16
Since Marino Barchiesi has devoted a substantial portion of his essay on the most famous Naevian play, the Tarentilla, to this fragment and the long history of interpretations of it, there is no need to repeat the details of his analysis. What the unknown character (and, behind the mask the character is wearing, Naevius himself) exalts is the power of the successful playwright. Even in a town that, unlike 5th-century Athens, did not allow its comic poets to speak freely, such a playwright could boast about being more powerful than a king, because in the imaginary world of the theater (the hic of l.3 is a reprise of in theatro hic of l.1) a slave might be freer than a citizen.17 3. In the preceding paragraph, I spoke of Naevius’ earnestness. This is not a risky inference from the two fragments we have examined but a faithful report of the tone heard in those and other fragments of the poet, even if we do not know which character uttered them and where. The same can be said of another fragment. In Agitatoria (“The Driver”) a character says “Semper pluris feci ego / potioremque habui libertatem multo quam pecuniam” (“I have always valued freedom at a much higher price than money, and I have held freedom to be preferable”).18 No matter who spoke these words, we find in them the same belief that is a feature not only of Naevius’ theater but also of his life—the conviction that led him to defy the powerful Metelli and end his life abroad. Even when he does not speak expressly of his freedom (or the freedom of his “spokescharacters”), moreover, Naevius’ propensity for not mincing words is visible, as in a fragment that consists of a question (“Cedo qui vestram rem publicam tantam amisistis / tam cito?”) and an answer (“Proveniebant oratores novi, stulti adulescentuli”).19 The statement is sharp: the Roman Republic has been badly damaged by young politicians lacking experience and wisdom. We do not need to accept Marmorale’s
16 Naevius 69–71 W.: “That a belief, which I have tested by the applause I get here in the theater, / no Grand Duke in the world dares to shatter— / by what a lot does slavery here beat this freedom!” 17 Barchiesi, La Tarentilla rivisitata (above, n. 9), pp. 2–66, whose remarks appear to me totally persuasive. For a different opinion as to the identity of the persona loquens, see Wright, Dancing in Chains (above, n. 15), p. 45, who thinks that the speaker “is probably a puer or an ancilla in the Tarentilla’s household, and the butt of the speech is no doubt one of the adulescentes who are making fools of themselves over the meretrix.” 18 Naevius 5–6 W. On the fragment, see also Silvia Paponi, Per una nuova edizione di Nevio comico (Pisa: ETS, 2005), pp. 37–40. 19 Naevius 106–7 W. ex ambigui tituli fabulis (“Tell me, how was it that you ruined such a migthy commonwealth as yours so quickly?” and “There came forward new-fangled orators, silly little youngsters”). Cicero, who quotes the fragment (Sen. 6.20), assigns it to the otherwise unknown play Ludus
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thesis that this charge was made against Scipio, who was still quite young in the final years of Naevius’ career, to acknowledge that this kind of accusation was a locus communis in ancient Greek comedy.20 In Demes, Eupolis’ most famous play, someone begs Miltiades and Pericles, who have just come back from the Underworld to help the Athenians in their war against Sparta, to prevent the young degenerates “who let the generalship drag about their ankles” from holding office any more; the age of these politicians (probably a hint at Alcibiades) can be a real danger when they are entrusted with matters such as war and peace.21 Two other Eupolidean fragments deal with the same subject. The first (μὴ παιδὶ τὰ κοινά, “do not entrust the public affairs to a child”) is a comic deformation of a common adage (“do not entrust a knife to a child”) used with regard to those who undertake things rashly. In the second (καὶ λέγουσί γε / τὰ μειράκια προιστάμενα τοῖς ἀνδράσι), a character complains that “in their speeches young boys object to mature men,” because such an upsetting of the normal procedure is the prelude to political disaster.22 We cannot assume that Naevius had Eupolis’ play in mind when he wrote his comedy. But it is interesting that this argument between ages comes back in other Naevian fragments as well. One example is the passage quoted by Marcus Aurelius in a letter to Fronto: Qui et regum filiis linguis faveant atque adnutent aut subserviant23.
As Marmorale has noticed, the regum filii of this fragment are likely the oratores novi, stulti adulescentuli of the previous one: if people once had to flatter kings, now the arrogance and presumptuousness of the kings’ sons makes it necessary to hold them
(“The Game”), a title that has been corrected in many different ways (Lupus Ribbeck, Lydus Mueller). See Frank G. Moore, “Notes on the Cato maior,” American Journal of Philology 23 (1902), pp. 437–40. 20 Marmorale, Naevius poeta (above, n. 7), p. 216. 21 Eupolis, fr. 104 καὶ μηκέτ᾽, ὦναξ Μιλτιάδη καὶ Περίκλεες, / ἐάσατ᾽ ἄρχειν μειράκια κινούμενα, / ἐν τοῖν σφυροῖν ἕλκοντα τὴν στρατηγίαν. For detailed commentary, see Ian C. Storey, Eupolis. Poet of Old Comedy (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 114, 136; Mario Telò (ed.), Eupolidis Demi, Biblioteca Nazionale. Serie dei classici greci e latini. Testi con commento filologico, n.s. 14 (Firenze: Le Monnier, 2007), pp. 241–57. 22 The first Eupolidean fragment (fr. 133) is quoted by Photius and attributed to the Demes. Meineke (ipsa rei probabilitate ductus) assigned the second (fr. 333) to the Demes as well; my translation follows Telò, Demi (above, n. 21), p. 634. The subject of the “young politicians” is not confined to comedy, however; in Euripides’ Suppliants, Theseus blames Adrastus for having been led astray by young men (νέοι) who enjoy being honoured, multiply wars without justice, and hurt the citizens, because one wants to be a general, another wants to get power into his hands in order to commit wanton abuse, and another wants wealth without considering whether the majority is damaged by being treated this way (ll. 229–37). 23 Naevius 25–6 W. ex incertis fabulis (“… who keep for sons / of kings a kindly silence on their tongues, / and bow to them, or are their underlings”).
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too in high respect. In other words, even the young sons of preeminent politicians demand from their fellow citizens a silent, submissive approval.24 Another example might be the only fragment of Clamidaria (“The Cloak”), a description of someone who “neque admodum a pueris abscessit neque admodum adolescentulust” (“he has neither very far outgrown his childhood nor is he very much of a youth”).25 It is true that such a statement would fit well in a typical “New Comic” plot, in which adulescentes (amantes) often play a leading role along with senes stulti and servi callidi. But calling a young politician neque puer neque adulescens would also be a biting definition much in the style of Naevius. Moreover, the Greek title of the play, attested nowhere among the many titles of Old, Middle and New Comedy, may recall Eupolis fr. 104.3, in which the poet faults the fashion of Alcibiades and his peers. The odd expression “to drag the generalship about their ankles” has been interpreted as referring to a habit of wearing long mantles, as women once did; this habit had been handed down from father (Alcibiades) to son (Alcibiades’ son), who trailed his cloak in an affected manner to resemble his parent, according to the comic poet Archippus;26 since an eagerness to imitate peculiar Greek customs (fashion included) was a feature of the political party of the Scipios, both the fragment and the title seem to hint at a concealed attack on a foreign politics that, as Cato would repeat over and over a few years after Naevius’ death, was slowly deviating from ancient mores. 4. So far we have mostly examined the likely political hints in Naevian comedies in order to emphasize the Aristophanic side of his poetry. With the last fragments, we have also noted some thematic and textual echoes.27 Before looking for other explicit borrowings and adaptations, it might be useful to check if Naevius’ debts to archaic comedy involve plots as well. This is a difficult enterprise, since the fragments of the Latin poet are so scanty that we cannot tell how the plots of his plays were constructed; nor is the information we get from writers who saw them onstage or read the scripts helpful. We can make some guesses, however, and a few of these suggest something interesting. Let us look at a topic apparent in a number of Naevian comedies, the argument between fathers and sons. This version of the relationship discussed above (the
24 Marmorale, Naevius poeta (above, n. 7), p. 48. 25 Naevius 28 W. 26 Archippus fr. 48 βαδίζει / † διακεχλιδώς, θοἰμάτιον ἕλκων, ὅπως / ἐμφερὴς μάλιστα τῷ πατρὶ δόξειεν εἶναι, † / κλασαυχενεύεταί τε καὶ τραυλίζεται (“He walks with affectation, dragging his cloak, so that he can seem so very like his father, he twists his neck and talks with a lisp”). The fragment is quoted by Plutarch (Alc. 1.7). 27 Another political allusion might be spotted in the line Populus patitur, tu patias (Naevius 65 W.: “The people suffers, suffer you also”), although the title of the comedy (Proectus, “The Outcast”) hints at a typical New Comic plot.
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contrast between young and old politicians) is a common theme in Greek New Comedy (Menander) and was fully exploited by the Roman comic playwrights of the second generation (Plautus and Terence). But anyone acquainted with Aristophanes’ plays realizes that the troubles connected with bringing up children were not only dealt with in the celebrated Clouds, but also formed the core of his first comedy, the lost Banqueters. We know the plot of Banqueters thanks to a scholium to a passage of the Clouds in which the chorus mentions the protagonists, the “chaste” (ὁ σώφρων) and the “pervert” (ὁ καταπύγων)28. The komisches Thema of the lost play is basically the same as that at the center of Terence’s Adelphoe: the different behavior of two brothers. The difficulty a father has with his son is the subject of Clouds as well, in which a father, crushed by the debts contracted by his son as a result of his passion for horse-racing, enters a school of thinkers run by the celebrated Socrates. The little we can guess from the scanty scraps of the previously mentioned Naevian comedy, Agitatoria, together with its speaking title, seems to point to a story that had something in common with Aristophanes’ Clouds. There are at least two interesting fragments: the first deals with the maintenance of horses, while the second is the description of a victory.29 Both texts are in dialogues: in the first, A tells B that he will let the horses be fed at his own expense for a single day; after having been thanked by B, however, he swears that if they do not win, he will sell them even while they are running.30 In the second fragment, C asks D if they have won and, after having received a positive answer, proclaims his joy and inquires after the circumstances of the victory.31 While there is no doubt about the meaning of the second fragment (in a play whose title refers to a charioteer, a victoria can only be a victory in a horse-race), the first has been interpreted in two different ways. According to Ribbeck, it is a dialogue between a slave-seller and a buyer, but most scholars from Warnecke on have seen in it a dialogue between a father and a son concerning horses.32 If we
28 Ar. Nu. 529. 29 Due to their likely contiguity, Warmington joins the two quotations together in a single fragment (10–14). 30 The text printed by Warmington (“Age ne tibi med advorsari dicas; hunc unum diem, / Demea, meos equos sinam ego illos esse”; “Postea / currenteis eis ego illos vendam, nisi tu viceris”) is different from Ribbeck’s (“Age, ne tibi med advorsari dicas, hunc unum diem / de meo securos sinam ego illos esse”; “Postea / currenteis ego illos vendam, nisi tu … viceris”), because he reads the proper name Demea instead of Ribbeck’s de meo. B’s approval is expressed through the exclamation tax pax. 31 “Eho, an vicimus?”; “Vicistis”; “Volup est. Quo modo?”, “Dicam tibi”. 32 Otto Ribbeck, Scaenicae Romanorum Poesis Fragmenta, vol. 2 (Comicorum Romanorum praeter Plautum et Terentium Fragmenta) (Leipzig: Teubner 1871, 18732), Coroll., p. viii; B. Warnecke, “Zur ‘Agitatoria’ des Naevius,” Rheinisches Museum 79 (1930), p. 411. Warnecke’s opinion has been supported by C. Brackman, “Observationes ad fabulas palliatas,” Mnemosyne III 2 (1935), p. 155 (“Apparet hic agi de expensis, quae celetes sive equi currentes requiruntur, id quod et nomen fabulae Agitatoriae
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accept such an interpretation, we find here a situation not unlike the one portrayed in the prologue of Aristophanes’ comedy—which, as noted above, was not unknown to Latin writers, even if its renown was due mainly to the presence of Socrates.33 To these two fragments of Agitatoria we might add a third, the protest of someone who complains to another character because he/she is fond of contradicting him/her all the time (“Quasi dedita opera quae ego volo ea tu non vis, quae nolo ea cupis”).34 The fragment probably portrays a quarrel between a husband and a wife, but Marmorale does not rule out the possibility that this might be a father’s rebuke of a son who always behaves as he should not and never as he should.35 In this case, the situation would resemble the arguments between Strepsiades and Pheidippides. At the beginning of Aristophanes’ play, the father wants his son to go to Socrates’ and Chairephon’s school, but he refuses. After Pheidippides has changed his mind and allowed them to educate him, Strepsiades begs him to reject the subversive teachings of the “thinkers,” but Pheidippides disobeys and beats his father. At the end of the comedy, the father asks his rebellious son to help him to destroy the “school of the thinkers,” but Pheidippides rejects his father’s request yet again.36 But this is not all. Naevius wrote another comedy for which a relationship with Clouds has been proposed. The comedy is Agrypnuntes (“The Wideawakes”), and Luigi Alfonsi conjectured that its title referred to people who spent the night lucubrantes—to be more precise, lawyers who, instead of sleeping, studied legal cases and wrote speeches.37 Alfonsi proposed that fr. 15 W. Nam in scena vos nocturnos coepit praemiatores tollere
indicat. Fieri autem potest, ut Naevius, illos versus scribens innuere voluerit in prologum Nub. Aristoph. 14–16 (…), quod sagacius Warnecke suspicatus est”); Marmorale, Naevius poeta (above, n. 7), p. 205; Antonio Traglia (ed.), Poeti latini arcaici, vol. I: Livio Andronico, Nevio, Ennio (Torino: UTET, 1986), pp. 213–14; Paponi, Per una nuova edizione (above, n. 18), p. 46. 33 Cf. n. 4. 34 Naevius 9 W. 35 For the hypothesis “husband and wife,” see Warnecke, “Zur ‘Agitatoria’” (above, n. 32), p. 411 (“Der Gegenstand des Streites konnten, wie auch in den ‘Wolken’ des Aristophanes, die luxuriösen Sitten des Sohnes sein, welcher wie Pheidippides nur ἱππάζεται ὀνειροπολεῖ θ’ ἵππους (Nub. 15–16), was seiner Mutter sehr zusprach (vgl. Nub. 66–68). Das lässt Frg. I der Agitatoria vermuten, wo von den Rossen wahrscheinlich ein adulescens spricht: aus Terenz And. 56 wissen wir ja, dass equos alere zu den liebsten Belustigungen der reichen Jünglinge gehörte”); Alfonso Traina, Comoedia: antologia della palliata (Padova: CEDAM, 20005), p. 33; Traglia, Poeti latini arcaici (above, n. 32), p. 214. Marmorale, Naevius poeta (above, n. 7), p. 205, asks: “Non potrebbe anche essere un rimprovero del padre al figlio che fa sempre l’opposto di quel che il padre vorrebbe?”. 36 Ar. Nu. 105–9, 1433–6, 1464–7. 37 Luigi Alfonsi, “Gli ‘Agrypnuntes’ di Nevio,” Dioniso 13 (1950), pp. 184–9.
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should be understood as an allusion to an orator who, through painstaking nightly efforts, managed to become the bugbear of people who spent their nights on other kinds of business.38 Alfonsi thinks that frr. 16–17 W. Si quidem vis loqui, non perdocere multa longe promicando, oratio est
are a joke on orators who abused their laboriously acquired profession by torturing their interlocutors with endless speeches.39 Since rhetoric was strictly connected with philosophy (in Greece, at least), however, Alfonsi suggests that Aristophanes’ Clouds might be Naevius’ model here: the fragment might be uttered by a cheeky person who, rather than staying awake all night in order to become acquainted with the profound secrets of philosophy (or of some other discipline), rejected the long lessons of his teachers with words not much different from those spoken by Pheidippides.40 5. We cannot know if Alfonsi’s hypothesis is correct; even Alfonsi seems cautious about it, since in his article he characterizes his reconstruction as extremely hypothetical.41 But what is fairly certain is that Naevius’ model was Greek—not only because Greek theater was a regular source for early Latin theater, but because of the title, a perfect Greek word. This is a peculiar feature of Naevius’ comedies: most of the titles consist of a Greek word such as Acontizomenos (“The Man Hit by a Javelin”), which
38 “For on the stage he began to make ruin for you prize-hunters of the night.” Warmington sees in the word scena an allusion to political foes; Alfonsi, “Gli ‘Agrypnuntes’” (above, n. 37), p. 185, sees in scena a synonym of forum (“campo di azione pubblica”) and writes that the fragment refers to “chi con lunghi studi e veglie è riuscito a diventare un veemente oratore, terrore delle avverse parti o dei furfanti e ladri.” 39 “But if you want just to tell me, and not to make a whole lesson of it by shooting crowds of words far and wide—you can speak.” On the problematic text of the fragment, see Traglia, Poeti latini arcaici (above, n. 32), p. 120; Paponi, Per una nuova edizione (above, n. 18), pp. 51–4. Alfonsi, “Gli ‘Agrypnuntes’” (above, n. 37), p. 185, writes that one might guess that “si tratti di presa in giro alle spalle di oratori, di gente che con veglie si preparava appunto all’esercizio dell’attività forense e ne faceva abuso torturando il prossimo con lunghi sermoni.” 40 Alfonsi, “Gli ‘Agrypnuntes’” (above, n. 37), pp. 185–6: “Ma si può anche pensare ad una parodia filosofica cui il motivo dell’oratoria si trovi unito di necessità. E vengono in mente per ovvia suggestione le Nubi aristofanee del 423. Qui pure potrebbe trattarsi—ma è certo assai dubbio—di qualche sfrontato che, invece di dedicarsi a lunghe veglie per imparare la filosofia o altra scienza, non ne voglia sapere di lente iniziazioni e di noiosi predicozzi (il perdocere qui è significativo in maniera del tutto particolare), e alla fine caccia i filosofi, da cui aveva sperato di apprendere in breve l’arte di τὸν ἥττω λόγον κρείττω ποιεῖν. Del resto questi momenti, la volontà affrettata di apprendere e lo zelo feroce contro chi non ha dati buoni insegnamenti, potrebbero desumersi anche sulla base di passi delle Nubi, se non altro come indice di una tradizione comica” (with some quotations from Aristophanes’ comedy: 237, 260, 317, 345, 418–19, 655–6, 1106, 1111, 1143, 1466, 1484–5, 1508). 41 Alfonsi, “Gli ‘Agrypnuntes’” (above, n. 37), p. 186 (“la estrema ipoteticità della ricostruzione”).
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goes back to a couple of Middle Comedy titles (Dionysius’ Ἀκοντιζόμενος and Antiphanes’ Ἀκοντιζομένη).42 In some cases, this peculiarity might build a bridge between the Roman comic poet and his antecedents. For instance, if we accepted the title Astiologa, Ribbeck’s emendation for the distorted word form assitogiola, we could say that Naevius wrote a play named after a woman who used to speak (λέγειν) in a witty, clever way (ἀστείως).43 Surely clever (and often witty too) was the way of speaking of Lysistrata, the heroine of one of the rare Greek comedies named after a woman; witty and clever too was Praxagora, the shrewd protagonist of Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen. Moreover, the same rhetorical skills were the gifts of a historical character often mentioned (and mocked) in the comic production of Cratinus: Pericles’ lover Aspasia, whose mastery of the art of rhetoric is praised by Plato in the Menexenus.44 Even more distinctive, some titles of Naevian plays are quite indecent, a quality reminiscent of the spirit of Greek Old Comedy, in which obscenity played a leading role. If Ritschl’s emendation is correct, we can say that not only Plautus but also Naevius wrote a Nervularia, “The Whip” (although, as Marmorale suggests, since nervus meant the male member as well, the real sense of the play might be quite different);45 Testicularia (“The Testicles”) is probably a pun on the double meaning of testis, “testicle” and “witness.”46 Although an insistence on obscene subjects (better, on male virility) might be the heritage of the Fescennine songs, the Aristophanic echoes are strong, as demonstrated
42 Other certain Greek titles are Colax (“The Flatterer”), Glaucoma (“The Cataract”), Gymnasticus (“The Gym-Master” or “The Athlete”), Nautae (“The Sailors”), Stigmatias (“The Branded Slave”) and Technicus (“The Charlatan”). 43 Cf. the meaning of the Greek noun ἀστειολογίαι in the Rhetoric to Alexander 1436a20. Ribbeck’s correction has been criticized by many scholars, who have proposed different emendations of the mysterious title (Agitatoria, Aretalogos, Asotos, Assitogula, Astrologa, Togularia); see Paponi, Per una nuova edizione (above, n. 18), pp. 97–103. 44 Pl. Mx. 235e; see also Plu. Per. 24.7. 45 Friedrich Ritschl, Parerga zu Plautus und Terenz (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1845), vol. 1, pp. 96–7, changed the unintelligible paradosis Herularia into Nervolaria; on Plautus’ Nervularia, see Gel. 3.3.6. Regarding the probably obscene meaning of the title, see Marmorale, Naevius poeta (above, n. 7), p. 169. On the sexual meaning of nervus, see Catullus (67.27, a metaphorical use of the adjective nervosus), Horace (Epod. 8.17 and 12.19), Priapea (63.14, 68.33, 80.10, 82.42) and Petronius (131.6). For a more detailed analysis, see James N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), pp. 21, 25, 38, 224). The Greek equivalent νεῦρον had the same peculiarity; see Jeffrey Henderson, The Maculate Muse. Obscene Language in Attic Comedy2 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 116. 46 I omit (because it would be too long and out of place) discussion on the debated meaning of the title Appella (translated by Warmington as “The Circumcised”), together with its connection with the presumed title of a comedy by Livius Andronicus (Verpus, again “The Circumcised,” – Verpo is Ribbeck’s emendation of Festus’ Virgo). Perhaps the title should mean “The Man with the Drawnaback Prepuce”, i.e. “with his penis ready for intercourse”, as in the Greek ἀπεψωλημένος (Ar. Ach. 161, with the remarks of Henderson, Maculate Muse [above, n. 45], p. 110).
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by the Naevian title that almost perfectly matches the title of a lost comedy of his Greek predecessor. It would be difficult to deny that Naevius’ Triphallus had something to do with Aristophanes’ Τριφάλης. We know very little of that Greek comedy (we have only 14 barely meaningful fragments) and the number three had “a special significance in ancient comic writings” as far as virility was concerned.47 But the similarity of the titles cannot be overlooked. The only preserved fragment of Naevius’ comedy, in which a father threatens a slave with terrible punishment if someone lends money to his son for paying a pimp (Umquam si quicquam filium rescivero / argentum amoris causa sumpse mutuum, / extemplo te illo ducam ubi non despuas), does not seem useful, since it points to a typical New Comic plot, although Leonardo Ferrero has remarked that one fragment of Aristophanes’ play (ἤιτουν τι τὰς γυναῖκας ἀργυρίδιον) might find an echo in the Naevian evidence.48 But the presence of the number three in this title and another (Tribacelus) seems to show that Naevius was well acquainted with Greek Old Comedy and its τόποι.49 Although both the title and the meaning of this comedy are disputed, there can be no doubt that the play involved a main character whose features were bigger than usual.50 In what sense they were so is unclear: we can be fairly certain that the protagonist of the Triphallus enjoyed a surprising, uncommon virility (the name Triphallus was a nickname of the god Priapus), but the peculiarity of the mysterious Tribacelus remains a puzzle.51 Since the Greek term βάκηλος designated a man who had emasculated himself to become a priest of the goddess Cybele (and, by extension, effeminate), such a title might indicate a man who was the perfect opposite of the Triphallus—something like “The Queen of the Queers,” the contrary of “The Most Masculine Womanizer.”52 Both titles (and both interpretations) would fit in Greek Old Comedy, where we find plays whose titles suggest plots dealing with either well-
47 On the use of the number three in sexual contexts in Aristophanes, see Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 45), p. 121, who states that Aristophanes’ comedy “had to do with an extremely satyric and debauched person.” Cf. Ar. fr. 561 ἀλαβαστοθήκας τρεῖς ἔχουσαν ἐκ μιᾶς (“Now she has three tubeholders instead of one”), “a line” that “seems to refer to a woman who has been the object of Triphales’ trimentulate attentions” (Henderson, Maculate Muse [above, n. 45], p. 120). Other possible sexual uses of the number three in this comedy are frr. 563, 566 (see infra, n. 57), 569. 48 Naevius 94–6 W. “If ever I come to know that my son has received any loan of money on account of a love affair, I will straightway lead you to that place where you couldn’t spit down”; Ar. fr. 560 “I/they asked the women for a small amount of money.” Leonardo Ferrero, “Recensione a Naevius poeta, a cura di E.V. Marmorale, Crisafulli, Catania 1945,” Rivista di filologia e di istruzione classica 26 (1948), p. 114, writes that “il caso volle che il fr. 5 Dind. che tratta di denaro preso a prestito presenti una certa corrispondenza coll’argomento dell’unico frammento superstite.” 49 Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 45), p. 121 (and n. 78), sees another allusion to the sexual power of the number three in Cratinus fr. 195. 50 Tribacelus is a conjecture by Ribbeck; the manuscripts have Tribascelus, Tribaselus, Tribasellus and ter baselus. 51 For the equation Triphallus = Priapus, see Priapea 83.9. 52 βάκηλος properly means “a eunuch in the service of Cybele” in two dialogues of Lucian (Eun. 8 and Sat. 12); βάκηλος in the sense “effeminate” occurs in a fragment of Antiphanes, a Middle Comic poet
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hung men (Myrtilus’ Titan-Pans) or pansies (Cratinus’ Softies and Eupolis’ Effeminates).53 But another interpretation is equally possible: in Suetonius’ biography of the Divus Augustus, we learn that the emperor used the rare Latin word baceolus to indicate a weak-minded person.54 This information, together with Hesychius’ explanation of the word βάκηλος, for which he offers among other synonyms ἀνόητος (“stupid”), would lead to a different translation of the title (something like “The Big Blockhead”).55 Apart from its possible Naevian by-product, in fact, Aristophanes’ comedy seems to have enjoyed some success in Republican and Imperial literature. In the 1st century BCE, Marcus Terentius Varro gave the Greek title Τρίφαλλος to one of his Menippean Satires; its alternative title περὶ ἀρρενότητος (“On virility”) makes it clear that the work followed in Aristophanes’ (and perhaps Naevius’) tracks.56 In the 2nd century CE, Lucian of Samosata, in the final part of the dialogue titled The Runaways, makes two characters (a husband and Hermes) argue about two books; the husband mentions the Τρικάρανος (“The Three-headed”, a satirical attack on the cities of Sparta, Athens and Thebes, written by Anaximenes of Lampsacus), while Hermes says that “one of the comic poets” (a common way of referring to Aristophanes) wrote the Τριφάλης.57 6. So far we have scrutinized probable connections between Naevius and Old Comic poets with reference not only to a common attitude toward the political situation they
(fr. 111.2). The word was even part of a proverb: the expression βάκηλος εἶ was used against homosexuals (Zenob. 2.62; see also Alexis fr. 105; Menander fr. 368). 53 The Greek titles of these comedies are Τιτανόπανες, Μαλθακοί and Ἀνδρόγυνοι. Myrtilus’ comedy owes its title to a group of profligates whose sexual desires made their members hard (τιταίνω = “draw at full stretch”) like those of the lascivious Pan. Hesychius and Photius list examples of the metaphorical uses of such deities (not only Pan but also the Titans) in sexual contexts. 54 Suetonius (Aug. 87) writes that Augustus preferred to use the rare word baceolus rather than stultus. 55 Hesychius β 106 βάκηλος. Among the many explanations of the word, we find also “big” (μέγας), “castrated” (ἀπόκοπος and γάλλος) and “effeminate” (ἀνδρόγυνος and γυναικῶδες). There might be also a third explanation of Naevius’ title: if bacelos were connected with the Latin word for “stick” (baculus, baculum, bacillum, etc., all cognate with the Greek word βάκλον), the plot of Tribacelus might be similar to Triphallus’, considering that both in Greek and Latin there were many metaphorical uses of words such as baton, club and pole to indicate the male member (Henderson, Maculate Muse [above, n. 45], p. 120 ff.; Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary [above, n. 45], pp. 14–19, 23–4). 56 We have only two fragments of this satire. The first (562 Astbury) is quoted by the lexicographer Nonius because it contains the rare word longurio (“a tall man”); the second (563 Astbury), quoted by the grammarian Charisius, is a single word (calamistra, “curling-tongs”). 57 Lucian, Fug. 32. Curiously, Τρικάρανος is also the title of another Menippean Satire (556 Astbury), quoted by Appianus (BC 2.9), in which Varro criticizes the coalition of Caesar, Pompeius and Crassus. Moreover, one fragment of Aristophanes’ Τριφάλης (fr. 566) reads Ἑρμῆς τρικέφαλος (“Three-headed Hermes”); since the text of the glossator (Hesychius) seems corrupt, some scholars (K.O. Mueller, Goettling and Kaibel, see K.–A. ad loc.) have supposed that Aristophanes made a phallic joke.
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lived in, but also to the similar content of some of their plays—those about the content of which it is possible to make reasonable guesses thanks to their (likely) plots, together with the subjects they develop or their titles. But another kind of connection might help us understand how tight the ties actually were that linked the Latin poet to his Greek antecedents. I mean verbal correspondences, passages that appear to have been taken from one author (and one definite context) and transferred to another; in other words, simple loans, borrowed for no other reason than to exploit a brilliant expression, a successful comparison or a funny joke—nothing to do with deliberate allusion or intentional reference. For Latin comedy, the best example of such a phenomenon concerns not Naevius but Plautus. In a passage from Stichus, Epignomus tells the parasite Gelasimus that he does not want him to become Catagelasimus (Nunc ego nolo ex Gelasimo mihi fieri te Catagelasimum); this joke comes direct from Aristophanes’ Acharnians, where Dikaiopolis mentions three towns (Camarina, Gela and Catagela), two real and one fictitious; the calembour plays on the Sicilian city Gela (Γέλα), a name that recalls the verb γελᾶν (“to laugh”) and the compound καταγελᾶν (“to laugh at someone”).58 The fragments of Naevius’ comedies include only a few remarks reminiscent of Aristophanic passages. I list four. (a) The discussion between two men in Gymnasticus (“The Gym-Master” or “The Athlete”) on the most reliable criteria for choosing a good wife contains a typical comic cliché. To the question asked by the first character (Utrum est melius, virginemque an viduam uxorem ducere?), the second answers that the better wife is virginem, si musta est.59 The conventionality of the situation is borne out by the identical question asked by old Antiphon in Plautus’ Stichus (Age tu altera utra sit condicio pensior, virginemque an viduam habere?); the different answer (Quanta mea sapientiast, ex malis multis malum quod minimumst, id minimest malum) is due to the fact that Antiphon’s interlocutor is not a man, as in Naevius, but a woman (Pamphila, Antiphon’s daughter).60 Pamphila’s reply shows the typical sententiousness of Greek New Comedy, but the provision added by the interlocutor of the Naevian fragment (the connection between the age of the woman and of the wine) points to a different poetic
58 Plaut. St. 631; Ar. Ach. 606 (κἀν Γέλᾳ κἀν Καταγέλᾳ). In the Comparison between Aristophanes and Menander (853c), Plutarch quotes a similar joke by the same poet (fr. 629 ὑπὸ γέλωτος εἰς Γέλαν ἀφίξομαι, “I will come to Gela on gales of laughter”, cf. S. Douglas Olson (ed.), Aristophanes, Acharnians [Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002], p. 230), branding it inopportune and frigid. On this and other Aristophanic echoes in Plautus, see Friedrich Leo, Plautinische Forschungen (Berlin: Weidmann, 1895, 19122), pp. 137–40. 59 Naevius 58–9 W. “Which of the two is better—to take a virgin or a widow as your wife?” “The virgin, if she is as fresh as must.” (my translation). 60 Plaut. St. 118–20: “Come, you other one. Which is the better situation, to marry a maid or a widow?” “To the best of my knowledge, of many misfortunes the least unlucky is the misfortune that brings the least amount of unluck.”
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style, more inclined to borrow words from the realm of nature, as was the case with Old Comedy. The comparison of a young woman to unripe wine—a sweet drink lacking its full maturity and thus the strong taste and higher “proof” that would make it dangerous— appears to be a locus communis in the poetry of the Augustan era. In an epigram of Onestus, the poet, having declared that he prefers to marry neither a virgin nor an old woman, states that he does not like sour grapes (ὄμφαξ) or raisins (ἀσταφίς), because “the ripe beauty (ἡ πέπειρος καλλοσύνη) is the best one when a man enters the chamber of Aphrodite.”61 A similar comparison is found in a fragment of the Old Age of Aristophanes, where someone (perhaps a procuress) asks a lustful old man if he likes ripe women or prefers unripe girls, firm as salted olives.62 The contrast between the ages of these courtesans, the mature ones and those (almost) still virgins, is expressed in two ways. First, there is a double reference to their bodily constitution, soft and relaxed in one case (δρυπεπεῖς), compact and firm in the other (στιφράς); second, the Greek comic poet compares ὑποπαρθένοι to a favourite hors d’oeuvre, olives steeped in brine, a perfect dish for whetting the appetite, because of their solid firmness, exactly as Naevius compares a young (and unexperienced) woman to a tasty, sweet wine. (b) The 28 fragments of Aristophanes’ Old Age do not allow us to fully reconstruct the plot of the comedy, but we can guess that the chorus was composed of old men who are rejuvenated and begin to behave like licentious youngsters.63 This was a successful plot-type even in New Comedy and its Roman followers, as Plautus’ Casina and Merchant demonstrate. Aristophanes seems to have liked it, because we find it also in Amphiaraus, a play whose plot involved the visit of a married couple to the oracular healing shrine of the Theban hero of that name. The reason for the visit is made clear by a fragment quoted by Aelian with regard to the wagtail, “a bird that twitched its tailfeathers so seductively that it earned the nickname σεισοπυγίς” (“shake-butt”).64 In the Aristophanic passage, the voice of the hero advises the wife to make the loins of the old man shake with great vigour like those of a wagtail, so that the god might effect a good charm.65
61 Greek Anthology 5.20; see also the anonymous epigram 5.304. 62 Ar. fr. 148 “Old man, do you fancy the girlfriends who are ripe, / or the fresh ones, firm as salted / olives?” (ὦ πρεσβῦτα, πότερα φιλεῖς τὰς δρυπεπεῖς ἑταίρας / ἢ τὰς ὑποπαρθένους ἁλμάδας ὡς ἐλάας / στιφράς;); the English translation comes from Jeffrey Henderson (ed.), Aristophanes, Fragments, Loeb Classical Library 502 (Cambridge Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 2007). 63 For Kaibel’s reconstruction, see K.–A. ad loc.; his hypothesis is accepted by Henderson, Fragments (above, n. 62), p. 173, and Jeffrey Rusten (ed.), The Birth of Comedy. Texts, Documents, and Art from Athenian Comic Competition, 486–280 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Universitiy Press, 2011), p. 295. 64 Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 45), p. 179. 65 Ar. fr. 29 ὀσφὺν δ’ ἐξ ἄκρων διακίγκλισον ἠύτε κίγκλου / ἀνδρὸς πρεσβύτου τελέει δ’ ἀγαθὴν ἐπαοιδήν; on the problematic text, see the commentary of K.–A. ad loc. Since the rhythmic, vigorous movements of the wagtail are also mentioned in a fragment of Aristophanes’ Old Age (fr. 147 λορδοῦ
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A fragment of Naevius hints at a similar situation. The lexicographer Festus notes that the rare noun rutabulum properly indicated a tool peasants used to poke up a fire to bake bread, and adds that the comic poet employed it to describe the indecent part of a man (obscenam viri partem). Here is the text of the fragment: Vel quae sperat se nupturam viridulo adolescentulo ea licet senile tractet retritum rutabulum?66.
This kind of imagery appears frequently in the obscene language of Attic comedy: as Henderson notes, “many double entendres are based on kitchen implements.” Even if there is no perfect Greek equivalent of rutabulum (“poker”), it would not be far-fetched to postulate that Naevius is borrowing a metaphor from Aristophanes’ sexual vocabulary.67 (c) Otto Ribbeck connected the wavering of the mind referred to in one fragment of “The Flatterer” (Et volo et vereor et facere in prolubio est) with a verse from Aristophanes’ Frogs (ποθεῖ μέν, ἐχθαίρει δέ, βούλεται δ’ ἔχειν). But the missing context of Naevius’ senarius makes it difficult to postulate a direct relationship between the verses. Naevius’ line might simply express the conflicting wishes of the character who is speaking.68
κιγκλοβάταν ῥυθμόν, “bend in the rhythm of a wagtail-strut”) quoted by Aelian in the same chapter, there was probably a similar scene of sexual seduction in that play as well, a favourite Aristophanic topos; think of the Scythian policeman and the dancing-girl (Th. 1160 ff.) or of Myrrhine and Kinesias (Lys. 829 ff.). 66 Naevius 7–8 W. ex incertis fabulis “Again, she who hopes to marry a green young lad, is she to be allowed to handle an old dotard’s worn-down poker?” 67 Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 45), pp. 142–3; in the chapter dedicated to “the male organs,” see the section devoted to the spit used to roast meat (p. 123; see also the verbs ἀναπείρειν and ἀναπηγνύναι at p. 170); in that dedicated to “the female organs,” see the sections devoted to ovens, hearths, braziers and hot coals (pp. 142–3); in that dedicated to “sexual congress,” see the section devoted to the verb κυκᾶν (“to stir up, churn”, p. 171). Adams, Latin Sexual Vocabulary (above, n. 45), p. 22, says that “the house and its contents were a source of metaphors for the genitalia of both sexes,” that “the presence of the metaphor in Naevius is of significance for the history of comedy in Latin,” and that “the metaphor would not be out of character in palliata” because Plautus too “admitted anatomical double entrendres of a sexual kind, and he may well have been anticipated by Naevius.” The position of Wright, Dancing in Chains (above, n. 15), p. 54, is quite different: “Though the situation which produced this line no doubt came from the Greek original, there is a saltiness in the words themselves which smacks more of Roman comedy than the Νέα.” 68 Naevius 32 W. “I want to do this, and I’m afraid to do this, and I feel a great pleasure in doing this” (my translation); Ar. Ra. 1425 “Athens loves him, but hates him, but wants to have him.” According to the ancient scholia, Aristophanes’ line was a parody of a verse from a lost tragedy by Ion of Chios (TrGF 19 F 41 σιγᾷ μέν, ἐχθαίρει δέ, βούλεταί γε μήν, “He/she does not speak, but he/she hates, and he/she wants indeed”). Naevius has taken the Greek title of his play (Colax) from either Eupolis (Κόλακες) or more likely Menander (Κόλαξ); on the relationship between the Menandrean comedy and their Roman
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(d) Theodor Panofka has seen a resemblance between a fragment of Tunicularia and a passage of Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen, in both of which the poets make fun in a similar way of mediocre painters with a high opinion of themselves. In the Greek play, Aristophanes mentions “the champion of the painters” (ὁ τῶν γραφέων ἄριστος), a mocking reference to a poor artist who made his living by decorating little vases (αἱ λήκυθοι) for the dead. In “The Little Coat” Naevius sarcastically compares the famous Apelles with the unknown Theodotus (a Greek name!), who sits in a small closet, protected by mats, on the day of the Compitalia and paints the Lares at play with a brush made from an ox-tail; he is a poor painter who, almost like the Aristophanic “champion,” sketched with the utmost care and in the greatest secrecy a completely worthless picture.69 7. One must admit that these few examples (and in particular the third and the fourth) offer no verbal correspondence as compelling as the Aristophanic jeu de mot echoed in Plautus’ Stichus (discussed above). But it is also true that similar correspondences, if they existed, would not add much to the picture drawn so far. From this outline it is possible to see that the presence of 5th-century Athens was more widespread than has been recognized. Indeed, some scholarly attempts to distinguish the first Latin comic poet from his Athenian models can actually demonstrate the link that connected them. I refer to the fact that, when he attacked his political targets, Naevius, unlike Aristophanes and his poetic peers, did not mention their names. The first ancient writer to note this difference is Cicero. In the fourth book of his Republic, having noted that the Romans considered both the dramatic art and the theater in general disgraceful, Cicero makes Scipio Aemilianus utter the following words: “… quem illa non adtigit vel potius quem non vexavit? Cui pepercit? Esto, populares homines improbos, in re publica seditiosos, Cleonem, Cleophontem, Hyperbolum laesit. Patiemur, etsi eius modi cives a censore melius est quam a poeta notari; sed Periclen, cum iam suae civitati maxima auctoritate plurimos annos domi et belli praefuisset, violari versibus, et eos agi in scaena non plus decuit, quam si Plautus noster voluisset aut Naevius Publio et Gnaeo Scipioni aut Caecilius Marco Catoni male dicere …”70.
imitations (not only Naevius and Plautus, but esp. Terence’s Eunuchus), see Fontaine, pp. 160–98 elsewhere in this volume. 69 Ar. Ec. 995–6; Naevius 97–100 W. (text uncertain). Cf. Theodor Panofka, “Die spielenden Laren, ein Altarbild des Theodotos,” Rheinisches Museum 4 (1846), p. 135 (and n. 4): “Daher dürfte die Stelle dieses römischen Komödiendichters, welche uns hier beschäftigt, jener des Aristophanes sich zur Seite stellen, wo von einem Künstler, der die Lekythoi für die Todten gemalt, die Rede ist.” 70 Cic. Rep. 4.10.11–12 “Whom did comedy not attack? Or, better, whom did it not persecute? Whom did it spare? I admit it has harmed bad demagogues who stirred up sedition in the state such as Cleon, Cleophon, and Hyperbolos. We can admit this, although it would be better if such citizens could be punished by a censor rather than by a poet. But it was no more proper that Pericles, who by reason of his greatest power had already governed for many years his town in peace and in war, should be insulted in verse, and that such verses should be recited on the stage, than it would have been for our
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Since we know that (if we trust Gellius) Naevius did abuse Publius Scipio, this passage can be explained in only two ways: either Scipio Aemilianus simply passes over the well-known slander of Naevius on the presumed poor figure cut by his relative when he was a young boy, or the words used by Cicero (versibus violare and agere versus in scaena for Pericles and the other demagogues, male dicere for the Roman politicians) indicate the two different manners in which a comic poet could attack a prominent political figure.71 While in Rome the public authorities apparently admitted only one genre of abuse (male dicere), with the fundamental condition that no politician could be mentioned by name, the peculiar situation of Athens allowed a wider range of solutions. There, every prominent figure (political leaders, but also other well-known characters such as tragic poets) could not only become the target of a verbal comic onslaught, either direct (ὀνομαστί, “by name”) or indirect (αἰνιγματῶδες, “enigmatically” or “allusively”), but could also play a role in the drama (Cicero’s agere versus in scaena), either as themselves (like Lamachus in Aristophanes’ Acharnians) or in a transparent disguise (like Cleon as the Paphlagonian slave in Aristophanes’ Knights). There were many ways to abuse a persona nota, and ancient testimonia even speak of an Athenian decree (issued by a second-rate politician named Syracosius sometime during the Peloponnesian War) that forbade attacks on a real person using his name;72 why then should we not think that Naevius deliberately followed Aristophanes (and Cratinus and Eupolis) in some milder and more oblique fashion of censuring the behaviour of a politician? If, in spite of the freedom allowed by the different social, religious and cultural background of Athens, Cratinus decided to attack Pericles δι’ ἐμφάσεως (“through innuendo”) in the Dionysalexander, and if both Aristophanes and Eupolis chose to introduce in their comedies Knights and Maricas a political leader (Cleon and Hyperbolus, respectively) under other names, we can hypothesize that when he made fun of the unsuccessful escapade of Scipio, Naevius was only following in their footsteps.73
own Plautus or Naevius to have decided to abuse Publius and Gnaeus Scipio, or for Caecilius to have abused Cato.” 71 Gel 7.8.5 (supra, pp. 205–6); Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus (the younger Africanus), son of Lucius Aemilius Paulus, had been adopted by the son of Publius Cornelius Scipio (the older Africanus), the presumed protagonist of Naevius’ fragment (1–3 W. ex incertis fabulis). 72 On the decree (mentioned in a scholion to Aristophanes, Av. 1297), see Alan H. Sommerstein, “The Decree of Syrakosios,” Classical Quarterly NS 36 (1986), pp. 101–8; and “Comedy and the Unspeakable,” in: D.L. Cairns and R.A. Knox (eds.), Law, Rhetoric and Comedy in Classical Athens: Studies Presented to Douglas M. MacDowell (London and Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, 2004), pp. 205–22; also John E. Atkinson, “Curbing the Comedians: Cleon versus Aristophanes and Syracosius’ Decree,” Classical Quarterly NS 42 (1992), pp. 56–64. 73 Our knowledge of the plotline of Cratinus’ Dionysalexander comes from the publication in 1904 of a papyrys fragment (POxy. 663) that contains an ample portion of its hypothesis (test. i K.–A.); see also Olson, Broken Laughter (above, n. 2), pp. 88–90; Bakola, Cratinus (above, n. 2), pp. 181–208 (on the peculiar meaning of ἔμφασις, see esp. pp. 198–206). On Aristophanes’ Knights and Eupolis’ Maricas,
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8. The lesson of the great playwrights of ancient Greek comedy is visible even in the scanty fragments of the ample theatrical production of Naevius we possess—a production that earned him third place in the canon of comic poets drawn up by Volcacius Sedigitus. In his plays, Naevius was able to pinch facete et defricate the men who, like the democratic politicians of 5th century Athens, aimed to turn a well-balanced republic into a personal domain. The diptych, a fragment of “The Tarentine Maid”, is a perfect summary of the comic world of Naevius, full of wit and harshness.74 If the meaning of the adverb facete needs no explanation, defricate, a hapax legomenon, is more problematic. “Scathingly”, Warmington’s metaphorical translation, is in one way clear and correct. But Warmington himself felt the need to add to his rendering, and in a footnote, after having given two alternative solutions (“in a manner spick and span” or “chic”), he wrote that since defrico properly means “to rub well,” the expression might instead be equivalent to “to lash with the tongue,” as in a Horatian passage on the hardness/harshness of Lucilius’ satires (“he rubbed the city with plenty of wit”).75 What is the source of this metaphor? Can we find a similar image in the language of an Old Comic poet? The answer is “Yes”; the verb is κνίζω (“to scratch”). It is true that the action of fricare is carried out by a rough sponge and that of κνίζειν is made with a sharp nail or the like, but the result is the same: at the end of the process, the (metaphorical) body of the victim is badly flayed. One can “scratch” the lyric production of a tragic poet, as in a passage of Frogs in which Aeschylus threatens to κνίζειν Euripides’ verses one by one.76 But the situation is best described in the second parabasis of Wasps, where the chorus hints at an episode in the long history of the tormented relationship between Aristophanes and Cleon. Here the chorus of the old jurors reminds the audience of the revenge of the demagogue for the many onslaughts he endured: Cleon wronged Aristophanes by “scratching” him, so that everybody laughed when they saw that the poet had been “flayed;” the words Aristophanes uses
see Alan H. Sommerstein, “Platon, Eupolis and the ‘demagogue-comedy,’” in: D. Harvey and J. Wilkins (eds.), The Rivals of Aristophanes. Studies in Athenian Old Comedy (London: Duckworth, 2000), pp. 437–51. 74 Naevius 92 W. 75 Hor. S. 1.10.3–4 (“Sale multo / urbem defricuit”), where sal clearly has two meanings, one proper (the salt that, poured on a wound, causes a burning sensation) and one metaphorical (the witty joke). The Italian translations (Marmorale, Naevius poeta [above, n. 7], p. 221: “lepidamente e mordacemente”; Traglia, Poeti latini arcaici [above, n. 32]>, p. 235: “in forma spiritosa e mordace”) dwell on another kind of metaphor (defrico = “to bite”); Wright, Dancing in Chains (above, n. 15), p. 47, relates Warmington’s explanation but underlines that “the adverb facete in Plautus is always connected with clever, and unscrupulous, speaking ability.” 76 Ar. Ra. 1198–1200: καὶ μὴν μὰ τὸν Δί’ οὐ κατ’ ἔπος γέ σου κνίσω / τὸ ῥῆμ’ ἕκαστον, ἀλλὰ σὺν τοῖσιν θεοῖς / ἀπὸ ληκυθίου σου τοὺς προλόγους διαφθερῶ (“Look here, I certainly don’t intend to pick away at your expressions word by word; instead, the gods willing, I’ll demolish those prologues of yours with an oil bottle”).
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to describe his mishap are κνίζειν and ἀποδέρειν (“to skin” and “to flay”) employed in the same metaphorical sense as in Naevius’ defricate.77 Again, we do not know if this small fragment was used in a political context. In disagreement with Warmington, whose interpretation seems to suggest that the phrase described a tongue-lashing by the fathers of the two young men who went to Tarentum to have a high (and high-priced) time, Wright writes that “it would seem more likely that a speech by a meretrix or a seruus is being described.”78 But it might be more charming to see in facete et defricate one of the many attacks of the Roman poet on the politicians who, in different places and different times, were assaulted, sometimes with success and sometimes without, by his Greek model.
77 Ar. V. 1286–7 καί με κακίσας ἔκνισε, κᾆθ’, ὅτ’ ἀπεδειρόμην, / οἱ ’κτὸς ἐγέλων μέγα κεκραγότα θεώμενοι (“Furthermore, while I was being skinned alive, the crowd outside kept laughing as they watched him shouting hard”). One might compare the metaphor radere = “to scrape” in Persius 5.15 (pallentis radere mores). 78 Wright, Dancing in Chains (above, n. 15), pp. 46–7.
Eckard Lefèvre
Plautus und die Techniken des Improvisationstheaters Abstract: This paper argues that Plautus implanted features of Italian improvised drama (Atellan farce, mime, Fescennine verses) into his plays, which were modeled on the comedies of the Nea. These features were also known to the Greek poets, but Plautus used them in an excessive manner unknown at least to the dramaturgy of Menander. He thus built a bridge from the literary tradition of Greek comedy to the non-literary dramatic traditions of Italy.
I. Theorie Daß das altitalische Stegreifspiel wie die Atellane, der Mimus oder die Feszenninen Einfluß auf die Struktur der Palliata gehabt hat, ist schon lange gesehen worden. Es genügt, die Namen Eduard Fraenkel, George Duckworth oder Ettore Paratore zu nennen. Wie der Terminus Stegreifspiel sagt, ist eine seiner wichtigsten Eigenarten die Improvisation. Die Akteure haben einen Plan, der in groben Zügen den Plot, die verschiedenen Personen und das Ziel der Handlung festlegt. In der Commedia dell’arte nannte man das einen ‘scenario’. Es war nun die Aufgabe der Schauspieler, die Parts der Personen im einzelnen zu improvisieren. Dabei bedienten sie sich mehr oder weniger frei vorgeformter Bestandteile, die sie zu einem Ganzen zusammensetzen mußten. Man wußte, wie ein strenger oder gütiger Alter, ein aufsässiger oder verliebter Jüngling, ein renommierender Soldat oder ein habgieriger Kuppler zu sprechen pflegen. Sogar für die Witze gab es ein großes Reservoir, aus dem man schöpfte und das ständig erweitert wurde. Von den genannten Forschern ist Fraenkel wichtig, weil er auf das Merkmal der Improvisation Wert gelegt hat, die Plautus in seinem schriftlich fixierten Text nachbildete – etwa bei den beliebten Wortgefechten. ‘Plautus’ bringt possenhafte Wortgeplänkel, velitationes wie er sagt, aus freien Stücken an, wo nur immer sich eine Gelegenheit dazu bietet. Beachtenswert, wenn auch nicht erstaunlich ist es, daß diesen Erweiterungen jeder eigentlich dramatische Zug fehlt. Wohl kommt in ihnen oft ein starkes Gefühl für die Erfordernisse eines lebendi-
Diese Ausführungen geben die leicht erweiterte Version eines Vortrags wieder, der am 27. Februar 2009 auf Einladung von Professor Kenneth Reckford auf dem Kongreß ‘Playing Around With Plautus’ an der State University in Tallahassee, Florida, gehalten werden sollte. Leider konnte der Referent wegen Krankeit in der Familie nicht anreisen. Für eine Betrachtung des Einflusses der Atellane auf Plautus wird auf den Aufsatz ‘Atellana e Palliata – gli influssi reciproci’ in dem von Renato Raffaelli herausgegebenen Band L’Atellana letteraria (Urbino: Quattro Venti, 2010) hingewiesen.
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gen Zwiegesprächs zum Ausdruck; das hält sich aber stets in den Schranken improvisierender Späße wie sie volkstümlichen Darbietungen eigen sind.’1 Erst in neuerer Zeit ist der Einfluß des altitalischen Stegreifspiels auf die Palliata systematisch untersucht worden. John Barsby hat 1995 Plautus’ Pseudolus als ‘improvisatory drama’ zu erweisen versucht. Ausgangspunkt seiner Betrachtung ist der Entstehungsprozeß der römischen Palliata. ‘Roman comedy is a creative fusion of two traditions, the literary tradition of Greek comedy on the one hand and the non-literary dramatic traditions of Italy on the other. The time has perhaps come when we should pay more attention to the Italian side; by doing so, we shall certainly understand Roman comedy better, and we may even come to recognise the Italian influence as a source not of imperfections but of enrichment. This is not to say that we should abandon the analytic approach from the Greek side, which will continue to be a fruitful one, but there may be something to learn from a complementary approach which takes proper account of the Italian background’.2 In diesem Rahmen ist auch das Phänomen der Improvisation zu sehen. Sie gehört in das nichtliterarische ‘mündliche’ Theater. Es versteht sich, daß ein Vollblutdramatiker wie Plautus von ihr begeistert sein mußte. Aus den spärlichen antiken Nachrichten können wir erschließen, daß er das nichtliterarische Spiel gut kannte. Sowohl Maccus als auch Plautus können Spitznamen des Umbrers Titus sein.3 Maccus deutet auf Vertrautheit mit der Atellane,4 Plautus (‘Plattfuß’) auf Vertrautheit mit dem Mimus.5 Beide Genera sind ihm gut bekannt,6 ja er dürfte in ihnen selbst als Schauspieler aufgetreten sein.7 Das könnte eine Erklärung dafür sein, warum er den mündlichen italischen Spielformen in ungewöhnlich großem Maß Einlaß in sein Werk gewährt hat. Man möchte geradezu meinen, ein Mann mit Erfahrung im italischen Theaterwesen (Gell. Noct. Att. 3, 3, 14)8 und Schauspieler von Atellanen und Mimen habe es nicht über sich bringen können, die Übersetzung einer griechischen Komödie Wort für Wort anzufertigen (was ohne-
1 Eduard Fraenkel, Plautinisches im Plautus (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1922), p. 410. 2 John Barsby, ‘Plautus’ Pseudolus as Improvisatory Drama,’ in: L. Benz / E. Stärk / G. Vogt-Spira (Hrsg.), Plautus und die Tradition des Stegreifspiels, ScriptOralia 75 (Tübingen: Narr, 1995), p. 56. 3 Friedrich Leo, Plautinische Forschungen. Zur Kritik und Geschichte der Komödie2 (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1912), p. 83; John Barsby (ed.), Plautus, Bacchides (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1986), p. 2. 4 Barsby (oben n. 3), p. 2; Lore Benz, ‘Die römisch-italische Stegreifspieltradition zur Zeit der Palliata,’ in: Lore Benz / Ekkehard Stärk / Gregor Vogt-Spira (Hrsg.), Plautus und die Tradition des Stegreifspiels, ScriptOralia 75 (Tübingen: Narr, 1995), p. 148. 5 William Beare, The Roman Stage3 (London: Methuen, 1964), p. 151; Barsby (oben n. 3), p. 2; Benz (oben n. 4), p. 152. 6 Beare (oben n. 5), pp. 142, 151; Barsby (oben n. 3), p. 6; Jürgen Blänsdorf, ‘T. Maccius Plautus,’ in: Handbuch der Lateinischen Literatur I (München: Beck, 2002), p. 185. 7 Leo (oben n. 3), p. 84; Beare (oben n. 5), pp. 142, 151; Barsby (oben n. 3), p. 2; Blänsdorf (oben n. 6), p. 185. 8 Blänsdorf (oben n. 6), p. 186.
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hin ein unfruchtbarer Anachronismus wäre). Einerseits gelang es Plautus, das Publikum durch die vertrauten Formen an die ‘hohe’ Literatur heranzuführen, andererseits konnte er die einheimischen ‘Sketche’ durch die Adaptation durchgehender Handlungen zu veritablen Theaterstücken ausbauen. Es handelt sich um eine geniale Kombination von griechischer ‘Schriftlichkeit’ und römischer ‘Mündlichkeit’.9 1985 charakterisierte Niall Slater verschiedene Formen des Stegreiftheaters und bemerkte grundsätzlich: ‘All these features of improvisation can be imitated in scripted theatre. Therefore, when I speak of improvisation, I mean Plautus’ literary imitation of these features of improvisational theatre.’10 In diesem Sinn äußerte sich Eckard Lefèvre 1997: ‘Wenn man von Einflüssen des improvisierenden Theaters spricht, ist gemeint, daß Plautus in seinen schriftlich verfaßten Stücken Techniken des Stegreifspiels, die er aus eigener Erfahrung oder Anschauung kannte, nachahmte. Man könnte von ‘verschriftlichtem’ Improvisations-Theater sprechen.’11 Das bedeutet, daß Plautus v o r der Aufführung bei der schriftlichen Abfassung seiner Manuskripte ‘mündliche’ Formen einarbeitete, die seine Schauspieler auswendig zu lernen hatten, die aber auf das Publikum so wirkten, als seien sie improvisiert. Diese Ansicht wurde mehrfach wiederholt, etwa in einer Arbeit über den Persa. ‘Plautus zeigt sich mit den Praktiken des Stegreifspiels wohlvertraut. Er gestaltet die mündlichen Formen in schriftlicher Form nach, so daß man von ‘verschriftlichtem Improvisations-Theater’ sprechen kann. Insofern begegnen auch im Persa Partien, die wie das Protokoll einer – natürlich glänzenden – Stegreifspiel-Aufführung anmuten. Das schließt nicht aus, daß der Dichter selbst mit größtem Kunstverstand Regie führt. Worauf es ankommt, ist der Umstand, daß er seine Personen so sprechen läßt, als improvisierten sie streckenweise aus dem Stegreif’.12 Manches muß auf diesem Gebiet ungeklärt bleiben. So wissen wir überhaupt nicht, ob Plautus’ Schauspieler selbst improvisieren konnten. Slater hat sich dazu in einem 1993 veröffentlichten Freiburger Vortrag über ‘Improvisation in Plautus’ überzeugend geäußert. ‘It is conceivable that Plautus’s actors could actually improvise in verse and such improvisations, if spectacularly successful, might be retained by Plautus in the final script. Against this possibility we must weigh the fact that, though repeat performances were certainly more common in Rome than Greece, a Plautine play did not have a long ‘run’ or regular revivals in which such improvisations could be tried out on different audiences. I assume therefore that all the ‘improvisation’ we find in these plays is Plautus’ literary imitation of the practice,
9 Benz (oben n. 4), p. 154. 10 Niall W. Slater, Plautus in Performance. The Theatre of the Mind (Princeton: University Press, 1 1985), p. 13 = (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 22000), pp. 9–10. 11 Eckard Lefèvre, Plautus’ Pseudolus, ScriptOralia 101 (Tübingen: Narr, 1997), p. 10. 12 Eckard Lefèvre, ‘Plautus’ Persa zwischen Nea und Stegreifspiel,’ in: Stefan Faller (Hrsg.), Studien zu Plautus’ Persa, ScriptOralia 121 (Tübingen: Narr, 2001), pp. 77–8.
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rather than a record of the contributions of his actors’.13 Besonders der letzte Satz fand Zustimmung.14 Auch wenn Plautus’ Schauspieler improvisieren konnten und das in einer Aufführung plautinischer Komödien auch taten, bleibt die Frage, ob dem Dichter ein solches Verfahren als Bereicherung seiner eigenen Fassung erschienen wäre. Aber selbst wenn das der Fall war, bleibt die weitere Frage, ob er nach der Vorstellung überhaupt die Möglichkeit hatte, seine Stücke zu bearbeiten und n a c h t r ä g l i c h Improvisationen, die während einer Aufführung gemacht wurden, in die schriftliche Fassung einzubauen. Gegen eine solche kühne Annahme15 ist zu bedenken, daß die Skripte v o r der Aufführung von den Theaterdirektoren angekauft wurden und in ihrem Besitz verblieben.16 Es ist ‘sicher, daß Plautus einen schriftlich fixierten Text des gesamten Stückes (und nicht etwa lediglich Teiltexte mit den Sätzen für die jeweiligen Rollen der einzelnen Schauspieler) vorgelegt hat, da die Stücke an den Regisseur verkauft wurden und vor der öffentlichen Aufführung den festgebenden Beamten zur Begutachtung vorgetragen werden konnten.’17 Da es zudem zu Plautus’ Lebzeiten keine Wiederaufführungen gab,18 konnte er auch kein Interesse daran haben, den Theaterdirektor zu bitten, ihm eine ‘zweite Auflage’ seines Texts zu gestatten. Schließlich: Eine Buchausgabe mehrerer oder aller Komödien hat Plautus nicht erlebt. Barsby hat in seiner Abhandlung über den Pseudolus zwei wichtige Kapitel vorgelegt: ‘Pseudolus as the Great Improviser’ und ‘Improvisatory Routines’ (im Pseudolus). Das erste Kapitel gipfelt in der Feststellung: ‘There is no doubt that Pseudolus is, and is presented as, one of the great improvisers. This does not in itself mean that we can describe Pseudolus as improvisatory drama: there is a difference between a drama featuring a character who improvises on the one hand and improvisatory drama on the other. But what Plautus has in fact done is to blur this distinction.’19 Das zweite Kapitel untersucht ‘Improvisatory Routines’ im Pseudolus. ‘These may be defined as routines which we can envisage a competent actor or pair of actors
13 Niall W. Slater, ‘Improvisation in Plautus,’ in: Gregor Vogt-Spira (Hrsg.), Beiträge zur mündlichen Kultur der Römer, ScriptOralia 47 (Tübingen: Narr, 1993), p. 118 n. 10 = Slater (oben Anm. 10), p. 168 n. 10. 14 Barsby (oben n. 2), p. 70 n. 21; Lefèvre (oben n. 11), p. 10 n. 2. 15 C.W. Marshall, The Stagecraft and Performance of Roman Comedy (Cambridge: University Press, 2006), p. 262. 16 Marcus Deufert, Textgeschichte und Rezeption der plautinischen Komödien im Altertum, Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte 62 (Berlin / New York: De Gruyter, 2002), p. 20. 17 Deufert (oben n. 16), p. 21. 18 Deufert (oben n. 16), pp. 24–5. Vgl. daselbst ferner: ‘Die Veränderung eines für ein Fest einstudierten Stückes bei den häufigen instaurationes, den Wiederholungen eines Festes, ist auszuschließen, bei (nicht sicher nachgewiesenen) Auftritten des grex außerhalb Roms sind sie ganz unwahrscheinlich: Kein Schauspieldirektor dürfte sich die Mühe gemacht haben, den Text eines in Rom erfolgreichen Stückes für die Wanderbühne neu zu gestalten.’ 19 Barsby (oben n. 2), p. 85.
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easily improvising without a script. Insofar as these appear in Plautus, they will have been adapted for a fully scripted drama, but we may nonetheless be able to detect their improvisatory ancestry.’20 Mit Plautus’ Verfahren, Stegreifelemente in der schriftlichen Komödie nachzubilden (damit sie lebendiger wird), ist eine Passage aus einem Brief des jüngeren Plinius über den Charakter von actio (‘a speech as heard’) und oratio (‘a speech as read’)21 zu vergleichen.22 Nach Plinius ist die oratio Abbild und gleichsam Muster der actio. Deshalb finde man in den besten orationes (also in den publizierten Reden) 1000 Stegreiffiguren, sogar in denen, die, wie man wisse, nur schriftlich herausgegeben worden seien, wie die gegen Verres: ‘Welchen Künstler? Wen doch? Du erinnerst mich richtig; sie sagten, es sei Polykletos.’ est enim oratio actionis exemplar et quasi archetypon. ideo in optima quaque mille figuras extemporales invenimus, in iis etiam, quas tantum editas scimus, ut in Verrem: ‘artificem quem? quemnam? recte admones; Polyclitum esse dicebant.’23 Plinius hat das richtig beobachtet. ‘One must […] take into account the obvious fact that performative features and elements of oral discourse were kept in the published versions – or even created for them (cf. Phil. 2) – in order to make the orations more vivid and persuasive for a reading public.’24 So wie (nach Plinius) die publizierte Rede Stegreiffiguren der mündlichen Version wiedergibt bzw. vorgibt, sie wiederzugeben, bildet Plautus in seinem Skript vor der Aufführung Stegreiffiguren (aus dem Stegreifspiel) frei nach – natürlich nicht nur figurae, sondern auch Strukturen von Monologen und Dialogen sowie Personen. Dieses ist die Position, die Slater, Barsby und Lefèvre – angeregt durch den Freiburger Sonderforschungsbereich ‘Übergänge und Spannungsfelder zwischen Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit’ – in den neunziger Jahren des letzten Jahrhunderts vertreten haben. Sie ist klar definiert und formuliert. Um so überraschender ist es, in dem 2006 erschienenen Buch ‘The Stagecraft and Performance of Roman Comedy’ von C.W. Marshall folgenden Satz zu lesen: ‘Lefèvre fails to distinguish consistently between improvisation in performance, the playwright’s use of improvisatory techniques in the scripting process, and the literary imitation of improvisation.’25 Es möge gestattet sein, an diesem Ort die erarbeitete Position deutlicher zu formulieren.
20 21 22 23 24 25
Barsby (oben n. 2), p. 65. Elmer Truesdell Merrill, Selected Letters of the Younger Pliny (London: MacMillan, 1924), p. 215. Epist. 1, 20, 9–10. Cic. Verr. II, 4, 5. Gesine Manuwald (ed.), Cicero, Philippics 3–9 (Berlin / New York: De Gruyter, 2007), vol. I, p. 114. Marshall (oben n. 15), p. 264.
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II. Praxis Im folgenden werden einige ‘features of improvisation’ in den plautinischen Texten vorgeführt und bewertet. Marshall fährt fort: ‘It makes no sense to claim an exclusive or proprietary relationship between improvisation and metatheatre, audience address, the moral deficiency of characters, satire, intrigue, verbal wrangling, or amusing comments’.26 Das sind in der Tat einige meiner Kategorien (nur von ‘e x cl u s i v e relationship’ habe ich nicht gesprochen),27 und es macht sehr wohl Sinn, diese Verwandtschaft herauszustellen. Selbstverständlich begegnet jedes einzelne dieser ‘features’ in den schriftlichen Literaturgattungen aller Zeiten. Treten sie aber allesamt auf engem Raum, noch dazu in übertriebener Weise auf (wie bei Plautus innerhalb e i n e r Komödie: im Amphitruo) und sind sie andererseits in besonderem Maß in mündlichen Gattungen anzutreffen, liegt der Schluß sehr nahe, daß Plautus Strukturen dieser mündlichen Gattungen nachgeahmt hat. ‘Grundsätzlich ist zu bemerken, daß jedes der […] Charakteristika ansatzweise in der Mese, der Nea und den Phlyaken bzw. der Rhinthonica begegnen kann. Für ihre Gesamtheit [sc. innerhalb e i n e r Komödie] und ihre übersteigerte Ausprägung wird man das nicht nachweisen können.’28 Dann heißt es weiter: ‘It is wrong to suggest the servus currens belongs to the improvised tradition when he is clearly attested in the Greek New Comedy tradition’.29 Das ist n i c h t falsch. Man muß nur die unterschiedlichen Strukturen bei Menander und Plautus beachten. ‘Ganz anders als bei Plautus ist die Funktion des Servus currens zum Beispiel in der Nea. Soweit dieser in ihr begegnet, parodiert er den Boten der Tragödie, der etwas Neues verkündet. Menander bietet nach Guardì Dysk. 81ff. und Asp. 399ff. zwei Beispiele.30 Pyrrhias und Daos haben wirklich etwas zu melden, was bei Merkur [sc. im Amphitruo] nicht der Fall ist.31 Zudem nehmen sie nur in wenigen Worten auf ihre Eile Bezug. Völlig verschieden davon sind die plautinischen servi currentes (sowohl die eigentlichen als auch der uneigentliche Merkur), denen der Mund übergeht. Nach J. Barsby “this routine does appear to be a Roman one; we have yet to find an example of the fully developed running-slave scene in Menan-
26 Marshall (oben n. 15), p. 264. 27 Eckard Lefèvre, ‘Plautus’ Amphitruo zwischen Tragödie und Stegreifspiel,’ in: Thomas Baier (Hrsg.), Studien zu Plautus’ Amphitruo, ScriptOralia 116 (Tübingen: Narr, 1999), pp. 11–50. 28 Lefèvre (oben n. 27), p. 45. 29 Marshall (oben n. 15), p. 264. 30 Tommaso Guardì, ‘I precedenti greci della figura del ‘servus currens’ della commedia romana,’ Pan 2 (1974), pp. 12–14. Zu diesen Beispielen skeptisch J. Christopher B. Lowe, ‘Terence and the RunningSlave Routine,’ Rheinisches Museum 152 (2009), p. 227, der Richard L. Hunter, The New Comedy of Greece and Rome (Cambridge: University Press, 1985), p. 164 n. 5 zitiert: ‘A Greek servus currens, as we know this character in Roman comedy, seems likely enough, but has in fact not yet been proved.’ 31 So jetzt auch Lowe (oben n. 30) pp. 225–6: ‘Mercury is himself not bringing any news but Plautus plays with convention by making him imitate the typical running slave.’
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der.”32 Man wird annehmen dürfen, daß die römische Praktik des servus currens in ihrer Absurdität auf mündliche Formen zurückgeht.33 In ihnen waren die Zuschauer von vornherein gegenüber Albernheiten offen.’34 Ein bühnentechnisches Argument kommt hinzu: ‘These long speeches are only possible on a very long stage, as at Rome’.35 Auf keinen Fall wird man sagen können, daß die servus currens-Szenen, wie sie bei Plautus begegnen, zu den ‘features’ gehörten ‘which are fully present in extant Greek comedy.’36 Das Extemporieren von Monologen ist ein Charakteristikum von ‘mündlichen’ Formen.37 ‘Der Kenner der Commedia dell’arte L. Riccoboni bezeichnet gerade Monologe (im Gegensatz zu Dialogen) als sichere Elemente, die das Spielen der ‘mündlichen’ Komödie erleichterten. Es ist klar, daß Monologe leichter zu improvisieren sind als Dialoge.’38 Denn in Dialogen oder in Dreier-Szenen müssen zwei oder drei Akteure geistesgegenwärtig aufeinander eingehen, bei Monologen kann ein Schauspieler nach Belieben vor sich hinreden. Es genügt nicht, hiergegen einzuwenden: ‘Performance conditions in Rome generally encouraged the prominent use of monologues (as transitions and to facilitate doubling, to smooth over Greek act divisions etc.).’39 ‘transitions’ und ‘doubling’ gab es auch in der griechischen Komödie. Einzig das dritte Argument hat einen bescheidenen Aussagewert. Aber nur bei einer verschwindend kleinen Anzahl der plautinischen Monologe ist diese Funktion nachzuweisen. Marshall’s Behauptung, auf die ‘performance conditions in Rome’ gingen auch ‘the artificiality of time and place, and a clear mechanism to indicate the end of a play’ zurück, wird nicht begründet. Der letzte Ausdruck mißversteht übrigens die Herausstellung des ‘Schluß-Gongs’ des Amphitruo.40 Damit war nicht ein Gong als Realität (ein Klingelzeichen), sondern ein Gong als Metapher (ein laut dreinfahrendes Finale) gemeint. Das Stück endet ja einerseits mit Blitz und Donner, andererseits damit, daß
32 Barsby (oben n. 2), p. 66. 33 So jetzt auch Lowe (oben n. 30), p. 232: ‘If the running-slave routine was a Roman development, although “building upon a Greek foundation” [Hunter (oben n. 30), p. 81], it is not implausible to speculate that native Italian tradition of improvised drama contributed something to this development. The routine, with its comic business and conventional motifs, would be well suited to improvised drama, a lazzo easily adapted to a variety of situations and capable of being extended by the actor ad lib.’ 34 Lefèvre (oben n. 27), pp. 31–2. 35 Walter B. Sedgwick (ed.), Plautus, Amphitruo (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1960), p. 122. 36 Marshall (oben n. 15), p. 264 n. 69. 37 Eckard Lefèvre, ‘Asides in New Comedy and the Palliata,’ Leeds International Classical Studies (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/classics/lics/) 3. 3 (2003 / 2004), p. 12. Vgl. Ferdinand Stürner, Monologe bei Plautus. Ein Beitrag zur Dramaturgie der hellenistisch-römischen Komödie, Hermes-Einzelschriften 111 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2011), pp. 135–6. 38 Eckard Lefèvre, Plautus’ Aulularia, ScriptOralia 122 (Tübingen: Narr, 2001), p. 115. 39 Marshall (oben n. 15), p. 264. 40 Lefèvre (oben n. 27), pp. 44–5.
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die vorherige Handlung etwas gewaltsam in eine überraschende Richtung gedrängt wird. Andere features, die in ‘mündlichen Formen’ beliebt sind, stellen Doppelgängertum und Verkleidung dar.41 Die schriftliche Atellane des ersten Jahrhunderts v. Chr. kennt dergleichen. Pomponius’ Maccus miles, Maccus sequester, Maccus virgo oder Novius’ Maccus Copo könnten auf das Verkleidungsthema, Pomponius’ Macci gemini, Macci gemini priores auf das Doppelgängertum hindeuten. Bei Plautus ist dieses Thema sehr beliebt (Amphitruo, Captivi, Menaechmi, Miles gloriosus). Gegen die Annahme, daß er auch in diesem Punkt den Stegreifspielen verpflichtet ist,42 wird eingewandt: ‘The prominence of plots involving look-alikes and disguise […] cannot be associated with masked acting of necessity, but was clearly also part of the scripted Greek tradition.’43 Der Zusatz ‘of necessity’ ist eine unzutreffende Unterstellung. Es geht nicht darum, daß es diese Thematik in der Nea nicht gegeben hätte, sondern darum, daß sie bei Plautus in den genannten Stücken über große Strecken reiner Selbstzweck ist, daß sie also nicht dramatischen, sondern komischen Zwecken dient.44 Plautus schöpft aus dieser Thematik närrisches Potential. Wenn man die Palliata mit der Nea vergleicht, muß man immer die völlig andere Dramaturgie der griechischen Stücke in Rechnung stellen. Übrigens verwendete Menanders Komödie Masken.45 1999 habe ich mich auf die vorzügliche Bemerkung von Duckworth berufen: ‘Trickery and impersonation, the ludicrous fooling of one person by another, are characteristic of low comedy and existed […] in the pre-literary Italian farces. Plautus, adapting his originals to the tastes of his audience, may have increased the farcical elements of fooling and trickery under the influence of the native comic forms’.46 Marshall läßt den letzten Satz fort (‘may have increased’) und sagt: ‘Duckworth’s prejudices (‘low comedy’) imply a hierarchy of scripted over unscripted performance, and it is disingenuous to use this as evidence for the improvisational origins of impersonation.’47 Weder Duckworth noch ich haben von einer ‘e v i d e n c e for the improvisational origins of impersonation’ gesprochen.
41 Lefèvre (oben n. 27), pp. 17–20. 42 Nach Ekkehard Stärk, Die Menaechmi des Plautus und kein griechisches Original, ScriptOralia 11 (Tübingen: Narr, 1989), p. 186 (mit Beispielen), ist in Rom die eigentliche Heimat der Zwillingsverwechslungen die ‘improvisierte Volkskomödie.’ 43 Marshall (oben n. 15), p. 265 (die Feststellung richtet sich offenbar gegen einen Satz von Walter Hinck, Das deutsche Lustspiel des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts und die italienische Komödie. Commedia dell’arte und Théâtre italien (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1965), p. 32, der mißverstanden ist). 44 Lefèvre (oben n. 27), p. 17 (mit Beispielen). 45 Sander M. Goldberg, The Making of Menander’s Comedy (London: Athlone Press, 1980), p. 13 mit n. 1; Horst-Dieter Blume, Menander (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1998), p. 70. 46 George E. Duckworth, The Nature of Roman Comedy. A Study in Popular Entertainment (Princeton: University Press, 1952), p. 168. 47 Marshall (oben n. 15), p. 265 n. 74.
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‘Finally, Lefèvre claims an improvisational origin for elements that are distinctive of Plautine style but possess no necessary relationship with improvisation, particularly [with] the aggressive use of metaphor.’48 Das bezieht sich auf die von mir herausgestellte ‘Metaphern-Exuberanz’ in der Aulularia.49 Das sind wieder Unterstellungen. Ich habe weder von einem ‘improvisational o r i g i n ’ noch von einer ‘n e c e s s a r y relationship’ gesprochen. Metaphern gibt es in allen Literaturgattungen. Wieder geht es darum, daß Plautus einen e x z e s s i v e n G e b r a u c h von Metaphern macht, der in der Nea keine Parallele hat, wohl aber im Stegreifspiel. Es ist ‘die Tradition des volkstümlichen Stegreifspiels, die auch hinter der plautinischen Metaphernkomik in deren besonderer Art und Technik sichtbar wird.’50 Lore Benz hat das an einem Stück beispielhaft gezeigt (‘Die Metaphorik der Captivi und die Tradition der volkstümlichen Stegreifbühne’51) und allgemeine Folgerungen für Plautus gezogen (‘Die Metaphernkomik auf der Stegreifbühne und bei Plautus’52). Die Auseinandersetzung wird mit einem Résumé geschlossen. ‘For the most part, Lefèvre isolates narrative elements as if they belong most appropriately in a particular genre; we do better to say they are most at home in ‘comedy”.53 Das trifft nicht zu. Man muß immer wieder feststellen: Wenn auf der einen Seite bestimmte ‘features’ in der Nea in normalem, bei Plautus aber in exzessivem Umfang begegnen und wenn sie in der Nea in den dramatischen Zusammenhang eingebettet sind, bei Plautus aber sich verselbständigen – wenn auf der anderen Seite diese ‘features’ im Stegreifspiel gang und gäbe sind, dann liegt der Schluß nahe, daß Plautus starke Anregungen von den Praktiken des Stegreifspiels bekommen hat. Es war seine Leistung, die griechische ‘Schriftlichkeit’ mit der römischen ‘Mündlichkeit’ zu verschmelzen. Es reicht daher nicht aus, zu konstatieren, daß einzelne Stegreifspiel-Elemente nicht nur bei Plautus, sondern auch in der Nea vorkommen, und daraus den Schluß zu ziehen, er sei in diesen Punkten von seinen griechischen Vorbildern abhängig. Ein wesentlicher Punkt, in dem sich Plautus von mündlichen Formen hat anregen lassen, ist seine Eigenart, das Kontinuum der Nea-Komödien (oikonomia) zugunsten einer Dramaturgie aufzugeben, die die Einzelszenen ausgestaltet, ohne auf das Ganze Rücksicht zu nehmen. Es versteht sich, daß davon die Konstruktion der für dieses Genos so bezeichnenden Intrigen besonders betroffen ist. Nicht nur werden die
48 Marshall (oben n. 15), p. 265. Offenbar muß in dem Satz das Wort ‘with’ getilgt werden? Im übrigen meint ‘Exuberanz’ nicht ‘aggressive use,’ sondern ‘große Quantität’. 49 Lefèvre (oben n. 38), pp. 117–29. 50 Lore Benz, ‘Zur Metaphorik der Captivi,’ in: Lore Benz / Eckard Lefèvre (Hrsg.), Maccus barbarus. Sechs Kapitel zur Originalität der Captivi des Plautus, ScriptOralia 74 (Tübingen: Narr, 1998), p. 102. 51 Benz (oben n. 50), pp. 103–20. Hierbei geht es vor allem um den Aspekt des Komischen bei den Metaphern, die einzelnen Figuren (dem Parasiten, dem Sklaven, dem Alten) zugeordnet werden. 52 Benz (oben n. 50), pp. 121–4. Es wird eine erstaunlich enge Verwandtschaft der Metaphernkomik bei Plautus und der von der Improvisation lebenden Commedia dell’arte aufgezeigt. 53 Marshall (oben n. 15), p. 265.
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plautinischen Intrigen zuweilen unvollständig und gegen die Wahrscheinlichkeit durchgeführt, sondern sie zeichnen sich auf der anderen Seite durch Doppelungen und Kumulationen gegenüber den Originalen aus – meistens um die Hyperaktivität des Sklaven zu demonstrieren (wie in den Bacchides oder im Pseudolus). Wie läßt sich die krasse Differenz zwischen Palliata- und Nea-Intrigen erklären? Duckworth hat zu Recht betont, daß ‘cheating and trickery’, also die Intrigen, in der Atellane eine große Rolle gespielt haben.54 Varro sprach von tricae Atellanae für ‘äußerste, undurchdringliche Verwicklungen’.55 tricae sind nach Ekkehard Stärk, wie die Sprachgeschichte zeige, die Intrige schlechthin; wen es erstaune, daß die Form der wohl kurzen, exodischen Atellaniolae als Metapher für Kompliziertheit kat’ exochen herangezogen wurde, könne jeden beliebigen Scenario aus dem reichen Fundus der comici dell’arte aufschlagen und sich überzeugen, daß man bei keiner anderen Form des Dramas so leicht den Überblick über das Ganze verliere wie bei den Produktionen der Stegreifbühne. Kompliziertheit erscheine geradezu als notwendige Folge dieser Technik: Ein von extemporierenden Schauspielern spielbarer Scenario sei auf eine bestimmte Zahl von festen Szenen und Auftritten angewiesen. Die Variierung des Plots sei nur durch Addition und Multiplikation dieser Bausteine möglich. Ein wohlüberlegter, überschaubarer Gesamtplan, der eine gewisse Geschmeidigkeit der dramatischen Mittel erfordert, sei dadurch unmöglich gemacht.56 Wenn es somit im Wesen des Stegreifspiels zu liegen scheint, daß Intrigen schon aus äußeren Gründen nicht immer konsequent durchgeführt werden können, ergibt sich umgekehrt, daß Dichter schriftlich verfaßter Komödien, die Techniken des Stegreifspiels nachahmen, erstens Intrigen nicht immer ausfeilen und zweitens Verständnis dafür bei ihrem an Stegreifspiel-Dramaturgie gewöhnten Publikum voraussetzen können. Mit Unfähigkeit hat diese ‘Technik’ nichts zu tun, sondern nur mit der Herkunft aus einem anderen theatralischen Umfeld. Neben der Atellane darf man aus der Antike auch den beliebten Mimus anführen, der in gleicher Weise von der Improvisation und dem Gebrauch fester vorgegebener Versatzstücke lebte. Beide Genera werden im kleinen Beispiele dafür gegeben haben, was Plautus im großen praktizierte. Für die Ausprägung der Intrigen ist aber nicht nur die vom ‘literarischen’ Theater verschiedene Technik des Stegreifspiels in Rechnung zu stellen, sondern auch die verschiedene Höhe. Es ist klar, daß ein an lange literarische Traditionen gewöhntes Publikum – wie das der Nea – Intrigen, die über ein ganzes Stück hindurch angelegt und folgerichtig durchgeführt wurden, eher zu folgen willig war als ein Publikum, das sich an Darbietungen auf ad hoc errichteten Bühnen erfreuen wollte. Prinzipiell vergleichbar, wenn auch auf einer tief darunterliegenden Ebene angesiedelt, ist die
54 Duckworth (oben n. 46), p. 11. 55 Sat. Men. 198 B. 56 Stärk (oben n. 42), pp. 19–20.
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Praxis der Fernsehregisseure unserer Zeit, die in der Regel nur noch mit einer Kleinklein-Dramaturgie arbeiten, einem ununterbrochenen Wechsel kürzester Sequenzen, um ein Publikum zu erreichen, das ein Maximum an Effekt mit einem Minimum an geistigen Unkosten zu goutieren wünscht. Doch stellen Intrigen wie die des Pseudolus noch immer wesentlich höhere Ansprüche an die Auffassungsgabe der Zuschauer als moderne Fernsehkost. Bislang sind hauptsächlich strukturelle ‘features’ besprochen worden, bei denen sich Plautus von dem nichtliterarischen Spiel inspirieren ließ. Die wichtigsten und interessantesten Zeugen dieser Deszendenz sind zweifellos die P e r s o n e n , die er der Atellane verdankt. Leider sind nur Andeutungen möglich. Man hat die plausible Vermutung ausgesprochen, daß sowohl die plautinischen Köche als auch die plautinischen Parasiten der Atellane verpflichtet sind. Lowe hat in einem 1989 veröffentlichten Freiburger Vortrag vermutet, daß die Gefräßigkeit (‘gluttony’) der plautinischen Parasiten von der Atellane angeregt worden sei. ‘Influence in this particular area is especially plausible.’57 Etwas später hat sich Barsby in einem 1995 veröffentlichten Freiburger Vortrag über den Pseudolus mit der Szene des Kochs in III 2 befaßt, besonders mit der Partie 804–836, ‘where he gives a long list of vegetables used by inferior cooks and another list of spices used by himself (some of them purely invented), which an actor again could have been left to improvise ad libitum. As has already been suggested, this whole scene has no real dramatic function, and the cook scene could be regarded in essence as a stock comic scene from earlier Italian drama, which Plautus has used in various forms to embellish his plays (the scene between Euclio and the cooks at Aulularia 406-459 is another which immediately comes to mind). There are of course cook scenes in Menander also, but it seems clear that Plautus has considerably embellished these with elements that can be regarded as Italian. It is true that the Cook is not one of the four or five known stock characters of Atellan farce, but the Glutton is (Manducus, or possibly Bucco), and where there is a glutton there must also be room for a scene with a cook.’58 Die coqui der plautinischen Komödie sind toto coelo verschieden von den mageiroi der Nea.59 Weiterhin sei darauf verwiesen, daß Stärk in seiner Freiburger Dissertation für zwei beliebte plautinische Figuren die Herkunft aus der Atellane vermutet hat: für den liebestollen senex amator60 und für die herrschsüchtige uxor dotata.61 Nach Lowe ist das ‘plausibly suggested’.62
57 J. Christopher B. Lowe, ‘Plautus’ Parasites and the Atellane,’ in: Gregor Vogt-Spira (Hrsg.), Studien zur vorliterarischen Periode im frühen Rom, ScriptOralia 12 (Tübingen: Narr, 1989), p. 168. 58 Barsby (oben n. 2), pp. 67–8. 59 J. Christopher B. Lowe, ‘Cooks in Plautus,’ Classical Antiquity 4 (1985), pp. 72–102. Vgl. denselben (oben n. 30), p. 233 mit n. 31, wo von ‘influence of improvised drama’ gesprochen wird. 60 Pappus sei der ‘nächste Verwandte’ des senex libidinosus (oben n. 42, p. 35). 61 Die aktiv in das Bühnengeschehen eingreifende Figur stamme als Typ aus dem römischen Stegreifspiel, und zwar aus der Atellane (oben n. 42, p. 55). 62 Lowe (oben n. 30), p. 233 (in n. 31 ist Elisabeth Schuhmann zu Unrecht genannt).
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Noch interessanter als die genannten Personen sind in dieser Hinsicht die klassischen Gegner Senex und Servus der Palliata, die in einer extremen Weise, die in der Nea nicht belegt ist, einander bekämpfen.63 Sie sind es vor allem gewesen, die in der Commedia dell’arte eine Wiederauferstehung erlebt haben. Bei der Übernahme der griechischen Komödienfiguren in die plautinische Komödie wurden aus den würdigen alten Herren der Nea durch ihre Verschmelzung mit dem Pappus der Atellane Vorfahren des Pantalone der Commedia dell’arte, aus den klugen Sklaven der Nea durch ihre Verschmelzung mit dem Maccus der Atellane Vorläufer des Arlecchino der Commedia dell’arte.
63 Selbst bei Terenz leben sie weiter: Eckard Lefèvre, ‘Die Inszenierung des Zweikampfs zwischen Simo und Davos in Terenz’ Andria,’ in: Peter Kruschwitz / Wolfgang-Widu Ehlers / Fritz Felgentreu (Hrsg.), Terentius Poeta, Zetemata 127 (München: Beck, 2007), pp. 189–205.
Boris Dunsch
Lege dura vivont mulieres: Syra’s Complaint about the Sexual Double Standard (Plautus Merc. 817–29) Abstract: Syra’s complaint about the sexual double standard in the sanctioning of adultery (Merc. 817–29) has been the subject of much debate in Plautine source criticism (Quellenforschung). In this paper, I analyze the structure, style and themes of the monologue and argue that it was considerably re-worked (or even written from scratch) by Plautus. The monologue thus reflects Roman rather than Greek attitudes, while not parting entirely from the Greek outlook as it may have been present in Philemon’s Emporos.
Plautus the Feminist? Let us begin with a rhetorical question: Was Plautus a feminist? Obviously he was not, if for no other reason than that calling him one would be anachronistic in the extreme. But does he touch on themes that could be called feminist avant la lettre? This has been suggested in recent research with reference to the old nurse Syra’s monologue at Mercator 817–29.1 Indeed, when one looks at what Syra has to say about the marital double standard, one cannot escape the impression that it sounds quite modern and that we are not listening to a comic character in a play written over 2000 years ago, but to a women’s rights (or rather, emancipation) activist of the 20th century.2 In view
This paper is a tribute to Jeffrey Henderson, whose eminent contributions to the study of ancient comedy are a great source of inspiration to all classicists. My analysis of Syra’s monologue was presented in different contexts in St. Andrews, Greifswald and Lund. I am grateful to my hosts and to those who discussed it with me, especially the late Sir Kenneth Dover, Adrian Gratwick, Karla Pollmann, Gregor Vogt-Spira, Jerker Blomqvist, Arne Jönsson and Therese Fuhrer. I am also much indebted to Douglas Olson for suggesting ways of making my argument more explicit and consistent and to Tim Moore for his perceptive comments. 1 Cf. Maurizio Massimo Bianco, Interdum vocem comoedia tollit: Paratragedia ‘al femminile’ nella commedia plautina (Bologna: Pàtron, 2007), p. 137, and Ridiculi senes: Plauto e i vecchi da commedia (Palermo: Flaccovio, 2003), p. 87 n. 133. 2 Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy, Women and History 1 (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 236–7, distinguishes between the concept of “women’s rights,” which refers to a movement “concerned with winning for women equality with men in all aspects of society and giving them access to all rights and opportunities enjoyed by men in the institutions of that society” and the wider term “women’s emancipation,” which carries the notion of striving for “freedom from oppressive restrictions imposed by sex; self-determination; and autonomy,” i.e. for “freedom from biological and societal restrictions.” Lerner confines her use of the term “feminism to those occasions when both levels
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of the social realities of women in the ancient world, it is apparent that Syra has much to complain about. In Greek, Roman and many other ancient as well as modern societies, the code of sexual behavior (and in particular the practice of punishing deviations from it) was—and sometimes still is—far more rigid for women than for men. This gender-biased double standard3 becomes particularly obvious when we look at how married life was regulated formally and informally, and especially how adultery and premarital sex were sanctioned legally as well as socially.4
The Plot of Mercator Before looking at Syra’s monologue itself, let us briefly recall the main points of the plot of Mercator and set her speech in the context of the scenes immediately preceding it. The play opens with an expository prologue spoken by the young lover Charinus, who has just returned home to “Athens” from a two-year business trip.5 It was his father Demipho’s idea to send him on the trip, to teach him a sense of responsibility after his son squandered huge sums of money in a love-affair with a courtesan.6
of consciousness and activity are evident” (p. 237); in the context of this paper, I apply the term in a broader sense. 3 Cf. e.g. Gerald W. Peterman, “Marriage and Sexual Fidelity in the Papyri, Plutarch and Paul,” Tyndale Bulletin 50 (1999), pp. 163–72; Catharine Edwards, The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 48–56; Susan Treggiari, Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), pp. 299–319, 461–5; with a special focus on comedy: Adele C. Scafuro, The Forensic Stage: Settling Disputes in GraecoRoman New Comedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 235–8. 4 For more general treatments of the double standard, see e.g. Lerner, Patriarchy (above, n. 2), esp. pp. 113–17, 171–6, on the situation in the ancient Near East; Keith Thomas, “The Double Standard,” Journal of the History of Ideas 20 (1959), pp. 195–216, focusing on early modern England; and from the perspective of evolutionary biology, Donald Symons, “The Double Standard,” in: Peter Singer (ed.), Ethics (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 105–12 (first in: Donald Symons, The Evolution of Human Sexuality [New York: Oxford University Press, 1979], pp. 229–44). On various specific aspects of the sexual double standard, cf. also some of the contributions in Karla Pollmann (ed.), Double Standards in the Ancient and Medieval World, Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaften Beiheft 1 (Göttingen: Duehrkop & Radicke, 2000). 5 For an excellent analysis of the prologue, see Niall Slater, “Opening Negotiations: The Work of the Prologue to Plautus’ Mercator,” New England Classical Journal 37 (2010), pp. 5–13; cf. also J. Christopher B. Lowe, “Notes on Plautus’ Mercator,” Wiener Studien 114 (2001), pp. 144–8. 6 On the complex psychology of the father-son relationship as presented in the prologue and on the motivation of Charinus’ business trip and the circumstances surrounding it, see Boris Dunsch, “Il commerciante in scena: temi e motivi mercantili nel Mercator plautino e nell’Emporos filemoniano,” in: Renato Raffaelli, Alba Tontini (eds.), Lecturae Plautinae Sarsinates XI: Mercator (Sarsina, 29 settembre 2007) (= Ludus Philologiae 11) (Urbino: QuattroVenti, 2008), pp. 11–41.
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Charinus, however, falls hopelessly in love again with yet another courtesan, who bears the speaking name Pasicompsa, in Rhodes. He buys the slave7 and takes her home with him. Fearing his father’s reaction to his spontaneous acquisition, he keeps her on his ship in the harbor at first, pretending that she is a present intended for his mother. His father, however, happens to catch sight of Pasicompsa and falls madly in love with her himself, turning into the comic figure of the enamoured old man. Without being aware of it, he thus becomes his own son’s rival in love. The situation is complicated further by the introduction of Demipho’s friend and next-door neighbor Lysimachus, who undertakes to act as Demipho’s front man and buys Pasicompsa, who has been put up for sale by Demipho against his son’s will. The reason Demipho gives for this sale, ironically, is that Pasicompsa would be too beautiful to be presented to his wife as a servant, and that her appearance alone would damage the reputation of his household. The plot is complicated even more by that fact that Charinus in turn is helped by his friend Eutychus, who—can you believe it?—is Lysimachus’ son.8 Eutychus tries to buy Pasicompsa for Charinus, only to find that she has already been sold, not knowing that his own father is the buyer. Lysimachus, on the other hand, has not only agreed to buy the pretty woman for Demipho but also to conceal her in his house and accommodate Demipho, as well as to throw a sumptuous party with the girl during the absence of Lysimachus’ wife, Dorippa, who happens to be away in the countryside.9 After buying Pasicompsa, Lysimachus too seems to develop an interest in her.10 Just in time (and quite unexpectedly for the two elderly gentlemen), Lysimachus’ wife—how could it be otherwise in comedy?—returns from the country. She discovers Pasicompsa in the family home. This discovery triggers off a sequence of turbulent events that lead up to Syra’s monlogue. In the last act, Eutychus finds Pasicompsa in his father’s house and manages to put everything right. Lysimachus is exculpated,
7 On the exact nature of Pasicompsa’s background, see Vincent J. Rosivach, When a Young Man Falls in Love: The Sexual Exploitation of Women in New Comedy (London, New York: Routledge, 1998), p. 86. 8 I am inclined to disagree with George E. Duckworth, The Nature of Roman Comedy: A Study in Popular Entertainment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952), pp. 181–2, who emphasizes the unusual simplicity and straightforwardness of the plot. Admittedly, the plot is clear enough when drawn up on paper, but its various parallel strands plus the surprise turns of the action make Mercator a complex play when watched. 9 On this aspect of the plot, cf. Gianna Petrone, “Quando la moglie è in campagna (nota a Plauto Merc. 714 ss.),” Pan 23 (2005), pp. 99–105. 10 This becomes obvious in the first scene of the third act (499–543), the only scene in which Pasicompsa is onstage. The continuing ambiguities and innuendo (e.g. in 505–7, 510, 517–23) point to a growing and only faintly veiled sexual interest on Lysimachus’ side; cf. Sharon L. James, “Trafficking Pasicompsa: A Courtesan’s Travels and Travails in Plautus’ Mercator,” New England Classical Journal 37 (2010), pp. 46–9; Roberta Stewart, Plautus and Roman Slavery (Malden, Oxford, Chichester: WileyBlackwell, 2012), pp. 32–4.
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Demipho is shamed and forced to give up Pasicompsa, and the way is free for Charinus.
Syra’s Monologue in Context Syra’s monologue is prepared during the three immediately preceding scenes, i.e. Lysimachus’ confrontation with Dorippa (700–40); a further complication brought about by the appearance of the cook and his helpers (741–802); and Eutychus’ short meeting with Syra (803–16). At the beginning of the fourth act, Lysimachus’ wife Dorippa has returned from the country unexpectedly. She is accompanied by Syra, her 84-year old nurse. Syra is first to discover Pasicompsa in the house (681–91). To make matters even worse, the woman is, quite recognizably, a courtesan (685). Now Lysimachus is on the verge of disaster. Yet at first, he still tries to protect his friend Demipho to the best of his ability, claiming that he is charged with guarding the strange woman in the context of some legal proceedings (736). Yet when the cook and his crew enter the stage, carrying provisions for the party, it can no longer be denied that the woman in the house was intended to be part of a fully-fledged orgy. Dorippa feels justified in her suspicions, gets even angrier, and tells her husband off harshly (784–92): DO. Non miror, sei quid damni facis aut flagiti. nec pol ego patiar seic me nuptam tam male measque in aedis seic scorta obductarier. Syra, ei, rogato meum patrem verbeis meeis, ut veniat ad me iam semul tecum. SY. eo. LY. nescis negoti quid sit, uxor, opsecro. cocepteis verbeis iam iusiurandum dabo me numquam quicquam cum illa—iamne abiit Syra? perii hercle! ecce autem haec abiit! vae misero mihi!11
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DO. I’m not surprised if you’re up to something that brings loss or shame. By Pollux, I won’t endure being so badly wed, and that sluts are introduced this way into my own abode. Syra, go to my father, ask him in my name to come to me together with you now. SY. I’m on my way. [Syra exits] LY. You don’t know what’s going on, wife, I beg you! I’ll take an oath in solemn formula now that I never did anything with her—has Syra gone now? By Hercules, I’m done! But look, she’s gone as well! Woe is me, poor wretch!12
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11 Unless indicated otherwise, quotations from Mercator follow, with slight modifications, Petrus J. Enk (ed.), Plauti Mercator cum prolegomenis, notis criticis, commentario exegetico (Leiden: Sijthoff, 1932). 12 Unless indicated otherwise, all translations are my own.
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Dorippa is outraged. Quite rightly, she feels badly married. She will not condone prostitutes being brought into her home. The intensifying13 plural of the derogatory term scortum (“slut”)14 underlines her anger and may also imply that she suspects that her husband has done similar things in the past and/or expects him to go on doing them in the future. So Dorippa decides to send Syra to summon her father. “Sending for father” is a comic routine also found in several other plays. In the world of Roman comedy, there are two main reasons why a married woman sends for her father. Both are mentioned in a passage in Menaechmi (770–2):15 Nec pol filia umquam patrem accersit ad se, nisi aut quid commissi aut iurgi est causa. And, by Pollux, a daughter never summons her father, unless some entrusted valuable or the husband is the cause for complaint.
The reasons are disputes about property rights (quid commissi) between husband and wife and unspecified misbehavior by the husband (vir), be it philandering or other serious misconduct. The context in Mercator, especially Dorippa’s statement that she will not condone being married so badly, points to the latter. Lysimachus can thus conclude that Dorippa intends to ask her father to deal seriously with his philandering and obvious lack of marital fidelity. Ultimately, the intervention may lead to divorce procedures, which are quite likely in this case.16 When Lysimachus, having interrupted his oath,17 turns back to Dorippa, he sees that she too has gone off, leaving him alone onstage. His physical loneliness is an excellent illustration of how isolated and cut off from the rest of his family he is and how lost he must feel, being worried about what the outcome may be when Dorippa’s father arrives and confronts him. The audience too will now probably expect a scene in which her father appears and puts things straight one way or another.
13 Cf. e.g. the use of the plural at Ter. Eun. 48 meretricum contumelias, referring to one meretrix, with Donatus’ explanation ad loc. (p. 279.2–3 Wessner) cum uni sit iratus, de omnibus queritur. 14 For the various connotations of scortum, cf. Francesca Mencacci, “Scortum. La pelle, il sacco e la ‘prostituta’,” Micrologus 13 (2005), pp. 91–112, esp. 105 (“persona che si prostituisce dal punto di vista di chi la frequenta e dell’uso che se ne fa: come semplice ventre, appunto, sacco di pelle che si può riempire a proprio piacimento”). 15 On the text of 771, see Adrian S. Gratwick (ed.), Plautus: Menaechmi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 210–11, whose conjecture is adopted here. 16 Cf. e.g. Antony Augoustakis, “Castrate the He-Goat! Overpowering the paterfamilias in Plautus’ Mercator,” Scholia 17 (2008), p. 44. 17 On possible religious implications of interrupting oneself when performing sacred rites onstage, see Boris Dunsch, “Religion in der römischen Komödie: Einige programmatische Überlegungen,” in: Andreas Bendlin, Jörg Rüpke (eds.), Römische Religion im historischen Wandel: Diskursentwicklung von Plautus bis Ovid (= Potsdamer Altertumswissenschaftliche Beiträge 17) (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2009), pp. 42–4, and “Religion in Roman Comedy,” in: Michael Fontaine, Adele Scafuro (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2014).
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To the spectators’ surprise, Lysimachus is never confronted by his father-in-law. With regard to the play’s dramaturgy, we have been led up the garden path in a typically Plautine fashion. Instead, Syra returns after a short while. Her absence is covered by no more than 12 lines, the remainder of Lysimachus’ speech. The old nurse announces that she has not met Dorippa’s father, because he has left—what a coincidence—to stay in the countryside. Before she can tell her mistress that, she meets her former nursling Eutychus and tells him about the recent events (803–16): SY. Era quo me misit, ad patrem, non est domi: rus abiisse aibant. nunc domum renuntio. EV. defessus sum urbem totam pervenarier: nihil investigo quicquam de illa muliere. sed mater rure rediit, nam video Syram astare ante aedis. Syra! SY. quis est, qui me vocat? EV. erus atque alumnus tuos sum. SY. salve, alumnule. EV. iam mater rure rediit? responde mihi. SY. cum quidem salute familiai maxuma. EV. quid istuc negotist? SY. tuos pater bellissumus amicam adduxit intro in aedis. EV. quo modo? SY. adveniens mater rure eam offendit domi. EV. pol hau censebam istarum esse operarum patrem. etiam nunc mulier intust? SY. etiam. EV. sequere me.
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SY. Where my mistress sent me, to her father—he isn’t at home. They kept saying he’d gone to the country. Now I take this message back to our home. EU. I’m tired out with hunting through the entire city: I can’t find out the slightest bit about that woman. But my mother has returned from the country, for I see Syra standing in front of our house. Syra! SY. Who is it that calls me? EU. I’m your master and your nursling. SY. Greetings, little nursling! EU. Has my mother returned from the country already? Answer me. SY. Indeed, to the greatest benefit of the family. EU. What does that mean? SY. Your most upright father has brought a mistress into the house. EU. What! SY. When your mother arrived from the country, she discovered her at home. EU. By Pollux, I’d never have thought that my father would do such things. Is the woman still inside now? SY. Yes. EU. Follow me. [Eutychus off.]
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In terms of the dramaturgy of Mercator, there are good reasons why Syra’s errand was not (and could not have been) successful. If she had succeeded in fetching Dorippa’s father, the additional character would have complicated the action of the play without making it more interesting or fun to watch. With another interested and emotionally involved party present onstage, it would have been more difficult to bring about a credible solution within the bounds of verisimilitude. Bringing on Dorippa’s father would also be superfluous from the perspective of dramatic economy, for what could he add to the condemnations of Lysimachus’ behavior that has not already been said
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by Dorippa or Syra? Moreover, since Lysimachus will not be punished in the end in any case, Dorippa’s father would be just one more figure to be placated by Eutychus. All this would make the play longer but would not add to its thematic interest or comic potential. Even more important, Syra is needed to tell Eutychus about his father’s amorous involvement, as no other character who knows about it is available to do that at this moment: Lysimachus would obviously not confess;18 Dorippa would be put in a very embarrassing situation if she had to tell her son about his father’s lewdness, so decorum speaks against bringing her on again; and the cook has already left, and there is no good excuse to let him return so soon. When Syra tells Eutychus about Lysimachus’ “girlfriend,” he is surprised to hear that his father would get up to such tricks (815) and seems to have an inkling that the stranger may in fact be Charinus’ girl. So he goes to see her and, if he is right, probably hopes to set matters straight again for his family and his friend Charinus. Interestingly, Syra uses amica to refer to the strange woman in the house, a term that implies a more permanent relationship with Lysimachus than other words for “prostitute” would.19 She probably does so with the intention of adding force to his culpability. From the way she phrases her statement, one can infer that Lysimachus has not only brought a strange woman into his family home (which would be bad enough), but a woman he intends to keep for an undefined period of time—making his offence and his shamelessness all the graver.
The Structure and Style of Syra’s Monologue Let us now turn to the monologue itself: Ecastor lege dura vivont mulieres multoque iniquiore miserae quam viri. nam si vir scortum duxit clam uxorem suam, id si rescivit uxor, inpunest viro; uxor virum si clam domo egressa est foras, viro fit caussa, exigitur matrumonio. utinam lex esset eadem, quae uxori est, viro; nam uxor contenta est, quae bona est, uno viro: qui minus vir una uxore contentus siet? ecastor faxim, si itidem plectantur viri, si quis clam uxorem duxerit scortum suam, ut illae exiguntur, quae in se culpam commerent, plures viri sint vidui quam nunc mulieres.
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18 Cf. Eckard Lefèvre, Plautus und Philemon, ScriptOralia 73 (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1995), pp. 16, 51, but with a different overall theory about the original plot structure. 19 Cf. Merc. 923–5, where Eutychus picks the word up and contrasts it with scortum; see James N. Adams, “Words for ‘Prostitute’ in Latin,” Rheinisches Museum 126 (1983), p. 326.
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By Castor, women live under a hard condition, and much more unfair, poor things, than men. For if a husband has picked up a whore, unbeknown to his wife, and if his wife finds that out, it’s not punishable to the husband. If a wife steps out of her home, unbeknown to her husband, the husband has a case, and she is expelled from the marriage. If only there was the same condition for the husband as for the wife! For a wife, who is good, is content with one husband; how should a husband be less content with one wife? By Castor, I’d guarantee20 that, if husbands were punished in the same way —if one has picked up a whore unbeknown to his wife— as those [wives] are expelled [from marriage] who have accumulated guilt, that there would be more ex-husbands than there are now ex-wives.
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Syra’s monologue is a good example of pre-classical set-piece rhetoric in Rome.21 It deals with women, and it is the mulieres who have the first and the last line—literally, as the word is placed at the ends of 817 and 829, resulting in a ring composition that embraces the entire monologue.22 The monologue also deals with men, who are also put in their place, literally again, in the form of emphatically repeated disyllabic words at line-end in a balanced composition: viro in 820, 823 and 824, and viri in 818 and 826. In fact, the entire speech is a great feast for structuralists. Three words are used to refer to females: mulier—scortum—uxor. The term mulier is “totally neutral”23 when referring to women in general, as here, indicating no more than that a woman has reached physical maturity.24 By contrast, scortum, although not a vulgarism,25 is an evaluative term, an impolite way of referring to a prostitute, originally meaning “leather” or “hide.” Use of it implies that the prostitute is no more than a material to be used, formed and worked through.26 The word uxor, on the other hand, denotes a 20 It could almost be translated “I bet.” For the “folksy tone” of ego faxim, see David Christenson (ed.), Plautus: Amphitruo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 232 on Amph. 511. 21 Cf. Jürgen Blänsdorf, Archaische Gedankengänge in den Komödien des Plautus, Hermes Einzelschrift 20 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1967), pp. 183–5, who focuses on the antithetical character of the monologue. 22 Cf. Paolo Bertini, “Per una grammatica della poesia plautina: tre tipi di costruzione del monologo,” Materiali e Discussioni 14 (1985), p. 71. 23 Francesca Santoro L’Hoir, The Rhetoric of Gender Terms. ‘Man’, ‘Woman’, and the Portrayal of Character in Latin Prose, Mnemosyne Suppl. 120 (Leiden, New York, Cologne: Brill, 1992), p. 32; cf. also Rosario López Gregoris, El amor en la comedia latina: Análisis léxico y semantico, Bibliotheca Linguae Latinae 3 (Madrid: Ediciones Clásicas, 2002), pp. 170–1. 24 See Adams, Words (above, n. 19), p. 345 n. 70. 25 See Adams, Words (above, n. 19), p. 326. 26 See Mencacci, Scortum (above, n. 14); Adams, Words (above, n. 19), pp. 322–3. Together with mercimonium, andrapodon and some other words of neuter gender, scortum belongs to a group of dehumanizing terms pejoratively referring to human beings that are not atypical of Greek and Latin usage. The fact that in Mercator “father and son evaluate the … slave woman as a human merchandise,
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married woman.27 In the course of the monologue, scortum and uxor are used to demarcate a binary opposition within the female gender between “whore” and “wife,” i.e. between females practising extra-marital as opposed to intra-marital sex.28 This opposition is carefully placed in 819 (scortum—clam uxorem) and 827 (clam uxorem— scortum), in the third and the third but last lines of the monologue, mirroring one another, while the terms themselves are chiastically arranged, so that uxorem suam in 819 and scortum suam in 827 are found at almost the same metrical position at linecadence. The other binary opposition is not established within a gender but between uxor and vir, “wife” and “husband,” male and female partners in marriage. This opposition is found at 820 (uxor—viro), 821 (uxor—virum clam), 823 (uxori—viro), 824 (uxor—viro) and 825 (vir—uxore). As one can see from this, the opposition between husband and wife is at the core of this speech.29 In 818 and 829, however, viri is used in opposition to mulieres and denotes the sexually mature male. So Syra’s speech about the marital double standard is framed by lines that invite the audience to think of husband and wife simply as man and woman; the symmetry of the speech reinforces the claim that both are equal in principle and can expect equal rights and equal treatment. The speech has a clear structure. Syra establishes the general thesis of her argument in the first two lines (817–18), which are heightened in tone and suggest the beginning of a moralising digression of high pathos. This impression is reinforced by the meter: a significant bunching of disyllabic line-ends can be observed in this passage (818 viri, 819 suam, 820 viro, 821 foras, 823 and 824 viro, 825 siet, 826 viri, 827 suam). The main part of Syra’s monologue falls into two sections (819–22 and 824–9) divided by line 823, which is also the center of the monologue. Moreover, the two sections are formally marked off by nam (819 and 824, each time introducing illustrations of the thesis established at 817–8).30 They are also linked by a repetition of key terms (like scortum ducere, clam uxorem, exigere31) and themes (marital fidelity,
or chattel” is emphasized by Roberta Stewart, Plautus (above, n. 10), pp. 26–37; cf. already Boris Dunsch, Commerciante (above, n. 6), p. 39 and passim on “la ripetuta designazione della schiava Pasicompsa quale merce in vendita, che è comprata e venduta.” 27 The fourth term that might be used to refer to females—femina—is conspicuously absent. In Cicero’s lexicon, femina always has positive attributes, while mulier is often accompanied by pejorative terms. Similar tendencies have been observed in Plautus; cf. Santoro L’Hoir, Rhetoric (above, n. 23), pp. 29– 33. 28 Cf. 819 scortum—clam uxorem, 827 clam uxorem—scortum. 29 Cf. Bertini, Grammatica (above, n. 22), pp. 71–2, who notes further plays on words and sounds in this speech. 30 On nam in Plautus, see Blänsdorf, Gedankengänge (above, n. 21), pp. 80–8. According to Wallace M. Lindsay, Syntax of Plautus (Oxford: Parker, 1907), p. 100, nam “often introduces a particular instance of a general statement.” 31 For exigere, “divorce (a wife),” e.g. Ter. Hec. 242; “put (a husband) out,” e.g. Plaut. Mil.glor. 1277; cf. OLD s.v. exigo 1c. The verb works both ways and is thus the perfect choice in the context of Syra’s speech.
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unequal punishment of husbands and wives for offences of a different degree of seriousness, and divorce procedures). And there is an element of controlled emotionality in the monologue, with ecastor (817) repeated at 826, underlining the “emotional” state of the old nurse.32 The rhetorical ring of the speech is reinforced by the legal terminology employed by the nurse, almost as if she were pleading a case in an imaginary courtroom. Right at the beginning, she mentions the lex dura multoque iniquior, the hard lot or condition under which women suffer, which, although not referring to a specific law, has undertones of a social norm. Yet the word lex should not be understood in the specific sense “law”33 but as “condition,” “state” or, to use a similarly legalistic expression, “term.” Indeed, the OLD, perhaps slightly over-reaching the tone of this passage, offers “a principle inherent in the nature of a thing, a condition of existence.”34 Taking lex to mean “condition” rids us immediately of the somewhat unhappy (if not awkward) logic of the statement, which although it purports to have a legalistic ring, is not really concerned with legal matters in 824–5 but with the relationship between husband and wife. Continuing her use of legal language, Syra talks about the absence of punishment (impunest viro) and about a legal cause (caussa) for divorce (exigitur matrumonio). She then returns to the lex motif, stating her wish that the same standard should apply to both wives and husbands. The reason she gives for this is an argument from analogy, in which she inverts the principle of the uxor univira and applies it to husbands, who she would like to see turn into viri unuxorii.35 The punishment motif is then picked up again (plectantur36), together with the divorce motif (exiguntur). The final line of the monologue is a true punch-line, in that it contains an unexpected twist that opens a window on a different social reality. If husbands were punished for marital infidelity with the same harshness and consequence women are, Syra says, more men would be without a partner (vidui) than women are now.
32 Cf. Merc. 673, where we are told that she is 84 years old. 33 In studies concerned with this passage, it is often understood and translated “law;” cf. e.g. Kathleen McCarthy, Slaves, Masters, and the Art of Authority in Plautine Comedy (Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 67–8, 134 n. 31 (“legislative proposal”); Ekkehard Stärk, Die Menaechmi des Plautus und kein griechisches Original, ScriptOralia 11 (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1989), pp. 57–8; Duckworth, Nature (above, n. 8), p. 300. Likewise, the lex pronounced at Merc. 1015–24 should rather be taken in the non-technical sense “term, condition, rule” (see OLD s.v. 5a); for this usage, cf. e.g. Stich. 503–4. On the non-technical use of lex in Mercator, cf. Dunsch, Commerciante (above, n. 16), p. 23 n. 31. 34 OLD s.v. lex 8; cf. also Adrianus J. Kleywegt (ed.), Valerius Flaccus: Argonautica Book 1. A Commentary, Mnemosyne Suppl. 262 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 481–2 (on dura … lege at Val. Flacc. 1.832–3): “In most cases it denotes ‘strict conditions imposed’, only one referring to actual ‘law’: Cic. Off. 2.75.” 35 Cf. Lefèvre, Plautus (above, n. 18), p. 51. 36 Plectere in the sense “punish” is used only here in Plautus; it means “beat” or “buffet” at Ter. Phorm. 220. The first post-Plautine instance of its legal application is Cic. Cluent. 5; see OLD s.v.
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The double standard Syra complains of is in fact expressed in a contemporary text, Cato’s speech De dote, of which Gellius has preserved two fragments at Noct. Att. 10.23.4–5 (= Cato or. fr. 200–1 Sblendorio Cugusi): Verba Marci Catonis adscripsi ex oratione quae inscribitur ‘de dote’, in qua id quoque scriptum est, in adulterio uxores deprehensas ius fuisse maritis necare: ‘Vir’, inquit, ‘cum divortium fecit, mulieri iudex pro censore est, imperium quod videtur habet, si quid perverse taetreque factum est a muliere; multatur, si vinum bibit; si cum alieno viro probri quid fecit, condemnatur.’ De iure autem occidendi ita scriptum: ‘In adulterio uxorem tuam si prehendisses, sine iudicio inpune necares; illa te, si adulterares sive tu adulterarere, digito non auderet contingere, neque ius est.’ I have copied the words of M. Cato from a speech called ‘On the Dowry,’ in which it is also written that husbands had the right to kill their wives caught in adultery: ‘When a husband,’ he says, ‘has divorced his wife, he judges the woman like a censor, and has full power to act as seems fit, if some wrong or turpitude has been committed by the woman. She is punished, if she drinks wine; if she has committed something shameful with another man, she is condemned to death.’ Further, on the right to kill her, it is thus written: ‘If you should have caught your wife in adultery, you could kill her without trial and with impunity; but if you should commit adultery actively or passively, she should not dare to touch you with a finger, and it is not lawful.’
Should this fragment from Cato mirror social reality at all, Syra’s silence about this outrageous difference in treatment between men and women in Rome would be remarkable. Why does she make nothing of such a blatant injustice? Is it perhaps because Syra’s speech is in fact a thinly-veiled Philemonian monologue unconcerned with what goes on in Rome? This leads to the question of Plautus’ source(s).
Plautine Quellenforschung: Greek Background and Roman Transformations A much debated question in Plautine Quellenforschung is whether the theme of Syra’s speech is Greek or Roman in origin and whether the passage is “Plautine” or “nonPlautine,” i.e. either adapted from Philemon’s Emporos, which is confessedly Plautus’ Greek model,37 or made up by Plautus from scratch. Some have argued for Plautine authorship38 or for contaminatio with a passage taken from another Greek
37 Cf. Merc. 9–10, and see Eric W. Handley, “Plautus and his Public: Some Thoughts on New Comedy in Latin,” Dioniso 57 (1975), p. 119. 38 Cf. e.g. Lefèvre, Plautus (above, n. 18), pp. 51–2, recently supported by Ferdinand Stürner, Monologe bei Plautus: Ein Beitrag zur Dramaturgie der hellenistisch-römischen Komödie, Hermes Einzelschrift 103 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2011), p. 91. In the present volume, Lefèvre (pp. 223–34) renews the emphasis he has put on Plautus’ independence and inventiveness on many previous occasions. Even if the extent to which native Italiote forms of comic entertainment influenced Plautus will probably
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play,39 others for Plautus’ faithful rendering of a Philemonian monologue,40 while a very few have claimed post-Plautine authorship.41 The question is far from trivial, for the answer given to it will likely influence our appraisal of Philemon’s as well as Plautus’ wider outlook on contemporary society and the role women played in it, including the extent to which the passage reflects Athenian and/or Roman law.42 It is common knowledge that the marital double standard Syra complains so vigorously about was a fact of life in Athenian as well as Roman society. During different periods, the intensity with which this double standard was enforced may have varied, but the fundamental concepts of adultery and premarital sex remained the same. In what follows, some of the more important references to marital behavior, possible misconduct and the husband-wife relationship found in Greek tragedy and comedy will be surveyed. The main topic of Syra’s monologue is familiar enough from Greek tragedy, and it stands to reason that speeches of similar length and theme were also delivered in New Comedy.43 The standard outlook on married life in Greek drama is perhaps most poignantly expressed in the first epeisodion of Euripides’ Andromache, where the nomos of marital life—a term not accidentally reminiscent of Syra’s lex—is contrasted with the physis of barbarian marriages in an agon and subsequent stichomythia between Hermione and Andromache (147–273). In Hermione’s eyes, Greece is a land of strict but happy marital ties. Things are ordered by nomos (176) and kept on a tight rein (178). The marital tie is a conventional one since it does not derive from relations of
remain unknown forever, the present analysis of Syra’s monologue shows how creatively he tailored the adaptations of his Greek models to the needs and expectations of his audience. 39 Cf. Gilbert Norwood, Plautus and Terence (New York: Longmans, Green, 1932), p. 40: “This looks like an insertion by Plautus of a striking passage in Menander’s Arbitration. It can hardly have belonged to Philemon’s play.” Thematically, a speech like Syra’s, though of course not spoken by a nurse, might fit Menander’s Epitrepontes, but after looking at the remains of the play, I remain unsure where it should be put and who should speak it. For an analysis of the relevant passages in Epitrepontes, cf. Ariana Traill, Women and the Comic Plot in Menander (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 179–88, 205–23; Susan Lape, Reproducing Athens: Menander’s Comedy, Democratic Culture, and the Hellenistic City (Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 246–52. 40 Cf. e.g. Friedrich Leo, Plautinische Forschungen (Berlin: Weidmann, 1912), pp. 115–21; Peter P. Spranger, Historische Untersuchungen zu den Sklavenfiguren bei Plautus und Terenz, Forschungen zur antiken Sklaverei 17 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1984), p. 108 n. 2. 41 See Otto Zwierlein, Zur Kritik und Exegese des Plautus IV: Bacchides, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz, Abhandlungen der geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse, Jahrgang 1992, 4 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1992), p. 334, who calls the monologue an “unausgegorenen Zusatz.” 42 On the methodological difficulties involved in this, cf. Richard P. Saller, “The Social Dynamics of Consent to Marriage and Sexual Relations: The Evidence of Roman Comedy,” in: Angeliki E. Laiou (ed.), Consent and Coercion to Sex and Marriage in Ancient and Medieval Societies (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, 1993), pp. 84–5. 43 Cf. Leo, Forschungen (above, n. 40), pp. 117–19.
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blood, and the insistence on keeping it in its full strictness is a mark of Hellenic civilization.44 Among the barbarians, by contrast, all is unrestrained physis. The use of this terminology points to the physis-nomos debate conducted by the sophists in the context of their theory of society in the 5th century BCE and kept alive by the various schools of Hellenistic philosophy in the 4th century and beyond.45 The term nomos occurs also in a very different context, in the Papyrus Didot I (= com. fr. adesp. 1000), line 14, despite the attribution to Euripides on the margin of the papyrus probably an excerpt from a comedy by an unknown playwright, by some believed to be Menander,46 where a woman, most likely a wife asked by her father to leave her husband, states her marriage ideals (14–6): The established rule (keimenos nomos) for husband and wife is that he should always cherish the one he has, and she should do what pleases her husband.47
In tragedy, it is (in the words of Malcolm Heath) “a commonplace that the marriage bed is a woman’s most vulnerable point, the thing she will fight most vigorously to protect.”48 In the first epeisodion of Euripides’ Medea, for example, the heroine, a foreigner like Andromache and, in fact, Syra, delivers one of the most remarkable accounts of the second-class status of women found in ancient literature (Med. 214– 66), complaining to the chorus of Corinthian women about the dowry system, men’s
44 Paul D. Kovacs, The Andromache of Euripides: An Interpretation, American Philological Studies 6 (Chico: Scholars Press, 1980), p. 57. Cf. also Laura McClure, Spoken Like a Woman: Speech and Gender in Athenian Drama (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 170–83; William Allan, The Andromache and Euripidean Tragedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 161–95; Donald J. Mastronarde, The Art of Euripides: Dramatic Technique and Social Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 275–9. 45 Cf. George B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 139–62, esp. 159–62; Desmond Conacher, Euripides and the Sophists: Some Dramatic Treatments of Philosophical Ideas (London: Duckworth, 1998), pp. 84–9. 46 Cf. Traill, Women (above, n. 39), pp. 213–21. The attribution to Menander is doubtful; W. Geoffrey Arnott (ed.), Menander. Volume III, Loeb Classical Library 460 (Cambridge Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. 414–16, is probably right in following Wilamowitz’ appraisal of the 44 lines of the papyrus as “the work of a third-rate comic poet with pseudo-tragic ambitions.” 47 Cf. also Men. Dysc. 308–9. 48 Malcolm Heath, The Poetics of Greek Tragedy (London: Duckworth, 1987), p. 160 (on Soph. Trach. 536–40, 545–51). Cf. also Synnøve des Bouvrie, Women in Greek Tragedy: An Anthropological Approach, Symbolae Osloenses Suppl. 27 (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1990), pp. 48–56; Helene P. Foley, Female Acts in Greek Tragedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 65–6, 84–5, and passim; Judith Mossman, “Women’s Voices,” in: Justina Gregory (ed.), A Companion to Greek Tragedy (Malden, Oxford, Carlton: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 352–65; Cheryl A. Cox, “Women and Family in Menander,” in: Sharon L. James, Sheila Dillon (eds.), A Companion to Women in the Ancient World (Malden, Oxford, Carlton, 2012), pp. 278–87.
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control of women’s bodies, and wives’ lonely isolation at home. Divorce, she says, brings discredit only for the wife, not for the husband (236–7). She even asserts that giving birth to a single child is worse than standing three times in the front line of battle (250–1).49 Another striking example is Procne’s denunciation of her experience of marriage in Sophocles’ Tereus, like Medea a drama of infanticide. Procne’s husband had raped and mutilated her sister, and she complains on behalf of women (fr. 583.6–12): When we reach puberty and can understand, we are thrust out and sold, away from our ancestors’ gods and our parents, some to strange men (xenous andras), some to foreigners (barbarous), some to joyless houses, some to hostile. And all this, once one night (euphronê mia) has yoked us to our husband, we are forced to praise and say that it is well.
10
Interestingly, this time the complaining woman is a Greek not a barbarian, but by marriage to the Thracian king Tereus, she is just as much a displaced person and foreigner as are Andromache, Medea—and Syra. Edith Hall suggests that a reading sensitive to tragedy’s portrayal of relations between men and women sees signs that male disrespect towards women in the sphere of the household met the same disapproval in the theatre as in reality. For however pervasive the sexual double standard in tragedy, as in Athenian life, … there is an immanent rule discernible in the genre by which the instalment of a concubine in the marital home is strictly censured.50
Perhaps an even closer similarity can be observed between Syra’s complaint and the one made by Clytemnestra in Euripides’ Electra, when she discusses Agamemnon bringing a concubine into their home (1035–40): Indeed, women are a foolish lot, I don’t deny it. But when a husband goes astray—for this is what can happen— and spurns his own bed, a wife is quite ready to do the same (mimeisthai) as her husband and acquire another friend.
1035
49 According to Edith Hall, “The Sociology of Athenian Tragedy,” in: Patricia E. Easterling (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 121, this “speech’s explosive political potential caused it to be recited at meetings in Edwardian London in support of women’s suffrage.” On lines 236–7 as the clearest indication of the sexual double standard, see Donald J. Mastronarde (ed.), Euripides: Medea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 210–11, who refers to the Didot papyrus and Anaxandr. fr. 57. Wide-ranging analogies between Mercator and Medea have been drawn by Bianco, Paratragedia (above, n. 1), pp. 119–47, not all of them convincing. 50 Hall, Sociology (above, n. 49), p. 121–2.
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Then reproach puts us in the limelight, while the guilty husbands get no bad name.
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This essentially means that wives cannot reciprocate if their husbands cheat on them, at least not without incurring a moral censure not applied in cases of male adultery. In fact, the situation was even worse in reality: a husband could go to a brothel in broad daylight in both Athens and Rome, and no one—least of all his wife—could prevent him from doing so. So there is not really any need to act clam uxorem, as Syra describes it, at least from a strictly legal perspective. By contrast, if a wife, at least one belonging to the higher stratum of society in Rome or—much worse—in Athens, went out unattended, this could well constitute due cause for divorce, along with all the unpleasant, especially financial, consequences. Yet visiting a brothel is one thing, bringing a potential female rival to live under the same roof as one’s wife, quite another—although again, legally there does not seem to have been any sanction even against that kind of behavior. But the law is not everything; important voices in Greek ethics condemned a husband’s “affairs outside the home” (thyraze synousiai) and openly displayed adultery, namely Plato (Leg. 841c– 842a), Aristotle (Pol. VII.5, 1335b38–1336a2) and the pseudo-Aristotelian Oeconomica (I.4, 1344a11–13; about what the Pythagoreans call koinos nomos in the treatment of one’s wife). What happens to men in tragedy when they bring a female stranger into their house? As we see in several plays, there is only one possible outcome. Every husband who attempts something like this suffers a violent death shortly afterward. This is the case with Aeschylus’ Agamemnon in the play by the same title, Heracles in Sophocles’ Trachinian Women, and Neoptolemus in Euripides’ Andromache.51 It is worth noting that Dorippa thinks that her husband Lysimachus has behaved exactly like the heroes from tragedy just mentioned, i.e. he actually picked up a strange woman of dubious background and introduced her into the family home (Merc. 785–6): Nec pol ego patiar seic me nuptam tam male measque in aedis seic scorta obductarier. By Pollux, I won’t endure that I’m thus now so badly wed, and into my abode thus sluts are introduced.
And indeed, although poor Lysimachus does not have to fear being stabbed in the bathtub like Agamemnon, he faces potentially unpleasant consequences, which may
51 See Hall, Sociology (above, n. 49), pp. 121–2. The figure of Clytemnestra in Electra differs, insofar as she puts forward an excuse that does not fit her own situation, cf. Martin J. Cropp (ed.), Euripides: Electra (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1988), p. 171 (on lines 1036–8): “This specious excuse (echoing A. Cho. 918–20) is inapplicable to Cl.’s own case; her adultery with Aeg. preceded Ag.’s return.”
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ultimately result in divorce and financial loss due to his obligation to repay the dowry he received upon marrying Dorippa. Such plots were likely familiar to Roman audiences before Plautus, through the dramatic works of Livius Andronicus (Aegistus, Tereus), Naevius (Danae) and probably others as well.52 Of special interest in this context is a fragment from a slightly later, post-Plautine tragedy, Accius’ Tereus (fr. 647–8 Ribbeck = 643–4 Warmington), which effectively brings out the gender tensions immanent in this mythological subject: Video ego te, mulier, more multarum utier, ut vim contendas tuam ad maiestatem viri. I see that you, woman, act like many women in violently fighting a husband’s sovereignty.53
As far as we can tell from a comparative analysis of the key themes of Syra’s monologue in Greek drama, therefore, her complaint about a double standard in dealing with extramarital affairs could be either Greek or Roman in origin, as has been rightly stated e.g. by Adele Scafuro.54 Philemon may have taken his cue from philosophical debates on marriage, just as he is known to have dramatised Peripatetic ethics in his Thesaurus.55 But Plautus could equally well have been influenced by a different dramatisation of the topic of the double standard and have decided to beef up his adaptation of Mercator by inserting a showpiece made up of free-floating commonplaces. All in all, therefore, thematic analysis cannot provide hard-and-fast criteria to decide one way or the other.
Syra’s Monologue: Transposed or Re-Worked? Over and above thematic analysis, it has been argued that Syra’s speech is a Plautine addition because of its purportedly awkward position in the text. After Eutychus’ command “follow me” (816), the expectation of the average theater-goer would
52 For Livius and Naevius, see e.g. Otto Ribbeck, Die römische Tragödie im Zeitalter der Republik (Leipzig: Teubner, 1875), pp. 28–31 (Aegistus), 35–40 (Tereus), 53–5 (Danae); Anthony J. Boyle, An Introduction to Roman Tragedy (London, New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 30–3 (Aegistus). 53 Text and translation follow Boyle (above, n. 52), p. 135. Accius’ tragedy was probably based on Sophocles’ play, cf. Dana F. Sutton, The Lost Sophocles (Lanham, New York, London: University Press of America, 1984), pp. 130–2. For a reconstruction of the Accian play, see Akiko Kiso, The Lost Sophocles (New York, Washington, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago: Vantage Press, 1984), pp. 51–86. 54 See Scafuro, Forensic Stage (above, n. 3), p. 235. 55 On this, cf. Elaine Fantham, “Philemon’s Thesauros as a Dramatisation of Peripatetic Ethics,” Hermes 105 (1977), pp. 406–21.
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probably be for Syra to leave the stage with no delay. Instead, she lingers on and delivers her homily. This is contrary to how such exits are generally handled in Greek drama. This is the main reason several scholars since Friedrich Bothe, including Friedrich Ritschl, have suggested transposing the speech to after 804.56 But delayed exits are not exceptional in New Comedy; they are commonly used to “contribute to characterization” or to “introduce important scenes.”57 Syra’s monologue has thus not been displaced and so become dysfunctional. On the contrary, it has been quite efficiently placed, as the very defeat of the spectators’ expectations draws attention to what the old woman has to say. In addition, the extended presence of the nurse onstage is needed, together with Charinus’ monologue (830–42), to cover Eutychus’ visit to his father’s house.58 A weightier argument in favor of Plautine re-working (or insertion of a passage from another play) is that Syra’s speech is, partly at least, off the mark. When she complains that adulterous husbands are not punished (820), while wives are “driven out of the marriage” (822), this is contrary to what has just happened onstage. Has she not been sent to fetch Dorippa’s father with the aim of initiating a divorce? Has Lysimachus not reacted with great fear to this prospect?59 The old nurse seems to go off on a tangent, and to this extent, her speech is indeed “verbal horseplay.”60 I therefore tend to agree with those who detect at least some, perhaps much Plautine re-working in this passage. Another reason for this is that, although we know that Philemon is in principle fond of homespun pseudo-philosophizing, “verbal horseplay” cast in appropriate topoi,61 and antithetical structures and fanciful wordplay,62 the text of Syra’s monologue has such a complex structure and its word-plays seem so well-attuned to the sound of the Latin language, that it is hard to believe that a close rendering of a corresponding speech in the Greek play of Philemon would work so well in the target language.
56 For details, see Enk, Plauti Mercator (above, n. 11), p. 163. 57 Cf. K.B. Frost, Exits and Entrances in Menander (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 15. 58 Cf. Timothy J. Moore, The Theater of Plautus: Playing to the Audience (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), p. 164; John H. Starks Jr., “servitus, sudor, sitis: Syra and Syrian Slave. Stereotyping in Plautus’ Mercator,” New England Classical Journal 37 (2010), p. 61. On dramatic time, cf. Lowe, Notes (above, n. 5), p. 149. 59 Cf. Norwood, Plautus (above, n. 39), p. 40: “Lysimachus at any rate is being punished by Dorippa’s anger and reproaches; above all, she sends for her father, which certainly means that she contemplates his transferring herself and her dowry from Lysimachus’ control to his own.” 60 For the phrase, cf. John N. Hough, “Plautine Technique in Delayed Exits,” Classical Philology 35 (1940), p. 39. 61 Cf. Hildebrecht Hommel, “Zur Toposfreudigkeit des Philemon, Dichters der Nea,” Grazer Beiträge 11 (1984), pp. 89–93. 62 Cf. Luca Bruzzese, Studi su Filemone comico, Prosopa 3 (Lecce: Pensa MultiMedia, 2011), pp. 58–74, 247–69.
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Another important point, forcefully raised by Eckard Lefèvre,63 is that the ideal of the uxor univira is very much a Roman concept.64 In the way in which the concept is phrased here by Syra, however, it is comically undercut: of course a husband cannot —by definition—have more than a single uxor at one time, unless he is a bigamist, so the entire point about qui minus vir una uxore contentus siet is lost. A husband can, by legal definition, only have one uxor; he may not be content with her, but that does not mean that, if he has sex with another woman, this woman becomes a second uxor, unless in a strictly transfigurative sense uncommon in early Latin.65
Freedom of Movement: Greek or Roman? In addition to the complexity and the univira theme of Syra’s monologue, another possible indication of the “Greekness” (or “Romanness”) of the speech is how the question of freedom of movement is dealt with. At 821–2, Syra utters the following complaint: Uxor virum si clam domo egressa est foras, viro fit caussa, exigitur matrumonio. If a wife steps out of her home, unbeknown to her husband, the husband has a case, and she is expelled from the marriage.
This sounds like the daily situation of the average upper-class Athenian woman, who led a more secluded and sheltered existence than her counterpart in Rome. Women peering out of windows or from behind doors are not only a topos in Aristophanic comedy66 but a social and cultural phenomenon still characteristic of countries where women generally live sequestered lives (or have done so until
63 Cf. Lefèvre, Plautus (above, n. 18), p. 51. 64 Cf. e.g. Marie-Luise Deißmann, “Aufgaben, Rollen und Räume von Mann und Frau im antiken Rom,” in: Jochen Martin, Renate Zoepffel (eds.), Aufgaben, Rollen und Räume von Frau und Mann: Teilband 2 (= Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für historische Anthropologie 5/2) (Munich: Karl Alber, 1989), pp. 514–17. The contrast to the Greek monandros is emphasized by e.g. Hermann Funke, “Univira: Ein Beispiel heidnischer Geschichtsapologetik,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 8/9 (1965/1966), pp. 183–8. 65 Cf. James N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London: Duckworth, 1982), pp. 160–1. 66 The implication of passages from Aristophanic comedy like Pax 979–85 and Th. 797–9 is that a respectable woman could not even look out of her front door or window without running the risk of attracting unwanted attention or accusations about her sexual availability; cf. S. Douglas Olson (ed.), Aristophanes: Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 257. Cf. also S. Douglas Olson (ed.), Broken Laughter: Select Fragments of Greek Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 335 on Men. fr. 804.10: “[…] a genuinely ‘good’ woman never steps outside the courtyard door of her house, but remains sitting […] quietly within.”
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recently). In addition, the sexes were generally more strongly segregated from one another in Athens,67 whereas the movements of Roman women appear to have been less restricted.68 Several passages in Plautus suggest that matronae could move freely outside, especially when attended by a comes. Earlier in Mercator, for example, Demipho maintains that it would be impossible for Pasicompsa to be his wife’s servant-in-attendance, because her extreme good looks would elicit staring, wolfwhistles and naughty gestures from male passers-by (403–11).69 Moreover, the very fact that Dorippa, attended by Syra, comes back from the countryside to check on Demipho (667–9) shows that the concept of “freedom of movement for women” for purposes other than ceremonial (or other strictly defined types) was not alien to a Roman audience. The sentiment expressed by Syra is thus “Greek” rather than “Roman.” In this context, it should also be noted that the expression virum … clam in line 821 of Syra’s speech could hint at bad intent by the woman who leaves the house. The phrase clam uxorem occurs without exception in references to male adultery in Plautus, just as clam virum, though much less frequent (eleven times vs. three),70 is always found in contexts of a wife’s unfaithfulness. The expression can thus perhaps be taken here as a euphemism for adultery. Female adultery was a real enough phenomenon in classical Athens, but also a constant source of anxiety and fantasy in Aristophanes’ male characters.71
Helpless Wives, Powerful Husbands and Harsh Laws? If what Syra says was true, it would not easily square with the fact that old men in love with prostitutes in comedy do their utmost to prevent their wives from finding out about their affairs. Indeed, the verb resciscere, “find out,” is almost tantamount to a
67 Cf. Kenneth J. Dover, Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Indianapolis, Cambridge: Hackett, 1994), pp. 209–13. 68 Cf. David Wiles, “Marriage and Prostitution in Classical New Comedy,” in: James Redmond (ed.), Women in Theatre, Themes in Drama 11 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 41: “Roman wives did not live the sequestered lives of Athenian women.” 69 In the context of this passage, the ugliness of “a Syrian or Egyptian” (415) slave, whom Demipho promises to buy instead, is contrasted with Pasicompsa’s beauty. This can be read as a nice ironic foreshadowing of Syra’s later appearance and as preparing her as a contrast figure set against the courtesan; cf. Starks, Syra (above, n. 58), p. 53. 70 clam uxorem: As. 942; Cas. 95 (clam me, spoken by an uxor), 451, 468 (restored by Pius), 1016; Men. 152; Merc. 545, 819, 827; clam virum: Amph. 107 (of Jupiter’s activity); Cas. 200; Merc. 821. 71 Cf. e.g. Jeffrey Henderson (ed.), Aristophanes: Lysistrata (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 69: “Whatever the case may have been in actual life, it is easy to imagine that Attic women, confined mostly to the sphere of the oikos and to the company of other women, were thought of as having (and therefore taking) more opportunities to be up to no good than the men.”
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job-description for the typical Plautine uxor,72 and again the context is that of marital infidelity. The dreaded figure of the well-dowered wife, the uxor dotata,73 would not cause so many Roman men to cower before them and their threats of divorce, or make men like Demipho in Mercator go so far as to fear castration at their wives’ hands if husbands in Rome had really nothing to fear from their wives.74 Another elderly man, Lysidamus in Casina, when his wife Cleustrata finds out about his love affair, starts wheedling and assuring her that if he ever has such an affair again, she can have him strung up and whipped with rods,75 a punishment fit for slaves rather than free citizens. These examples are strikingly far from Cato’s digito non auderet contingere, neque ius est. As we may conclude from general life experience, such threats were probably made more often than they were carried out. Although divorce was legally easy, men must as a rule have been deterred from it by the obligation to pay back their wives’ dowries,76 and women by social pressure to submit to male authority. Moreover, the phrase viro fit caussa in 822 is of considerable interest. By using it, the speaker implies that the husband was in fact required to justify, i.e. give reasons, for a divorce, probably before the consilium amicorum or perhaps the magistrates. This was not a requirement in Athens, however, but in Rome.77 Furthermore, the implication seems to be that no arbitrariness is envisaged in this process. It is thus difficult to decide what view to take, and both here and elsewhere in the text exaggerations and grotesque ideas may obscure the difference between the world of comedy and that of reality. It remains to look at what Syra actually asks for in her speech. What kind of equality would one expect a decent wife to request from her husband? Should she say (1) “I would like to see both of us faithful and chaste, not only myself but my partner too,” or (2) “I would like to be just as adulterous and profligate as my husband, and I 72 Cf. e.g. Merc. 720, 1003, 1004. There is a fine example of the phrase ne uxor resciscat metuit (i.e. the husband) at Asin. 743. Interestingly, the verb is used of the husband at Amph. 491–2 resciscet tamen /Amphitruo rem omnem. 73 On the comic stereotype, see Ekkehard Stärk, “Plautus’ uxores dotatae im Spannungsfeld literarischer Fiktion und gesellschaftlicher Realität,” in: Jürgen Blänsdorf (ed.), Theater und Gesellschaft im Imperium Romanum, Mainzer Forschungen zu Drama und Theater 4 (Tübingen: Francke, 1990), pp. 69–79. 74 Cf. Merc. 275. 75 Cf. Cas. 1000–3. 76 On the function of the dowry (dos), cf. Adrian S. Gratwick, “Free or not so Free? Wives and Daughters in the Late Roman Republic,” in: Elizabeth M. Craik (ed.), Marriage and Property (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1984), p. 39: “Thus dowry was an expression and sustainer of classgradations, for a rich man would rarely marry a poor wife, while a rich father would have nothing to gain by supplying his daughter with a large dowry in marriage to a poor man; from the man’s point of view it was an incentive to marry, and from the woman’s it was an insurance against frivolous divorce by her husband.” 77 Cf. e.g. Myles McDonnell, “Divorce Initiated by Women in Rome,” American Journal of Ancient History 8 (1983), p. 58; Treggiari, Roman Marriage (above, n. 3), p. 265.
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want to have an equal right to have fun,” or (3) “I am behaving badly, and my husband is behaving badly—he gets off and I am punished. There is no justice in this. I want him to be punished as much as I am”? Of these three wishes, we would perhaps intuitively say, if asked, “Well, shouldn’t she request alternative (1)?” This being Plautine comedy, however, Syra does not go for the obvious, and the audience is duped and led to expect the “wrong” kind of “right” moral reasoning. Instead, Syra presents us with alternative (3), the least moral option of the lot. Since we now see that the claim for justice and equality in marriage is comically undercut in the old woman’s monologue, this is perhaps the best point to give some thought to the fact that Syra’s stage character is that of an old nurse (nutrix). Nurses are ambiguous characters, to say the least, and the nurses of comedy, especially Roman comedy, defy stereotypical assumptions. The ambiguity of the nurse in ancient drama can be traced back to some memorable Euripidean characters, for example Phaedra’s nurse in Hippolytus. The comic type of the philosophizing nurse, speaking out of character, like the nurse in Hippolytus, may be intended as a parody of the ideal allegedly proclaimed by the Stoic Chrysippus, that the nurse assigned to look after children during their early years should be a philosopher.78 We do not expect an old woman, and a nurse to that, to spread immoral views. In general, the representation of the nurse in literature and inscriptions is quite positive, and it is perhaps reasonable to assume that there were bonds of affection between a former nursling and an old nurse still resident in the household.79 Perhaps Plautus (or already Philemon?) follows the strategy of setting up claims that are so unconventional and outrageous, and at the same time put in the mouth of an incongruous speaker, that he runs no risk of being taken seriously by those in the audience who were in power or who mattered to him for other reasons, e.g. as future literary 78 Quint. Inst. or. 1, 1, 4. 79 For the generally positive image of the nurse in Greek and Roman culture, cf. Beate Wagner-Hasel, Alter in der Antike: Eine Kulturgeschichte (Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau, 2012), pp. 46–8. For Euripides, cf. Herwig Brandt, Die Sklaven in den Rollen von Dienern und Vertrauten bei Euripides, Altertumswissenschaftliche Texte und Studien 1 (Hildesheim, New York: Olms, 1973), pp. 27–35, 59– 81. For Menander, cf. Martha Krieter-Spiro, Sklaven, Köche und Hetären: Das Dienstpersonal bei Menander. Stellung, Rolle, Komik und Sprache (Stuttgart, Leipzig: Teubner, 1997), pp. 34–41 and passim. Yet there are also indications that nurses enjoyed a bad stage-reputation for chattering and idle or malicious gossip (Men. Dysc. 384–87; Sam. 260–1; Antiph. fr. 157.4–5). For Old Comedy, cf. Jeffrey Henderson, “Older Women in Attic Old Comedy,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 117 (1987), pp. 105–29, esp. 123: “Aristophanes … uses nurses mainly as helpers in wifely intrigue and his off-hand allusions to them show a cynical attitude, as is also the case in later comedy.” For Latin literature, cf. Vincent J. Rosivach, “Anus: Some Older Women in Latin Literature,” Classical World 88 (1994/95), pp. 107–17. The stereotypical anus was imagined as prone to alcohol, sexually unattractive, overly soft-hearted, superstitious and garrulous. Nurses shared some of these misogynist attributes with other female roles depicted in comedy; cf. e.g. Dorota M. Dutsch, Feminine Discourse in Roman Comedy: On Echoes and Voices (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 149–86.
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patrons.80 The remarkable fact remains that Plautus makes a character utter such thoughts onstage at all, perhaps in the hope that the gist of Syra’s claims might stick with the audience despite the ludicrous nature of their advocate and the incongruous way they are delivered.
Divorcees, Widows, and Wartime Allusions The punch line of the monologue (829) presents the audience with a surprising conclusion: “If indeed all men who pick up whores would just be treated like those wives who are to blame for some misbehavior as well, then more men would be vidui than there are women.” Here Plautus exploits the basic ambiguity of the adjective viduus. The word may refer generally to a man (or woman) separated from his (or her) wife (or husband) by e.g. divorce, death or prolonged absence. The remark about vidui at 829 may thus also allude to the loss of manpower caused by the many military campaigns Rome was involved in during Plautus’ lifetime, such as the First and Second Punic Wars (264–241 and 218–201 BCE) and the wars with Philip of Macedon (200–197 BCE) and Antiochus the Great (191–188 BCE). Heavy military losses and the prolonged absence of many husbands must have left their mark on the demographic structure of Rome. This would not be the only transfigurative use of a word referring to military affairs or war in Plautus.81
80 Cf. Richard L. Hunter, The New Comedy of Greece and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 87: “The earnestness of Syra’s speech must be seen in the context both of her character and of the dramatic situation … It may also be thought that Syra’s proposal is so outrageous in terms of conventional morality that no member of the Roman audience would have even considered the possibility that it was to be taken seriously.” Cf. also Starks, “Syra” (above, n. 58), p. 62: “The final, ironic twist is that the ultimate other, an aged, foreign, female slave, from outside the family, the society, and the power structure, states the case for new laws, never to be written, that would penalize male malefactors.” 81 Cf. the collection of instances in David Wollner, Die auf das Kriegswesen bezüglichen Stellen bei Plautus und Terentius, Gymnasialprogramm Landau 1909; Alfons Spies, Militat omnis amans: Ein Beitrag zur Bildersprache der antiken Erotik (Diss. Tübingen, 1930), pp. 45–50; and the overview in Elaine Fantham, Comparative Studies in Republican Latin Imagery, Phoenix Suppl. 10 (Toronto, Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1972), pp. 26–33. At the same time, Syra’s language may echo the kind of references made in statesmanlike speeches to the widows of soldiers killed in action (like that of Pericles in Thuc. 2.45.2). One might even try to detect a more specific allusion to an event in Rome around the time when Mercator was first performed. Livy 25.2.9 tells us that in 213 BCE a number of Roman matrons were accused of stuprum before the people by the plebeian aediles. Some were found guilty and exiled; the term used by Livy is exigere, just as in Syra’s speech. It is of course impossible, however, to prove that Plautus is alluding specifically to any contemporary event. Still, “occasional explicit references to the outside world” can be found in Plautine comedy; see Ruffell (p. 306 in this volume).
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Since in Greek, unlike Latin, there are two different expressions for “widow”/ “widower” (cherê/cheros) and “someone sleeping alone” (monokoitos/-ê), the wordplay would not work in Philemon’s Emporos. For this reason, it seems likely that it was inserted by Plautus.82
Conclusion Despite the fact that conditions for Greek and Roman wives were different from ours, Syra’s complaints have broken free of reality and give voice to little more than her own prejudices and homespun philosophy—hence the grotesquely inappropriate universality of their application in this homily. Like the latter part of the monologue of the whimpering old nurse in Aeschylus’ Choephoroe (734–65),83 Syra’s monologue is an expression of her homely preoccupations and insular wisdom. Plautus thus turns out to be no feminist, not even ante litteram. Yet he is aware of the tensions the marital double standard produced in his time, and he reacts to these tensions in his own way, not as an orator or philosopher but as a comic playwright. It is difficult and perhaps impossible to tell how much of Syra’s monologue was already in Philemon’s Emporos. As a vigorous criticism of the double standard, it would in principle have worked in Greek as well as Roman comedy, and it is safe to assume that Philemon was capable of writing such a monologue. Yet Plautus is not incapable of sounding “Greek” to a Roman audience when he wants to.84 The contents and themes in Syra’s monologue, as far as the husband-wife relationship is concerned, sound partly Greek on the face of it (women are not allowed to leave the house; the husband can put his wife out), but on closer inspection, quite
82 There is a somewhat similar play on the semantic stretch of the word vidua at Mil. glor. 964–6, where a young woman (allegedly) married to an old man is jocularly called a ‘widow’. For viduus and vacuus as equivalents of monokoitein, cf. Rosario Moreno Soldevila (ed.), Diccionario de motivos amatorios en la literatura latina (siglos III a.C.–II d.C.), Exemplaria Classica Anejo 2 (Huelva: Universidad de Huelva, 2011), pp. 297–8. 83 On Kilissa in Choephoroe, cf. e.g. Thomas G. Rosenmeyer, The Art of Aeschylus (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 217–18; Desmond J. Conacher, Aeschylus’ Oresteia: a Literary Commentary (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1987), pp. 120–1. 84 This has been amply demonstrated for many passages of Plautine comedy by Eduard Fraenkel, Plautine Elements in Plautus (Plautinisches im Plautus), translated by Tomas Drevikovsky and Frances Muecke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) (from the Italian Elementi plautini in Plauto, Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1960, and the German Plautinisches im Plautus, Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1922) passim; for the monologues in particular, see pp. 96–144. Surprisingly, there is no discussion of Syra’s speech in Fraenkel’s book, perhaps because he accepted the view of previous scholars like Leo, Forschungen (above, n. 40), p. 121, that the nurse’s monologue was entirely Philemonian and therefore could not serve as a model case-study of Plautus’ methods of adaptation and thus even less as an example of his originality.
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apart from obvious features like sound-play and carefully balanced antithetical structure, some elements in the speech are definitely Roman (a play on the ambiguity of vidui and viduae; the need for the husband to establish a valid cause for a divorce). What Plautus has created is thus, as often, a blend of Greek and Roman elements; the law and moral standards that apply to what is nominally “Athens” or another Greek city actually belong to the same civitas Graecoromana that Adrian Gratwick has conveniently called “Plautopolis.”85 Quite apart from the problems of Quellenforschung, the text shows a remarkable awareness of a long-standing problem of ancient societies and an artful mastery of the principles of rhetorical composition that foreshadows the technique of Terentian prologues. In a way, it can even be regarded as a precursor of the elegance of Lucilius and the avantgardism of the Neoterics.86 In sum, it seems that Plautus composed Syra’s monologue at least partly from scratch, taking some liberties with whatever stood in its place in Philemon’s play. Instead of a moral exhortation, the audience gets … an indecent proposal, yet one that aims at making them think. To a modern audience, however, Syra’s observations still bring into sharp focus the dichotomy between two kinds of sexual morality in antiquity.
85 Adrian S. Gratwick, “Drama,” in: Edward J. Kenney, Wendell V. Clausen (eds.), The Cambridge History of Classical Literature. Volume II. Part 1: The Early Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 112–3. 86 This tendency toward a “quintessentially Neoteric and Augustan” avantgardism in Roman comedy is rightly emphasized, with particular focus on Terence, by Fontaine in this volume (pp. 180, 196–7 and passim).
Keith Sidwell
“Letting It All Hang Out”: Lucian, Old Comedy and the Origins of Roman Satire Abstract: Roman Satire and the works of the 2nd-century CE Greek satirist Lucian have in common a quasi-autobiographical and self-mocking authorial persona. Since there is good evidence in both cases for a connection with Attic Old Comedy, it is worth asking whether there was some perceived or received idea in ancient scholarship that would have transmitted the notion of autobiographical abjection combined with satire which was then picked up independently first by Lucilius and then by Lucian. In fact, there is good evidence for a belief in antiquity that Old Comic poets, and in particular Cratinus, Eupolis and Aristophanes, represented themselves not only in their parabases but also as self-mocking characters in their plays. If Lucian implicitly relies upon this notion in constructing his own self-mocking satirical persona, Lucilius too may have had access to this notion and composed his foundational narrative and poetic Roman satires accordingly. This possibility allows a different perspective on how Horace and Persius received the Old Comic masters and perhaps allows us to read their direct references to them in a more dynamic fashion.
Autobiographical self-revelation is all too familiar to modern culture. Oh how we could wish sometimes to know less—much, much less—about the intimate secrets of Oprah’s guests! Consequently, its appearance in ancient literature tends to be read without special comment on the mode itself. But more or less the opposite appears to be the case in ancient Greek culture. As Glenn Most has demonstrated, such selfrevelation occurs for the classical Greeks in closely controlled circumstances—mostly threatening or tragic—probably because of the centrality of the ideology of self-
A first version of this paper was presented to the research seminar at the University of British Columbia on 12 January 2009. I am grateful to Professor Susanna Braund for the invitation, which prompted me to put some shape onto ideas developed during the composition of Aristophanes the Democrat: the Politics of Political Satire during the Peloponnesian War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) and for her comments after the seminar. I am also grateful to Dr. Adam Bartley of the University of Kent for permission to reproduce material that also appeared in “The Dead Philosophers’ Society: New Thoughts on Lucian’s Piscator and Eupolis’ Demes,” in: A. Bartley (ed.), A Lucian for Our Times (Newcastle: Scholars Press, 2009), pp. 109–18. Jeff Henderson invited me to deliver a series of seminars on Aristophanes at Boston University in 1996 and I hope and trust that this contribution to his Festschrift, made with great respect for his contributions to the field of Old Comedy and with deep personal affection, will make his hair stand on end quite as much as did those ragged precursors of Aristophanes the Democrat.
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sufficiency in their culture.1 What a surprise, then, it must be—although we do not appear to have thought about it much—that among the Roman satirists (writing in both Latin and Greek), in a literary culture entirely dependent on its Greek forerunners—we find self-revelation (even if we can properly regard it as merely the construction of a first-person persona2) in a prominent position. Anderson, at any rate, appears to put this down to a Roman cultural tic: One of the chief developments of Roman literature involved the creation of genres in which the writer spoke forth in the first person, most notably, poetic satire and love elegy …. It is obvious that Romans of the first century BC found it very natural to talk of themselves and to hear others speak of themselves and that egoism was not a distressing factor. On the contrary, personal writings seemed to have the appeal of ingenuous confessions that reveal the common humanity of us all.3
This seems to me to be out of line with the evidence, which shows that the self-critical autobiography of satire was the result of the usual process of imitatio rather than the Oprah syndrome. Let us start with the Greek satirist Lucian of Samosata, the acknowledged master of ironic self-presentation. His floruit is in the mid-2nd century CE.4 It was he who perfected the genre of the prolalia (introductory speech) with its titillating autobiographical details.5 The most famous of these is Somnium (The Dream), in which he recounts to an audience of fellow-Samosatans how he came to be a pepaideumenos rather than a sculptor and thus able to address them this very day (Somn. 18). Here is a snippet to show how Lucian mocks himself as he makes his points. He has just told his audience how he was apprenticed to his uncle as a stone-mason after a family conference on his future, broke a marble slab in two on his first day, and was given a beating for it by his uncle:6
1 Glenn W. Most, “The Stranger’s Stratagem: Self-Disclosure and Self-Sufficiency in Greek Culture,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 109 (1989), pp. 114–33. 2 See e.g. Susanna Braund, The Roman Satirists and Their Masks (London: Bristol Classical Press/ Duckworth, 1996). 3 “Autobiography and Art in Horace,” in: William S. Anderson, Essays on Roman Satire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 50. 4 This emerges clearly from internal references to contemporaries, such as the Cynic philosopher Peregrinus (e.g. De Morte Peregrini [The Passing of Peregrinus]passim), Alexander of Abonuteichos (Alexander [Alexander the False Prophet]) and contemporary events, such as Lucius Verus’ Parthian Wars (Quomodo Historia Conscribenda sit [How to Write History]). For a brief recent introduction (with notes and bibliography), see Keith Sidwell, Lucian: Chattering Courtesans and Other Sardonic Sketches, Penguin Classics (London: Penguin Books, 2004), pp. ix–xxix. 5 I cite Lucian by the Latin titles listed in Sidwell, Lucian (above, n. 4), pp. 347–51, and by the English titles from A.M. Harmon, K. Kilburn and M.D. Macleod (eds.), Lucian, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1913–67), also listed in this catalogue, except where pieces are translated in Sidwell, Lucian (above, n. 4), where I give that title. 6 All translations are my own. Where I cite passages which occur in Sidwell, Lucian (above, n. 4), I reprint my translation from there.
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ἀποδρὰς οὖν ἐκεῖθεν ἐπὶ τὴν οἰκίαν ἀφικνοῦμαι συνεχὲς ἀναλύζων καὶ δακρύων τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ὑποπλέως, καὶ διηγοῦμαι τὴν σκυτάλην καὶ τοὺς μώλωπας ἐδείκνυον, καὶ κατηγόρουν πολλήν τινα ὠμότητα, προσθεὶς ὅτι ὑπὸ φθόνου ταῦτα ἔδρασε, μὴ αὐτὸν ὑπερβάλωμαι κατὰ τὴν τέχνην. I ran off home from the workshop and arrived in a state of continuous sobbing and with my eyes brimming with tears. I told mummy about the strap, I showed her the welts, and I accused my uncle of great cruelty. I even added that he had done it out of jealousy, worrying that I would outstrip him in his craft.
But Lucian also regularly appears as a character in his own comic dialogues (an invention of which he was extremely proud; see below)—always in some disguise (the Syrian, Parrhesiades, Lykinus, Tychiades). The best examples, to which I return later, are Bis Accusatus (Two Charges of Literary Assault)7 and Piscator (The Fisherman, alternatively entitled The Dead Come to Life). In the first, the Syrian (Lucian) is indicted by his wife Rhetoric for neglect, and then by his lover Dialogue for hybris, wanton and violent humiliation, but wins both cases. In Piscator, the ancient philosophers, including Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Diogenes, Chrysippus, Aristippus, Epicurus and Empedocles, have begged a day off from Hades to return to the world and confront Lucian (here disguised as Parrhesiades—“Freedom-of-Speech’s Boy”) over his malicious Vitarum Auctio (Philosophies for Sale), an earlier dialogue in which he auctioned off philosophical doctrines in their very persons—so the ancient dead claim, at any rate. Lucian also composed another self-revelatory work, this time using his own name as that of the narrator, the self-confessedly lying story of a sea-journey that took him to the moon, into the belly of a whale and to the Isles of the Blest—the Verae Historiae (True Histories). This type of comic self-representation is also, I think no one will deny, central to Roman Satire. Here is Susanna Braund on Lucilius: “But what is most notable about Lucilius, apart from his fierce invective, is the distinctive autobiographical presentation of the Satires, frequently with a marked element of criticism and irony at his own expense.”8 And again on Horace: “In his first book of Satires Horace adopts the autobiographical mode of Lucilius.”9 More recently, Emily Gowers writes: “One prominent feature of the Sermones is autobiographical … Recent criticism has identified the portrait Horace gives us of himself as a composite of comic types … This is a personality attuned to the character of the genre.10 Think, for example, of Horace on his journey to Brundisium (Satires 1.5.82–5):
7 Translated under the title The Double Indictment in Harmon-Kilburn-Macleod (eds.), Lucian (above, n. 5). 8 Susanna Braund, Roman Verse Satire, Greece and Rome. New Surveys in the Classics 23 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 13. 9 Braund, Roman Verse Satire (above, n. 8), p. 17. 10 Emily Gowers, “The restless companion: Horace Satires 1 and 2,” in: Kirk Freudenburg (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Roman Satire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 54–5.
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Hic ego mendacem stultissimus usque puellam Ad mediam noctem exspecto: somnus tamen aufert Intentum Veneri; tum immundo somnia visu Nocturnam vestem maculant ventremque supernum. Here, foolish man, I waited for a lying girl Till midnight; I was tight for sex when sleep snatched me; A filthy dream spattered my nightshirt and my tum As I lay back ….
And in Satires 2.1.32–4, Horace makes it a central aspect of Lucilius’ satire: quo fit ut omnis votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella vita senis So came about the way the old man’s whole life appeared Just like a painting drawn upon a votive slab.
It is difficult to check the level of self-revelation—and even more self-satire—that Lucilius went in for, given the state of his fragments. But it cannot be doubted that he spoke about himself. Take W 650–1 from Book 26, for example:11 publicanus vero ut Asiae fiam, ut scripturarius pro Lucilio, id ego nolo et uno hoc non muto omnia I should become, instead of me—Lucilius— A taxman or a scripturarius? No, no— That is the one thing I’ll not swap for all the world!
And at least some scholars have (apparently) believed that Horace’s wet-dream has its origins (like the rest of this satire) in imitation of Lucilius, specifically the verse (W 1183):12 perminxi lectum, inposui pede pellibus labes13 I wet the bed right through and came over the skins
11 I cite Lucilius’ Latin text as W plus fragment number from the edition of E.H. Warmington, Remains of Old Latin, vol. III, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge Mass. and London: Harvard University Press/ William Heinemann, 1979). 12 Niall Rudd, Satires of Horace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966: reprint Bristol: Bristol University Press, 1982), p. 55, refutes these assertions without mentioning which scholars held the view. 13 Reading pede =membro virili for pedem with Warmington (above, n. 11).
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Of Persius, moreover, the next Roman satirist in the Lucilian-Horatian tradition, the Life of Persius reports (Vita Persi p. 238 Jahn = W p. 126): lecto Lucili libro decimo vehementer saturas componere instituit … sibi primo mox omnibus detractaturus cum … recentium poetarum et oratorum sectatione After reading Lucilius’ tenth book, Persius began enthusiastically writing satires designed to disparage first himself and then everyone, including recent poets and orators
This certainly makes it sound as though no one with access to Lucilius would have disputed the satires’ self-critical as well as critical posture. I do not mean to claim, in pointing to self-representation as a central element in Roman Satire, that it is the same as autobiography. The work that has been done to elucidate the notion of the persona or “mask”14 is unaffected by what I am saying. It is the very fact that our satires, both Latin and Greek, have as a central feature a persona that proposes itself as the writer himself that is the focus of my attention, not the question of how far, if at all, this “mask” can be taken to represent the real individual who wields and manipulates it. The next question is to ask where this type of self-representation comes from and why it appears so inveterately a part of the satirical traditions we are examining. I have not chosen Lucian, Lucilius and Horace at random, of course; I am focussing upon them and what they have in common because there is good evidence that one of their main models was Old Comedy. The evidence for Lucilius and Old Comedy (and therefore by extension for Horace, who confesses himself a follower, albeit critical, of Lucilius) comes in the opening of Horace’s Satire 1.4: Eupolis atque Cratinus Aristophanesque poetae, atque alii quorum comoedia prisca virorum est, si quis erat dignus describi quod malus ac fur, quod moechus foret aut sicarius aut alioqui famosus, multa cum libertate notabant. hinc omnis pendet Lucilius… Eupolis, Cratinus and Aristophanes, The poets, and the other true Old Comic men, Used to black-ball with liberty the guys who were Fit to be drawn as bad, as thieves, adulterers, Knife-men or in some other way just infamous. Here’s where Lucilius took his cue, took all his cues…
14 By Braund, Roman Satirists (above, n. 2), among many others.
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The context here is not self-representation but the use of onomasti komoidein, “naming invective.” There is a venerable debate about whether hinc denotes just this debt15 or can be generalised,16 and there is also dispute over whether Lucilius knew this theory directly17 or whether it was formulated after Lucilius by Varro.18 Nothing is thus certain here in respect to Lucilius himself and his perceived debts. I think we can say, however, on the basis of W 411, that Lucilius, like other elite Roman writers, saw Greek literature as the font of good practice: archeotera … unde haec sunt omnia nota the older works, from which these have all arisen
(where archeotera is one of his famous Greek borrowings). We might also reasonably dragoon Horace into the camp of Roman writers who reckoned what they were doing was Romanising Greek literature—and maybe in the process improving on it (see e.g. Epistles 1.19). For Lucian, the evidence is less equivocal. In one of the dialogues cited earlier, Bis Accusatus, Dialogue accuses the Syrian of using Old Comedy as a central source (Bis Acc. 33): εἶτά μοι εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ φέρων συνκαθεῖρξεν τὸ σκῶμμα καὶ τὸν ἴαμβον καὶ κυνισμὸν καὶ τὸν Εὔπολιν καὶ τὸν Ἀριστοφάνη. Then he shut me up in the same room with joking, iambus, Eupolis and Aristophanes—men terribly clever at criticising serious things and pouring scorn on what is right and proper.
Likewise in Piscator, Diogenes is in no doubt as to the literary source of Parrhesiades’ (Lucian’s) invective against the philosophers (Pisc. 25): ὥσπερ ἀμέλει καὶ πάλαι ἔχαιρον Ἀριστοφάνει καὶ Εὐπόλιδι Σωκράτη τουτονὶ ἐπὶ χλευασίᾳ παράγουσιν ἐπὶ τὴν σκηνὴν … καί τοι ἐκεῖνοι μὲν καθ᾽ ἑνὸς ἐτόλμων τοιαῦτα … ὁ δὲ τοὺς ἀρίστους συγκαλῶν … μεγάλῃ τῇ φωνῇ ἀγορεύει κακῶς Πλάτωνα, Πυθαγόραν … οὔτε ἑορτῆς ἐφιείσης, οὔτε ἰδίᾳ πρὸς ἡμῶν παθών. Just so in days gone by they took delight in Eupolis and Aristophanes bringing Socrates here onto the stage to mock him…. The playwrights, however, showed their boldness against only one man …. But this man brings the best people together … and then loudly abuses Plato, Pythagoras etc…. without the sanction of a holiday and without having had anything done to him personally by us.
15 Richard LaFleur, “Horace and Onomasti Komodein: the Law of Satire,” in: W. Haase (ed.), ANRW 2.31.3 (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1981), pp. 1790–1826. 16 Rudd, Satires of Horace (above, n. 12), pp. 88–92. 17 George C. Fiske, Lucilius and Horace: a Study in the classical Theory of Imitation, University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature 7 (Madison: 1920, reprint Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1966), p. 281, citing W 411, from Book 10. 18 F. Leo, “Varro und die Satire,” Hermes 24 (1889), pp. 67–84.
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The point is clarified by Lucian in propria persona claiming the same influence in Prometheus es in Verbis (“So you think I’m the Prometheus of the Literary World?”) 6: οὐ πάνυ γοῦν συνήθη καὶ φίλα ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἦν ὁ διάλογος καὶ ἡ κωμῳδία … καὶ ὅμως ἐτολμήσαμεν ἡμεῖς τὰ οὕτως ἔχοντα πρὸς ἄλληλα ξυναγαγεῖν καὶ ξυναρμόσαι οὐ πάνυ πειθόμενα οὐδὲ εὐμαρῶς ἀνεχόμενα τὴν κοινωνίαν. It has to be said that Dialogue and Comedy were not firmly compatible friends when they started out …. None the less, I was bold enough to bring together two things which had this contrary relation to each other and to fit them together even though they weren’t too keen and put up with the cohabitation with some discomfort.
Lucian has other sources, of course, notably Menippus, the 3rd-century BCE Cynic inventor of the spoudaiogeloion philosophical tract (Bis Acc. 33). But his firm intent appears to be for his audience to recognise, and in some detail, the source of his inspiration. Thus in Piscator 6, Parrhesiades/Lucian responds to the assault of the dead philosophers by saying: αὐτὰ γοῦν ἅ φημι ταῦτα, πόθεν ἄλλοθεν ἢ παρ᾽ ὑμῶν λαβὼν καὶ κατὰ τὴν μέλιτταν ἀπανθισάμενος ἐπιδείκνυμαι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις; οἱ δὲ ἐπαινοῦσι καὶ γνωρίζουσιν ἕκαστον τὸ ἄνθος ὅθεν καὶ παρ᾽ ὅτου καὶ ὅπως ἀνελεξάμην, καὶ λόγῳ μὲν ἐμὲ ζηλοῦσι τῆς ἀνθολογίας, τὸ δ᾽ ἀληθὲς ὑμᾶς καὶ τὸν λειμῶνα τὸν ὑμέτερον. Where else but from you did I get the material I’ve gathered like a bee, which I use in my public displays? The audience applaud and recognize every single allusion, its source, and how I have collected it, in their view envying me for my flower-picking, but in fact envying you and your meadow.
In Lucian’s case in particular, then, it should probably strike us as odd that in doing something original in combining disparate genres, which he tells us about, he ignores his most obviously original move, which is putting himself into his works as a major character. If this response is correct, we ought to be looking for signs that in his self-representation Lucian was following the lead of earlier models he could be confident his audience would spot. This would most obviously be Old Comedy, I think, because of the self-satirical aspect (though a case could be made for iambus—see Bis Acc. 33—which is never at the center, however, of Lucian’s discourse about his influences). And if it is so for Lucian, a fortiori it may be true for Lucilian satura. But first we must ask, how do we look for this, given that, had it been really obvious, it would have been found long ago? This is where the theory and practice of reception studies comes in. In the past, we might simply have said “you go to the source, and if you do not find it there, it is not to be found.” It is many years since the point was made by Robin Schlunk that Vergil’s Homer was not necessarily our Homer, but needed to be reconstructed by close attention to the Hellenistic scholarship
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through which the master was mediated to the Roman.19 The point can be less drily made by citing a passage from Lucian’s Verae Historiae (True Histories) II, 20 in which the lying adventurer finally gets a one-on-one with Homer in the Elysian Fields: σχολῆς οὔσης ἀμφοῖν, τά τε ἄλλα ἐπυνθανόμην καὶ ὅθεν εἴη, λέγων τοῦτο μάλιστα παρ᾽ ἡμῖν εἰσέτι νῦν ζητεῖσθαι. ὁ δὲ οὐδ᾽ αὐτὸς μὲν ἀγνοεῖν ἔφασκεν ὡς οἱ μὲν Χῖον, οἱ δὲ Σμυρναῖον, πολλοὶ δὲ Κολοφώνιον αὐτὸν νομίζουσιν· εἶναι μέντοι γε ἔλεγεν Βαβυλώνιος, καὶ παρά γε τοῖς πολίταις οὐχ Ὅμηρος ἀλλὰ Τιγράνης καλεῖσθαι· ὕστερον δὲ ὁμηρεύσας παρὰ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἀλλάξαι τὴν προσηγορίαν. ἔτι δὲ καὶ περὶ τῶν ἀθετουμένων στίχων ἐπηρώτων, εἰ ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνου εἰσὶ γεγραμμένοι. καὶ ὃς ἔφασκε πάντας αὑτοῦ εἶναι. κατεγίνωσκον οὖν τῶν ἀμφὶ τὸν Ζηνόδοτον καὶ Ἀρίσταρχον γραμματικῶν πολλὴν τὴν ψυχρολογίαν. ἐπεὶ δὲ ταῦτα ἱκανῶς ἀπεκέκριτο, πάλιν αὐτὸν ἠρώτων τί δή ποτε ἀπὸ τῆς μήνιδος τὴν ἀρχὴν ἐποιήσατο· καὶ ὃς εἶπεν οὕτως ἐπελθεῖν αὐτῷ μηδὲν ἐπιτηδεύσαντι. We neither of us had anything to do and so I asked him about his birthplace, mentioning that this was still an unresolved enigma, hotly debated in our world. He replied that he was not unaware that some people thought he was Chian, others from Smyrna, lots a Colophonian. However, he told me he was a Babylonian, and the name he answered to among his own people was not “Homer,” but Tigranes. Later he had been made a hostage by the Greeks and had changed his name. My next question was about whether the athetised verses were actually written by him. He claimed every last one was original. That was when I began to condemn the grammarians in the school of Zenodotus and Aristarchus for purveying nonsense. When he had given me good enough answers to these questions, I framed a third: why on earth had he started with the word “wrath”? He replied that it hadn’t really been deliberate. It had just come into his head.
Lucian also knew—and appears to have expected his audience of pepaideumenoi to know—the scholarship on Old Comedy. This is clear from the way he speaks of his hidden comic allusions at the opening of Verae Historiae I.2: καὶ τῶν ἱστορουμένων ἕκαστον οὐκ ἀκωμῳδήτως ᾔνικται πρός τινας τῶν παλαιῶν ποιητῶν τε καὶ συγγραφέων καὶ φιλοσόφων πολλὰ τεράστια καὶ μυθώδη συγγεγραφότων, οὓς καὶ ὀνομαστὶ ἂν ἔγραφον, εἰ μὴ καὶ αὐτῷ σοι ἐκ τῆς ἀναγνώσεως φανεῖσθαι ἔμελλον. I have also in a manner not unconnected with comedy framed each element of my tales as an enigmatic allusion to some of the ancient poets, historians and philosophers who wrote much of mythical monsters. I would give you their names, if they were not going to be obvious to you from your reading.
The language deliberately appropriates the terms of a well-represented ancient account of the history of Old Comedy, according to which the genre went through a stage in which enigma was central and names were suppressed.20 19 Robin R. Schlunk, The Homeric Scholia and the Aeneid: a Study of the Influence of Αncient Homeric Criticism on Vergil (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1974). 20 Ancient scholars characteristically divided the history of invective comedy into three stages, according to the way the attacks were made. These were (1) open attack on anyone, (2) enigmatic attack
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The most obvious first-person Old Comic poet-narratives are the parabases (e.g. Aristophanes Clouds 518–62; Eupolis Baptai fr. 89), and the fact that Lucian often uses his on-stage character among other things in literary defences might appear to point in this direction. Although a passage such as Aristophanes Clouds 518–62, however, contains a small amount of autobiography, it is completely targeted on the poet’s dramatic career and is at nothing like the level of intimacy seen in Lucian’s Somnium (The Dream) or Lucilius’ and Horace’s “journey” poems (or in Horace’s description of the nature of Lucilian satire in Satires 2.1). It seems inherently more likely, given the wholesale self-dramatisation by Lucian of himself in the dialogues, that he was imitating self-dramatisation of the poet as a character in Old Comedy. Let us begin our search, therefore, for the author as self-satirised character in Old Comedy. We do not have far to look for one glaring example, although the evidence for the phenomenon as more widespread seems at first glimpse limited. The one comic poet we have firm evidence for having been a character in comic drama appeared in Cratinus’ Pytine, staged at the Dionysia of 423 BCE, the year after Knights (Σ Knights 400a = Cratin. Pytine test. ii). The ancients identified him with the author of the play, Cratinus: τὴν Κωμῳδίαν ὁ Κρατῖνος ἐπλάσατο αὑτοῦ εἶναι γυναῖκα καὶ ἀφίστασθαι τοῦ συνοικεσίου σὺν αὐτῷ θέλειν, καὶ κακώσεως αὐτῷ δίκην λαγχάνειν, φίλους δὲ παρατυχόντας τοῦ Κρατίνου δεῖσθαι μηδὲν προπετὲς ποιῆσαι, καὶ τῆς ἔχθρας ἀνερωτᾶν τὴν αἰτίαν, τὴν δὲ μέμφεσθαι αὐτῷ ὅτι μὴ κωμῳδοίη μηκέτι, σχολάζοι δὲ τῇ μέθῃ. Cratinus made Comedy his wife and portrayed her as wishing to end her cohabitation with him and taking against him a suit for mistreatment. Some friends arrive by chance and ask Cratinus not to do anything hasty. They ask the reason for the dispute and she criticizes him for not writing comedy any more but instead spending his time on drink.
In the course of a wider discussion of Critias’ harsh treatment of Archilochus’ selfprojected abjection, Ralph Rosen has recently commented on this:21 “Cratinus’ abject posture in this play … would have fit squarely within the long tradition of satirists, who at some point in their work eventually direct their satire at themselves.”
on anyone and (3) attack only on slaves and foreigners. Stage (2) is here the point of reference for Lucian, the “enigmatic” or “symbolic” moment in Old Comedy’s development, variously called ψόγος κεκρυμμένος (“hidden invective”), κωμῳδεῖν ἐσχηματισμένως (“satirizing figuratively”), συμβολικὰ σκώμματα (“allegorical jokes”), ἐλέγχουσα αἰνιγματωδῶς (“attacking enigmatically”). The first three are Tzetzes’ formulations (Aristophanes test. 83a–b), the last of the scholium on Dionysius Thrax (Aristophanes test. 84). In some accounts, this ‘enigmatic turn’ is associated with the abandonment of ὀνομαστὶ κωμῳδεῖν (“satirising by name”), e.g. the Anonymus Crameri (Koster, Prolegomena XIb 29) and the scholia to Dionysius Thrax (Koster, Prolegomena XVIIIa 31–2). It is to this concatenation of terms that Lucian alludes here. 21 Ralph Rosen, Making Mockery: the Poetics of Αncient Satire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 253.
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I am suggesting a more direct impact on the later satirists I have been discussing. The deep-seated idea that Cratinus put his life-experience with alcohol-addiction and comic drama into a play in which he himself was the central comic-poet sot whose whole artistic future was put in doubt by his drinking must have had a serious impact on anyone with a mind to imitate Old Comedy. And as we shall see, Cratinus’ name— and this play—were well known to Roman satirists of both the Latin and the Greek traditions. If the phenomenon had been regarded as more widespread and we could find other examples, we might begin to see more clearly how the ironic autobiographical stance emerged as a function of imitatio. There are probably other examples. Storey has argued (from Apsines Rhetoric 3 (= Eup. Autolykos test. iii), for example, that Eupolis put himself and Aristophanes onstage in Autolycus:22 Εὔπολις ἁλοὺς ξενίας δημοσίᾳ ἐπράθη. πριάμενος αὐτὸν ὁ Λύκων ἐγχειρίζει τὸν παῖδα Eupolis was convicted of xenia and sold publicly. Lycon bought him and put him in charge of his son.
Autolycus was the son of Lycon, and this sounds like nothing more than a typical Old Comic plot. We will return to this play and its plot later. Ancient commentators seem to have thought it clear that Aristophanes spoke directly at fr. 488: (Σ Pl. Ap. 19c καὶ αὐτὸς δ᾽ ὁμολογεῖται Σκηνὰς καταλαμβανούσαις, “and he himself admits in the Women Pitching Tents”). The same is true of fr. 604 (from an unidentified play; Life of Aristophanes = Aristophanes test. 1.55: ὧν καὶ αὐτὸς ἐμνήσθη, “which he himself mentioned”). This is so even though both fragments are in iambic trimeters, not a meter associated with the parabasis. It is also well known that Aristophanes’ character Dicaeopolis in Acharnians (377–82, 496–556) speaks openly in the pose of the comic poet writing and acting in the play.23 All of this, I think, amounts to good evidence that in antiquity the self-representation by comic poets in their own works was a prominent feature in the theories espoused by Hellenistic commentators. This makes it easier to see what Lucian is up to in his appropriation of Old Comedy. There is in fact a strong argument for saying that in Bis Accusatus Lucian expected his audience to see in his own satirical selfrepresentation a strong echo of that of Cratinus in Pytine. At any rate, the personification of Rhetoric as his wife and her charge against him of κάκωσις “mistreatment” (Bis Acc. 14) both suggest that Cratinus’ Pytine lies behind the fabric of the dialogue.
22 Ian C. Storey, Eupolis, Poet of Old Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 87. 23 Bdelycleon in Wasps (650–1) seems to some modern scholars to equate himself with the comic poet/author—again in iambic trimeters (Z.P. Biles, “Intertextual biography in the rivalry of Cratinus and Aristophanes,” American Journal of Philology 123 (2002), pp. 198–200; Storey, Eupolis (above, n. 22), pp. 87, 346, 371), but this is controversial and the passage does not appear to have been read this way in antiquity.
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Plutarch—no lover of Old Comedy (Mor. 853a–4d)—provides evidence that the use by Old Comedy of self-satire was thought a way of taking the edge off invective: τῶν κωμικῶν ἔνιοι τὴν πικρίαν ἀφαιρεῖν δοκοῦσι τῷ σκώπτειν ἑαυτούς (“Some of the comic poets reckon to take away the bitterness [sc. of comic invective] by satirising themselves”), and one of his examples is Pytine. Beyond the instances noted above, where scholia directly identify the comic poet as a stage-character or where we can see indirect evidence that this was a normal view (as in the case of the anecdote in Apsines), a passage in Platonius (Koster, Prolegomena II.8–12) can be taken to support the notion that the phenomenon was reckoned especially notable in Eupolis: Εὔπολις δὲ εὐφάνταστος μὲν εἰς ὑπερβολήν ἐστι κατὰ τὰς ὑποθέσεις. τὰς γὰρ εἰσηγήσεις μεγάλας τῶν δραμάτων ποιεῖται, καὶ ἥνπερ ἐν τῇ παραβάσει φαντασίαν κινοῦσιν οἱ λοιποί, ταύτην ἐκεῖνος ἐν τοῖς δράμασιν, ἀναγαγεῖν ἱκανὸς ὢν ἐξ Ἅιδου νομοθετῶν πρόσωπα καὶ δι᾽ αὐτῶν εἰσηγούμενος ἢ περὶ θέσεως νόμων ἢ καταλύσεως. Eupolis is excessively imaginative in his plots. For he makes his mises en scène grand and the imagination which the others bring to bear in the parabasis, this he uses in the dramas, being capable of bringing back from Hades the personages of lawgivers and through them giving advice about the making or repealing of laws.
Mario Telò has recently re-examined this passage in his commentary on Eupolis’ Demes, focussing attention on the interpretation of the dichotomy between “in the parabasis” and “in the dramas.”24 The problem, in a nutshell, is that the quality ascribed to Eupolis, φαντασία “imagination,” normally refers to purely verbal evocativeness, but something more is clearly intended, something normally specific to the parabasis, which Eupolis extends throughout his plays. Telò suggests that the phantasia ascribed to Eupolis is closer to εἰδωλοποιία “making images,” i.e. “giving speeches to recognisable individuals,” basing his argument on a passage in [Longinus] De subl. 15.1 (On the Sublime) in which the terms appear to be assimilated. Elsewhere, eidolopoiia refers specifically to the dead (and Aphthonius even cites the dead politicians of Demes in illustration). Telò may nonetheless be on to something, but we need to ask what it was that “others do in the parabases.” As Platonius tells us elsewhere (Koster, Prolegomena I.36–7), in the parabasis οἱ ποιηταὶ διὰ τοῦ χοροῦ ἢ ὑπὲρ ἑαυτῶν ἀπελογοῦντο ἢ περὶ δημοσίων πραγμάτων εἰσηγοῦντο (“the poets either defended themselves or gave advice about public affairs”). Given that both passages are ascribed to the same author, we are probably looking at a single theory. The “imagination” employed in the parabasis, then, must have to do with the manner in which the poet presents his own views. Platonius is making it clear that there is something different about the “in one’s face” way, as it
24 M. Telò, Eupolidis Demi, Biblioteca Nazionale, Serie dei classici greci e latini. Testi con commento filologico, n.s. 14 (Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 2007), pp. 46–8.
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were, that Eupolis does this in the plays as opposed to in the parabasis. And since Platonius does not appear to confine himself to the example of Demoi in making this claim—it is something generally true of the author, which can be exemplified by the specific example of the resuscitation of the leaders—we need to ask what kind of φαντασία could have justified this statement. The answer must be that, just as what was placed “before the eyes” of the audience in the parabasis was, via the chorus, the poet himself, so Eupolis had a habit of putting himself on stage in the dramas to get his views over.25 The very way in which the example of Demoi is expressed appears to justify this interpretation. Uniquely in this sort of text, the poet himself is said ἀναγαγεῖν ἱκανὸς ὢν ἐξ Ἅιδου νομοθετῶν πρόσωπα καὶ δι᾽ αὐτῶν εἰσηγούμενος ἢ περὶ θέσεως νόμων ἢ καταλύσεως (“to be capable of bringing back from Hades the personages of lawgivers and through them giving advice about the making or repealing of laws”). Platonius appears to be saying that in several of his comedies, including Demoi, Eupolis appeared as a character. This inference, I have argued above, seems to have been made about Eupolis by other ancient scholars in respect to other plays. Strong support is offered for this reading of Platonius by Lucian, who appears to have made use in his Piscator of Eupolis’ Demoi. He clearly knew the play, since he cites fr. 102 at Demonax 10 and uses it again at Nigrinus 7 (cf. [Luc.] Dem. Enc. 20). As noted, the dialogue opens with the ancient philosophers arriving back on earth specifically to get their own back on Lucian (presented in disguise; see below) for what he wrote about them in Philosophies for Sale. Lucian persuades them to allow the judgement to be made by Philosophy herself and her entourage, and a courtroom scene unfolds in which he is able to refute the charges brought against him by Diogenes on the others’ behalf, arguing that he was actually attacking false philosophers. Just as Lucian uses Cratinus’ Pytine in the Bis Accusatus as a crucial intertext for an audience he wishes to convince of the validity of his crossing of philosophy with comedy, so he may be using Eupolis’ Demoi here to underline once more his unique combination. But as in Pytine this could only operate because the ancients saw the comedy as a literary defence by the author (since Cratinus was understood to be the comic poet of the play), so the use of Demoi implies that Eupolis was perceived as having had a stage role there and hence as producing a form of defence of his serious comic views. Two further relationships between Piscator and Demoi appear to confirm that this is the intertext Lucian is using to prop up his satirical but serious selfpresentation. At one point (Piscator 30) he calls the philosophers νομοθέτας (“lawgivers”), and since this is an apter description of the central figures in Demoi than it is of the angry philosophers, it seems to serve as an intertextual signal. Moreover, when Lucian gives his own name, it is Parrhesiades, which is formed in the same way and
25 For a full discussion of the consequences of this for the interpretation of Old Comedy, see Sidwell, Aristophanes the Democrat (above, opening n.).
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even sounds rather like Pyronides, the central character of Eupolis’ Demoi. That this is not pure chance is suggested by the fact that in Bis Accusatus Lucian uses the simple ethnic “the Syrian” instead of a true name (Bis Acc. 15). The evidence of Platonius and Lucian—and the seriousness with which Eupolis’ Demoi was received in later antiquity—tends to support the inference of a comic poet on stage, naturally identified in antiquity with the author. The implication of Lucian’s choice of name for himself in Piscator and of Platonius’ description of the plot of Demoi is that Eupolis played the leading role. It is not implausible that the perceived message of the play may have been understood most easily if the apparent interventions by the “author” were in the mouth of Pyronides, since the whole notion of the “Great Idea” of saving the city by recourse to the restoration of the patrios politeia could then easily be ascribed to the author (in the way that Dicaeopolis’ peace plan has sometimes been ascribed to Aristophanes). This account of the perceived centrality of poetic on-stage self-representation in Old Comedy and of Lucian’s deliberate use of it as an intertextual signal has important consequences for our understanding of the reception of Old Comedy in antiquity and the theories formulated about it and for our reading of Lucian. If my argument is correct, we will need to try to reconstruct some counter-intuitive interface between Old Comic self-representation and Lucian’s works before we can really see what he expects his audience to have envisaged as his literary goals.26 The same will be true, of course, if my argument has established a greater likelihood now that Lucilius did not link onomasti komoidein and self-revelation fortuitously, but because he was innovating on the basis of a widely held theory of Old Comedy. Let us turn, therefore, to a passage which, like the anecdote from Apsines considered earlier, tells a detailed story about Eupolis—one Storey has argued was also drawn direct from his Autolykos, since once more the poet’s enslavement is central to the anecdote.27 Apsines said: “Eupolis was convicted of xenia and sold publicly. Lycon bought him and put him in charge of his son.” The passage I want to examine now is from Aelian’s De Natura Animalium (Nature of Animals) 10.41: Εὐπόλιδι τῷ τῆς κωμῳδίας ποιητῇ δίδωσι δῶρον Αὐγέας ὁ Ἐλευσίνιος σκύλακα ἰδεῖν ὡραῖον, Μολοττὸν τὸ γένος, καὶ καλεῖ τοῦτον ὁ Εὔπολις ὁμωνύμως τῷ δωρησαμένῳ αὐτόν. κολακευθεὶς οὖν ταῖς τροφαῖς, καὶ ἐκ τῆς συνηθείας ὑπαχθεὶς τῆς μακροτέρας, ἐφίλει τὸν δεσπότην ὁ Αὐγέας ὁ κύων. καί ποτε ὁμόδουλος αὐτῷ νεανίας, ὄνομα Ἐφιάλτης, ὑφαιρεῖται δράματά τινα τοῦ Εὐπόλιδος· ἃ οὐκ ἔλαθε κλέπτων, ἀλλὰ εἶδεν αὐτὸν ὁ κύων, καὶ ἐμπεσὼν ἀφειδέστατα δάκνων ἀπέκτεινεν. χρόνῳ δὲ ὕστερον ἐν Αἰγίνῃ τὸν βίον ὁ Εὔπολις κατέστρεψε, καὶ ἐτάφη ἐνταῦθα· ὁ δὲ κύων ὠρυόμενός τε καὶ θρηνῶν τὸν τῶν κυνῶν θρῆνον, εἶτα μέντοι λύπῃ καὶ λιμῷ ἑαυτὸν ἐκτήξας ἀπέθανεν ἐπὶ τῷ τροφεῖ καὶ δεσπότῃ, μισήσας τὸν βίον ὁ κύων. καὶ ὅ γε τόπος καλεῖται μνήμῃ τοῦ τότε πάθους Κυνὸς Θρῆνος.
26 See further Sidwell, “Dead Philosophers’ Society” (above, opening n.). 27 Storey, Eupolis (above, n. 22), pp. 86–9.
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Augeas of Eleusis gave as a gift to Eupolis the comic poet a nice-looking puppy, of the Molossian breed, and Eupolis called it by the same name as the man who had given it to him. Spoilt by good feeding and brought to heel by their long-established cohabitation, the dog Augeas began to grow fond of its master. Now a young man named Ephialtes, who was a fellow-slave of Eupolis,’ at some point stole some of his plays. But the theft was detected, because the dog saw him, attacked, and gave him such a ruthless bite that he killed him. Later on, Eupolis completed his life on Aegina and was buried there. But the dog howled and mourned the doggy lament. Then, however, it wasted away of grief and hunger over the grave of the master who had cared for it, conceiving a hatred for life. And actually, the place is still called “Doggy Lament” in remembrance of its suffering then.
What one notices immediately is the biographical detail. What we will be obliged to accept on top of this, if we accept Storey’s hypothesis about the origin of the anecdote, is the fictionalised setting of the poet’s self-representation. Eupolis cannot have been enslaved and still have written comedy, still less have died and written the play in which he stages his own death. But this may help confirm the instincts and arguments of those who read Roman satire in terms of “masks.” If such a model of self-representation really lay behind the origins of the Roman genre, its sophisticated intended public could not have been expected to buy into the reality of the satirist’s pose. On the other hand, Aristophanes’ life was apparently also believed to be accessible through his plays. It can be argued that the whole business of charges of xenia against him which we find in the scholia and the biographies was extracted from plays in which, as in Acharnians (377–82, 496–556), the author appeared to ancient scholars to be coterminous with the stage-character.28 As noted above, it is certainly the case that the writer of the Vita (Aristophanes test. 1.55) believed that the poet himself spoke in fr. 604 (ὧν καὶ αὐτὸς ἐμνήσθη, “which he himself mentioned”): τὴν γυναῖκα δὲ αἰσχύνομαι τώ τ᾽ οὐ φρονοῦντε παιδίω (“I’m ashamed before my wife and my two senseless children”). Fr. 604 was used by some ancient biographers (Ar. test. 1.56–7) to suggest that the tradition attested elsewhere, that Aristophanes had three sons (Philippus, Nicostratus or Philetairus and Araros), was wrong and he had only two. There is one play of Aristophanes in which the central character has two sons, Daitales (Banqueters; cf. Clouds 529; fr. 205). It is true that the father here is an old man (fr. 205), but then, so is Dicaeopolis, and ancient scholars took Ach. 378 to express something about Aristophanes (as many scholars still do). I conclude that the very first play of Aristophanes may have been believed to have a self-representational comic poet at its heart. If the struggle by a father to bring up his two sons morally (the theme suggested for Banqueters by Aristophanes’ description at Clouds 529: “my virtuous and my sexually delinquent boy”) calls to mind Horace Satires 1.4 and Leach’s treatment of its biographical fiction, perhaps we can imagine Horace too
28 Sidwell, Aristophanes the Democrat (above, opening n.), p. 112.
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expecting his audience to see the shadow of the bald (and old?) comedian falling across his autobiographical protestations.29 If this analysis has merit, what I have said only scratches the surface. If Lucian did consciously appropriate what was widely perceived in ancient scholarship on Old Comedy as on-stage self-representation by its poets, the same body of theory may already have been available to Lucilius. It is notoriously difficult, however, to date any of the material I have been dealing with accurately, so that the hypothesis must remain conjectural. Just as with Lucian, however, who boldly and clearly claims originality in the creation of the hybrid “comic dialogue,” we need not take issue either with Horace (who claims Lucilius as the inventor of the Roman genre: Satires 1.10.48) or with Quintilian (10.1.93 Satura quidem tota nostra est) and suggest that Roman Satire was just Old Comedy in Roman guise. Lucilius had created something novel. Comedy was a dramatic genre, whereas satire was a narrative one. It also settled down into a form that used the hexameter rather than the mix of iambic, lyric and trochaic metres characteristic of Old Comedy (cf. Horace, Satires 1.4.7, on this as Lucilius’ only change to his Old Comic model). Ancient critics were much more alive to these formal differences than we are, as is again reflected in the way Lucian speaks of his own originality within the imitative tradition. I close by pointing out three places where the suggestion that Old Comedy provided the model for the self-revealing satirist may make a difference to our understanding of the naming of its practitioners. Two are in Horace, one in Persius. Horace confirms his acquaintance with—and the importance to his craft of—two of the three comic poets I have singled out as “self-representationists”. In Satires 2.3, Damasippus berates Horace for his laziness in writing and asks what the point is of the books he takes with him to his Sabine farm (Satires 2.3.11–12): Quorsum pertinuit stipare Platona Menandro, Eupolin, Archilochum, comites educere tantos? What was the point of squeezing Plato in next to Menander, bringing Eupolis, Archilochus, such huge companions?
The books are Plato, Menander, Eupolis and Archilochus. I take these to represent various aspects of Horace’s work—philosophy, gentle social comedy, satirical attack. With Eupolis, however, identified as the most important of the Old Comic poets famed for “letting it all hang out,” Horace may be pointing to one of the sources of his own satiric persona. At Epistles 1.19.1–3, in a poem that deals with the true nature of imitation and in particular his own contribution to the Romanisation of Greek literature, Horace evokes
29 E.W. Leach, “Horace’s Pater Optimus and Terence’s Demea: Autobiographical Fiction and Comedy in Serm. 1, 4,” American Journal of Philology 92 (1971), pp. 616–32.
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none other than the drunken self-satirist himself, Cratinus, and in all probability, his most famous play, Pytine (cf. Cratinus fr. 203): Prisco si credis, Maecenas docte, Cratino, Nulla placere diu nec vivere carmina possunt Quae scribuntur aquae potoribus. If you believe Cratinus, learned Maecenas, Poems composed by water-drinkers cannot live Or please for very long.
I suspect that in his own arch way, Horace in these two places is making sure (if we are as learned as learned Maecenas, or shrewder than Damasippus) that we catch his implication—that he too, like his illustrious predecessor, has in his apparently guileless self-representation drunk deep from the heady vintage of Old Comedy. The final passage is Persius 1.123–5: Audaci quicunque adflate Cratino iratum Eupolidem praegrandi cum sene palles, aspice et haec, si forte aliquid decoctius audis. You, blown with bold Cratinus, who grow pale and wan At angry Eupolis and at the grand old man, Glance at this too, if you perchance like concentrates.
My final question is whether the epithets accorded to the triad of poets mentioned before as Lucilius’ inspiration by Horace (Satires 1.4.1) relate to their status as practitioners of onomasti komoidein. I know of no other source, however, in the scholiastic material where Eupolis is called “angry.” In the extension of the passage we have looked at from Platonius, he is called eucharis “pleasant” and hypselos “lofty,” and ta skommata lian eustochos “very well-aimed in his jokes.” Can it be instead that the Eupolis of e.g. Autolykos or Demes was reckoned to have an angry persona? And why is Aristophanes “the grand old man”? Was Persius thinking rather of the Aristophanes character of Daitales (Banqueters)? As for Cratinus’ audacity, I suspect that it too may just as easily be tied to his drunken antics in Pytine as to the practice of satirical named attack.
Ian Ruffell
Old Comedy at Rome: Rhetorical Model and Satirical Problem Abstract: This paper reconsiders the evidence for the reception of Old Comedy in Rome, primarily in Latin texts. The first part shows how mainstream reflection on Old Comedy at Rome was strongly shaped by rhetorical theory (and to a lesser extent the broader philosophical tradition) in addition to the Hellenistic critical tradition on comic drama itself. In particular, the reflections on Old Comedy by writers such as Cicero and Quintilian present Old Comedy in terms markedly different from and more rounded than those of Horace and others, as a stylistic model of suavitas and gravitas rather than a model for satirical invective (whether conceived positively or negatively). The second part shows how Old Comedy, while lacking any close dramatic cognate in its ancient afterlife, was appropriated particularly by satirical writers to theorise libertas and negotiate their response to a political context that circumscribed just such freedom. In the final part, the reception of Old Comedy is presented as primarily that of text and language, not of performance. This textual reception at Rome provides a check on suggestions of a broader performative dissemination and reception of Old Comedy.
The reception of Old Comedy in antiquity is one of the most problematic instances of literary history. Whereas other genres enjoyed a lively and fruitful afterlife, whether in terms of creative re-use, reworking or inverting their material (epic, tragedy, lyric), or through a relatively straightforward generic descent (historiography, for example), Old Comedy’s descent is marked by rapid change, to the extent that barely 50 years after the death of Aristophanes, the genre of kōmōidia was in essential elements barely recognisable from its earlier form. Later reception is marked by the treatment of the genre as either a problem or an example. How can or should we accommodate comedy, understood largely as abusive laughter, within human relations, as the philosophers asked? Or explain the references and practices of Old Comedy, as the literary critics asked? Or mine Old Comedy for correct Attic or historical snippets, as the Second Sophistic and the lexicographers and theater historians asked? Until we reach the satirical prose versions of Lucian, we must look hard indeed to see the use and reworking of Old Comedy in a literary context as a kind of creative peer and not an illustrative or pedagogic artefact.1
1 It is a very great pleasure to offer this paper in honor of one of the foremost Aristophanists of my lifetime. Thanks to Costas Panayotakis and Chloe Stewart for reading a draft, and to Catherine Steel for advice on Ciceronian matters. All errors are my own. For the problem of laughter in Greek culture, in
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In this paper, I shall be looking at one strand within this problematic reception of Old Comedy, namely its reception at Rome and primarily in Latin literature of the Republic and early Empire.2 I shall be making three related arguments. First, mainstream reflection on Old Comedy at Rome was strongly shaped by two contemporary filters—rhetoric and philosophy—in addition to the Hellenistic critical tradition on comic drama itself. Second, Old Comedy, while lacking any close dramatic cognate in its ancient afterlife, was appropriated particularly in order to theorise libertas, primarily in the genre of satire. I shall argue, however, that the specific Roman receptions of Old Comedy in theoretical terms made the metapoetics of libertas particularly problematic. Third, the reception of Old Comedy is conspicuously that of text and language, not performance. The reception of Old Comedy at Rome provides a check on claims for a broader performative reception of Old Comedy that have been made in recent years. As we shall see, it is (as one might expect) in certain respects difficult to isolate the Roman reception of Old Comedy from that of the broader Greek receptions of the genre, which stem particularly from the Peripatetic tradition or other Hellenistic theory and criticism.3 Roman theorising of Old Comedy stands in that tradition of classical scholarship. Later writers, such as the lexicographer Julius Pollux and the medical writer Galen, also pose something of a conundrum, as they are writing in Greek for Greek audiences, while apparently attached culturally and financially closely to the Roman center.4 Other writers, such as Dionysius of Halicarnassus and the author of verse fables, Phaedrus, are close to Rome, but their intended audience is far from certain. Nonetheless, I will be focusing in the main on writers of Latin, where a distinctive set of further concerns were added to the mix. These were, first, the nature of the Roman social and political context, and, second, the nature of the Roman dramatic context. Old Comedy, an anachronistic form in much of Greek politics after the death of Alexander, came to play a significant role in working out the
which Old Comedy plays its part, see F.S. Halliwell, Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), with bibliography. 2 Accounts of reception in this period can be found in W. Süss, Aristophanes und die Nachwelt (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1911), pp. 13–15; L.E. Lord, Aristophanes: his Plays and Influence (London: Harrap, 1925), pp. 87–94; A. Cucchiarelli, “La commedia greca antica a Roma,” Atene e Roma 51 (2006), pp. 157–77. 3 These traditions (and the relations between them) are imperfectly understood. The most substantial evidence comes in treatises of a much later date or from the Aristophanic scholia. See, variously, the controversial but useful work of R. Janko, Aristotle on Comedy. Towards a Reconstruction of Poetics II2 (London: Duckworth, 2002); H.-G. Nesselrath, Die attische Mittlere Komödie: ihre Stellung in der antiken Literaturkritik und Literaturgeschichte, Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte 36 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990). See also R.L. Hunter, Critical Moments in Classical Literature: Studies in the Ancient View of Literature and its Uses (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 78–106. 4 For Galen’s knowledge of Greek comedy, see V. Nutton, “Galen’s Library,” in: C. Gill, T. Whitmarsh and J. Wilkins (eds.), Galen and the World of Knowledge. Greek Culture in the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 19–34.
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role of satirical and abusive poetry in the environments presented by Roman politics.5 The Roman rewriting of the Greek comic tradition, while vibrant and engaged with carnivalesque theatrical traditions that might be thought to have some deep affinity with Old Comedy as a tradition of popular comedy, nonetheless had no place for direct rewriting of that genre, largely for historical reasons, and this led in turn to the ecological niche of Old Comedy being filled by other genres.
1. Old Comedy as Moral and Stylistic Example The most conspicuous approach to Old Comedy in the Roman tradition is that of exemplarity. Old Comedy itself was used as a model of language or style, and particularly of the role of humor in an elite social context, and as a moral example. Or it was used not as a model itself, but as a source of individual political, rhetorical or moral examples. That is, it was quarried as a historical source, rather as it is often used today. Both sides of comic exemplarity are to be seen in discourses that could present themselves as having some degree of kinship with Old Comedy, most conspicuously rhetoric. The combination of a common understanding of Aristophanes in terms of moral and stylistic exemplarity can be seen in a letter of 54 BCE of Cicero to his brother Quintus, in which he warmly compares his writing to Aristophanes. The full resonances of the comparison, however, are not immediately obvious. Indeed, they may seem perverse and perhaps even self-contradictory, given what we know of the reception of Old Comedy in the Greek tradition (Q. fr. 3.1.19):6 Cicero tuus … dedit mihi epistulam legendam tuam, quam paulo ante acceperat, Aristophaneo modo valde mehercule, et suavem et gravem; qua sum admodum delectatus. Your Cicero (i.e. your son) … gave me your letter to read, which he had received a little earlier. It was really damnably Aristophanic: attractive and serious; I was highly delighted by it.
There is no doubt that for Cicero, at least, Aristophanes is a serious matter. The term gravis may simply be a reference to stylistic grandeur, but it is a style appropriate to weighty matters. Weighty content may sound more plausible than weighty style, given that Aristophanes can cheerfully plumb the stylistic depths as well as attain heights. But the view of Aristophanic seriousness is repeated a century or more later
5 For that role, see I.A. Ruffell, “Horace, popular invective and the segregation of literature,” Journal of Roman Studies 93 (2003), pp. 35–65, with bibliography. 6 = Aristophanes, test. 59, cf. test. 131.4. D.R. Shackleton-Bailey (ed.), Epistulae ad Quintum fratrem et M. Brutum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980) ad loc., tentatively suggests emending to Aristoteleo (comparing de Orat. 1.49, where Aristotle is one of a number of suaves), but unnecessarily, as the evidence below shows.
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by Quintilian, who described the genre as heavyweight (grandis, Inst. 10.65) and aligned it closely with epic in particular. Even more surprising, perhaps, is that gravis also connotes moral seriousness. That may fit with comic metapoetics, which can assert that τὸ … δίκαιον οἶδε καὶ τρυγῳδία (“comedy too knows what is right,” Ar. Ach. 500), but it is surprising given the critical reception of Old Comedy in Hellenistic criticism and scholarship, which in its most well-known strands emphasised comic shamelessness, aggression and invective, and in far from positive terms. For Horace, working in this tradition, Old Comedy slipped from freedom (libertas) to offense (vitium, A. P. 282): vicious in every sense. Even more surprising, perhaps, is the collision of styles that might at first sight be suggested here. As a heavyweight and a counterpart of epic, Old Comedy seems to be the kind of genre that would be far from the slender poetics and Hellenistic poetry advocated and emulated by late Republican poets, a development to which Cicero’s own efforts in verse may have contributed.7 The first epithet, suavis, used by Cicero to describe Aristophanes, however, has more in common with neoteric poetics. Again Cicero is not alone in understanding Old Comedy in such terms. Indeed, the characterisation of the genre as suavis—”attractive,” “pleasant,” “agreeable,” “smooth” or even “sweet”—is echoed in a series of related terms used by Roman writers about Old Comedy over the next centuries. Quintilian describes Old Comedy as elegans et venusta (“elegant and charming”) as well as grandis (10.65). Macrobius refers to Aristophanes’ charm, lepos (Sat. 5.20.13), and to the poets of Old Comedy as elegantes (7.5.8). Most of these terms would be at home in Catullan metapoetics or an Augustan recusatio.8 There seems to be a contradiction here. It is also striking that the latter characterisation of the genre’s style is not only at odds with its weight, but even more clearly opposed to the analysis of comedy in Hellenistic theory and criticism, which ascribed polished and delicate stylistic virtues not to Old Comedy but to its later generic offspring, New Comedy, and in particular, Menander. This tradition is well represented by the Comparison of Aristophanes and Menander attributed to Plutarch, in which Aristophanic language is presented as problematic because of its lack of smoothness and consistency. The register of Aris-
7 For Cicero’s translation/adaptation of Aratus, and for Cicero as a precursor of the new poets, see W. Clausen, “Cicero and the new poetry,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 90 (1986), pp. 159–70, with bibliography. For Cicero’s poetic output in general, see W.W. Ewbank, The Poems of Cicero (London: University of London Press, 1933; repr. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 2002); E. Courtney, The Fragmentary Latin Poets2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 149–78. 8 lepidus and associated terms, Catullus 1.1; 6.17; 36.10; illepidus, 6.2; 10.4; 36.17; lepos, 57.1. For venustus, see also Catullus 3.2, of his notional audience; suavis is coupled with elegans in 13.10. Lucretius, de rerum natura 4.180 = 909 contrasts suavidicis to multis versibus in a celebration of concision and brevity. Compare also Lucretius’ famous honey-and-wormwood image, which invokes Callimachean poetic purity, musaeo … lepore (9) and a suaviloquenti / carmine (20–1), to help the medicine go down. For suavitas associated with poiētikē, and in particular with brevity, see also Nepos Att. 18.5–6. For its use in terms of quantitative restraint, see Phaedrus 4.ep.1–4.
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tophanic language is much more flexible, both between characters and within characters. Menander’s characters, by contrast, all tend to speak in broadly the same register.9 The Plutarchan treatise counts this as a point in favor of the later genre.10 It is in this ultimately Peripatetic tradition that Horace’s stylistic prescriptions in the Ars Poetica can be seen. In particular, he argues for coherence and unity (A.P. 14–23, esp. 23) and for consistency (A.P. 89–92)—that material should fit style (and rhythm), with occasional exceptions for effect (93–8). Characters should be consistent, either with respect to known characters, or self-consistent if invented (125–7). Versification, too, should be smooth. Horace’s discussion of the development of the basic iambic trimeter out of lyric poetry suggests that it was appropriate for shouting down an unruly audience: popularis / vincentem strepitus et natum rebus agendis (“overcoming the raucous noise of the people and born for enacting things,” 81–2).11 A persistent flaw in the development of drama is the collision of the peasants (rustici) with the educated townies (urbani), with the two doing duty for style as well as social class (note esp. on the development of Satyri). In terms of style, both rhythm and humor (sal), it is Plautus who is most explicitly the target of Horace’s ire, as being neither lepidus nor urbanus (Ars Poetica 270–4):12 at vestri proavi Plautinos et numeros et laudavere sales, nimium patienter utrumque, ne dicam stulte, mirati, si modo ego et vos scimus inurbanum lepido seponere dicto legitimumque sonum digitis callemus et aure. Your ancestors, however, praised Plautus’ rhythms and humor, too placidly— not to say stupidly—admiring both, if in fact you and I know how to separate crude from pleasant speech and are well-versed, with fingers and ear, in a sound that’s appropriate.
It is clear as Horace goes on, however, that Old Comedy is mutatis mutandis likewise problematic for him, as for his Hellenistic precursors, in terms of its general stylistic tendencies and its humor, which, according to Horace, goes well beyond earthiness (sal) to shamelessness and violent offence (280–4, a passage to which I return below). It is possible that the elegance and charm of Old Comedy, noted by Cicero, Quintilian and others, refers exclusively to the quality of Aristophanes’ Attic Greek, or, for that matter, that the charm is that of a quaint and old-fashioned genre. There is
9 On this, see A. Willi, The Language of Aristophanes (Oxford: Clarendon, 2003). 10 See especially Plu. Mor. 853b–e. For discussion, see Hunter, Critical Moments (above, n. 3), pp. 78– 89. 11 Horace is not talking here specifically about Old Comedy so much as about Satyri. For the noise of the (Roman) theater, see also Ep. 2.1.200–5. 12 Porphyry on 273 explicitly glosses lepidum as venustum et suavem.
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certainly some scope for that in the use of suavis, which is frequently used of musical qualities.13 And the famed quality of Aristophanes’ Attic Greek is indeed one of the elements for which Quintilian recommends him at 10.65 (sinceram illam sermonis Attici gratiam, “that pure charm of Attic speech”). Even so, he goes on to assign the elegantia and venustas explicitly to the other elements of Aristophanic poetry (Inst. 10.1.65–6): Antiqua comoedia cum sinceram illam sermonis Attici gratiam prope sola retinet, tum facundissimae libertatis, et si est insectandis vitiis praecipua, plurimum tamen virium etiam in ceteris partibus habet. Nam et grandis et elegans et venusta, et nescio an ulla, post Homerum tamen, quem ut Achillem semper excipi par est, aut similior sit oratoribus aut ad oratores faciendos aptior. [66] Plures eius auctores, Aristophanes tamen et Eupolis Cratinusque praecipui. Old Comedy almost alone keeps intact the simple charm both of the Attic dialect and of very eloquent freedom of speech, and if it is notable for pursuing crimes, it nonetheless has a great deal of strength in its other elements. For it was weighty, elegant and charming, and I do not know what else—that is, after Homer, who, like Achilles, can always be excepted—would be either closer to orators or would be more suitable for making orators. It had several authors, but in particular Aristophanes, Eupolis and Cratinus.
It is also clearly the case that for Quintilian, as for Macrobius, these qualities are characteristic of the genre as a whole, not of Aristophanes alone. This too marks a divergence from Peripatetic theory, which in some versions had Aristophanes (however implausibly) as an elegant mean between the other members of the “triad,” Cratinus and Eupolis.14 To explain this apparently peculiarly Roman understanding of Old Comedy, we need to look beyond, or at least less directly at the traditions of Greek poetics that Horace notably inherits. If we consider Cicero’s use of suavis elsewhere, one conspicuous use is in offering positive evaluations of (and indicating warm feelings toward or pleasure from) individuals in elite Roman society.15 The vague amiability connoted by
13 Period charm: Aul. Gel. 9.13.4; 10.3.15; 12.4.3; 17.2.10. Attic speech: Cic. de Orat. 3.42–3 (in an AtticAsiatic split). For song, see e.g. Plaut. Cas. 799; Stich. 760 (rather paradoxically: lepidam atque suavem cantionem … cinaedicam) and 767. For suavitas of native Latin speaking, see Nepos, Att. 4.1. For the sounds of Latin as less suavis than Greek, see Quintilian, Inst. 12.10.33; Gellius 9.9.4–9 on Vergil’s adaptations of Theocritus. 14 This is broadly the version that comes down to us in Platonius’ treatise “On the different types of comedy” (W.J.W. Koster [ed.], Scholia in Aristophanem, fasc. I A: Prolegomena de Comoedia II [Groningen: Bourma’s Boekhuis, 1975], pp. 6–7). 15 For the semantic range of suavis, see A.H. Mamoojee, “‘Suavis’ and ‘dulcis’: A study of Ciceronian usage,” Phoenix 35 (1981), pp. 220–36. His main concern is to distinguish dulcis from suavis, suggesting that dulcis is more unambigously concerned with physiological taste, and that dulcis can more easily slip into having negative connotations. Mamoojee suggests that in comparison with dulcis the range of applications of suavis is more intellectual than emotional and has social rather than political connotations (in the narrow sense), but the story is more complex than that, as I argue below.
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the term (cf. English “nice’) makes it all the more striking that Cicero uses it to describe this most startling of genres. Elsewhere for him it is a near conventional epithet to describe family and friends,16 their letters,17 their conversation,18 their decent behavior or attitude toward him or his family,19 their character,20 the quality of their relationship,21 or some combination thereof.22 Cicero’s description of Quintus’ letter and indeed of Aristophanes is no doubt shaped partly by this social and personal usage. But as the term is associated above all with style and literary technique, we must look toward its use in more formal discourse for a fuller explanation. A second approach to suavis and related terms of approbation of Old Comedy is thus to look in more detail at rhetorical theory. Here too, we can begin to answer the problem posed explicitly in the following century by Quintilian: what made Old Comedy good for aspirant orators to work with? To be sure, suavis often denotes performative and aural elements: tone and euphony.23 It can also be used of a generally conversational manner24 or of a personal affability (comitas).25 Given that Cicero is discussing a letter, however, and that the author of the letter will not be the one reading it aloud, it is necessary to consider other elements. When suavitas is mentioned in passing, it is not always easy to distinguish these broader stylistic features. Fortunately, Cicero spells them out in places. In the Partitiones Oratoriae
16 More or less conventionally at e.g. Fam. 6.18.5 (son of Q. Lepta); 7.33.1 (Volumnius); 9.10.2 (Nicias); 12.30.3 (Chaerippus); 13.1.2 (Phaedrus); 14.3.2 (his children); 14.5.1 (son) and 14.5.2 (wife Terentia); 14.18.1 (daughter); 16.4.1 (Curius); Att. 1.15.1 (brother Quintus); 5.9.3 (son); 7.3.12 (son-in-law); 16.7.8 (Attica); Q. fr. 2.6.4, 2.15.2, 3.4.6, 3.5.4, 3.5.9, 3.7.9. For a suavis grandson and traveling companion, see Apul. Met. 8.20. 17 Fam. 2.13.1 (M. Caelius), 9.18.1 (L. Papirius Paetus), 13.18.1 (of a letter to Atticus by Ser. Sulpicius Rufus); 15.21.4 (C. Trebonius); Att. 1.20.1; 2.8.1, 2.12.1, 2.13.1; 13.44.1; 16.15.6; Q. fr. 2.14.1 and 3.1.17 (from Caesar); 3.7.6 (to Caesar); Brutus 330. 18 Fam. 11.27.5 (C. Matius); 16.12.6 (A. Varro); Att. 1.17.6; cf. Plaut. As. 835; Plin. Ep. 4.3.2; 6.8.7. 19 Fam. 2.13.2; 3.10.9, 3.12.2 (App. Claudius Pulcher); 5.20.9 (Mescinius Rufus); 10.3.1, 10.5.1 (L. Munatius Plancus); Att. 10.8.9; Q. fr. 2.14.1. 20 Fam. 3.1.1 (App. Claudius Pulcher again); 4.6.2 (Ser. Sulpicius Rufus); 7.15.2 (C. Matius), 7.28.1 (M’. Curio); 9.14.5 (M. Brutus); Att. 14.17a.5 (M. Brutus again); 16.16a.4. 21 Fam. 8.1.1 (from M. Caelius); Fam. 13.26.1 (Ser. Sulpicius Rufus again); Att. 5.1.5; Q. fr. 2.9.1. 22 Fam. 5.12, disingenuously flattering the historian Lucceius for his ingenium (1) and articulation of the ‘laws of history’ (3); suavitas quaedam … sermonum atque morum, haudquaquam mediocre condimentum amicitiae (“a certain attractiveness of conversation and character, no mean adornment for friendship”, Amic. 66); cf. Att. 1.17.6 (consilio ac sermone). 23 For use of the voice, see de Orat. 3.42 (and further on variety below); Brutus 203, 234, 235, 259, 303; Orat. 57–8; Fin. 5.49; cf. Aul. Gel. 2.17.3. Rhythm and euphony: de Orat. 3.181; Orat. 149–62 (discussing linguistic developments, including the changed practices of contemporary poetry, poetae novi); opposed to an infelicitous collocation of words: Orat. 163. Delivery: Rhet. Her. 3.21–2 (pronuntiatio); Cic. Brut. 133; Quintilian, Inst. 1.5.33; 10.2.83 (of Aristotle); 11.3.16, 11.3.31, 11.3.35; Seneca, Contr. 3.pr.3; Val. Max. 8.10(ext).1. 24 See the discussion of conversational style at Off. 1.133–4 (on which further below). 25 A useful tip for any aspiring politician ([Q. Cic.], Pet. 42), but often overlooked.
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(Divisions of Rhetoric), he discusses how the suave genus of utterance derives from the elegantia and iucunditas of smooth-sounding words, then moves on to consider good periodic style, with tight, well-balanced clauses (21), which is less relevant to Old Comedy. He then considers a further kind of suavis oratio, which derives variously from innovation, surprise, the stirring of emotions, hints of the speaker’s personality or beliefs, or hints of exaggeration or self-deprecation (Partitiones Oratoriae 22): Fit etiam suavis oratio cum aliquid aut invisum aut inauditum aut novum dicas. Delectat enim quidquid est admirabile, maximeque movet ea quae motum aliquem animi miscet oratio, quaeque significat oratoris ipsius amabiles mores: qui exprimuntur aut significando iudicio ipsius et animo humano ac liberali, aut inflexione sermonis cum aut augendi alterius aut minuendi sui causa alia dici ab oratore, alia existimari videntur, idque comitate fieri magis quam vanitate. Sed multa sunt suavitatis praecepta quae orationem aut magis obscuram aut minus probabilem faciant; itaque etiam hoc loco nobis est ipsis quid causa postulet iudicandum. Attractive speech also happens when you say something unseen or unheard or new. For whatever surprises creates pleasure, and that speech is particularly stirring which excites some passion, and which indicates the lovable character of the orator himself: these are expressed either by indicating one’s own judgement and humane and liberal spirit, or by a change of tone, when for the sake of inflating someone else or reducing himself one thing seems to be stated, and another seems to be thought—and that appears to happen out of affability rather than egotism. But there are a lot of principles about suavitas that render it more confusing and less reasonable; so, in this instance too, we have to judge for ourselves what the case demands.
The latter species of irony reflects the kind of self-deprecating eirōneia for which Socrates was famous. A number of these features—surprise, innovation, irony, manipulation of emotion26—are pertinent to Old Comedy. In a subsequent part of the dialogue, Cicero amplifies, in relation to three elements: narrative technique, ornamentation and variety. The first of these again amplifies surprise among other techniques (Partitiones Oratoriae 32):27 Suavis autem narratio est quae habet admirationes, exspectationes, exitus inopinatos, interpositos motus animorum, colloquia personarum, dolores, iracundias, metus, laetitias, cupiditates. An attractive narrative is one which has surprise, suspense, unexpected deaths, the introduction of emotional disturbances, conversations between characters, grief, anger, fear, happiness and desire.
Similar phenomena are included by Cicero when discussing ornamenta rerum, in cases where a high degree of suavitas needs to be deployed: after discussion of verbal suavitas, he recommends such embellishments as anything surprising or unforeseen,
26 For flebilis suavitas, see Quint. Inst. 11.3.170 (paired with flexum vocis). 27 For a fabulam … suave comptam, see Apul. Met. 9.14.1.
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predicted by portents, or apparently happening because of the gods or fate (Part. 72– 3). Such ornamenta are specifically related to the argumentatio in de Inventione 1.50: inventam (sc. argumentationem) exornari et certas in partes distingui et suavissimum est et summe necessarium (“it is the height of attractiveness and absolutely necessary to adorn the argument you have devised and to organise it into parts”). More commonly, the ornamentation to achieve suavitas is verbal and stylistic, and in particular it is associated with tropical and figural language of all sorts. These forms are detailed (metonymy, catachresis, “allegory” or extended metaphor), in connection with suavitas in Orator 91–5, brought together under the heading translatio.28 Likewise, in criticism of poetry, various figures are labeled by Porphyry as suavis in his commentaries on Horace.29 Clearly related to both figural and tonal ornamentation is an association of suavitas with varietas and color: Quid, ad auris nostras et actionis suavitatem quid est vicissitudine et varietate et commutatione aptius? (“What is more appropriate for our ears and for the attractiveness of the speech than change and variety and alteration?,” de Orat. 3.225).30 There could be a limit, however, to such ornamentation: there should not be excessive ornamentation or wordiness, a point spelled out in de Oratore.31 It is thus not entirely contradictory that suavitas can be associated elsewhere with simplicity, notably by Aulus Gellius, but even Cicero can suggest that brevitas is suavis. In de Oratore 3.103 he emphasizes that an orator must be ornatus et suavis, but clarifies that he should have a suavitatem … austeram et solidam, non dulcem atque decoctam (“a severe and well-grounded attractiveness, not one that is sweet and distilled”).32 In addition to the element of surprise and emotional manipulation, the figural and tropical elements, for all that Cicero perceives them as ornamental (which includes playing to audience entertainment), are directly relevant to Aristophanes’
28 See also Orat. 211 for translatio; Inv. 2.49 for ornamenta of elocutio. Either ornamentation or tightly co-ordinated periodic style may be why suavitas is the distinguishing feature of Isocrates among the Attic orators at de Orat. 3.28. For Cicero on tropes more generally, with particular reference to de Orat. 3, see D.C. Innes, “Cicero on tropes,” Rhetorica 6 (1988), pp. 307–25. 29 Porphyry on Ep. 1.15.13 (allegoria); see also on Carm. 1.11.5, 1.17.11, 1.35.34–5; 4.2.25 and 27–8, 4.5.30, 4.6.35–6. 30 See also 3.121. For vocal variety, see 3.227: smoothly changing but varied; for vocal variety, see also Part. 25, Orat. 57–8. For color, see Opt. Gen. 8. For a form of tonal modulation in music (χρῶμα) see Vitruvius 5.4.3. For discussion of varietas and ornatus, see E. Fantham, “Varietas and satietas; De Oratore 3.96–103 and the limits of ornatus,” Rhetorica 6 (1988), pp. 275–90. 31 M. Antonius’ criticism of L. Licinius Crassus’ over-elaboration of Scaevola’s ars is contrasted with the latter’s eximia suavitate (de Orat. 1.234); for Crassus’ suavitas, see also de Orat. 2.16. 32 For simplicity, see Aul. Gel. 11.14.1 (simplicissima suavitate, but involving at least some word-play or capping); 12.2.7 (discussing and quoting Cic. Rep. 5.9.11); 12.4.3; linked with brevitas: Cic. Inv. 2.6 (of Aristotle). It is in this sense, perhaps, that suavitas is associated with children (Plin. Ep. 5.16.2) and a rustic lifestyle (Cic. S. Rosc. 48).
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style.33 But these are central to Aristophanic humor in particular, and it is notable that suavitas comprises or is closely correlated with humor both in Cicero and in other writers. Thus the lengthy treatment of wit in de Oratore by C. Julius Caesar Strabo is cued by the observation that suavis … est et vehementer saepe utilis iocus et facetiae (“joking and wit are attractive and often extremely useful,” 2.216).34 Cicero returns to Caesar Strabo’s humor (and, in a related vein, his theatricality35) on numerous occasions. In Brutus 177, suavitas clusters with other terms, some of which have been noted already—festivitas and facetiae, urbanitas and lepos: Festivitate igitur et facetiis, inquam, C. Iulius L. f. et superioribus et aequalibus suis omnibus praestitit oratorque fuit minime ille quidem vehemens, sed nemo unquam urbanitate, nemo lepore, nemo suavitate conditior. So in fun and humor, I say, C. Julius, son of Lucius, was greater than his predecessors and contemporaries, and he was, indeed, not at all forceful as an orator, but no-one ever was more skilled in wit, smoothness and charm.
Elsewhere, Caesar Strabo’s suavitas is correlated with humanitas and sal, as well as lepos again (Tusc. 5.55), all terms with which suavitas is closely associated.36 The latter in particular is repeatedly associated with humor.37 Likewise, in a more informal context, suavitas is correlated with both clarity and humor (Off. 1.133–4). In a letter to Cicero, M. Caelius links humor and suavitas directly: sed hoc usque eo suave est ut, si acciderit, tota vita risus nobis deesse non possit (“this is so amusing that, if it happens, we shan’t lack for something to smile about in the rest of our life,” Fam. 8.3.1). Elsewhere, suavitas is coupled or associated with hilaritas.38 One notable association here is that Athens was said to have been cheered up by Pericles’ speech-making
33 For Aristophanes and metaphoricity, see H.-J. Newiger, Metapher und Allegorie. Studien zu Aristophanes, Zetemata 16 (Munich: Beck, 1957); and “War and peace in the comedies of Aristophanes,” in: J. Henderson (ed.), Aristophanes: Essays in Interpretation, Yale Classical Studies 26 (New Haven/ London: Yale University Press, 1980), pp. 219–37; J. Taillardat, Les Images d’Aristophane: études de langue et de style2, Annales de l’Université de Lyon, sér. III: Lettres, fasc. 36 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1965); M. Silk, “The people of Aristophanes,” in: C.B.R. Pelling (ed.), Characterisation and Individuality in Greek Literature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), pp. 150–73; I.A. Ruffell, Politics and Anti-Realism in Athenian Old Comedy: The Art of the Impossible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 54–156. 34 He also claims to have seen quosdam Graecos inscriptos libros … de ridiculis (“certain Greek books written about humor,” de Orat. 2.217), praises Greek practice but disparages their theory and analysis, and claims that such things cannot be taught. 35 de Orat. 3.30, not in this instance linked to suavitas. 36 For humanitas, see Fam. 7.28.1 (explicitly linked with the city); Att. 6.3.8; 7.3.12; 15.1.1; 16.16a.4; Cael. 25. For suavitas and lepos see de Orat. 3.181; Brut. 177. 37 For lepos with facetiae: Cic. Clu. 141; de Orat. 1.17, 1.159 (with urbanitas and sal), 1.243; 2.219, 2.225. With sal: de Orat. 2.98, 2.252. With festivitas: de Orat. 2.227; Rhet. Her. 4.32 (opposed to dignitas and pulchritudo). With iocosis: Off. 1.134. For lepos and humanitas, see de Orat. 2.270 (of Socrates), 271. 38 Fam. 9.11.1; see also Plin. Ep. 3.1.7 and especially 6.8.7.
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(Brutus 44), although that need not imply that Pericles was wisecracking his way through putting across his war strategy. This association of suavitas and its cluster of closely associated terms39 with humor is the final and perhaps most important element in Cicero’s characterisation of his brother’s Aristophanic style. It is certainly consistent with Cicero’s emphasis on Aristophanic wit in de Legibus, where he describes Aristophanes as the facetissimus poeta veteris comoediae (“most witty poet of Old Comedy,” 2.35),40 a comment repeated nearverbatim by Aulus Gellius in quoting from Aristophanes (1.15.19; 13.25.7). Gellius makes the connection with humor even more unambiguously clear in referring to him as homo festivissimus (“a most humorous person,” praef. 20). Suavitas, however, points to types of humorous discourse that, if not entirely removed from the obsession with onomasti kōmōidein and comic invective, encompass a much broader field, ranging across narrative expectations, tropical and figural discourse, and emotional response in the audience. The combination of elements can be seen in the rhetorical tradition as far back as Aristotle’s discussion of asteia (= urbanitas) in the Rhetoric.41 Indeed, Cicero explicitly associates Aristophanes, Plautus and Socratic irony with this wider type of humor: not narrow (and narrowly motivated) invective but examples of the inventive, elegans and urbanus type (de Officiis 1.104):42 duplex omnino est iocandi genus; unum illiberale petulans, flagitiosum obscenum, alterum elegans urbanum, ingeniosum facetum, quo genere non modo Plautus noster et Atticorum antiqua comoedia sed etiam philosophorum Socraticorum libri referti sunt. There are overall two types of humor: one is ungenerous, spiteful, aggressive and rude; the other is smart, sophisticated, inventive and witty, of the kind that not only our Plautus and the Old Comedy of Attica but also the works of the Socratic philosophers were said to be.
The difference between Cicero’s understanding of Old Comedy in relation to humor in this passage and that of Horace in the Ars Poetica is stark. As Brink has noted,43 both derive ultimately from Peripatetic theory, but they come to vastly different conclusions. The explanation would seem to be twofold. First, Cicero is more clearly drawing on the rhetorical tradition associated with wit and civilised discourse, whereas 39 Fantham, “Varietas and satietas” (above, n. 30), p. 279 n. 9, suggests that they are synonyms in de Orat. 1 and 3. 40 = Aristophanes test. 58. 41 For Aristotle on verbal jokes, asteia, see Rhetoric 1412a19–b33. Material from Greek comedy is included in the witticisms discussed, but from Middle Comedy (Anaxandrides) rather than Old Comedy. The typology of jokes in the Tractatus Coislinianus may also indirectly stem from such rhetorical analyses. Where Aristotle explicitly deals with the humor of Old Comedy, however, his emphasis is more on shamelessness (EN 1128a23–5). 42 C.O. Brink, Horace on Poetry, Volume II: The ‘Ars Poetica’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 308, compares the description of Socrates at de Oratore 2.270 (and generally 2.235ff). 43 On Ars Poetica 273.
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Horace’s comments in the Ars Poetica are more derived from Peripatetic or Peripatetic-influenced theories and histories of comedy. In this tradition, which ultimately goes back to Aristotle, older comedy was marked by a profound shamelessness, which included (but was not limited to) invective and became the dominant understanding of the genre in subsequent criticism. It is not that the broader range of literary techniques are entirely ignored in subsequent theory—we see elements of analysis of the humor and narrative techniques of Old Comedy in the Tractatus Coislinianus and in Platonius, On the Different Types of Comedy (= Prolegomena de Comoedia II Koster)—but they seem to have been less dominant than the tracing of kōmōidoumenoi, on the one hand, and explicating the language, on the other. That emphasis has in turn skewed modern approaches to the genre.44 Although Cicero is no doubt staying with the rhetorical theory (including that of humor) he knows best, as a reader of Aristophanes he was probably less swayed by pre-existing assumptions and instead found parallels with his own specialty and its precepts.45 In particular, it is clear from his remarks on suavitas noted above that he was far more conscious of the role (and extent) of humor in a public and performance context than was Horace. Two other factors need to be taken into consideration. The first is that public interactions among the elite, as well as between the elite and others, in the late Republic could be robust even where they were inventive and witty. The line that might be drawn between the two types of humor Cicero emphasises in de Officiis may have been dependent on author and context, but it is possible to see the continuities between the sophisticated playing to the gallery and elegant, witty conversation of Cicero’s theory and practice, on the one hand, and the more boisterous but sophisticated banter of Catullus, on the other. Humor—including irony, self-deprecation, exaggeration, tropes and figures of all kind (puns, metaphor, metonymy and so on)— are, for both, part of what social interaction among the elite was all about. The Catullan stance does not consist of metapoetics in a purely formal sense or in a social vacuum. Rather, the evaluation of friends and foes is simultaneously poetic and personal: the position of wit in every sense is central in characterising their responses.46 Thus the unfortunate Asinius Marrucinus is presented as clunkily unfunny:
44 And still does: for some discussion in relation to recent work on comedy, see I.A. Ruffell, “Review article: Comedy,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 132 (2012), pp. 157–71. 45 Some close connection has been adduced between Cicero’s account of wit and humor in de Orat. 2.216–90 and the Tractatus Coislinianus, but it is difficult to establish a reasonably direct connection, and such similarities as there are stem from their common ancestry in Peripatetic theory: see W.L. Grant, “Cicero and the Tractatus Coislinianus,” American Journal of Philology 69 (1948), pp. 80–6. For Greek handbooks on humor, see also n. 34 above. 46 For lepos and facetiae: Catullus 12.8–9; 50.7–8. For venustus: 3.2, of his chosen audience; 13.6 (somewhat sarcastically) of Fabullus. For continuities between Cicero and Catullus, see B.A. Krostenko, Cicero, Catullus, and the Language of Social Performance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), especially pp. 129–53; cf. S.C. Stroup, Catullus, Cicero, and a Society of Patrons: the Generation of the Text (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). For aggressive humor in the late Republic, see
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his activities are the opposite of wit (quamvis sordida res et invenusta est, “it’s something rather disgusting and charmless,”12.5), but his brother (est … leporum disertus puer ac facetiarum, “is a boy skilled in witty charm,” 12.8–9). In context, then, the continuities between the sophistication of Old Comedy and the sophistication of Catullus are more plausible than they are when seen through the lens of post-Catullan developments in Augustan poetry. The formalities of the Augustan recusatio are less piquant and their social implications less immediate.47 The concerns of Catullus, however, are in one significant sense different from those of Old Comedy, namely that issues of public policy are much less central to his poetry, even if public figures and a robust discourse involving them can be. The second factor to consider further, then, is that Cicero’s characterisation of Aristophanic humor acknowledges both the moral and political significance of the genre and the connection of humor with that, in a way that Horace in the Ars Poetica is unwilling or unable to countenance. Cicero’s characterisation of Quintus’ letter as both suavis and gravis is not in fact unusual, when seen in the context of rhetorical rather than comic suavitas. This can be frequently observed in the theoretical treatises: attributing the qualities of being both suavis, or one of the closely related terms, and gravis, being stylistically, morally or politically weighty (“serious,” perhaps), to the same material or to the same speaker.48 Plato, like Aristophanes, is picked out as an exponent of the method.49 Quintilian too is insistent that the notorious tendency of Old Comedy to pursue vitia and libertas should not obscure the stylistic strengths of the genre in doing so. Indeed, the two go together: comic libertas is facundissima (Inst. 10.1.65, quoted above). Both Quintilian and Cicero, then, are suggesting a view of Old Comedy that extends considerably beyond personal abuse and attack, and toward a weighty genre of public engagement and persuasion, in which humor is central as both means and end. This analysis of Old Comedy can be seen elsewhere in the rhetorical tradition, which again may have a Roman connection. In chapter 8 of a rhetorical treatise ascribed to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, but which dates perhaps from the 2nd century CE,50 Old Comedy is represented as a “serious,” in this case philosophical genre. PsDionysius is discussing the use of tropes and figures to say something other than
A. Corbeill, Controlling Laughter: Political Humor in the Late Roman Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). 47 This is not to say that there might not be social and political implications to such formal recusationes. 48 See Rhet. Her. 4.69; Cic. Inv. 1.3; 2.49; de Orat. 3.96; Brut. 186 (of Philippus; also facetus); Orat. 182; Sen. Contr. 1.pr.13. For the terms used of sententiae (opp. to verba), see Orat. 150, 168; of voice in Orat. 182. They are opposed in Brut. 38 and distinct in Sul. 19 and Plin. Ep. 5.16.2. For gravitas and lepos, see de Orat. 2.227, 2.270; Rep. 2.1.9; gravitas opposed specifically to scurrilus lepos: Brut. 143. 49 Orat. 62. 50 See M. Heath, “Pseudo-Dionysius Art of Rhetoric 8–11: Figured speech, declamation, and criticism,” American Journal of Philology 124 (2003), pp. 81–105 with further bibliography.
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what is apparent, and they are, as in Cicero, associated with humor ([Dion. Hal.] art. rhet. 8.11 (II p. 309.19 Us.-Rad.)):51 ἡ δε κωμῳδία ὅτε πολιτεύεται ἐν τοῖς δράμασι καὶ φιλοσοφεῖ, ἡ τῶν περὶ τὸν Κρατῖνον καὶ ᾿Αριστοφάνην καὶ Εὔπολιν, τί δεῖ καὶ λέγειν· ἡ γάρ τοι κωμῳδία αὐτὴ τὸ γελοῖον προστησαμένη φιλοσοφεῖ As for comedy, when it engages in politics and philosophy in its plays—that is, the comedy of those of the time of Cratinus, Aristophanes and Eupolis—what need is there to say anything? For this comedy engages in philosophy with a covering of laughter.
The use of humor as a shield or carapace perhaps suggests the honey and wormwood image familiar from Lucretius (4.1–25). It is interesting in the context of the discussion of suavitas that for Lucretius the suaviloquens poem is the honey. But in none of these authors is it quite so straightforward. Just as the poetic techniques of Lucretius are used to render his account of Epicurean doctrine more plausible, appealing and persuasive, so too Cicero, Quintilian and Ps-Dionysius recognise that humor, not least figural humor, is the way Old Comedy makes its arguments: Old Comedy is both serious and witty at the same time. This is not to say that the well known characterisation of Old Comedy as the poetry of attack was ignored, but the reception of the genre at Rome presents a more nuanced view. Thus Cicero can have a character endorse the abuse of improbos such as Cleon, Cleophon and Hyperbolus, but deplore the treatment of Pericles.52 And in the passage quoted above, Quintilian expressed conditional reservations about the more brutal elements of Old Comedy but insisted that this was far from the whole story. As well as the quality of the Attic, the emphasis on comedy’s weight and elegance, and the enduring value of Old Comedy to the Roman reader, the passage is notable for its treatment of freedom (libertas). It is the implementation of comic freedom of speech that is here said to be facundissimae. Two further points accrue, which point in different directions. On the one hand, there is a concession that comic enthusiasm for attack may have gone too far, but this is characterised as attack on vitia, which suggests a strongly moral flavor to Old Comedy’s personal invective—in a more limited sense than that suggested by Ps.-Dionysius. Conversely, for Quintilian neither the wit nor the freedom seems to be limited to personal attack: the assault on vitia is a subset of comic libertas. On the other hand, we have the most unambiguous statement yet that Old Comedy was in some sense the most proximate genre to oratory (apart, that is, from Homer). The explicit mention of vitia may enlarge upon a theme in satirical writing, which I discuss further below, but there is a broader sense here of comedy as a public discourse of speech, closest to that of oratory itself. It is not, I
51 = Aristophanes test. 66. 52 Cic. Rep. 4.11, quoted in Augustine C.D. 9.
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think, unreasonable to see Cicero’s comments a century and a half earlier in much the same light. In sum, Cicero and Quintilian, in contrast to the school of thought about Greek comedy represented by the Plutarchan Comparison, can be seen to view Old Comedy in general, and Aristophanes in particular, as an appropriate model for one member of the Roman elite to propose to another as a model for social interaction within the elite. The suavitas of Old Comedy encompassed autobiography, irony and figural language, surprise and shock, humor and a performance manner consonant with these. Comic suavitas might be associated with a spicier element too, but it did not lose a sense of clarity and economy.53 All this is combined with a strong sense of importance or weight in style and content.
2. Examples in Comedy Both the pedagogic utility of Old Comedy and the sense of a kinship on some level between oratory and Old Comedy may in part explain a second use of the genre, which is to quarry it for historical examples, primarily of politicians and to a lesser extent philosophers. Among the politicians, Pericles stands out, in particular for the nature of his rhetoric rather than his policy. Old Comedy is taken as truth-telling here, even where it is abusive. Pericles’ style, the qualities of which, as I have noted, come close to comic suavitas, are praised, but not for polish, balance and delicacy. Quintilian is particularly keen on mining Old Comedy for historical exempla of public oratory. Thus in Inst. 12.10.20–6, he discusses the nature of the “Attic” style of oratory and argues against understanding this as a plain or unadorned style particularly associated with Lysias. He introduces, as contrasts to this misunderstanding of Attic oratory, a series of well-known orators (including Isocrates, whom we have already seen characterised as suavis) and finally brings forward the evidence of comedy as a witness to the style of the Attic greats (Inst. 12.10.24): Quid Periclea? similemne credemus Lysiacae gracilitati quem fulminibus et caelesti fragori comparant comici dum illi conviciantur? What of Pericles? Shall we believe that he was similar to Lysias in simplicity, given that the comic poets compare him to lightning and the crack of heavenly thunder while they are abusing him?
The explicit comparison to thunder and lightning is a reference to Aristophanes’ Acharnians 530–1 in particular. The (posthumous) characterisation of Pericles as Zeus
53 A point important for Galen, who wrote a treatise advocating his use in education (Lib. Prop. 17 = 19.48 Kühn), as well as drawing on Aristophanes (and Plato) among his own stylistic models (Med. Nam. 31–2: see V. Nutton, “Galen’s Library” [above, n. 4]).
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in that passage exploits a comparison well-established by comic playwrights during Pericles’ lifetime. It is possible that Quintilian had plays of that period to work from, but the scholia to Acharnians do not offer any specific parallels for the thunder and lightning, and Quintilian may be generalising from a very small evidence-base, which perhaps consisted of one play, and indeed one often-cited passage.54 In his quarrying of the comic poet(s) for historical and anecdotal nuggets, Quintilian might be thought to betray a certain naiveté. There is some of that, certainly, in his use of Eupolis, Aristophanes and Menander for evidence about education (Inst. 1.10.18), including that of Hyperbolus in his representation as Marikas in Eupolis’ play of that name.55 Given that historians are still prone to do such things today, perhaps we should not be too harsh on Quintilian, particularly if he was looking for a telling image. In discussing Pericles, however, he shows a certain balance towards comic abuse in this passage: the poets are exaggerating, yes, abusive, yes, but also and at the same time saying something about Pericles, and eloquently and persuasively at that. There seems to be an intuitive understanding of the process of comic invective here—although Quintilian wisely underplays the negative connotations of Zeus as tyrant that lie behind the image. Perhaps more striking is the preference for using the evidence of comedy over the evidence of history, not least Thucydides.56 Although the historian seems to indicate at 1.22 that his speeches are stylistically his own, including those he puts into the mouth of Pericles, he does suggest that Pericles was a far more measured speaker than Aristophanes does, and he contrasts him favorably with Cleon in this respect (esp. 3.36.6).57 The preference for the comic version here might proceed not only from a misplaced faith in comic reliability or a desire for picturesque detail, but from a recognition that the comic poets were more interested in discussing style than was their contemporary Thucydides.58 Here too there may be an implicit acknowledgement of the kinship between Old Comedy and its political targets, not only as participating in political discourse but as engaged in it in a similar style. The kinship between the grandis but eloquens comedy and Periclean oratory can be seen a little later on at Inst. 12.10.58–65, when Quintilian explains the familiar three-fold division of oratory into, in his terms, the refined (subtile), the heavy or 54 For Pericles in the Greek comic tradition, see M. Revermann, “Cratinus’ Dionysalexandros and the head of Perikles,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 117 (1997), pp. 197–200; I.A. Ruffell, Politics and AntiRealism in Athenian Old Comedy (above, n. 33), pp. 408–9. 55 Comic abuse of Hyperbolus is also noted by Cic. Brut. 224. 56 At Inst. 12.2.22, both historians and comic poets are explicitly associated with a discussion of exempla, and Pericles is again singled out. 57 In Acharnians, Cleon is not characterised as noticeably noisier than Pericles in his pomp, and has yet to attain the utter monstrosity of Knights and Wasps; earlier in the Peloponnesian War, Hermippos has him merely yapping around Pericles’ ankles (Moirai fr. 47). 58 See also Gellius’ discussion of linguistic incapacity via a line from Eupolis among other poetic accounts at 1.15.12.
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strong (grande or robustum) and the middle or flowery type. He spends most time on the latter two. The middle type, which in Cicero’s version is associated with suavitas,59 is rich in tropes and figures, has delightful digressions and is associated with pleasure (delectandi, 60). But the powerful orator of the grandis type is in addition particularly good on an emotional level, and with his force (vis) he can take people along with him irresistibly (61). He is like a raging torrent and contrasts with the calmly flowing river that is the middle sort.60 Following this image, Quintilian offers examples of these three types of eloquentia (64) from poetry: Menelaus, Nestor and Odysseus as represented in Homer. The latter is an exponent of Quintilian’s preferred, grandis style. It is not, however, this most foundational of orators with whom he concludes his exposition of the style, but with Pericles as presented in the comic poets (Quintilian, Inst. 12.10.65): hanc uim et celeritatem in Pericle miratur Eupolis, hanc fulminibus Aristophanes comparat, haec est uere dicendi facultas This is the force and speed that Eupolis is impressed by in Pericles, this is what Aristophanes compares to thunderbolts, this is the capacity for true speaking.
Again, this is the Pericles of Acharnians, to which is now added the Eupolidean Pericles. This must be a reference above all to Eupolis’ Demes (Dēmoi), where Pericles played (broadly) the role of a respected dead statesman. Demes was evidently one of the most popular of Eupolis’ plays in antiquity,61 and it is in Demes, at any rate, that Eupolis used the image of Persuasion (Peithō) sitting on Pericles’ lips (fr. 102.5), an image much cited by Roman writers, not least in discussing rhetorical theory. In addition to Quintilian himself elsewhere in the Institutio (10.1.82), it is referred to both by Cicero in Brutus (59), after an earlier reference to the same passage in Eupolis’ play (Brutus 38 and de Oratore 3.138), and by Pliny the Younger in a letter to Tacitus (1.20); there is also a substantial paraphrase in Valerius Maximus, attributed to unnamed poets of Old Comedy.62 It is striking that Pliny’s discussion of Pericles and his style
59 Orat. 91, introducing the account of tropes and figures noted above. 60 The latter image (at 12.10.61) is reminiscent of Aristophanes’ characterisation of Cratinus in his pomp at Knights 526–8, but Quintilian’s implication is slightly different (he does not exploit negative connotations of a lack of control) and the image of a river is a common one in ancient poetics: see Callimachus, Hymns 2.105–13, with F. Williams (ed.), Callimachus: Hymn to Apollo (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978) ad loc. 61 I.C. Storey, Eupolis: Poet of Old Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 111; for testimonia, see also M. Telò (ed.), Eupolidis Demi, Biblioteca Nazionale. Serie dei classici greci e latini. Testi con commento filologico, n.s. 14 (Florence: Le Monnier, 2007), pp. 139–42 and on individual fragments. 62 8.9(ext).2. He proceeds to give an anecdote linking Peisistratus and Pericles, and to liken Pericles’ rule to a tyranny. Neither the anecdote nor the claim seems necessarily or obviously taken direct from comedy (although they are certainly compatible).
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uses exactly the same material as Quintilian does, quoting both from Demes fr. 102 and Acharnians 530; it may be relevant that Pliny was taught by Quintilian.63 The well-worn association of Eupolis with Pericles may be one reason why Cicero originally misattributed his quotation of Acharnians 530 at Orator 29 to Eupolis, writing to Atticus to make the correction (Att. 12.6a).64 If Quintilian is drawing on other sources for Pericles in this account of the heavyweight style, he is silent about them. Pericles, then, is for Quintilian the epitome of grandis and eloquens, just as Old Comedy is. The evidence for this is Old Comedy itself. If Quintilian has a nuanced view of comic invective, and if Cicero prefers for the most part a positive evaluation of Old Comedy that plays down invective, there is much more negative treatment of ad hominem abuse of individuals in one specific case, that of Socrates. Seneca Vit. Beat. 27.2,65 notably, has Socrates say that praebui ego aliquando Aristophani materiam iocorum, tota illa comicorum poetarum manus in me venenatos sales suos effudit; illustrata est virtus mea per ea ipsa per quae petebatur. I sometimes provided material for jokes to Aristophanes, and that whole band of comic poets poured out their venomous insults against me; my virtue was shown by the very things for which it was attacked.
The extent of this negative presentation of Old Comedy, however, is limited. The silence, no less than the distinctly limited range of comic exempla in general, may be a function of the surviving evidence, but compared to the reception in Greek, such negative examples of comic abuse are rare.66 Certainly the case of Clouds and Socrates appears to be one of the more well-known instances of comic abuse after the treatment of Pericles, although that may be largely due to the influence of Plato. Quintilian simply refers to the charge (by the comici) of making the weaker stronger in the context of dealing with slanders against oratory because of its very effectiveness; he notes that Plato’s own criticism of Tisias and Gorgias was on exactly the same ground.67
63 For Pliny and Quintilian, see Plin. Ep. 2.14.9, 6.6.3. Eupolis, Demes fr. 102 is quoted by in full by Σ Ael. Ar. 3.51. For further instances in the Greek tradition, see Kassel–Austin ad loc. and Telò, Eupolidis Demi (above, n. 61) on his fr. 1. 64 Cicero may well have been initially relying on an intermediate source that already contained this mistake. M.A. Mesturini, “Aristofane — Eupoli e Diodoro. A proposito di una citazione ciceroniana,” Maia 35 (1983), pp. 195–204, points out that the text of Diodorus Siculus contains the same error, in a series of comic jokes about Pericles and the origins of the Peloponnesian War (12.40) that go back to Ephorus (12.41.1). She suggests that both Cicero and Diodorus are reliant on a corrupt text of Ephorus circulating at Rome. I am grateful to Simone Beta for drawing this article to my attention. 65 = Aristophanes test. 37. 66 See also Σ Juvenal 2.9 (= Aristophanes test. 36). 67 Quintilian, Inst. 2.16.3.
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The philosophical and rhetorical traditions at Rome, then, in addition to their general characterisations of the genre of Old Comedy, have a circumscribed engagement with the contents of the genre, using it for details of well-known individuals and primarily in the respective philosophical and rhetorical fields. In the case of rhetorical theory, the discussion of rhetorical style has clear continuities with the snippets offered about comic style, but whether this implies any broad knowledge of the genre at first hand is a question I leave to the final section.
3. Satire and Freedom The genres of rhetorical and philosophical writing are not, however, the most substantial contexts for reception of Greek comedy at Rome. The genre that engages most obviously with Old Comedy is satire, in whose self-construction Greek (and, indeed, Roman) comedy forms an important element. From Horace to Juvenal, Roman satirists used Old Comedy to define the nature, scope and limits of their own genre, and in particular its relationship to freedom, libertas, which is central to the way they all negotiate their relationship to and descent from Lucilius and the first generation of Roman satirists. The evolving redefinition of libertas involves a series of perspectives on Old Comedy that, if not conflicting with, are certainly different from those of the earlier and contemporary rhetorical reception of the Greek genre. Although most accounts of the reception of Old Comedy have begun substantively from its reception in satire,68 it is important to appreciate that the satirists’ manoeuvres take place against a different understanding of the genre at Rome. Libertas is central to Horace’s programmatic elements in Sermones 1, and is picked up again in Sermones 2, albeit in a more marginal role. In particular, it is the starting point for the first explicit reflections on the history and nature of satire in Sermones 1.4.1–8: Eupolis atque Cratinus Aristophanesque poetae atque alii, quorum comoedia prisca virorum est, siquis erat dignus describi, quod malus ac fur, quod moechus foret aut sicarius aut alioqui famosus, multa cum libertate notabant. hinc omnis pendet Lucilius, hosce secutus, mutatis tantum pedibus numerisque, facetus, emunctae naris, durus conponere versus.
5
Eupolis and Cratinus Aristophanes, the poets, and the other men who wrote Old Comedy,
68 Thus Süss, Aristophanes und die Nachwelt (above, n. 2) and Lord, Aristophanes (above, n. 2) (after discussing Naevius and the Metelli, on whom see below).
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if anyone deserved to be written against, because he was a bad man and a thief, because he was an adulterer or thug or in any way of ill-repute, they marked him down with great freedom. Lucilius depends upon this in every way, following them, changing only the metre and rhythms: witty, his nose blown, a harsh writer of verses.
5
None of the claims made here are entirely self-evident or straightforward. It is true, as noted already, that individual abuse was a feature of Old Comedy on which later Hellenistic scholarship fastened, and it is also true that (alleged) moechi and fures or sicarii are abused in Old Comedy, particularly in the choral songs. Consider, for example, the characterisation of Cratinus by Aristophanes in Acharnians 848–53, and the references to the robber Orestes in the same play (1166–8). What the genre was most famous (or notorious) for, however, was attacking not petty anti-social or criminal behaviour, but much grander individuals and in particular those engaged in politics (as recognised by the rhetorical mining of Old Comedy for prominent individuals). Horace’s account of the genre is significantly distorted. Horace does not essay an explicit appraisal of Old Comedy on stylistic grounds here. Lucilius is said to depend entirely (omnis) on the poets of that genre, but this claim refers above all to the satirical quality in a narrow sense. Lucilius’ style is rather at odds with the suavis et gravis comoedia of Cicero. Lucilius is facetus, humorous, certainly, but Horace is not suggesting elegantia or suavitas so much as humor. He proceeds to criticise Lucilius on grounds of quantity—prolixity, lack of quality control and laziness—in terms that would be recognisable from Callimachean poetics, the muddy lutulentus river.69 In his return to the theme in the tenth poem of Book One, Horace develops this criticism of Lucilius, reaffirming his criticism on three related grounds. Lucilius’ poetry is rhythmically lacking in fluency (incomposito … pede, 1). Admiration for the invective (sal, 3) has led to an uncritical reception of everything else. Laughter by itself is not enough—if it were, one would have to admire the mimes of Laberius (5– 8).70 Poetry should be short (8–10). At this point, he returns to Old Comedy, and it turns out that Lucilius does not depend on them in every way. Old Comedy provides (some of) the elements missing in Lucilius (Sermones 1.10.11–17): et sermone opus est modo tristi, saepe iocoso, defendente vicem modo rhetoris atque poetae, interdum urbani, parcentis viribus atque extenuantis eas consulto. ridiculum acri fortius et melius magnas plerumque secat res.
15
69 Contrast Quintilian’s own aquatic views on comedy noted above, n. 60. 70 On these, see now C. Panayotakis (ed.), Decimus Laberius: The Fragments, Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries 46 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
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illi, scripta quibus comoedia prisca viris est, hoc stabant, hoc sunt imitandi; quos neque pulcher Hermogenes umquam legit neque simius iste nil praeter Calvum et doctus cantare Catullum. One needs at times serious talk, but often joking, taking at times the role of an orator and poet, at other times that of a wit, being sparing with force and deliberately toning it down. Humor generally cuts through things more strongly and effectively than fierceness. Those men who wrote Old Comedy succeeded in this, they are to be imitated in this respect; neither has pretty Hermogenes ever read them, nor that ape “learned” to sing nothing beyond Calvus and Catullus.
15
Whatever else is going on with the lovers of Calvus and Catullus, Old Comedy is here being co-opted for a spot of intellectual one-upmanship: Horace is developing a more learned pose with particular reference to knowledge of Greek texts, and ironically it is the extremely Hellenising Calvus and Catullus who are picked out as the limit case of these ignoramuses’ knowledge. The characterisation of Old Comedy is now much closer to the suavis ac gravis Aristophanes of Cicero and indeed Quintilian: it is more witty and humorous (ridiculus, iocosus, urbanus) than using aggression (vis) and the language of attack (tristi, acri). It is not clear that Horace’s notion of humor allows Old Comedy quite the range of stylistic devices and applications that Ciceronian suavitas has; more important, less weight is seemingly given to the gravis or the grandis, let alone the celebration of vis that Quintilian was to offer (in relation to Pericles)—such emotional excitation is (for Horace) more to be found in the mime and other undesirables. Even so, there are sufficient continuities here to see this attenuated description of Old Comedy as plausible (or at least familiar), as far as it goes, to a Roman audience of the period. The same could not be said for Sermones 1.4, where Horace deals more directly with notions of attack and individual targets. It is clear that Old Comedy, however suavis for Cicero, was associated with representations of and attacks on political targets—prominent individuals such as Pericles, Cleon, Hyperbolus and Alcibiades.71 This freedom of speech (παρρησία, libertas) is indeed precisely what Old Comedy has been associated with in the Greek tradition from [Xenophon] Ath. 2.18, onward. Horace’s account of libertas is entirely different: no more does Old Comedy deal with political players, but with incidental and much less high-status figures, such as muggers and thieves. The principle is echoed in the choice of target throughout his satires, not least the three opening diatribes on which this programmatic satire follows: nonentities or speaking names, for the most part, not political players.
71 See n. 52 above and n. 80 below.
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Despite the apparently strong generic claims of affiliation to Old Comedy, moreover, it is possible to see other genres exploited in this and the other Sermones, but not Old Comedy itself. In addition to the Callimachean aspects noted above, critics have pointed to elements of Greek New Comedy and the Roman palliata, particularly Menander and Terence, respectively, and an alternative lineage for παρρησία can be identified, derived from Epicurean philosophy.72 A generic enrichment is clearly going on, as well as a pointed shift and redefinition of libertas. Horace thus redefines the nature of Old Comedy in terms of its style, stance and targets: attenuating the first two and shifting (or being extremely selective about) the second. Even going by second-hand reports in Rome of what Old Comedy was like, let alone if one actually unrolled a copy, these are remarkable claims. The scope and compass of libertas is reduced, and the redefinition of Old Comedy is the means used to introduce it. This redefinition is pointed both in the literary context of the reception of Old Comedy and in the historical context of the triumviral period. The concept of libertas became loaded in the late Republic, and nowhere more so than in the opposition to Caesar and in the aftermath of his assassination.73 It has been argued that satire, and the critical reception of Lucilian libertas, was associated with Pompeian writers (which would have been problematic while Sextus Pompey remained a thorn in Octavian’s side), but this is by no means an exclusive association, and Caesarians were more than capable of exploiting satirical libertas.74 Nor is invective, political or otherwise, limited to the Lucilian tradition. A renunciation of political freedom of speech in favor of an attenuated personal one has more general ramifications in terms of the content of poetry and its relationship to politics: a marking off of poetry from traditions of political invective, whether popular or elite-based (in which Laberius’ mime, Catullus and Calvus are all implicated). The disturbed 30s and the rivalry between Octavian and Antony offered much scope for these traditions, and it is against those that Horace is operating.75
72 For both these elements, see esp. R.L. Hunter, “Horace on friendship and free speech,” Hermes 113 (1985), pp. 480–90, esp. 487–9; also Ruffell, “Horace” (above, n. 5). For a very full study of thematic connections between Horace and Greco-Roman New Comedy, see B. Delignon, Les Satires d’ Horace et la comédie gréco-latine: une poétique de l’ambiguité, Bibliothèque d’études classiques 49 (Louvain/ Dudley Mass.: Peeters, 2006). 73 For libertas in the late Republic, see C. Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome during the Late Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968); V. Arena, Libertas and the Practice of Politics in the Late Roman Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). See also Delignon, Les Satires (above, n. 72). 74 I. du Quesnay, “Horace and Maecenas: the propaganda value of Sermones,” in: T. Woodman and D.A. West (eds.), Poetry and Politics in the Age of Augustus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 19–58, with commentary in Ruffell, “Horace” (above, n. 5). 75 For this argument, see Ruffell, “Horace” (above, n. 5).
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This understanding of Horace’s stance on libertas in the Sermones also helps explain a later instance of Horatian reception of Old Comedy, where libertas is again at issue and the poet seems to have adopted an entirely different stance. In the Ars Poetica, Old Comedy is not a theatrical genre on which Horace concentrates extensively (when compared to tragedy, Roman comedy or even satyr play). In its one appearance, his view of libertas and of Old Comedy appears in a more negative light than it had in the Sermones (Ars Poetica 281–4): successit vetus his comoedia, non sine multa laude; sed in vitium libertas excidit et vim dignam lege regi; lex est accepta chorusque turpiter obticuit sublato iure nocendi. Old Comedy followed these [sc. Aeschylus & co.], and won considerable praise; but freedom slipped into fault and violence that deserved correction by a law; a law was passed and the chorus was shamefully silenced as the privilege of giving offence was removed.
Now Horace is entirely opposed to vis. The Aristotelian and Peripatetic identification of older comedy with aiskhrologia (Nicomachean Ethics 1128a23–5) is reflected in the adverb turpiter, which is attached to the disappearance of the chorus: the shamelessness of comedy has led to curtailment of its libertas.76 The conviction that Old Comedy was controlled by legal restrictions is a repeated feature of Hellenistic scholarship, although the majority of the reports, at least, are evident misinterpretations of passages of comedy and as ahistorical as Horace’s version.77 They do speak volumes, however, about the assumptions of Greek scholarship in antiquity. Horace is probably also influenced by the ban on personal abuse in the Twelve Tables, to which Cicero refers (Rep. 4.11–12), which supposedly made anyone composing or uttering a poem of invective (carmen … quod infamiam faceret flagitiumve alteri, “any poem … which brought disgrace or loss of reputation on another’) liable to execution. If Cicero’s report is accurate, this was, it must be admitted, not the most effective piece of legislation the world has known. Elsewhere in the Ars Poetica, Horace gives further hints about his problems with libertas. His account of the development of music and festivals builds in licentia as a problem from the beginning, and one that stems from the uneducated rusticus rubbing up against the urbanus (Ars Poetica 208–13):
76 Brink, Horace (above, n. 42), p. 317, notes (following Hendrickson) that turpiter could modify nocendi rather than obticuit; an allusion to aiskhrologia seems probable here either way. 77 See F.S. Halliwell, “Comic satire and freedom of speech in classical Athens,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 111 (1991), pp. 48–70.
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postquam coepit agros extendere victor et urbis latior amplecti murus vinoque diurno placari Genius festis inpune diebus, accessit numerisque modisque licentia maior. indoctus quid enim saperet liberque laborum rusticus urbano confusus, turpis honesto?
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After the victor began to expand its territory and the city-wall to enclose a wider space and the patron god to be appeased with wine in holidays free from restraint, a greater excess was added to the rhythms and styles. For what would an uneducated man know, and an off-work peasant mixed-up with a city-dweller, scum with a gentleman.
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The problems of licentia and mass public entertainment are thus entwined: the mixing of classes, the freedom from toil (at least for the rustici) and the carnival-style freedom of the public festivals. Not for Horace the comforts of a supposedly circumscribed festival freedom. Finally, as a way of summing up the Horatian swerve with comic libertas, we can see how he handles the epitome of invective-fuelled, supposedly uncontrolled and highly political comic poets, Cratinus. In Epistles 1.19.1–3, Horace begins his letter to Maecenas by quoting the authority of the comic poet: Prisco si credis, Maecenas docte, Cratino, nulla placere diu nec vivere carmina possunt, quae scribuntur aquae potoribus. If you believe, learned Maecenas, the old poet Cratinus, poems cannot please or live for long, which are written by water-drinkers.
This draws on a well-worn tag from Cratinus’ Pytinē, that “if you drank water you would create nothing clever” (ὕδωρ δὲ πίνων οὐδὲν ἂν τέκοις σοφόν, fr. 203), which had a wide circulation, including being incorporated into a poem in the Greek Anthology (AP 13.29 = Nicaenetus epigr. 5 G.-P.). Pytinē, as is widely recognised, took the abuse of Cratinus by Aristophanes as a once-vigorous poet of aggressive comedy but now a clapped-out drunk, and demonstrated the creative vitality of the former by making it the basis of a domestic plot: Cratinus, married to Comedy but running around with a mistress Methe, Drunkenness.78 In the play, there seems to have been
78 See esp. R.M. Rosen, “Cratinus’ Pytine and the construction of the comic self,” in: D. Harvey and J. Wilkins (eds.), The Rivals of Aristophanes: Studies in Old Athenian Comedy (London: Duckworth/ Classical Press of Wales, 2000); Z.P. Biles, “Intertextual biography in the rivalry of Cratinus and Aristophanes,” American Journal of Philology 123 (2002), pp. 169–204; I.A. Ruffell, “A total write-off: Aristophanes, Cratinus and the rhetoric of comic competition,” Classical Quarterly 52 (2002), pp. 138–
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an attempt to restore Cratinus, wean him off Drunkenness and have him compose comedy; the lines to which Horace refers may have been either self-defence or a vindication. The surviving fragments in the play that relate to the writing of comedy feature personal abuse prominently (esp. frr. 208–9), and invective and abuse seem to have been central to the restored or vindicated figure. Horace’s adoption of the Cratinean line does not entail an adoption of Cratinean poetics. After a brief extension of the idea of poets as drinkers via Ennius, he diverts into a poem about poetic leaders and poetic followers. Horace promotes his innovations in being the first to introduce Archilochean iambi, but emphasises that he has not adopted the Archilochean content or its harsher elements: numeros animosque secutus / Archilochi, non res et agentia verba Lycamben. (“following the rhythms and spirit of Archilochus, not the subjects and words that deal with Lycambes,” 24–5). After justifying his decisions with reference to Sappho and Alcaeus, Horace presents an exchange with a disgruntled reader, on the question of why Horace’s works are consumed (and offered) in private rather than in public. Horace’s self-deprecating disavowal of performance uses a revealing image: spissis indigna theatris scripta pudet recitare et nugis addere pondus (“I feel ashamed about reciting writings that are unworthy of crowded theaters and about putting weight on trifles,” 41–2). He is not apologising for not writing drama; rather, theater epitomises the crowded, indiscriminate, mixed audience he worries about in the Ars. The refusal of weight and the emphasis on nugae (compare Catullus 1.1) take us back to the concerns of Sermones 1.4 and 1.10. None of this suggests a Cratinean legacy. Indeed, the ring-composition in the poem has the theatrical opening denied in the theatrical language of the conclusion. Horace concludes his poem with the desire to avoid anger and a fight. So much for libertas. This quietist reinterpretation of libertas and Old Comedy plays a significant role in what follows, as subsequent Roman satirists seek in turn to redefine and advance the nature of satire. In his first satire, Persius offers a conspectus of satiric predecessors, which is again focused on the nature of their attack, but without the explicit reservations expressed by Horace. Lucilius “tore through” the city and broke his tooth on his enemies. Horace is less cutting, touching on (tangit) every social offence (vitium) for his friends to laugh at, he plays around (ludit) and is “skilled at hanging people from a twitching nose” (callidus excusso populum suspendere naso, 117–18). The latter expression, above all, suggests a strong social basis to Horatian humor. After reiterating that he will not write yet another derivative epic, he turns back to Old Comedy (123–6): audaci quicumque adflate Cratino iratum Eupolidem praegrandi cum sene palles,
63; E. Bakola, “The drunk, the reformer and the teacher: agnostic poetics and the construction of persona in the comic poets of the fifth century,” Cambridge Classical Journal 54 (2008), pp. 1–29.
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aspice et haec, si forte aliquid decoctius audis. inde vaporata lector mihi ferveat aure: Whoever is inspired by daring Cratinus and grows pale at angry Eupolis together with the grand old man, look at these verses too, should you listen to anything on the intense side. Let my reader’s ear burn with the blast from these:
Persius is going back (he claims) on the hard stuff, the reduced, boiled down and intense type of satirical attack. He goes on to clarify his readership: no-one who laughs at foreigners, no-one who can only state the obvious, no provincial selfimportance and (above all) no-one who gets cheap laughs at philosophers because of their funny mathematics and diagrams, or because of slapstick involving them. This exclusion of readers might admittedly be thought to encompass such characters as the poets of Old Comedy themselves, not least Aristophanes, the praegrandis senex and author of Clouds, and Eupolis, the author of Kolakes (Spongers). How glaring this contradiction would have been is open to question. For most Roman writers, Seneca apart, the emphasis appears to have been on the political attack rather than the philosophical; it might also be said that the attack on philosophers in Old Comedy was rarely as simplistic as Persius has it here (or Plato has it in the Apology). A bigger distinction is between the proposed readership of Persius’ satire and the audience of Old Comedy (i.e. those misled by images of Socrates dangling from a rope).79 In the final line of the poem, Persius characterises his undesirable types as a theater audience, leaving them the play-bill (edictum) to read. This is the culmination of a rhetoric of exclusivity that is the dominant theme of the poem: Persius rejects both popular and fashionable genres, eschews a wide readership, and denies any desire for a poetic legacy. Unencumbered by such concerns, he will write with the freedom of Lucilius and Old Comedy. Authorial freedom, according to Persius, is freedom from the constraints of the audience. He is cutting himself loose from the constraints of his predecessors. Of the extant Roman satirists, it is only Juvenal whose programmatic satire does not feature the conspicuous involvement of Old Comedy, although just as Persius responds to Horace, so Juvenal responds to Persius, as well as to Horace and Lucilius. In particular, the rejection of rebarbative epic and tragedy in Juvenal 1 is reminiscent of Persius’ rejection of such writing in his own first satire. Juvenal’s own presentation of satirical freedom is as a stance of already-compromised compulsion, as both witness and participant in the corruption of Rome. The challenge of recreating “that frankness of our ancestors in saying whatever they wanted with blazing rage” (illa priorum /
79 For the staging of Socrates’ appearance on the crane in Clouds, see M. Revermann, Comic Business: Theatricality, Dramatic Technique, and Performance Contexts of Aristophanic Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 187–9.
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scribendi quodcumque animo flagrante liberet / simplicitas, 1.151–3) is accepted and immediately ducked. In response to the safety of poetry on mythological themes (both Greek and Latin, 1.152–4) and the dangers of Lucilian assault (1.165–70, cf. 1.154), Juvenal will attack the iniquities of the recent past. Given both his emphasis on the specifically Roman mire and, in particular, his broadsides about Greeks and other foreigners, and their displacement of (or influence on) native Romans, the hellenising aspects of Horace’s engagement with Old Comedy would have been tricky for Juvenal to finesse. In fact, he does introduce Old Comedy, in the second satire, and in the context of a form of libertas, but in a sense far from illa priorum … simplicitas. Here Laronia has presented an assault on hypocrisy, particularly sexual hypocrisy and not least by philosophers, and has offered a defence of women (who do none of the dreadful things that men do). The satirist endorses her intervention and accordingly turns on Creticus, an orator and Stoic who performs in a see-through toga that even female professionals would blush at: Creticus, acer et indomitus libertatisque magister (“fierce, uncontainable, teacher of freedom,” 2.77). Irony aside, freedom is now sexual license. At this point, the satirist turns to crossdressing, citing in particular the rites of the Bona Dea, whose infiltration by Clodius was a notorious instance of late Republican libertas and (according to Juvenal’s speaker) has now become the norm rather than the exception. Yet invasion of women’s cults is not confined to Ciceronian invective but is also found in Greek comedy, not least, among extant plays, in Thesmophoriazousae. Juvenal, however, exploits a different play, Eupolis’ Baptai (Satires 2.89–92): solis ara deae maribus patet. ’ite, profanae,’ clamatur, “nullo gemit hic tibicina cornu.’ talia secreta coluerunt orgia taeda Cecropiam soliti Baptae lassare Cotyton. The goddess’ altar is now open to men alone. “Begone, impious women,’ is the cry, “no flute-girl groans on her horn here.’ Such were the rites that the Baptai celebrated, by secret torchlight, who used to exhaust Cotyto in Athens.
This is the play that supposedly caused the feud between Eupolis and Alcibiades (although Alcibiades and comic sex and sexuality had a certain history in Eupolis anyway80), to the extent that Alcibiades is supposed to have drowned Eupolis.81 The cult of Cotyto (Cotys) had affinities with the more ecstatic forms of Dionysiac worship
80 See Kolakes fr. 171 and discussion by Storey, Eupolis (above, n. 61). 81 In discussing popular misconceptions (Att. 6.1.18), Cicero gives the example of the widespread belief that Eupolis was murdered by Alcibiades, thrown overboard when en route for Sicily, although he does not himself implicate Baptai. Cicero refers to Eratosthenes’ disproof of the belief on chronological grounds, but whether this implies that Cicero was accessing Eratosthenes’ work on comedy directly is debatable.
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and with other Eastern cults such as Bendis and Cybele. It is not quite clear from the fragments and testimonia whether Baptai had men taking over or imitating femaleonly rites, or whether the rites were open to men but involved transvestism—or at least the adoption of Eastern dress and implements, such as can be seen from Aeschylus’ description in Edonoi fr. 57, which would come close to the same thing.82 What seems clear, however, is that Juvenal’s use of this calls attention not to the satirical representation of Alcibiades so much as to the behavior of men onstage: Old Comedy displays and enacts the grotesque and excess, as well as (in places) condemning it.83 Juvenal may of course simply be mining Old Comedy for examples of Greek filth, but this passage comes bookended between two that deal explicitly with libertas and the performer as teacher: Creticus, as noted above, and a passage on turpis Cybele cult (110–14), featuring a raving old man, who is an exemplum and a magister. In the new Rome, libertas has become the freedom to talk in falsetto (fracta voce loquendi / libertas), and this is a freedom in which comic drama is and perhaps has always been complicit. The retreat of satirical libertas, with Horace, to the social and to manners, and with Persius to the personal and to morals, becomes a frank acknowledgement that however urgent and necessary it is, it is also and at the same time always compromised.
4. The Limits of Old Comedy This discussion of rhetorical, philosophical and satirical uses of Old Comedy does not suggest a particularly wide or deep knowledge of Old Comedy at Rome. The examples, as we have seen, cluster around some well-known Athenian politicians of the late
82 Most recent commentators (E. Courtney, A Commentary on the Satires of Juvenal (London: Athlone Press, 1980) on Juvenal; Storey, Eupolis [above, n. 61] on Eupolis) argue that the latter is most probable. For the continuities between Eastern dress and transvestism, see F. Lissarrague and F. FrontisiDucroux, “From ambiguity to ambivalence: a Dionysiac excursion through the ‘Anacreontic’ vases,” in: D.M. Halperin, F.I. Zeitlin and J.J. Winkler (eds.), Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 211–56. 83 The ambivalent nature of Old Comedy also seems to be played upon later in the satire, where there is a suggestion of Aristophanes’ Frogs (Stygio ranas in gurgite nigras, “black frogs on the river Styx,” 150). According to Juvenal, their presence is in itself one of the implausible elements about the Underworld in which only young children believe, although the detail also serves to undermine the surrounding epic allusions, especially to Vergil’s Aeneid, as noted by S. Braund (ed.), Juvenal Satires Book I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) on 149–52. It seems less clear that Vergil himself had earlier evoked the same play in Georgics 1.378 (veterem in limo ranae cecinere querelam, “the frogs sang their ancient lament”): see R.A.B. Mynors (ed.), Vergil: Georgics (Oxford: Clarendon Press) ad loc. The case made by L.A.S. Jermyn, “Weather-Signs in Virgil,” Greece and Rome 20 (1951), p. 36, followed by R.F. Thomas (ed.), Virgil: Georgics, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) ad loc., is much more convincing for Cicero introducing Aristophanes into his version of the underlying passage of Aratus (Arat. Progn. fr. 4.1; cf. Arat. Phaen. 946–8) than for Vergil doing something similar.
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5th century, and are the kind of anecdotes and stories that entered the biographical tradition, as is apparent from Plutarch’s lives of Pericles and Alcibiades in particular.84 Cicero may have (once) read some Aristophanes and thought it appropriate to compare his brother’s output in general terms; the evidence does not support a particularly close engagement, and this may be over-generous. In the case of the satirists, it seems more plausible that a roll or two had made their way into Horace’s or Persius’ clutches. Horace’s speaker certainly claims to have Eupolis to read in the country (Serm. 2.3.12)85 and both he and Persius flaunt their intellectual credentials. In both cases, it would be more convincing if the pair of them were not retailing the entirely conventional triad of Hellenistic scholarship, which is repeated more broadly in the Latin tradition.86 Knowledge of Cratinus in particular seems less than that of his younger rivals, and it is striking that the anecdotes that are retailed are from plays put on after Pericles’ death by Aristophanes (Acharnians) and Eupolis (Demes), respectively. Despite Quintilian’s comments on its suitability for and proximity to oratory, and Galen’s later recommendation for schoolboys or Macrobius’ claim that Eupolis was known to everyone (notus est omnibus Eupolis, Sat. 7.5.8), it seems clear that knowledge of Old Comedy was somewhat restricted.87 An exception, perhaps, is Aulus Gellius, who quotes extensively from Frogs, as well as from Thesmophoriazousae and, unusually, Aristophanes’ Holkades.88 It is unlikely, however, that Gellius’ knowledge of Aristophanes was typical of an educated Roman any more than, say, Athenaeus’ compendious knowledge of sources about food (either directly or indirectly) was
84 At Inst. 12.2.22, the stories about Pericles in both the historici and liberrimum hominum genus, comici ueteres are being tied to the more obviously anecdotal and biographical tradition. To the biographical tradition in a different sense might be attributed the Aristophanic satire on Euripides noted at Plin. Nat. 22.80.5. 85 And perhaps Plato Comicus: the Plato of the preceding line may be that poet (as suggested by A. Kiessling, Q. Horatius Flaccus5, volume 2, Satiren, revised by A. Heinze (Berlin: Weidmann, 1921) and A. Palmer, The Satires of Horace (London: Macmillan, 1883) ad loc.), but more likely than not it is the philosopher (so F. Muecke, Horace: Satires II (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1993) on 2.3.11; Kassel– Austin on Pl. Com. test. 10), whose urbane, satirical technique would not be out of place here. A more extensive programmatic engagement of Horace with Aristophanes, particularly Frogs, is claimed by A. Cucchiarelli, La satira e il poeta: Orazio tra Epodi e Sermones, Biblioteca di Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 17 (Pisa: Giardini, 2001), pp. 15–55, “La commedia ” (above, n. 2), and “Iter satiricum: le voyage à Brindes et la satire d’Horace,” Latomus 61 (2002), 842–51. The links are to my mind rather tenuous, but for a more positive view see A. H. Sommerstein, “Hinc omnis pendet? Old Comedy and Roman Satire,” Classical World 105 (2011), pp. 25–38. 86 For the triad, see also Vell. Pat. 1.16.3. Persius’ adjectives may derive from some scholarly source rather than first-hand knowledge. 87 The thrust of Quintilian’s argument in Inst. 12 certainly does not suggest that all the Greek writers he has on his menu would be regular reading for his Roman audience. 88 Frogs 354–71: Aul. Gel. praef. 21, 1.15.19; Frogs 1154, 1156, 1158–9: Aul. Gel. 13.25.7; Thesmophoriazousae 453–6: Aul. Gel. 15.20.7; Holkades fr. 447: Aul. Gel. 19.13.3, a lexical note.
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typical of an educated Greek. Furthermore, in addition to evidence at second-hand through biography and anecdote, the use of lexicographic works must be taken into consideration: some of the major outputs of Hellenistic scholars were treatises on the meaning of words in Aristophanes, and their use may lie behind lexical remarks by Pliny (and indeed Galen).89 A slightly greater range (in terms of source plays) can be seen in grammatical writers and commentators on Terence, particularly Priscian, but the extent to which the acquaintance was at first hand is doubtful.90 Among more representative readers, the mistakes that are made over attributions are revealing. Cicero, as noted above, originally attributed his quotation about the thundering Pericles from Acharnians to Eupolis and had to write to Atticus to correct his error and text (Att. 12.6a). Similarly, Valerius Maximus evidently confused Frogs and Demes, attributing the advice about a lion cub (Frogs 1430–2, of Alcibiades) to Pericles returned from the dead.91 The confusion is understandable, given that Aristophanes is clearly building on the earlier play, but does not suggest close attention to the genre. Vitruvius, meanwhile, in discussing philosophers and poets who have made remarks about the providential nature of the world (Vitr. 6.pr.3), includes a number of comic poets, albeit somewhat more vaguely than the other writers in his list. The comedians are Chionides, Aristophanes, Alexis and an otherwise unattested “Eucrates.” The latter has been taken for a textual mistake for Eu, Crates (= Eupolis, inc. fab. fr. 494) or for Crates alone. It may also simply be a genuine mistake.92 It is also clear that where Old Comedy was known, it was for the most part through reading texts rather than through performance (thus, for example, Horace’s claim to be reading texts in Sermones 2.3). There is no conclusive evidence that Greek Old Comedy was ever performed at Rome. The closest is a story about Augustus in Suetonius’ life which, in the context of discussing the emperor’s limited Greek, nonetheless claims that he enjoyed poems and delectabatur etiam comoedia ueteri et saepe eam exhibuit spectaculis publicis (“he even enjoyed old (Greek) comedy and often had it put on at public games,” Div. Aug. 89.1). The adjective vetus, “old,” does not here decisively indicate Old Comedy in the narrow generic sense. It can sometimes do so, particularly with comoedia, although prisca is also used and entirely unambiguously.93 Vetus is also used, however, of the Roman palliata, adaptations of Greek New Comedy, both with the generic noun comoedia and with the comic poets themselves
89 See Plin. Nat. 21.29.3; note also Servius on Georgics 1.8. 90 Thus Priscian quotes Eupolis, Aiges fr. 7 (inst. gramm. 18.252 = Gramm. Lat. III p. 334.15); Prospaltioi frr. 263 and 265 (inst. gramm. 18.225 = Gramm. Lat. III p. 320.4; inst. gramm. 18.190); Chrysoun Genos fr. 316 (de metr. Ter. 26 = Gramm. Lat. III p. 429.1, the latter quoting Hephaestion explicitly). 91 Val. Max. 7.2.7 = Eup. Demes test. 7. 92 In the Teubner edition, F. Krohn (ed.), Vitruvii de architectura libri decem (Leipzig: Teubner, 1912) accepts the emendation Crates, but suggests in the apparatus that the two names have been run together. 93 So Hor. Serm. 1.4.2, 1.10.16; Plin. Nat. 21.29. Velleius Paterculus 1.16.3 uses both adjectives.
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(comici or similar).94 The context here could suit the palliata as much as Old Comedy, as Suetonius is discussing Greek culture as well as language, and furthermore proceeds immediately to discuss Augustus’ habit of taking exempla and bons mots from texts in either language and sending them to magistrates, generals and other administrators, or indeed using them as advice in running the household. These moral examples publice vel privatim salubria may be thought to suit the more gnomic New Comedy, but it is difficult to be sure. Given that Suetonius goes on to detail Augustus’ canny approach to freedom of speech—discouraging use of his name, especially in a non-serious and non-elite context; discouraging anonymous libels in general— the imitation and encouragement of a culture of free speech seems unlikely to have been the motive for such performances. It does nonetheless remain possible that performance of Old Comedy was (re)introduced to give the impression of an open society. The reading culture is well observed in Pliny the Younger’s discussion of Vergilius Romanus (Ep. 6.21). Vergilius, he says, has tried many other (in some case obscure) genres: mimiambi, a version of specifically Menandrian comedy that Pliny rates as highly as Plautus or Terence, and now an Old Comedy (vetus comoedia: 6.21.2, 6.21.5), of which Pliny has heard a chunk at a reading. Pliny praises it on primarily stylistic grounds—vis, granditas, subtilitas, amaritudo, dulcedo and lepos—not far, indeed, from Cicero or Quintilian. When he passes to targets of such satire, however, the Horatian withdrawal from public engagement, the restriction to morality and the generic targets, can be seen all too clearly: ornauit uirtutes, insectatus est uitia; fictis nominibus decenter, ueris usus est apte (“he amplified virtue and attacked vice; he used fictional characters fittingly, and real ones appropriately,” 6.21.6). Pliny does manage to add that this benignitas went too far in his own case. His false modesty draws attention to the problem of libertas under the early Empire, the tension at the heart of Roman satire. Whether Pliny himself was deeply familiar with Old Comedy, or Vergilius Romanus was representative, may be doubted. A wide reading knowledge of Old Comedy certainly cannot be taken for granted in the late Republic and early Empire, much less widespread performance knowledge. The question of performance (and Vergilius Romanus’ generic excursions) prompts one final problem: how far, if at all, did Old Comedy influence Roman comedy, especially the fabula palliata? The answer lies in the range “not much” to “not at all.” There are three possible areas in which it might be possible to track some influence, but in each case any such suggestion is faint. First, the adaptations of Greek New Comedy by Plautus, Terence and (as far as we can tell) the other poets of Roman comedy, such as Caecilius Statius, whose work is known only through fragments or titles, leave little room for explicit political interven-
94 With comoedia: Quint. Inst. 6.1.52. With comici: Quint. Inst. 1.7.22; 9.3.14; cf. Aul. Gel. 3.16.2; 4.16.3; 13.23.16.
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tion.95 This is not to say either that these comedies cannot be understood as making political interventions or that there are not occasional explicit references to the outside world. But direct engagement with issues and personalities is simply not there in Roman comedy as we have it. The one possible instance where there is a hint of an approach close to Old Comedy in the fabula palliata is the report of Cn. Naevius’ provocation of the Metelli into having him locked up, an incident to which Plautus refers (Miles Gloriosus 211–12), but we know little more about the details of the incident. The account in Ps-Asconius suggests that it was a one-liner rather than a more sustained assault in the manner of Old Comedy, but the evidence is uncertain.96 Second, both Old Comedy and fabula palliata share the use of set-piece elements for extensive poetic self-fashioning. The difference is that in Plautus and Terence such self-reflexivity is concentrated in prologues rather than in a mid-play parabasis. Some of the Plautine and Terentian forms of self-promotion, not least their attempts to curry favor with the audience and to beg for their attention, share elements with similar moves in Old Comedy. Terence’s negotiations over the multiple versions of Hecyra are reminiscent of Aristophanes’ similar moves over Clouds. On the other hand, there is much about comic parabaseis, not least their claims for political or moral sophia, that is not replicated. Likewise, the metapoetic priorities are different, with the Old Comic stress on innovation not echoed in Plautus, and the disputes over contaminatio an entirely distinct discourse. Although Old Comedy does have explanatory (and often highly metatheatrical) prologues that set up the story, the (pre-Terentian) expository prologues of the palliata look formally and functionally more like the (usually divine) prologues of Greek New Comedy, albeit with a self-reflexive dimension.97 Third, the elements of dramatic technique in which the palliata diverges most clearly from New Comedy are its use of continuous action rather than a consistent five-act structure, its more varied use of meters, and its use of solo song, and in these respects it is closer to Old Comedy. The song is solo song, however, rather than (overwhelmingly) choral song, as in Old Comedy; the rhythmic structure of the songs is far from similar; and the use of longer meters analogous to the “recitative” meters
95 The other writers of the fabula palliata were probably closer to Plautus in technique than to Terence, as is argued by J. Wright, Dancing in Chains: the Stylistic Unity of the Comoedia Palliata, Papers and Monographs of the American Academy in Rome 25 (Rome: American Academy, 1974). Texts are collected in O. Ribbeck (ed.) Comicorum Romanorum praeter Plautum et Terentium fragmenta, Scaenicae Romanorum poesis fragmenta, vol. 3 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1888); there is no comprehensive translation available as there is now for Old Comedy. Caecilius Statius, however, can be found in the Loeb edition of E.H. Warmington, Remains of Old Latin, vol. 1 (London: Heinemann, 1935), pp. 467–561. 96 For the ancient evidence, see Ps-Asconius on Cic. Ver. 1.1.29; Aul. Gel. 3.3.15; “Caesius Bassus,” de metris (Gramm. Lat. VI p. 266 Keil). For sceptical discussion with further bibliography, see H.B. Mattingly, “Naevius and the Metelli,” Historia 9 (1960), pp. 414–39. For a much more positive view of links between Naevius and Old Comedy, see Beta in this volume. 97 On metatheatricality and Plautus, see N. Slater, Plautus in Performance: the Theatre of the Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).
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of Old Comedy come in much less regular patterns than in the older Greek genre.98 While the regularity of the complex epirrhematic structure of Old Comedy can be overstated, such patterns are nonetheless entirely alien to the palliata. Later scholarship on Roman comedy drew attention to parallels between certain recitative meters in Old Comedy and longer meters in the palliata and even supposed that the latter descended from the former, but these claims are difficult to sustain.99 The most interesting question is why there was this lack of influence from Old Comedy in the late 3rd and early to mid-2nd century. One popular argument is that this was due to prescriptions against onomasti kōmōidein, of the kind Horace mentions in the Ars Poetica and elsewhere, and which Cicero claims were part of the Twelve Tables —and which presumably were used by the Metelli in the case of Naevius, if that is an historical incident. The problem for this analysis is that the evidence is unequivocal that political, moral and social abuse, including by name, was practised from (at least) Lucilius onward, and that practitioners included such luminaries as Catullus, to say nothing of invective outside elite contexts. This may of course be an instance of laws being observed more in the breach than in the observance (unfortunates such as Naevius aside) or of theater being regarded differently from written texts. The concerns over a permanent theater at Rome perhaps speak to such anxiety. It may, however, be the case that the Metelli’s actions against Naevius represented an ad hoc extension of a prohibition of sung invective in an entirely different context, namely witchcraft.100 The evidence from mime suggests that performance in itself was not a barrier to highly political performance onstage.101 There may have been a more complex dynamic at work, which parallels puzzling generic developments in theatrical comedy in other cultures. The change from Old to Middle to New Comedy in Greece, for example, owes at least some of its impetus to inter-related generic forces of competition and innovation, on the one hand, and repetition and audience expectation, on the other.102 Terence’s account of the disputes in the mid-2nd century certainly suggest a degree of generic pressure and expectation not suggested by the earlier work of Plautus.103
98 For the meters of Old Comedy, see especially M. Silk, “Aristophanes as a lyric poet,” in: Henderson, Aristophanes (above, n. 33), pp. 99–151; L.P.E. Parker, The Songs of Aristophanes (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997). 99 For a claimed link between Roman comedy and Old Comedy from the point of view of metre, see “Marius Victorinus” art. gramm. 2.3 (Gramm. Lat. VI p. 78 and, almost verbatim, Rufinus comm. in metra Ter., Gramm. Lat. VI pp. 556–7, 564 [p. 564 quoted as Aristophanes test. 98]); continuities are assumed by passages such as “Marius Victorinus” 3.15 (Gramm. Lat. VI p. 124 = Aristophanes test. 105). 100 Thus T. Frank, “Naevius and free speech,” American Journal of Philology 48 (1927), pp. 105–10. 101 See references collected by Panayotakis, Decimus Laberius (above, n. 70), p. 11 n. 20. 102 The competitive dynamic in Old Comedy in particular has been much discussed: see above, n. 78; for repetition and innovation, see Ruffell, Politics and Anti-Realism (above, n. 33). 103 See esp. the prologue to Terence’s Eunuchus.
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A further contributing factor is that the development of the palliata simply reflected what was available to Roman playwrights in the mid- to late-3rd century, and in particular what was available at Tarentum, which seems to have played a critical role in the development of Roman comedy. Both the anecdote that Terence died while on a trip to Greece to secure more textual models and his own self-defence over re-use of comic models suggest a far from inexhaustible supply of Greek originals to hand.104 Whatever the degree of penetration of Old Comedy (rather than Middle) into South Italy and Sicily in the 4th century,105 it was not such as to have had a marked impact on the Roman adaptation of Greek comedy in the latter part of the 3rd.
5. Conclusion Overall, the evidence for Old Comedy at Rome suggests that its reception was highly circumscribed. Other than the specialist interests of anthologisers and grammarians, and of outliers such as Vergilius Romanus, Pliny’s mild-mannered generic experimenter, two main vectors can be seen: analysis and use in rhetorical theory, on the one hand, and use in Roman satire, on the other. For the former, the appreciation of the stylistic range and political commitment of the genre was (implicitly or explicitly) brought close to that of rhetoric itself. For the latter, Old Comedy and its shameless invective provided an ongoing touchstone of libertas to be appropriated, negotiated and avoided in an ongoing exploration of satirical alienation. It may seem paradoxical that those most directly engaged in Roman politics were most aware of the aesthetic qualities of this most problematic of classics. Their nuanced stylistic account should afford a warning to modern scholars not to be misled by the emphasis of Hellenistic scholarship on onomasti kōmōidein or its adoption by the Roman satirists to mark their distance from the confrontation of power. Old Comedy could be a model of political and social engagement, and not just a problem.
104 For Terence’s death, see Suetonius’ life of Terence, preserved in Donatus’ commentary (= Suetonius, de Poetis 8.90–6 Rostagni). For textual models, see also previous note. 105 The maximal case has been urged particularly by Revermann, Comic Business (above, n. 79), building on O. Taplin, Comic Angels and Other Approaches to Greek Drama through Vase-paintings (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), and see also E. Csapo, Actors and Icons of the Ancient Theater (Malden, Mass., Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 38–82; for a more cautious interpretation of the evidence, see A. Hughes, “Comedy in Paestan vase painting,” Oxford Journal of Archaeology 22.3 (2003), pp. 281– 301; and Performing Greek Comedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 1–7.
Niall W. Slater
Inventing Everything: Comic and Performative Sources of Graeco-Roman Fiction Abstract: While the search for a moment of transition at which a notion of “fiction” comes into being is probably futile, the classical poet’s emerging self-consciousness of his own and others’ poetic forms undoubtedly plays a key role. While the later tradition (influenced by Aristotle) tends to emphasize the contribution of drama and particularly comedy to fiction’s imagination of character and action, comedy is also a key source for understanding fiction as world-making (building a dramatic space that is not simply identical with the audience’s world), as well as an important authorial paradigm for the manipulation of time. All these features are adumbrated on the Graeco-Roman stage—and most often in comedy—before they appear, often looking remarkably modern, in the surviving ancient novels.
listen: there’s a hell of a good universe next door; let’s go — e. e. cummings
Many varied genealogies have been proposed for Graeco-Roman fiction: Euripidean tragedy, comedy and even mime compete or combine with fable, narrative history and biography in the critical discourse. Explanations burgeon in the absence of ancient testimony from either authors or readers about the nature of their shared enterprise. As John Morgan succinctly puts it, “in antiquity the novel was drastically undertheorized, even to the extent that there was no word for it in either Greek or Latin.”1 Novel is not itself identical with fiction, of course, but perhaps too many terms (mythos, historia, plasma and fabula among them) compete for the title of being the “real” fiction. Indeed, finding the precise moment of the emergence of “real” fiction,
Jeff Henderson’s great generosity and friendship from our days as colleagues at USC in the 1980s onward have taught me so much about both laughter and imagination; I hope this brief meditation on fiction and the even briefer discussion of a possible representation of imperial comic performance elsewhere in this volume may reflect, however dimly, my abiding gratitude. An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the 2007 conference on “Fiction Across Cultures,” organized by Margalit Finkelberg and David Shulman with the support of the Israel Academy of Sciences and the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I thank the organizers for their superb hospitality and their kindness in allowing this revised version to appear in the present volume. 1 John Morgan, “Make-believe and Make Believe: The Fictionality of the Greek Novels,” in: C. Gill & T.P. Wiseman (eds.), Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1993), p. 176.
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whether the novel or an earlier form, has been well critiqued by Denis Feeney by analogy with genre theory: If genres are not reified Platonic essences, then mixing or crossing of genres is not something interesting that happens to pre-existing entities, but instead it is the very phenomenon which constitutes what we take to be those essences.2
The search for the transition, then, from the moment when no fiction existed to the moment of its coming into being is thus probably doomed. Margalit Finkelberg has nonetheless made a powerful case for the lyric age as a time of transition from inspired poets to constructing poets, and thus from a poetics of truth to a poetics of fiction—a transition that began to be theorized in the 5th and even more the 4th centuries BCE.3 While no summary can do justice to the richness and rigor of Finkelberg’s arguments, it is worth noting how subtly the evidence for the poet’s self-consciousness as creator emerges, whether in Alcman’s portrayal of himself as one who discovers or invents both words and melody (PMG 39, trans. Campbell): ϝέπη τάδε καὶ μέλος Ἀλκμὰν εὗρε γεγλωσσαμέναν κακκαβίδιων ὄπα συνθέμενος These words and melody Alcman invented by organizing the tongued cry of partridges,
or in Solon’s reference to himself as “expert” in meter—the earliest such reference by a poet to the structure of the medium in which he worked.4 Two centuries later, the notion of the poet as a craftsman of words is fully established, and the best evidence is from the Attic stage—specifically from comedy talking about tragedy in a passage Finkelberg treats as well.5 Here is the servant of Agathon discussing his master’s impending work in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae (49–57, trans. Sommerstein)
2 D.C. Feeney, “Towards an Account of the Ancient World’s Concepts of Fictive Belief,” in: Gill and Wiseman, Lies and Fiction (above, n. 1), pp. 240–1. Much of this is already implicit in the criticism of Aristotelian genre theory and its descendants offered by B.E. Perry, The Ancient Romances (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 18–22. 3 Margalit Finkelberg, The Birth of Literary Fiction in Ancient Greece (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 18–27 and passim. 4 Solon fr. 13.52; cf. his reference at fr. 1.2 to “putting together … the structure of words” (κόσμον ἐπέων … θέμενος). 5 Finkelberg, Birth (above, n. 3), p. 172.
Inventing Everything: Comic and Performative Sources of Graeco-Roman Fiction
(ΘΕ.) μέλλει γὰρ ὁ καλλιεπὴς Ἀγάθων πρόμος ἡμέτερος … δρυόχους τιθέναι δράματος ἀρχάς. κάμπτει δὲ νέας ἁψῖδας ἐπῶν, τὰ δὲ τορνεύει, τὰ δὲ κολλομελεῖ, καὶ γνωμοτυπεῖ κἀντονομάζει καὶ κηροχυτεῖ καὶ γογγύλλει καὶ χοανεύει.
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For Agathon of the lovely language, our suzerain, is about … to lay the stocks on which to commence a play. He is bending new verbal timbers into shape, now gluing songs together, now fashioning them on the lathe, and coining ideas and creating metaphors and melting wax and rounding out and casting in a mould.
The most recent commentators on this play calls this a “chaotic jumble of images,”6 and the very abundance is surely the point. The multifarious Agathon is not just any craftsman but simultaneously every kind of craftsman. He begins somewhat traditionally by laying out the stocks or pegs (δρυόχους) upon which a ship’s keel might be built. Yet the “verbal timbers” (ἁψῖδας ἐπῶν) he then bends are not part of a ship’s structure but the “felloes” or exterior rims of wheels; perhaps the hearer is meant momentarily to imagine a wheeled ship, like those in the Dionysiac procession. But soon we are on to other images, turning parts on a lathe and gluing others together, neither of which suits the ship imagery. The root verb in γνωμοτυπεῖ, meaning “stamp, coin,” suddenly shifts to the field of metalworking, which is followed by lostwax bronze-casting. The parody is clear: Agathon’s servant in his enthusiasm has gradually transformed his master from a traditional poet, launching the vessel of verse onto the sea, into a much humbler wood- or metal-worker, possibly even one who repeats himself as he stamps out one γνώμη or clever saying after another. The implicit in this scene may need to be made clear: the comic poet, Aristophanes, by presenting Agathon as a hyperactive jack of all poetic trades, demonstrates his own superior, indeed theoretically superior, understanding of all the tragic poet does not quite grasp. Comedy, as embodied by Aristophanes and his 4th-century successors, already understands poetry as fabrication and thus as fiction. My goal in exploring comedy’s conception and theorization of poetic creation is not to establish a new and definitive genealogy for fiction, but to suggest the impor-
6 C. Austin and S.D. Olson (eds.), Aristophanes: Thesmophoriazusae (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), ad 52–7.
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tance of the dramatic and especially comic strand in its heritage—particularly as a space in which the possibilities of fictional creation could be explored. The contribution of drama in the abstract to the fully developed novel tradition tends to be acknowledged. Perry put it succinctly thus: Greek romance, as a new literary species with a purpose and direction all its own, was … fundamentally drama in substance and historiography in its outward form.7
What the later tradition, under the oppressive influence of Aristotle, tends to emphasize is drama’s contribution to fiction’s imagination of character. This is undoubtedly important—but as or even more important is to understand drama as a key source for conceiving fiction as world-making as well as character-making—and the author as capable of manipulating time. All these features are adumbrated on the Greco-Roman stage—and most often in comedy—before they appear, often looking remarkably modern, in the surviving ancient novels. Sometime in the mid-4th century BCE, the comic poet Antiphanes mounted a play called Poetry (Poiesis), in which a figure offered the audience some remarkable thoughts on the art of writing verse. Olson has suggested these views might be part of an agon or debate between competing representatives of poetry, though the view espoused by Handley and others that the speaker, perhaps Poetry herself, might be delivering a prologue, certainly has parallels in 4th-century practice.8 In any case, the views still have the power to startle (Antiphanes fr. 189): μακάριόν ἐστιν ἡ τραγωιδία ποίημα κατὰ πάντ᾿, εἴ γε πρῶτον οἱ λόγοι ὑπὸ τῶν θεατῶν εἰσιν ἐγνωρισμένοι, πρὶν καί τιν᾿ εἰπεῖν· ὥσθ᾿ ὑπομνῆσαι μόνον δεῖ τὸν ποιητήν. Οἰδίπουν γὰρ †φῶ9 τὰ δ᾿ ἄλλα πάντ’ ἴσασιν· ὁ πατὴρ Λάιος, μήτηρ Ἰοκάστη, θυγατέρες, παῖδες τίνες, τί πείσεθ’ οὗτος, τί πεποίηκεν. ἂν πάλιν εἴπηι τις Ἀλκμέωνα, καὶ τὰ παιδία πάντ’ εὐθὺς εἴρηχ’, ὅτι μανεὶς ἀπέκτονε τὴν μητέρ’, ἀγανακτῶν δ’ Ἄδραστος εὐθέως ἥξει πάλιν τ’ ἄπεισι ‒ ◡‒ ˉ ◡‒
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7 Perry, Ancient Romances (above, n. 2), p. 140. 8 S.D. Olson (ed.), Broken Laughter: Select Fragments of Greek Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 172–3; E.W. Handley, “Comedy,” chapter 12, in: The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 411–13. Cf. also I. Konstantakos “This Craft of Comic Verse: Greek Comic Poets on Comedy,” Archaiognosia 12 (2003–2004) pp. 11–53, esp. 11–13, 21–30. 9 Kassel–Austin choose not to print a correction for the metrically defective φῶ. Olson, Broken Laughter (above, n. 8), pp. 154, 173, prefers Οἰδίπουν γ’ ἂν φῆι 〈μόνον〉, arguing for a third-person verb.
Inventing Everything: Comic and Performative Sources of Graeco-Roman Fiction
〈ἔπει〉θ’ ὅταν μηθὲν δύνωντ’ εἰπεῖν ἔτι, κομιδῆι δ’ ἀπειρήκωσιν ἐν τοῖς δράμασιν, αἴρουσιν ὥσπερ δάκτυλον τὴν μηχανὴν καὶ τοῖς θεωμένοισιν ἀποχρώντως ἔχει. ἡμῖν δὲ ταῦτ’ οὐκ ἔστιν, ἀλλὰ πάντα δεῖ εὑρεῖν, ὀνόματα καινά, ‒ ◡‒ ˉ ◡‒ ◡‒ ˉ ◡ ‒ κἄπειτα τὰ διωιχημένα πρότερον, τὰ νῦν παρόντα, τὴν καταστροφήν, τὴν εἰσβολήν. ἂν ἕν τι τούτων παραλίπηι Χρέμης τις ἢ Φείδων τις, ἐκσυρίττεται· Πηλεῖ δὲ πάντ’ ἔξεστι καὶ Τεύκρωι ποιεῖν
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Tragedy’s a cushy art altogether, since first of all the spectators know the plots already, before anyone speaks— all the poet has to do is remind them. All I need to do is say “Oedipus” and they know the rest—his father Laius, his mother Jocasta, his daughters, sons, what will happen to him, what he’s done. Or again if someone says “Alcmaeon,” in the same breath he’s included all the children, how he went off his rocker and killed his mother, and how Adrastos will enter raging and leave again … And when the poets can’t come up with anything and have said absolutely everything in their plays they lift the crane just like a finger,10 and the spectators get their money’s worth. That’s not the way with us—we have to invent everything: new names, … set-up, present state, fourth act curtain, opening.11 If a Chremes or a Pheidon leaves out any of this, he’s hissed off the stage, but Peleus and Teucer can do what they please.
Although nothing else survives of this play, Antiphanes was a very productive comic playwright, some of whose titles may look back to mythological parody (he wrote a Bacchae, a Medea and an Oinomaos or Pelops), others to contemporary character comedy (such as his Rustic, Doctor and Parasite). Nor are the metapoetic views in
10 The “crane” was used for appearances of gods at the end of the play; see D.J. Mastronarde, “Actors on High: The Skene Roof, the Crane, and the Gods in Attic Drama,” Classical Antiquity 9 (1990), pp. 247–94. Olson in Broken Laughter (above, n. 8), p. 174 ad loc., sees in the comparison to a lifted “finger” a reference to a boxer’s signal of defeat. 11 What I have translated “opening” might or might not be the prologue: the narrative of a conventional prologue would fall under “set–up,” but the use of εἰσβολήν for “opening” seems deliberately vague: a play needed a strong opening, which might be a dialogue scene, followed by a delayed prologue. “Fourth act curtain” is literally the catastrophe (καταστροφήν), on which see further below.
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Poetry isolated. In the only surviving fragment of Antiphanes’ Tritagonist (fr. 207.1–6) someone reminisces about the poet Philoxenus: πολύ γ’ ἐστὶ πάντων τῶν ποιητῶν διάφορος ὁ Φιλόξενος. πρώτιστα μὲν γὰρ ὀνόμασιν ἰδίοισι καὶ καινοῖσι χρῆται πανταχοῦ· ἔπειτα 〈τὰ〉 μέλη μεταβολαῖς καὶ χρώμασιν ὡς εὖ κέκραται. θεὸς ἐν ἀνθρώποισιν ἦν ἐκεῖνος, εἰδὼς τὴν ἀληθῶς μουσικήν. Philoxenus was far superior to all the poets. For he was the first one altogether to use personal and new names. And then how well his melodies used changes and colors! That guy was a god among men, truly knowing the art of music.
The Poetry passage has often been compared to Aristotle’s well-known views in the Poetics on the nature of comic invention (1451b11–16): ἐπὶ μὲν οὖν τῆς κωμῳδίας ἤδη τοῦτο δῆλον γέγονεν· συστήσαντες γὰρ τὸν μῦθον διὰ τῶν εἰκότων οὕτω τὰ τυχόντα ὀνόματα ὑποτιθέασιν, καὶ οὐχ ὥσπερ οἱ ἰαμβοποιοὶ περὶ τὸν καθ’ ἕκαστον ποιοῦσιν. ἐπὶ δὲ τῆς τραγῳδίας τῶν γενομένων ὀνομάτων ἀντέχονται. This is already clear from comedy. After composing a plot according to what is probable, then they assign arbitrary names to the characters, instead of writing about individuals as the iambic poets do. In the case of tragedy, the poets stick to the names of actual people. (trans. N.J. Lowe)
The prestige of Aristotle is such that the views expressed in Antiphanes are often seen as a reflection of the philosopher’s own, or at least of topics circulating first and foremost in philosophical circles at Athens. Yet it is worth considering whether an assumption of the philosopher’s priority over the practitioner here is justified. True, the passage from Poetry emphasizes how the named characters of myth seem to generate their own stories in the minds of an audience, and the Tritagonist fragment even states that one of Philoxenus’ innovations was giving “personal and new” (ἰδίοισι καὶ καινοῖσι) names to characters. Lowe in a brilliant article on “Comic Plots and the Invention of Fiction” concludes that, “For Antiphanes and Aristotle alike, what set comedy apart from other genres of poetry was the notion of made-up characters.”12 Moreover, “Within the narrative culture of antiquity, comedy was a very strange kind of storytelling indeed: the first, and for half a millennium practically the only, literary genre to tell stories about characters the audience had never
12 N.J. Lowe, “Comic Plots and the Invention of Fiction,” in: David Harvey and John Wilkins (eds.), The Rivals of Aristophanes (London: Duckworth, 2000), p. 261.
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met before.”13 Yet this neglects some important elements toward the end of Poetry’s discussion of how the a poet writes comedy. Let us return to Antiphanes’ Poetry (fr. 189.17–22, quoted above). The meter tells us that there are gaps in at least two lines of the text, which like so many others is preserved only by Athenaeus. The gap falls between what seems to be a discussion of character (“new names”) and one of plot or dramatic structure, where at least one technical term, the καταστροφή or ‘turning point’ of the action, is included. As Olson notes, there might be several items missing14—even multiple lines of items from the list of what the comic poet must invent; note that Antiphanes uses the same verb, εὑρεῖν, as Alcman does for the poet’s activity. If the discussion after the gap concerns strictly plot structure, from background material through present action to turning point, it is then curious that we suddenly move back to the opening or introduction. One could always posit textual corruption: τὴν εἰσβολήν (“the opening”) would fit perfectly at the beginning of line 19, and then τὰ διωικημένα / πρότερον (“the set-up”) might designate the speech of a delayed prologue figure. On the other hand, the structuring principle might not be chronological. Even the preserved list might not be bipartite (character and plot) but tripartite (character, plot elements, and more abstract structural features such as the crisis or recognition that often comes near but not at the end—often the fourth act by the time of New Comedy—with the consequences to be worked out thereafter). What does “inventing everything” mean? New names for characters, and actions in which they then engage—but the comic poet understands that the task is even larger than that. Of most interest is the term that seems the vaguest: τὰ νῦν παρόντα, “the things now present.” If this is not part of a strict sequence of points in performance (a view undermined by the placement of εἰσβολήν), it might rather collectively refer to the whole of the staged action. Alternatively, it might refer not to plot points at all but to the whole process of world creation—the setting of the play world in both time and space—in which comedy must also engage. Certainty is impossible, but either in this term or in the lost text there can be place not just for action and character as illustrated or expressed by action, in Aristotelian terms, but for comedy’s need to make a world in which to stage the play. Nick Lowe puts this well in a recent article on space in Aristophanic comedy, pointing out the special function of the prologue: “[Comic] prologues can be, and usually are, essentially atopic. Comic prologues have a good deal of work to do; one of the reasons they are so much longer than tragic prologues, typically around three or four times the length, is that they have to construct an entire universe ex nihilo.”15 The
13 “Comic Plots” (above, n. 12), p. 262. 14 Broken Laughter (above, n. 8), p. 174 ad 17. 15 N.J. Lowe, “Aristophanic Spacecraft,” in: L. Kozak and J. Rich (eds.), Playing Around Aristophanes: Essays in Celebration of the Completion of the Edition of the Comedies of Aristophanes by Alan Sommerstein (Oxford: Aris and Philips, 2006), p. 52.
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obvious Aristophanic example is the opening of Acharnians, as Dicaeopolis gradually brings the Pnyx into being around him and incorporates the audience in the Theater of Dionysus into the play as part of the citizen body sitting in the Assembly. Other prologues play with audience expectation, even delaying desired information: the servants bustle about in the opening of Peace, preparing food for the giant dung beetle —until they suddenly imagine some clever young man in the audience asking his neighbor “What’s this all about? What’s up with the beetle?” (Peace 43–4 τόδε πρᾶγμα τί; / ὁ κάνθαρος δὲ πρὸς τί;). This finally triggers the long-awaited exposition that includes anchoring the action in time and space. Pan opens Menander’s The Grouch with the simple request, “Imagine that the place is in Attika—Phyle” (τῆς Ἀττικῆς νομίζετ’ εἶναι τὸν τόπον / Φυλήν). When the anonymous prologue speaker in Plautus’ Truculentus asks for a small part within the audience’s city wall in which to erect Athens, and then proclaims that he will transform the stage into that city for the duration of the comedy, this is really only the further end of the same spectrum of world-making activities we have seen from comedy’s earliest recorded stages (Truc. 1– 3, 10–11): perparvam partem postulat Plautus loci de vostris magnis atque amoenis moenibus, Athenas quo sine architectis conferat. … Athenis mutabo ita ut hoc est proscaenium tantisper dum transigimus hanc comoediam.
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Plautus petitions for the pettiest part of a place Within your great and pleasant walls, Wherein he may erect Athens—without architects. … I shall thus transform this stage into Athens For just so long as we’re acting this comedy.
I have perhaps belabored the issue of comedy’s ability to create place because it is too easily dismissed as conventional or even part of a standard repertoire of metatheatrical humor. The self-conscious nature of the fiction should not distract from the fact that it is a fiction. The Athens staged in the Truculentus is no more and indeed no less fictional than the Syracuse where Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe opens. Chariton’s novel is often classed as historical fiction.16 It begins on Sicily and its heroine is the daughter of Hermocrates, the name of a Syracusan commander known from the time of the Athenian-Sicilian conflict—and one who had a daughter, although history does
16 On drama, politics and identity in Chariton, see Steven D. Smith, Greek Identity and the Athenian Past in Chariton: The Romance of Empire, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 9 (Groningen: Barkhuis and Groningen University Library, 2007) and his chapter elsewhere in this volume.
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not record her name. Yet we should beware imposing our more specific modern categories of historical fiction on Chariton’s work: while many elements correspond to the actual city that we can reconstruct from archaeology, his Syracuse is no less fictional than Dorothy Sayers’ Oxford, wherein she erects on Balliol’s “spacious and sacred cricket ground” a new women’s college, Shrewsbury, in which to stage her Gaudy Night.17 Because this kind of world-making seems to proceed by descriptive addition (or subtraction), ancient theorists and many later have paid less attention to this part of fiction, especially in its origins. What is one more Oxford college, or one more convenient sea-side tomb for an only apparently dead Callirhoe? The notion of a sustained alternate world, accessible for repeated visits, may be a creation of the Hellenistic Age—although I would argue that it is not fundamentally distinct from the fabrication of a world such as Aristophanes’ Cloudcuckooland. Payne has recently claimed that the bucolics of Theocritus take this key step: “Their world is the first fully fictional world in Western literature.”18 His intriguing argument rests as much on what is absent from the poems as on what is present: pastoral, or at least Theocritean pastoral, has neither “the pointed vigor of expression” of lyric and tragedy nor the “attractions of plot and character” of Homer.19 Instead, it offers a “fully fictional” world “just across the border from reality.”20 Moreover, the poems “have the form of literary drama, but their characters are manifestly not representations of contemporary life … The poems flaunt the absence of a single origin for their world, which can be derived neither from myth alone nor from actuality alone.”21 Although it takes performed drama for its model, pastoral for Payne differentiates itself from staged drama, including Hellenistic mime, as well as from Theocritus’s own urban idylls, by its creation of a separate world as well as fundamentally different characters. The latter helps Payne differentiate the fully fictional world of bucolic from the fantasy worlds of Old Comedy or even fable, which he sees as inhabited by plausible characters. There is much of value in Payne’s analysis, especially in the notion that pastoral creates an alternate but related reality. Vergil remakes Arcadia in important ways, both enriching it poetically and mapping out the paths one might travel from the pastoral to the historical world and back. It suffices for the moment, however, to observe that this potential for world-making, despite Payne’s attempt to draw a clear dividing line, is already both implicit and explicit in comedy’s ability to lay out new worlds, in its inductive prologues and otherwise.
17 “Author’s Note,” Gaudy Night (New York: Avon, 1968), p. v. 18 Mark Payne, Theocritus and the Invention of Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 1. 19 Payne, Invention (above, n. 18), p. 1. 20 Payne, Invention (above, n. 18), p. 21. 21 Payne, Invention (above, n. 18), pp. 14–15.
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It is also essential to note that the specific world pastoral makes can and does become an ancestor of emergent prose fiction, most obviously in Longus’s pastoral novel, Daphnis and Chloe, but arguably in specific scenes of other fictions as well. Longus’s novel uses a doubled New Comedy plot of hero and heroine exposed in infancy,22 then brought up in a pastoral world by foster parents. A “historical” world from the city embodied in idle and destructive Methymnean youths invades and threatens their world until defeated by Pan. A potentially even more dangerous invasion by the city owners of both herds and herdsmen brings about the recognition of the lost children and, with further help from Pan and the Nymphs, the approval of their marriage. In the post-Vergilian ending, they negotiate a life alternating between city and country, between historical responsibility and pastoral freedom. Longus’ novel begins with the narrator’s encounter with a painting (εἰκόνος γραφήν) dedicated in the grove of the Nymphs. Such ecphrasis of works of art in the ancient novel has been much discussed in recent years.23 The narrator seeks out an interpreter of the image, then produces the narrative for the reader. What has been little remarked is that the artistic ecphrasis is immediately followed by geographic ecphrasis: πόλις ἐστὶ τῆς Λέσβου Μιτιλήνη, μεγάλη καὶ καλὴ· διείληπται γὰρ εὐρίποις ὑπεισρεούσης τῆς θαλάσσης καὶ κεκόσμηται γεφύραις ξεστοῦ καὶ λευκοῦ λίθου. νομίσεις οὐ πόλιν ὁρᾶν ἀλλὰ νῆσον. ταύτης τῆς πόλεως τῆς Μιτιλήνης ὅσον ἀπὸ σταδίων διακοσίων ἀγρὸς ἦν ἀνδρὸς εὐδαίμονος, κτῆμα κάλλιστον … (1.1–2)24 There is a city on Lesbos called Mitylene, of great size and beauty; it is transected by channels which bring the sea right into the city, and graced by bridges of polished marble. It will give you the impression of an island rather than a city. About two hundred stades distant from this city of Mitylene was a country estate of a wealthy man, a most beautiful possession … (trans. J. Morgan)
Modern editing emphasizes a break between the two ecphraseis, designating the first a preface or prologue, the second the beginning of the text proper. While the panel painting generates the narrative, the world-making proceeds in 1.1 just as in a comic prologue: Mitylene springs forth, an island within or adjoining the island of Lesbos, 22 For both Old and New Comedy elements in Longus, see Steven Smith’s essay elsewhere in this volume, esp. pp. 323–5. 23 See esp. Shadi Bartsch, Decoding the Ancient Novel: The Reader and the Role of Description in Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989); Helen Morales, Vision and Narrative in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). On Longus, see esp. R.L. Hunter, A Study of Daphnis and Chloe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 38–52; J. Kestner, “Ekphrasis as Frame in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe,” Classical World 67 (1973–74), pp. 166–71. For the role of ecphrasis in the later novelistic tradition, M.A. Doody, The True Story of the Novel (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press), pp. 387–404 and passim, is useful. 24 Text and translation from John Morgan, Longus: Daphnis and Chloe, Aris and Phillips Classical Texts (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2004).
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and the space of the country is built by opposition to it. Longus then smoothly interweaves character and narrative with spatial description, as he details how Lamon finds Daphnis nursed by a goat and hidden in a thicket, then brings him home. With the phrase “two years later” (4.1 ἤδη δὲ διετοῦς χρόνου διαγενομένου), Longus introduces the discovery of Chloe in the cave of the Nymphs and anchors the story in time as well as space. Time, and the ability to shape it within narrative, must thus be a final, brief theme. It seems eminently possible that temporal manipulation and inversion in ancient fiction is also an extension of experiments first undertaken in drama and especially comedy. The opening of Heliodorus’s Aethiopica is justly the most famous in all of ancient fiction. It takes the entire first half of the narrative, through the end of Book 5, to fully explain the tableau the reader views at the novel’s opening (1.1–3, 7–8): ἡμέρας ἄρτι διαγελώσας καὶ ἡλίου τὰς ἀκρωρείας καταυγάζοντος, ἄνδρες ἐν ὅπλοις λῃστρικοῖς ὄρους ὑπερκὺψαντες, ὃ δὴ κατ’ ἐκβολὰς τοῦ Νείλου καὶ στόμα τὸ καλούμενον Ἡρακλεωτικὸν ὑπερτείνει, μικρὸν ἐπιστάντες τὴν ὑποκειμένην θάλατταν ὀφθαλμοῖς ἐπήρχοντο καὶ τῷ πελάγει τὸ πρῶτον τὰς ὄψεις ἐπαφέντες, ὡς οὐδὲν ἄγρας λῃστρικῆς ἐπηγγέλλετο μὴ πλεόμενον, ἐπὶ τὸν πλησίον αἰγιαλὸν τῇ θέᾳ κατήγοντο. καὶ ἦν τὰ ἐν αὐτῷ τοιάδε· ὁλκὰς ἀπὸ πρυμνησίων ὥρμει τῶν μὲν ἐμπλεόντων χηρεύουσα, φόρτου δὲ πλήθουσα· ὁ δὲ αἰγιαλός, μεστὰ πάντα σωμάτων νεοσφαγῶν, τῶν μὲν ἄρδην ἀπολωλότων, τῶν δὲ ἡμιθνήτων καὶ μέρεσι τῶν σωμάτων ἔτι σπαιρόντων, ἄρτι πεπαῦσθαι τὸν πόλεμον καθηγορούντων … οἱ γὰρ δὴ κατὰ τὸ ὄρος θεωροὺς ἑαυτοὺς τῶνδε καθίσαντες οὐδὲ συνιέναι τὴν σκηνὴν ἐδύναντο, τοὺς μὲν ἑαλωκότας ἔχοντες, οὐδαμοῦ δὲ τοὺς κεκρατηκότας ὁρῶντες, καὶ τὴν μὲν νίκην λαμπράν, τὰ λάφυρα δὲ ἀσκύλευτα, καὶ τὴν ναῦν μόνην ἀνδρῶν μὲν ἔρημον τᾶλλα δὲ ἄσυλον ὥσπερ ὑπὸ πολλῶν φρουρουμένην καὶ ὥσπερ ἐν εἰρήνῃ σαλεύσαν. ἀλλὰ καίπερ τὸ γεγονὸς ὅ τι ποτέ ἐστιν ἀποροῦντες εἰς τὸ κέρδος ἔβλεπον καὶ τὴν λείαν· ἑαυτοὺς οὖν νικητὰς ἀποδείξαντες ὥρμησαν. The smile of daybreak was just beginning to brighten the sky, the sunlight to catch the hilltops, when a group of men in brigand gear peered over the mountain that overlooks the place where the Nile flows into the seas at the mouth that men call Heracleotic. They stood there for a moment, scanning the expanse of sea beneath them: first they gazed out over the ocean, but as there was nothing sailing there that held out hope of spoil and plunder, their eyes were drawn to the beach nearby. This is what they saw: a merchant ship was riding there, moored by her stern, empty of crew but laden with freight … But the beach!—a mass of newly slain bodies, some of them quite dead, others half-alive and still twitching, testimony that the fighting had only just ended. … They stood on the mountainside like the audience in a theater, unable to comprehend the scene: the vanquished were there, but the victors were nowhere to be seen: the victory was unequivocal, but the spoils had not been taken, and the ship lay there, crewless but otherwise intact, riding peacefully at anchor as if protected by a great force of men. But although they were at a loss to know what it all meant, they still had an eye for plunder and a quick profit. So they cast themselves in the role of victors and set off down the hillside. (trans. Morgan)
Morgan suggests that the manipulation of time here is paradigmatic for the work’s fictionality: “For all its mimetic qualities, no one could mistake the opening of the Aethiopica for a factual document. By the Renaissance, in fact, critics had come to
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recognize such temporal inversions as a conventional sign of fictivity.”25 Morgan, however, in my view too easily accepts the idea that this kind of temporal manipulation descends from epic and the beginning in medias res. The Aeneid does deliberately begin in the middle of its hero’s story. I wonder, however, if we are justified in assuming that Homer deliberately manipulated time in the same way. The oral bard takes a theme as his starting point, the wrath of Achilles or the wily Odysseus, and pursues that thread forward, even with diversions and pauses along the way. Homer does not present his hearers with significant climaxes in his narrative while suppressing vital information on how events could have reached that point in order to create suspense—though Vergil can.26 Temporal manipulation to create suspense and deliberate withholding of information seem best modeled again by the theater and particularly prologues that offer some elements of background information while withholding others. The delayed prologue takes this even further, and the example of Ignorance herself, Agnoia, in Menander’s Perikeiromene or Shorn Girl offers excellent evidence. In the damaged opening, the audience learns that the soldier Polemon has disgraced his mistress Glycera and thrown her out of the house on suspicion of infidelity with Moschion. This opening arouses conflicting sympathies—which are inverted by the arrival of Agnoia, who explains that she purposely aroused an uncharacteristic anger in Polemon in order to bring about the revelation that Moschion is the girl’s brother (162–70): πάντα δ’ ἐξεκάετο ταῦθ’ ἕνεκα τοῦ μέλλοντος, εἰς ὀργήν θ’ ἵνα οὗτος ἀφίκητ’ — ἐγὼ γὰρ ἦγον οὐ φύσει τοιοῦτον ὄντα τοῦτον — ἀρχὴν δ’ ἵνα λάβῃ μηνύσεως τὰ λοιπά, τούς θ’ αὐτῶν ποτε εὕροιεν· ὥστ’ εἰ τοῦτ’ ἐδυσχέραινέ τις ἀτιμίαν τ’ ἐνόμισε, μεταθέσθω πάλιν. διὰ γὰρ θεοῦ καὶ τὸ κακὸν εἰς ἀγαθὸν ῥέπει γινόμενον. This all blazed up to spark off future incidents, to goad him [Polemon] into rage—I spurred him on, he’s not like that by nature, but I aimed to launch
25 Morgan, “Make-believe” (above, n. 1), p. 216. 26 I would thus differentiate fictional suspense from Homer’s capacity for misdirection and “epic suspense” well discussed by James Morrison, Homeric Misdirection: False Predictions in the Iliad (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), esp. pp. 51–71. S.D. Olson, Blood and Iron: Story and Storytelling in Homer’s Odyssey (Leiden and New York: Brill, 1995), provocatively claims that in the Odyssey Homer “practices deception and fraud on a routine basis and repeatedly withholds crucial information from his audience” (p. 142), but his own discussion of Homer’s challenges in representing temporal flow (pp. 90–110) suggests that the fictional suspense of temporal inversion was beyond the Greek oral epic.
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revelations from the outcome—and at last to make them find their families. So, if this shocks anyone and seems disgraceful, he must change his views. With god’s help evil turns to good, right from conception. (trans. W.G. Arnott)
The prologue plays metatheatrically with Aristotelian terminology by embodying it: Ignorance herself will bring about recognition.27 But it does so more particularly by manipulating time: in effect, by coming in after the fact, Agnoia allows the audience to replay the opening scene they have just experienced with one set of emotional responses and invites them to replace those with another, different set. Iterable time is fundamentally comic time—but even more clearly fictional time. And thus it is time to draw quickly to a close. Aristotle’s views of the relations between character and action have heavily influenced our view of fiction throughout antiquity, highlighting comedy’s role as a creator of character types—and plot as the plausible choices of characters. The ability of fiction to create new and different worlds for those characters and actions has been undervalued—but is undoubtedly present in the comic texts we have. Deliberate play in comic recognition plots may also be a source for longer narratives’ interest in manipulating time for emotional effect. The comic poets were the first to think of themselves as inventing everything— and why should we gainsay them?
27 See the analysis of Kathryn Gutzwiller, “The Tragic Mask of Comedy: Metatheatricality in Menander,” Classical Antiquity 19 (2000), pp. 102–37, esp. 116–17.
Steven D. Smith
From Drama to Narrative: The Reception of Comedy in the Ancient Novel Abstract: Attic comedy is arguably the most important literary influence on the ancient novel.1 New Comedy especially has been much discussed for its influence on the shape of the plots and the typology of characters in the romances, which are full of Menandrian topoi. But Old Comedy, too, was influential on ancient prose fiction, and if the coarseness and aggression of its language and humor are generally out-ofplace in the putatively more respectable world of romance, they are more at home in the riotous world of the comic-picaresque novels. I first offer a survey of the influence of New Comedy on romance, and then a consideration of comic appropriations in the picaresque novels. In the final section, I offer a more detailed analysis of comic pederasty in the romances of Chariton, Longus and Achilles Tatius as an indicator of the continued power and relevance of Old Comic ridicule in reinforcing normative sexual morality even in a much later literary genre.2
I. New Comedy and Romance New Comedy’s formative role in the establishment of romantic conventions is well known, and it is therefore necessary to sketch here only briefly the outlines of that
I warmly dedicate this essay to Jeffrey Henderson: dissertation director, mentor and friend. Words fail to describe how much I have learned and continue to learn from him, both as a scholar and as a teacher. 1 The translations of Aristophanes are those of Jeffrey Henderson (ed.), Aristophanes: Birds, Lysistrata, Women at the Thesmophoria, Loeb Classical Library 79 (Cambridge Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 2000) and Aristophanes: Frogs, Assemblywomen, Wealth, Loeb Classical Library 180 (Cambridge Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 2002). The translations of Longus and Xenophon of Ephesus are those of Jeffrey Henderson (ed.), Longus: Daphnis and Chloe; Xenophon of Ephesus: Anthia and Habrocomes (Cambridge Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 2009). The translations of Achilles Tatius are by Tim Whitmarsh (Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon [Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001]). All other translations are my own. 2 Romain Brethes, De l’idéalisme au réalisme: une étude du comique dans le roman grec, Cardo 6 (Salerno: Helios, 2007), p. 127, devises three helpful categories for identifying the comic in the ancient novel: (1) comic intertextuality, i.e. allusion to the comic tradition; (2) comic intratextuality, i.e. the relationship of each novel to itself, its genre, the genre’s conventions and its own comic system; and (3) comic extratextuality, i.e. when a novel uses the comic or parodic mode to engage critically with ideas central to the genre, such as love, marriage, sexuality or religion. In what follows, I will be especially interested in categories 1 and 3, as I delineate how the voice of Old Comedy within Greek romance buttresses the sexual morality of romance and thereby reaffirms romantic ideology.
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influence.3 Most significant is the master plot of New Comedy, structured around the marriage of a young, attractive heterosexual couple of high social standing.4 Unlike Aristophanic comedy, which has an explicitly political orientation, New Comedy and the Greek romances alike focus on domestic drama, and reasonably so, given that the plots are centered on an erôs whose goal is the extraction of a boy and a girl from their respective households and the subsequent formation of a newly married couple. This is not to say that romance is apolitical; to the contrary, politics—both in the Greek sphere and on an international scale—are crucial to the main narratives of Chariton’s Callirhoe and Heliodorus’ Aithiopika and even become important in some sub-plots of the other romances.5 Moreover, the domesticity of the plots of New Comedy and romance belies the political ideology they assume, namely that civic stability is founded on the stable union of husband and wife; harmony within the polis is predicated on harmony within the oikos. The adventure narratives of the romances also seem to have germinated from the plots of New Comedy. Plautus’ Rudens, for example, likely a contaminatio of two earlier Greek plays,6 is set in African Cyrene with a cast of characters from across the Mediterranean world. The plot involves the reunion of a girl named Palaestra with her father many years after the girl was abducted by pirates and sold into slavery as a prostitute; the play concludes happily with the father’s intention to marry his daughter to the young Athenian Plesidippus. Plautus’ Miles Gloriosus too, based on a Greek play, Alazôn, by an unknown author, has a complicated back-story involving a slave’s kidnapping by pirates as well as the abduction of a young lover’s girlfriend by the eponymous braggart soldier. The climactic recognition scenes typical of Menander’s comedies also found their way into romance, most notably in the novels of Longus
3 See Sophie Trenkner, The Greek Novella in the Classical Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), pp. 110–11; Carlo Corbato, “Da Menandro a Caritone. Studi sulla genesi del romanzo greco e i suoi rapporti con la Commedia Nuova,” Quaderni Triestini sul Teatro Antico 1 (1968), pp. 5–44; Alberto Borgogno, “Menandro in Caritone,” Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica 99 (1971), pp. 257–63; Consuelo Ruiz-Montero, “The Rise of the Greek Novel,” in: G. Schmeling (ed.), Novel in the Ancient World2 (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 29–85; and now for a full treatment of the subject, Brethes, De l’idéalisme (above, n. 1). On the paradigmatic example of Chariton 1.4, see Hugh Mason, “Chaireas in Chariton and New Comedy,” Classical Bulletin 78 (2002), pp. 21–2; Stefan Tilg, Chariton of Aphrodisias and the Invention of the Greek Love Novel (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 138. For the influence of comedy on fictional world-making, see the essay by Niall W. Slater in this volume, pp. 309–21. 4 The best discussion of the ideology of Menandrian comedy is Susan Lape, Reproducing Athens: Menander’s Comedy, Democratic Culture, and the Hellenistic City (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). 5 On the relationship between drama and politics in Chariton, see Steven D. Smith, Greek Identity and the Athenian Past in Chariton: The Romance of Empire, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 9 (Groningen: Barkhuis and Groningen University Library, 2007), pp. 104–10. 6 Cornelia Catlin Coulter, “The Composition of the Rudens of Plautus,” Classical Philology 8 (1913), pp. 57–64.
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and Heliodorus. Plots and plot devices such as these needed only slight alteration to be transformed into the material for a romance. It has been noted that these narrative models extend back beyond Menander to a folkloric tradition,7 but while this is certainly true, Menander and New Comedy were the most important mediators of that tradition for later authors of romance. In addition, as regards the plotting of the romances, it is worth noting the significance of Tychê—the Greek personification of chance or indiscriminate luck—as the divine power that manipulates the events of the narratives. It is a commonplace in romance that characters apostrophize or otherwise blame the goddess for all their misfortunes, a motif that can be traced back to Menander.8 Appeals to a blind and fickle Tychê mark the characters in Menandrian comedy and Greek romance as unaware of their involvement in a conventional plot, and this ignorance is to be contrasted with the audience/reader’s own understanding of the conventions of the respective genres; part of the pleasure of both New Comedy and romance is that, while we know that everything will turn out well for the protagonists, they, for all their suffering, do not. Whitmarsh explains that this is why Tychê is “such an attractive metanarrative figure: it captures both the indeterminacy and the teleology of plot.”9 One example will suffice: late in Heliodorus’ Aithiopika, when events turn even more unfortunate for the protagonists, the narrator remarks that “at that point I suppose either some divinity or some Tychê who controls human affairs began to stage a new tragic episode on top of what had already been performed” (τότε δή πως εἴτε τι δαιμόνιον εἴτε Τύχη τις τὰ ἀνθρώπεια βραβεύουσα καινὸν ἐπεισόδιον ἐπετραγῴδει τοῖς δρωμένοις, 7.6.4). This is the only point in the Aithiopika where the narrator himself attributes plotting to Tychê, and it is noteworthy that he only tentatively characterizes Tychê’s manipulation of events as tragic plotting, in a sense ventriloquizing what the unknowing characters themselves might say about their situation. In the brilliant conclusion of the novel, however, the narrator supposes that the divine force that brings about the comic resolution was the same divine force that stagemanaged (ἐσκηνογράφησεν) what previously appeared to be a tragedy: “joy and grief embraced, tears were mixed with laughter” (χαρᾶς καὶ λύπης συμπεπλεγμένων, γέλωτι δακρύων κεραννυμένων, 10.38.4). Even if the characters did not know it, their story was heading toward a comic ending all along. Menandrian Tychê, surviving into the
7 Trenkner, Greek Novella (above, n. 3); Massimo Fusillo, Il romanzo greco: polifonia ed eros (Venice: Marsilio, 1989); Ruiz-Montero, “Rise” (above, n. 3). 8 Men. Mis. 246–8, 449; Pk. 151, 810; Sam. 55, 163, 398; Dysc. 545; Epitr. 1108; etc. On tychê in Menander, see Gregor Vogt-Spira, Dramaturgie des Zufalls: Tyche und Handeln in der Komödie Menanders, Zetemata 88 (Munich: Beck, 1992), pp. 10–18. On the epistemological and metanarrative significance of tychê in the novels, see Tim Whitmarsh, Narrative and Identity in the Ancient Greek Novel: Returning Romance (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 248–50. 9 Whitmarsh, Narrative (above, n. 8), pp. 249–50.
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latest and most sophisticated of the Greek romances, shapes the epistemological trajectory of romantic narrative. Romance’s appropriation of character types from New Comedy is also well known: the youthful lover, beloved virgin, stern parent, aged lover, helpful friend, trickster slave, faithful servant, nurse, matron and courtesan. While the protagonists of all the romances inhabit the comic types of youthful lover and beloved virgin (the latter considerably more developed in romance),10 they are surrounded and accompanied by figures also recognizable from Athenian drama. Thus, for example, Chaereas has his helpful friend in Polycharmus, Dionysius is attended by the trickster slave Plangon, and Cleitophon has Satyrus as his faithful servant. Even characters’ names are sometimes borrowed direct from Menandrian plays: Chaereas, Plangon and Theron, to name a few. Just as in New Comedy several types could be combined in a single character, so too in romance individual characters could possess traits of multiple types from the earlier genre. Longus’ Lycaenion and Achilles Tatius’ Melite, for example, combine aspects of the matron and courtesan, while Plangon, already mentioned as a trickster slave, also serves as Callirhoe’s faithful nurse. A final word must be said, too, about the possible influence of Middle Comedy, that nebulous transitional phase of the comic tradition between 404 and 320 BCE. Character types like the cook, the parasite and the mercenary soldier, while associated with the New Comedy of Menander, began developing in Middle Comedy.11 It is possible, therefore, even if only speculative, that in introducing the parasite Gnatho, for example, Longus had in mind characters from Antiphanes and Alexis inter alios, and not just the parasites familiar from Menander.12 Alexis, in fact, was the innovator responsible for the replacement of the Old Comic term κόλαξ with the now more familiar term “parasite” (παράσιτος).13 The mythological burlesques of Middle Comedy may also have influenced romance. Thus the monologue in which Chariton’s Callirhoe contemplates infanticide may recall not only Euripides’ Medea but also a comic heroine: Medea was a popular subject among the Middle Comic poets.14 Melodrama
10 Renate Johne, “Women in the Ancient Novel,” in Schmeling (ed.), Novel (above, n. 3), p. 169; Katharine Haynes, Fashioning the Feminine in the Greek Novel (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), passim. 11 W. Geoffrey Arnott, “Middle Comedy,” in: G.W. Dobrov (ed.), Brill’s Companion to the Study of Greek Comedy (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), pp. 319–25. 12 Antiph. frr. 87; 253; Alex. frr. 121; 183; 205; 263; Heinz-Günther Nesselrath, Die attische Mittlere Komödie: Ihre Stellung in der antiken Literaturkritik und Literaturgeschichte, Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte 36 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990), p. 311. 13 Alex. fr. 183; see Arnott, “Middle Comedy” (above, n. 11), pp. 323–4. 14 Smith, Greek Identity (above, n. 5), pp. 111–12. A Middle Comic Medea may also have inspired Apuleius’ short story about a slave woman who killed herself and her baby boy as revenge on the slave husband who spurned her for a freeborn woman (Met. 8.22)—a comic vulgarization typical of mythological burlesque. On Middle Comedy and mythological burlesque, see Arnott, “Middle Comedy” (above, n. 11), pp. 294–300.
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itself and the quasi-parodic appropriation of the tragic mode, pervasive in romance, may also be traced back to the burlesques of Middle Comedy, although Aristophanes was already parodying Euripides in the 5th century and it is unclear whether the romancers expected their readers to understand their characters’ melodramatics as comic or parodic. It must be stressed that the authors of Greek romance were not merely rehearsing in prose character types and plots familiar from Menander’s comic stage, although there is something to be said about romance’s translation of New Comedy into a medium that was itself transferable: the readable book of romance could communicate across a vast imperial oikoumenê social and civic ideals once communicated in the immediacy of a festival performance.15 As familiar as its characters and plots may have seemed, romance was something profoundly new, and New Comedy offered raw material and a loose framework within and around which authors could engage with a multiplicity of other literary genres in what Brethes has described as a “frénésie de la création et de la dynamique narrative.”16
II. Old Comedy in the Comic-Picaresque and Other Novels 1. The Greek Novels Our knowledge of Greek comic-picaresque novels has increased significantly in the last century with the publication of papyrus fragments of Lollianus’ Phoinikika and the anonymous Iolaos; most recently, Klaus Alpers has identified and extracted from the 9th-century encyclopedia known as the Etymologicum Genuinum a collection of fragments from a so-called Protagoras by an anonymous author. Along with these comic-picaresque novels may be considered the Wonders Beyond Thule of Antonius Diogenes and the Babyloniaka of Iamblichus (both known from summaries in the 9th-century Library of Photius), as well as the Lucianic Onos.17 These novels clearly preserved some of the conventions of romance (travel, adventure, erotic themes), and it is therefore possible also to sense echoes of motifs from New Comedy. What distinguishes these novels from romance, however, is their interest in low-life characters and scenarios and their concomitant indulgence in an obscene style of humor
15 Whitmarsh, Narrative and Identity (above, n. 8), p. 259. 16 Brethes, De l’idéalisme (above, n. 1), p. 73. 17 Susan Stephens, “Fragments of Lost Novels,” in: Schmeling (ed.), Novel (above, n. 3), pp. 655–83, classes the Babyloniaka as a “nationalistic novel” along with Ninus, Sesonchosis and Calligone; the novel by Antonius Diogenes is sui generis.
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reminiscent of Aristophanes and Old Comedy. This is the aspect of the novels I am interested in considering here. Before addressing the obscene humor of the novels, it is worth contemplating a different influence that Aristophanes exerted on the genre. According to Photius, the novelist Antonius Diogenes in his sprawling Wonders Beyond Thule described himself as a “poet of Old Comedy” (λέγει δὲ ἑαυτὸν ὅτι ποιητής ἐστι κωμῳδίας παλαιᾶς, 111a34–5). There is little direct evidence by which to postulate why Antonius represented himself as following in the footsteps of Aristophanes, although there is perhaps a hint in Photius’ remark that the novel comes “close to myth and the unbelievable” (μύθων ἐγγὺς καὶ ἀπίστων, 109a11). Antonius may therefore have thought of Wonders Beyond Thule as an extension of the Aristophanic conjuring of fantastic landscapes and scenarios such as the Cloudcuckooland of Birds, the marshy entry to the Underworld of Frogs, and even Socrates’ fanciful skywalking (ἀεροβατεῖν) in Clouds. The link between Aristophanes and the fantastical travel narratives of the novelistic tradition is strengthened by Lucian’s Verae Historiae, in which the narrator at one point during his aerial sojourn even visits Cloudcuckooland and remarks, “I remembered Aristophanes the poet, a man wise and truthful and wrongly disbelieved because of what he wrote” (καὶ ἐγὼ ἐμνήσθην Ἀριστοφάνους τοῦ ποιητοῦ, ἀνδρὸς σοφοῦ καὶ ἀληθοῦς καὶ μάτην ἐφ’ οἷς ἔγραψεν ἀπιστουμένου, 1.29).18 The second Photian summary of a lost novel is a reminder that what qualifies as obscene is historically determined. Photius says of the Syrian Iamblichus that in terms of obscenity (αἰσχρολογίᾳ, 73b25) he stands midway between Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus. This suggests that for the 9th-century compiler, Achilles Tatius represented the most obscene of the ancient novels, but even at its most obscene, Leucippe and Clitophon does not descend to the obscenities of Old Comedy—even the Aristophanic speech of the priest of Artemis (see below) remains on the level of double
18 On Antonius Diogenes, see Lamberto Di Gregorio, “Sugli Ἄπιστα ὑπὲρ Θούλην di Antonio Diogene,” Aevum 42 (1968), pp. 199–211. On the relationship between Antonius and Lucian’s Verae Historiae, see Klaus Reyhl, Antonios Diogenes: Untersuchungen zu den Roman-Fragmenten der ‘Wunder jenseits von Thule’ und zu den ‘Wahren Geschichten’ des Lukian (Diss. Tübingen, 1969); John R. Morgan, “Lucian’s True Histories and the Wonders Beyond Thule of Antonius Diogenes,” Classical Quarterly NS 35 (1985), pp. 475–90. On the relationship of both to Old Comedy, see Stephens, “Fragments” (above, n. 17), p. 677; Jeffrey Henderson, “The Satyrica and the Greek Novel: Revisions and Some Open Questions,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 17 (2010), p. 490. On Antonius and Petronius, see Ewen Bowie, “Links Between Antonius Diogenes and Petronius,” in: Michael Paschalis, Stavros Frangoulidis, Stephen Harrison and Maaike Zimmerman (eds.), The Greek and the Roman Novel: Parallel Readings, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 8 (Groningen: Barkhuis and Groningen University Library, 2007), pp. 121–32. On the influence of Aristophanes on Lucian and Antonius Diogenes, see Ewen Bowie, “The Ups and Downs of Aristophanic Travel,” in: Edith Hall and Amanda Wrigley (eds.), Aristophanes in performance, 421 BC–AD 2007: Peace, Birds, and Frogs (London: Legenda, 2007), pp. 32–51. For more on the relationship between Lucian and Old Comedy, see the essay by Keith Sidwell in this volume, pp. 259–74.
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entendre. Given this shift in the criteria for obscenity by the middle Byzantine period, it is unsurprising to find so little in the Photian summary of Iamblichus that could be likened to the aggressive humor of Aristophanic comedy. One exception is perhaps when the famished Rhodanes and his companion lick themselves clean of some tainted honey and are overcome with diarrhea (τὰς γαστέρας καταρρυέντες, 74b4),19 an instance of scatological humor reminiscent of Old Comedy. The sexuality of the Lucianic Onos, which ranges from the titillating to the outrageous, offers clearer traces of Aristophanes’ obscene humor. The bout of lovemaking between the narrator Lucius and the aptly named maid Palaestra is conveyed through the extended metaphor of the wrestling school (8–10), a commonplace in Old Comedy but also in Greek erotica generally. The characteristically Greek flavor of the palaistra metaphor is reinforced by the fact that, when Apuleius sets the Lucianic scene in his Latin Metamorphoses, the wrestling metaphors metamorphose into metaphors of the battlefield (2.16–17).20 At one point, Palaestra drops seductively to the bed on one knee and says to Lucius, “Come on now, wrestler, you’re holding onto the middle, so brandishing your point, thrust and go deep” (ἄγε δὴ σὺ ὁ παλαιστής, ἔχεις τὰ μέσα, ὥστε τινάξας ὀξεῖαν ἐπίπρωσον καὶ βάθυνον, 10.15–17). Palaestra’s saucy language throughout this scene is one of the highlights of the novella, and the phrase “you’re holding onto the middle” (ἔχεις τὰ μέσα) has a particularly Aristophanic feel. Henderson notes that, “In Aristophanes, to grab someone μέσος, in the middle, … refers to rape,” and Palaestra’s playful application of a similar phrase amid their erotic role-playing is consistent with the sexual aggressiveness of the entire episode.21 The Aristophanic echoes continue in the following scene, when Palaestra’s mistress magically transforms herself into a nuktikorax, or night-raven, and Lucius expresses his own wish to be transformed into a bird, curious about whether after metamorphosis he would possess the soul of a bird as well (13.7–9). The significance of Aristophanes’ Birds within the Lucianic tradition has already been noted (cf. Lucian VH 1.29). The episodes dealing with the homosexual intrigues of the priests of the Syrian goddess (38) and the act of bestiality with which the narrative climaxes (51), while entertaining, are merely obscene and lack the “ridicule, abuse, satire, and comic exposure” characteristic of Old Comedy.22 The concluding scene, between the newly retransformed Lucius and the nameless lady who enjoyed coupling with him when he was an ass, rises more to the level of Aristophanic obscenity. Disappointed by the proportions of Lucius’ human genitalia, the lady lashes out at him:
19 But even this is reminiscent more of Heliodorus than of Achilles Tatius; cf. Hld. 2.19.6. 20 Jeffrey Henderson, The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy2 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 169–70. 21 Ach. 274; Lys. 437; Ec. 260; fr. 74. See Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 20), p. 156. 22 Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 20), p. 29.
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έγώ, ἔφη, μὰ Δί’ οὐχὶ σοῦ, ἀλλὰ τοῦ ὄνου τοῦ σοῦ ἐρῶσα τότε ἐκείνῳ καὶ οὐχὶ σοὶ συνεκάθευδον, καὶ ᾤμην σε καὶ νῦν κἂν ἐκεῖνό γε μόνον τὸ μέγα τοῦ ὄνου σύμβολον διασῴζειν καὶ σύρειν· σὺ δέ μοι ἐλήλυθας ἐξ ἐκείνου τοῦ καλοῦ καὶ χρησίμου ζῴου ἐς πίθηκον μεταμορφωθείς. (56) By Zeus, she said, when I had lust not for you but for your ass, at that time I laid with him and not with you, and I thought that even now, even if that was the only thing, you would keep and trail behind you that great proof (symbolon) of asshood. But you have come to me transformed from that handsome, serviceable creature into a monkey.
The Aristophanic precedent for symbolon as a phallic term occurs at Av. 1214, where it acquires a humorous double entendre in the exchange between Iris and Peisetaerus: ΠΙ. Οὐδὲ σύμβολον ἐπέβαλεν ὀρνίθαρχος οὐδείς σοι παρών; ΙΡ. Μὰ Δί’ οὐκ ἔμοιγ’ ἐπέβαλεν οὐδείς, ὦ μέλε. PEISETAERUS: And no Top Cock was around to enter your passage? IRIS: Listen, mister, nobody’s entered me at all!
Henderson notes that the use of symbolon as a term for the phallus in the Lucianic Onos “is not the same kind of term”23 as that employed by Aristophanes: the sexual meaning at Av. 1214 depends upon ἐπιβάλλειν, which Aristophanes regularly uses as a verb implying sexual aggression and rape.24 It is difficult to improve on Henderson’s rendering, but an alternative translation might be: “And no Top Cock was around to thrust upon you the symbol of his authority?” At Onos 56, however, according to Henderson, the lady uses the term symbolon merely to mean a “visible proof” of asshood. But the Lucianic narrator, like Aristophanes, may also be playing with variants of βάλλειν. The lady’s disappointment at not being greeted with the “visible proof” (symbolon) of Loukios’ asshood may be read as an ironic reversal of the moment when, during the scene of their coupling, she was the sexual aggressor: “she throws her arms around me and lifting me inside received the whole thing” (περιβάλλεταί με καὶ ἄρασα εἴσω ὅλον παρεδέξατο, 51). Her aggressive embrace (periballesthai) clearly indicates that she longed to receive the aggressive thrusting from the great symbol (symbolon) of Loukios’ asshood. Unlike the Aristophanic Iris, the ass’ lady would have welcomed a Top Cock. Lollianus’ Phoinikika, on the other hand, was, according to Sandy, “designed to shock moral sensibilities and conventional notions of decorum”25—all the more
23 Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 20), p. 124 n. 88. 24 Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 20), p. 170. 25 In Bryan Reardon (ed.), Collected Ancient Greek Novels (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1989), p. 809. See Albert Henrichs (ed.), Die Phoinikika des Lollianos: Fragmente eines neuen griechischen Romans, Papyrologische Texte und Abhandlungen 14 (Bonn: Habelt, 1972); Tibor Szepessy, “Zur Interpretation eines neu entdeckten griechischen Romans,” Acta
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disappointing then not to find more obvious borrowings from Old Comedy in the fragments of the novel that survive. One scene, however, bears the clear stamp of Aristophanic humor: during a scene of ritual sacrifice, which is likely an instance of Scheintod such as that in Achilles Tatius,26 the sacrificial victim, either a boy or a young woman, apparently belches and farts (κἀκ τοῦ ὄπισθεν ἐπιπε[, B1 verso 12 Stephens and Winkler),27 and the narrator claims, “I put up with the disgusting smell” (πρὸς τὴν ἀηδίαν τῆς ὀσμῆς ἀντέσχον, 12–13). Although the language here is not obscene in the manner of Aristophanes,28 the humor of crepitation in Lollianus’ fragment is familiar from Old Comedy.29 The fragment of the so-called Iolaos novel depicts a gallos (a eunuch initiate into the cult of Cybele) in conversation with the eponymous hero and his companion, a kinaidos. The appearance of the kinaidos, the text’s combination of prose and poetry, and its mix of sacred and profane have rightly prompted comparisons with Petronius’ Satyrica.30 The fragment’s prose passage is followed by 20 verses in the Sotadean meter, an innovation of the 3rd-century BCE poet Sotades of Maroneia that is typically associated in both Greek and Latin with galloi/galli and kinaidoi/cinaedi.31 Given the Hellenistic pedigree of the novel’s satiric qualities, it remains uncertain what elements may be traced to Attic comedy. The fragment does, however, contain obscene language when the gallos says, “that by deceit you intend to fuck” (ὅτι δόλῳ σὺ βινεῖν μέλλεις, 30 Stephens and Winkler). βινεῖν is the “vulgar vox propria for sexual intercourse in comedy” and its “connotation is always violent and/or illicit intercourse.”32 The obscenity of Aristophanes and Old Comedy therefore lies embedded in the language of the Iolaos fragment. Fragments of the so-called Protagoras novel—41 in number, extracted from the th 9 -century Etymologicum Genuinum and identified by Alpers as belonging to the same text on stylistic and linguistic grounds—contain clear echoes of Attic comedy. One fragment, for example, refers to the untrustworthiness of a man who is fond of
Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 26 (1978), pp. 29–36; John Winkler, “Lollianos and the Desperadoes,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 100 (1980), pp. 155–81; Susan Stephens and John Winkler (eds.), Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments: Introduction, text, translation, and commentary (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). 26 Winkler, “Lollianos” (above, n. 25), pp. 173–5. 27 Cf. Ap. Met. 4.3.10. 28 Henrichs, Die Phoinikika (above, n. 25) and Koenen have each conjectured a form of ἐπιπέμπειν for ἐπιπε[, a suggestion endorsed by Stephens and Winkler, Ancient Greek Novels (above, n. 25), pp. 340, 354. 29 Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 20), pp. 195–9. 30 P. Parsons, “A Greek Satyricon?,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 18 (1971), pp. 53–68; Stephens, “Fragments” (above, n. 17), p. 673; Henderson, “Satyrica ” (above, n. 18), p. 489. 31 Maurizio Bettini, “A proposito dei versi sotadei, greci e romani: con alcuni capitoli di ‘analisi metrica lineare’,” Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 9 (1982), pp. 59–105. 32 Henderson, The Maculate Muse (above, n. 20), p. 151.
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anointing the bodies of young athletes with oil (φιλαλειπτῶν), a type who is always hanging around the palaistra and immoderately curious about what each meirakion is up to.33 This brings to mind the speech of the Just Argument in Aristophanes Clouds, which refers to older men who ogle boys in the training school and the boys’ own care to not anoint themselves below the navel (972–8). In another fragment, a man is prevented from “fucking” (βινεῖν again) because of impotence and old age.34 One character in the novel remarks, “we’re feeling up Attic figs like the guys who pluck fruit;”35 the novelistic scenario is uncertain, but the humor must be sexual, as the verb blimazein (“to feel up”) is standard in Old Comedy.36 The influence of Old Comedy can also be seen in matters less salacious: one fragment refers to Brilettian honey, figs called chelidonia, dried early figs, and dried grapes called psithiai, all Attic specialties also referred to by Aristophanes, Apollophanes and Epigenes.37 If the fragments identified and collected by Alpers are indeed from a comic-picaresque novel of the 2nd century CE, they are powerful further testimony to the influence of Old Comedy—its language, scenarios, and realia—within the comic-picaresque tradition.
2. The Latin Novels I conclude this section with a brief consideration of the influence of comedy on Petronius’ Satyrica and Apuleius’ Metamorphoses.38 The fragments of the comicpicaresque novels discussed above are strong evidence for Greek inspiration behind the novels of Petronius and Apuleius.39 Although it remains possible that, as Stephens puts it, “among an international literary elite conversant in both languages”40 Petronius’ Satyrica served as inspiration for the Greek novelists, more likely the sub-genre
33 Fr. 2 Alpers = Et.Gen. α 542 (Klaus Alpers, “Zwischen Athen, Abdera und Samos. Fragmente eines unbekannten Romans aus der Zeit der Zweiten Sophistik,” in: Margarethe Billerbeck and Jacques Schamp [eds.], Kainotomia: die Erneuerung der griechischen Tradition/le renouvellement de la tradition hellénique. Colloquium Pavlos Tsermias (4. XI. 1995) [Freiburg: Universitäsverlag Freiburg Schweiz, 1996], p. 29). 34 Fr. 10 Alpers = Et.Gen. β 118 (Alpers, “Zwischen Athen” [above, n. 33], p. 32). 35 Fr. 11 Alpers = Et.Gen. β 146 (Alpers, “Zwischen Athen” [above, n. 33], p. 32). 36 Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 20), pp. 173–4. 37 Ar. Ach. 802; Apolloph. fr. 5; Epig. fr. 1; see Alpers, “Zwischen Athen” (above, n. 33), p. 30. 38 For Petronius, see Costas Panayotakis, Theatrum Arbitri: Theatrical Elements in the Satyrica of Petronius, Mnemosyne Supplement 146 (Leiden and New York: Brill, 1995). For Apuleius, see Regine May, Apuleius and Drama: The Ass on Stage (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 39 Stephens and Winkler, Ancient Greek Novels (above, n. 25), p. 7; Maaike Zimmerman, “Latinising the Novel: Scholarship since Perry on Greek ‘models’ and Roman (re-)creations,” Ancient Narrative 2 (2002), pp. 129–30; Henderson, “Satyrica” (above, n. 18). 40 Stephens, “Fragments” (above, n. 17), p. 674.
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of the comic-picaresque in Greek predated the Latin novels.41 Furthermore, as Henderson has argued, once we let go of the idea that the Satyrica was written at the court of Nero and recognize its many resonances with post-Neronian literary phenomena, it seems possible to date it on the basis of the surviving evidence to the Flavian or early Hadrianic period, “maybe the 120s.”42 Whatever the date of the Satyrica, the process of creative adaptation of Greek material into a Latin narrative inevitably involved such transformation that it becomes difficult to identify Greek literary genealogies precisely other than via the hybrid comic-picaresque tradition.43 This becomes especially true when one tries to identify traces of the Greek comic tradition within the Latin narratives, since Latin literature had its own comic tradition in Plautus and Terence as well as Roman satire to which it could turn for comic allusion.44 Furthermore, even when conventional elements from the comic stage are evident in the novels, they are inextricably intertwined with other literary traditions and, as Rimell puts it, “embroidered with a mass of competing narratives.”45 Though Rimell refers specifically to Petronius’ Satyrica, her remark could just as well apply to Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. That said, there are tantalizing hints of Aristophanic comedy in both Latin novels. Panayotakis has identified the abundant influence of Greco-Roman mimic drama on the Satyrica, and it is even possible to look through Petronius’ fascination with the mediating genre of mime to glimpse the Old Comic origins of certain episodes, such as the sequence onboard Lichas’ ship. While shipboard scenes are typical in ancient prose fiction, the abundance of generic comic elements in the Lichas episode (“dreams, recognition, trial-scene, brawl, false death”)46 suggests theatrical stylization. In that case, the episode’s setting has a literary ancestry that extends back to Aristophanes’ Frogs, in which Charon and Dionysus are conveyed onstage in a ferry to depict their comic journey to the Underworld.47 Even the opening fragment of the Satyrica, in which Encolpius fulminates against the state of contemporary rhetorical education at Rome, can be said to look back to Aristophanes’ parody of Athenian education throughout Clouds.48 Petronius also seems to have been inspired by comedy in representing the language of slaves and freedmen as distinct from the more
41 For the argument that the Satyrica was based on a Greek original, see Gottskálk Jennson, The Recollections of Encolpius: The Satyrica of Petronius as Milesian Fiction, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 2 (Groningen: Barkhuis and Groningen University Library, 2002). 42 Henderson, “Satyrica” (above, n. 18), p. 494. 43 Zimmerman, “Latinising ” (above, n. 39), pp. 131–2. 44 For the reception of Old Comedy in Roman satire, see the essay by Ian Ruffell in this volume, pp. 275–308. 45 Victoria Rimell, Petronius and the Anatomy of Fiction (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 175. 46 Panayotakis, Theatrum Arbitri (above, n. 38), p. 137. 47 Ar. Ra. 188–270; see Panayotakis, Theatrum Arbitri (above, n. 38), pp. 137–8. 48 Panayotakis, Theatrum Arbitri (above, n. 38), p. 7.
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elevated language demanded by contemporary literary taste.49 More specific echoes of Aristophanes (though not obscene) can be heard in expressions such as “people are lions at home, but when they go outside they’re foxes” (populus est domi leones, foras vulpes, 44.14, cf. Ar. Pax 1189–90), “it’s better to be laughed at than ridiculed” (satius est rideri quam derideri, 61.4, cf. Ar. Ach. 606 and Pl. Smp. 189b), “the company presents a mimic farce on stage” (grex agit in scaena mimum, 80.9 v. 5, cf. Ar. Th. 149– 50), and “more often you’ve spoken like a poet than like a human being” (saepius poetice quam humane locutus es, 90.3, cf. Ar. Ra. 1058).50 Quartilla’s remark that the seven-year-old girl Pannychis is no younger than she was when she herself was deflowered (25.4) hearkens back to Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazousae, in which a man disguised as a woman claims that “her” lover “deflowered me when I was seven years old” (ὅσπερ με διεκόρησεν οὖσαν ἑπτέτιν, 480).51 Trimalchio wonders why no one asks his wife Fortunata to perform the cordax, a lewd dance she executes better than anyone else (52.8, cf. κόρδαχ’ εἵλκυσεν, Ar. Nu. 540). It has been suggested that the humorous, sudden reversal that concludes the story of the Pergamene boy shares a “technique of humour” with Ar. Ra. 1471–5.52 The farting of Corax (117.12) is reminiscent of the threatened farting of Xanthias in Aristophanes’ Frogs, and Schmeling notes that just as Aristophanes is “parodying the poor taste of his fellow comedians,” so too would the farting of Petronius’ Corax be “an act of exasperation in the face of all the talk and plans of Eumolpus to deceive the captatores of Croton.”53 On the whole, however, the influence of Attic comedy on Petronius seems indirect. Even the more aggressive, abusive humor of the Satyrica, which could be said to have affinities with Old Comedy, could in fact be traced back to that original Greek genre via the influence of Roman satire. Horace, after all, reminds us that Lucilius, the originator of Roman satire, relied on Eupolis, Cratinus and Aristophanes as models for invective humor.54 The phallic humor of the Satyrica too, as when Eumolpus comments on the prodigious size of Ascyltus’ penis (92.9), although it might appear to have a literary genealogy extending back to Aristophanes, has more in common with the Latin Priapea than with the Greek tradition.55 The fascination with animality generally and the exploration of the boundary between human and animal, such as we see throughout Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, is a literary phenomenon that extends back to the animal choruses of Old Come-
49 See Gareth Schmeling, A Commentary on the Satyrica of Petronius (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. xxvi, with bibliography. 50 Schmeling, Commentary (above, n. 48), pp. 178–9, 253, 339, 377. 51 Schmeling, Commentary (above, n. 48), p. 76. 52 Edward Courtney, A Companion to Petronius (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 137. 53 Schmeling, Commentary (above, n. 48), pp. 448–9. 54 Hor. Ser. 1.4.1–8. 55 Schmeling, Commentary (above, n. 48), pp. 381–2.
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dy.56 It is, furthermore, clear that Apuleius envisioned many of the Milesian tales in the novel as stylized according to the conventions of the comic stage: in the tale of Aristomenes, the storyteller pleads with his friend Socrates to “draw away the tapestry of tragedy and unfold the small curtain of comedy” (aulaeum tragicum dimoueto et siparium scaenicum complicato, 1.8), and when he introduces the tale of the wicked stepmother, Lucius informs the reader “that you are reading a tragedy, not a comedy, and you are ascending from the comic shoe to the tragic boot” (te tragoediam, non fabulam, legere et a socco ad cothurnum ascendere, 10.2). In the elaborate machinations of the festival in honor of Risus, the god of laughter, Lucius becomes an unwitting actor in the comic theatre of Hypata (3.10), and twice in the novel his behavior descends to the level of Old Comedy when he mires his adversaries in the filth of his diarrhea (4.3; 7.28). There are also passages in Apuleius’ novel that may be direct allusions to Aristophanes. The scene in which the priests of Atargatis place the Syrian goddess on Lucius’ back (deamque serico contectam amiculo mihi gerendam imponunt, 8.27) seems to allude to Xanthias’ quip to Dionysus in Aristophanes’ Frogs: “And I’m the damn donkey who carries out the Mysteries!” (νὴ τὸν Δί’ ἐγὼ γοῦν ὄνος ἄγω μυστήρια, 159). Both the Apuleian scene and the line from Aristophanes, however, may be proverbial,57 and Lucius explicitly connects his own ass-narrative with a proverb at the end of Book 9: from his story was born the common proverb about the nosy ass and his shadow (unde etiam de prospectu et umbra asini natum est frequens prouerbium, 9.42). Lucius here combines two separate Greek proverbs: “about an ass’ peeping in” (περὶ ὄνου περικύψεως) and “about the shadow of an ass” (περὶ ὄνου σκιᾶς), both referring to anything trivial, frivolous or insignificant. But both proverbs also have a comic pedigree: the former is attested in Menander,58 while the latter is quoted in Aristophanes’ Wasps where, when Bdelycleon asks Philocleon what reason they might have to fight, Philocleon responds that their contest would be “about the shadow of an ass” (περὶ ὄνου σκιᾶς, 191).59 Finally, in the story of Cupid and Psyche there is the scene of the talking tower. Psyche, bidden by Venus to enter the Underworld on her fourth mission, attempts to do so by hurling herself from a tower, but the tower stops her suicidal leap and 56 On the animal choruses of Old Comedy, see Gregory Sifakis, Parabasis and Animal Choruses: A Contribution to the History of Attic Comedy (London: Athlone Press, 1971); Kenneth Rothwell, Nature, Culture, and the Origins of Greek Comedy: A Study of Animal Choruses (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 57 May, Apuleius and Drama (above, n. 38), p. 199; B.L. Hijmans et al., Apuleius Madaurensis, Metamorphoses Book VIII: Text, Introduction, and Commentary, Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1985), p. 239. 58 Men. fr. 189. 59 Cf. Pl. Phdr. 260c, and Suda ο 400, which cites also Sophocles’ Kedalion and Aristophanes’ Daidalos. See May, Apuleius and Drama (above, n. 38), p. 199; Hijmans et al., Metamorphoses Book VIII (above, n. 56), p. 354.
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recommends a different, less drastic method of entering the world of the dead (6.17). The scene clearly alludes to Heracles’ advice to Dionysus in Aristophanes Frogs that the best way to get to Hades is by jumping from a tower (127–33).60 Apuleius’ alteration of the scene, however, is equally noteworthy: Psyche’s tower actually improves on Heracles’ advice in Aristophanes and therefore seems, according to May, “to be conscious of its intertextual prehistory.” Ultimately, Apuleius “rewrites Aristophanic comedy when it suits him and for comic purposes.”61
III. Romance and Comic Pederasty KOMPONIST: In mein Heiligtum hinein ihre Bocksprünge! Ah! – Hugo von Hoffmannsthal, Ariadne auf Naxos
Although Greek romance showcases narratives whose telos is an emotionally reciprocal marriage between hero and heroine, the texts are populated by numerous male characters more interested in erotic relationships with other male characters than with women. In the Ephesiaka of Xenophon of Ephesus, the friendly pirate Hippothous tells the tragic story of his beloved Hyperanthes (3.2); he later marries a wealthy woman, but after she dies he takes up with a boy named Cleisthenes, “who was handsome and so shared in all Hippothous’ possessions” (πάντων μετεῖχε τῶν Ἱπποθόου κτημάτων καλὸς ὤν, 5.9.3). The novel ends with the notice that Hippothous built a great tomb for Hyperanthes in Lesbos, and after adopting Cleisthenes as his son (a remarkable eroticization of the father-son relationship), he resided in Ephesus happily ever after with Anthia and Habrocomes (5.15.4).62 In Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, the parasite Gnatho, described by the narrator as “having an ingrained taste for boys” (φύσει παιδεραστὴς ὤν, 4.11.2), is at first drawn as a loathsome character, but it is ultimately he who secures a happy ending for the protagonists (4.29). Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon boasts two pederastic couples: Cleinias and his beloved Charicles (1.7– 14) and Menelaus and his anonymous beloved (2.34). Though both homosexual subnarratives are tragic, homosexual desire per se in Achilles Tatius’ novel is set on a discursive par with heterosexual desire, as the erotic debate at the end of Book 2 suggests.
60 For references and bibliography on this scene, see May, Apuleius and Drama (above, n. 38), p. 200. 61 May, Apuleius and Drama (above, n. 38), pp. 200–1. 62 On Hippothous, see Akihiko Watanabe, “The Masculinity of Hippothous,” Ancient Narrative 3 (2003), pp. 1–42; Brethes, De l’idéalisme (above, n. 1), pp. 81–6. On opposing views of Hippothous’ adoption of Cleisthenes, see David Konstan, Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 56; Helen Morales, Vision and Narrative in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 48.
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Greek romance thus clearly accommodates male homosexual desire. But the issue is precisely that homosexual desire must be accommodated: narrative space must be found for it to be spoken about and something must be done with it. In Greek romance, a genre that gives pride of place to a narrative of heterosexual marriage, homosexual narratives are inevitably consigned to a subordinate position.63 Whitmarsh is surely right that in the first two centuries of the common era, “far from legitimising a widely held belief that pederasty was an inferior form of sexual practice, the romances were intervening in a debate that was still alive.”64 But Heliodorus’ Aithiopika, a late 4thcentury product from which any trace of same-sex desire appears to have been eradicated, is powerful testimony to the genre’s ability to imagine a world where the only place for homosexual desire is in the closet.65 The romances by Chariton, Longus and Achilles Tatius all demonstrate awareness that the genre’s ideological focus on heterosexual marriage necessitates the marginalization and/or diminution of homosexual desire within the narrative. It is my contention here, however, that the irruption of Old Comic ridicule of pederasty within the relatively decorous world of romance does not signal an unqualified devaluation of homosexual desire; rather, the policing of excessive homosexual behavior antithetical to the sexual morality of romance, namely a boy’s promiscuous sexual passivity and a man’s over-indulgence in sex with boys, demands the meta-literary intervention of the Aristophanic mode. What remains of Old Comedy strongly suggests that the genre as a whole was hostile to pederasty, which, according to Henderson, rarely appears in comedy without some pejorative coloration. The audience is invited to laugh self-consciously, and usually derisively, at the exposure of what was a common but somewhat embarrassing fact of Athenian sexual life in the 5th century. At best, homosexuality (in the form of the occasional enjoyment of a boy) is presented as a harmless vice; at worst (in the case of grown men who are fond of other men or who are actually effeminate) it is made to represent and exemplify corruption, decadence, shamelessness, wickedness, or ‘perversion’.66
While the Greek romances are for the most part sympathetic to pederasty, Old Comedy by contrast is most unsympathetic, and it is therefore remarkable when the ridicule of pederasty typical of Old Comedy can be heard in the narratives of romance. Most 63 See Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. III: The Care of the Self, translated from the French by Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1986), pp. 228–32; Bernd Effe, “Der griechische Liebesroman und die Homoerotik: Ursprung und Entwicklung einer epischen Gattungskonvention,” Philologus 131 (1987), pp. 95–108; Konstan, Sexual Symmetry (above, n. 61), pp. 26–30; Simon Goldhill, Foucault’s Virginity: Ancient Erotic Fiction and the History of Sexuality (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 46–111; T. Whitmarsh, Narrative and Identity (above, n. 8), pp. 159–63. 64 Whitmarsh, Narrative and Identity (above, n. 8), p. 160. 65 On the date of Heliodorus, see John R. Morgan, “Heliodorus,” in: Schmeling (ed.), Novel (above, n. 3), pp. 417–21. 66 Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 20), p. 208.
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interesting, this Aristophanic voice ridiculing pederasty in the novels is directed not just at minor “villains” who are obstacles to the romantic progress of the narrative, but at the romantic heroes themselves.
1. Chariton In the earliest of the romances, Chariton’s Callirhoe, the protagonist Chaereas is characterized at first as an erômenos, and his chance encounter with Callirhoe comes as an unforeseen disruption to his youthful erotic life with other young men. The reader first encounters him striding home from the gymnasium, “gleaming like a star,” the bloom on his face from exercise in the palaistra “like gold on silver” (1.1.5). When Chaereas becomes lovesick for Callirhoe and confines himself to his house, ἐπόθει δὲ τὸ γυμνάσιον Χαιρέαν καὶ ὥσπερ ἔρημον ἦν. ἐφίλει γὰρ αὐτὸν ἡ νεολαία. πολυπραγμονοῦντες δὲ τὴν αἰτίαν ἔμαθον τῆς νόσου, καὶ ἔλεος πάντας εἰσῄει μειρακίου καλοῦ κινδυνεύοντος ἀπολέσθαι διὰ πάθος ψυχῆς εὐφυοῦς. (1.1.10) the gymnasium began to long for Chaereas, and it was as if deserted, for the young men loved him, and in their intense curiosity they learned the cause of his illness, and pity entered them all because a beautiful young man was at risk of dying on account of what his good-natured soul was suffering.
The homosexual activity of Chaereas’ youth becomes, in fact, the basis for slander when Callirhoe’s other suitors object that Chaereas has been chosen before themselves as her husband. One young Italian, the son of the tyrant of Rhegium, stands before his fellow suitors and calls Chaereas a “rent-boy in rags” (πόρνος καὶ πένης, 1.2.3). πόρνος is the reading of the sole medieval manuscript of Chariton and is printed by Reardon in his Teubner edition. Earlier scholars found the word objectionable. Karl Praechter suggested emending to ἄπορος (“without means or resources”), a word synonymous with πένης (“impoverished”). An indignant Joseph Jakob suggested instead μόνος (“alone”): “Der Vorwurf des πόρνος gegen den Chaireas ist so grundlos und unmotiviert und den ersten Liebhaber durch ein wüstes Leben befleckt erscheinen zu lassen widerspricht so sehr der Überlieferung des griechischen Romans, dass das Wort unmöglich im ürsprunglichen Text gestanden haben kann.”67 The Italian’s slander of Chaereas as a πόρνος, however, is not groundless and unmotivated: Chariton has established that Chaereas is the darling of the gymnasium, and as such his reputation could easily be damaged if an offended party wished to question the integrity of the boy’s erotic relationships with other men. The word has an Aristopha-
67 Joseph Jakob, Studien zu Chariton dem Erotiker (Aschaffenburg: Schippner’schen Druckerei, 1903), p. 55.
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nic pedigree: in Wealth, Cario criticizes boys who, like Corinthian courtesans, give up their ass for a wealthy lover, and Chremylus responds: “But not the decent ones, only the whores (πόρνους); the decent ones don’t ask for money” (155–6). Πόρνοι are ridiculed also in fragments of Alexis and Phrynichus.68 Homosexual erôs is not always a target of ridicule in Chariton’s novel, as the narrator’s sympathetic depiction of Chaereas’ popularity among the young men of Syracuse indicates. Furthermore, throughout his adventures, Chaereas is attended by his exceptional friend Polycharmus, who plays Patroclus to his companion’s Achilles (1.5.2). That their idealized friendship is tinged with eroticism is confirmed by the fact that Chaereas and Callirhoe too are likened by the narrator to Achilles and Patroclus: twice when recounting Chaereas’ grief at the loss of Callirhoe, Chariton directly quotes Homer’s description of Achilles grieving over the loss of Patroclus (1.4.6 and 5.2.4 = Il. 18.22–4).69 But despite this sympathetic, subtle eroticization of the relationship between Chaereas and Polycharmus, Chaereas’ homosexual youth continues to pose a problem as he struggles to become both a man and the husband of Callirhoe. When the jealous Chaereas accuses Callirhoe of having entertained the midnight revels of suitors outside their door, she promptly replies by accusing him of being the erotic object of the midnight serenades: “No one came reveling to my father’s house; but your doorstep is perhaps used to revels, and your marriage pains your lovers” (οὐδεὶς ἐπὶ τὴν πατρῴαν οἰκίαν ἐκώμασεν … τὰ δὲ σὰ πρόθυρα συνήθη τυχόν ἐστι τοῖς κώμοις, καὶ τὸ γεγαμηκέναι σε λυπεῖ τοὺς ἐραστάς, 1.3.6). We cannot imagine the proud daughter of Hermocrates using coarse, Aristophanic language, but the sentiment of her remark echoes the Italian suitor’s slanderous description of Chaereas as a πόρνος; she calls her young husband a slut without using the word. Chariton’s Aristophanic characterization of his romantic hero as a young man with a dubious homosexual past is relevant to his depiction of Chaereas later in the novel as a potentially problematic citizen of democratic Syracuse. That Chaereas is perhaps not the best democratic citizen is signaled early in the novel, as the narrator likens his physical beauty to that of the Athenian Alcibiades as it is depicted by painters and sculptors (1.1.3). Alcibiades’ own scandalous political career was inter-
68 Alex. fr. 244; Phryn. Com. fr. 49; see also adesp. com. fr. 73. 69 Cf. Manuel Sanz Morales and Gabriela Laguna Mariscal, “The Relationship Between Achilles and Patroclus According to Chariton of Aphrodisias,” Classical Quarterly 53 (2003), pp. 292–5, who argue that Chariton represents the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus as homoerotic, but nevertheless consider only the Homeric allusions relevant to the relationship between Chaereas and Callirhoe, ignoring 1.5.2, about Chaereas and Polycharmus. They therefore deny the possibility that “Chariton deliberately uses the Homeric model of Achilles and Patroclus in order to introduce a homosexual element into the novel, in view of the fact that references to pederasty are veiled in it” (pp. 294–5). As I show below, however, Chariton explicitly depicts Chaereas as a boy desired by the men of Syracuse.
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twined with gossip about his equally scandalous homoerotic relationships, if we are to believe the poets of Old Comedy.70 This aspect of Alcibiades’ literary representation can be seen as part of a larger pattern in which Athenian demagogues are depicted in Old Comedy as either being or behaving like prostitutes in their youth.71 Chaereas, too, has an air of the demagogue about him upon his return to Syracuse from his exotic exploits in the East: he carefully stage-manages his arrival and surrounds himself with Persian wealth, and his rhetorical manipulation of the people hints at his propensity to focus the will of the democratic ekklêsia and boulê on his own tyrannical erôs.72 It is telling, too, that the whole narrative serves as a fictive aetiology of the tyrannical reign of Dionysius I of Syracuse.73 The entire trajectory of Chaereas’ political life, therefore, from his youthful popularity in the gymnasium to his unsettlingly tyrannical adult behavior, hearkens back to an Aristophanic type.74
2. Longus In the final book of Daphnis and Chloe, the wealthy Astylus visits the country estate of his father Dionysophanes and brings with him his friend Gnatho, a hanger-on from the city, who immediately takes notice of Daphnis’ youthful beauty: ὁ δὲ Γνάθων, οἷα μαθὼν ἐσθίειν ἄνθρωπος καὶ πίνειν εἰς μέθην καὶ λαγνεύειν μετὰ τὴν μέθην καὶ οὐδὲν ἄλλο ὢν ἢ γνάθος καὶ γαστὴρ καὶ τὰ ὑπὸ γαστέρα, οὐ παρέργως εἶδε τὸν Δάφνιν τὰ δῶρα κομίσαντα, ἀλλὰ καὶ φύσει παιδεραστὴς ὢν καὶ κάλλος οἷον οὐδὲ ἐπὶ τῆς πόλεως εὑρών, ἐπιθέσθαι διέγνω τῷ Δάφνιδι καὶ πείσειν ᾤετο ῥᾳδίως ὡς αἰπόλον. (4.11.2) Gnatho, being a fellow who knew only eating, drinking until he was drunk, and fornicating after he was drunk, and who was no more than a mouth, a belly, and the parts below the belly, had taken more than a casual look at Daphnis when he brought the gifts: having an ingrained taste for boys, and having found beauty of a kind unknown even in the city, he decided to move on Daphnis and thought that a goatherd would be easy to seduce.
70 Ar. Ach. 716; see also fr. 554; adesp. com. fr. 511; Eup. fr. 171. 71 Victoria Wohl, Love Among the Ruins: The Erotics of Democracy in Classical Athens (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 73–123. 72 Smith, Greek Identity (above, n. 5), pp. 199–248; Koen De Temmerman, “Chaereas Revisited. Rhetorical Control in Chariton’s ‘Ideal’ Novel Callirhoe,” Classical Quarterly 59 (2009), pp. 247–62. See also Richard Hunter, “History and Historicity in the Romance of Chariton,” in: Wolfgang Haase (ed.), ANRW II.34.2 (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1994), pp. 1055–1086. 73 S.A. Naber, “Ad Charitonem,” Mnemosyne 29 (1901), pp. 92–9; Smith, Greek Identity (above, n. 5), pp. 244–8. 74 On Chaereas’ similarity to the ἀκόλαστος of New Comedy, see Brethes, De l’idéalisme (above, n. 1), pp. 30–2.
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In his depiction of Gnatho, Longus combines two types: elements of the parasite from New Comedy are familiar enough, but Gnatho is also likened to the active pederasts of Old Comedy, whose immoderate desire for boys makes them easy targets for the poet’s ridicule.75 Goldhill has shown that the following scene even centers on an Aristophanic joke: at first thinking that Daphnis will be amenable (χειροήθη, literally “accustomed to the hand,” 4.12.1), Gnatho soon discovers that the boy wants nothing to do with him, and when his attempt at rape fails, Gnatho falls in the mud, “needing a man, not a boy, to lend a hand” (ἀνδρὸς οὐ παιδὸς ἐς χειραγωγίαν δεόμενον, 4.12.3). The double entendre for the rare word χειραγωγία (“lending a hand”) is corroborated by Aristophanes’ use of a similar word in the phrase λιπαροῦς χειρουργίας (“constant handiwork”), perhaps referring to the masturbation of men by women.76 Gnatho is depicted as a violent sexual predator and consequently an object for Aristophanic ridicule because Longus wishes to introduce into the narrative yet one more threat to the “natural” progress of the romance towards its telos, Daphnis’ marriage to Chloe. Into the idealized, natural world of the pastoral countryside, Gnatho comes as an invader, bringing with him all the putatively corrupting desires of the city. But nature (φύσις) is precisely what is at issue: Gnatho is said to be a pederast “by nature” (φύσει) but Daphnis attempts to rebuff his direct sexual request with a clumsy argument from nature: πρῶτον μὲν ἐφίλησε προσδραμών, εἶτα ὄπισθεν παρασχεῖν τοιοῦτον οἷον αἱ αἶγες τοῖς τράγοις. τοῦ δὲ βραδέως νοήσαντος καὶ λέγοντος ὡς αἶγας μὲν βαίνειν τράγους καλόν, τράγον δὲ οὐπώποτέ τις εἶδε βαίνοντα τράγον, οὐδὲ κριὸν ἀντὶ τῶν ὀḯων κριόν, οὐδὲ ἀλεκτρυόνας ἀντὶ τῶν ἀλεκτορίδων ἀλεκτρυόνας, οἷός τε ἦν ὁ Γνάθων βιάζεσθαι τὰς χεῖρας προσφέρων … (4.12.1–2) First he ran up and gave him a kiss and then asked him to present his backside the way she-goats do for he-goats. After a while Daphnis caught on and replied that while it was fine for he-goats to mount she-goats, no one had ever seen a he-goat mounting a he-goat, or a ram mounting a ram instead of the ewes, or roosters mounting roosters instead of the hens. At this Gnatho grabbed him and was ready to resort to rape …
In fact, Daphnis’ own observation of nature earlier in the novel was insufficient for his sexual enlightenment with Chloe, and only through the tutorial of the sexually sophisticated married woman Lycaenion (also from the city) did Daphnis learn about the mechanics of intercourse (3.14–19). In Daphnis’ personal experience, nature turned out to be not the most effective instructor. Furthermore, despite the narrator’s claim that Gnatho’s pederastic desire is “ingrained,” when he is asked by Astylus to
75 Richard Hunter, A Study of Daphnis and Chloe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 69–73; Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 20), pp. 215–19. 76 Goldhill, Foucault’s Virginity (above, n. 62), p. 51. For the possible sexual innuendo of χειρουργία at Lys. 672, see Henderson, Maculate Muse (above, n. 20), p. 160; and Henderson (ed.), Aristophanes: Lysistrata (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 160, citing as comparanda Hippon. fr. 114a; Amphis fr. 20; AP 12.22.
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defend his erôs for a mere goatherd, Gnatho fashions an argument not from nature but from mythology (4.17.4–7); from this perspective, his pederasty is not an innate facet of his identity, but the product or effect of having been a student in the urban symposia of the profligate (πᾶσαν ἐρωτικὴν μυθολογίαν ἐν τοῖς τῶν ἀσώτων συμποσίοις πεπαιδευμένος, 4.17.3). Had Daphnis not been exposed as an infant, and had he instead remained with his birth parents and grown up in the city alongside Astylus and Gnatho, he himself might have had a very different attitude toward homosexual desire. Longus’ playful unmasking of nature as learned behavior in this episode is connected to his artful assimilation of heterosexual awakening and marriage to the cyclical processes of nature. Naturalizing heterosexual marriage in this way is revealed to be the product of a sophistic skill.77 For this reason, Gnatho is accommodated finally within the romantic scheme: he ceases to be a perverse intruder and an object for Aristophanic ridicule and becomes instead a friendly helper in the cause of Daphnis and Chloe’s marriage. Seeing an opportunity for reconciliation (καιρὸν … διαλλαγῶν), Gnatho rescues Chloe from the cowherd Lampis, in return for which “Daphnis reconciled with Gnatho as with a benefactor” (τῷ μὲν ὡς εὐεργέτῃ διηλλάττετο, 4.29). After this point in the novel, the question of Gnatho’s troublesome sexuality vanishes. As Hunter puts it, in Daphnis and Chloe, “‘villains’ do not remain so for long.”78
3. Achilles Tatius Given the largely sympathetic depiction of homosexual erôs in Leucippe and Clitophon, it perhaps comes as a surprise to encounter late in the romance a voice from Old Comedy that is aggressively critical of the excesses of male sexual passivity. In the climactic trial sequence, the cuckolded Thersander not only publicly accuses Clitophon of adultery with his wife Melite, but accuses the priest of Artemis of managing the goddess’ temple as if it were a brothel. When the priest himself is given an opportunity to address the court, Clitophon says that “He was a speaker of no slight ability, and in particular emulated the style of Aristophanic comedy” (ἦν δὲ εἰπεῖν οὐκ ἀδύνατος, μάλιστα δὲ τὴν Ἀριστοφάνους ἐζηλωκὼς κωμῳδίαν, 8.9.1). Employing an urbane and comic style (ἀστείως καὶ κωμῳδικῶς), the priest accuses Thersander of “renting his body” (πορνείαν) when he was young:
77 On the intertwining of physis and technê in the novel, see Froma Zeitlin, “The Poetics of Erôs: Nature, Art, and Imitation in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe,” in: D. Halperin, J. Winkler and F. Zeitlin (eds.), Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 417–64. 78 Hunter, Study (above, n. 74), p. 71.
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“παρὰ τὴν θεόν,” λέγων, “λοιδορεῖσθαι μὲν οὕτως ἀκόσμως τοῖς εὖ βεβιωκόσι στόματός ἐστιν οὐ καθαροῦ. οὗτος δὲ οὐκ ἐνταῦθα μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πανταχοῦ τὴν γλῶτταν μεστὴν ὕβρεως ἔχει. καί τοί γε νέος ὢν συνεγίνετο πολλοῖς αἰδοίοις ἀνδράσι καὶ τὴν ὥραν ἅπασαν εἰς τοῦτο δεδαπανήκει. σεμνότητα δ' ἔδρακε καὶ σωφροσύνην ὑπεκρίνατο, παιδείας προσποιούμενος ἐρᾶν καὶ τοῖς εἰς ταύτην αὐτῷ χρωμένοις πάντα ὑποκύπτων καὶ ὑποκατακλινόμενος ἀεί. καταλιπὼν γὰρ τὴν πατρῴαν οἰκίαν, ὀλίγον ἑαυτῷ μισθωσάμενος στενωπεῖον, εἶχεν ἐνταῦθα τὸ οἴκημα, ὁμηρίζων μὲν τὰ πολλά, πάντας δὲ τοὺς χρησίμους πρὸς ἅπερ ἤθελε προσηταιρίζετο δεχόμενος. καὶ οὕτω μὲν ἀσκεῖν τὴν ψυχὴν ἐνομίζετο, ἦν δ' ἄρα τοῦτο κακουργίας ὑπόκρισις. ἔπειτα κἀν τοῖς γυμνασίοις ἑωρῶμεν, πῶς τὸ σῶμα ὑπηλείφετο καὶ πῶς πλῆκτρον περιέβαινε καὶ τοὺς μὲν νεανίσκους, οἷς προσεπάλαιε, πρὸς τοὺς ἀνδρειοτέρους μάλιστα συμπλεκόμενος· οὕτως αὑτοῦ κέχρηται καὶ τῷ σώματι.” (8.9.1–4) “To insult those who have lived decent lives in his ill-befitting way, in the presence of the goddess, is the sign of an impure mouth. And this is not the only time this has happened: wherever he goes, his tongue is an instrument of all kinds of abuse. When he was a boy, he consorted with many of society’s more upstanding members, and expended all his youthful beauty on such activities. He acted the part of piety, he made a show of self-control: he pretended that his desire was to open himself up to a good pedagogy, ever bending to, always submitting to men who wished to see him attain this end. When he left his father’s house, he rented a place for himself up a narrow passageway. He set up house there, indulging for the most part his passion for Homer (Homer-eroticism, you might call it), and he hooked up with and entertained everyone who might be of any use for the purposes he had in mind. He reckoned that he was training his soul in this way, but it was in fact all an act to cover up his wickedness. Then in the gymnasia, too, we saw how be rubbed the oil into his body, how he clamped the pole between his legs, and how when it came to wrestling with young men, he grappled particularly with the ones whose manhood was more pronounced. This is how he used his body.”
The speech is a masterpiece of Aristophanic double-entendre, which Whitmarsh’s translation brilliantly captures. Regardless of whether the priest’s colorful accusations of πορνεία are true, they are an effective means of slander. The priest’s speech is the kind that in Chariton’s novel the son of the tyrant of Rhegium would like to have delivered to the people of Syracuse against Chaereas, had he been a more sophisticated speaker. But it would not have been appropriate in that novel to level such an injurious rhetorical assault against the hero of the romance. For the son of the tyrant of Rhegium to call Chaereas a πόρνος is one thing, but to style him as debauched in the same manner as Thersander is here styled would have inflicted irreparable damage on Chaereas’ character. However much Chaereas may be patterned on an Aristophanic type, as argued above, he must also remain an appropriate match for Callirhoe. Thersander, however, is not the hero of Leucippe and Clitophon; to the contrary, he is but one more obstacle to the novel’s happy ending. Furthermore, as Morales has argued, Thersander is represented in the novel not just as a potential rapist and villain, but as a meta-literary figure for a reader hostile to the conventions of romance and a cynical hermeneutic “bully” willing to “do violence to the text.”79 As
79 Morales, Vision and Narrative (above, n. 61), p. 84.
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such, he becomes a licit target for elaborate Aristophanic ridicule within the novel. It should be stressed that the priest’s criticism impugns not passive homosexual desire or passive homosexual behavior per se, but πορνεία, Thersander’s allegedly promiscuous use of his body for the satisfaction of other men’s sexual desires. The other paidika in the novel and even the mythological and hypothetical erômenoi imagined in the erotic dialogue in Book 2 are spared Aristophanic ridicule. Promiscuity appears to be a problem for women or boys who allow their bodies to be used as sexual objects, but not for the male characters who actively satisfy their own desires: during the erotic dialogue that concludes Book 2, Clitophon claims that his sexual experience with women is limited “to intimacy with those who put Aphrodite up for sale” (ὅσον ὁμιλῆσαι ταῖς εἰς Ἀφροδίτην πωλουμέναις, 2.37.5). Long before his infamous sexual “healing” of Melite at the end of Book 5, it is clear that Clitophon is no virgin and has a varied sexual past. Even within a romantic narrative that claims to prize virginity and sexual fidelity,80 the active sexuality of men overrides all other sexual prerogatives. The priest’s Aristophanic ridicule of Thersander’s sexually promiscuous youth may be connected with the treatment of another promiscuously passive character who also, precisely because of her promiscuity, is an acceptable casualty of the romantic narrative. I have in mind, of course, the nameless prostitute the Egyptian pirates deceived, held captive in their ship and then decapitated, pretending that she was Leucippe. In narrating her story and revealing for Clitophon the identity of the headless corpse, Leucippe obviously sympathizes with the woman’s plight: she is an “unfortunate” and “poor woman” (8.16). But Leucippe’s description of the woman as one “of those who make money by selling Aphrodite’s wares” (τῶν ἐπὶ μισθῷ πωλουσῶν τὰ Ἀφροδίτης) recalls Clitophon’s earlier reference to his own experience with similar women (ὅσον ὁμιλῆσαι ταῖς εἰς Ἀφροδίτην πωλουμέναις, 2.37.5). In the world of romance, promiscuous women and boys are expendable, and Achilles Tatius constructs an unsettling equivalence between the public ridicule of Thersander for his youthful πορνεία and the casual decapitation of the nameless prostitute. So far I have taken for granted Clitophon’s own self-presentation as a sexually active male with an exclusive interest in women. But it is worth noting that when Thersander’s lawyer speaks to rebut the slanders of the priest of Artemis, he focuses his attack on Melite and Clitophon: τοῦ γὰρ ἀνδρὸς στειλαμένου τινὰ μακρὰν ἀποδημίαν, καιρὸν τοῦτον ἐνόμισεν εὔκαιρον μοιχείας καὶ νεανίσκον εὑροῦσα πόρνον (τοῦτο γὰρ τὸ μεῖζον ἀτύχημα, ὅτι τοιοῦτον ηὗρε τὸν ἐρώμενον, ὃς πρὸς μὲν γυναῖκας ἄνδρας ἀπομιμεῖται, γυνὴ δὲ γίνεται πρὸς ἄνδρας) … (8.10.9)
80 John R. Morgan, “Kleitophon and Encolpius: Achilleus Tatius as Hidden Author,” in: Paschalis, Frangoulidis, Harrison and Zimmerman (eds.), Greek and the Roman Novel (above, n. 18), pp. 105–20, reads the novel as Clitophon’s (problematic) attempt to stylize his erotic adventures as romance.
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When her husband set off on a lengthy voyage, she deemed this a perfect opportunity for adultery. She found a rent-boy—yes, this is even more unfortunate: the object she found for her desires was of the type that plays the man’s role for women, but turns into a woman for men!
Thersander’s lawyer is thus able to turn the tables: it is no longer Thersander who is the πόρνος, but Clitophon himself. A reader sympathetic to Clitophon may scoff that this is baseless slander. But certain images and narrative details suggest that this is not entirely so. The reader earlier glimpsed Clitophon’s effeminacy, when he put on women’s clothes during his escape from Thersander’s prison. After Melite dresses Clitophon up in her clothes, she remarks that the dress suits him: “How much more handsome you have become with this clothing!” (ὡς εὐμορφότερος … παρὰ πολὺ γέγονας τῇ στολῇ, 6.1.3). Melite alludes briefly to the myth of Achilles on Skyros and then pleads with Clitophon to “keep this clothing as a memento of me” (τὴν ἐσθῆτα ταύτην φύλαττε μνήμην). The reader wonders if Clitophon did keep Melite’s dress after his reunion with Leucippe and if he sometimes dressed up as a reminder of his former benefactor. Furthermore, Clitophon’s entire narrative is framed by his eroticized meeting with an anonymous stranger in the temple of Astarte in Sidon. The scene depicts the stranger’s successful seduction of the young and handsome Clitophon, as the stranger literally takes Clitophon by the hand and leads him away from the temple of the Phoenician goddess to a secluded locus amoenus so that they can indulge in erotic storytelling (1.2). Leucippe, it will be noted, is absent. The priest of Artemis may, therefore, employ the Aristophanic mode to ridicule Thersander’s youthful πορνεία, but this public attack based on normative sexual morality is revealed to be an ironic rhetorical image, as Leucippe and Clitophon flirts from beginning to end with the potentially illicit pleasures of male effeminacy.81
IV. Conclusion The story-patterns and character types of New Comedy had a formative impact on the development of the ancient novel, especially romance, which borrowed from New Comedy its central, ideologically motivated narrative of heterosexual marriage between young lovers. Other genres were important: historiography, philosophy, tragedy and pastoral all made an indelible mark on the surviving romances. But New Comedy remained the privileged mode for imagining the world of romance, which was routinely conceptualized as if it were a presentation for the comic stage. Metaphorical curtains are drawn and spectators both within and external to the text are made to gaze in astonishment at the Menandrian drama of romance.
81 Morales, Vision and Narrative (above, n. 61), p. 76.
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But Aristophanes and the traditions of Old Comedy also exerted an important influence on the ancient novel, and it is with this alternative comic legacy that I have been concerned in this chapter. The aggressive, sexually explicit humor of Old Comedy, rare in romance, seems to have been a defining feature of the comicpicaresque novels of the same period. Sexual jokes, scatalogical humor and coarse Aristophanic language can be found to varying degrees in most of the surviving nonromantic fictions, and this brand of Greek comedy also translated well into the Latin novels of Petronius and Apuleius. Aristophanes’ fantastic settings and scenarios, moreover, seem to have been influential on narratives of travel and adventure, especially Antonius Diogenes’ Wonders Beyond Thule and Lucian’s Verae Historiae. When Old Comic humor appears in romance, it comes as a heterogenous intrusion. In the romances by Chariton, Longus and Achilles Tatius, the Aristophanic voice of Old Comedy bursts in to ridicule excessive homosexual behavior, either that of boys who are promiscuous in their relations with men or, in the case of Longus’ Gnatho, that of men who are immoderate in their sexual appetite for boys. What is most interesting, however, is that Aristophanic ridicule does not target only men like Gnatho or Thersander, villains who stand in the way of the progress of the romantic narrative; it impugns the reputations even of the romantic heroes Chaereas and Clitophon. The possibility that the romantic heroes may also be πόρνοι, however, must be suppressed as soon as it is suggested. Whatever his past, Chaereas must cease to be the darling of the gymnasium and embrace his new identity as the husband of Callirhoe. However illicit his own sexual life, Clitophon nevertheless tells his story as if it were a conventional romance, pleading the case for his own chastity and leading the reader to believe that he lives happily ever after with Leucippe. Aristophanic ridicule of pederasty intrudes into the world of romance as a voice of criticism, reasserting and policing the normative sexual morality of the new genre. The selfconscious suppression and marginalization of alternative sexual narratives throws into stark relief the artifice of these fictions, written to accord with the erotic conventions of romance.
Sebastiana Nervegna
Greek Culture as Images: Menander’s Comedies and Their Patrons in the Roman West and the Greek East Abstract: This paper considers the iconographic tradition of Greek New Comedy in both the Roman West and the Greek East. My specific interest is in mosaics and wall paintings illustrating New Comedy scenes, and my focus is on their original displaycontext and geographic distribution pattern. In addition to stressing the importance of the atrium-complex as a display venue for these images in Pompeian houses, I argue that after the Early Empire, house-owners in the Roman West largely lost interest in reproducing theatrical scenes at a time when these images were most popular with their Greek-speaking counterparts. In both the Roman West and the Greek East, illustrations of Greek drama played into ancient house-owners’ selfportrayal, by fostering cultural pretensions and reinforcing Greekness in the Imperial East.
The warlike Borysthenites, Dio Chrysostom writes, live on the Black Sea, in the “midst of barbarians,” and no longer speak good Greek. Yet nearly all of them know at least the Iliad by heart: Homer is the only poet they wish to hear about, and they worship Achilles in two temples they built for him. The Indians too know Homer and sing his poetry translated into their own language; they cannot see our stars, Dio Chrysostom comments, but are familiar with Priam, Andromache, Hecuba, Hector and Achilles.1 That Dio Chrysostom singles out the Iliad as the Homeric poem appropriated by both the Borysthenites and the Indians comes as no surprise. This was a favorite text in and out of school; consistently cited by ancient writers and preserved by the majority of Homeric papyri and Homeric school-texts, the Iliad outdid the Odyssey in popularity.2 The influence of schools turned texts into shared cultural heritage and literary figures into cultural heroes. Homer was the bedrock, “the first, middle and last” author in the crash-course in eloquence designed by Dio Chrysostom; “a god not a man,” as a pupil
1 Dio Chrys. Or. 36.9; 53.6–7. A longer version of this article appeared in Menander in Antiquity: The Contexts of Reception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), Ch. 3, and is printed here with the permission of Cambridge University Press. The honorand and my readers will find here a wealth of details I could not include in my book. My warmest thanks to the editors of this volume for their kind help, to the Australian Research Council for funding my research, and to the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry of the University of Sydney for covering the cost of both plans. 2 Raffaella Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 194–7.
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penned on his wax tablet.3 But other poets too could proudly stand beside him. Ancient writers and school-related papyri point to two such figures, Euripides and Menander, with Menander the one poet commonly associated with Homer in literary sources.4 In antiquity, familiarity with Menander conjured up different things: dramatic performances in public theaters, revivals in private settings and exposure to his comedies in classrooms across the Empire. Schools played a major role in the afterlife of Menander and of ancient authors in general. Consider the maxims drawn from his plays or foisted upon him that students copied as writing exercises and learned as behavioral rules: focussed on a limited range of themes such as wealth and friendship, these maxims shaped children’s ethical landscape and colored it with cultural authority.5 Knowledge of Menander’s plays, either in full or in excerpted format, came next. Be they budding orators or literati enjoying their leisure hours, declaimers drew characters and motifs from comedy—Menander’s comedy, as Quintilian recommends —and, like comic actors, took on a range of personae to master every kind of speech.6 Portraits of Menander and illustrations of his plays were also a significant vehicle for maintaining Menander’s popularity with later generations. Their importance cannot be underestimated: not only is Menander the Greek author most widely portrayed throughout antiquity, but his comedies boast an exceptionally rich and tenacious iconographic tradition, virtually monopolizing the visual record for Greek drama from the early Hellenistic period onward.7 A large and fascinating body of evidence for anyone interested in the ancient reception of Menander’s drama, these illustrations are
3 Dio Chrys. Or. 18.8; T.Bodl.Ms.Gr.class. d159 (p), Journal of Hellenic Studies 13 (1892–1893), p. 296; Raffaella Cribiore, Writing, Teachers, and Students in Graeco-Roman Egypt (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), no. 200. 4 Select references: IG XIV 1183c (Aristophanes of Byzantium ranked Menander second to Homer); Stat. Silv. 2.1.113–19; Auson. Protrepticus ad nepotem 45–7; Ferrandus, Life of Fulgentius 1 PL 65, p. 119B. Aristophanes’ judgment was inscribed on a Menander herm now at the University of Turin: G.M. Richter, The Portraits of the Greeks2 (London: Phaidon, 1965), p. 236 no. 4; Klaus Fittschen, “Zur Rekonstruktion griechischer Dichterstatuen. 1. Teil: Die Statue des Menander,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung 106 (1991), pp. 243–79 no. 44. This Menander herm was appropriately displayed with a Homer herm. 5 On maxims, their themes and their roles in ancient education, see T.J. Morgan, Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), ch. 4. 6 Quint. Inst. 10.1.71; 3.8.51. On declaimers and impersonation, see W.M. Bloomer, “Schooling in Persona: Imagination and Subordination in Roman Education,” Classical Antiquity 16 (1997), pp. 57– 78. 7 Menander portraits: Fittschen, “Zur Rekonstruktion” (see above, n. 4); Sarah Bassett, “The Late Antique Image of Menander,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 48 (2008), pp. 201–25. Illustrations of Menander’s plays: J.R. Green and Axel Seeberg, in: T.L.B. Webster, J.R. Green and A. Seeberg, Monuments Illustrating New Comedy3 (=MNC3; London, 1995) 1, esp. pp. 85–98; Eric Csapo, “Performance and Iconographic Tradition in the Illustrations of Menander,” Syllecta Classica 10 (1999), pp. 155–88; Actors and Icons of the Ancient Theatre (Chichester/Malden Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), ch. 5.
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beset with interpretative problems clustering around the relationship between the visual record and general knowledge of the plays. If not regarded as a record of public or private performances, illustrations of Menander’s plays are at least often linked to the wide circulation of texts of the comedies and to ancient viewers’ familiarity with them.8 My interest here is in approaching these issues by reconstructing what has been called a “tradition of illustrating theatrical subjects in private houses, and often within social spaces such as oeci and triclinia.”9 Focusing diachronically on New Comedy illustrations, which make up the largest part of the visual record for Greek drama, I frame my discussion around two main points: display-context and geographic distribution. In addition to stressing the neglected importance of the atriumcomplex as a venue for these images in Pompeian houses, I argue that the tradition of reproducing New Comedy scenes in private settings did not remain static over time. Roman patrons from (mostly) the Early Empire continued to commission New Comedy illustrations, only to lose interest in them later on, at least in comparison to their Greek-speaking counterparts. From about the 2nd century CE on, illustrations of Menander’s drama are largely confined to the Greek East, from Turkey to Syria, Lesbos and Crete. In both contexts—Italy and the Greek East—theatrical scenes played into the process of self-portrayal of the patrons who commissioned and owned them, eager to display their allegiance to Greek culture. As blanket terms that invite broad generalization, “Hellenization,” “Romanization” and “Hellenizing trends” are not always helpful and are perhaps to be avoided. But I hope to show that these illustrations, considered in the context of larger issues of cultural receptivity, can function as a springboard to explore the relationship between Early Imperial Rome and Hellenistic Greece and between Imperial Greeks and their glorious past.
Greek Drama and Roman Atria Like Old and Middle Comedy, New Comedy was quick to make its way into the visual record inside and outside Greece. Its first medium was, in all likelihood, the most
8 See most recently Kathryn Gutzwiller, A Guide to Hellenistic Literature (Malden Mass.: Blackwell, 2007), p. 52; G.W.M. Harrison, “Semper ego auditor tantum? Performance and Physical Setting of Seneca’s Plays,” in: G.W.M. Harrison (ed.), Seneca in Performance (London: Duckworth, 2000), pp. 142–3; Franco Ferrari, “Papiri e mosaici: tradizione testuale e iconografia in alcune scene di Menandro,” in: Guido Bastianini and Angelo Casanova (eds.), Menandro: cent’ anni di papiri (Florence: Istituto Papirologico G. Vitelli, 2004), pp. 127–49. 9 David Parrish, “The Architectural Design and Interior Décor of Apartment I in Insula 2 at Ephesus,” in: Roger Ling (ed.), Fifth International Colloquium on Ancient Mosaics. JRA Supplementary Series 9 (Ann Arbor: 1995), p. 155 (quotation); see also Csapo, “Performance” (above, n. 7), and Actors (above, n. 7), ch. 5.
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important medium of Early Hellenistic art, painting. With their accuracy in reproducing details such as masks, their qualities of composition and their widespread diffusion, later versions offer important clues for reconstructing the original paintings: wherever they were displayed, they were easily accessible and open to the public gaze.10 The subject-matter included, probably invariably, the full dramatic cast in the play’s opening or key scene, the scene that made each comedy most easily recognizable. Rather than illustrations of scenes, these are illustrations of plays conceived as a set, with each comedy illustrated by one scene.11 A few dates help us visualize how quickly they entered artists’ repertoires. Menander probably died in 291/0 BCE, but a terracotta figurine reproducing an excerpt from a New Comedy scene known in several later copies was to be found in provincial Boeotia already in about 285 BCE, as indicated by its context date, a grave at Halae. The mould and its wear suggest that production of the terracotta began even earlier and help date the archetype of the scene to about 300 BCE.12 This suggests that Menander’s comedy was being illustrated already within his lifetime. More terracotta figurines from Smyrna and Myrina show that local patrons had their own New Comedy scenes already by the late 2nd century BCE; although these figurines were placed in tombs as single items, at least some were originally displayed in groups.13 To the 2nd century BCE can also be dated the dramatic illustrations that grace the House of the Comedians in Delos, crowding the frieze that runs around the main reception room. Only about half of this frieze (ca. 11–12 m.) is preserved, with some nine scenes from both comedy and tragedy occupying fields of various lengths and without lateral frames.14 Set at eye-level, they were meant to capture the attention of guests and visitors.
10 J.R. Green, Theatre in Ancient Greek Society (London, New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 112; Csapo “Performance” (see above, n. 7), esp. pp. 162–3. 11 Comic illustrations with fewer characters may be explained as excerpts: the Sikyonioi wall painting from Ephesus (see on MNC3 6DP 1 with xz 32–3), the painting in Palermo that recalls the Leukadia illustration (Palermo, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 2304, MNC3 5NP 11 with xz 12–4) and the Theophoroumene fragment from Pompeii (Ufficio Scavi di Pompei 20545, with Sebastiana Nervegna, “Menander’s Theophoroumene between Greece and Rome,” American Journal of Philology 131 [2010], pp. 23–68). Tragic illustrations, by contrast, often show only two characters: in addition to the Hypsipyle wall painting discussed below, see the Orestes wall painting from Ephesus and the tragic scene from Villa Sora at Torre del Greco (Palermo, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, MTS2 89, 5NP 22; the companion piece of MNC3 5NP 11). For scenes as illustrations of plays, see Csapo, “Performance” (above, n. 7), esp. p. 164. 12 This figurine is now in the Museum at Thebes (MNC3 1BT 1). For its date and the iconographic tradition of the scene that it reproduces, see J.R. Green, “Drunk Again: a Study in the Iconography of the Comic Theatre,” American Journal of Archaeology 89 (1985), pp. 465–72. 13 On terracotta figurines, see MNC3, pp. 192–219. One of the terracotta statuettes from Smyrna and Myrina (Athens, National Museum 5060; MNC3 3DT 17a) reproduces the cymbal player of the Theophoroumene with a vent-hole in his left hip, to be viewed from the same angle as the cymbal-player reproduced in Dioscurides’ mosaic. 14 On this frieze, apparently in situ, see MNC3 3DP 2.1–9.
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The Vesuvian area is the setting of the next chapter of the New Comedy iconographic tradition: here dramatic scenes are first attested in the late 2nd century BCE and become increasingly common during the Early Empire.15 Excavated in Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabia, only the examples from Pompeii can be securely tied to their original display-contexts, at least in a few cases. The contexts invariably coincide with either reception areas or the atrium-complex. The frieze from the House of the Comedians in Delos finds an excellent comparandum in the frieze from the Casa del Centenario in Pompeii (IX.8, 3.7). Built in the early 1st century CE on the remains of houses dated to the 2nd century BCE, the Casa del Centenario is one of the largest houses in Pompeii, with an impressive size (about 1850 m.2), two atria, over 40 areas and even private baths.16 Here too, tragic and comic scenes were set in a frieze, now preserved only in drawings, that occupied the upper wall of a large triclinium decorated in Third Style.17 Another triclinium and an enclosed garden offer more examples of Pompeian reception spaces adorned with drama. The Casa della Fontana Grande (VI.8.21–2), a smaller house at the edge of a well-off neighborhood in via di Mercurio, takes its name from the glass and shell mosaic fountain that graces the pseudo-peristyle. Since this house was being redecorated when Vesuvius erupted, the atrium-complex had been stripped to be re-plastered and its fine furnishings had apparently been removed, but the triclinium preserves traces of a dramatic illustration now almost completely faded.18 The luxurious Casa dei Dioscuri (VI. 9, 6.7), which occupies about one-third of the entire insula, was fully redecorated after the earthquake of 62 CE, possibly by the same shop that took care of the Casa dei Vettii. Through the vestibule decorated with images of the Dioscuri, the Corinthian atrium (the main atrium of the house) and a large tablinum, all rich in paintings, visitors gained access to a viridarium, “the beating heart of the refined residential area” of the house.19 Two of the paintings placed here, on the western wall of the western portico, illustrate Greek drama. Euripides’ Hypsipyle is probably the subject of the tragic illustration: holding the baby Opheltes to her breast, Hypsipyle greets Amphiaraus who, jug in hand, asks the spring to fetch water for his
15 See below. 16 Giovanni Pugliese Carratelli (ed.), Pompei: pitture e mosaici (=PPM ; Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia, 1990–1999) IX.2.903–5; Lawrence Richardson, Pompeii: an Architectural History (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1988), pp. 126–7. 17 PPM IX.1.1048–51. The frieze apparently contained at least six comic scenes (MNC3 4NP 2.1–6, with a seventh scene completely lost) and two scenes that are apparently tragic (MTS2 88, NP 14, 15). 18 E.W. Leach, The Social Life of Painting in Ancient Rome and on the Bay of Naples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 201; PPM IV.613. The dramatic illustration is MNC3 5NP 10. A comic scene now almost completely lost is also recorded for the Casa del Camillo (VII.12. 22–23–24; PPM VII.563), but the function of the room housing it cannot be identified. 19 Lucia Romizzi, “La Casa dei Dioscuri di Pompei (VI 9, 6.7): una nuova lettura,” in: Francesco Mercattili (ed.), Contributi di archeologia vesuviana, vol. 2 (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2006), pp. 77–160 (quotation on p. 97). On this viridarium, see also PPM IV.940-9.
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libation.20 The baby in Hypsipyle’s arms may strengthen the hypothesis that the comic illustration placed in the same area is Menander’s Samia, here reproduced in a version that recalls its archetype more faithfully than the Samia mosaic from Mytilene does. The woman is holding something (now lost) to her breast; she is probably Chrysis, facing Demeas’ outburst.21 In the Casa del Centenario, Greek drama was not limited to the frieze of the triclinium but welcomed guests and visitors as soon as they stepped into the house in the main atrium, a fine complex with high ceilings. Apparently added after the triclinium decorations, a tragic and a comic scene were reproduced on the western wall, while a comic scene graced the eastern wall.22 Although altered by the addition of a fourth figure, Heracles, the tragic scene in this atrium was also reproduced in one of the paintings gracing the atrium of the Casa dei Quadretti Teatrali (I.6, 11; Plan 1); this is an example of repeated dramatic illustrations in the Vesuvian area.23 Atypically narrow and deep, the entrance to the Casa dei Quadretti Teatrali opened onto the busy Via dell’Abbondanza and housed a series of dramatic scenes set in the middle of large panels. Only seven of the original ten scenes are preserved more or less complete, crowding around the atrium (b) and divided by imitation pilasters with candelabra. Visitors entering the house were surrounded by two dramatic illustrations, one on each side. Whichever way they walked around the illuminated pool, the impluvium, they were greeted by comedy alternating with tragedy on both the eastern and western walls.24 Painted in Third Style, these panels are contemporary with the two (apparently) dramatic illustrations in the main atrium of the Casa di Caecilius Iucundus (V.1.26).25
20 Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 9039 (MTS2 87, NP 9) with T.B.L. Webster, Monuments Illustrating Tragedy and Satyr Plays2 (Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Suppl. 20; London, 1967), p. 158. 21 Bonn, Akademisches Kunstmuseum 108 (MNC3 5NP 9), with Csapo, “Performance” (above, n. 7), p. 173. The two panels were paired. See Romizzi 2006 (above, n. 19), pp. 99 (“the two theatrical panels, a scene from comedy and a scene from tragedy … were placed on the western wall, respectively north and south of the tablinum”), 122. 22 PPM IX.2.912, fig. 14 (MNC3 5NP 2); 913, fig. 16 (MTS2 88, NP 16); 914, fig. 18 (MNC3 5NP 4). 23 One of the comic illustrations from the atrium of the Casa dei Quadretti Teatrali (MNC3 5NP 5a) is also replicated in a painting from Herculaneum (Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 9037, MNC3 5NP 5b). The Theophoroumene illustration is also well represented in the Vesuvian area. See Nervegna, “Menander’s Theophoroumene” (above, n. 11). 24 Northern wall: a lost panel (PPM 1.374, fig. 23) and MNC3 5NP 8. Eastern wall: MTS2 87, NP 6, 7 and MNC3 5NP 5a. Western wall: a faded panel (PPM 1.372, fig.19a–b) and MNC3 5NP 7. 25 C.E. Dexter, The Casa di L. Cecilio Giocondo in Pompeii (Diss. Duke, 1975), pp. 14–15, quoting the description given by Mau in the late 1800s. See also PPM III.582, fig. 7.
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Plan 1: Plan of the Casa dei Quadretti Teatrali in Pompeii (I.6, 11). After PPM I.1, p. 361. Reproduced by M. C. Bishop.
Plan 2: Plan of the Casa di Marcus Lucretius in Pompeii (IX 3, 5.24). After PPM IX.2, p. 141. Reproduced by M.C. Bishop.
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Although not as sumptuous as the Casa del Centenario, the Casa di Marcus Lucretius (IX 3, 5.24; Plan 2) is fairly large and richly decorated, with its main entrance opening onto Via di Stabia; peeking inside the house from the street, through the vestibulum (1) and the atrium (2), one would have a good view of the garden (18), set on a higher level with a fountain and rich sculptural display. Placed in the central part of the wall against a blue background, two dramatic illustrations, a comic scene on the southern wall and a tragic scene on the northern wall, enlivened the forecourt of the atrium (2), the vestibulum (1), a space usually decorated simply.26 A similar arrangement was repeated in one of the alae opening onto the atrium (9) with a now-fragmentary comic scene on the northern wall and apparently a tragic illustration on the western wall.27 In the opposite ala (8) was more theater-related imagery: a seated poet conversing with an actor occupied the southern wall, while a poet in the company of (probably) a muse was painted on the western wall. This ala is placed next to a triclinium (16) rich in Dionysian decoration that was also the largest enclosed area in the house.28 The atrium was often used as a single space with the tablinum, the master’s “office space” and the storage area for official records. The tablinum was an extension of the atrium and often the most lavishly decorated room of the house.29 From a tablinum were apparently removed the two fine mosaics reproducing Menander’s Synaristosai and Theophoroumene, both signed by Dioscurides of Samos.30 Part of the decorative program of the socalled Casa di Cicerone, a house first “excavated” in the early 1700s, these mosaics are dated to the late 2nd century BCE by the letter form of their inscription. They are our earliest evidence for the presence of Menander’s comedy in the visual record from the Vesuvian area. While illustrations of Greek drama in dining rooms and areas dedicated to the entertainment of guests and visitors invite speculation about the use of Greek plays in private entertainment, their presence in the atrium does not look in this direction. That Roman patrons chose the atrium-complex to display Greek drama calls for comment. The atrium was the constitutive element of the Italic house and the most important area in the Republican elite town house, to the extent that its evolution is often used to
26 PPM IX 2.148, fig. 10 (MNC3 5NP 3), PPM IX.2.144, figs. 3–4. 27 Comic scene: PPM IX.2.243, fig. 152; (apparently) tragic scene: PPM IX.2.246, fig. 157. 28 Poet and actor: Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 9038 (PPM IX.2.230, fig. 133); poet and muse: Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 9030 (PPM IX.2.238, fig. 143). This triclinium is an uncommon example of a Pompeian dining room dominated by Dionysian imagery: see further Roger Ling, “The Decoration of Roman triclinia,” in: Oswyn Murray and Manuela Tecuşan (eds.), In Vino Veritas (London: British School at Rome, 1995), pp. 239–51, esp. 241. 29 H.I. Flower, Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 203–5; Richardson, Architectural History (above, n. 16), p. 388. 30 Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 9987, 9985 (MNC3 3DM 1–2) with Margarete Bieber and Gerhart Rodenwaldt, “Die Mosaiken des Dioskurides von Samos,” Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 26 (1911), p. 1 with n. 1. Richardson, Architectural History (above, n. 16), p. 244, identifies the room with the Menander mosaics as the “heart of the house.”
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write the history of the domus. In the imperial period, the atrium lost importance to the peristyle and eventually fell out of fashion, resurfacing only rarely.31 Be they tragic or comic, dramatic illustrations from Pompeii and the Vesuvian area in general reproduce Greek plays (at least some of them also known in Latin adaptations) as a series of trompe-l’oeil easel paintings of the Third and Fourth Style, styles that specialized in imitating galleries of famous paintings from the Hellenistic period.32 Copies of originals set in some conspicuous public place probably in Athens, theatrical scenes were now placed in a domestic area that was quintessentially Roman in name, origin and function; the Greeks did not have atria (Vitr. 6.7.1). When found in a house with two atria, their venue is invariably the main atrium-complex. In spite of its general state of neglect, the Casa dei Quadretti Teatrali boasted a refined atrium, with the skilful use of color contributing to its elegance; in both the Casa dei Quadretti Teatrali and the Casa di Marcus Lucretius, dramatic panels were set against a blue background meant to catch the visitor’s eye. An expensive pigment, blue was reserved for the most impressive areas. Apparently out of favor by the Third Style, it must have also looked oldfashioned in the Casa di Marcus Lucretius.33 Also costly were the two fine mosaics produced by Dioscurides; being comparatively rare, mosaics in Pompeii were an index of luxury.34 The size and decoration of the atrium both reflected and created status. In his sociological reading of the Roman house, Vitruvius includes “princely, high vestibula” and “most spacious atria” among the necessary features of an office-holder’s residence.35 The house of Sulla’s stepson, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, is a case in point. Scaurus’ house on the Palatine, later sold for the largest amount of money recorded by our sources, had an atrium that measured 473 m.2 and could host up to 2500 people. Following the example set by the orator Lucius Licinius Crassus, Scaurus picked the decorations of a public building, the gigantic marble columns (over 11 m. high) that were part of the scaenae frons he built when aedile in 58 BCE, to grace his atrium. It is to Augustus’ credit that he moved the columns back to a public building, the regia of the Theater of Marcellus.36 Further down the social ladder, the owner of
31 Flower, Ancestor Masks (above, n. 29), esp. pp. 188–95, with earlier literature. 32 Most of the scenes are painted in Third Style. See Romizzi (above, n. 19), p. 123. 33 Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, “The Social Structure of the Roman House,” Papers of the British School at Rome 56 (1988), pp. 74–5 with n. 99. 34 Mariette De Vos, “Paving Techniques at Pompeii,” Archaeological News 16 (1991), pp. 36–60, esp. 37–8. 35 Vitr. 6.5.2 (ed. Krohn) nobilibus vero, qui honores magistratusque gerundo praestare debent officia civibus, faciunda sunt vestibula regalia alta, atria et peristylia amplissima. 36 Ascon. Ped. In Scaur. pp. 26–7 Clark; Plin. Nat. 36.5–7; Quint. Inst. 5.13.40. Filippo Coarelli, “La casa dell’aristocrazia romana secondo Vitruvio,” in: Revixit Ars (Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 1996; 19781), pp. 348–56; see also Frank Sear, Roman Theatres (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 55–6. For Crassus’ house also adorned with columns originally imported to decorate a stage, see Plin. Nat. 36.7, 17.6; Val. Max. 9.1.4. The cross-over between theater and domestic architecture is, to my knowl-
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an elegant house north of the Porta Marina (Regio VII, Insula Occidentalis 12–15), Aulus Umbricius Scaurus, selected one of his atria as the venue for a singular blackand-white mosaic probably produced during Tiberius’ reign. At each corner of the impluvium, the mosaic features four jars with labels recording their contents, the fishsauce Scaurus produced and sold, with Scaurus’ name added on three of them. Scaurus’ purpose was “to advertise his business, his wealth and most of all Scaurus himself.”37 Not that one needed to step into the atrium to have an idea of the houseowner’s social standing. To show their military achievements, successful generals of the Republican period had war-spoils attached to the façades of their atrium houses, and these must still have been on display in the mid-1st century CE, since Suetonius laments their loss in the great fire of 64 CE.38 That house façades in general obliterated the distinction between public and private is well exemplified by the amount of electioneering graffiti on the walls of Pompeian houses.39 The atrium was, above all else, the place where the family’s history was displayed to the public gaze. Shut only exceptionally as a sign of mourning, the doors of the Roman house were kept wide open during the day, making the atrium and its decorations a free-for-all spectacle.40 Although shrines to the household gods, the lararia, could be found elsewhere, several Pompeian houses, including the Casa di Caecilius Iucundus and the Casa di Marcus Lucretius, had them in the atrium.41 Like many of their fellow townsmen, the inhabitants of the Casa di Caecilius Iucundus and the Casa del Centenario kept in their entrance-hall a strong-box used as a repository for money, books and documents. Set on a stone base, the arca was a permanent showcase of family wealth, as the two arcae in the atrium of the Casa dei Vettii make clear.42 A special, proud spot among the atrium decorations was occupied by the wax masks of the ancestors, the imagines. Stored individually in wooden cupboards (armaria) to be
edge, first attested for Alcibiades, who forced Agatharchus, apparently a skênê-maker (I.E. Stephanis, Dionysiakoi Technitai [Heraklion: Panepistemiakes Ekdoseis Kretes, 1988], no. 14), to adorn his house (Plut. Alc. 16.4). 37 R.I. Curtis, “A Personalized Floor Mosaic from Pompeii,” American Journal of Archaeology 88 (1984), p. 565. 38 Livy 23.23.6; Suet. Nero 38.2. See K.E. Welch, “Domi militiaeque: Roman Domestic Aesthetics and War Booty in the Republic,” in: S. Dillon and K.E. Welch (eds.), Representations of War in Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 110. 39 Shelley Hales, The Roman House and Social Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 104. 40 On closed doors, e.g. Tac. Ann. 2.82. More references can be found in Wallace-Hadrill, “Social Structure” (above, n. 32), p. 46 with n. 12. 41 Lararium in the Casa di Caecilius Iucundus: PPM III.579, fig. 4; lararium in the Casa di Marcus Lucretius: PPM IX.2.156, fig. 22. 42 PPM IX.2.908, fig. 5 (Casa del Centenario); PPM III.579, fig. 4 (Casa di Caecilius Iucundus); J.R. Clarke, The Houses of Roman Italy, 100 B.C.–A.D. 250: Ritual, Space, and Decoration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), esp. p. 212 (Casa dei Vettii). See also Flower, Ancestor Masks (above, n. 29), pp. 196, 200.
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carried out for the funeral parades, the imagines depicted the office-holding members of the family and were identified by labels, tituli. Probably visible even when the cupboards were closed, the tituli provided a summary of the deceaseds’ political careers, with painted family trees detailing the relationship between them.43 In wealthy houses, the ancestors’ vigilant gaze greeted clients eager to get their dole and guests and visitors waiting to be received, as well as supervising all the family rituals that took place in the atrium, from coming-of-age ceremonies to weddings and mourning rites.44 Although Pompeii did not yield imagines, bronze busts of the owner and his father or grandfather were found next to the entrance to the tablinum in several houses, including the Casa di Caecilius Iucundus.45 As we gather from the tablets recording his transactions and placed in a strong-box in his peristyle, Caecilius Iucundus was an argentarius, a deposit banker who participated in auctions, paid sellers the price of the merchandise sold, and loaned money to buyers.46 Since his father, L. Caecilius Felix, was a freedman, he did not have imagines to boast, but he had two herms, dedicated by Felix to his patrons and placed not far from the theatrical paintings that graced the atrium.47 A similar mix of Roman ancestors and a display of Greek learning can be seen in the Casa del Menandro, a large house possibly owned in the last period by a branch of the Poppaei. On the right wall of exedra 23 stood the labelled Menander wall painting, a unique instance of an identifiable portrait of a Greek writer on Pompeian walls, probably along with a Euripides portrait painted on the left wall. Between them was a now-faded figure (Dionysus?) that was the target of the axial sight-line from the front door: when the tablinum screen was open, the exedra’s back wall was visible from the entrance.48 While the walls of exedra 23 were painted in Fourth Style, those of the nearby exedra 25 retained their Second-Style decoration in their main and upper zones.49 By evoking a rustic sanctuary, the paintings served as an appropriate background for the display of four ancestors’ busts, roughly executed
43 E.g. Livy 8.40.3–5; 10.7.11 (tituli); Pliny NH 35.6 (family trees). See Flower, Ancestor Masks (above, n. 29), pp. 207, 211–17, with more references and detailed discussion. 44 Flower, Ancestor Masks (above, n. 29), pp. 200–3. 45 Flower, Ancestor Masks (above, n. 29), p. 195 with n. 38. 46 Jean Andreau, Les affaires de Monsieur Jucundus (Rome: École française de Rome, 1974) offers a detailed discussion. 47 Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 110663 (portrait), 110665 (marble herm; the portrait is lost); CIL X 860. See Dexter, The Casa (above, n. 25), pp. 178–87. 48 Roger Ling, The Insula of the Menander at Pompeii. Volume I: The Structures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 59 with pl. 22 (plan of the house and position of exedra 23); Lesley Ling and Roger Ling, The Insula of the Menander at Pompeii. Volume II: The Decorations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 85–8 (the decorations of exedra 23). 49 Ling and Ling, The Insula of the Menander (above, n. 48), p. 18 and passim; Penelope M. Allison, The Insula of the Menander at Pompeii. Volume III: The Finds, a Contextual Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 309–10.
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probably in wood and set in a niche. They coexisted with the sophisticated decorations of the house, recalling the contrast Pliny draws between the simple Roman imagines and the glamorous metal busts executed by foreign artists.50 The presence of illustrations of Greek drama next to imagines, owners’ portraits and displays of family history and prestige plays into the process of identity and selfportrayal with which the Romans were obsessed, while bespeaking their complex fascination with things Greek. Identification of Pompeian house-owners is notoriously difficult, but at least some of the patrons who inhabited the houses decorated with Greek drama are on record as local politicians. Aulus Rustius Verus, who was active in the 60s CE and ran for the office of duovir iure dicundo, lived in the huge Casa del Centenario. Marcus Lucretius was a decurion and a flamen Martis.51 L. Veranius Hypsaeus, a duovir of the Neronian period, may have owned the Casa della Fontana Grande and the adjoining fullonica.52 The campaign posters on the façade of the Casa dei Dioscuri suggest that its inhabitants belonged to the gens Nigidia. Richardson suggested that M. Nigidius Vaccula, apparently a bronze merchant, lived there in the last period, while Romizzi has argued for the knight Cn. Alleius Nigidius Maius.53 A prominent figure in Pompeian politics, Maius is known from a number of sources and is particularly famous for his generosity in funding public entertainment. Labelled “prince of game givers,” he is on record as presenting gladiatorial games in his quinquennial year.54 As a successful banker and son of a freedman, Caecilius Iucundus is a good example of a parvenu running a successful business that brought him into contact with a cross-section of the local elite. His sons went for a political career, running for public office.55 From Aulus Rustius Verus to Caecilius Iucundus’ sons, these house-owners were all fighting over offices in a town where political advancement was a struggle. To a friend asking him to facilitate his stepson’s advance to decurion, Cicero notoriously answered, “If you want, you will have it in Rome. At Pompeii, it is difficult.”56
50 Plin. Nat. 35.6 with Flower, Ancestor Masks (above, n. 29), pp. 42–6, esp. 42. For a slightly different view, see Allison, The Insula of the Menander (above, n. 49), p. 310. 51 The owner of the Casa del Centenario has been variously identified with A. Rustius Verus or Ti. Claudius Verus (see PPM IX.2.905). J.L. Franklin, Pompeis difficile est: Studies in the Political Life of Imperial Pompeii (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), esp. pp. 133–4, opts for A. Rustius Verus. On Marcus Lucretius, see CIL IV 879, PPM IX.2.141–2; Paavo Castrén, Ordo Populusque Pompeianus: Polity and Society in Roman Pompeii (Rome: Bardi, 1975), p. 69. 52 Leach, The Social Life (see above, n. 18), pp. 201, 250, with earlier literature. 53 Lawrence Richardson, Pompeii: The Casa dei Dioscuri and its Painters (MAAR 23; Rome, 1955), pp. 87–8, followed by J.L. Franklin, “Cn. Alleius Nigidius Maius and the Amphitheatre: ‘Munera’ and a Distinguished Career at Ancient Pompeii,” Historia 46 (1997), p. 435. Romizzi, “La Casa dei Dioscuri” (above, n. 19), pp. 141–3. 54 Franklin, Pompeis (above, n. 51), pp. 93–4. 55 PPM III.576. 56 Macr. 2.3.1: Pompeis difficile est. See Franklin, Pompeis (above, n. 51), esp. pp. 197–207.
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Exposed as they were to the public gaze, houses and their atria in particular were key to promoting one’s reputation. Despite the Romans’ complaints about Greeks, Greek cultural achievements in many fields were beyond dispute.57 Comedy was one. For all Terence’s refined style, he was only a “half-Menander,” according to Julius Caesar; for all the Roman playwrights and their accomplishments, Quintilian notoriously claimed that “comedy is our weakest point” (in comoedia maxime claudicamus).58 “Menander” was a good buzz-word to advertise cultural standing. When Marcus Pomponius Bassulus, who served as a duovir in Aeclanum, close to modern Avellino, wrote his own epitaph under Trajan or Hadrian, he pointedly mentioned that he had adapted select plays by Menander and had written original dramas (CIL IX 1174, ILS 29-53). One can reasonably doubt that our Pompeian house-owners watched Menander in theaters to appreciate his subtle handling of comic motifs, or mastered the reading list Quintilian detailed in the 90s CE. The impression their houses gave, however, was that they did.
Menander Illustrations in the Imperial Greek East If one toured the Mediterranean looking for illustrations of Menander’s comedies completed during the high and late Empire, Zeugma in Syria and its Maison de Synaristosai would be a good starting point. Signed by Zosimos and likely produced in the first half of the 3rd century CE, the Zeugma Synaristosai was set in a triclinium that served as the main reception area of the house, to be fully enjoyed by the guests dining in the room.59 Leaving Syria for Turkey, several Menander mosaics have been recently discovered in Daphne, a wealthy suburb of Antioch. Apparently dating to the 2nd or 3rd century CE, they illustrate four comedies, all inscribed with the name of the play and the number of the act: Synaristosai, Philadelphoi, Perikeiromene and Theophoroumene.60 These panels are part of a single pavement, which apparently formed a
57 Juv. Sat. 3.58–125 is a good though generically biased starting point. Roman resistance to things Greek ranged from Greek athletics (but see Zahra Newby, Greek Athletics in the Roman World: Victory and Virtue [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], part 1) to the presence of Greek philosophers and rhetores in Rome (see most recently Sarah Culpepper Stroup, “Greek Rhetoric Meets Rome: Expansion, Resistance, and Acculturation,” in: William Dominik, Jon Hall (eds.), A Companion to Roman Rhetoric [Oxford: Blackwell, 2007], pp. 23–37, with references). 58 Donat. Life of Terence 7 (Caes. Poet. 2.1); Quint. Inst. 10.1.99. 59 C. Abadie-Reynal, J.-P. Darmon and A.-M. Manière-Lévêque, “La maison et la mosaïque des Synaristôsai,” in: Robert Early et al. (eds.), Zeugma: Interim Reports (Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 51; Portsmouth, 2003), pp. 79–99, esp. 87, 95, 99; K.M.D. Dunbabin, “Nec grave nec infacetum: The Imagery of Convivial Entertainment,” in: K. Vössing (ed.), Das römische Bankett im Spiegel der Altertumswissenschaften (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2008), pp. 14–16. 60 Preliminary publication, in Turkish: Ömer Çelik, ”Yukari Harbiye mozaik kurtarma kazisi (Perikeiromene, Philadelphoi, Syaristosai, Theophorosmene,” in: 17. Müze çalişmalari ve kurtarma kazilari
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corridor. Although the function and design of the structure housing them are unknown, the size of the Menander pavement points to a large building. On the island of Crete, meanwhile, two other patrons, probably both house-owners, surrounded themselves with Greek plays. The mosaics from the House of Dionysus and Ariadne in Chania and from an unnamed house in Kastelli Kissamou await definitive publication, but here too the plays in question are Menandrian comedies. From Chania we have an inscribed mosaic from Plokion and a fragmentary scene resembling the Sikyonios illustration, both used to frame a large mosaic of Dionysus and Ariadne. Another mosaic inscribed Sikyonios, placed next to the ever-popular Theophoroumene, comes from Kastelli Kissamou. These artefacts cannot be dated by archaeological context, but stylistic features place them in late antiquity, the mid-3rd or 4th century CE for the Chania pieces and perhaps even later for the newly discovered mosaics from Kastelli Kissamou.61 More illustrations of Menander’ s plays come from Ephesus, two wall paintings decorating a reception room in Apartment 1 of a terrace house. Dated to the late 2nd century CE and perhaps originally ten in number, the identifiable comic scenes reproduce Menander’s Perikeiromene and Sikyonioi, while the tragic ones depict Euripides’ Orestes and an Iphigenia.62 The centerpiece of the rich visual record for Menander’s comedies, however, is the House of Menander in Mytilene, with its array of 11 mosaics placed in both the portico and the triclinium of the house. Probably dated to the late 4th century CE, these illustrations are key to identifying earlier monuments. Not only do they all preserve the plays’ titles and, in all but two instances (Leukadia and Theophoroumene), the number of the act represented, but the mosaics in the triclinium also uniquely give the characters’ names. Finally, an unidentified building in Ulpia Oescus, a Roman colony in Bulgaria, housed a mosaic inscribed “Menander’s Achaioi” and characterized by a representation technique typical of late antiquity: the scene is depicted as if seen from above, or with figures standing on a sharply sloping ground. This suggests a date as late as the 5th century CE.63
sempozyumu (28 nisan–1 mayis 2008, Side; Ankara, 2009), pp. 41–52. Fuller publication, in English and with color photographs: Kathryn Gutzwiller and Ömer Çelik, “New Menander Mosaics from Antioch,” American Journal of Archaeology 116 (2012), pp. 573–623. 61 Chania mosaics: Stavroula Markoulaki, “Psephidota ‘Oikias Dionysou’ sto Mouseion Chanion,” in: Pepragmena tou ST diethnous kritologikou synedriou 1.1 (1990), pp. 449–63. Green and Seeberg MNC3 1.75; Kastelli Kissamou: Stavroula Markoulaki et al., “H archaia Kisamos kai h poleodomike des organose,” in: Monica Liviadiotti, Ilaria Simiakaki (eds.), Creta romana e protobizantina (Padua: Bottega d’Erasmo, 2004), pp. 355–73. The play’s title is attested as both Sikyonios and Sikyonioi: see W. Geoffrey Arnott (ed. and trans.), Menander III, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. 196–8. I thank Stavroula Markoulaki for generously sending me pictures of the Theophoroumene mosaic. 62 Selçuk/Ephesus, MNC3 DP 1.6 1 (notoriously inscribed Sikyonioi rather than Sikyonios), 2. 63 The mosaics from Mytilene are now preserved in the Chorapha Museum (MNC3 6DM 2.1–11), while the one from Ulpia Oescus is in the Pleven Museum (MNC3 6DM 1). On the date of the Bulgarian mosaic, see Green, Theatre (above, n. 10), p. 164.
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By the imperial period, the tradition of illustrating Greek drama in public domestic areas was well established, yet it is distributed in a peculiar way. After the early Empire, house-owners in Italy and the Western Empire generally lost interest in commissioning and displaying Menander’s comedies, at least in comparison to Greek-speaking parts of the empire. This is not to say that dramatic images disappear. Consider the villa at Piazza Armerina in Sicily, built in the 4th century CE and probably owned by a member of the senatorial elite. Room 45 of the villa features a mosaic with children acting as musicians and actors; in addition to performing as pipers and cithara-players, for instance, they put on comedy and tragedy.64 The dramatic scenes are both damaged—of the tragic one, only the bottom part survives —and the actors do not seem to be wearing masks, although their costume clearly indicates that they are performers: the tragedians have the typical high-soled boots, while the comedians are padded and wear the standard comic outfit beneath their costumes. Ancient mosaics typically represent tragedy as myth rather than theatrical event, and there are only few exceptions to this tendency.65 The main exception is from the Tenuta di Porcareccia, close to Rome: a series of 24 hexagons with two figures each, probably dated to the late 2nd or early 3rd century CE and now preserved in the Vatican Museum. Unfortunately, the archaeological context is beyond recall, as is the composition to which the panels originally belonged. Since they underwent heavy restoration, little can be made of their subject matter, but the high-soled boots that most of the figures wear suggest a link with tragedy in performance.66 The problem with both the Vatican mosaics and the composition from Piazza Armerina is that the dramatic scenes cannot be tied to a specific play. It is interesting in this connection that the best preserved comic actor from Piazza Armerina apparently mixes up iconographic conventions: he is given the padding and the scarf typical of late comic slaves, yet holds the stick of an old man.67 It may be that he stands for comedy in general rather than for a specific play, like the comic actors on a mosaic from Patras (late 2nd or early 3rd century CE) and a graffito from the Tomba dei
64 Andrea Carandini, Andreina Ricci and Mariette De Vos, Filosofiana. La Villa di Piazza Armerina (Palermo: Flaccovio Editore, 1982), pp. 284–91, pl. XLII.87. See also K.D.M. Dunbabin, “A Theatrical Device on the Late Roman Stage: the Relief of Flavius Valerianus,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 19 (2006), pp. 191–212, esp. 205. 65 Also relevant is the “Iphigenia” mosaic (late 2nd or early 3rd century CE) from the triclinium of the House of Iphigenia in Seleucia, with its three characters set against an architectural backdrop. See Janet Huskinson, “Theatre, Theatricality and Performance in Some Mosaic Pavements from Antioch,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 46 (2002–2003), pp. 141–4. 66 K.E. Werner, Die Sammlung antiker Mosaiken in den Vatikanischen Museen (Vatican City: Monumenti, Musei e Gallerie Pontificie, 1998), pp. 99–101, discusses these mosaics and their possible interpretation. Not all panels are related to tragedy; one hexagon, for example, reproduces a poet with a muse, while another includes what seems to be a silen. 67 On this scarf and its origins, see Eric Csapo, “A Case Study in the Use of Theatre Iconography as Evidence for Ancient Acting,” Antike Kunst 36 (1993), pp. 48–9.
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Ludi in Cyrene (early 2nd century CE) that features composite pictures with various entertainers, from musicians to actors and athletes.68 The entertainers are shown competing for prizes laid on a table, a motif also included in the frieze from the Villa di Piazza Armerina, where it appears on a higher register: these compositions reproduce games with dramatic performances as part of the program. From the 2nd- and 3rd-century CE Roman West there are a handful of mosaics representing comedy: one from Spain (Cordoba), two from France (Grand and Aixen-Provence), one from Switzerland (Avenches), one from Tunisia (Sousse) and finally two examples from Italy (Baia and Brindisi).69 While the panels from Aix-enProvence and Baia can be tied to a private context, the mosaic from Grand comes from a civic basilica not far from the Temple of Apollo Grannus, and the mosaic from Avenches may have originally graced public baths.70 Both the Cordoba mosaic, which reproduces only one figure, an old man with a crook standing before a porch, and the Baia mosaic, which originally offered a three-figure scene, with the character on the left largely obliterated by the ancient renovation, are new to our repertory.71 The fragmentary mosaic from Avenches preserves only the face of a hetaira tilted to the right, with a second character’s open hand next to it. This composition can be compared to the Samia illustration from Mytilene, with the mosaic from Avenches reversing the image.72 Completed in the late 2nd or early 3rd century CE for a huge house, the Maison de l’Oued Blibane, the mosaic from Tunisia probably reproduces a scene we know from other examples, Menander’s Sikyonios. As Green points out,
68 Patras, Archaeological Museum (MNC3 6CM 1); Cyrene, Tomba dei Ludi (MNC3 6EP 2). See S.E. Waywell, “Roman Mosaics in Greece,” American Journal of Archaeology 83 (1979), p. 301 no. 38; Lidiano Bacchielli, “La «Tomba dei Ludi a Cirene»: dai viaggiatori dell’Ottocento alla riscoperta,” Quaderni di Archeologia della Libia 16 (2002), pp. 285–312. 69 Janine Lancha, Mosaïque et culture dans l’Occident romain (Ier–IVe s.) (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1997), pp. 200–1 (Cordoba mosaic, dated to the 2nd or 3rd century CE; see MNC3 6WM 1 for its identification), 128–31 (Grand mosaic, dated to the reign of Caracalla), 109–10 (mosaic from Aix-enProvence, possibly 3rd century CE, now at the Musée Granet 821–1–66), 271–2 (Avenches mosaic, ca. 200–250 CE, now in the Roman Museum). On the mosaic from Tunisia (Sousse 57.010; MNC3 6FM 1), see below. The mosaic from the so-called Terme di Baia (Settore Sosandra, 2nd century CE) is discussed by Mariarosaria Esposito and Paola Miniero, “I mosaici delle ‘Terme’ di Baia,” in Atti del VI Colloquio dell’ Associazione Italiana per lo Studio e la Conservazione del Mosaico (Ravenna: Edizioni del Girasole, 2000), pp. 253–66. On the mosaic recently excavated from beneath Palazzo Nervegna in Brindisi (2nd century CE), see Assunta Cocchiaro, “Brindisi,” Taras 22 (1–2; 2002), pp. 72–9, with J.R. Green, “Theatre Production: 1996–2006,” Lustrum 50 (2008), p. 231. See also below. 70 Lancha, Mosaïque (above, n. 69), pp. 128–31, 271–2 with references. 71 On the renovation undergone by the Baia mosaic, see F. Branda, G. Luciani, A. Costantini and C. Piccioli, “Indagine tecnico scientifica sull’emblema del settore della Sosandra delle Terme di Baia,” in: Atti del VII Colloquio dell’Associazione Italiana per lo Studio e la Conservazione del Mosaico (Ravenna: Edizioni del Girasole, 2001), pp. 609–14. 72 For other examples of image reversal in the visual record, see Nervegna, “Menander’s Theophoroumene” (above, n. 11).
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the Brindisi mosaic can also be identified as illustrating a comedy by Menander, Samia.73 If the mosaics from Avenches, Sousse and Brindisi are included, we know of 26 illustrations that can be more or less securely regarded as reproducing Menander’s plays and were completed after the early imperial period. The Greek-speaking East is the source of 22 or even 23 of these: Ulpia Oescus was a Roman colony, but Bulgaria has a geographically interesting position between the Western and the Eastern Empire. With the Ephesus wall paintings as the earliest examples and the mosaics from Ulpia Oescus and Kastelli Kissamou as perhaps the latest, these illustrations span the period from the late 2nd to the 4th or even 5th century CE. Earlier monuments tend to be part of a decorative program that also includes tragedy (Delos, several Pompeian houses), but later this pattern apparently survives only in Ephesus. Everywhere else, we find only comedy. What may have been a desire to reproduce a specific space—the original display-context of the archetypes of our dramatic scenes—was lost, and the patrons’ pressing concern became to advertise these scenes as illustrations of Menander’s plays. In this way too, the Sousse mosaic is interesting because it lacks a label. Among the mosaics from the Western provinces, the North African ones stand out for their relatively frequent use of name-labels, which are however restricted to specific subjects: hunting scenes, horse racing and charioteers.74 Signs of manipulation and updating of the early Hellenistic archetypes of Menander illustrations often crop up in the visual record, in its earliest as well as its latest stages.75 In executing his Synaristosai, Zosimos probably deprived Menander’s characters of their masks (their mouths are not particularly open), but he set the image against a scaenae frons.76 In addition to stressing the theatrical character of the image, Zosimos’ scaenae frons provides a convenient and conspicuous place to record the play’s title, Synaristosas, given as the object of “Zosimos made,” written at the bottom 73 For the dating of the mosaic from Sousse, see K.D.M. Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman North Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 132 with n. 6; Lancha, Mosaïque (above, n. 69), p. 54. From North Africa also comes a fragmentary wall painting reproducing a comic slave originally located in the House of M. Asinius Rufinus and now preserved in the Sfax Museum (MNC3 6FP 1). On the Brindisi mosaic, see J.R. Green, “A Scene from Comedy in Brindisi,” Prometheus (forthcoming). 74 Ruth Leader-Newby, “Inscribed mosaics in the Late Roman Empire: perspectives from east and west,” in: Zahra Newby, R. Leader-Newby (eds.), Art and Inscriptions in the Ancient World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 179–99, esp. 181. A good example is the multiple scene mosaic from Althiburus produced in the late 3rd century CE: it has some 20 labels, either fully or partially extant, identifying dogs and probably horses. See Dunbabin, North Africa (above, n. 73), p. 60. 75 The best example of updating is the soldier on the fragmentary and now unlabelled mosaic from Chania that probably reproduces Sikyonios (MNC3 6DM 3.2): he wears a Pannonian cap, an item that entered soldiers’ attire only during the later Empire. See further Csapo, “Performance” (above, n. 7); Nervegna, “Menander’s Theophoroumene” (above, n. 11). 76 For Zosimos’ characters as unmasked, see J.R. Green, “Theater Production” (above, n. 69), p. 230. For other examples of architectural frames introduced into a dramatic illustration, see Nervegna, “Menander’s Theophoroumene” (above, n. 11), p. 33 with n. 18.
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of the scene. The detailed labels on the Menander mosaics from Mytilene (which are not always correct) smack of antiquarian interest, and although they were clearly not derived from illustrated manuscripts, the best point of comparison for them is in fact the illustrated manuscripts from late antiquity. The mosaics are roughly contemporary with the lost archetype of our illustrated editions of Terence’s comedies, which was probably realized around 400 CE.77 The artists who illustrated Terence’s dramas were familiar with illustrations of Greek plays and possibly with their labels too. The inscription Theophoroumene occupies a prominent spot on the mosaic from Kastelli Kissamou. Made from different-colored tesserae set in the middle of the composition, the label rather than the image is meant to be the focus of the viewer’s attention; the scene is adjusted in various ways to accommodate it. The dating of the Menander illustrations is rarely beyond dispute, but with the exception of the mosaics from Kastelli Kissamou and Ulpia Oescus, they fall between the later 2nd and the 4th century CE. It is tempting to link the initial impulse behind this “efflorescence” (or revival?) of Menander illustrations in the imperial East to the archaizing tendency of the period conventionally labelled the Second Sophistic (mid1st to mid-3rd century CE). There has been some controversy surrounding the impact of the renaissance of Greek studies on the visual record and especially mosaics. According to Bruneau, Greek mosaics produced during the imperial period were impervious to contemporary Western influence and harked back to the Hellenistic tradition. This claim has been corrected by both Hellenkemper Salies and Dunbabin. Western influences can be detected in many aspects of Greek mosaics, including the choice of subject matter: the mosaics from Kos and Patras reproducing gladiatorial combats— the Roman sport par excellence—put Eastern patrons on par with their Western counterparts.78 Ancient artists had an Empire-wide repertoire from which patrons could choose; aside from accidents of survival, however, different parts of the Empire had their own tendencies and iconographic preferences. Gladiators were known in the East but were more numerous in the West and especially in Gallia Belgica (the modern Benelux countries, the Rhineland, and much of Switzerland and northeastern France); the motif of the victorious charioteer appears almost exclusively on Western mosaics; specific literary references are rare in the record from North Africa.79 77 David H. Wright, The Lost Late Antique Illustrated Terence (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2006) esp. pp. 208–9. 78 Philippe Bruneau, “Tendances de la mosaïque en Grèce à l’époque impériale,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt II 12.2 (1981), pp. 320–46; G. Hellenkemper Salies, “Römische Mosaiken in Griechenland,” Bonner Jahrbücher 186 (1986), pp. 241–84; K.D.M. Dunbabin, Mosaics of the Greek and Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), ch. 12. Gladiators in Kos: Louis Robert, Les gladiateurs dans l’Orient grec (Amsterdam: A.M. Hakkert, 1971; 19401), p. 191 no. 191a; in Patras: I.A. Papapostolou, “Monuments des combats de gladiateurs à Patras,” Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 113 (1989), pp. 393–400. See also Dunbabin, Mosaics (above), pp. 215–16. 79 Gladiators: Thomas Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators (London, New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 23–6; victorious charioteer: K.D.M. Dunbabin, “The Victorious Charioteer on Mosaics and Related
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The two parts of the Empire also used comedy as a motif in different ways. The extant comic mosaics from the Roman West from the 2nd century CE on are few in number and consistently anonymous. Often lacking a recognizable iconographic pedigree, they were at least occasionally also set in public buildings. Numerous, invariably identified and concentrated in the private realm, they have a spot of their own in the iconographic repertoire of the Greek East. This trend can be placed in the general distribution pattern of comedy-related artefacts outlined by Green and Seeberg. In the years 50–180 CE, there is a decrease in production, which reaches almost 30% after 180 CE. Within this picture of general decline, the Greek-speaking East, along with peripheral areas of the Roman West, registers an increase of interest in comic monuments. Rome played a major role in the years 50 BCE–50 CE, but later the emphasis shifts elsewhere. Although the range of media is maintained, the preference for costly materials, a trend already in place in preceding periods, becomes more marked in Late Antiquity.80 The widespread diffusion of mosaics indicates that they were no longer as expensive as they had been, but they remained “a mark of wealth and prestige.”81
Menander Illustrations between the Roman West and the Greek East Illustrations of Menander’s comedies travelled far and wide. Originally depicted on paintings displayed in a public setting probably in Athens, they were reproduced in a range of media from the early Hellenistic period to late antiquity. The original illustrations, which are often misunderstood by later copies, were a close witness to the performance of Menander’s plays and provide a good record of details such as costumes and masks. Depicted on mosaics and wall paintings, Menander’s comedies quickly entered the decorative program of ancient houses, in the Roman West as in the Greek East. But their distribution did not remain unchanged over time. From the late 2nd century BCE on, Roman house-owners avidly displayed illustrations of Menander’s comedies, and of Greek drama in general, in their reception rooms and atria, next to tokens of family history and prestige, but they lost interest in them after the early Empire. In the Greek East, by contrast, these illustrations are largely concentrated in the imperial period, consistently set in private domestic areas and clearly identified. Their labels turn the general into the specific, openly advertising the
Monuments,” American Journal of Archaeology 86 (1982), pp. 65–89; North African mosaics: Dunbabin, North Africa (above, n. 73), pp. 131–4. 80 Green and Seeberg, MNC3 1, pp. 54 fig. 1, 69, 72 (decline in the production of comic monuments), 72, 73 fig. 13 (shift toward the East), 73 fig. 12, 75; see also p. 69 (use of costly material). 81 Dunbabin, Mosaics (above, n. 78), p. 326.
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images as illustrations of Menander’s comedies. Grammarians such as Phrynichus could question the Greeks’ obsession with Menander, “celebrated throughout the Greek world,” and the learned public could opt for Aristophanes and his purer Greek.82 But house-owners in the Imperial Greek East had no doubt: Menander’s comedy was part of their glorious Greek past.
82 Phrynichus, Selection of Attic Verbs and Nouns 394 F.
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The Evidence of the Zeugma Synaristosai Mosaic for Imperial Performance of Menander Abstract: The recently discovered imperial period mosaic from Zeugma, showing the opening scene of Menander’s Synaristosai, differs markedly from previously known representations. Examination of the mosaic and the scene, both in Menander and in Plautus’s adaptation of it for his Cistellaria, suggests that the artist Zosimos is not simply copying or adapting previous visual representations but offers a view influenced by contemporary staging of the play in the Greek east. The mosaic thus testifies to both the continuation of Menander in performance under the empire and his adaptation to the stage of the much larger Roman theatres.
Menander’s Synaristosai or “Ladies Who Lunch” was once a famous play and the opening scene, from which it takes its title, its most famous part. Yet today only a dozen fragments quoted by others and a few doubtful papyrus scraps remain— supplemented by three mosaics. That the plays of New Comedy’s greatest poet continued to be read throughout antiquity has never been doubted. References to staged performances are scarcer. The most recently discovered part of the visual record for the Synaristosai, however, may offer a glimpse into how this work held the stage into the period of the Roman empire, even as it had to be adapted to changing performance conditions. The oldest and best representation of the Synaristosai is the beautiful emblema or panel mosaic, signed by the mosaicist Dioscurides but untitled, excavated at Pompeii from the so-called “House of Cicero” in 1764. Widely reproduced, it shows three female figures, their features strongly suggestive of comic masks, seated around a small table with a very small attendant to the right.1 Although various interpretations of the composition were offered earlier, it was not until 1930 that Marx proposed that this scene represented the opening of Menander’s lost Synaristo-
1 Naples 9987; T.B.L. Webster, Monuments Illustrating New Comedy3, rev. and enl. J.R. Green and A. Seeberg, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement 50 (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1995), vol. II, p. 186; abbreviated hereafter as MNC3). Excellent reproductions of the Dioscurides mosaic are found in Richard Green and Eric Handley, Images of the Greek Theatre (London: British Museum Press, 1995), p. 78 fig. 50; Jeffrey Rusten (ed.), The Birth of Comedy: Texts, Documents, and Art from Athenian Comic Competitions, 486–280 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), p. 591 fig. 8A. As well discussed by Sebastiana Nervegna elsewhere in this volume, this and its companion mosaic representing Theophoroumene are our earliest evidence for Menander’s comedies in the Bay of Naples area.
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sai.2 His identification was confirmed in 1962 by the discovery at Mytilene of another mosaic, much later and cruder in workmanship but clearly an iconographic descendant, and inscribed with both the play’s title and the names of the three characters.3 The rescue excavations at Zeugma in Turkey, near the Syrian border, have now added a third example, probably of the 2nd century AD and of quite good quality.4
Fig. 1: Zeugma mosaic of Synaristosai. Photo by Anne-Marie Manière Lévêque, with the permission of the excavators, Catherine Abadie-Reynal and Jean-Pierre Darmon, previously published in Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 51 (2003).
2 F. Marx, “Plauti Cistellaria Menandrea in Dioscuridis Mosaico Pompeiano,” Rheinisches Museum 79 (1930), pp. 197–208; brief but useful in English is D.K. Lange, “The Identification of Plautus’ Cistellaria with Menander’s Synaristosai,” Classical Journal 70 (1975), pp. 30–2. 3 MNC3 (above, n. 1) II, p. 469, 6DM2.3. The original publication of S. Charitonidis, L. Kahil and R. Ginouvès, Les mosaïques du Ménandre à Mytilène, Antike Kunst Beiheft 6 (Bern: Francke, 1970), dates the mosaics to the late 3rd century CE, although L. Berczelly “The Date and Significance of the Menander Mosaics at Mytilene,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 35 (1988), pp. 119–27, makes a plausible case for a 4th-century date. Reproduced in Green and Handley, Images (above, n. 1), p. 79 fig. 51; and Rusten, Birth (above, n. 1), p. 592 fig. 8B. 4 C. Abadie–Reynal and J.-P. Darmon, in: R. Early et al., Zeugma: Interim Reports, Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 51 (2003), pp. 79–99. I am grateful to Prof. Darmon for supplying the photograph and his generous permission to publish it with this article.
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Fig. 2: Naples mosaic of Synaristosai by Dioscurides. Photo by Mathias Kaibel, published under GNU Free Documentation License.
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The scene is identifiable both by its inscription, ΣΥΝΑΡΙΣΤΩΣΑΣ ΖΩΣΙΜΟΣ ΕΠΟΙΕΙ (“Zosimos made the Synaristosai”) and by iconography. Like the other two mosaics, it portrays three seated women, one much older than the others, and a small table. Here there are two smaller servant figures rather than one. The Zeugma mosaic is unique among Menander representations for its backdrop of three panels or openings in a structure behind the figures, which I will suggest is a stage building or scaenae frons with three doors, each roughly framing one of the seated figures. To understand the implications of the new Zeugma mosaic, we must begin with the Pompeii and Mytilene examples. No one has doubted that both represent the same scene and therefore the opening scene from which Menander’s play takes its title. Differences of detail, however, demand an explanation. Although the later Mytilene mosaic is often said to be a “mirror-reverse” of the earlier example, Csapo has shown that in the transition from earlier to later mosaic, “We could sooner speak of a transposition of heads here than of a scene-reversal.”5 The body of the left-hand figure in both scenes is turned sharply inward toward the table around which the women gather, while the body of the right-hand figure is somewhat more frontal. The central figure in both cases inclines toward the right-hand figure. The resultant dynamics of the two scenes therefore differ sharply: in the earlier Dioscurides mosaic from Pompeii, both younger women direct their attention to the older woman, whose own attention seems focused on her wine cup, while in the later example from Mytilene, the younger women are engaged with one other; the older woman may or may not be attending to them over her wine. Csapo’s structural argument here is that the later mosaicist has essentially transposed the heads of the outermost seated women, while moving the small attendant figure from right to left; the servant becomes just a tiny head behind the shoulder of the figure labeled Philainis in the later Mytilene version.6 Like many mosaics, the Pompeian example is usually assumed to derive from a lost Hellenistic painting. After collecting examples of scenes from Sophocles, Euripides and Menander (with no plausible instances from Aeschylus, Aristophanes or other playwrights), Csapo argues that they all derive from originals of dramatic scenes created as a group in the early Hellenistic period, with never more than one exemplary
5 Eric Csapo, “Performance and Iconographic Tradition in the Illustrations of Menander,” Syllecta Classica 10 (1999), p. 166; cf. the brief but important discussion in J.R. Green, “Drunk Again: A Study in the Iconography of the Comic Theater,” American Journal of Archaeology 89 (1985), p. 465. 6 E.W. Handley, “Some Thoughts on New Comedy and its Public,” Pallas 47 (1997), pp. 185–200 (this special issue was also published as a separate volume, B. Le Guen (ed.), De la scène aux gradins (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 1997), with identical pagination); p. 197 offers the intriguing suggestion that the textual tradition has influenced the way the Mytilene mosaicist modified earlier designs, finding in them “a tendency to prefer scenes to read from right to left, in the order of speaking.” This might also have implications for the position of the figure labeled Plangon in our scene; see further below.
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or characteristic scene from each individual title. The choice of plays reflects the active performance repertoire of the early Hellenistic period (hence the absence of scenes from Aeschylus and Aristophanes), but in Csapo’s view the transmission of the scenes thereafter is purely visual, within an artistic tradition. While consideration of his general arguments for the existence of the original series is beyond the scope of this article, I wish to challenge Csapo’s notion that the iconographic types, once created, lived on wholly independent of actual performances of Menander. The case of the Synaristosai, in light of the new Zeugma mosaic, is key to my argument. We must consider the problem of identifying the female characters in the play for a moment. While the papyrus remains may preserve the name of one male character in the play, Demeas, our only source for the names of the women is the Mytilene mosaic itself. For further information we rely on arguments deriving from the now universally accepted view that Plautus adapted Menander’s Synaristosai, including its famous opening scene, in his Cistellaria or “Casket Comedy.”7 The Mytilene mosaic names the older hetaira as Philainis, a perfectly probable name for such a figure.8 In Plautus’s Cistellaria, this older woman, the lena, is not named in the texts that have come down to us, but she is the mother of one of the two younger women, and so we assume this was the case in Menander’s lost play. Which of these figures is that daughter? In Plautus, the daughter’s name is Gymnasium, which embodies a joke about sex as a workout. The other young woman is Selenium; in love with a freeborn young man, she will be discovered to be freeborn herself at play’s end, allowing them to marry. In his Loeb edition of Menander, Arnott identified the central figure on the Mytilene mosaic labeled “Plangon” as the daughter of Philainis and therefore the original of Gymnasium, on the ground that mother and daughter were likely seated together.9 He later revised his view, noting that Plangon is the name for freeborn women in both Menander’s Hero and his Samia, and perhaps for Sostratos’s sister in 7 The identification of Menander’s Synaristosai as the source for some or much of Plautus’ play is among the most interesting detective stories in the history of scholarship on Roman comedy. For details, see G. Thamm, Zur Cistellaria des Plautus (Diss. Freiburg im Breisgau, 1971), pp. 1–6. Key contributors are J.W. Bierma, “De Plauti Cistellaria,” Mnemosyne NS 53 (1925), pp. 309–19; Bernhard Bischoff, “Zu Plautus und Festus,” Philologus 87 (1932), pp. 114–17; E. Fraenkel, “Das Original der Cistellaria des Plautus,” Philologus 87 (1932), pp. 117–20 (repr. in: Fraenkel, Kleine Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie II: Zur römischen Literatur, Zu juristischen Texten, Verschiedenes, Storia e letteratura 96 [Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1964], pp. 33–6); W. Süss, “Zur Cistellaria des Plautus,” Rheinisches Museum 84 (1935), pp. 161–87; and “Nochmals zur Cistellaria des Plautus,” Rheinisches Museum 87 (1938), pp. 97–141. 8 She is regularly identified as the “wolfish older woman” (Mask 28 in Pollux’s classification): MNC3 (above, n. 1), vol. I, pp. 35–7. 9 Similarly Handley, “Some Thoughts” (above, n. 6), p. 197, identifies Pythias on the Mytilene mosaic as the original of Plautus’ Selenium, hostess of the party. Handley’s own suggestion, however, that speaking-order in the scene has influenced the mosaicist’s application of labels from left to right, would nicely explain why Plangon, whom I identify as the hostess of the party and the original of Selenium, would have moved from the left-hand position in Dioscurides’ design to the center in the
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the Dyskolos.10 This is persuasive: Plangon must be the freeborn woman here, and Pythias is therefore the daughter of the older hetaira, already working as a hetaira herself.11 How we identify the two unlabelled younger women in the earlier Dioscurides mosaic remains an open question. Arnott confidently identifies the mask of the lefthand figure in this mosaic as a hetaira mask from Pollux’s list.12 I am less sure that even a work of this superior quality allows us to differentiate a hetaira mask certainly from the pseudokore or false maiden mask, which the freeborn Plangon should be wearing. More relevant are the similarities in costume between the central female figure in the Dioscurides mosaic and the old woman. Both wear a yellow cloak over a white gown and are thus linked in the scene by both position and color scheme, while the left-hand woman is dressed mostly in white, with a brown-sleeved garment underneath.13 A fragment of Donatus’ On Comedy (6.6) reports that in Roman comedy meretrices, who largely parallel Greek hetairai, regularly wore yellow:14 leno pallio colore vario utitur, meretrici ob avaritiam luteum datur (“The leno or pimp wears a coat of many colors, while the courtesan on account of her greed is given yellow”). This is a step short of guaranteeing the convention for the Greek stage, but it does suggest how the Roman period owner of the Dioscurides mosaic, ordering the work for his house in Pompeii, probably read and understood the code of the colors worn by the women. In sum, it seems far more plausible to identify the two women in luxurious yellow as the family unit of mother and daughter hetairai, and the woman in white as the freeborn Plangon. After these lengthy preliminaries, we can finally return to the new Synaristosai mosaic from Zeugma. Csapo and others argue that the mechanics of artists’ copybooks
Mytilene example: if the old woman speaks first in Menander’s scene, her hostess Plangon, and not her daughter, is the natural first respondent to her remarks. 10 W. Geoffrey Arnott, “A New Mosaic of Menander’s Synaristosai,” in: R. Hartkamp and F. Hurka (eds.), Studien zu Plautus’ Cistellaria (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2004), p. 401. The case is not ironclad, since as Ulrike Auhagen, “Das Hetärenfrühstück (Cist. I 1)—Griechisches und Römisches bei Plautus,” in: Hartkamp and Hurka (above), pp. 199–200, notes, Eubulus wrote a hetaira comedy called Plangon, and the name occurs in catalogues of hetairai in Anaxil. fr. 22 and Timocl. fr. 27. But Menander’s practice seems more relevant. Pythias is otherwise unattested in Greek New Comedy but occurs as a hetaira name in Lucian, Dialogues of the Hetairae 12. 11 Only a few, including most recently Eckhard Lefèvre, “Plautus’ Cistellaria zwischen Menanders Synaristosai und italischem Stegreifspiel,” in: Hartkamp and Hurka, Studien (above, n. 10), p. 66, have doubted that the women in Menander’s play were hetairai. 12 “A New Mosaic” (above, n. 10), p. 401. 13 David Wiles, The Masks of Menander (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 203, believes that this brown-sleeved garment, which would not be changed when over-garments and masks were, identifies the actor playing Plangon as the protagonist. The intriguing notion is that such details would help an alert audience follow which other roles the protagonist, the only actor in the production competing for the actor’s prize, was playing. 14 Cf. Auhagen, “Das Hetärenfrühstück” (above, n. 10), pp. 198–9.
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explain the varying but still close relation between Dioscurides’ mosaic and the Mytilene version three or more centuries later. The arrangement of the figures in the Zeugma mosaic cannot easily be explained by small changes in copying, nor does this version make a plausible intermediate step between the other two. The composition has been opened out and reconfigured. While at first glance it recalls the earlier version of Dioscurides, the introduction of the second servant figure has fundamentally altered the dynamic of the scene. The two younger women, neither of whom can here be firmly differentiated by costume or mask,15 converse around the table, while the older woman is separated from them by a wide space and the figure of one of the two attendants. It might be possible to argue that the Zeugma version represents an archetype, which was then mirror-reversed to produce the Mytilene version, but we have no way to explain this much more spread-out composition as a copyist’s rearrangement of components of Dioscurides’ version. If copybook juggling cannot produce the Zeugma version, we need not assume that the visual evidence is independent of actual theatrical performance. In fact, the Zeugma mosaic is best explained as a representation of a postclassical and possibly Roman era staging of Menander’s play. It must be admitted at once that we have little positive evidence for any performances of Greek drama, and of Menander in particular, under the empire.16 A fragmentary discourse of Dio Chrysostom (around 100 CE) seems to suggest that some comedies were still performed in full at that time, while tragedy was often being shortened or excerpted.17 Menander was certainly read, for both his pure Attic Greek and his entertainment value, but the Synaristosai may not have been part of the reading canon.18 Yet the introduction of a backdrop cannot be explained either as a visual derivative from Dioscurides or as a likely concomitant to an artist’s rendering of a scene for a patron who had only read the play as a poetic composition, i.e. as an artist’s decorative frame around a standard scene. From the same house in Pompeii comes
15 Nervegna, pp. 362–3 elsewhere in this volume, suggests Zosimos may not have wished to represent the figures as masked, but that seems unlikely, given the theatrical backdrop 16 Elaine Fantham, “Roman Experience of Menander in the Late Republic and Early Empire,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 114 (1984), pp. 299–309. C.W. Marshall, “Alcestis and the Ancient Rehearsal Process (P. Oxy. 4546),” Arion, III.11 (2004), pp. 27–45, shows that P.Oxy. 4546 is precious evidence for a Roman period rehearsal and multi-actor performance of Euripides’ Alcestis. 17 Or. 19.5 (vol. II, p. 258.19 Arnim) τὰ μὲν τῆς κωμῳδίας ἅπαντα … μένει. See translation with comment at Eric Csapo and W.J. Slater, The Context of Ancient Drama (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), p. 386 (V.48). 18 See Alain Blanchard, “Les Synaristosai et la constitution du Choix de Ménandre,” in: Hartkamp and Hurka, Studien (above, n. 10), pp. 11–19, for an intriguing argument in favor of a canon of 24 Menander plays (equaling the 24 selected tragedies), organized in triads. He proposes that the 12 Menander plays used by Plautus and Terence, including the Synaristosai Plautus adapted as his Cistellaria, were less likely to be transmitted whole thereafter by the Greek tradition.
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another famous mosaic by Dioscurides, a rendition of a scene from Menander’s Theophoroumene (“Girl Possessed”).19 Another version of this scene from Menander now preserved in the Naples storerooms, a badly damaged mosaic emblema nonetheless recognizable as referring to the same point in a performance of Theophoroumene, with attendants at left and the tympanum player at right, has recently been published.20 Where Dioscurides’ version of the Theophoroumene scene shows the players on a stage, with part of an entrance door visible to the right of the tympanum player, the artist of the damaged emblema has simply placed a generic classical frame around the scene. Such, however, is by no means the procedure at Zeugma. Zosimus has created a backdrop within the frame, whose roof line and three openings remind us forcefully of the Roman scaenae frons. No surviving example of Greek New Comedy requires three different private onstage houses,21 but every imperial scaenae frons had at least that many openings. The much larger stages of this later period invited physically larger productions, with more supernumerary players and more spread-out staging. I submit that this is precisely what the Zeugma mosaic represents. This is in sharp contrast to the original staging of the play in Athens, as it can be reconstructed from the Dioscurides mosaic. Given the action of the women lunching together, the scene should be understood as taking place indoors or in the inner courtyard of the house; David Wiles and others have accordingly suggested that the tight grouping in this earliest version shows that the scene was staged using the ekkyklema or rolling stage platform.22 Wiles believes that this may be a playful inversion of tragic practice on Menander’s part: where tragedy often ends with the revelation on the ekkyklema of death or disaster, Menander begins with a scene of humorous domestic distress.23 Of more significance may be the fact that no other New Comedy known to us opens with three women in dialogue. The appeal to the audience is thus in significant part a voyeuristic one, a glimpse into the private, erotically charged space of a courtesan’s household. The novelty of this in Menander is worth emphasizing.24 The
19 Naples 9985 = MNC3 (above, n. 1), vol. II, p. 186, 3DMI. See Rusten, Birth (above, n. 1), p. 593 fig. 9. 20 G. Stefani, “Mosaici sconosciuti dall’area vesuviana,” in” AISCOM VI [Atti del VI Colloquio dell’associazione Italiana per lo Studio e la Conservazione del Mosaico] (Ravenna: Edizioni del Girasole, 2000), pp. 279–90, fig. 4, Naples 17735. 21 J.C.B. Lowe, “Dramatic Time and Space in Cistellaria and Synaristosai,” in: Hartkamp and Hurka, Studien (above, n. 10), p. 90; and “Terentian Originality in the Phormio and Hecyra,” Hermes 111 (1983), pp. 449–51. 22 Wiles, Masks (above, n. 13), pp. 48–9; cf. Green and Handley, Images (above, n. 1), pp. 76–9, figs. 50–1, printing excellent color images along with discussion and further references. 23 It is worth noting, however, that tragedy can use the ekkyklema at the beginning too, for Ajax’s slaughter of the sheep in Sophocles’ play or the startling revelation of the chained princess awaiting the sea monster at the beginning of Euripides’ lost Andromeda. 24 Jürgen Blänsdorf, “Menander und Plautus in den Cantica der Cistellaria,” in: Hartkamp and Hurka, Studien (above, n. 10), p. 296: “Nirgendwo sonst in Menanders Komödien tritt die Liebe von der ersten
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scene gives the illusion, not witnessed onstage since Aristophanes’ women’s plays, of peering into a private, all-female world and eavesdropping on its conversation, dotted with terms particular to women.25 While scenes with two women alone on stage are by no means unknown, a scene with three women speaking and no men about at all is unparalleled in the world of New Comedy. Stichus, for example, opens with two women in conversation and has interesting thematic parallels with Cistellaria as well. The determination of these two young wives, who refuse to give up their long-absent husbands even in the face of parental opposition, drives the action of Stichus, just as Selenium resists giving up Alcesimarchus. Both mosaics of the opening of the Synaristosai show in addition a non-speaking servant figure, arguably female, reinforcing the sense of an all-female world.26 The disposition of the figures in the Zeugma mosaic is thus not best explained by copyists’ choices or mistakes. Rather, it suggests the stage realities of post-classical production. The much larger theatres of the Roman empire no longer used the ekkyklema to represent interior scenes; this would have been far too confined a space on those broader stages. Instead, Roman audiences, like those of today, could be asked to use their imagination to understand that tables and chairs created a domestic space, even if the stage would subsequently represent a market or a public street. The mosaic shows how Menander’s famous opening scene of the Synaristosai could be adapted to the Roman imperial stage. Zosimus’ signature is in the first instance a powerful signal that he is not simply copying the work of an earlier mosaicist. Beyond that, it stakes his claim to have represented Menander’s work as it was played in the artist’s own time.
Szene des ersten Aktes an so sehr in den Vordergrund der dramatischen Aktion, nirgendwo sonst ist die Hälfte der Rollen—hier sechs von zwölf—Frauen vorbehalten.” 25 For example, adesp. com. fr. 479, attributed by Arnott (his fr. 11) and others to this play, has the oath νὴ τὴν Ἄρτεμιν, probably reflected in the lena’s ecastor (15), a Latin oath used only by women (George Duckworth, The Nature of Roman Comedy [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952], p. 333). Other markers of female speech in the Greek include τάλαν (P.Heidelberg 175 line 8; Geoffrey W. Arnott (ed. and trans.), Menander, vol. III, Loeb Classical Library 460 [Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000], p. 332) and the oath μὰ τὼ θ[εώ (P.Oxy. 4305 line 10; Menander, vol. III, p. 340). A reference to the custom of women chewing white myrtle berries to sweeten the breath (fr. 336) likely belongs to the opening scene as well. 26 Arnott, Menander, vol. III (above, n. 25), pp. 326–7, suggests that the reference to ἡ βάρβαρος in fr. 341 implies that this servant girl was represented in the mosaics. The presence of a male servant in the house of Selenium/Plangon would be surprising, given that Alcesimarchus does not seem to live there full-time.
Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern Receptions
Laura Kendrick
Medieval Vernacular Versions of Ancient Comedy: Geoffrey Chaucer, Eustache Deschamps, Vitalis of Blois and Plautus’ Amphitryon Abstract: The late 14th-century poets Geoffrey Chaucer and Eustache Deschamps, as well as a number of contemporary translators and commentators of classical texts, engaged with ancient comedy largely, although not entirely, through freewheeling medieval Latin adaptations of it. As opposed to Vitalis of Blois, who justified the liberties he took by the need to “rejuvenate” Plautus’ comedies, and to Geoffrey Chaucer, who assimilated and mixed motifs from Latin comedies without acknowledgment in his Canterbury Tales, Eustache Deschamps produced a relatively faithful French translation of Vitalis’ 12th-century Latin Geta. Comparative examination of speaker indications in Deschamps’ Geta et Amphitrion and in manuscript copies of classical and medieval comedies suggests, contrary to what scholars have supposed, that Deschamps’ translation was meant for performance by characters. A possible context would have been the household of the Duke and Duchess of Orleans when Deschamps served there as maître d’hôtel and, seemingly, as master of entertainments.
Let it be said at the outset that neither Eustache Deschamps nor Geoffrey Chaucer, the most talented comic writers in French and in English in the late 14th century, ever mentioned the name of Plautus or Terence in their surviving works. Indeed, Deschamps never used the term “comedy” at all, and Chaucer did so only once: near the end of his Troilus and Criseyde, he sends his antique “tragedy,” set during the Trojan War, into the world in the written form of a little English book and, at the same time, invokes the aid of God to help him create a “comedy” before he dies: Go, litel bok, go, litel myn tragedye, Ther God thi makere yet, er that he dye, So sende might to make in som comedye! (V.1786–8)1
This explicit wish inaugurated a long critical tradition of considering the Canterbury Tales, which Chaucer began after finishing Troilus, as his attempt to produce an English vernacular version of ancient comedy. Chaucer’s use of “tragedy” to describe a verse narrative of betrayed love in besieged Troy suggests that his understanding of
1 Larry D. Benson et al. (ed.), The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987); subsequent references will be to this text.
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comedy was equally anachronistic. The question that will interest us, however, is not so much how closely medieval vernacular writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer and Eustache Deschamps imitated ancient comedy, but what they—and their contemporaries—thought they were doing.
Medieval Adaptations as Rejuvenations By 1439, John Lydgate was already praising Chaucer for his “fresh comedies” and linking his preeminence as a poet to these: “My maistir Chaucer, with his fresh comedies, / Is ded, allas, cheeff poete off Breteyne” (Fall of Princes, 1.246). “Fresh” meant vivid, gay or lively, as opposed to faded or dull. Lydgate’s allusions to ancient comedy, without reference to Chaucer, focus on its happy outcome: “A comedie hath in his gynnyng … a maner compleynyng, / And afterward endeth in gladness” (ca. 1420, Troy Book, 2.847) or stress the small-town, popular audience for comic song involving “many unkouth transmutacioun” (ca. 1449, “Misericordias domini in eternum cantabo,” line 67).2 It is unclear whether these transformations have to do with the subject matter of comedy (which involves various types of trickery and disguise, switches and swaps) or the nature of mimetic performance itself (which creates the illusion of transformation). Lydgate’s adjective, “uncouth,” could range in meaning from the strange to the unseemly, from the novel to the crude and distasteful. If we knew what texts (or commentaries) served as Lydgate’s models of comedy, it would be easier to understand what he meant by such adjectives. Lydgate both read and wrote Latin and, as a monk of the Benedictine abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, he had access to a library of around 2000 manuscripts. Rare texts of Plautus and Terence existed in English monastic or cathedral libraries prior to the 14th century,3 as on the continent. Bury St. Edmonds seems to have owned the comedies of Terence and eight of Plautus’ plays, including Amphitryon.4 Lydgate
2 Lydgate’s references to “comedie” are cited in the Middle English Dictionary online at http://quod. lib.umich.edu/m/med/. 3 For example, five of the first six comedies of the Varronian canon of Plautus’ plays, including Amphitryon, were collected in a late 11th- or 12th-century manuscript once belonging to Salisbury Cathedral, now British Library, Royal 15.C.XI. Folios 161v–162r from this manuscript may be viewed online at http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm. A 12th-century copy of comedies by Terence from St. Albans Abbey has survived as well, now Oxford, Bodleian Library ms. Auct. F. 2.13; see http://image.ox.ac.uk/show?collection=bodleian&manuscript=msauctf213. On surviving manuscripts, see Wolfgang de Melo’s introduction to Plautus: Amphitryon, The Comedy of Asses, The Pot of Gold, The Two Bacchises, The Captives, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. CIV–CXIL. I will use the spelling “Amphitryon” in referring to Plautus’ Latin play. 4 Rodney M. Thomson, “The Library of Bury St. Edmunds Abbey in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,” Speculum 47 (1972), p. 633. See also Claire Sponsler’s introduction to her edition of John Lydgate,
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had likely read 12th- and 13th-century comedies that were revised versions or imitations of Plautine and Terentian comedy; these imitations, written in rhymed Latin elegiac meter, were widely copied in pamphlet form for several centuries and studied by schoolboys to make their linguistic efforts more entertaining. There are, for example, some 170 surviving copies of Pamphilus and over 65 of Geta.5 Chaucer certainly knew some of these comedies, for he mentions Pamphilus twice in the Canterbury Tales,6 and he borrows plot elements from two others, Lidia and Geta, although without naming them, in his Merchant’s Tale. Chaucer’s attitude toward his comic sources, as we shall see, was even more irreverent than that of some 12thcentury Latin poets. The Vitalis (probably of Blois) who names himself in the prologue to Aulularia as the reviser of two comedies by Plautus, “first the Amphitryon and now the Aulularia,”7 takes credit for improving Plautus and making him more pleasing to contemporary audiences by abbreviating names and making the language more familiar, thus rejuvenating works “long oppressed by age.”8 Vitalis adapts Plautus’ Amphitryon,
Mummings and Entertainments (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2010), online at http:// www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/scjlintro.htm. 5 Even though utilitarian, unbound school texts did not have a high survival rate, 67 manuscripts and seven fragments of Geta survive, and some of these were copied in England. At the Abbey of Ramsey in the final quarter of the 14th century, for example, a trilingual miscellany was compiled (now Oxford, Bodleian Library ms. Bodley 851) containing, among other texts, medieval Latin comedies: Geta, Babio and part of Miles Gloriosus. Paris, BNF ms. lat. 8430, dating from the end of the 13th or the beginning of the 14th century, compiles both Pamphilus and Geta (following Ovid’s De arte amandi and Amores); the scribe begins the text with “Incipit Geta” (f. 67v) and concludes with “Here ends Geta, a most laughable book” (“Explicit hic Geta liber ridiculosus,” f. 71v). On surviving copies of Geta and Pamphilus, see Ferruccio Bertini et al., Commedie latine del XII e XIII secolo, 5 vols. (Genoa: Instituto di Filologia Classica e Medievale, 1976–1986). For Geta, see vol. 3, pp. 160–5; for Pamphilus, vol. 3, pp. 47–8. See also Franz G. Becker, Pamphilus: Prolegomena zum Pamphilus (de amore) und kritische Textausgabe (Düsseldorf: A. Henn, 1979). For comparison of the “prodigious” number of surviving copies of medieval Latin comedies to the scarcity of vernacular comedies from the same era, see Carol Symes, “The Performance and Preservation of Medieval Latin Comedy,” European Medieval Drama 7 (2003), p. 43. 6 Chaucer alludes to Pamphilus in The Franklin’s Tale (F 1110), where comparison is made to the secrecy of Pamphilus’ love for “Galathee,” and in The Tale of Melibee (B2 2745–52), where the allegorical figure of Prudence quotes three sayings from “Pamphilles.” 7 “Amphitrion nuper, nunc Aulularia tandem /Senserunt senio pressa Vitalis opem” (lines 27–8). All quotations of Aulularia are from Bertini, Commedie latine (above, n. 5), vol. 1. The English translation is by Alison Goddard Elliott, Seven Medieval Latin Comedies (New York: Garland, 1984), p. 51. 8 Here Vitalis neglects to mention that he was working also with an intermediary, probably 5thcentury, Latin verse adaptation of the Aulularia known as Querolus (from the name of its main character), or labeled Querolus sive Aulularia, a text studied in the schools of Orleans. See Keith Bate, “Language for School and Court: Comedy in Geta, Alda and Babio,” in: L’Eredità classica nel Medioevo: il linguaggio comico, Atti del III convegno di Studio, Viterbo, 26–28 May 1978 (Viterbo: Anesotti, 1978), p. 144. If there was also a late antique adaptation of Plautus’ Amphitryon, no trace of it has survived.
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giving first billing to the servant (no longer a slave), whose name he changes from Sosia to Geta.9 In the prologue to Geta (written before Aulularia), Vitalis names neither himself nor Plautus, but he complains that ancient authors get praise while modern ones are little appreciated or rewarded: “Even if someone really is pleased / by a literary work, he still bears it ill will and, praising the ancient authors, / does not know how to enjoy the modern.”10 Are the “new” works in question revised and rejuvenated versions of older ones such as those Vitalis wrote? Most 12th- and 13thcentury Latin comedies name no ancient source, even when the names or roles of their characters recollect those of Terence or Plautus.11 What benefit was there for the contemporary poet if the ancient author he adapted got all the credit? Vitalis, in his prologue to Geta, judges that the poet with no money, no reward for his writing, is “nobody,” no matter how wise he is: “You can be just as wise as you like; / if you have no money, you’re nobody.”12 This wording resonates with that of the main character of this play, who pronounces himself a nobody. Geta’s learning (of a few sophistic syllogisms) results only in doubts about and even temporary renunciation of his own identity in the face of another Geta, whom he takes to be himself. The theme of the double, treated with such wit by Vitalis and so full of possibilities for comic theatrical representation,13 is relevant also to the situation of the writer who sets out to adapt an earlier text, who imitates and “ventriloquizes” another. In the prologue to his second adaptation of Plautus, the Aulularia, Vitalis calls attention to the confusion of identities that results from revising an ancient work. For the breach of decorum of involving the gods in comedy—indeed, giving Jupiter the usual role of the yearning “adolescent” (adulescens)—he insists that we should not blame him, for he is only following Plautus: “That’s Plautus’ fault, not mine. / I am
9 Keith Bate has edited Geta from a single manuscript of the second half of the 12th century, now Berne, Bürgerbibliothek, cod. 702, the oldest surviving copy, once owned by a lawyer from Orleans. My quotations from Geta will be from this edition, in Bate’s Three Latin Comedies, Toronto Medieval Latin Texts (Toronto: Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies, 1976), pp. 13–34. Recent critical editions of Geta are by Arnold Paeske, Der “Geta” des Vitalis von Blois, kritische Ausgabe (Cologne: R. J. Hundt, 1976), and Bertini, Commedie latine (above, n. 5), vol. 3. 10 Geta 20: laudans ueteres nesci amare nouos; trans. Elliott (above, n. 7), p. 26. 11 In revising Plautus’ Amphitryon, Vitalis not only changed Sosia’s name to Geta, but, as scholars have remarked, he borrowed this name from Terence, just as he borrowed the names of the other characters he added, along with Terence’s practice of providing a prologue and synopsis of the action. See Jan M. Ziolkowski, “The Humour of Logic and the Logic of Humour in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance,” Journal of Medieval Latin 3 (1993), p. 13 n. 3: “the names of the slaves derive from the comedies of Terence: Sannio in Adelphoe, Sanga in Eununchus, Davos in Andria and Phoemio, Byrria in Andria, and Geta in Phormio and Adelphoe. Further Terentian traits are the prologue and argument.” 12 Geta 16: Multa licet sapias, re sine nullus eris; trans. Elliott (above, n. 7), p. 26. 13 In “The Humour of Logic” (above, n. 11), Ziolkowski points out that “whereas Plautus achieved his humour almost exclusively through a comedy of errors … [and] restricted himself mainly to the theatrical dimensions of the double, Vitalis uses the double … to probe philosophically disconcerting issues of duality, duplication, duplicity, and, above all, dialectic” (p. 14).
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free from all blame; I’m only following Plautus.”14 Yet two lines later Vitalis is sharing the play with Plautus: “this comedy—mine or Plautus’,”15 before insisting on his own appropriation of what once belonged to the earlier poet: “that which was Plautus’ is now mine.”16 As he points out, however, it is still Plautus who “benefits” from what Vitalis has subtracted from him (through various kinds of abbreviation); it is still Plautus who is made more “pleasing” through the efforts of Vitalis.17 Latin adaptations and imitations of ancient comedy took many forms in the 12th and 13th centuries, most tending toward verse narrative spoken by an expository voice, with varying proportions of dialogue. Because so many narrative explanations and identifying tags, such as “he said,” are worked into the verse, most scholars have believed that these medieval Latin comedies were intended for reading and study or for performance by at most a single reader, who could imitate different voices, possibly with the aid of mimes to impersonate the various characters.18 Yet after the opening synopsis or argument, the comedy of Babio is all dialogue, and Pamphilus nearly so; furthermore, changes of speaker in these two texts are indicated in some manuscripts by abbreviations of the characters’ names or other marks (as in texts of ancient comedy).19 This suggests that some medieval Latin comedies may have been meant for a fuller sort of impersonation than others. Most focus on the fictions clever
14 Aulularia (above, n. 7), lines 20–1: Crimina Plautus habet. /Absoluar culpa: Plautum sequor; trans. Elliott (above, n. 7), p. 50. 15 Aulularia 23: Hec, mea vel Plauti, comedia … 16 Aulularia 24: … sed Plauti qui fuit, illa mea est. 17 Aulularia, 25–6: Curtavi Plautum: Plautum hec iactura beavit; /Ut placeat Plautus, scripta Vitalis emunt; trans. Elliott (above, n. 7), pp. 50–1: “I have curtailed Plautus, and he is enriched by the loss; / Vitalis’s writings earn applause for Plautus.” 18 Looked at from another perspective, narrative phrases or passages may provide “built-in” stage directions. For example, rather than complicating the layout of the text with additions such as rubricated or marginal speaker designations, marginal paragraphus signs or other marks, these could be written into the text itself, even rhymed with lines of dialogue. So Carol Symes argues in “Performance and Preservation” (above, n. 5), p. 40: “narrative elements helped to preserve the integrity of early dramatic documents, ensuring that essential information for performers would not be lost if an individual scribe had neither the time, inclination, nor expertise to supply marginalia, glosses, or other apparatus.” Symes develops her pragmatic analysis at greater length in “The Appearance of Early Vernacular Plays: Forms, Functions and the Future of Medieval Theater,” Speculum 77 (2002), pp. 778– 831. 19 The use of abbreviated names or other marks to indicate changes of speaker in rewriting manuscripts of ancient comedy, however, continued throughout the Middle Ages. This was as true for Terence and Plautus as for Aristophanes. See J.C.B. Lowe, “The Manuscript Evidence for Changes of Speaker in Aristophanes,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 9 (1962), p. 27: “The thirteenthand fourteenth-century manuscripts in general preface each new speech in the dialogue with an abbreviated form of the speaker’s name (or description, if he is nameless). This system we have taken over not only for modern editions of classical texts but for all dramatic texts. Nevertheless, occasionally … changes of speaker are marked simply by a dash, which is clearly a survival of the paragraphus common in papyri.”
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characters “stage” through trickery and ruse in order to satisfy their desires (usually sexual, usually illicit).20 Even the most narrative of these medieval Latin comedies place the reading or listening audience in the enjoyably superior position of knowing what the dupe(s) do not and thus being able to appreciate what we call dramatic ironies. The relationship between 12th- and 13th-century Latin comedy and 13th- and 14th-century vernacular comic tales known as fabliaux, which are also rhymed verse narratives with varying degrees of dialogue, has been debated in the past. Edmond Faral argued that medieval Latin comedies should be thought of as fabliaux: “the medieval Latin tale was derived from ancient comic drama; abusively designated by the name of comedy, it presents, in its spirit and the nature of its subjects, the closest analogies with the fabliau, or, more precisely, is nothing else, under the deceptive cloak of academic style, but the fabliau.”21 Faral stressed the interpenetration of entertaining vernacular tales and medieval Latin comedies; from his point of view, the medieval Latin comedies were so fully adapted to their audiences that they ought not to be considered comedies at all but fabliaux. Per Nykrog, on the other hand, argued that the two were very different: “The favorite character of Latin comic writers in the 12th and 13th centuries is that of the slave—or the servant—who is ugly, gluttonous, lazy and often stupid. French fabliaux do not use this character at all, which is inexplicable if the fabliaux were inspired by Latin. Furthermore, the names of characters in the Latin tales are those of analogous characters in ancient literature, but these names are nowhere to be found in French fabliaux. Yet romances of antiquity show that medieval storytellers could easily transpose Greek or Latin names into French.”22 Nykrog’s objections are answered, in part, by Vitalis’ brief explanation of his technique of shortening and changing characters’ names and using “domesticated words” (albeit Latin ones) to make Plautus’ comedies (Amphitryon and Aulularia) more pleasing to contemporary audiences. In much the same modernizing spirit, the slaves of ancient comedy were transformed in 12th-century Latin comedies into servants or young people, who were more often wily than stupid, and the fabliaux followed in the same vein. Whereas the medieval Latin comedies maintained the fiction of a nominally Greek or Roman setting for the action and used Latin speech, the 13th- and 14th-century fabliaux shifted the setting to the contemporary world and its vernacular and thus entertained a potentially much broader audience than medieval Latin comedy could do. The medieval reception of ancient comedy was decidedly modernizing and irreverent. Nothing was too authoritative to change.
20 Konrad Schoell, La Farce du quinzième siècle (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1992), p. 28, notes that comic theater is characterized by its intrigue staged by the character of the duper or “rusé,” by its very consciousness of staging a play within the play. 21 Edmond Faral, “Le Fabliau latin au moyen âge,” Romania 50 (1924), p. 385 (my translation). 22 Per Nykrog, Les Fabliaux (Geneva: Droz, 1957; reprint 1973), p. LI (my translation).
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To exemplify the amplitude of these revisions, let us examine one of the changes Vitalis made in rejuvenating Plautus’ Amphitryon in his own Geta, and the way Chaucer creatively adapted Geta at the end of his Merchant’s Tale by interweaving plot elements from another 12th-century Latin comedy, Lidia, probably written by Arnulf of Orleans. The two comedies were connected in the prologue of Lidia, which vaunts the audacity of its deceits as compared to those of Geta: “Whoever is unfamiliar with Pearus / and the pears fallen from the pear tree, smiles when he hears Geta and is overcome by laughter; / but will anyone be amazed at Jupiter’s deceit or the crimes committed by gods if he recalls / Lidia and what she is capable of doing? / Who will marvel at Amphitryon, deceived by Jupiter / only once, when Lidia deceived Decius four times? / Amphitryon, moreover, believed that nothing was something, / whereas Decius believed that what he saw was nothing. / A suitable ruse deceived them both with an equal deceit; / tricked, each thought deceit no deceit.”23 In Plautus’ Amphitryon, the philandering Jupiter, disguised as Amphitryon, sleeps with the latter’s beautiful wife, Alcumena, while Amphitryon is away at war. When Amphitryon returns home, it is Jupiter who gets the wife off the hook (after much comic misunderstanding) by sending portents and finally descending from heaven to explain to the irate husband how Alcumena was tricked, but also to reveal the identity of the newborn twins: one is Hercules, while Amphitryon himself sired the other boy earlier. The contentment of the cuckold at the end of Vitalis’ Geta is not achieved by Jupiter, who returns to heaven for good once he has satisfied his desire, leaving Alcmena to fend for herself. Vitalis’ Alcmena is quick-witted enough to invent an excuse to satisfy her husband. When he threatens to beat her, she promptly claims that she was only dreaming he had already been home and spent the night making love to her, which convinces him that there was never anything going on behind the barred doors of his house. In Vitalis’ Geta, the cuckolded scholar-husband’s content-
23 Trans. Elliott (above, n. 7), p. 126; for the Latin edition of Lidia by Edmond Lackenbacher, see Gustave Cohen et al. (eds.), La “Comédie” latine en France au XIIe siècle, vol. 1 (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1931): Audit et in Getam ridet premiturque cachinno, Qui Pirrum nescit uel pira missa piro. Quis stupet insidias Iouis aut facinus deitatis, Si recolit que sit Lidia quidue potest? Quis Ioue miratur lusum semel Amphitruona, Cum lusit Decium Lidia fraude quater? Credere quod nichil est aliquid fuit Amphitruoni, Quod uidit Decius credidit esse nichil: Conueniens parili fraus fraude fefellit utrumque; Lusus uterque dolo non putat esse dolum. (p. 16, lines 7–16) Probably written by Arnulf of Orleans after 1175, the medieval Latin comedy Lidia was turned into an Italian tale by Boccaccio, who voiced it through the character of “Pamphylo” as the ninth story of the seventh day of his Decameron.
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ment is due simply to having his wife to himself again, and there is no allusion to a pregnancy, whereas in Plautus, the warrior-husband is content with the bonus of becoming the father or presumptive father of twin sons, one a demi-god with a brilliant future. Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale re-integrates the desire for paternity Vitalis left out of his Geta. Chaucer’s cuckolded husband is not a scholar (as in Geta) but a blind old Lombard knight named January, who longs for an heir, and his wife alludes to her pregnant “condition” to persuade him to let her climb into the pear tree for the pears she is dying to eat.24 Like both Plautus’ and Vitalis’ Latin comedies, Chaucer’s vernacular fabliau atypically involves classical gods in a human couple’s love-life. But Chaucer opts for the more audacious, “in-your-face” deceit and copulation of Lidia, rather than the adultery behind closed doors of Amphitryon and Geta. Chaucer replaces the philandering Jupiter and his accomplice-son Mercury with a mismatched divine couple, Pluto and Proserpina, who have been walking in January’s garden and arguing.25 As spectators of the cuckolding, the gods take sides; Pluto intervenes to give January back his sight, while Proserpina gives May her glib tongue to defend herself. January leaves the scene a happy cuckold, stroking his wife’s belly,26 convinced that his pregnant young wife “struggled” with a man in a tree to make him see again, and that his newly returned sight must be imperfect if he saw what he thought he did. The pregnancy or supposed pregnancy of the “adulterous” wife is an important feature in Plautus’ Amphitryon,27 but it plays no part in the 12th-century Latin comedy known as Lidia, from which Chaucer adapted the pear-tree episode in his Merchant’s Tale. Nor does pregnancy play any part in Boccaccio’s retelling of Lidia in his Decameron. In the Latin comedy, it is Lidia’s lover “Pearus” (a name that enables much punning) who convinces the old husband that what he has seen from his perch in the pear tree (his wife copulating with her lover on the ground below) is an illusion,
24 “I telle yow wel, a womman in my plit / May han to fruyt so greet an appetit / That she may dyen but she of it have” (The Merchant’s Tale, lines 2335–7). 25 The idea of introducing Pluto and Proserpine (whose return to earth brings springtime) may have been suggested by the narrator’s comment in Geta about the effect of Jupiter’s and Mercury’s arrival on earth: “They leave heaven. The earth gives off the fragrance / of gentle spring, sensing the presence of gods” (trans. Elliott [above, n. 7], p. 28); Geta 57–8: Deseritur celum. Vernali mitis odore / respirauit humus: senserat esse deos. 26 “He kisseth hire and clippeth hire ful ofte, / And on hire wombe he stroketh hire ful softe” (The Merchant’s Tale, lines 2413–14). 27 On the novelty of a visibly pregnant character onstage in ancient comedy, see David Christenson, “Grotesque Realism in Plautus’s Amphitruo,”Classical Journal 96 (2001), pp. 244–5: “No other character in extant Greek and Roman drama appears pregnant on stage…. Alcmena, who unwittingly engages in adultery, holds the stage in her bloated and caricatured form in no less than five scenes. … The appearance of any pregnant character, let alone an exaggeratedly stuffed matrona, must have had an arresting visual effect on Plautus’ audience….”
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and that the tree is enchanted. Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale, on the other hand, like Geta, is quickly brought to a close by the wife’s own verbal ruse, which convinces her husband that “reality” (his cuckolding) is “illusion” (hallucination, dream). Although similarities between the pear-tree episode in the Merchant’s Tale and Lidia have long been recognized, scholars have not noticed that Chaucer’s comic treatment of pagan gods has its precedent in Vitalis’ Geta and Plautus’ Amphitryon.28 Indeed, this is due to the freewheeling, irreverent way medieval writers such as Chaucer treated earlier comedies, adapting and mixing them to create what Lydgate would call “fresh comedies.”29
Preservation and Performance of Deschamps’ Geta et Amphitrion The changes Chaucer’s French contemporary Eustache Deschamps made to his French translation of the entirety of Vitalis’ Geta are more conservative and respectful of his source text. Deschamps took liberties of three main sorts: he transformed Vitalis’ Latin elegiac meters into French octosyllabic rhyming couplets; he elaborated and exaggerated Geta’s ridiculous, kitchen sophistries, as well as Birrea’s skeptical commentaries on them,30 and he invented new word play that works in French to substitute for Plautus’ and Vitalis’ Latin puns.31 Like Vitalis’ Geta, Deschamps’ verna-
28 Nevertheless, many resemblances of plot and character between Latin comedy and fabliaux are discussed by Kathleen A. Bishop, “The Influence of Plautus and Latin Elegaic Comedy on Chaucer’s Fabliaux,” The Chaucer Review 35 (2001), pp. 294–317. 29 Chaucer’s friend John Gower took considerable liberties with the story of Vitalis’ Geta, or knew it imperfectly, for he used it as an exemplum of “supplantation” and turned Geta into the husband cuckolded by his friend “Amphitrion,” who imitated Geta’s voice to deceive Geta’s wife and gain entrance to her bed (Confessio amantis 2.2459–95). Boccaccio also gave a synopsis of the story of Geta in his Amorosa visione (lines 70–88). In this case, there is no mention of Amphitryon at all; it is Geta who is cuckolded by Jove, while “Birria” complains under his load of books, as in Vitalis’ comedy. 30 It was Vitalis who transformed Plautus’ returning miles gloriosus into a studens gloriosus and put him in the comic position of a sort of human caryatid, nearly crushed under a load of his master’s books. Whereas Vitalis’ Geta merely relishes the prospect of using his newly memorized syllogisms to turn his fellow servant Birria into an ass, Deschamps’ Geta has boundless confidence in his mastery of the transformative power of syllogistic reasoning, which he boasts that he will use, once back home in his “kitchen,” to turn those who anger him into she asses or jack asses, oxen, goats, ewes, rabbits, hares, reptiles, garter snakes, lions, bears, wolves or foxes (VIII, 222–3, lines 328–60). On Vitalis’ “academic” innovations, see Ziolkowski, “The Humour of Logic” (above, n. 11); on Plautus’ braggart slaves, see Schironi (this volume, pp. 450–3). 31 For example, Deschamps repeatedly puns on the name Geta and forms of the verb jeter (“to throw”) in the lapidation scene, where Geta, eager to shift the burden of books to Birrea, throws stones at him to force him out of the hole where he is hiding to avoid work:
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cular version, which we will call Geta et Amphitrion, uses narrative passages to frame a preponderance of monologue and dialogue. The sole surviving copy of the text, on folios 455r–463r of Paris, BNF ms. fr. 840, Deschamps’ collected works, is clearly addressed to readers. The initial rubric ends with the phrase “as it may appear to readers” (“si comme ce pourra apparoir aux lisans,” VIII, 211).32 But reading was generally done aloud at this time and to others; it entailed a vocal performance of the visual text. In the table of contents of BNF ms. fr. 840, which would have been added to the volume last, the text is identified as both a translation from Latin and a “treatise:” “Traicté de Geta et d’Amphitrion mis de latin en françois.” A treatise is a written document, a record of oral discussion, sometimes the result of an oral negotiation between different parties. Raoul Tainguy, the scribe who copied and compiled Deschamps’ works in BNF ms. fr. 840 in the first decade of the 15th century working from materials the deceased poet himself must have collected,33 chose to stress the classical with his labels: the title in the table of contents reintegrates the Greek name
Lors commence a getta Geta, Onques nulz homs mieulx ne geta. Souvent gette et point ne detrie; Et Birrea merci lui crie (VIII, 225, lines 439–42). The spellings of the different verb forms “getta,” “geta” and “gette” reflect pronunciations that accentuate the pun on Geta’s name. Although the lapidation scene was Vitalis’ invention, he did not get as much mileage out of it as Deschamps did. A few lines before this, when Birrea overhears Geta’s provocative boast that he will turn him into an ass, Birrea mutters from his hole that the overburdened Geta would have done better to use the transformative powers of his logic to conjure up a horse to do his packing, a “cheval morel,” punning on Deschamps’ family name “Morel,” meaning dark brown, a common name for horses in medieval French. It has been suggested that Deschamps was playing on his given name as well with an anagram for “Eustace” in the same line: “you ought to have made a brown horse” (“faire dEUST un ChEvAl morel,” VIII, 223, line 372). See Didier Lechat, “Le Traité de Geta et Amphitrion d’Eustache Deschamps, œuvre sosie du Geta de Vital de Blois,” in: Danielle Buschinger (ed.), Autour d’Eustache Deschamps, Actes du Colloque du Centre d’Etudes Médiévales de l’Université de Picardie-Jules Verne, Amiens, 5–8 Novembre 1998 (Amiens: Université de Picardie, 1999), p. 159. 32 Œuvres complètes d’Eustache Deschamps, eds. Le Marquis de Queux de Saint-Hilaire and Gaston Raynaud, 11 vols. (Paris: Didot, 1878–1901). All references to Deschamps’ Geta et Amphitrion or his other works will be to this edition; volume numbers will be given in Roman numerals, followed by page-numbers in Arabic numerals. For a black-and-white reproduction of Paris, BNF ms. fr. 840, in which the play begins on f. 455r, see http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b90075948. 33 See Marie-Hélène Tesnière, “Les manuscrits copiés par Raoul Tainguy, un aspect de la culture des grands officiers royaux au début du XVesiècle,” Romania 426–7 (1986), p. 313: “The manuscript, copied carelessly, as if in a hurry, is the work of at least three or four copyists, but the essential part is due to Raoul Tainguy, who signs on folio 581v and seems to have directed the whole” (my translation). Tainguy was a scribe who frequently worked for Arnaud de Corbie, longtime Chancellor of France and former premier president of the Parliament, who would have known Deschamps from at least the late 1370s on. In BNF ms. fr. 840, there is even a ballad ascribed to “Corbie” that seems to emanate from a playful poetry competition (for the poems have the same rhymes and refrain—“Par la mort dont Dieux vint a vie”—and string together blasphemous oaths) (see I, 271–7, ballads 145–8).
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of Amphitryon, while the initial rubric identifies the text as a mythological narrative in verse (“histoire de poeterie”). Raoul Tainguy did not, however, explicitly identify Deschamps’ text with Latin comedy; he did not label it “comedie,” even though the French translation for comoedia was current in late 14th-century learned circles, as was a tendency to understand ancient Latin comedy in terms of contemporary sorts of comic performance. The entourages of kings Charles V and Charles VI and their brothers were engaged in translating Latin classics to French in the final decades of the 14th century and also in commenting on and interpreting these. Both Deschamps and Raoul Tainguy probably knew of these efforts. Nicole Oresme, in his translation and commentary on Aristotle’s Politics (ca. 1372–1374), explained comedy as a sort of public playing done in disguise, using masks and reciting the roles of characters, and treating matters that were vulgar and dishonorable: “Comedies estoient uns gieux que l’en faisoit en publique, et se desguisoient les gens et prenoient faulz visages et recitoient personages de choses villaines et deshonestes.” Oresme went on to compare ancient comedy to contemporary charivari, in that both involved grumbling and ugly behavior (“Et faisoient rechignemens et laides contenances, si comme l’en seult faire es charivaliz”).34 In his earlier translation and commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics (ca. 1370), Oresme linked ancient comedies with “those they make today” and went on to define comedy as a play in which each person speaks his character (“dit chascun son personnage”), that is, his part or role written in rhymes on a roll (“en ont aucuns roulles et rimes”). Oresme’s analogy comes from a religious play, or a burlesque parody of one, involving “a man who represents Saint Paul, another Judas, another a hermit.” A few pages earlier in the same translation and commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics, Oresme classed the reciters of ancient comedies with medieval “goliards” and labeled their verse or song as vulgar (“Et a gouliardois et disëeurs de comedies, c’est a dire, de villains ditéz ou vilainnes chançons”). Nicole Oresme’s contemporary Raoul de Presles, in his translation and commentary on Augustine’s City of God (ca. 1375), understood ancient comedy and tragedy as both being impersonated and involving musical accompaniment: “there were players of various instruments and others who disguised themselves (‘desguisoient’) and imitated or impersonated (‘contrafaisoient’) the characters of whom the tragedy or comedy speaks.” Raoul’s emphasis is on the base, sexual nature of comic action in the following passage: “Comedy is comprised of the actions of persons in private life, the whoring and dirty tricks (“conchiemens”) that they perform in such debaucheries.” A few years later, Simon de Hesdin, translating and glossing Valerius Maximus (Paris, BNF ms. fr. 9749, f. 174v), defined the action and audience of ancient comedy even more specifically: “Others who were called comedes or comedien were those who, in verse, recited the deeds of people’s private lives, such
34 This passage is cited under the definitions of personnage in the 2012 edition of the Dictionnaire du moyen français (1330–1500), online at http://www.atilf.fr/dmf (my translations).
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as the deflowering of virgins, the vulgarities and misdeeds of foolish women and their loves, and such matters as delighted the people.”35 All three translators agreed that the subject matter of ancient comedy was vulgar and that it was conveyed in verse. Simon de Hesdin seemed to suggest recitation by a single player, leaving unclear the degree of visual and vocal mime involved. Nicole Oresme, on the other hand, clearly stated that different actors spoke the parts of the various characters. While insisting on the importance of costume or “disguise” to hide the player’s true identity, Raoul de Presles also stated that the players “imitate” the characters of the comedy. The verb “contrefaire” at this time covered copying of comportment but also of language, often in order to trick someone.36 But where did Nicolas Oresme, Raoul de Presles and Simon de Hesdin get their ideas about ancient comedy? Certainly much came from the Latin commentary tradition.37 Yet in trying to make ancient comedy understandable, these French translator-commentators revised and rejuvenated the genre with allusions to what they believed had survived of it into their own era, especially plays with character roles and masked charivari.38 It is not inconceivable that they had read or seen an old manuscript containing illustrations of scenes from the plays by Terence.39 It is probably more likely, however, that their
35 All these examples are cited from the Dictionnaire du moyen français (above, n. 34), under comédie and comedien (my translations). Raoul de Presles’ remarks, from his commentary on La Cité de Dieu, are found in an unpublished early 15th-century manuscript (Paris, BNF ms. fr. 6272, f. 29v–30r) online at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9060428d. 36 For example, the verb contrefaire is used specifically with reference to imitated speech in the records of the French Chancery in Poitou to recount an incident (worthy of farce but apparently serious) that occurred in 1351: in order to extract a ransom from fellow francophones whom they beat and took prisoner, one Symon Goin and his accomplices pretended to be English, “faisans comme Angloys et contrefaisans leur lengages.” The verb faire here refers to imitation of gesture and comportment, presumably brutal, while the verb contrefaire expresses linguistic mimicry, imitation of English speech. 37 See Joseph R. Jones, “Isidore and the Theater,” Comparative Drama 16 (1982), pp. 26–48; Mary H. Marshall, “Theatre in the Middle Ages: Evidence from Dictionaries and Glosses,” Symposium 4 (1950), pp. 1–39. 38 Raoul de Presles’ comments on ancient comedy and its sources are discussed by Sandra Pietrini, “Medieval Entertainers and the Memory of Ancient Theater,” in: Cesare Molinari (ed.), Renaissance du théâtre, théâtre de la Renaissance, a special issue of Revue international de Philosophie 252 (2010), pp. 167–71. Pietrini concludes: “Raoul de Presles’s assimilation of the Roman ludi to contemporary performances—the jeux de personnages, the charivari, the dits of the troubadours, and the interludes— demonstrates that the theatre was no longer a surviving memory of the past but a real presence in everyday life. The imaginary theatre of antiquity is thus seen as directly related to the vast range of performances that took place in medieval society” (p. 171). 39 The more than 150 scenes sketched in ink in the 9th-century Terence manuscript (Paris, BNF ms. lat. 7899), which belonged to the Abbey of Saint Denis, may be seen online at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:// 12148/btv1b84525513. For color photos of an illustrated collection of plays by Terence in a manuscript copied around 1100 in Tours (Tours, Bibliothèque municipale ms. 0924), see http://www.enluminures. culture.fr/documentation/enlumine/fr/rechexperte_00.htm and enter “Terence” under “auteur ouv-
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understanding of comic performance came from scholarly performances of medieval Latin comedies and from festive performances in the vernacular of a burlesque or comic nature. Although Raoul Tainguy did not identity Deschamps’ translation of Geta as a comedy but as a treatise for readers, he did produce—or reproduce—a page layout that called attention to changes of speaker, a layout he used for this purpose in other texts placed both earlier and later in BNF ms. fr. 840.40 Throughout the text of Deschamps’ Geta et Amphitrion, the copyist centered the name of the speaking
rage.” For other surviving manuscripts, see Leslie Webber Jones and C. R. Morey, The Miniatures of the Manuscripts of Terence Prior to the Thirteenth Century, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1931). 40 For example, on folios 274v–275r, a prophecy that seems to involve three different speakers or attitudes is laid out in this way, with a series of quatrains headed by red rubrics labeled “Admiration” and “Response” shifting to “Question” and “Response” (V, 320–3). On f. 282v–283r, a dialogue in quatrains on the vices of the times has rubrics announcing each “Question” and “Response” (V, 367–9). On f. 437v–440v, a more traditional question-and-answer game full of sexual innuendo played by both sexes is laid out in the same way to signal each change of speaker, giving the impression that the 339line poem is a compilation of spoken roles (VIII, 112–26). Not only did the scribe mark each rubric announcing a new question or answer with a paragraphus just to the left of it, but he marked the first line of the new question or answer just under the rubric with an even larger paragraphus in alternating red and blue inks. On f. 376v–380v, the scribe used a similar method to indicate who speaks in the “Dit des .IIII. offices de l’hostel du roy … à jouer par personnaiges” (VII, 175–92). The initial rubric of this “Dit,” which turns out to be a comic, entirely dialogued dispute, calls for its performance by characters (“personnaiges”). The boasts and accusations of four personified departments of a contemporary French royal or princely household—wine, bread, cuisine and sauces (“Eschançonnerie,” “Panneterie,” “Cuisine,” “Sausserie”)—are announced with red rubrics indicating who speaks; each rubric is centered in the middle of the column of writing directly above the speech, which is marked to the left of its first line with a red paragraphus. The dispute is brought to an end by a fifth character, labeled “Maistre d’Ostel,” and the play ends happily as the four rivals join in a drinking-song. Even though this poem is introduced by its rubric as a “dit” in the sole surviving copy of BNF ms. fr. 840, its layout indicates that it is a play intended for oral performance by several speakers, as does the final phrase of the same rubric, “to be played by characters.” Furthermore, in the table of contents of BNF ms. fr. 840, this text appears under the heading of “Farces” (along with “La farce de Me Trubert et d’Antronguart), although it is not called a farce here but an “impersonation” (“Le personnaige des .IIII. offices royaux”). One burlesque chanson royal (a five-strophe ballad with envoy) is even introduced by its rubric as being “à jouer par personnaiges” (to be played by characters). The rubrics of this farcical slanging match, which appears on f. 450r, indicate who speaks with the formulas “La ribaulde parle” (the bawd speaks) and “Le ribault parle” (the ruffian speaks), before reverting simply to “la ribaulde” and “le ribault,” and ending with their sudden arrest and accusation by two new characters, the provost and his sergeant (VIII, 182–4). For an attempt to classify Deschamps’ dialogued poems, see Aurélie Mazingue, “Les indices de la théâtralité dans la poésie d’Eustache Deschamps,” in: Thierry Lassabatère and Miren Lacassagne (eds.), Eustache Deschamps, Témoin et modèle: Littérature et société politique (XIVe–XVIe siècles) (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2008), pp. 69–88. Mazingue does not treat the page layout of Deschamps’ dialogued poems, nor does she treat Deschamps’ vernacular translation of Vitalis’ Geta, which she finds to be more of an “exercise in translation than of dramatization, closer to
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character or the narrator (designated as “l’acteur”) on a separate line in the middle of the text column and wrote it in red. In addition, he signaled the change with a paragraphus mark in alternating red and blue inks just to the left of the first line of each new speech. There are a few errors in the planning, when a separate line was forgotten for the rubric indicating the new speaker’s name. In these cases, the name of the new speaker is written in red at the end of the preceding speech, and a paragraphus mark indicates the beginning of the new speech on the line below. Still legible are several tiny abbreviations of speaker names to the right of the columns (reminders for later rubrication), as for example on folios 456v and 457r.41 Whereas “traicté” in the table of contents is almost certainly an identification that does not come from Deschamps, speaker designations could have been indicated in the copies from which Raoul Tainguy worked. Some late 14th-century or early 15thcentury manuscripts of medieval Latin comedy42 leave an entire line free for each rubricated speaker name, as Raoul Tainguy did in copying Deschamps’s translation of Vitalis’ Geta.43 Most scribes seem to have been more economical with space than this, yet fine medieval copies of Plautus and Terence, especially those that enact the text with accompanying pictures, do usually provide abbreviated names and/or paragra-
Latin comedy than to theater in the vernacular.” Nevertheless, she judges that Deschamps’ translation of Geta gives “additional proof of his attachment to dramatic material” (my translation, p. 88). 41 A text which the table of contents identifies as a farce, “La Farce de Me Trubert et d’Antronguart,” is copied as if it were a fabliau, with no indications of changes of speaker, even though it is almost exclusively dialogue and ends with a drinking-song (lines 620–1). Only the name of “Barat” (“Liar,” one of the judges of the dice game) appears in a tiny script to the left of a passage on f. 374v (VII, 167, line 386), where the dice game gets underway and a rapid-fire, polyvocal exchange replaces simple dialogue. The rubric heading the text summarizes its story or fable: “how a man found another in his garden picking an almond and how he had him thrown in prison and the judgment that came of it” (f. 372r–376v; VII, 155–74). The plot of this piece, based on the duping of the duper, is common in French fabliaux and Latin comedy. Raynaud indicates changes of speaker by adding a dash before each new speech in his edition (VII, 155–74). 42 See the selection of photographic reproductions of different manuscripts’ page layouts in the five volumes of Bertini, Commedie latine (above, n. 5). Changes of speaker are marked by rubrics set apart on lines by themselves in the late 14th- or early 15th-century manuscript of London, BL Harley 6298 (from which f. 7v of the comedy of Paulino et Polla is reproduced by Bertini, vol. 5, p. 97). The utilitarian 13th- and 14th-century school copies of Vitalis’ Latin Geta I have examined (Paris, BNF mss. lat. 8430, 8207 and 8509A) do not indicate who is speaking at all, so intent are they on saving space. For further discussion of different page layouts of medieval Latin comedies, based on the reproductions in Bertini, see Symes, “Performance and Preservation” (above, n. 5), pp. 39–45. 43 Raoul Tainguy followed the most common contemporary custom of presenting rhymed vernacular verse in relatively fine manuscripts by giving each verse a separate line in a double-columned page layout. On these conventions, see Geneviève Hasenohr, “Les recueils lyriques. Les manuscrits théâtraux,” in: Henri-Jean Martin and Jean Vezin (eds.), Mise en page et mise en texte du livre manuscrit (Paris: Promodis, 1990), pp. 329–40. Fine medieval exemplars of Terence and Plautus were more often written in a single block with a punctus within the continuous lines to mark the end of one verse and the beginning of the next.
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phus marks to indicate changes of speaker.44 In an illustrated copy of Terence’s plays written around 1100 now in Tours (Bibliothèque municipale ms. 0924), the abbreviations of speaker names are done in the same ink as the text, preceded and followed by a punctus or raised dot, but the first letter of the following word, that is, the first letter of the new speech, is given a touch of red to distinguish it.45 The comedies of an 11thcentury illustrated Terence in Paris, BNF ms. lat. 7903, present abbreviated speaker names in red. Closer in date to the manuscript of Deschamps’ collected works is the illustrated copy from ca. 1407 of Terence’s comedies in BNF ms. lat. 7907A.46 Here the abbreviated speaker name appears in red to the left of the enlarged initial beginning each new speech; if the new speech begins in mid-line, the red abbreviation is placed directly before it within the line, often followed by a red punctus. An illustrated Latin manuscript of Plautus’ comedies dating from 1405 (Paris, BNF ms. lat. 7890) uses the same system with, in addition, much pen flourishing of the paragraphus marks that indicate speaker changes.47 Yet Gaston Raynaud, the most recent editor of Deschamps’ Geta et Amphitrion, in the S.A.T.F. edition of 1893 (still authoritative today) chose to put the rubrics identify-
44 Aspects of the page layout of Terence manuscripts from the 9th through 12th centuries may be gleaned from the black-and-white reproductions in Jones and Morey, The Miniatures (above, n. 39) and online (see above, n. 3). 45 See above, n. 39. 46 Online at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:12148/btv1b84521984. 47 Nevertheless, there is an important difference between the layout of illustrated Latin manuscripts of Plautus and Terence and that of Deschamps’ translation of Vitalis’ Geta. Raoul Tainguy was not thinking in terms of scenes in which characters appear together, for what he signaled was a series of speeches, with each new speaker’s name set apart on a line by itself. In medieval exemplars of Terence and Plautus, speaker changes are indicated to the side of or within the line; when speaker names appear in red on a separate line, they indicate instead which characters appear in the following scene. See for example f. 162r of the turn-of-the-12th-century Plautus manuscript from Salisbury (London, BL Royal 15.C.XI) (above, n. 3); here a red rubric on a separate line introduces a scene by giving the names and roles of the two characters who will speak. In some early medieval manuscripts of Terence, characters’ names (and sometimes also their roles) appear as labels over their heads. When the full program of illustrations was not completed, a line of names written in red ink is all that is left above the blank space left for depictions. In the early 15th-century Terence anthology of BNF ms. lat. 7907A (above, n. 46), each scene is illustrated. For Plautus’ comedies, however, no ancient cycle of illustrations seems to have existed. The early 15th-century Amphitryon of Paris, BNF ms. lat. 7890 has only an opening vignette illustrating a sequence of three actions from the beginning of the story, a common way of illuminating romance texts at the time. Nevertheless, this manuscript does have rubrics indicating which characters participate in different scenes. On folio 7r, for example, “Mercurius” appears on a line by itself heading his speech; on folio 7v, a scene is introduced with the rubric “Jupiter · Alcumena · Mercurius.” On illustrated Plautus manuscripts of the 15th and 16th centuries, see Grazia Maria Fachechi, “Plauto illustrato fra medioevo e umanesimo,” Atti della Accademia nazionale dei Lincei. Rendiconti. Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche 13 (2002), pp. 177–242. The early fifteenth-century Amphitryon of Paris, BNF ms. lat. 7890, seems to be the earliest surviving text of Plautus to receive any illustration.
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ing speakers in brackets and to move them into the right margin.48 He did this supposing that the rubrics were untrustworthy scribal additions: “the copyist, thinking he was dealing with a poem in dialogue, had introduced a whole series of names of characters that the Marquis de Queux de Saint-Hilaire had faithfully preserved in the separate edition of this little work that he published in 1872; from the place they had occupied in the manuscript, I eliminated them, or rather, pushed them into the margins within brackets.”49 Because he did not treat the rubrics identifying speakers in other dialogued texts by Deschamps in the same fashion, we must assume that Raynaud was influenced by the initial rubric directed to “readers” and the label “Traictié” in the table of contents of the manuscript (which would have been added after the compilation was finished). Raynaud also completely missed the playfulness of Deschamps’ translation. He was impervious to the incongruity-based humour of Deschamps’ elaborations of Vitalis’ wit, as for example the oft-repeated oaths “By Hercules!” in a play that deals with that hero’s conception. Deschamps not only translated and increased the number of these incongruous oaths, but he also adorned Almène’s bedroom with a tapestry depicting the story of Troy and the deeds of Hercules and Jason (line 73). To Raynaud, such elaborations were infelicitous and only showed Deschamps’ “sovereign disdain for historical verisimilitude.”50 He did not seem to realize that Deschamps was well aware of the anachronism and had his tongue in his cheek. Raynaud’s editorial decisions, which deliberately de-emphasized evidence of oral performance, and his critical judgments, which dismissed the importance of the work as merely a close translation of Vitalis’ medieval Latin adaptation, have done much to divert scholarly attention from Deschamps’ Geta et Amphitrion, which was probably written for performance at court, and which deserves to be integrated into the history of the reception of ancient comedy.51
48 Oeuvres complètes,VIII, 213: “On met entre crochets les noms de personnages que le copiste a cru devoir introduire dans ce poème, comme s’il était dialogué.” 49 Oeuvres completes, XI, 145. 50 Oeuvres completes, XI, 145. 51 Either knowing nothing of Dechamps’ translation or supposing, like Raynaud, that it was not intended for performance, L.R. Shero, “Alcmena and Amphitryon in Ancient and Modern Drama,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 87 (1956), pp. 192–238, skipped nearly 1500 years between the 1st century CE and 1487, when an Italian translation of Anfitrione by Pandolfo Collenuccio was performed in Ferrara at the court and in honor of Duke Hercules (Ercole I d’Este), marking, along with the performance of an Italian translation of Plautus’ Menaechmi a year earlier, “the actual beginning of modern European drama” (p. 209). Nor is Deschamps’ Geta and Amphitrion mentioned by Robert H. Lucas, “Medieval French Translations of the Latin Classics to 1500,” Speculum 45 (1970), pp. 225–53, probably because, from a modern point of view, Deschamps was really translating Vitalis, not Plautus. Only one brief article has been dedicated to Deschamps’ Geta et Amphitrion: Didier Lechat’s “Le Traité” (above, n. 31). Lechat makes no attempt to date or imagine a context for Deschamps’ work, but he does note the conservative nature of the translation and
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There are no clear references allowing certitude as to when, for whom or for what occasion Deschamps translated Vitalis’ Geta. When Deschamps’ translation has been noticed by specialists of medieval Latin comedy at all, it has been dated to 1420 or slightly later, following the error of its first 19th-century editor.52 Deschamps was dead by 1405, however, and it is not at all certain that he produced his translation of Geta at the very end of his life.53 There does seem to have been a revival of interest in ancient comedy in princely circles in the first decade of the 15th century, beginning with a compilation of six comedies of Plautus in Latin, with the first page of the first comedy, Amphytrion, richly illuminated (Paris, BNF ms. lat. 7890). Produced by a scribe who worked for the Treasurer of Jean de Berry, this manuscript was copied around 1405, probably from a manuscript the early humanist Jean de Montreuil procured from Italy.54 Was this compilation intended for the book-loving Duke? About 1408, as a New Year’s gift from Martin Gouge, then Bishop of Chartres, Jean de Berry received a fine illuminated copy of the Latin text of Terence’s comedies (Paris, BNF
signals the few added parts, especially Deschamps’ “extraordinary amplification” of the metamorphoses Geta boasts he will accomplish (p. 158). 52 Le Traicté de Getta et d’Amphitrion, poème dialogué du XVe siècle traduit du latin de Vital de Blois par Eustache Deschamps, ed. Le Marquis de Queux de Saint-Hilaire (Paris: Librairie des Bibliophiles, 1872), p. XIX. The editor gives no reason or earlier source for assigning the date of “around 1421” (“vers 1421”) to Deschamps’ translation. This erroneous date has been repeated by (among others) Bertini (above, n. 5), vol. 3, p. 157. 53 On the date of Deschamps’ death, see Ian S. Laurie, “Eustache Deschamps: 1340 (?) – 1404,” in: Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levy (ed.), Eustache Deschamps, French Courtier-Poet: His Work and His World (New York: AMS Press, 1998), p. 31. 54 See the description of this manuscript by Marie-Hélène Tesnière, as well as a color reproduction of its illustrated first page, in the exhibition catalogue Paris - 1400: les arts sous Charles VI, ed. Elisabeth Tuburet-Delahaye et al. (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux / Fayard, 2004), pp. 239–40. See also pp. 241–2 for color reproductions of the frontispieces from the two Terence manuscripts Martin Gouge commissioned, now online at the Gallica website (nn. 55 and 56 below). These frontispieces seems to represent the notions found in Nicholas Trivet’s commentary on Seneca’s tragedies, as reinterpreted in French by Raoul de Presles in his translation of and commentary on The City of God (ca. 1375): “[The stage] is a little house in the middle of the theater in which there was a lectern where the tragedies and comedies of the poets were read aloud, and there were people in disguise who imitated the behavior of those of whom these plays were sung and invented, as still today you may see people doing in plays with characters and in charivari, and there were players of various instruments and others who disguised themselves and played the people of whom the tragedy or comedy spoke” (my translation). Jones, “Isidore and the Theater” (above, n. 37), pp. 41–2 and n. 47, suggests that the visual representations of these two Terence frontispieces were inspired by this passage from Oresme: “asena … est une petite maison ou milieu du theatre en laquelle avoit ung letrin ou l’en lisoit les tragedies et comedies des poetes et y avoit gens desguisez qui faisoient les contenances de ceux pour lesquelz len chantoit et faisoit ces jeux ainsi comme tu vois que len fait encores au jour duy les jeux de personnaiges et charivalis. Et y avoit joueurs de divers instruments et autres qui se desguisoient et contrefaisoient les personnes de qui la tragedie ou comedie parloit”.
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ms. lat. 7907A).55 Around 1411, it was the turn of Louis de Guyenne, the Dauphin, whose chancellor Gouge became, to receive the illuminated copy now known as the Terence des Ducs (Paris, Arsenal ms. 664).56 We may understand Deschamps’ translation of a 12th-century Latin Geta (itself a “rejuvenation” of a comedy by Plautus) as an act aimed at pleasing—and entertaining—princes and their entourages. Although the very faithfulness of Deschamps’ translation of Vitalis’ Geta has led modern scholars to pass it over, faithfulness in a medieval vernacular translation is unusual enough at this time to attract interest in itself, for it may indicate respect for the source, which was, after all, Plautus, even if at second hand.57 We might even speculate that the early French humanist Jean de Montreuil’s interest in procuring a good copy of Plautus’ Latin text could have been sparked by Deschamps’ vernacular rendition of Vitalis’ imitation/adaptation of Plautus. Both Jean de Montrueil and Eustache Deschamps served Louis d’Orléans (younger brother of Charles VI), among other masters, during their courtly careers. Deschamps probably encountered the Latin text of Vitalis’ Geta during his days as a student at the University of Orleans where, by his own account, he led a joyful life.58 His experience of the still lively tradition of performing medieval Latin comedy in Orleans,59 and his familiarity with Vitalis of Blois’ Geta, which he translated in its entirety, seem to have provided Deschamps with seminal ideas he would later develop by transposing them into a gamut of poetic forms in the vernacular—farces, dits, question-and-answer games, debates, jeux de personnages, burlesque charters, letters and proclamations for reading aloud, as well as scores of comic ballads—to amuse his companions in the several princely courts in which he served. There are traces of
55 The manuscript, with its initial, full-page representation of Roman theater (f. 2v), can be viewed at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84521984. 56 See http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8458135g for this manuscript and its frontispiece depiction of Roman theater (f. 1v). 57 According to Geneviève Hasenohr, “Discours vernaculaire et autorités latines,” in Mise en page et mise en texte (above, n. 43), p. 293, it was in the latter half of the 14th century that French translators turned away from an “attitude d’assimilation” to an “attitude de discrimination,” that is, from the practice of freewheeling adaptation to a more scrupulous respect for the literal sense of the text being translated. The vernacular commentaries that accompanied these translations (above, nn. 34–5, 38) did much of the work of assimilation by using comparisons and analogies to make the text more meaningful to medieval audiences. 58 It has often been supposed that Deschamps studied civil law in Orleans, although there is no record of his receiving a university diploma. The Latin incipit to his translation of extracts from Innocent III’s De contemptu mundi, presented to the king in 1383, calls him “master” as well as “squire:” “magistrum Eustachium Moreli de Virtute, scutiferum” (II, 243). 59 See Dorothy M. Quynn and Harold S. Snellgrove, “Slanderous Comedies at the University of Orleans in 1447,” Modern Language Notes 47 (1942), p. 187: “The comedies were objected to [in records of the university reforms of 1447] because of the time and expense involved and because they contained attacks on other Nations and individual members thereof, often resulting in serious quarrels.” The different Nations traditionally performed these comedies on the festivals of their patron saints.
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Vitalis’ Geta everywhere in Deschamps’ works. For example, Geta must admit the truth of his double’s claim that, in spite of his great ugliness, “one part makes me loved as a whole.”60 In a ballad to the punning refrain of “If I only had the vit of my Orleans days” (“Se j’eusse mon vit d’Orliens”), Deschamps regrets the loss of his student life/prick, which made him welcome, in spite of his poverty, everywhere and won him women’s praise.61 Vitalis’ grotesque description of Geta’s body is zestfully translated in Deschamps’ Geta et Amphitrion62 and probably inspired Deschamps’ comic, ape-like self-portrait of his own supreme ugliness—his general hairiness, blackness, shortness and big stomach—elsewhere, as for example in a ballad to the refrain of “Above all others, I should be king of the Ugly” (“Sur tous autres doy ester roy des Lays”).63 The character of Birria too suggested aspects of Deschamps’ comic persona, especially in ballads in which he played the disgruntled, disabused royal or princely “servant” who complains of the “folly” of his master and others, dislikes being forced to forgo physical comfort to accompany his lord on military or other expeditions,64 and poignantly regrets leaving the “pasties” of Paris.65 In an article on the function of court poet as comic entertainer, G. Matteo Roccati has treated a series of comic ballads and rondeaux in which Deschamps mentions a group of court companions by their names; Roccati finds that the group consists of
60 “Sic ut totus amer pars facit una mei” (Geta 358; trans. Elliott, p. 41). Deschamps’ translation of the line in his Geta et Amphitrion is faithful: “Ainsis une part de moy fait /Que je soye amez tout a fait” (VIII, p. 235, lines 757–8). 61 Œuvres complètes, VI, 10–11. 62 Geta 327–46; Œuvres complètes, VIII, 233–4, lines 698–726. One wonders if Vitalis’ considerable verbal amplification on Geta’s ugliness could have been inspired by the illustrations of Terentian comedy in medieval manuscripts, where the figures of characters playing the roles of slaves wear dark masks with large open mouths rimmed in white, have flat, spreading noses and are generally made to look apelike. The illustrations of the 9th-century Terence owned by the Abbey of Saint Denis but executed in Reims (where Deschamps is supposed to have had his early schooling) are perhaps the most simian. See the reproductions from Paris, BNF ms. lat. 7899 on the Gallica website (above, n. 39) and in Jones and Morey, The Miniatures (above, n. 39); the latter also remark (vol. 2, p. 5) that Terence himself was, in medieval tradition, confused with and sometimes represented as an African slave. On the tradition of medieval descriptions of ugliness, see Jan Ziolkowski, “Avatars of Ugliness in Medieval Literature,” The Modern Language Review 79 (1984), pp. 1–20. 63 Oeuvres completes, IV, 273–4. 64 Deschamps treats this theme many times, for example in ballad 19, where he lists the discomforts of his three military campaigns in Flanders and asks, in the envoy, when these painful “matins” will finally be over: “Prince, in Flanders we have been singing a long time. / I like a short mass, a good dinner, fine cuisine. / That’s why I want to ask you, in all humility, / when the return from matins will be sounded” (I, 96–7). Compare Birria: “Madness drives these fools to ruin; / let them wage their own wars. / No one is ever safe in a battle” (trans. Elliott, p. 46; Geta 464–6). 65 There is something of Birria in Deschamps’ forced goodbye to the pleasures of Paris, to the refrain of “Adieu Paris, adieu little pasties!” (“petiz pastez,” V, 51–2). Compare Birria’s rush to the kitchen at the end of the comedy: “Away with all these insane disputations. / I’m on my way to the kitchen” (trans. Elliott, p. 48; Geta 519).
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squires and young men of the same generation as Deschamps in the circle of the young Louis (brother of Charles VI), the group of Louis’ future “officers, administrators and military leaders.”66 In 1389, Deschamps was named squire in the service of Valentine Visconti (of Milan), Countess of his hometown of Vertus and the new wife of Louis, who became Duke of Orleans in early 1393. Louis, in his early twenties, immediately promoted Deschamps, in his early forties, to the offices of counselor and maître d’hôtel. Was this office also that of an impresario responsible for entertainment at banquets? A farce like Deschamps’ Dit des .IIII. offices, which ends with the appearance of an authoritative maître d’hôtel to reconcile the dispute, could have served as an interlude between the courses of a feast. Deschamps’ French translation of Vitalis’ medieval Latin adaptation of Plautus, set in Greece with Jupiter in the role of the “adolescent” lover and much satire of scholarly sophistry, might well have amused the young duke, his Franco-Italian bride and their entourages. There are mentions in the household records of the Duke and Duchess of Orleans between 1392 and 1394 of substantial payments (20 gold florins on one occasion, 20 livres tournois on another) to a group of “joueurs de personnages” (Jehannin Esturjon, Hannequin Le Fèvre, Jacquemart Le Fèvre, and Gilet Vilain) for “a certain role-playing entertainment” (“aucun esbattement de jeux de personnages”) and for “the good and pleasant services and pleasures they gave him.”67 That the period for these payments coincides with Deschamps’ tenure as maître d’hôtel gives pause. Could it be that a muchrejuvenated version of Plautus’ Amphitryon was performed in 1393–1394 in French at the court of the Duke and Duchess of Orleans, nearly 100 years before an Italian Anfitrione was performed in 1487 at the court of Ferrara?68
66 G. Matteo Roccati, “Sur quelques textes d’Eustache Deschamps témoignant de la fonction comique du poète de cour,” in: Thérèse Bouché and Hélène Charpentier (eds.), Le Rire au moyen âge dans la littérature et dans les arts, Actes du colloque international des 17, 18 et 19 novembre 1988 (Bordeaux: Presses universitaires de Bordeaux, 1990), p. 289. Rocatti does not mention Deschamps’ translation of Vitalis’ 12th-century Latin Geta in the context of his service to Louis d’Orléans, but he does devote a short paragraph to it in an article on Deschamps’ knowledge of Latin, as evidenced by his use of Latin sources in his writings, and his translations from Latin: “La culture latine d’Eustache Deschamps,” Le Moyen-âge 111 (2005), pp. 259–74. Here Roccati remarks that Deschamps’ translation of Geta fits the playful image we have of him: “cette traduction relève donc d’une attitude ludique, tout à fait conforme à l’image habituelle que nous avons de son auteur” (p. 263). 67 For these references, see Emile Colas, Valentine de Milan, Duchesse d’Orléans (Paris: Plon, 1911), p. 132, also mentioned by Edmond Faral, Les Jongleurs en France au Moyen Âge (Paris: Champion, 1910), p. 247. 68 See above, n. 51.
Ludovica Radif
Aristofane mascherato: Un secolo (1415–1504) di fortuna e ‘sfortuna’ Abstract: The initial return of Aristophanic comedy to Western literature may be regarded as more or less of a success, depending on one’s point of view. Three Italian humanists at the beginning of the 15th century attempted to translate portions of Plutus: Rinuccio Aretino in his “Penia fabula” revived the section involving Penia; Leonardo Bruni reworked the first act (Pl. 1–269); and Giovanni Tortelli in the “prologus” of his De Orthographia wrapped up an earlier literary game played with his friend Leonardo. A century later, Niccolò Machiavelli, the famous Florentine politician, dared to remake Clouds, replacing original characters with important persons of the age of the Medicis. Unfortunately, these works met with no success, and the Athenian comic poet remained obscure for various reasons: Rinuccio kept the original author concealed, Tortelli moved on to work on other subjects, Bruni stopped translating, and Machiavelli’s grandson Giuliano de’Ricci did not transcribe what he described as a dangerous play. Recent studies of Penia and Le Maschere throw new light on this first appearance of the Western Aristophanes and suggest the extent to which they can be appreciated and acted today.
La selezione bizantina di commedie giunta fino alla diade di Pluto e Nuvole è la bandiera con cui Aristofane arriva in Occidente all’inizio del XV secolo;1 e non è certo un ingresso trionfale, tutt’altro. Gli scarsi testimoni di ripresa che incontriamo nell’ambito umanistico sembrano piuttosto voler appropriarsi di frammenti comici a supporto di argomentazioni personali: parliamo di Rinuccio Aretino, Giovanni Tortelli, Leonardo Bruni. Con la seconda metà del secolo e Alessandro da Otranto troviamo forse un interesse più diretto nei confronti del grande comico ateniese, documentato dalla trascrizione del testo greco delle prime due commedie e, per quanto riguarda il Pluto, dalla prima traduzione latina interlineare completa, arricchita di glosse,2 preziosa testimonianza di un mondo in via d’estinzione, quello dei manoscritti, a ridosso
1 Per esempio, Gaspare da Verona possiede due versioni di Pluto e Nuvole (che poi vende nel 1465 a Lionoro de Leonori [ms. oggi a Ferrara]); Francesco Barbaro 6 commedie (manoscritto oggi nella Biblioteca Estense di Modena, contenente Pluto, Nuvole, Rane, Cavalieri, Uccelli, Acarnesi). Dal canto suo, il Poliziano nel manoscritto oggi alla Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, Parisinus Graecus 3069, copia Pluto, Nuvole, Rane, Pace, Uccelli, Lisistrata, Vespe e arg. Ecclesiazuse, cfr. Léon Dorez, “L’hellénisme d’Ange Politien,” Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire 15 (1895), pp. 3–32. 2 Ne ha fornito un’edizione Maria Luisa Chirico, Aristofane in terra d’Otranto (Napoli: Pubblicazioni del Dipartimento di filologia classica dell’Università degli studi di Napoli Federico II, 1991).
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dell’edizione principe del 1498: l’ambito è quello didattico e l’intento del frate domenicano di Otranto è quello di salvare la grecità che vede minacciata dai Turchi. In ogni caso, fino al Cinquecento, Aristofane è figura non molto conosciuta e di secondo piano negli interessi degli umanisti; e infatti, a proposito del testo di Rinuccio, Antonio Stäuble, nel corso della sua rassegna della commedia umanistica, aggiunge che esso può costituire lo “spunto per l’ipotetica ricostruzione di una linea ‘aristofanesca’ del teatro rinascimentale, rimasta in ombra rispetto alla linea ‘plautino-terenziana’.”3 Un caso più recente, del tutto a sé stante, per impostazione e per curiosa sorte, è rappresentato dal lavoro giovanile di Machiavelli intitolato Le Maschere, che, per quel poco che possiamo desumere dai dati in nostro possesso (è infatti andato perduto), riproponeva attualizzandole le Nuvole. Il primo Aristofane occidentale è per così dire “assottigliato” nel suo patrimonio drammatico, mascherato (addirittura censurato!) perché visto attraverso il filtro di interessi umanistici un po’ a margine della commedia e calato in una nuova società: non essendoci ancora un terreno pronto ad accoglierlo nella sua forma e nel suo messaggio originali, è stato variamente ridotto e adattato. Prenderemo in considerazione i tentativi di riproposta aristofanea compiuti da Leonardo Bruni (1439–40, traduzione latina di Pluto 1–269), indirettamente testimoniato anche dal De Orthographia di Giovanni Tortelli (anni ’30/’40), da Rinuccio Aretino (la fabula Penia: 1415–16, corrispondente a Pluto ca. 403–626), e infine da Niccolò Machiavelli (le perdute Maschere: ca. 1504, su modello delle Nuvole4). Si tratta di rivisitazioni che non hanno avuto molta fortuna, e, forse proprio perché casi isolati all’interno delle rispettive produzioni, non hanno ricevuto particolare attenzione da parte degli studiosi; eppure, a un più attento esame, si rivelano prezioso documento di un’epoca, in bilico tra il patrimonio greco, la cultura latina e le concrete possibilità di ascolto e di pubblico. Non abbiamo testimonianze relative a una messinscena dei testi qui considerati; ma, per quanto riguarda la fabula di Rinuccio, i caratteri di teatrabilità sono riscontrabili ed è stata positiva l’esperienza di una rappresentazione nel 2006; analogamente, per come riusciamo a immaginare il testo machiavellico (definito comunque “atto recitabile” dal nipote), non ci sono dubbi sulla grande potenza drammatica, che è stata messa alla prova nel novembre 2009 sulle scene genovesi. Daremo dunque qualche ragguaglio anche delle relative performance contemporanee. L’Aristofane mascherato può dunque essere riproposto efficacemente sul palco come maschera.
3 Antonio Stäuble, “Umanistica, commedia,” in: Vittore Branca (cur.) Dizionario critico della letteratura italiana2, vol. IV (Torino: Utet, 1986), p. 345 (= La commedia umanistica: situazione della ricerca e aggiornamento bibliografico, in: Antonio Stäuble, «Parlar per lettera». Il pedante nella commedia del Cinquecento e altri saggi sul teatro rinascimentale (Roma: Bulzoni, 1991), p. 149). 4 Abbiamo lasciato per ultime le due opere che hanno avuto una rappresentazione scenica contemporanea.
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L’Aristofane del primo Quattrocento: gli accenni alle Nuvole Gli umanisti partono dal Pluto, la commedia che trovavano collocata per prima nei manoscritti; dobbiamo tuttavia citare anche due accenni alla seconda commedia, le Nuvole. Per preparare il suo pubblico ideale alla traduzione, il Bruni distingue la commedia di Aristofane da quella di Plauto e di Terenzio, accorpandola invece al genere di Cratino e di Eupoli: una comicità che venne poi proibita dalla legge, a causa della sua maldicenza ed eccessiva libertà: Aristophanes poeta comoediam scripsit non quomodo Plautus et Terentius, sed quomodo Cratinus et Eupolis. Hoc autem genus comoediarum tandem lege prohibitum fuit propter maledicentiam et nimiam libertatem; unde inquit Horatius. (ed. Cecchini, rr. 1–4, p. 3)
Non che i nomi di Cratino e di Eupoli servissero a fornire qualche indicazione ulteriore in merito, ma semplicemente potevano richiamare il celebre quadro oraziano di sat. I.4, che infatti troviamo immediatamente riportato, con qualche variante: Eupolis atque Cratinus Aristophanesque poetae atque alii quorum comoedia prisca virorum est, siquis erat dignus rescribi quod malus aut fur, quod moechus foret aut sicarius aut alioqui famosus, multa cum libertate notabant. (ed. Cecchini, rr. 5–9, p. 3)
Lo scopo del rinvio alle Nuvole e a Orazio è di aiutare il lettore del suo Pluto parziale, aggiungendo una nota didascalica, circa il tempo in cui viveva il comico, e istituendo una cronologia relativa: l’età di Aristofane è l’età del filosofo Socrate: Fuit autem Aristophanes per tempora Socratis philosophi, in quem etiam scripsit comoediam ridiculis notationibus plenam. (ed. Cecchini, rr. 12–14, p. 3)
Non solo, ma si informa il lettore di un ulteriore collegamento fra i due, ossia appunto il fatto che il comico avesse posto al centro di una sua ridicolissima opera, le Nuvole, proprio il filosofo a lui contemporaneo. Rinuccio Aretino fa riferimento alla seconda commedia aristofanea quando, a proposito dell’argumentum preposto dell’Eutifrone platonico5, nel presentare la figura di Socrate, egli ritiene opportuno riferire la disavventura teatrale, in seguito alla quale si era scatenata l’accusa di Meleto. Queste sono le parole che egli dedica alla commedia Nuvole, che viene però intitolata, dal nome del protagonista, Strepsiade:6
5 Circa 1443. 6 Mi sono occupata dello Strepsiade nell’articolo “Lo Strepsiade di Aristofane verso un odierno Pluto dissacrante”, in: Walter Lapini, Luciano Malusa, Letterio Mauro (curr.), Gli antichi e noi. Scritti in onore di Antonio Mario Battegazzore, (Genova: Glauco Brigati, 2009), pp. 299–307.
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Socrates sui temporis philosophorum omnium princeps, cum in poetas et maxime comicos vehementius inveheretur quod iuvenes eorum fabulis ad vitia irritando corrumperent, Aristophanes poeta comicus temporibus illis eximius fabulam edidit quae inscribitur Strepsiades. In ea Socrates introducitur non putare deos quos civitas colebat, et adolescentes seducere, ut sibi magis crederent quam parentibus. Quae fabula publice cum in theatro recitaretur, plebem adversus Socratem vehementer commovit. Huiusmodi occasione captata, delator quidam nomine Meletus per poetas subornatus Socratem impietatis accusat7 Dal momento che Socrate, il principe dei filosofi della sua epoca, inveiva un po’ troppo severamente contro i poeti, specie quelli comici, perché secondo lui con le loro storie corrompevano i giovani solleticandoli ai vizi, Aristofane, poeta comico, famoso in quel tempo, compose una commedia intitolata Strepsiade. In essa, Socrate è presentato come uno che non ritiene dèi quelli che la città venera e trascina i ragazzi al punto che essi danno ascolto più a lui che ai propri genitori. E quando il dramma venne recitato pubblicamente in teatro, incitò violentemente la plebe contro Socrate; e, cogliendo una simile occasione, un delatore di nome Meleto, pagato dai poeti, accusò Socrate di empietà…
Anche in questo caso si può parlare di una nota eminentemente informativa e di ordine contenutistico. Interessante per noi, l’apposizone “poeta comico, famoso in quel tempo,” che fa riflettere sull’effettiva perdita comune di notizie, anche presso coloro che Rinuccio poteva presumere destinatari primi delle sue traduzioni: un terreno culturale in cui era facile plagiare opere del passato. Esclusi questi accenni che possiamo definire ausiliari, gli interessi dei primi traduttori di Aristofane, Rinuccio e Leonardo, sono concentrati sulla commedia Pluto.
Il ludus di Bruni e di Tortelli C’è un terzo Aretino a occuparsi del Pluto: Giovanni Tortelli si trova a riprendere un passaggio della traduzione dell’amico Leonardo, a proposito di una voce del suo De orthographia,8 così presentandone l’incipit: Prologus cum unico l scribitur. Et dicitur a nobis praefatio sive proloquium. Nam rem in toto libro narrandam proponit. Licet Terentius prologis abusus sit. Et in prologis scribundis opera abutitur. Non quae argumentum narret, sed quae maledictis veteris poetae respondeat. Et cum rem de qua tractare intendunt proposuerint solent latini poetae invocare deinde narrare. Quod modo contrario fit a Graecis. Nam cum primo invocaverint quae tractaturi sunt deinde proponunt enarrantque
7 Dean P. Lockwood, “De Rinucio Aretino Graecarum Litterarum interprete,”Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 24 (1913), p. 106. 8 Sul diverso accostamento dei tre al testo ho parlato a Budapest al congresso organizzato dall’International Association For Neo-Latin Studies, «Thirteenth International Congress» (Budapest 6–12 agosto 2006), con una relazione intitolata “Aristofane Aretino”, in: R. Schnur (cur.), Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Budapestinensis. Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies (Tempe, 2010), pp. 593–602.
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deinde. Satyrici vero nec invocant nec breviter quicquam primitus dicendum proponunt. Sed ex abrupto incipientes repraehensione sui qua se primum expurgare posse putant exordiuntur. Ac se mixtim cum aliis repraehendentes de quibus locuturi sunt longiori processu proponunt. Ob quod non minus prologo quam Terentius ipse fecerit abutuntur. At vero qui apud Graecos antiquam comoediam in morem nostrae satyrae conscripserunt ut Aristophanes Cratinus et Eupolis magis etiam quam nostri a re ipsa processerunt. Hoc differentes ac comoediae retinentes quam non seipsos ipsimet sed alium inducunt ex abrupto alterum repraehendentem ut ex Aristophane libet latine versiculos aliquos referre quos Leonardus arretinus delitiae nostrae mecum olim ludens interpraetatus est. Nam in prima comoedia inducit Aristophanes Chremetem virum bonum caeterum inopem; qui cum paupertate offenderetur ad oraculum Apollinis profectus quaesivit. Num praestaret mutare mores et aliter vivere. Respondit Apollo cui primum obvius fieret de templo exiens eum sequeretur ac domum suam adduceret. Ille autem accaepto responso caecum sequebatur. Nam is primum sibi obvius fuerat. Carinus autem servus qui cum Chremete venerat ignarus huius responsi mirabatur domini factum; et insanisse illum existimabat. Itaque cum pluries eum ab illius caeci insecutione verbis revocare tentaret. Et nihil Chermes penitus responderet; insaniam domini ac fortunam suam conquerens talia loqui occaepit: Ut permolesta9 …
Il Tortelli nella sua ampia opera lessicografica,10 sotto la voce “prologo,” nomina gli esponenti della commedia arcaica greca come rappresentanti estremi in terra greca dello stile satirico romano, ancorché introducano sulla scena un personaggio diverso rispetto all’autore. Per offrire un esempio di questo prologo alla maniera greca egli pensa di citare alcuni versi del Pluto aristofaneo tradotti dal greco da Leonardo Bruni, quasi per scherzo, in sua compagnia. Tortelli si premura di circostanziare il passo premettendo un breve sunto della situazione comica della commedia: è quindi come se fornisse un mini-prologo corrispondente all’argumentum parziale apposto dal Bruni (che non copre tutta la trama dell’“atto,” ma serve da introduzione per seguire meglio quello che sta succedendo) e perciò all’antefatto (che procede dai vv. 28–43, in cui Cremilo, data l’insistenza del servo Carione, riferiva il motivo della sua spedizione a Delfi e il relativo responso), cui segue la citazione dei primi 24 versi della traduzione del Bruni. In una struttura ad anello, quello che veniva spiegato da Cremilo viene anticipato (28–43 + 1–24) e il suo ragionamento recupera una coerenza. La scena continua nel Bruni con l’interessamento verso il terzo personaggio, il dio della ricchezza, che viene coinvolto, insieme ai compaesani riuniti nel coro, in un’operazione apparentemente filantropica. Proprio in quel punto dello snodo della trama si aggancia il remake di Rinuccio. Tortelli non dichiara un interesse specifico nei riguardi del comico: il suo intento è, da lessicografo colto, di esemplificare un tipico prodotto letterario greco, per aiutare il lettore a discernere lo stile di un prologo; ma la voce relativa apre uno
9 Giovanni Tortelli, “De Orthographia”, s.v. “prologus.” 10 Opera in cui si preoccupa, come noto, di fissare una unità nell’ortografia delle parole greche in latino; ed. Venezia-Roma, 1471.
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scorcio ulteriore sulla commedia antica: dalle parole che impiega siamo indirettamente informati sul clima entro il quale aveva preso forma la traduzione del Bruni, in particolare quando riferisce olim mecum ludens interpretatus est; si trattava, dobbiamo credere, di un momento piacevole tra amici, un ludus litterarius,11 in cui si erano cimentati entrambi su Aristofane in una fatica versoria portata avanti poi singolarmente dal Bruni. Il breve passo del Tortelli è quindi prezioso anche come fonte indiretta del lavoro di Bruni e documento di una colta curiositas nei riguardi di Aristofane, sotto una maschera lessicografica.
La versione del Pluto di Leonardo Bruni12 Il lavoro del Bruni, concepito successivamente a quello di Rinuccio, è il seguito ideale degli aliqui versiculi tradotti in compagnia del Tortelli. Lo scopo di questa traduzione parziale è dichiarato nella prefatio: Ego, igitur, volens Latinis nostris ostendere quale genus erat illarum comediarum, primum actum huius comediae13 Aristophanis in Latinum transtuli. (ed. Cecchini, rr. 9–12, p. 3)
L’attenzione di Leonardo Aretino alla buona resa delle parole greche in latino è testimoniata e argomentata nel De interpretatione recta, dove egli sostiene l’adeguatezza della lingua latina a restituire il ricco lessico greco, in un impegno che è culturale, morale e politico al tempo stesso: “Scritti originali e traduzioni dal greco, dunque, assolvono così ad un’identica funzione intellettuale e, allo stesso tempo, ad un’analoga finalità civile: sono espressione della ripresa culturale che sta alla base dell’Umanesimo perché servono a mettere in circolazione nuove idee e a recuperare e a diffondere testi prima non conosciuti o non utilizzati; ma sono anche testimonianza della tensione morale e politica fiorentina perché offrono riferimenti e modelli civili proprio mentre la città [scil. Firenze] cerca di definire un suo «status» e una sua autonomia.”14 Dunque, l’esigenza di elevare il livello di cultura degli uomini del suo tempo può dirsi alla base anche della traduzione aristofanea del Bruni, un fatto peraltro isolato all’interno della sua produzione: applicando una categoria non classica alla commedia, quella della suddivisione in atti, il traduttore dice di volersi dedicare al solo primo atto, e di fatto si interrompe in modo un po’ brusco, a metà di
11 In Cecchini ed. cit., p. x, si colloca il ludus negli anni 1433–1434 (oppure 1439–1440). 12 Leonardo Bruni, “Versione del Pluto di Aristofane,” introduzione e testo critico a cura di Maria ed Enzo Cecchini (Firenze: Sansoni, 1965); Enzo Cecchini, “Collazione di due nuovi manoscritti”, in: Enzo Cecchini, Albio Cesare Cassio, “Due contributi sulla traduzione di Leonardo Bruni del Pluto di Aristofane,” Giornale Italiano di Filologia 24 (1972), pp. 472–6. 13 Cfr. Tort: In prima comoedia. 14 Leonardo Bruni, Sulla perfetta traduzione, a cura di Paolo Viti (Napoli: Liguori, 2004), pp. 4–5.
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una gustosa battuta, che troverebbe il suo completamento in un verso 270 che non c’è: di fronte alla battuta del coro che pregusta l’arrivo di un sacco di monete (Videtur enim venisse nummorum acervum habens), il servo, che ha presente l’aspetto dimesso del vecchio logoro, dovrebbe infatti ribattere “sacco di acciacchi, piuttosto.” Comunque, la scena prescelta da Bruni ha una sua compiutezza, visto che accompagna idealmente i protagonisti dall’incontro con Pluto all’ideazione del progetto filantropico di ridonargli la vista, fino al momento di condividere con il coro dei contadini le gioie dell’imminente benessere. La sua è una buona traduzione, abbastanza fedele al testo di partenza, con scarsi allontanamenti/fraintendimenti (segnaliamo appena l’intervento censorio nei confronti della pederastia); ma il fatto stesso che il Bruni non operi una scelta personale sulla commedia aristofanea, limitandosi piuttosto a saggiare l’inizio della prima, e quindi a proporre una breve incursione drammatica, entro la prospettiva già aperta dalla critica oraziana (Cfr. Hor. Serm. I 4, 1–5) è indicativo di un interesse marginale, ribadito in qualche modo dal finale tronco, privo di conclusioni. Il volto di Aristofane assume qui i tratti approssimativi di una maschera antiquaria riassuntiva di un genere.
La Penia di Rinuccio Aretino Rinuccio Aretino (ca. 1390/1395–ca. 1457) è umanista non di spicco e relativamente poco studiato fino all’Ottocento, noto quasi esclusivamente per la sua opera di traduzione delle favole esopiche15 e, parallelamente, per le mansioni prestate in
15 Ricorre per la prima volta come Rainutius quidam eruditus vir, autore accurato di una traduzione della vita e delle favole di Esopo, nel Supplementum supplementi Chronicarum ab ipso mundi exordio usque ad redemtionis nostrae annum MCCCCCX editum et novissime recognitum et castigatum a J.P. Bergomate (Venetiis: 1513), p. 75. In L. Hervieux, Les fabulistes latins depuis le siècle d’Auguste jusqu’à la fin du moyen age, voll. 5 (Paris: 1893–1899), I 296, ancora si riferisce la confusione tra il presunto Romulus favolista e il nostro Rimiccius/Remicius, Rainutius/Rynuncius, etc…; il Fabricius Bibliotheca Latina Mediae et infimae aetatis, tomo V (Firenze: Typ. Th. Baracchi, 1858), p. 393, s. v. Rimicius, ne parla come di un autore di traduzioni (specie della vita e delle favole di Esopo, ma anche della versione delle lettere di Ippocrate) e si domanda la causa del soprannome Thessalus appioppatogli da Bonaccorsio Pisano nella sua edizione; peraltro, illustrando la figura di Alamanno Rinuccini Bibl. Lat., V 393–4, gli attribuisce la versione del Caronte di Luciano che è invece di Rinuccio (e permangono, comunque, incertezze sulla paternità di alcune opere); tenta di precisare il nome A.M. Quirini, che sostiene la variante Rimicius appoggiandosi al termine greco ῥῆμα, che avrebbe messo in luce la sua cultura greca, come anche il soprannome di Thessalus. Specificamente dedicata a Rinuccio, la voce appunto “Rinuccio da Castigliofiorentino” di Francesco Ravagli (Edita postuma in Francesco Ravagli. Miscellanea di erudizione e belle arti 1/4–1/5–6 (1911), pp. 34–46, 65–75, letta pubblicamente nel 1887, da cui si conosce l’intenzione—rimasta poi tale—di pubblicare una monografia sullo stesso. Insomma, sulla sua figura e sulla sua opera sono perdurate (e in parte perdurano) incertezze, a partire dal nome stesso: per rendersi conto, basta aprire l’opera di Cosenza (Mario E. Cosenza, Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary of the Italian Humanists and of the World of
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ambito ecclesiastico, al suo ritorno dall’Oriente, dapprima a Bologna, al seguito del Cardinale Gabriele Condulmer (futuro papa Eugenio IV), e poi definitivamente nella curia papale a Roma, forse a partire dal 1428. Soltanto con Dean Lockwood possiamo considerare aperta la via alle moderne edizioni critiche dei testi di Rinuccio: nel suo prezioso panoramico articolo De Rinucio Aretino Graecarum Litterarum Interprete presenta tutte le versioni latine condotte dall’umanista, tra cui la Penia, indicandone relativi manoscritti e pubblicandone le parti proemiali / introduttive. La fase della sua vita che ci interessa maggiormente, quella in cui fu composta la fabula, è la giovinezza, contraddistinta dai viaggi in Oriente (anche Costantinopoli) dove si recò “ancora implume”;16 del suo soggiorno a Creta abbiamo un’interessante testimonianza dall’umanista Cristoforo Buondelmonti, il quale, relativamente agli anni 1415– 1416, sostiene di aver visto la campagna da cui l’amico Rinuccio trasse la cosidetta fabula Penia. Possiamo così datare la Penia e incrociare la testimonianza con quella che ci viene offerta direttamente dall’autore nella lettera prefatoria all’amico Matteo: egli fu invitato dall’amico medico Pietro Tommasi a compiere un tragitto verso la località nord occidentale di Réthimno e questo percorso diviene la cornice della fabula, contrassegnata dalla sosta per rinfrancarsi presso la taverna e dall’ascolto occasionale della bella storia (corrispondente ai vv. 403–626 ca. del Pluto) che decide di riproporre in lingua latina. Ciò che colpisce di questa traduzione parziale della commedia è la disinvoltura con cui viene condotta, benché si tratti di un momento in cui Rinuccio non conosce ancora bene la lingua greca: Ernesto Berti, nello studiare il testo latino del Critone appartenente anch’esso al periodo giovanile, evidenzia conoscenze ancora incerte, per cui ipotizza che Rinuccio abbia ricevuto aiuti, per esempio dal suo maestro, il Simeonachis, oppure che la redazione a noi giunta sia una rielaborazione matura.17 Dopo l’articolo citato di Dean P. Lockwood, la prima edizione completa del testo, con introduzione e passi paralleli, è stata compiuta da Walther Ludwig,18 nella quale tuttavia una serie di sviste e di conseguenti inutili correzioni delle lezioni dell’unico manoscritto (Oxoniensis Balliolensis
Classical Scholarship in Italy (1300–1800), voll. 5 (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1962–1972), IV 3056–60, V 1543–4, spec. le ultime schede) con i dati bio-bibliografici di base, le traduzioni da autori classici (tra cui cita Aristofane) e, a parte, dello scritto della Penia Fabula, come anche delle monodie sulla morte di Mermero; per quanto attiene alla fabula, l’autore la riconduce ai versi (ca. 400–626) dell’originale greco e ricollega la dedica a Matteo a un “Matteo Cretensis” riferendo luogo e tempo di stesura (durante un viaggio negli anni 1415–1416); per quanto riguarda il manoscritto che la conserva, fa riferimento alla collezione di scritti rinucciani, ottenuti da William Gray probabilmente direttamente dallo stesso Rinuccio. 16 Patriam parentes ac dulcem tepidumque nidum deserens, implumis […]caelo […]volitavi remoto sono le parole del proemio alla traduzione del Critone platonico, ed. Berti, pp. 127 e 132. 17 Ernesto Berti, Il Critone latino di Leonardo Bruni e di Rinuccio Aretino, in: Ernesto Berti-Antonella Carosini (edd.) (Firenze: Leo Olschki, 1983), pp. 84–5 n. 11. 18 Die Fabula Penia des Rinucius Aretinus (München: Wilhelm Fink, 1975).
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131, ff. 31r–37r19) mi hanno suggerito di approntare una nuova edizione.20 Da notare che Rinuccio non presenta la Penia come ripresa da Aristofane. Grazie anche alla testimonianza di Cristoforo Buondelmonti, è possibile rendersi conto di quanto l’umanista abbia introdotto di suo, quanto sia riuscito a incastonare la sezionegioiello della Penia in un nuovo contesto di genere autobiografico, quale il viaggio a Creta; tale suo intervento pare giustificare agli occhi del Buondelmonti una nuova paternità del testo, che viene ritenuto di Rinuccio. Anche nella seconda dedica al reverendus pater, aggiunta dopo anni, Rinuccio continua a mantenere celato l’autore autentico; di fatto la sua opera, tagliata in modo originale e personale rispetto al modello, viene ad assumere una fisionomia un po’ nuova, grazie anche alla prospettiva rovesciata deducibile dal titolo stesso rivolto alla Povertà invece che alla Ricchezza. Possiamo quindi anche noi rivendicare alla Penia lo statuto di commedia vera e propria, non soltanto di versione parziale, con una sua struttura umanistica. Il testo della Penia, che nelle parole di Rinuccio al dedicatario Matteo non era stato proposto per una rappresentazione, ma come esercizio disimpegnato di traduzione, contiene tuttavia gli elementi per poterlo rendere sulla scena. Ha fornito il testo per una prima mondiale assoluta il mio Soldo Bifronte del 2004, un libro “bifronte” come le monete, leggibile nei due sensi, contenente sul lato A il Pluto 403–626 in traduzione, e sul lato B il corrispondente passo nella Penia in traduzione, mentre nelle pagine centrali una riduzione scenica dell’intera Penia attualizzata ai nostri giorni. Con il titolo di “La favola semiseria di Pluto e di Penia” è stata allestita al Teatro Verdi di Pisa il 27 maggio 2006, per la regia di Francesca Nenci e interpretata dal suo laboratorio “Mitopoiesi” (Produzione: Liceo Classico Galileo Galilei di Pisa), poi ripresa in dvd al Teatro Angel Dal Foco del paese di Pergola. Un’innovazione introdotta è stata l’ampliamento del coro, che si moltiplica in una serie di facce contemporanee della povertà: dopo il contadino ateniese che esce ubriaco dalla botte, vediamo il coro del Pluto unirsi al coro del Soldo Bifronte, con le contadine russe del ’900, il metalmeccanico e il precario, il tutto siglato da un coinvolgente ballo, al ritmo di chitarra dal vivo: esecuzioni a cura dell’allegra “Banda dei quattro soldi,” interprete del tintinnio delle monete lungo i secoli, degli stati d’animo altalenanti, dell’ingenua precaria felicità del contadino. La trama è ambientata nella taverna cretese (la regista ha proposto l’ambiente dei dintorni di Candia come un cronotopo bachtiniano), dove al tavolo il gradevole dialogo a sfondo aristofaneo tra due bravi Farfuglio, il dotto (Flavia Faloppa), e Binocolo, la spalla (Fabrizio Aquinati), viene bruscamente interrotto dall’arrivo di uno stravagante Rinuccio, tra tomi e volumi rotolanti ovunque, bizzarro nel suo tentativo di parlare greco, con tanto di raffinata “r” moscia; quando poi, accomodatosi in un 19 Donato al Balliol College da William Gray, per il quale fu probabilmente realizzato intorno agli anni 1450 nell’ambito dello scriptorium diretto da Rinuccio, riprodotto nell’edizione del 2011 sotto citata. 20 Rinuccio Aretino, Penia, a cura di Ludovica Radif, pref. di Antonio Stäuble (Firenze, Franco Cesati, 2011).
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angolo della locanda, inizia a scrivere lettere con la penna d’oca rossa, ecco che magicamente si avvia una corrispondenza tra le due scene, per cui si sviluppano in contemporanea il Pluto aristofaneo e la Penia (la versione scelta è quella della fabula). Al momento in cui la vecchia e scostante Penia cerca di dissuadere i protagonisti dal progetto di ridonare la vista al cieco dio Pluto, si costituiscono due partiti sulla scena, con tanto di tribune di partito, manifesti e fan rispettivi, allusioni a recenti formazioni elettorali di partito, quali l’“Alleanza dei poveracci,” volta a sostenere il sano lavoro, contro l’innovatrice “La ricchezza nel pugno,” decisa ad arricchire gli onesti. Il tempo scorre, il locale deve chiudere, mentre Rinuccio, distratto da quei discorsi, non è riuscito ancora a terminare il suo brodo piccante cretese. Se ne va a malincuore, ma determinato a riprodurre la storia lì casualmente ascoltata in una sua fabula latina. A questo punto si inserisce il resoconto parodico della tecnica medica dell’incubatio presso il santuario delle guarigioni del dio Asclepio; con un notevole balzo temporale in avanti, veniamo quindi proiettati nel XXI secolo, a spiare le conseguenze della rinnovata vista di Pluto nella dimora residenziale di un ricco onesto. A dominare la scena è uno scintillante e corteggiato Euro-pluto, la versione euro del dio dei soldi (Chiara Cartei): la sua ricchezza di abito luminescente si staglia contro la situazione concreta di inflazione depauperatrice di ogni vera abbondanza di mezzi. Bastano pochi rapidi sketch per dipingere gli esiti deleteri dell’antico progetto filantropico aristofaneo: per esempio, vediamo distrutta la vecchia che era stata … romanticamente sfruttata e poi abbandonata dal giovane che non ha più bisogno del suo denaro, oppure la “signora snob,” che lamenta il degrado di alcune grandi firme, oramai in mano a tutti, inflazionate, … La soluzione reazionaria affidata alla saggezza tutta medievale (e contemporanea) della dea Fortuna è stata resa attraverso un canto etereo, sospeso tra l’ingenua leggiadria e la profondità etica. Al finale previsto presso il tempio di Apollo, con un dio che simpaticamente si schermisce di fronte a ogni responsabilità e in conclusione però torna ad aiutare il protagonista, è stato sostituito nella rappresentazione pisana uno sguardo un po’ scettico, disincantato, che mette in dubbio l’affare Cremilo, così come il progetto della Fortuna, e provocatoriamente propone addirittura una distribuzione del denaro a tutti, indifferentemente, al di là di ogni merito (ma, ci chiediamo, di fatto non si era già visto il fallimento di tanta ricchezza?). La messa in scena, ripresa in dvd, è stata poi riproiettata al Teatro Angel Dal Foco il 30 giugno 2006. Nel paese vicino a Fabriano, quella sera, un drappello di persone si snoda per le stradine e imbocca l’accesso di un teatro settecentesco, restaurato di recente, restituito alla sua eleganza di struttura architettonica all’italiana, con gallerie e palchetti, impreziosita da motivi ornamentali, lampioni e velluti. L’iniziativa, interessante anche perché promossa e sostenuta in totale gratuità da parte del Comune e degli interpreti ha come spettatori i partecipanti al XXVII Congresso Internazionale di Studi Piceni “Tra prosa e poesia nell’Umanesimo e nel Rinascimento (in Italia e nelle Marche)” di Sassoferrato; Rinuccio Aretino ne emerge come figura significativa in quanto pionieristica nell’ambito della fortuna aristofanea e della traduzione umanistica.
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Le Maschere di Machiavelli Nelle biografie di Niccolò Machiavelli compare solitamente qualche riga dedicata a un’opera comica andata perduta. Si tratta del “ragionamento” di foggia aristofanea Le Maschere, di cui è possibile dedurre alcune notizie nelle parole del nipote Giuliano de’ Ricci, suo diretto lettore, nonché responsabile anche della sua scomparsa. Egli infatti decide di non ricopiarlo fra le opere del nonno e ne fornisce le motivazioni. Ancora una volta, e indicativamente sotto il titolo di Le Maschere, l’Aristofane delle Nuvole, che ne è stato modello ispiratore, è stato coperto, addirittura censurato, al punto da non poter sopravvivere. Attraverso l’esame di questa preziosa testimonianza e la lettura dell’intera opera del Machiavelli, ho tentato di ipotizzare uno sviluppo scenico di queste spregiudicate Maschere, edito presso l’editore Ennepilibri di Imperia,21 ma già andato in scena al Teatro Rina e Gilberto Govi di Bolzaneto (Genova) il 26 e 27 novembre 2009, con la regia di Antonio Biggio, per cui ne fornirò le linee costitutive testuali e una breve cronaca. Dalle parole del Ricci: Et di più conpose ad instanzia di Messer Marcello Vergilio et ad imitazione delle Nebule et altre commedie di Aristofane un ragionamento a foggia di commedia et in atto recitabile et lo intitolò Le Maschere che l’originale si ritruova appresso di me fragmentato et non perfetto et tanto mal concio che io non l’ho copiato sì come ho fatto molte altre cose sue, discorsi et lettere non stampate et credo anco non lo volere copiare perché sotto nomi finti va laccerando et mal trattando molti di quelli cittadini che nel 1504 vivevano.
possiamo dedurre che l’aveva scritta dietro suggerimento dell’amico e collega Marcello Virgilio (con cui è documentato un carteggio epistolare), e a imitazione delle Nuvole, soprattutto, ma anche di altre commedie: opera significativa anche perché sarebbe una delle primissime commedie in volgare del Cinquecento. Alla base doveva esserci l’agone dialogico (ragionamento), arricchito da notazioni sceniche (recitabile), e “a foggia di commedia,” ossia non una commedia vera e propria, forse perché mancante di coro o di qualche elemento strutturale, o forse problematica per qualche aspetto relativo ai personaggi, al punto da indurlo a non terminarla. Molte persone, infatti, cittadini, quindi anche Fiorentini, risultavano colpite dalla satira, sotto finti nomi; ci viene fornita anche una data, il 1504, epoca di ambientazione o di composizione e, infine, la confessione di non lo volere copiare, per la quale dobbiamo tenere in debito conto l’incarico che il Ricci aveva ricevuto dalla censura dell’Inquisizione di eliminare le opere sovversive o scottanti: elemento da cui deduciamo l’audacia politica della commedia di Machiavelli.
21 Ludovica Radif, Le Maschere di Machiavelli (Imperia: Ennepilibri, 2010).
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Seguendo dunque la trama fondamentale delle Nuvole aristofanee, ma attingendo anche ad altre commedie, e soprattutto calando la vicenda negli anni dello scrittore, possiamo immaginare personaggi e sviluppo drammatico di queste Maschere. Il padre e il figlio preoccupati del futuro potrebbero essere il papa Alessandro VI (che era pesantemente intervenuto contro Savonarola) e il figlio Cesare Borgia, il Duca Valentino, ribattezzato Cavallentino per far riferimento ai cavalli, riecheggiando il gioco linguistico del greco Fidippide. Per quanto riguarda il pensatoio immaginiamo Savonarola e Piagnoni, cui si aggiunge il Coro di Nuvole e l’agone tra Povertà e Pluto. Al Teatro Govi è andato in scena “Il carnevale degli dèi” (compagnia del Teatro Govi, scene realizzate a cura del biennio dell’Accademia Ligustica di Belle Arti di Genova), con un primo tempo dedicato a un rifacimento dell’Anfitrione di Plauto ambientato nella Genova del 2010,22 che termina con l’arrivo sulla scena di alcune Nuvole personificate che convincono Giove a mettere in scena la vicenda ripresa dal Machiavelli, una storia pronta da 505 anni! L’ambientazione è dalle parti di Via S. Gallo a Firenze, alla Taverna del Cavalluccio Pazzo. Una serie di gag trapiantate dalle Nuvole nel tessuto sociale dell’epoca cinquecentesca, e ravvivate dalla pronuncia toscana, affine a quella dell’attore Leonardo Pieraccioni, del papa-papà Sesto (Adriano Delucchi), sviluppa il tema dei debiti economici, con giochi parodici sui Medici e sui Pazzi. Giunti al Pensatoio-Convento di S. Marco, troviamo due frati piangenti (i piagnoni, appunto) che fanno disquisizioni nebulose su quisquilie (o sugli ingredienti delle famose pillole di Giovanni Damasceno, la cui ricetta effettivamente compare in una lettera di Machiavelli a Francesco Guicciardini), fino all’arrivo del grande fra’ Floriano della Faggiuola, nome inventato che adombra il frate Savonarola, e delle danzatrici Nuvole. Nell’itinerario pseudo-iniziatico rimane in seguito coinvolto il figlio Cavallentino, che, con una contaminazione dall’altra commedia aristofanea del Pluto, giunge al fianco del dio cieco della ricchezza, il discorso forte, a confronto con la Povertà. Floriano-Savonarola si presenta come frate fanatico della Povertà, della Pace; la sua soluzione ai debiti? vivere di elemosine!, ingraziandosi la gente che si lancia in puntate sui cavalli, e facendo elemosine al convento (attraverso un ‘salta-danaio’, un cavallino di Troia salvadanaio che viene spacciato come rimedio contro la povertà). Cavallentino, ben indottrinato, torna entusiasta dal padre, mentre Sesto vede sparire i propri beni, la sua casa (di disonesto) spogliarsi. Per illustrare ai frati la differenza fra “pregare” e “fregare” al papa non resta che un predicatore d’eccezione, il … francescano frate Foco; l’incendio conclusivo avvicina il finale delle Nuvole al rogo del Savonarola! Ma il regista aggiunge il particolare di una fontana, in cui il padre immerge la testa del figlio; da parte loro, le Nuvole, schizzando acqua, sembra-
22 Ludovica Radif, Giovedì a casa di Alcmena, Silvae di Latina Didaxis 27 (Genova: Compagnia dei Librai, 2009).
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no voler contrapporre la loro sapienza naturale, l’indagine ‘scientifica’ delle cause, alle fiamme dell’inquisizione.
Conclusioni Il percorso che con pochi ma significativi esempi è stato qui sunteggiato, tra i manoscritti del Quattrocento e la scena contemporanea, ha voluto evidenziare il duplice volto aristofaneo nella prima ripresa in Occidente: il lato fortunato, specie del primo dramma, di essere divenuto portavoce della prisca comoedia, anche mediante nuovi accenti e tipiche interpretazioni umanistiche; accanto a quello, il lato sfortunato, l’essere stato ridotto, nascosto, misconosciuto, addirittura taciuto per la sua carica ideologica e reazionaria, ben avvertita da un uomo politico come Niccolò Machiavelli nel primo Cinquecento. Quest’ultimo può certamente dirsi un punto d’arrivo nell’immedesimazione nel testo aristofaneo, da considerarsi molto più fedele nello spirito all’originale rispetto a tante rivisitazioni attuali che continuano a mantenere inalterati sulla scena incomprensibili riferimenti a personaggi antichi. Le rivisitazioni parziali come quelle di Rinuccio (documentata dal viaggiatore Buondelmonti) e Leonardo (in parte condivisa con Tortelli) hanno avuto il merito, però, di avvertire e risvegliare uno spirito comico ormai sopito per ragioni di tempo e di spazio, e di farsene interpreti nello stile e negli ambienti a loro più congeniali; ma soprattutto, che si trattasse di lessicografia, di esercitazione linguistica o di esemplificazione di un genere, questi pionieri della riscoperta aristofanea hanno saputo comunque riconvocare un pubblico, nuovo, non abituato, e, almeno, incuriosirlo.
Hélène Casanova-Robin
L’influence de Plaute sur la définition du comique chez Giovanni Pontano Abstract: In the Italian Quattrocento, the discovery of Plautus’ plays generated much debate and gave rise to innovative literary creations. As one of the most important readers of these comedies, Pontano contributed to elaborating philological approaches while borrowing many elements for his own work. In his treatise De Sermone, the Neapolitan humanist studied the concept of facetudo, making up this word in much the same way as Plautus himself overused neologisms. His farreaching study of the comic writer, drawn from the rich illustrations provided by Plautus’ writing, highlights how ars can transform everyday life even at its most trivial.
Homo ad risum sponte sua instinctus est atque ad iocum refocillationis gratia (III, 7, 2) L’homme est naturellement enclin à rire et à plaisanter pour se détendre
L’engouement suscité par la redécouverte des comédies de Plaute, dans l’Italie du XVe siècle, après une période médiévale où Térence, au langage plus policé, lui fut largement préféré,1 apparaît tout autant dans la multiplication des éditions2 que dans la veine littéraire qui se trouve alors fécondée. Plusieurs études fameuses ont éclairé le premier de ces aspects: celle fondatrice de Friedrich Ritschl3 a été considérablement renouvelée par l’ouvrage de Cesare Questa,4 qui expose avec précision le travail philologique mené par les humanistes sur les textes de Plaute, depuis les premières années du Quattrocento, lorsque Nicolas de Cues fait connaître à Rome un manuscrit contenant douze nouvelles comédies du poète antique,5 point de départ de la diffusion de toutes les comédies. Rita Cappelletto, dans un livre remarquable,6 s’est attachée à montrer l’apport de Giovanni Pontano dans la connaissance de Plaute, relevant et commentant les innombrables annotations que cet humaniste ajouta aux
1 En effet, si Térence avait connu une relative fortune durant le Moyen Âge, Plaute était demeuré davantage dans l’ombre, ses textes n’ayant pas été tous découverts et son langage suscitant sans doute moins d’intérêt. 2 Editio Princeps, Venise, par Giorgio Merula, 1472. 3 Friedrich Ritschl, Ueber die Kritik des Plautus: Opuscula philologica, II (Leipzig: 1868). 4 Cesare Questa, Per la storia del testo di Plauto nell’umanesimo, I: la recensio di Poggio Bracciolini (Roma: Eidizioni dell’Ateneo, 1968). 5 Codex Ursinianus, aujourd’hui Vat. Lat. 3870, voir Stefano Pittaluga, La scena interdetta : teatro e letteratura fra Medioevo e umanesimo, (Napoli: Liguori, 2002). 6 Rita Capelletto, La ‘Lectura Plauti’ del Pontano (Urbino: Quattroventi, 1988).
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manuscrits qu’il possédait dès son plus jeune âge,7 avant même d’occuper les fonctions politiques et culturelles qui seront les siennes dans le royaume de Naples des Aragonais. Le second de ces aspects demeure plus partiellement exploré: en effet, si l’on a considéré d’assez près la réception de Plaute dans les œuvres vernaculaires du XVe siècle italien,8 seules quelques études ponctuelles ont examiné l’influence de ses comédies sur la littérature néo-latine.9 Certes, toutes ces productions participent d’un même intérêt pour la verve plautinienne, qui suscite des échos aussi bien dans la langue italienne contemporaine que dans une langue latine dont d’aucuns ne négligent pas d’actualiser le sermo cotidianus. Les auteurs du Quattrocento, sur ce point comme sur bien d’autres, imposent donc une rupture, lisant et traduisant abondamment les pièces de Plaute, qui comblent leur soif de nouveauté et leur offrent une voie inédite pour développer le genre, si prisé à la Renaissance, du libre dialogue. Poggio Bracciolini est l’un des pionniers dans ce domaine, comme dans beaucoup d’autres, lorsqu’il inaugure la forme de la « facétie », chez les humanistes, directement inspirée de la comédie antique.10 Le Liber facetiarum11 raille les grossièretés des gens de la campagne, la sottise humaine, en une liberté de ton apparentée à celle dont use le poète comique antique et qui annonce, par bien des points la réflexion subtile menée par Giovanni Pontano dans le De Sermone.12 Giovanni Pontano (1429–1503), à son tour, accorde donc un intérêt tout particulier à Plaute, corrigeant et annotant abondamment le manuscrit personnel qui contenait
7 Selon Francesco Tateo, “Il lessico dei ‘comici’ nella facezia latina del Quattrocento,” in: I Classici nel Medioevo e nell’Umanesimo, Miscellanea Filologica, 1975, pp. 93–109, et Capelletto, La ‘Lectura Plauti’ del Pontano (n. 6), Pontano aurait eu entre les mains un manuscrit de Plaute dès 1458. 8 Giorgio Padoan, L’avventura della commedia rinascimentale (Padova: Piccin Nuova, 1996), par exemple. 9 Francesco Tateo, “Il linguaggio comico in Pontano,” in: Jozef Ijsewijn & Eckhard Kessler (eds.), Acta Conuentus Neo-Latini Lovaniensis (Munich: Fink Verlag, 1973), pp. 647–57; Pierre Laurens, “Modèles plautiniens dans la lyrique amoureuse,” Cahiers de l’Humanisme (2000), pp. 243–61; Antonio Staüble, La commedia umanistica del Quattrocento (Firenze: Istituto nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento, 1968). 10 Poggio Bracciolini, Facetiae (Paris: M. Le Noir, 1518, mais des éditions paraissent en Italie dès 1470: Rome, Georgius, Lauer, par exemple). Lionello Sozzi, “Les Facéties du Pogge et leur influence,” Bulletin de l’Association d’étude sur l’humanisme et la renaissance 7 (1977), pp. 31–5, précise que le texte a circulé en Italie très largement dans des traductions italiennes, tout au long du XVe siècle; voir aussi Barbara C. Bowen, Humour and Humanism in the Renaissance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), qui, au chapitre 1 de son ouvrage, dresse la liste des recueils de facéties de la Renaissance, depuis certains passages de Pétrarque (Rerum memorandum libri, 114: “De facetiis ac salibus illustrium” (pp. 37– 61), “De mordacibus iocis” (pp. 62–84) à Pontano, De Sermone (chap. II, p. 265 et suiv.). 11 Édition moderne Stefano Pittaluga, (Milano: Garzanti, 1995); trad. fr. d’Étienne Wolff (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2005). 12 Bien sûr, il faudrait examiner également sur ce point l’influence exercée par l’œuvre d’Alberti (Momus, Intercenales, en particulier), mais cela exigerait une étude à part entière.
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les vingt pièces du poète dramatique antique.13 Outre la maîtrise philologique qu’il manifeste par ce travail, Pontano révèle une attention exceptionnelle portée à la langue de Plaute, à la construction des dialogues et plus largement à la richesse poétique du texte. L’imprégnation du texte plautinien et plus généralement de l’esprit qui prévaut dans ces comédies, apparaît à divers titres dans les propres productions de l’humaniste: on la décèle tout d’abord dans les dialogues écrits au cours des premières années de son activité littéraire14 (Antonius, Asinus, Charon15). En outre, la prédilection de l’humaniste pour la couleur plautinienne se traduit aussi par des inflexions données à son propre langage poétique, qu’il s’agisse de personnages ou de thématiques inspirés à l’évidence par la comédie de Plaute, ou plus précisément d’un enrichissement lexical modelé sur les innovations du dramaturge antique.16 Mais elle nourrit aussi une réflexion profonde, menée de longue date, sur la nature du comique et ses implications sur le langage. Celle-ci trouve son accomplissement dans le traité De Sermone, composé dans les dernières années de l’existence de Pontano, à partir de 1499 puis remanié jusqu’à la fin de sa vie,17 si bien qu’il ne sera publié qu’après sa mort, par les soins de son ami Pietro Summonte. Si, par bien des aspects, ce traité peut-être lu comme une réponse à l’exposé donné par Cicéron dans le De Oratore (II, LVIV–LXXI) et à Quintilien, au livre VI (chap. III, de risu) de l’Institution oratoire, il présente toutefois un certain nombre de positions divergentes: là où le rhéteur antique se préoccupait avant tout d’évaluer l’importance et la variété des
13 Plauto Vindob. Lat. 3168 (Cod. Wien, Oesterr. National-Bibl., lat. 3168 (W); R. Cappelleto, dans La lectura Plauti del Pontano, supra n. 6, décrit et commente ce travail minutieux; Cesare Questa, Per la storia del testo di Plauto, supra n. 4; Remigio Sabbadini, Le scoperte dei codici latini e greci nei secoli XIV e XV, 2 vol. (Firenze: Sansoni, 1905). 14 Salvatore Monti, “Ricerche sulla cronologia dei Dialoghi di Pontano,” Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosophia dell’Università di Napoli 10 (1962–1963), pp. 296–305. 15 Ces dialogues ont été édités par Carmelo Previtera: Giovanni Pontano. I Dialoghi (Firenze: Sansoni, 1943). 16 On pense en particulier au personnage du senex amator, choisi par le poète pour s’auto-représenter dans la plupart de ses recueils et décliné sous diverses variantes. Quant au langage, Pierre Laurens, dans l’étude citée supra n. 9, a rappelé l’apport de la comédie plautinienne à la poésie amoureuse latine. Il a souligné cependant que Pontano, dans ses emprunts au lexique et aux images du poète comique, ne fait pas pour autant œuvre novatrice en ce domaine, s’en tenant à une reprise assez topique du discours érotique. L’annotation minutieuse que l’humaniste appose sur les manuscrits de Plaute le pousse davantage à relever l’innovation lexicale, l’expressivité du vers et surtout cette variété du sermo, constitué d’admirables trouvailles, dont il loue les nuances infinies. 17 Voir Sergio Lupi, “Il De Sermone di G. Pontano,” Filologia Romanza II.8, (1955), pp. 366–417; Henri Weber, “Deux théoriciens de la facétie: Pontano et Castiglione,” Bulletin de l’Association d’étude sur l’humanisme, la réforme et la renaissance 7 (1977), pp. 74–8; Georg Luck, “Vir facetus, a Renaissance Ideal,” Studies in Philology 55.2 (1958), pp. 107–21; pour une synthèse générale sur l’histoire du texte et les principaux thèmes développés, on se reportera à l’édition d’Alessandra Mantovani, Giovanni Pontano, De Sermone (Roma: Carrocci, 2002). Toutes mes citations du traité pontanien sont empruntées à cette dernière édition.
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effets comiques dans une plaidoirie, Pontano réfléchit sur l’essence même du comique, soulignant ses implications éthiques et esthétiques. Le discours acquiert un relief particulièrement aigu si on observe qu’à Naples, au cours du XVe siècle, le genre farcesque, en langue vernaculaire, connaît une vogue immense.18 La notion de comique, indissociable de la réflexion sur les formes du langage et sur la fonction sociale de la conversation entre « hommes de bien », telle que la développera peu après Castiglione, s’inscrit donc dans un contexte d’émulation fervente, mettant en regard la langue latine et le vernaculaire, au sein de productions diverses manifestement fécondées par la diffusion de l’œuvre plautinienne dans ce milieu. J’exposerai ici la place prépondérante accordée par Pontano à l’œuvre de Plaute dans le De Sermone: comme l’ont montré un certain nombre de travaux,19 la finalité du discours est prioritairement éthique et doit être replacée dans l’idéal d’humanitas, élaboré par l’humaniste à la suite de Cicéron et de Sénèque, plus précisément ici de l’une de ses composantes, l’urbanitas, issue des réflexions du De Oratore et de Quintilien. L’originalité du texte tient également à l’examen de la facetudo sous toutes ses formes, qui est étayée par une analyse poétique minutieuse des répliques plautiniennes. En effet, cette longue familiarité avec la langue du poète comique, qui débute dans la toute première jeunesse de Pontano, trouve son aboutissement dans ce traité Sur la conversation, dans lequel l’humaniste étudie précisément les subtilités du comique, que tout homme du monde se doit de maîtriser. Au-delà d’un vademecum de la conversation de l’honnête homme, le texte présente, avant Bergson, la nécessité du rire et de la facétie pour le bon équilibre de l’âme et pour la sérénité des relations humaines. Complément de la formation du bon orateur politique, le discours ici décrit correspond à celui développé dans le cadre de l’otium, lorsque l’individu recherche un délassement de l’âme qui doit répondre à une modération apparentée à la fameuse mesotès d’inspiration aristotélicienne, de façon à susciter cette facetudo pleine de grâces qui revigore l’esprit (recreatio animi) en le gardant de toute vulgarité. Or, dès le préambule, l’auteur présente son texte comme le produit d’une maturité personnelle—soulignant qu’il l’écrit à l’âge de 73 ans—qui naît d’une contingence précise: la situation politique de Naples n’a jamais été aussi grave,
18 Le Novellino de Masuccio, dit le Salernitain, constitue un exemple fameux de ce type de production. Sannazar écrit également des comédies italiennes farcesques. Voir Giorgio Padoan, L’avventura della commedia rinascimentale (Padova: Piccin Nuova Libreria, 1996); ainsi que Francesco D’Episcopo, “Immanità e inganno nell’opera di Masuccio Salernitano e di Giovanni Pontano,” in: Il Rinascimento, a cura di Vittore Branca et alii (Firenze: Olschki, 1982), pp. 347–63; on se reportera également à Nuccio Ordine, Teoria della novella e teoria del riso nel Cinquecento (Napoli: Liguori, 1996), dont le premier chapitre est consacré à l’histoire du rire; et “Rire thérapeutique et théorie de la nouvelle à la Renaissance,” in: Marie-Laurence Desclos (ed.) Le rire des Grecs, Anthropologie du rire en Grèce ancienne (Grenoble: J. Millon, 2000), pp. 525–52. 19 Francesco Tateo, L’umanesimo etico di G Pontano (Lecce: Millela, 1972); voir aussi l’introduction de Alessandra Mantovani à son édition du De Sermone et, plus récemment, Florence Bistagne, Pontano, De Sermone, De la conversation (Paris: Champion, 2008).
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l’Italie est dévastée par les troupes françaises, la barbarie semble dominer l’environnement. L’humaniste, à l’image de Cicéron dans les dernières années de son existence, se trouve donc dans un otium forcé qu’il cherche à convertir en lieu d’apaisement, en réfléchissant sur les qualités et les défauts du discours courant. Il se réfère assez explicitement à son modèle antique en décrivant sa situation, justifiant ainsi de se tourner vers une réflexion sur la conversation plaisante pour retrouver quelques forces dans ces épreuves.20 Or, pour ce sujet, il s’éloigne quelque peu de la réflexion menée par Cicéron dans le De Oratore ou par Quintilien dans l’Institution oratoire, choisissant de s’intéresser avant tout à la caractérisation du langage qui permet, selon lui, de développer sous ses diverses facettes les virtualités d’un comique envisagé autant dans sa dimension linguistique que dans sa finalité éthique.21 L’allusion implicite à Cicéron introduit d’emblée l’opposition entre facetus/rudis qui structure majoritairement le traité. L’apport plautinien, longuement exploré dans ses dialogues précédents (Asinus, Antonius, Charon), constitue ici une armature centrale de l’ouvrage, Pontano s’appuyant à de nombreuses reprises sur des citations empruntées aux comédies de Plaute pour étayer son propos. L’objet de cette étude consiste donc à considérer la lecture pontanienne du texte antique au regard de cette réflexion sur le discours facetus : outre qu’il en conçoit une notion nouvelle—la facetudo—l’humaniste décèle dans ces pièces latines une infinie variété de modulations plaisantes. Ce regard contribue à nourrir la réflexion sur le pouvoir de l’ars capable de transfigurer l’obscène, ajoutant à la méditation éthique sur le discours une réflexion esthétique inédite.
I. Plaute et la naissance de la facetudo L’humaniste pose donc comme premier objectif, dès le prologue, la caractérisation des facetiae, envisagée dans leur finalité sociale et éthique:
20 Annum agimus … tertium ac septuagesimum et eum quidem nequaquam ociosum aut desidem, quando ocio illo frui, quod suapte natura concessum est senectuti, per Italiae turbationes non licet. … Je suis dans ma soixante treizième année …, pas du tout inactif ni désœuvré, puisque il ne m’est pas permis de jouir de ce loisir qui est accordé tout naturellement par la vieillesse, en raison de la situation troublée en Italie… (ma traduction). Cf. Cicéron, De Oratore, I, VIII, 32: quid esse potest in otio aut iucundius aut magis proprium humanitatis quam sermo facetus ac nulla in re rudis? « Quel délassement plus doux dans la retraite ou plus conforme à la dignité de notre nature, qu’un entretien enjoué et qui se prête à tous les sujets? » (toutes les traductions de ce texte sont ici empruntées à Edmond Courbaud, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1922). 21 Voir, sur l’éthique pontanienne, les travaux de Francesco Tateo: Tradizione e realtà nell’Umanesimo italiano (Bari: Dedalo Libri, 1967), notamment le chapitre “L’umorismo di G. Pontano e l’ispirazione dell’Asinus,” pp. 319–54; L’Umanesimo meridionale, supra n. 19; L’Umanesimo etico di G. Pontano, op. cit.; ”Il lessico dei comici, nella facezia latina del Quattrocento”, supra n. 9.
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conuertimus ad scribendas eas siue uirtutes siue uicia quae in sermone uersantur; non autem oratorio aut poetico sed qui ad relaxationem animorum pertinet atque ad eas quae facetiae dicuntur, id est ad ciuilem quandam urbanamque consuetudinem domesticosque conuentus hominum inter ipsos, non utilitatis tantum gratia conuenientium, sed iucunditatis refocillationique a labore ac molestiis. Nous nous tournons vers l’écriture des vertus et des défauts que l’on trouve dans le discours; non celui rhétorique ou poétique, mais celui destiné à détendre l’esprit, qui vise à produire ce qu’on appelle des facéties, c’est-à-dire celui pratiqué dans les relations civiles et urbaines, dans les réunions, non seulement dans une finalité utilitaire, mais aussi pour le plaisir et pour en tirer un réconfort après le labeur et les soucis.22
Or, pour susciter ce plaisir capable de restituer à l’âme ses forces, la conversation courante (materia communis, I, IX, 2), destinée à engendrer plaisir et volupté (oblectatio ac uoluptas, I, 9, 2) doit être premièrement « empreinte de charme et de douceur »: Itaque lepidus is uidetur, qui suauitate dicendi teneritudineque quasi quadam delectat et uerborum et rerum. (I, IX, 3)
Cette caractéristique est illustrée par une citation extraite de la Cistellaria de Plaute, proposée après un bref exemple de Térence, pour caractériser le discours « plein de grâces », dit lepidus, celui que Pontano définit, selon une étymologie fantaisiste, comme destiné à soulager de la peine (laborem leuare). Ce trait apparaît doté à la fois d’une douceur et d’une délicatesse qui émanent à la fois de l’harmonie verbale et des sentiments dépeints. Quom ego antehac te amaui, et mihi amicam esse creui, mea Gymnasium, et matrem tuam, tum id mihi hodie aperuistis, tu atque haec: soror si mea esses, qui magis potueritis mihi honorem ire habitum, nescio; nisi, ut meus est animus, fieri non posse arbitror; ita omnibus relictis rebus mihi frequentem operam dedistis: et ego uos amo, et eo a me magnam inistis gratiam. (Cist. 1–7) Je t’ai toujours aimée, et je n’ai jamais pu douter de ton amitié, ma Gymnasie, ni de celle de ta mère; mais c’est aujourd’hui surtout que vous m’en donnez des preuves. Tu serais ma sœur, que tu ne pourrais pas me témoigner plus d’intérêt; non, je le sens bien, cela n’est pas possible; car vous avez tout délaissé pour m’accorder entièrement votre aide. Que je vous aime, et que je vous suis reconnaissante!23
Cette notion de lepos, que l’humaniste trouve ainsi abondamment illustrée chez Plaute, se manifeste dans ses propres productions poétiques de façon récurrente, soit personnifiée à travers le personnage de Lépidina, dans l’églogue éponyme, soit
22 La traduction des extraits du De Sermone est mienne. 23 Ma traduction.
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prétexte à une création mythologique, qui met en scène, non sans humour, dans une élégie du De Amore Coniugali, la naissance des jumeaux Lepores, fils d’Apollon et de la nymphe Dulcidia, adoptés dans l’entourage de Vénus.24 Ici, Pontano distingue en outre les infinies nuances de cette parole séduisante qui demeure toutefois infiniment maîtrisée, faisant apparaître les degrés divers qu’elle peut comporter, depuis la suavité jusqu’à la pointe acérée, qualités parfois réunies (« douces saveurs, douces et piquantes à la fois », sapores suaues, suaues simul et salsi; ou encore: « séduisantes, séduisantes et en même temps piquantes » lepida, lepida pariter ac salsa): Lepidis itaque suauitas tantum inest dictis, salsis etiam acumen, quando salsus sapor est ipse quidem acutior. (I, 9, 5) Dans les mots séduisants, il y a seulement de la douceur, mais dans les mots piquants, existe également une pointe, puisque la saveur piquante est elle-même plus aiguisée.
Or, dans cette gradation qu’il relève dans l’intensité comique, Pontano apprécie chez Plaute une expression « à la fois délicieuse et piquante, aimable et digne d’un citoyen bien éduqué » (hoc et salsum et lepidum et ciue etiam ingenuo dignum, I, 9, 5). L’exemple de Plaute cité alors, emprunté à l’Amphitryon (718–19) repose sur une utilisation inédite du qualificatif grauida, que le poète fait glisser du sens propre à une acception figurée inattendue, pour dénoncer la prétendue folie Alcmène. Les propos sont ceux de Sosie: Amphitruo, speraui ego istam tibi parituram filium; uerum non est puero grauida. […] sed insania. (718–19) Amphitryon, j’espérais qu’elle te donnerait un fils; Mais ce n’est pas d’un enfant qu’elle est grosse, […] mais de folie.25
Toute la subtilité du comique consiste à réunir dans l’énoncé la représentation idéale de l’épouse d’Amphitryon, qui porterait l’enfant désiré et celle, discordante, d’une déraison odieuse.
24 De Amore Coniugali, II, 7, « De ortu et genitura leporum », poème qui n’est sans doute pas sans lien avec l’épigramme de Martial V, 29, 1–4, comme le suggère Pierre Laurens, donc non dénué d’une certaine ironie. v. 45: « Ipsa leuata labore uocem uos iure Lepores; / Nominis haec uestri non mihi causa levis:/Vos eritis curis requies, uos mite leuamen, / Sollicitisque animis diminuetis onus. » [Vénus parle] Soulagée de mon effort, je vous nomme à juste titre Charmes; / je ne fais pas ce choix à la légère: vous serez le repos des soucis, un doux soulagement/ vous atténuerez le poids des tourments de l’âme. » (ma traduction). 25 Trad. Alfred Ernout, pour la Collection des Universités de France, (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1932), revue par Jean–Christian Dumont, 2001.
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Pontano loue d’autre part la diversité du langage plautinien capable de recourir à toutes sortes de métaphores concrètes empreintes d’affectivité pour étayer une flatterie: Non pectinem eburneum Plautus, non caseum molliculum, non monedulam pratermisit inter blandiendum (I, XI, 1) Plaute ne néglige pas les « peigne d’ivoire », « fromage si tendre », « mon petit choucas ».
Il s’appuie alors sur le modèle de Plaute, revendiqué explicitement, pour créer le terme de facetudo, dérivé du qualificatif facetus, de même que Plaute crée sorditudo à partir de sordidus: Forsan non omnino etiam displicuerit facetudo, subducta syllaba, ut a sordido sorditudo que Plautina deductio est. Peut-être ne déplairait pas facetudo, en ajoutant une syllabe [à facetus], comme, à partir de sordidus, Plaute a forgé sorditudo. (I, 12, 9).
De fait, toute l’analyse des divers modes d’expression du comique participe plus largement d’une méditation à la fois sur le mode de conversation à préconiser chez celui qu’on désignera par l’honnête homme, quelques décennies plus tard, mais aussi sur la nécessité de trouver une voie de diversion agréable pour l’esprit d’un citoyen cultivé. La facetudo, notion engendrée donc par la lecture de Plaute, caractérisée ensuite comme relevant d’un langage mesuré (quaedam mediocritas, IV, 2, 3), constitue une nouvelle uirtus à acquérir pour l’homme de bien, qui nécessite une maîtrise du langage comique et une compréhension profonde de sa finalité. Cette vertu apparaît nécessaire autant pour l’usage individuel (« pour le réconfort de l’âme, pour apaiser les tourments », refocillatio animi, sedare molestias, argument encore exprimé en I, XIII, 1) que dans les relations sociales, indispensable compagne de l’urbanitas, comme l’explique Pontano au chapitre XIII du livre I. Plaute sert là encore à étayer la revendication d’une modération même dans l’admonestation, de façon à préserver la dignité du locuteur. Cette amabilité est justifiée (I, 25, 6) par la réplique de Philoxène, dans les Bacchides (408–10): Eia Lyde, leniter qui saeuiunt sapiunt magis. Minus mirandum est illec aetas siquid illorum facit Quam si non faciat. Feci ego istec itidem in adolescentia. Hé là Lydus, il faut, si l’on est sage, modérer sa colère! Il n’est pas étonnant qu’à son âge il ait fait quelque chose comme cela, moins que s’il ne l’avait pas fait; j’ai fait la même chose, moi dans ma jeunesse.26
26 Traduction de Pierre Grimal (Paris: Gallimard, 1971).
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Il s’agit ainsi de garder sans cesse le souci d’être alloquendo gratus et periucundus (I, 25, 7), « agréable et le plus plaisant du monde dans le discours ».
II. Richesse et diversité du comique plautinien Mais la véritable analyse des modulations du verbe comique apparaît à partir du livre III. Pontano y énumère et opère une large et subtile classification des formes de comique. Prenant majoritairement appui sur des exemples tirés des comédies de Plaute, l’humaniste définit ainsi un triplex iocandi genus (« trois sortes de comique » III, V), sur le modèle de Quintilien (VI, 3, 23), en l’exposant selon une distinction qui lui est propre, précisément caractérisée par les ressources offertes par les pièces de Plaute. Il différencie celui de l’esclave, dont Plaute offre maints exemples, de celui du paysan et surtout de la facetudo, cet art de la conversation enjouée propre à l’homme de bien: liberalitas inest ac suauitas illa, honestae iucunditatis comes, tantumque ab rusticitate remota quantum rusticanis a moribus urbani absunt (III, V) [dans la troisième catégorie] il y a cette libéralité et cette douceur, compagnes du plaisir honorable, et aussi éloignées de la rusticité que l’urbanité se distingue d’elle par ses mœurs.
Il s’attache à considérer de façon très précise tout ce qui peut susciter le rire chez l’auditeur-spectateur des comédies de Plaute, mettant en relief la variété des moyens utilisés qui relèvent tantôt du comique de langage, tantôt du comique de situation, tantôt de jeux de mots remarquablement élaborés (III, XVI, 3–4). Ici ce sont des injures, dont le registre familier et la référence au monde agricole prêtent à rire: quippe cum dicta ipsa alia sub increpationis speciem risum moueant, quale Plautinum illud: ‘iste quidem gradus subcretus est cribro pollinario’ (Poen. 513); itemque ‘uicistis cocleam tarditudine’ (Poen. 532) car d’autres bons mots, eux-mêmes, sous le ton du reproche, provoquent le rire, comme chez Plaute: « Le pas dont vous allez est plus menu que les mailles d’un tamis à farine »; « vous avez surpassé l’escargot en lenteur ».
Ou encore, l’allusion scabreuse sous le jeu de mots: Noctu in uigiliam quando ibat miles, tum tu ibas simul, Conueniebat ne in uaginam tuam machaera militis? (Pseud. 1180–1) La nuit, quand le militaire allait prendre la garde et que tu allais avec lui, est-ce que son braquemart entrait bien dans ton fourreau?27
27 Sauf mention contraire, les traductions de Plaute sont désormais empruntées à Alfred Ernout, supra n. 25.
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Pontano éclaire ainsi d’infinies nuances toute la gamme du comique, renouvelant le répertoire traditionnellement dressé par les Anciens précisément pour l’adapter à une finalité qui n’est plus celle de l’orateur, mais celle de l’homme « cultivé », urbanus: la cauillatio, « raillerie », définie par Cicéron dans le De Oratore, II, LIV, 218 comme un genus facetiarum (« genre de plaisanterie »), repose ici sur la personnification d’un objet qui s’étend sur plusieurs répliques du dialogue: – Cistella hic mihi adolescens euolauit – In caueam latam oportuit (Cist. 731–2) – Ma cassette, jeune homme, s’est envolée. – Il aurait fallu l’enfermer dans une cage.
L’humaniste identifie ailleurs une coloration comique dans l’ironie (ab illusione) greffée sur une métaphore renforcée par un jeu phonique: – uox ad auris aduolauit – nae, ego infelix fui, qui non alas interuelli (Amph. 325–6) – Une voix a volé jusqu’à mes oreilles – Suis-je malheureux! Je ne lui ai pas coupé les ailes.
Mais, plus que l’injure retournée contre son auteur (alibi ex retorsione maledicti), c’est la nouveauté, d’ordre lexical ou proprement spectaculaire, qui apparaît comme la plus appropriée à provoquer la jubilation du spectateur-auditeur, surtout si elle émane d’un seruus « fourbe et rusé »: iucundissima sane tum effictio nominum tum innouatio muliebrium uestimentorum, ex ore praesertim serui subdoli ac ueteratoris (III, XVI, 4) la plus grande source de plaisir est la création de mots, ou l’innovation dans les vêtements féminins, surtout si on les trouve dans la bouche d’esclaves fourbes et rusés.
En effet, une attention toute particulière est accordée à l’innovation linguistique. L’humaniste relève deux occurrences de paronomase: aut quae adnominatione, ut ‘Ecquid is homo scitus est? / Plebiscitum non aeque est scitum’ (Pseud. 748); et ‘hic equus non in arcem, uerum in arcam faciet impetum’. (Bacc. 943) ou bien la paronomase, comme « Ses idées sont donc bien ordonnées? Une ordonnance n’est pas en meilleur ordre »; et « ce cheval n’attaquera pas la citadelle mais un coffre ».
La tirade d’Epidicus, dans la pièce éponyme, fournit l’illustration éloquente de cette catégorie manifestement chère à Pontano, comportant un éventail fourni de termes forgés à partir du lexique usuel, mais tout à fait inédits, à l’époque, et dont la traduction peine à rendre la coloration concrète et imagée:
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tunicam rallam, spissam, linteolum caesicium, indusiatam, patagiatam, calthulam aut croculam tunique transparente, épaisse, en lin bien tissé, chemise, frangée, couleur de souci ou safranée.28
Cette nouitas uerborum constitue un sujet de délectation pour l’humaniste qui émaille toutes ses œuvres personnelles de néologismes ou d’inventions verbales forgées sur le modèle plautinien. On les rencontre aussi bien dans les œuvres poétiques que dans les dialogues. La scène d’ouverture du dialogue Actius, inspirée manifestement par les compositions dramatiques de Plaute, en fournit une illustration magistrale, représentant un échange cocasse reposant précisément sur des jeux lexicaux riches d’innovations29: on y découvre par exemple le diminutif domunculam, « petite maison », attesté en latin classique, ici repris par l’interlocuteur par le néologisme democulam « petit peuple »; le surnom Caulita est également intégré dans un énoncé jussif où domine une paronomase: Caute agito, mi Caulita « Agis avec précaution, mon Caulita » et ainsi tout au long de ce prologue au débat mené par les Académiciens sur la question de la prééminence de la langue poétique sur la prose historique. D’autres jeux de langage sont ainsi retenus par l’auteur dans le De Sermone, comme autant de trouvailles d’exception. Ainsi, en IV, III, 19, il loue non seulement le double sens de l’expression (duplicitas sensus), mais la rencontre de sonorités vocales ou consonantiques qui produisent l’effet comique dans cette réplique des Ménechmes: Geminum dum quaeris, gemes (Men. 257) En recherchant ton jumeau, tu gémiras.30
L’analyse que développe ici Pontano révèle son attention portée à l’allitération – terme qu’il forge lui-même dans l’Actius, comme il se plaît à le rappeler ici (IV, III, 20), ainsi qu’à l’agencement des mots dans la phrase: Atque in huiusmodi praecipue uocibus prima quidem occursio tota est naturae, secunda uero ad artem potius referenda: eius enim est et deducere uoces et quaerere earum structuram et comparare eas atque inflectere (IV, III, 20). Et dans ces paroles, en particulier, la rencontre des voyelles relève certes de la nature, mais ce second point est plutôt à rapporter à l’art: en effet, c’est le propre de l’art de développer les sons, de chercher à les ordonner, de les agencer pour en produire une mélodie.
28 Francesco Tateo mentionne également ce passage dans son article “Il linguaggio comico in Pontano,” supra n.7. 29 Actius, in Giovanni Pontano Dialoghi, a cura di Carmelo Prévitera (Firenze: Sansoni, 1943), p. 127. 30 Traduction personnelle.
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Ces quelques emprunts demeurent insuffisants pour rendre compte de la lecture d’une minutie extrême, effectuée par un auteur qui a montré ailleurs combien il était sensible à l’expressivité sonore et rythmique d’une phrase, soucieux aussi d’une étroite concordance entre le sémantisme et le verbe. L’ars constitue ainsi la voie d’approche privilégiée des œuvres de Plaute.
III. Ars comica et inuentio L’analyse de l’articulation des lieux comiques fait apparaître l’intérêt de Pontano porté également à l’inuentio touchant aux situations ou plus précisément à la confrontation de caractères qui sont autant de modulations sur les types de personnages et qui suscitent le plaisir du spectateur, cette iocunditas si prisée. Sur ce point également, la matière plautinienne offre un terrain particulièrement fécond. L’impertinence de Mercure envers Amphitryon illustre en effet ce renversement de comportement traditionnellement imputé au vieillard désireux d’expier ses erreurs de jeunesse: Prodigum te fuisse oportet in adolescentia, Quia senecta aetate mendicas malum. (Amph. 1031–2) – Il faut que tu aies été bien prodigue dans ta jeunesse […] – Parce que sur tes vieux jours tu viens mendier près de moi des coups.
L’effet plaisant, qualifié par Pontano de dictum et salsum et bene argutum (« propos piquant et pénétrant », III, 17, 3) tient selon cet auteur à la vraisemblance du propos qui permet au spectateur de reconnaître un trait bien connu du comportement du jeune homme prodigue, réduit à la fin de sa vie à la mendicité. Poursuivant son analyse, l’humaniste souligne combien l’expressivité des divers loci comici plautiniens tient à la conception de l’échange des répliques. Il assimile alors cet enchaînement entre un énoncé sérieux et une réplique qui introduit de façon inattendue un registre concret, comparant cette intrusion à la variété de saveurs produite par la nature (III, 17, 19): les sarcasmes n’en deviennent que plus acérés (dicteriorum acumen), empreints parfois d’un mordant remarquable (salsitatem), ou bien au contraire d’un charme séduisant (leporem), semblables à ces condiments qui ajoutent jubilation et plaisir aux mots délicieux. La métaphore gustative ainsi développée trouve sa justification avec l’exemple de trois citations de Plaute évaluées par Pontano comme particulièrement comiques (quid his ridiculosius?) ou tout à fait délicieuses (quid illo autem lepidius?). On y trouve, placés en regard, des propos centrés soit sur le thème de l’ingestion: sputo sanguinem / Resinam ex melle Aegyptiam uorato (Merc. 138) je ne fais que cracher du sang / Avale donc de la résine d’Égypte avec du miel.
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soit sur une comparaison animalière: dic mihi: solent ne tibi oculi unquam duri fieri? quid? Tu locustam esse censes, homo ignauissime? (Men. 923–4) Dis-moi: tes yeux deviennent-ils souvent durs? Quoi? Tu me prends pour une sauterelle, triple idiot?
Une longue série d’exemples, empruntés à un large répertoire des pièces de Plaute, vient encore illustrer l’invention ingénieuse d’un auteur capable de diversifier ainsi les saveurs du dialogue en livrant une peinture colorée de la nature humaine. Pontano reprend ensuite la fameuse distinction rhétorique entre res/ uerba, issue du répertoire héroïque, (III, 17, 20): le comique de geste est ainsi répertorié à côté du comique de langage, ou parfois les deux catégories sont identifiées étroitement unies, comme dans cet exemple tiré du Rudens (886–8): Credo alium in aliam belluam hominem uortier. Ille in columbam, credo, leno uortitur, nam in columbari collum haud multo post erit. Je crois que chaque homme peut se transformer en une nouvelle bête. Ce marchand de femmes, je le crois, se transforme en colombe, Car bientôt on lui prendra le cou dans un colombier.31
Pontano voit dans cette association d’un phénomène et d’un jeu de mots, une réussite « succulente » (dicta ipsa succulenta sunt): la référence à la métamorphose, poétisation d’une peinture acerbe de l’âme pervertie du proxénète, offre en effet une représentation plaisante d’un personnage déprécié. L’originalité de ce panorama tient aussi en grande partie dans l’intérêt porté par l’auteur à la réception de ce comique par le spectateur. Pontano caractérise les moindres effets de ces procédés et il révèle pour chacun l’effet produit sur le lecteur-auditeur: l’injure outrancière suscite le rire (« sous le langage du blâme, [les mots] font rire », sub increpationis speciem risum moueant), le comique de situation détend l’auditeur (« la difficulté ou l’impossibilité d’agir réjouissent l’auditeur », e difficultate peragendae rei ac frustratione deliniant auditorem), de même que le jeu de mots. Quant à l’accusation ignominieuse, elle provoque la jubilation du public (sunt quae ab probrositate pariant iucunditatem). Plus précisément, il en dégage le bénéfice intellectuel, s’appliquant à démontrer à quel point l’acuité de la pointe et le charme des mots peuvent susciter dans l’âme humaine une multiplicité de réactions:
31 Trad. A. Ernout (supra n. 25) très légèrement modifiée.
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alia aut mordicant, aut uellicant; quaedam uero titillant; alia prima fronte risum mouent; alia diutius uersata, relinquunt in animo sedationem quasi quandam. Sunt quae ruborem afferant, quae contra animum erigant aut moneant aut dehortentur. (III, 17, 21) Les uns sont mordants, d’autres piquent; certains chatouillent; d’autres, de prime abord, font rire; d’autres, médités longtemps, laissent dans l’âme une sorte d’apaisement. Il y en a qui font rougir, d’autres qui excitent l’esprit, le mettent en alerte, le stimulent.
Tous ces termes expriment la stimulation spirituelle exercée par le comique plautinien. Au-delà d’un simple délassement, plus qu’un instrument de conversation mondaine, le langage comique ainsi élaboré avive l’activité de l’esprit humain, dont la vitalité est figurée par la réaction physiologique ici notée (ruborem afferant, « font rougir »). Le choix de termes concrets (mordicant, uellicant, titillant), empruntés au lexique animalier, présente une double fonction: d’une part, ceux-ci soulignent la vivacité de la métaphore comporte une visée argumentative indéniable, d’autre part, ils replacent, dans le commentaire même de Pontano, la couleur plautinienne. Pour étayer sa démonstration, l’humaniste applique aux éléments plaisants, considérés dans leurs degrés divers, les critères fournis par l’analyse rhétorique, restituant à la verve comique une éminente portée éthique: Illud tamen satis liquet in uerborum concinnitate ac ui plurimum quidem repositum esse, siue ad delectandum molestiasque lepore tantum ipso sedandas siue ad uulnerandum saleque illinendas plagas siue ad retorquenda iacula reliquendam ue suspitionem absconditi risus ac ioci notae ue pudendae, tum cicatrices inurendas tum mentis ipsius clam quidem cruciandae acerrimos morsus torturasque grauissimas. (III, 17, 22) Il apparaît clairement que cet effet repose principalement sur l’agencement étudié des mots et sur leur puissance sémantique: pour apporter du plaisir, pour apaiser les soucis précisément par ce charme, pour blesser aussi et pour enduire les coups de sel, pour renvoyer les flèches et délaisser le soupçon d’un rire caché, d’un jeu ou d’une marque infâmante, tantôt aussi pour imprimer des cicatrices dans l’esprit lui-même secrètement torturé, certes, et des morsures vives ainsi que des souffrances profondes.
IV. Ars comica: transfigurer l’obscène Plus encore, l’originalité du propos tient précisément dans ce contraste entre les situations triviales, voire grossières, dépeintes et l’art du poète comique qui transforme ce matériau en source de plaisir pour l’auditeur. La jubilation est alors suscitée par cette prise de conscience de cette capacité de l’ars à transfigurer le laid, l’obscène ou l’incongru en objet esthétique: ostendamus artem naturae coniunctam id praestare ut, quod turpe est suapte natura atque oscenum, id dicatur nec turpiter nec oscene. Quod artis esse quis neget? (IV, II, 1)
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Montrons que l’art allié à la nature procure cela: ce qui est par nature honteux et obscène, peut être exprimé de façon ni honteuse, ni obscène. Qui pourrait nier que c’est là le propre de l’art?
L’ars intervient en effet sur deux points, selon Pontano (IV, II, 5): par sa capacité à transposer (translatio) et à fournir des analogies (similitudo rei). La métaphore utilisée par Plaute pour évoquer l’adultère du mari d’Artémone illustre cette atténuation relativement comique d’un fait grossier: Fundum alienum arat, familiarem incultum deserit; (Asin. 874) Il laboure le champ d’autrui et laisse en friche le champ familial.
Dans l’églogue Lépidina, l’humaniste a mis en œuvre un procédé analogue pour représenter sous une apparence pittoresque le Vésuve personnifié. Le fameux volcan se trouve ainsi dépeint doté d’un noir concombre au lieu de parties viriles: Quodque pudet, nullas res hic habet et caret illis, Pro quibus intumuit cucumis niger; inde Napaeae Hunc rident, rident et Oreades; ille superbum Nutat et inflexo quassat nigra tempora cornu, Quod longe horrescit saetis hinc inde reflexis. (Ve cortège, 249–53) Et cela me gêne d’en parler: il n’a rien, il est dépourvu de parties viriles; À la place, un noir concombre se gonfle. Pour cela, les Napées Se moquent de lui, et les Oréades aussi: lui, fièrement, Il hoche la tête et secoue ses tempes noires ornées d’une corne recourbée Longue, hérissée de soies raides qui rebiquent des deux côtés.32
Suivant la veine plautinienne, le poète a su allier le burlesque à la fantaisie, sans pour autant dériver vers une quelconque grossièreté, mais illustrant cette facétie d’une verve toute populaire. Ailleurs, l’ars sert à rehausser un dialogue extravagant. Pontano montre comment, dans un échange verbal des Ménechmes, l’exploitation de tout le champ sémantique de cura constitue, un procédé stylistique destiné à montrer la discordance entre les préoccupations d’un senex autoritaire et la résignation d’un médecin obéissant qui apparaît comme une variation sur le personnage du seruus: – SENE ENEX X : Magna cum cura illum curari uolo. – MEDICUS EDIC US : Quin suspirabo prius sexcentum dies, Ita ego illum cum cura magna curabo. (Men. 895–7)
32 Le texte et la traduction sont cites d’après mon ouvrage: Hélène Casanova-Robin, Giovanni Pontano, Eclogae/Églogues, étude introductive, traduction du texte latin et annotation (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2011).
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– LE VIEILLARD : Je veux qu’il soit bien soigné, avec de grands soins. – LE MÉDECIN MÉ DEC IN : Bon, je pousserai plus de six cents soupirs par jour, Tant j’aurai soin de te le bien soigner.
Pontano voit là une subtile alliance de l’ars et de la natura destinée à renforcer l’effet plaisant (IV, III, 8): l’inuentio, ou la recherche d’une situation originale, s’y trouve rehaussée par une expressivité lexicale particulièrement bien choisie, l’étroite adéquation entre le langage élaboré et le contraste entre les deux individus décrits intensifiant la dimension comique. On décèle, dans cette orientation du propos pontanien, un écho de la caractérisation du genus facetum présentée par Cicéron au livre II du De Oratore: Est autem huius generis uirtus, ut ita facta demonstres, ut mores eius de quo narres, ut sermo, ut uoltus omnes exprimantur… (De Or. II, LIX, 241) Le mérite de ce genre de plaisanterie est de mettre en relief ce que l’on raconte, de faire ressortir le caractère, le ton, la physionomie du héros de l’histoire.
Or l’humaniste ne se limite pas à souligner la fonction mimétique de la plaisanterie, mais il en tire une analyse de la typologie des personnages qui repose précisément sur l’invention et l’élocution poétiques. Dans l’exemple cité, le rire se trouve suscité par la concentration, dans un échange relativement bref, d’acceptions très diverses, voire opposées, du terme cura, à entendre tantôt au sens de « soin », tantôt au sens de « souci » ou de « tourment ». L’examen du comique plautinien conduit ainsi à un éloge de l’ars, rejoignant une exaltation du travail exercé sur la parole poétique récurrente dans toute l’œuvre de Pontano. La forme sentencieuse, dont use également Plaute dans ses dialogues, est également louée, moins pour sa dimension plaisante, que pour l’intérêt qu’elle peut provoquer en raison de son élégance et de la sagesse du propos exprimé. On retrouve dans ces commentaires la définition de l’excellence de la parole poétique présentée dans l’Actius,33 dialogue de peu antérieur au De Sermone et qui exaltait le travail du vers. Ici, l’humaniste loue la concentration de toutes les qualités qui conduisent à susciter l’admiration, fin ultime de l’art: Ut apud Plautum, cum percontaretur alter, « Quo pacto potis et nupta et uidua esse eadem », respondit alter: « Quod adolescens nupta sit cum sene ». Dictum minime ridiculum, quod tamen sententiae loco probationem inducat. … Huiusmodi enim siue dicta siue responsa magis probantur ut concinne ut grauiter ut prudenter atque ex tempore et ad rem ipsam accommode dicta quam ut ridicule, cum saepenumero admirationem quoque ingenerent in animis audientium. (V, II, 24–6) Comme chez Plaute, lorsque l’un demande: « Comment peut-elle être mariée et veuve à la fois? », l’autre lui répond: « Parce qu’elle a été mariée toute jeune avec un vieillard ». Le propos
33 Poésie définie pour susciter l’admiration: poetae siue officium siue finem esse dicere apposite ad admirationem (Actius, supra n. 30, p. 146).
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est peu amusant, mais propre à susciter l’approbation, comme une sentence. … Les bons mots ou les répliques de cette sorte sont appréciés plus parce qu’ils sont élégamment agencés, empreints de gravité, de sagesse, prononcés au moment voulu et appropriés à la situation que pour leur caractère risible, en même temps qu’ils font naître aussi l’admiration dans l’esprit des auditeurs.
Lisant les œuvres de Plaute avec une acuité exceptionnelle, Pontano y découvre, outre les ressources inépuisables d’une langue, qu’en philologue exercé, il apprécie à sa juste valeur, les fondements mêmes d’une réflexion éthique et philosophique sur le comique. La facetudo dont il revendique l’invention verbale autant que sémantique, devient ainsi l’une des vertus essentielles de l’homme cultivé, propre à séduire son entourage et, plus encore, à lui procurer ce délassement de l’âme indispensable pour renouveler ses capacités intellectuelles. L’originalité du propos tient grandement aussi à son actualisation: ouvrant son discours sur la situation historique contemporaine, Pontano ne s’écarte jamais longtemps de la société qui est la sienne, confrontant les citations de Plaute à des anecdotes vécues, à des témoignages personnels qui révèlent, s’il est besoin, l’essence de sa démarche humaniste: les Anciens sont loués pour la beauté morale et esthétique que leurs œuvres véhiculent, tout autant que pour le ferment dont on peut nourrir la pensée contemporaine. Castiglione s’en souviendra, quelques décennies plus tard, dans son Livre du Courtisan (1528).34
34 Voir l’étude d’Henri Weber, “Deux théoriciens de la facétie,” supra n. 17.
John Nassichuk
Strepsiades’ Latin Voice: Two Renaissance Translations of Aristophanes’ Clouds Abstract: Following the lead of such 15th-century humanists as Valla and Filelfo in Italy, and Erasmus and Reuchlin in the northern countries, 16th-century philologists and translators produced several translations of difficult Greek dramatic texts. This article examines the Latin rendering of Aristophanes’ wordplay in Clouds, with particular attention to a series of utterances attributed to Strepsiades. The Latin translations studied are Andreas Divus’ influential ad verbum translation, which circulated in several editions starting in 1538, and the Nuremberg humanist Nicodemus Frischlin’s later (1586) version. I suggest that whereas Divus’ version served principally as a resource for lexical identification, with at times only approximate attention to syntax, the German scholar’s contribution tends to deliver a more refined and at times even conjectural ad sensum rendering of the original.
“The notion,” remarks Paul Botley in his important recent study of Renaissance Latin translation, “that a reader with no knowledge of Greek might deepen his understanding of a Greek author by collating a number of translations of the original text seems to have emerged in the fifteenth century because, for the first time, Latin readers had access to a number of translations of the same text.”1 Such a luxurious abundance of Latin versions was not available even to the 16th-century reader of Aristophanes before the year 1586, when the humanist Nicodemus Frischlin saw his translation of the Greek comic poet’s complete known works published in its corrected form at the Frankfurt press of Johannes Spies.2 Frischlin’s work gained much contemporary approval based on the renowned elegance of its Latinity. The smooth-flowing eloquence of his Latin strikes a marked contrast with the work of his principal humanist predecessor in the field, Andreas Divus, whose own collected Latin renderings of Aristophanes’ plays had appeared in Venice a half-century earlier.3 Taken together, these two versions make up the essential contribution of 16th-century Latin authors to the art of translating ancient Greek comedy. A comparative examination of these texts
1 P. Botley, Latin Translation in the Renaissance. The Theory and Pratice of Leonardo Bruni, Giannozzo Manetti and Desiderius Erasmus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 173. 2 Nicodemi Frischlini Aristophanes, veteris comoediae princeps: poeta longe facetissimus et eloquentissimus: repurgatus a mendis, et imitatione Plauti atque Terentii interpretatus, ita ut fere Carmen Carmini, numerus numero, pes pedi, modus modo, Latinismus Graecismo respondeat (Frankfurt-am-Main: Johannes Spies, 1586). 3 Aristophanis, comicorum principis, comediae undecim, e Graeco in Latinum, ad verbum translatae, Andrea Divo Justinopolitano interprete (Venice: 1538).
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reveals strikingly different practises of translation. Divus, a veritable pioneer in the field of Latinizing Aristophanes,4 adopts a strategy of word-for-word rendering in some places reminiscent of Pilate’s early attempt to translate the Iliad.5 His work belongs to the category of translations that “acknowledge the permanent value of the Greek text” and are “significant because they are self-consciously impermanent constructions”, since “students of Greek found that the most useful Latin translations were the most literal”.6 Whereas Divus’ translation resembles the kind of self-effacing lexical aid that serves mainly to strengthen comprehension of the Greek, Frischlin’s Aristophanes shows a greater willingness to eschew ad verbum literalness in favour of ad sensum formulations that seek to imitate the aesthetic and poetic qualities of the original. The present study confirms the starkness of this contrast between the two approaches to translating Aristophanes. At the same time, I hope to demonstrate a rapport of subtle continuity in the work of the two humanists, insofar as the stylistic elegance of Frischlin does not hide his frequent use of words encountered in Divus. Aristophanes’ comic language provided a considerable challenge to the humanist Latin translator. His frequent use of verbal irony, with a rich variety of dialectal imitations7 and clever neologisms, renders the objective of precise equivalence all but impossible. The distinction between “high” and “low” language, though present throughout the Aristophanic corpus, is perhaps especially notable in the Clouds, where Socrates plays a central role and is at times set against a more rustic, uncouth figure, Strepsiades, the heavily-indebted father of a horse-loving son, Pheidippides. Strepsiades, a man of rural origin and countrified taste, exhibits a level of intelligence that obliges him to understand every concept or situation in resolutely literal terms.8 His intellectual limitations form the basis of much verbal irony and innocently-coined neologism, as is clearly illustrated in his discussion regarding the Clouds themselves.9 In order to bring forth the characteristic tendencies of the two Latin versions here under examination, this study is limited to a brief series of passages in which Strepsiades’ spontaneous lexical creativity is most conspicuous. These have been identified by Green, in a note to his important article on the representation of abuses of intellectualism in Clouds.10 Under the category “Strepsia-
4 See S. Beta, “La prima traduzione latina della Lisistrata. Luci e ombre della versione di Andrea Divo”, Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 129 (2012), pp. 195–216. 5 On Pilate’s Homeric labours, see A. Pertusi, Leonzio Pilato fra Petrarca e Boccaccio: le sue versioni omeriche negli autografi di Venezia e la cultura greca del primo umanesimo (Venice: Istituto per la collaborazione cultural, 1964). 6 Botley, Latin Translation (above, n. 1), p. 174. 7 A. Willi, The languages of Aristophanes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 8 On Strepsiades, see C.H. Whitman, Aristophanes and the Comic Hero (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 120–43. 9 A. Köhnken, “Der Wolken-Chor des Aristophanes,“ Hermes 108 (1980), pp. 154–69. 10 P. Green, “Strepsiades, Socrates and the abuses of intellectualism, “ Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 20 (1979), pp. 15–25.
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dic puns and portmanteau neologisms”, Green identifies Clouds 24, 33, 74, 166, 243, 730, 857 and 1108–9.11 These eight examples will constitute the sample used in this study, although it should be admitted that many other passages would be suitable as well. Each of the passages is the object of a comparative analysis that sets Frischlin’s text beside that of Divus. The humanist from Capodistria, Andreas Divus, is known as an early prose translator of Homer (1537), Aristophanes (1538) and Theocritus (1539). Schreiber, in a note on line 30 of Aristophanes’ Birds, correctly observes that Divus’ Latin versions had no pretension to an aesthetic or poetic quality commensurate with that of the original, but were rather “intended to be used as trots by students of the Greek texts.”12 Divus’ work enjoys a curious status in the history of humanist translations from the Greek, in that it was at once highly influential and much-criticised. The few modern philologists who have examined Divus’ translations have castigated them for their inaccuracy. “Among his numerous other basic errors,” writes Schreiber, “Divus was unable to distinguish among voices, moods, tenses, and persons.”13 The aim of the present study is not to rehabilitate Divus’ reputation as a translator—Schreiber’s high-toned condemnation, though exaggerated, is hardly without merit—but to underline his limited role in the emerging Renaissance interpretation and Latinising of Aristophanes. As a pioneer in the field, working with a difficult Greek text,14 the Italian humanist’s principal concern was to provide a correct rendering of the Greek author’s vocabulary. The correction and refinement of Divus’ translations fell to his immediate 16th-century successors as translators of Aristophanes. Foremost among these were the French humanist Florent Chrestien,15 who translated Peace (1589), Wasps (1607) and Lysistrata (1607), and, most notably, the humanist from Tübingen, Nicodemus Frischlin.16 The following demonstration attempts to provide primary concrete evaluation of the relative merits and shortcomings of Divus and Frischlin as translators of Strepsiades’ word-play in Clouds.
11 Green, “Strepsiades” (above, n. 9), p. 22 n. 21. 12 F. Schreiber, “The etiology of a misinterpretation: Aristophanes Birds 30,” Classical Philology 70 (1975), p. 209. 13 Schreiber, “The etiology” (above, n. 12), p. 209. 14 A.H. Sommerstein, “The History of the Text of Aristophanes,” in: G.W. Dobrov (ed.), Brill’s Companion to the Study of Greek Comedy (Leiden: Brill, 2010), p. 217. 15 B. Jacobsen, Florent Chrestien. Ein Protestant und Humanist in Frankreich zur Zeit der Religionskriege (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1973), pp. 153–6. 16 D. Price, The Political Dramaturgy of Nicodemus Frischlin (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), pp. 51–4, 80 and passim.
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v. 10 ἐγκεκορδυλημένος Strepsiades’ opening speech, in which he explains how he finds himself constantly harassed by creditors because of his profligate son and aristocratic wife, contains several examples of verbal irony and lexical creativity. At verse 10, Aristophanes attributes to his comic hero the use of a participle of the compound verb ἐγκορδυλέω, meaning “wrap into a ball”. This particular verbal form, derived from the substantive κορδύλη, the primary sense of which is “tumour” or “lump”, is rare in classical Greek. The scholiast cites the otherwise unknown authority Creon (FGrH 753 F 1) to the effect that the word was used by Cypriots to refer to a type of hairstyle. Its use at the beginning of the play serves to underline the comic absurdity of Strepsiades’ character and the futility of his bombastic vehemence. He observes bitterly that Pheidippides, oblivious to his father’s exasperation, sleeps and breaks wind with no inhibition: ἀλλ’, οὐδ’ ὁ χρηστὸς οὑτοσὶ νεανίας ἐγείρεται τῆς νυκτός, ἀλλὰ πέρδεται ἐν πέντε σισύραις ἐγκεκορδυλημένος. (8–10)
In translating these verses, Divus displays his rigorous adherence to ad verbum Latin equivalents. The word-order of the Latin follows that of the Greek as closely as possible: Sed neque bonus hiccine adolescens Expergiscitur noctu: sed pedit In quinque pelliceas involutus. (Divus, p. 50)
For ἐγκεκορδυλημένος at the end of verse 10, Divus employs a verbal adjective, involutus, which is far more common in Latin than Aristophanes’ word is in Greek. Both the relative scarcity of the evocative Greek gerundive and the comic situation itself highlight the resolutely physical sense of the verb. By contrast, the Latin term is sufficiently common to have acquired an often-attested figurative meaning. Its metaphorical and abstracting character blunts the force of the image’s comic homeliness. Frischlin’s translation of the passage uses the same verbal adjective, involutus, but displays a greater readiness to vary the word-order for stylistic effect: At enim neque bonus hic meus Adolescens hac nocte e somno expergiscitur: Sed pedit, involutus quinque stragulis. (Frischlin, p. 158)
Comparison of the two Latin versions strongly suggests, on the basis of shared formulae—“neque bonus,” “Adolescens … expergiscitur,” “sed pedit,” “involutus”—that Frischlin’s poetic refinements erect themselves on the foundation of Divus’ work. The German humanist has nonetheless abandoned the close strictures of his predecessor’s ad verbum fidelity to the Greek word-order. For example, Divus’ close rendering of ἐν
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πέντε σισύραις at the beginning of verse 10—“In quinque pelliceas”—is replaced by the more classical ablative “quinque stragulis” at verse-end with no preposition. In the same passage, Strepsiades goes on to describe how his son, “wearing long hair, mounts horseback, drives a chariot team and dreams of horses”. Pheidippides gaily pursues his pleasures while his father accumulates debt and worry. Here again, the old man’s expressive vehemence produces a verb that exemplifies Aristophanes’ linguistic inventiveness: ὁ δὲ κόμην ἔχων ἱππάζεται τε καὶ ξυνωρικεύεται ὀνειροπολεῖ θ’ ἵππους (14–16)
Starkie notes that the verb ξυνωρικεύομαι is not attested elsewhere in the Classical period and suggests that it may be “a jest κατὰ παρωνυμίαν”.17 This rare word, elaborated from its cognate substantive συνωρίς (“a pair of hitched animals,” specifically horses) and the more common verb συνωρίζω (“hitch together”), is also a hapax legomenon in the Aristophanic corpus. Once again, Divus’ Latin version opts for a more pedestrian expression: Hic autem comam habens Equitatque, et duplici jugo vehitur, Somniatque equos. (Divus, p. 50)
In order to render a meaning close to that of Aristophanes’ verbal invention, Divus has used three words—“duplici jugo vehitur”—that produce a satisfactory semantic equivalent by sacrificing the clever poetic effect of the Greek original. Such attention to literal clarity and identical word-order again reveals the fundamental pedagogical character of this early translation, the objective of which is less that of eloquent imitation than of primary accuracy. Frischlin retains two of the three conjugated Latin verbs in these verses, offering a well-chosen and similarly rare equivalent of ξυνωρικεύεται: Sed ille comam interim Alit, equitat, aurigatur, atque insuper equos In somno somniat … (Frischlin, pp. 158–9)
Although the verbs “equitat” and “somniat” remain as significant holdovers from the earlier translation, Frischlin has again made several notable alterations. Most notably, he has strengthened the meaning of the adversative particle δὲ by interpreting it to mean something like “in the meantime” or “all the while” (interim), a bold addition 17 W.J.M. Starkie (ed.), The Clouds of Aristophanes (London: Macmillan, 1911; reprint Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1966), p. 15 n. 15. See also Dover (above, n. 17), p. 94 n. 15: “συνωρίς is a racingchariot drawn not by four horses but by two. Ξυνωρικεύεται implies συνωρικός, ‘having to do with’ (hence ‘skilled at’ or ‘knowledgeable in’) racing with pairs.”
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that considerably heightens the force of the contrast between the father’s consternation and the son’s extravagant oblivion. The present participle “habens” (ἔχων) disappears from the end of verse 14, replaced at the beginning of verse 15 by the conjugated present form “alit”, which initiates a three-member sequence of verbal enumeration emphasized by asyndeton. The third term of this sequence, “aurigatur”, is Frischlin’s translation of ξυνωρικεύεται. Here the humanist translator seems to have deliberately sought a lexical equivalent of similar rarity. Less common than the intransitive “aurigare” (“to drive a chariot”), “aurigari” has the same meaning but with perhaps an ironic overtone, as is suggested by its occurrence in Varro’s Menippean Satire.18 A final bit of creative wordplay is present at the end of Strepsiades’ opening speech. The old man wraps up his complaint by chiding himself for having bought an expensive Corinthian horse branded with a koppa. This extravagant purchase is one major reason for his present money troubles. “Why did I borrow?” he cries. “It was when I bought the horse marked with a koppa. Ah, pest! If only I had knocked out (my) eye with a stone instead!” The Greek uses an aorist passive form of the verb ἐκκόπτω, occasioning a sonorous repetition of the -κοπ- sound: τί ἐχρησάμην; ὅτ’ ἐπριάμην τὸν κοππατίαν. οἴμοι τάλας, εἴθ’ ἐξεκόπην πρότερον τὸν ὀφθαλμὸν λίθῳ. (22–4)
On the use of this verb for repetitive effect echoing the type-name of the offensivelypriced horse, Dover remarks that “Aristophanes’ puns are seldom sophisticated, and the pun on -κοπ- is one of his feeblest.”19 In translating this sequence, Divus remains characteristically attentive to the literal meaning: Quid usus sum? Quando emi coppaciam. Hei mihi misero. Utinam amputatus esset prius oculus lapide. (Divus, p. 50)
This Latin version reproduces the Greek substantive κοππατίαν by transliteration —“coppaciam”—but in rendering the verb neglects to reproduce the sonorous, repetitive effect of the double use of -κοπ-. It faithfully preserves the meaning of Strepsiades’ heavy pun, but renounces any attempt to imitate the strong verbal irony that offers the reader an early glimpse at the comic hero’s penchant for caustic retort. Frischlin’s work reduces this remark to that of two iambic senarii: At in quem usum? Cum coppatiam emerem: hei mihi? Utinam prius esset a me huic exculptus oculus. (Frischlin, p. 159)
18 Varro Men. 316. 19 K.J. Dover (ed.), Aristophanes, Clouds (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 96.
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Use of the dative pronoun “huic” in verse 24 illustrates Frischlin’s concern with clarity and precision. Such deployment of additional pronouns is a standard humanist technique, characteristic of Lorenzo Valla’s corrections in many passages from the Vulgate.20 Frischlin maintains the transliteration of κοππατίαν, but his substitution of the participle “exculptus”, in place of Divus’ less appropriate “amputatus” suggests some effort to recreate the repetitive playfulness of the original. In sum, the humanists’ treatment of Strepsiades’ opening speech illustrates a growing sense of ease in the Latin rendering of a difficult Greek comedy. Divus follows the Aristophanic word order closely enough to reproduce its very syntax with nearly ad verbum rigour, a practice that likely reflects the translator’s struggle to avoid the risk of error. Frischlin makes use of Divus’ translations, preserving several of his proposed Latin equivalent terms. These changes in word-order bespeak confidence in the comprehension of the Greek. Metrical and stylistic refinements constitute a means of seeking even greater proximity to the language of Aristophanes.
v. 33 ἐξήλικας While his father frets about his looming debts, the sleeping Pheidippides dreams of horse-racing. At one point, after a race has been run, he barks a command to his groom to “give the horse a roll” in order to remove sweat from its coat, “then take it home”. Aristophanes here uses the participle ἐξαλίσας (“after giving it a roll”), for which Dover records a verbal parallel in Xenophon Oec. 2.18.21 In the next verse, Strepsiades replies by taking up the same verb and switching it, with ironic import, from the aorist participle to the perfect indicative ἐξήλικας. The result is a flash of verbal irony not unlike the repetition of -κοπ- in verses 23 and 24, only this time the verbal recurrence marks an exchange between two voices: Φε. ἄπαγε τὸν ἵππον ἐξαλίσας οἴκαδε. Στ. ἀλλ’ ὦ μέλ’ ἐξήλικας ἐμέ γ’ ἐκ τῶν ἐμῶν. (32–3)
The pseudo-technical, sporting jargon is thus transformed into a biting rejoinder on the extravagant profligacy of a young man who, according to his father, lives well beyond his means: “But my friend, you have rolled me out of house and home.” In translating this exchange, Divus again sacrifices the playful sound repetition that underpins Aristophanes’ irony. Instead of seeking some Latin parallel to the ἐξαλίσαςἐξήλικας polyptoton, he uses two distinct verbs: Phi. Abige equum convertens domum. Str. Sed ô infelix ejecisti me ex meis. (Divus, p. 51)
20 Botley, Latin Translation (above, n. 1), p. 65. 21 Dover, Clouds (above, n. 18), p. 97 n. 32.
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The choice of the verb convertere perhaps suggests in this case that the translator has mistaken the technical sense of the Aristophanic expression to mean something more banal, such as “turn the horse around and head homeward.” Van Leeuwen correctly notes the Latin equivalent evolvere (Sen. Ep. 74, iii bonis evolve), adducing the close parallel at Plautus Men. V, v, 5: Quem ego hominem, si quidem vivo, vita devolvam sua.22 Frischlin’s translation restores the verbal repetition encountered in the Greek. His modifications of word-order also produce a more limpid Latin expression that aptly approximates the comic brusqueness of the “dialogue”: PH. Equum provoluito, ac domum reduc. ST. At tu provoluisti me, bone vir, e meis Bonis … (Frischlin, p. 159)
For the sake of precision, Frischlin has added the ablative noun bonis, the sense of which remained implicit in both Aristophanes and Divus, to the possessive adjective at the end of verse 33. The use of a prepositional phrase—e meis—in the same position again suggests that Frischlin consulted the work of his humanist predecessor. He has nonetheless altered the verb that acts upon equum in verse 32, and his choice of provolvere over convertere represents a considerable improvement of the interpretation of this passage. A similar usage is attested in Tacitus, Ann. VI.xvii.4 multis fortunis provolvebantur, as is noted by Starkie, who adds that the metaphor “is unexampled in Greek”.23 Though perhaps not entirely independent of Divus, Frischlin’s work here exhibits significant, useful innovation in both vocabulary and syntax.
v. 74 ἵππερον and v. 243 νόσος … ἱππική By the time day finally breaks in this initial scene, Strepsiades has hit upon a plan to erase his ever-mounting debts. The plan of course involves Pheidippides, whom he now tries to waken with soft, cajoling words. Strepsiades’ final remarks before rousing his son include an often commented-upon narrative account of his difficult marriage to a daughter of the Megacles family-line. He tells of the conflict that inevitably arose between a husband and wife of different castes regarding the education and prospects of their son.24 The audience learns that the young scion of this curiously-assorted pair has always displayed a greater fondness for aristocratic pastimes such as horseracing than for his father’s simple, rustic pleasures. Strepsiades sums up the resulting financial situation with an innovative metaphor:
22 J. Van Leeuwen (ed.), Aristophanis Nubes (Leiden: A.W Sijthoff, 1898), p. 14. 23 Starkie, Clouds (above, n. 16), p. 19. 24 See on this theme, D. Ambrosino, “Aristophanes Nubes 46 s. (Il matrimonio di Strepsiade e la democrazia ateniese),” Museum Criticum 21–22 (1987), pp. 95–127.
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ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐπίθετο τοῖũς ἐμοῖς οὐδὲν λόγοις, ἀλλ’ ἵππερον μου κατέχεεν τῶν χρημάτων. (73–4)
Marianetti offers a translation of these verses which well captures the presence of a newly-forged Greek substantive: “He did not listen to any of my words, / but wasted my property with his horse-mania.”25 Several commentators have noted that the neologism ἵππερον evokes substantives of similar form such as ἵκτερος (“jaundice”) and ὕδερος (“dropsy”).26 Divus refrains from imitating this bit of lexical creativity, proposing instead a two-word formula that uses the genitive plural to indicate the “horse” element of Pheidippides’ obsessive malady: Sed non persuasus est meis nihil verbis, Sed equorum desyderium mei contra fudit res. (Divus, p. 53)
Divus’ anaphoric use of sed, translation of λόγοις with the ablative verbis, and rendering of the Greek genitive μου with its Latin equivalent mei, all further illustrate his commitment to producing a version that closely mirrors the morphology and syntax of the original, with little regard at times for the internal cohesion of the Latin. The rather heavy genitive construction equorum desyderium provides a faithful semantic rendering of Aristophanes’ substantive without attempting to match the dynamic playfulness of the Greek. Such use of periphrasis again illustrates the humanist translator’s preference for literal equivalents that resemble the kind of explanatory amplification likely to appear in philological commentaries. Frischlin, for his part, demonstrates similar caution in rendering ἵππερον with a two-word construction. Nevertheless, several changes of vocabulary reveal his superior confidence in seeking a particular Latin style or “tone” more nearly corresponding to that of Aristophanes’ characters: Sed ipse monitis nihil obtemperat meis: Et morbum equestrem offundit meis pecuniis. (Frischlin, p. 161)
The substitution of the dative monitis … meis for Divus’ ablative meis … verbis illustrates Frischlin’s willingness to stray from precise literal renderings to grasp the fullest meaning of the Greek. Such hermeneutic awareness and sensitivity also explain the morphological alteration of the possessive adjective in verse 74, from Divus’ awkward mei … res to the more elegant meis pecuniis. The most significant of the 25 M.C. Marianetti, The Clouds: an annotated translation (Lanham: The University Press of America), p. 16. 26 So Starkie, Clouds (above, n. 16), p. 29, following ΣV; Van Leeuwen, Aristophanis Nubes (above, n. 21), p. 21; Dover, Clouds (above, n. 17), p. 103; also A.H. Sommerstein (ed. and trans.), Aristophanes: Clouds (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1982), p. 163.
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changes which, from Divus to Frischlin, heighten the clarity of the Latin version is the substitution of the accusative morbum equestrem for the eight-syllable genitive plural formula equorum desyderium. Despite his wholesale alteration of verses 73–4, however, Frischlin’s accusative expression morbum equestrem still allows the hypothesis that the German humanist consulted the works of his predecessor. Divus uses the same two words, in the nominative, in his translation of Aristophanes’ νόσος … ἱππική at verse 243. Upon first encountering Socrates, Strepsiades tries to explain why he wishes to become a student of the prestigious Thinkery (φροντιστήριον). When Socrates asks how he incurred such crippling debt “without noticing it”, the new pupil replies that “a horse epidemic destroyed [him] and ate [him] up terribly”.27 A stinging, condescending enquiry then awakens still more of Strepsiades’ verbal irony: Σω. πόθεν δ’ ὑπόχρεως σαυτὸν ἔλαθες γενόμενος; Στ. νόσος μ’ ἐπέτριψεν ἱππική, δεινὴ φαγεῖν. (242–3)
The expression νόσος … ἱππική clearly refers to the same malady indicated by the substantive ἵππερον in v. 74. Any humor here resides not in the use of a neologism, since the adjective ἱππικός (“skilled in riding, equestrian”) is commonly attested in ancient authors, but in the unusual modification of νόσος. Dover notes to this effect that “Strepsiades speaks like a patient describing his symptoms to a doctor,”28 while Forman suggests that the malady motif is enhanced by the appositive expression δεινὴ φαγεῖν, “which has been eating me up fearfully” (Sommerstein). Such an association of terms also calls to mind the neutral substantive φαγέδαινα, “cancer,” the devouring malady. Divus attempts to translate this exchange by means of a literal ad verbum rendition: So. Unde autem debitor teipsum oblitus est factus? St. Morbus me consumpsit equestris gravis comedisse. (Divus, p. 58)
The Latin version thus proposes morbus … equestris as an equivalent to Aristophanes’ inventive νόσος … ἱππική. As noted above, Frischlin uses the same two-word formulation in his rendering of ἵππερον at verse 74. It then appears again at 243: So. At obaeratus cum esses, teipsum quomodo Ignorasti? St. Morbus equestris me perdidit, In devorando vehemens. (Frischlin, p. 168)
This recurrence of the construction inherited from Divus is further testimony to Frischlin’s judicious use of his predecessor’s work. Instead of systematically distancing himself from Divus’ version, Frischlin selects elements that both enhance clarity
27 Marianetti, Clouds (above, n. 23), p. 28. 28 Dover, Clouds (above, n. 18), p. 129.
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of style and refine the Latin rendering of Aristophanes’ Greek. In so doing, he frequently opts for a translation ad sensum, at times relaxing the exigencies of literal precision. Hence the use of perdidit at verse 243 is a less exact equivalent of ἐπέτριψεν than is Divus’ consumpsit.
v. 166 διεντερεύματος Another moment of inventive word-play comes in the dialogue of Strepsiades and the Socratic disciple on the scientific mystery of insect flatulence. The disciple presents Socrates’ learned account of this sonorous natural phenomenon: “He said that the gnat’s intestine is narrow (160–1 ἔφασκεν εἶναι τὔντερον τῆς ἐμπίδος / στενόν), and that the air is forced through this small tube all the way to the rump; and then the arsehole, being a cavity adjacent to a narrow passage, emits sound as a result of the force of the wind.”29 Strepsiades, exulting in this revelation of cutting-edge science, exclaims admiringly, “So the arsehole of a gnat is a trumpet. Happy, happy man, what a feat of evisceration! He’d surely find it easy to defend a lawsuit successfully, when he has such a deep knowledge of the intestine of the gnat.”30 This joyous exclamation produces an inspired flash of lexical innovation at the end of verse 166, followed by a second occurrence of the neuter substantive ἔντερον (“intestine”) two verses later: σάλπιγξ ὁ πρωκτός ἐστιν ἄρα τῶν ἐμπίδων. ὦ τρισμακάριος τοῦ διεντερεύματος. ἦ ῥαδίως φεύγων ἂν ἀποφύγοι δίκην ὅστις δίοιδε τοὔντερον τῆς ἐμπίδος. (165–8)
Translators and commentators have variously rendered the genitive at the end of verse 166 as “evisceration” (Sommerstein), “entrail-learning” (Rogers), “entrailspection” (Forman), “intestigation” (fr. Van Daele). Several have suggested that the word is likely a humorous derivation from the verb ἐντερεύω, which occurs in Archippos fr. 23.3 with the meaning “gut fish.” The close, sonorous and semantic association of the twice-occurring τοὔντερον and διεντερεύματος is obvious. Dover offers the further possibility “that by δι- Aristophanes means to suggest the many words which imply perspicacity or thoroughness.”31 Commentators such as Forman and Sommerstein adduce the neuter substantive διερεύνημα, “inspection, investigation,” as a close parallel to Aristophanes’ word32, while Starkie notes the possible ironic reference to
29 Sommerstein, Clouds (above, n. 25), p. 27. 30 Sommerstein, Clouds (above, n. 25), p. 27. 31 Dover, Clouds (above, n. 18), p. 116. 32 L.L. Forman (ed.), Aristophanes’ Clouds (New York: American Book Company, 1915), p. 27; Sommerstein, Clouds (above, n. 25), p. 169: “Greek dientereuma, a word coined for the occasion, perhaps a blend of di’enterou ‘through the intestine’ and diereunema ‘investigation’.”
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philosophical language, “since διερευνᾶν constantly occurs in Plato.”33 This clever combination of related sounds constructs a verbal irony that poses a daunting challenge to any translator. Here Divus again shies away from a precise rendering of the Aristophanic neologism. Instead of resorting to a genitive plural construction of the type used to translate ἵππερον in verse 74, he has in this instance sought a word of similar connotation to that of the Greek to reproduce some semblance of the original poetic effect. Divus uses the substantive intestinum to render the neuter τοὔντερον at verse 160: Dixit esse intestinum culicis / Angustum. In Latin, the verse segments become considerably shorter as Strepsiades proclaims his admiration of a stunning and most useful philosophical breakthrough: Tuba podex est igitur coliculum, O ter beate trula, An facile fugiens aufugiet poenam, Quicunque sciverit intestinum culicis. (Divus p. 55)
Divus’ choice of a lexical equivalent for the genitive διεντερεύματος seemingly reflects an effort to situate the Latin expression on a level of comedic irony parallel to Aristophanes’ amusing language tricks. Trula means variously a small ladle, pan or basin. It appears once in Juvenal’s third Satire, where the poet complains of a flattering Greek who always has the best of it, being ready at any moment, night or day, to take his expression from another man’s face, to throw up his hands and applaud if a friend gives a good belch or pisses straight, or “if his golden basin gurgles when turned upside down” (si trulla inverso crepitum dedit aurea fundo).34 The word is also attested at Horace Sat. II.3: “Opimius, a poor man for all his gold and silver hoarded up within, would on holidays, from a ladle of Campanian ware, drink wine of Veii, and on working days soured wine …” (Campana solitus trulla vappamque profestis).35 In its ancient poetic usage, then, trulla is a word of decidedly satirical affinity. Although it does not duplicate the Aristophanic wordplay, it remains an inspired, inventive parallel from a lower linguistic register. Divus has abandoned the play of echoes between τοὔντερον and διεντερεύματος, which constitutes the fundamental resource of Aristophanes’ verbal irony in this passage. Divus’ translation of διεντερεύματος using the vocative trula reflects a certain willingness to relax the principle of lexical and morphological equivalence he elsewhere applies with much rigour. The unusual Greek genitive perhaps exceeded the humanist’s resources of
33 Starkie, Clouds (above, n. 16), p. 47. 34 Juvenal III.108. (English translation from the Loeb edition of G.G. Ramsay, Juvenal and Persius (London: W. Heinemann, 1950.) 35 Horace Satires II.iii.144. (English translation from the Loeb edition of H.R. Fairclough, Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica (London: W. Heinemann, 1955.)
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invention. In order to provide an image of analogous comic import, however, he sacrificed the etymological figure highlighted by Aristophanes’ unusual genitive. Even cursory comparison reveals that Frischlin, as he tackles this difficult passage, has attentively examined the work of his Italian forerunner. His rendering of verse 160 similarly includes the use of the substantive intestinum: aiebat intestinum esse culicis / Angustum. The same neuter substantive appears again three verses later, where the student is explaining the mechanics of a mysterious, noisy anatomical function: “then the arsehole, being a cavity adjacent to a narrow passage, emits sound as a result of the force of the wind” (163–4 ἔπειτα κοῖλον πρὸς στενῷ προσκείμενον / τὸν πρωκτὸν ἠχεῖν ὑπὺ βίας τοῦ πνεύματος). Then, despite the usual alterations in syntax, he preserveσ two of the three substantives in verse 165, while even the third— a genitive plural—remains similar to the one proposed by Divus: Ergo, quantum intelligo, culicum podex, tuba est? Beatum, qui illud intestinum repperit. Nae facile judicium effugiat aliquis reus: Quisquis culicis intestinum dignoverit. (Frischlin, p. 165)
Both translators use podex with the genitive plural culicum or coliculum, a construction the predicate verb est designates as equivalent to tuba. The German humanist then proposes a rendering of verse 166 radically different from Divus’. Instead of imitating Aristophanes’ lexical creativity or choosing a parallel from a similar register, as Divus does, Frischlin is content to restore the repetitive, echoing effect centred upon the recurrence of the sound -εντερ- in τοὔντερον and διεντερεύματος. In place of the Greek genitive, he inserts another, new occurrence of intestinum. The unwonted accumulation of this substantive, which appears four times in verses 160–8, creates a repetitive effect even greater than in the original Aristophanic passage. Frischlin’s approach to translating διεντερεύματος is thus to exaggerate the primary repetition (τỏύντερον/ intestinum) against which the new, composite substantive strikes a subtle contrast.
v. 320 στενολεσχεϊν The dialogue of Socrates and Strepsiades following the antistrophe (298–313) contains an explanation, by master to pupil, of the mysterious, nebulous Clouds phenomenon. Socrates notes in particular that these divinities, hitherto unknown to Strepsiades, are nothing less than “great goddesses for men of idleness, who bestow on us intelligence and discourse and understanding, fantasy and circumlocution and incisive and repressive power” (316–18).36 Sensational new knowledge of this sort excites Strep-
36 Sommerstein, Clouds (above, n. 25), p. 41.
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siades, leading him to declare that his soul “on hearing their voice, has taken wing, and now longs to chop logic and to chatter minutely about smoke.”37 Aristophanes’ language here aptly reflects the creative efforts of the comic hero’s overstretched intelligence: ταῦτ’ ἄρ’ ἀκούσασ’ αὐτῶν τὸ φθέγμ᾿ ἠ ψυχή μου πεποτήται καὶ λεπτολογεῖν ἤδη ζητεῖ καὶ περὶ καπνοῦ στενολεσχεῖν. (319–20)
Verse 320 contains two infinitives of similar meaning, the second of which—στενολεσχεῖν—is an invention, explains Dover, “modelled on ἀδολεσχεῖν” and constructed from the adjective στενός (“tight, close”) and the substantive λέσχης (“quibbler”). Once again, Divus renounces any attempt to imitate Aristophanes’ verbal inventions, choosing rather to select a term that provides an adequate semantic equivalent according to context. In maintaining the syntactic structure of the verse organized into two equal parts by the recurrent conjunction (καὶ … καί), the humanist translator simulates the linear composition of the Greek: Haec audiens ipsarum vocem anima mei volavit. Et subtilia dicere iam quaerit, et de fumo philosophari.38
The first of the two infinitives in verse 320 of the Latin version, subtilia dicere, provides a near-exact semantic equivalent of λεπτολογεῖν. Divus’ choice of words in this instance again confirms his prudent interpretive practice, which consists of rendering the meaning of the Greek without striving for any close poetic resemblance. Indeed, the use of the genitive mei for the Greek μου betrays an approach that favours unwavering, even slavish imitation of the original. The translation reads like a wellconstructed aide for the studious reader whose knowledge of the language does not allow him to fully comprehend the ancient text without the supplementary guidance of a linear, literal Latin version. At times, however, this lack of attention to syntax obscures the meaning of difficult passages. Frischlin’s translation of these verses tends to lengthen the Latin formulation. Whereas Divus maintained a verse-per-verse equivalence with the Greek, Frischlin does not hesitate to stretch the passage by adding a third verse nearly entire. Characteristically, this adjustment is accompanied by an alteration of the word-order. Strepsiades here, perhaps somewhat uncharacteristically, expresses himself in flowing, elegant Latin: Certe meus hic animus, quam primum audivit verba loquentum, In pectus continuo emicuit: et iam subtilia rerum Evolvere gestit, iam nugari de fumo incipit. (Frischlin, p. 172)
37 Sommerstein, Clouds (above, n. 25), p. 41. 38 Divus, Aristophanis … comediae undecim (above, n. 3), p. 61.
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Frischlin thus eliminates the literal translation of ζητεῖ (quaerit) by placing the deponent infinitive (nugari) before de fumo and adding a finite verb to follow it, so that the syntax closely parallels the translation of λεπτολογεῖν (subtilia rerum / Evolvere gestit…). As such, two finite verbs are used to replace the zeugma at verse 320 which, conversely, is well preserved in Divus’ version. This naturally makes for a lengthened, methodical cadence of expression. Frischlin’s rendering of στενολεσχεῖν (nugari de fumo) gives the Greek verb a ridiculous, almost nonsensical quality less apparent in his predecessor’s choice of equivalent (philosophari). The introduction of a verbal parallelism (gestit…incipit) heightens the clarity of the verse and permits a more poetic, fanciful interpretation of Aristophanes’ verbal invention.
v. 730 ἀποστερητρίδα During their lesson, Socrates urges Strepsiades to “think out one of his problems” (verse 695) while lying in the bed that he has brought out of the Thinkery. Here the Coryphaeus or Socrates, (depending upon the editor’s judgment of the matter) encourages the struggling pupil, exhorting him to “think up a defraudative idea” (728 νοῦς ἀποστερητικός). To this the old man, longing for some facile pleasure, exclaims, “Ah, if only instead of lambskins someone would throw over me a lovely bit of … fraudulent ingenuity” (γνώμην ἀποστερητρίδα). As Sommerstein observes, the substantive-adjective construction is in this case “approximately equivalent to νοῦς ἀποστερητικός in 728.”39 Hence, in the exchange between Strepsiades and the chorus-leader, γνώμην ἀποστερητρίδα becomes the centre of an inventive jonglerie in which the hero uses suggestive terms to restate the preceding exhortation. Harassed by the fleas in his bed, and labouring under the unbearable weight of contemplative effort, Strepsiades rephrases the encouragement he has been offered in suggestive terms, indicating that his mind “is beginning to wander from intellectual to sexual thoughts.”40 Dover further remarks that he “thinks of γνώμην ἀποστερητρίδα as a personable young woman materializing in his embrace under the bedclothes.”41 This lexical innovation is formed by the addition of the suffix -τρίς to the feminine adjective cognate to ἀποστερέω. The result is an adjective reminiscent of and morphologically similar to substantives such as αὐλητρίς (“flute-girl”) and ὀρχηστρίς (“dancing-girl”). In Divus’ version, the Greek expression is rendered by a formula which is an approximate, lexical equivalent of the Greek. Here νοῦς ἀποστερητικός is translated mens privativa, an approximation not far removed from the original meaning:
39 Sommerstein, Clouds (above, n. 25), p. 199. 40 Sommerstein, Clouds (above, n. 25), p. 199. 41 Dover, Clouds (above, n. 18), p. 199.
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Non pigrescenda, sed obtegenda Invenienda enim mens privativa, Et deceptio.42
Divus’ strategy seems to be to substitute a seldom-used Latin term for an original, although highly suggestive, Greek word. The adjective chosen, “privativus/a”, is rare in antiquity and denotes principally a grammatical and logical quality, as exemplified by a passage from Aulus Gellius regarding the use of the negative particle “ne” in Latin syntax: ‘ne’ enim particula, ut apud Graecos, ita plerumque in Latina quoque lingua privativa est.43 This use of a recherché technical term provides a nice parallel for ἀποστερητικός with its pretentious, newfangled -ικος ending, which smacks of the trendy, pseudo-intellectual jargon much in evidence in Clouds.44 Divus maintains the same adjective two verses later in his translation of Strepsiades’ playful rejoinder to Socrates’ exhortations: Heu, quis igitur inijciet Ex pellibus agnorum sententiam privativam. (Divus, p. 75)
Characteristically, the translator stops short of imitating Aristophanes’ morphological creativity. To maintain the Latin adjective in this way means sacrificing, once again, the verbal humour in Aristophanes’ repetitive word play. The use of sententiam as a rendering of γνώμην, when coupled with privativam, narrows the sense of the Greek construction, highlighting its technical aspect and thus discretely effacing the suggestion of erotic fantasy. By maintaining the same word in translating two etymologically linked adjectives, Divus elects to preserve a general approximation of Aristophanes’ subtle and dynamic Greek usage without imitating the Athenian comic poet’s ironic wordplay. His choice of a somewhat rare term of scholastic resonance nevertheless introduces, perhaps unwittingly, an element of verbal humour very much in keeping with the pedagogical theme as it might be parodied during the first half of the 16th century. Frischlin’s translation of these lines eliminates the comically obscure and technical expression mens privativa favoured by Divus. His use of the gerundive in lines 727–8 still suggests the possibility that his work here is not entirely independent of his humanist colleague’s earlier efforts. Despite the different verse-form, Frischlin’s placement of the gerundives is similar to that of Divus:
42 Divus, Aristophanis…comediae undecim (above, n. 3), p. 75. 43 Aulus Gellius Noctes Atticae 13.23.19 “for the particle ne, as it is among the Greeks, is frequently privative in the Latin language also.” 44 On this point, see M.-P. Noël, “Mots nouveaux et idées nouvelles dans les Nuées d’Aristophane,” Ktéma 22 (1997), pp. 175–7.
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Non decet ita mollem esse, sed obnubenda facies: Et inquirenda apta ad fraudem sententia, Et impostura. (Frischlin, p. 192–3)
Here Frischlin translates νοῦς with sententia instead of mens. He also eliminates the adjectival equivalent privativa, preferring a lengthened, explicative qualifier (apta ad fraudem). He then maintains this basic formula in his rendering of lines 729–30: Vah quis inijcit mihi Nunc ex agninis pellibus sententiam, Ad fraudandos cimices aptam. (Frischlin, p. 193)
Frischlin here proposes a surprisingly tendentious reading of line 730, which suggests that Strepsiades seeks to “defraud” not his creditors but the biting fleas. This kind of error, of course, simply provides an example of the risks inherent in translation ad sensum. Whereas Divus’ more cautious though idiosyncratic choice of privativa as an ad verbum substitution gives his Latin version an interesting, suggestively contemporary resonance, Frischlin’s conscientious striving for syntactic clarity has in this case led him into an inaccurate hermeneutical conjecture.
v. 857 καταπεφρόντικα This neologism is the perfect form of a verb καταφροντίζειν proper to Aristophanes.45 It appears in the heated dialogue of Strepsiades and Pheidippides in which the former, having been expelled from the Thinkery, tries to persuade his son to take up study under Socrates so as to acquire the knowledge of the Unjust Argumentation necessary for hoodwinking creditors (v. 814–64). In this conversation between father and son, Strepsiades explains his failure as a student by saying that every time he learnt something, he forgot it straightaway. His admission prompts a sarcastic enquiry from Pheidippides: “Is this why you have lost your cloak as well?” (856 διὰ ταῦτα δὴ καὶ θοιμάτιον ἀπώλεσας;). Not to be put off, the determined father replies, “I haven’t lost it, I’ve thought it away” (857 ἀλλ᾿ οὐκ ἀπολώλεκ’, ἀλλὰ καταπεφρόντικα). Sommerstein, followed by Marianetti, offers an inventive translation of this line that neatly approximates the Aristophanic word-play, “I haven’t lost it, I’ve invented it in knowledge.” As Forman observes, however, the literal sense seems to be that Strepsiades has “worn out his coat by thinking.”46 In the first humanist Latin version of this passage, Divus maintains his usual practice of ad verbum translation. He renders Pheidippides’ question in Latin by using
45 Liddell alleges an occurrence of dubious similarity in Polybius at XXVIII.iii. 46 Forman, Clouds (above, n. 31), p. 168.
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the substantive pallium as an equivalent of θοιμάτιον: Propter haec iam et pallium amisisti?47 Word-order is here again observed with strict precision. In translating Strepsiades’ reply, Divus proposes a useful equivalent of Aristophanes’ neologism: Sed non amisi, sed ad scholam consumpsi.48 The first-person perfect form of the verb consumere, here signifying “to use up” or “to bring to naught,” has been chosen to translate the aorist καταπεφρόντικα. In this instance too, Aristophanes’ verbal humour is considerably lessened in the Latin. Whereas the Greek incorporates a clear indication of a specific type of wear—intellectual fatigue, indicated by φροντίζειν— into the verb, Divus’ lexical choice remains less precise, in part due to the absence of a narrowing prefix. The second humanist translation distances itself from the literal meaning of Aristophanes’ verb, but it also seems to reflect an attempt on Frischlin’s part to reestablish the playful, ironic tone of Strepsiades’ response to his son’s sarcasm. Frischlin changes the substantive in Pheidippides’ question from pallium to the more general vestis: Etiam propterea vestem amisisti, puto?49 Here the use of the adverb propter with the perfect form of amettere again suggests a link between the German humanist and his Italian forbear. In Strepsiades’ answer, Frischlin avoids the cumbersome repetition sed … sed, which organizes the line in Divus. The perfect of amettere recurs in the negative near the beginning of the line, just as Divus has it, but the verb, in the first-person perfect at line end, decisively separates the two translators: Imo non amisi, sed in studia artium / Et literarum impendi.50 Frischlin’s impendere bears some resemblance to Aristophane’s καταφροντίζειν, insofar as it is a compound the base of which (pendo) signifies, in one meaning, “weigh, judge, think on”. Its meaning as a compound verb—“spend, disburse”—belongs entirely to the pecuniary realm. In this case, then, Frischlin has foregone ad verbum literalness in favour of a poetic parallel to Aristophanes’ verbal play.
v. 1108–9 στομώσεις … στόμωσον The final example of Strepsiades’ wordplay collected by Green occurs at the very end of the decisive, stichomythic joust between the Just Reasoning and the Unjust Reasoning. Strepsiades uses the verb στομόω in a precise, metaphorical sense when he instructs the Unjust Reasoning in how to mould the innate talents of Pheidippides. Sommerstein translates: “Teach him and chastise him, and remember to give him a sharp edge, with one side adapted to small lawsuits, while the other side of his jaws you should whet to serve for weightier affairs”: 47 48 49 50
Divus, Aristophanis… comediae undecim (above, n. 3), p. 80. Divus, Aristophanis… comediae undecim (above, n. 3), p. 80. Frischlin, Aristophanes, veteris comoediae princeps (above, n. 2), p. 198. Frischlin, Aristophanes, veteris comoediae princeps (above, n. 2), p. 198.
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δίδασκε καὶ κόλαζε καὶ μέμνησ’ ὅπως εὖũ μοι στομώσεις αὐτόν, ἐπὶ μὲν θάτερα οἵũον δικιδίοις, τὴν δ’ ἑτέραν αὐτοῦ γνάθον στόμωσον οἵαν εἰς τὰ μείζω πράγματα. (1007–10)
Word-play in this passage rests on the multiple meanings of the verb—“furnish with a mouth, muzzle, carve, sharpen” and hence by extension “form, train”. Strepsiades describes the didactic process metaphorically as the physiological construction of a person, with special reference to the mouth (στόμα) as the instrument of speech and argumentation. Aristophanes’ verbal irony consists in the combination of more than one of the verb’s divergent meanings. In educating Pheidippides, the Unjust Reasoning is to furnish him with a mouth equipped to argue sharply and successfully. Divus in his word-for-word translation of these lines chooses roborare as an equivalent for στομοῦν. The future indicative στομώσεις becomes the second-person present subjunctive robores, and the aorist imperative στόμωσον is rendered in Latin by the present imperative robora. In its syntax, Divus’ version provides an exact imitation of the original Greek word order: Doce, et puni, et memento ut Bene mihi robores ipsum, in quidem altera Potentem parvis litibus, alteram autem maxillam Robora potentem ad majora negotia. (Divus, p. 88)
The choice of roborare as the twice-occurring verb in this segment again eliminates the effect of ironic word-play in the Greek. Instead of developing the creation metaphor that asks the pedagogue to envision his task in much the same way a sculptor might divine possibilities in raw, uncarved material, the Latin Strepsiades merely asks the Unjust Reasoning to “strengthen” Pheidippides’ jaw and thus bolster his eloquence. The same verb is used by Lucretius to evoke the fortifying effects on the human body of growth through puberty to young adulthood.51 Cicero in a discussion on the topic of rhetorical powers uses it much like Divus.52 Although Frischlin’s translation introduces several shifts in vocabulary and syntax, it nonetheless retains two of the three imperatives, doce and memento, from the first line, thus once again establishing a subtle connection with the work of his humanist predecessor. A subjunctive phrase—et ut exacuas atque instruas / Probe— separates the second and third imperatives as they are presented in order by both Aristophanes and Divus. The result is a significantly altered sequence of expression:
51 Lucretius, De rerum natura, IV.1037–8 Sollicitatur id in nobis, quod diximus ante, /semen, adulta aetas cum primum roborat artus. 52 Cicero, Orator XLII Sed quod educata huius nutrimentis eloquentia est ipsa se postea colorat et roborat, non alienum fuit de oratoris quasi incunabulis dicere.
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Doce, castiga, et ut exacuas atque instruas Probe, memento; et alteram buccam quidem Ad levicula obtinenda litigia: alteram Exacue, ut majora obtineat negocia. (Frischlin, p. 210)
The double subjunctive in line 1007 clearly constitutes Frischlin’s attempt to incorporate into his translation the plurality of meanings suggested by Aristophanes’ use of στομόω. The verb exacuere then appears alone, without instruere, in its second occurrence, now in the imperative, at the beginning of line 1010. Here exacuere seems to be used elliptically, having absorbed the meaning of instruere by close association three lines earlier. Such clever alteration of syntax with the use of verbal repetition permits Frischlin to nearly approximate the jaunty, mirth-inspiring effect of the Greek original. The passages from Clouds in which Strepsiades verbal inventiveness is most conspicuous provide apt material for examination of translators’ characteristic tendencies. In places where the Greek itself seeks to innove, the Latin interpreters resort to divergent strategies of accommodation. Divus generally renounces any attempt to lay hold of meanings that exceed the literal rendering of each word separately, sometimes with little regard even for accord of case and gender. Such dogged literalness nevertheless bears witness to the peculiar ad verbum rigour which, pushed to an extreme, exemplifies the overriding—and often ultimately confusing—concern of many early translators for lexical accuracy. Frischlin, on the other hand, aspires to a semantic accuracy that takes into account the importance of phrases and sentences as primary units of meaning. The German humanist provides a Latin version that can be rightly understood as a veritable achievement of translatio in the Renaissance sense of the term. Although he does not always avoid the pitfalls of interpretation the 16thcentury translator almost invariably encounters, he does provide Strepsiades with a distinctive, although still-emerging Latin voice.
Francesca Schironi
The Trickster Onstage: The Cunning Slave from Plautus to Commedia dell’Arte Abstract: This article surveys the development of the character of the comic trickster, from Plautus’ servus callidus in ancient Rome to the servi of commedia erudita and the zani of commedia dell’arte in Renaissance Italy. I show that the astute, quick slave of Plautus turns into a powerless servant in commedia erudita. In commedia dell’arte, the zani regains center stage in the comic show, but loses the intelligence that made Plautus’ servus callidus an iconic figure of Roman comedy. The zani is a buffoon, but like the servus callidus, he remains at the core of comic laughter. The importance of the slave figure in comedy as well as his development from Plautus to commedia dell’arte can be explained by looking at the historical and social context of the times in which these characters flourished.
From the Aristophanic Athenian dêmotês able to create a revolutionary new world fitting his own aspirations, to the giullari and fools in Medieval plays and European folklore, tricksters are an integral part of comedy and comic laughter.1 Indeed, the first comic trickster in European comedy is the hero of Old Comedy, the multi-faceted deus ex machina of Aristophanic fantasies, who is in charge of the dénouement of the plot. When Old comedy “developed” into Middle and New Comedy, and eventually enjoyed a new golden era in the Rome of Plautus and Terence, the Aristophanic comic hero changed in nature, significantly altering the social and behavioral features of the “original.” From the energetic, inventive free citizen of the democratic polis, the comic hero of Roman comedy (and in particular Plautine comedy) became a slave in the political center of the new Mediterranean power: the servus callidus. This change in the comic trickster’s social class is important because it adds to the carnivalesque nature of comedy as a genre: comedy began depicting a topsy-turvy world in which slaves were in charge and tricked their masters. When the comedies of Plautus enjoyed new popularity in Renaissance Italy, this pivotal and partly “revolutionary” character
I would like to thank Richard Andrews for invaluable comments and suggestions. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted. 1 Tricksters are not found only in comedy; the first example in Greek literature is Hermes in the fourth Homeric Hymn; among heroic characters, Odysseus/Ulysses is the most famous trickster. On the trickster figure, see Paul Radin, The Trickster: a Study in American Indian Mythology (New York: Schocken Books, 1972). On the trickster in Renaissance theater in particular, see Donald Beecher, “Intriguers and Trickster: The Manifestations of an Archetype in the Comedy of the Renaissance,” in: D. Beecher and M. Ciavolella (eds.), Comparative Critical Approaches to Renaissance Comedy (Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1986), pp. 53–72.
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molded by Plautus returned to the stage in two new types of comedy: the commedia erudita and the later commedia dell’arte. Like the Aristophanic trickster in Roman comedy, however, the servus callidus again experienced a significant evolution. This paper considers how this stock figure developed from the prototype of Plautus’ comedy to the commedia erudita and commedia dell’arte. Without attempting a complete analysis, I will focus on elements typical of Plautus’ slaves and on their evolution over time. In addition to the plays of Plautus,2 my analysis is based on a sample of Renaissance comedies dating from 1508 to ca. 1598.3 As for commedia dell’arte, which was primarily an improvised form of theater, my main source has been the scenarios published by Flaminio Scala (1552–1624) in 1611 (Il teatro delle favole rappresentative, i.e. The Theater of Tales for Performance).4 These are the oldest and best preserved scenarios of commedia dell’arte, as they alone were collected to be published and not as personal copies of a company or an actor. I have also used some of the so-called “zani-texts”, popular texts in prose or meter about the “zani” (the character of the servant, as he was known in Italian improvised comedy) and his life,
2 I have omitted cunning slaves in New Comedy from my analysis because, beyond the difficulty of identifying such a character in this type of comedy, the Renaissance intellectuals who wrote commedia erudita did not know Menander and New Comedy. Any possible influence of the latter on the former is thus to be excluded. On slaves in New Comedy, see Philip W. Harsh, “Intriguing slaves in Greek comedy,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 86 (1955), pp. 135–42; W. Thomas MacCary, “Menander’s Slaves: Their Names, Roles and Masks,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 100 (1969), pp. 277–94; William S. Anderson. “A New Menandrian Prototype for the Servus Currens of Roman Comedy,” Phoenix 24 (1970), pp. 229–36. I have also not analyzed slaves in Terence’s plays, because Terentian comedies generally lack servi callidi. See C.W. Amerasinghe, “The Part of the Slave in Terence’s Drama,” Greece and Rome 19 (1950), pp. 62–72; Giovanni Cupaiuolo, Terenzio, Teatro e Società (Napoli: Loffredo, 1991), pp. 37–47, 82–8; Kathleen McCarthy, “The Joker in the Pack: Slaves in Terence,” Ramus 33 (2004), pp. 100–19. 3 I consider the following comedies (in chronological order): Ludovico Ariosto, Cassaria (The Play of the Strongbox, 1508, prose version), Suppositi (The Pretenders, 1509); Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena, Calandria (1513); Niccolò Machiavelli, Mandragola (The Mandrake, ca. 1518) and Clizia (1525); Angelo Beolco (Ruzante), Betía (1523–1525); Pietro Aretino, Cortigiana (1525); Ludovico Ariosto, Negromante (The Magician, second version, 1528) and Lena (1528); Angelo Beolco (Ruzante), Moscheta (1529), Parlamento (1529), Bilora (1529), Fiorina (1531), Piovana (1532), Vaccaria (1533); Anton Francesco Grazzini, Il frate (The Frair, 1540); Annibal Caro, Gli straccioni (The Ragged Brothers, 1543); Alessandro Piccolomini, Alessandro (1544); Giovan Maria Cecchi, Assiuolo (The Horned Owl, 1550); Luigi Groto, Emilia (1579, a rewriting of Plautus’ Epidicus); Giordano Bruno, Il candelaio (The Candlestick, 1582); Giambattista Della Porta, La sorella (The Sister, ca. 1591/1598); Anonymous, Venexiana (16th century). 4 As edited by Richard Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala. A Translation and Analysis of Thirty Scenarios (Lanham, Toronto and Plymouth: Scarecrow Press, 2008). Scala’s collection includes 50 scenarios (though Andrews publishes only the 30 most representative), and is thus both extensive and varied. Scala designates each scenario as the play of a ‘day’ (for a total of 50 days) using a literary frame first adopted by Boccaccio in the Decameron, thus stating the literary ambition of his collection.
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often in the form of a dialogue or monologue of the servant himself.5 Together with Scala’s scenarios, the “zani-texts” are the oldest source for commedia dell’arte and among the most ancient evidence for the character of the zani, since they were mostly published between 1576 and 1588. The advantage of the “zani-texts” compared to Scala’s scenarios (which merely inform us about the action, scene by scene, with no dialogue between characters) is that they preserve the very words of the zani.
1. The servus callidus in Plautus Plautus’ plays are full of slaves, and a few recurrent types can be identified.6 The cunning slave is a staple: his main role is to solve the problems that lie at the heart of the plot itself, and he is thus the engine of the entire play. The servus callidus reaches his goals through wit and intelligence, working alone and surrounded by other characters, who are above him in the societal hierarchy but cannot give him advice. In the topsy-turvy comic world, therefore, the cunning slave, with his role and qualities, outshines—semel in anno—the “free” characters in the play, and thanks to his intelligence and his leadership, he becomes the audience’s hero. The main characteristic of the servus callidus is self-confidence. Of all comic characters, the servus callidus is the most self-conscious: he is fully aware of his own skills and ability in trickery, as well as of his role in the play. Strobilus, a slave in Aulularia, gives a snapshot of the characteristics of the “good” (i.e. cunning) slave: faithful to his master, able to understand his master’s feelings and inclinations, and fast to act.7 Chrysalus, the cunning slave of the Bacchides, even provides a lecture on what a cunning slave should be (Bacch. 651–60): There’s nothing more worthless than a servant without a plan, unless he has a powerful mind: whenever there is necessity, he will draw [the plan] out of his mind. No one can be worthy, unless he knows how to do both good and evil. He must be a rogue with rogues, he must rob thieves, and he must steal what he can. The person of value, the one who is wise in his mind, should be a
5 They are published by Vito Pandolfi, La Commedia dell’Arte. Storia e Testo, Vol. I (Florence: Sansoni, 1957), pp. 155–293, and studied by Robert Henke, Performance and Literature in the Commedia dell’Arte (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 106–36. 6 On Plautus’ slaves, see Eduard Fraenkel, Plautine Elements in Plautus (Plautinishes im Plautus), trans. T. Drevikovsky and F. Muecke (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 159– 72; C. Stace, “The Slaves of Plautus,” Greece&Rome 15 (1968), pp. 64–77. The latter lists the following Plautine “cunning slaves:” Libanius (Asinaria), Chrysalus (Bacchides), Epidicus (Epidicus), Palaestrio (Miles Gloriosus), Tranio (Mostellaria), Toxilus (Persa), Milphio (Poenulus) and Pseudolus (Pseudolus). “Deceived slaves” are Sosia (Amphitruo), Olympio (Casina) and Scelerus (Miles Gloriosus). Stace also lists “slaves of special interest”—Tyndarus (Captivi), Gripus (Rudens) and Truculentus (Truculentus)— as well as more “ordinary slaves”—Lampadio (Cistellaria), Messenio (Menaechmi) and Trachalio (Rudens). 7 Aul. 587–602.
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man skilled in dissimulation: he must be good with the good, and bad with the bad; whatever the situation is, he must adapt his soul to it.
The most representative of the servi callidi, almost a blueprint for the character, is Pseudolus in the play named after him. He seems to miss no occasion to display full confidence in his skills. Already at the beginning of the comedy, he takes charge of the situation and reassures his young master Calidorus, even if he still lacks a plan.8 He later asks Calidorus to let him find the money needed to free Calidorus’ beloved as a challenge to his own intelligence.9 Pseudolus even challenges the old Simo, the father of Calidorus and his own master, warning him that on that very day he will steal from him the money needed for his son’s girlfriend;10 the challenge is carried out impudently, as Pseudolus continuously warns his old master to guard against him.11 Self-confidence borders on real boasting in Pseudolus,12 Tranio,13 Toxilus,14 Chrysalus and Palaestrio. The latter two boast about their machinae.15 Chrysalus also constantly reminds himself, his young master Mnesilochus and his friend Pistoclerus that he has the wits and courage necessary to solve any problem.16 He is so proud of himself that he even suggests that he should be honored with a gold statue.17 Such self-confidence leads cunning slaves to indulge in the pleasure of briefing their young masters about their success in tricking various blocking characters.18 In taking the
8 Pseud. 96–120, 232–4, 316–17. 9 Pseud. 114–16: “Ask me for twenty minae, so that you will be assured that I’ll do what I promised. Ask for them, by Hercules, I beg you; I long to make that promise.” Similar promises are made by Milphio to his young master Agorastocles, who is begging for help, in Poen. 159–169. 10 Pseud. 481–558. 11 Pseud. 508–11, esp. 517–18: “I warn you to be on your guard. I say to be on your guard, I tell you. Beware! Look, today with those same hands you will give me the money.” 12 Pseudolus is certainly a braggart at Pseud. 574–6: “By Jupiter, how splendidly and fortunately does everything I undertake turn out to be! In my mind a plan has been put together for which I have no doubt or fear. For it would be folly to entrust a great deed to a fearful heart.” 13 Tranio first reassures his young master Philolachetes and tells him to let him take care of everything (Most. 387–408); then he launches into a monologue about the importance of being skilled in trickery (Most. 409–18), and eventually ends with a final promise about the tricks (ludi) he is going to play on the old master (Most. 427–30). 14 In a monologue and an aside (Per. 449–58, 480–1), that is, addressing the audience, Toxilus praises his plan and claims to be confident in its outcome. 15 Bacch. 232 (machinabor machinam); Miles 138 and 813 (quantas moveo machinas). One might wonder whether this metaphor in the Miles is used on two other occasions by other characters (Pericleptomenus, Acroteleutia, and Milphippa), who are plotting with Palaestrio and carry out his orders, when they call him an ‘architect’ (Miles 901, 902, 1139). 16 Bacch. 225–7, 232–3, 239–42, 751–2. 17 Bacch. 640. 18 E.g. Epidicus in Ep. 337–77.
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lead in the action, these servi callidi become masters of the game and give orders even to their masters19 or free men.20 This confidence, however, is not adamantine. The slave is faced with what at first sight seems an extremely difficult task, and he knows that, if his plan fails and his master discovers his deception, he will be badly punished.21 Thus in a moment of despair the servus callidus gives voice to his fears in a monologue, in which he calls upon his wits and dives into a series of questions and doubts about what to do, as happens with Libanius22 and Epidicus.23 An excellent example of such a monologue is delivered by Pseudolus, who candidly admits that he has no clue about what he will do to help his young master, who needs 20 minae to free his beloved Phoenicium from the pimp Ballio.24 Yet Pseudolus quickly recovers his wits and compares himself to a poet: just as a poet in his writing is able to create something that does not exist, so he too will create the necessary 20 minae ex nihilo.25 Such momentary lapses of self-confidence also occur during the action, when the slave has a moment of despair26 or needs to encourage himself at a critical moment in his plans.27 These moments of weakness, however, are always brief; an idea springs into the slave’s mind and he quickly recovers his usual self-confidence.28 This despair, always quick to disappear, can thus be seen as a device that serves to underline the inventiveness and wit of the slave.
19 Pseudolus in Pseud. 383–93, Palaestrio in Miles 805–12, Chrysalus in Bacch. 728–60. 20 Palaestrio gives orders to Periplectomenus, an old Athenian citizen, on several occasions in Miles 232–59, 771–805. 21 The threats of tortures are not actually carried out in any of Plautus’ plays. On the subtle relation between fear of tortures, threat of torture and lack of final punishment in Plautus’ slaves, see Holt Parker, “Crucially Funny or Tranio on the Couch: the Servus Callidus and Jokes about Torture,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 119 (1989), pp. 233–46. 22 Libanius in the Asinaria (249–64) warns himself to kick away his idleness, invokes his ingenium, and urges himself to do something to help his master rather than harming him. 23 Epidicus sees a disaster approaching and blames himself; his helplessness is well shown when his monologue turns into a dialogue in which he plays both speakers (Ep. 96–100): “You are a worthless fellow, Epidicus.—What’s the pleasure in insulting yourself?—Because you let yourself go!—What can I do?—Are you asking me? Before, you used to give advice to the others. Something must be found out, in some way.” 24 Pseud. 394–400. 25 Pseud. 404–5: nunc ego poeta fiam: viginti minas, / quae nusquam nunc sunt gentium, inveniam tamen. 26 Pseudolus in Pseud. 423–6, 1025–32; Tranio in Most. 676–9. 27 Tranio in Most. 543–6, 562–6. Pseudolus talks to himself in the second person to gain courage before tricking his master (Pseud. 453–4): “They are coming to you, Pseudolus; prepare your speech against the old guy.” 28 Many examples can be quoted for the slave’s recovery of self-confidence, such as with Pseudolus at Pseud. 759–60: “Whatever before was uncertain or doubtful in my intellect, now is clear; my mind has been cleansed and the path is now open.” In Bacchides, Chrysalus initially anticipates the success of his plan, but then is halted by the fear that something may go wrong and he may be punished, although he eventually finds the courage to continue (Bacch. 349–65).
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Another consequence of the topsy-turvy world of Plautine comedy is that the servus callidus is allowed to talk in a style that does not fit a man of his condition. When boasting and full of self-confidence, for example, the slave may use military language, comparing himself to a general. At these moments, he becomes a “braggart slave” acting as a comic foil of the braggart soldier, another common stock character in Roman comedy. Military language is used to boast about the slave’s own “heroic deeds” by Pseudolus in the homonymous comedy,29 Libanius in Asinaria,30 Chrysalus in Bacchides31 and Palaestrio in Miles.32 Toxilus in Persa launches into a tirade full of military metaphors: The enemy defeated, the citizens safe, the state in tranquility, the peace ratified, the war over, the deed accomplished successfully, the army and the garrisons uninjured, as you, Jupiter, and all the other gods powerful in heaven have helped us well, I am grateful and thank you, because I took complete revenge upon my enemy. Now, for this reason, I will divide and allot the booty among my allies.33
29 Pseud. 579–89: “For in my breast I have already prepared my forces (copias)—double, threefold stratagems, treacheries, in order that, wherever I engage with the enemy (hostibus congrediar)—I will say it trusting in the virtue of my forefathers, in my industry and in my deceitful malice—I may easily win, and easily spoil my enemies by my treacheries (facile ut vincam, facile ut spoliem meos perduellis meis perfidiis). Now I will splendidly finish this Ballio, this common foe of me and all of you; only give me your attention. Now I want to besiege this town [i.e. the house of Ballio] in order to conquer it today (hoc ego oppidum admoenire ut hodie capiatur volo), and I will lead my legions there (atque huc meas legiones adducam). If I capture it (expugno)—and I will make it an easy task for my citizens—without delay I will immediately lead my army (meum exercitum protinus obducam) against this other old town [i.e. the house of Simo]. Then I will load and fill myself and all my fellow-soldiers (participis omnis meos) with booty (praeda) so that they know that I was born [to become] terror and flight for my enemies (perduellibus meis).” Earlier in the play, Pseudolus talks about battles he must fight (Pseud. 524–5); later on, he claims that he will lead his legions against the enemies (Pseud. 761–3), rejoices after he has put the enemy to flight (Pseud. 1269: hostibus fugatis) and, completely drunk, ends his exultation with a ‘vae victis’ (Pseud. 1317), like a new Brennus. 30 Asin. 554–6 (legiones, copiae, exercitus, pugnando, virtus). 31 Bacch. 709–11 (ballista, turrim, propugnacula, invadam, oppidum), Bacch. 1069–1074 (praeda, urbe capta, exercitum, triumpho, milites). 32 The Miles provides a good combination of a moment of doubt followed by the elaboration of the trick celebrated with military language: his fellow in trickery Pericleptomenus urges Palaestrio to quickly find a good plan using a long series of military metaphors: hostis, obsidium, exercitum, perduellis, praesidium, inimicis, legiones, moenia, inimicos (Miles 219–30). When Palaestrio has found a plan, his use of military language is particularly heavy (Miles 267, 596–608, 815), and those who obey his orders all call him ‘imperator’ (Miles 1160). In this comedy, the military language of Palaestrio is clearly used to underline the role of the slave as boasting counterpart of the bragging soldier Pyrgopolinices. 33 Per. 752–7: Hostibus victis, civibus salvis, re placida, pacibus perfectis, / bello exstincto, re bene gesta, integro exercitu et praesidiis / cum bene nos, Iuppiter, iuvisti, dique alii omnes caelipotentes, / eas vobis habeo grates atque ago, quia probe sum ultus meum inimicum. / Nunc ob eam rem inter participes dividam praedam et participabo. Similarly, earlier in the play Toxilus invited a ‘cunning maiden’ (the daughter of the parasite Saturio) to start her own battle (proelium) with the leno Dordalus (Per. 606–7).
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The phrasing echoes real triumphal inscriptions and elogia,34 reinforcing the comic effect of such exaggerated metaphoric language put in the mouth of a slave. The language of the servus callidus, however, is not limited to the military sphere. In the upside-down world of Plautine comedy, a slave can also talk with a senatorial flair, as do Epidicus35 and Tranio.36 This mix of military and senatorial language would have sounded strange when used by a slave, and it is indeed this aspect that Fraenkel identifies as one of the most important “Plautine” innovations in the slave figure.37 The self-celebration of the cunning slave does not spare the epic style. On the contrary, it reaches its highest point when the slave, like a new Homer, praises his own skills and accomplishments as if he were an epic hero. The most famous example is Chrysalus singing his own Iliad38 and equating himself to both Agamemnon (the “imperator” of the Greek army) and Ulysses (the real conqueror of Troy). The comparison of Chrysalus’ machinations to the heroic capture of Troy is used again elsewhere in the play.39 The parallel with Ulysses is especially interesting, because he is the trickster par excellence in the mythic universe of the ancients. Indeed, the comparison is used in other plays: Pseudolus, the prototype of the cunning slave, is equated to Ulysses by his own master Simo40 and is even judged better than Ulysses at the end of the play.41 Servi callidi seem to know no limits in their use (or abuse) of myth, epic and “heroic” comparisons. Toxilus, an interesting mix of a cunning slave and a desperate lover, states that his love-labors are far worse than those of Heracles,42 and equates himself with the Titans.43 Chrysalus, probably the most versed in mythical and epic examples of Plautus’ cunning slaves, compares his robbing and tricking Nicobulus to the killing and skinning of Phrixus’ ram,44 and equates himself to Bellerophon when
34 Cf. Fraenkel, Plautine Elements in Plautus (above, n. 6), pp. 163–5. 35 Epidicus (Ep. 158–63) mixes military language (bellum, audendum, oppugnare) with an imaginary call to the senate of his wits to convene (ego de re argentaria / iam senatum convocabo in corde consiliarium). 36 Most. 687–8: huc concessero, / dum mihi senatum consili in cor convoco. Later on, Tranio uses the same mix of military and senatorial language in a different sense (Most. 1047–50): “and from there I led every legion out (eduxi omnem legionem), both men and women. After I led my soldiers (manipulares meos) away from the siege (ex opsidione) into a safe place, I decided to convoke the senate of my playfellows (senatum congerronum); but after I convoked them, they removed me from the senate (ex senatu).” 37 Cf. Fraenkel, Plautine Elements in Plautus (above, n. 6), p. 159–65. 38 Chrysalus, in Bacch. 925–78. On Chrysalus’ Iliad, see Fraenkel, Plautine Elements in Plautus (above, n. 6), pp. 46–53. 39 Bacch. 987, 1053–8. 40 Pseud. 1063: meus Ulixes. 41 Pseud. 1244: Superavit dolum Troianum atque Ulixem Pseudolus. The old master Simo also compares Pseudolus to Socrates (Pseud. 464–5) because of his dialectic ability. 42 Per. 1–5. 43 Per. 26–7. 44 Bacch. 241–2: “Here today I will make Phrixus’ ram of him [i.e. Nicobulus, his old master] and I will shave him of his gold down to his skin.”
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he delivers a letter to Nicobulus in which his son Mnesilochus (at Chrysalus’ suggestion) asks him to tie Chrysalus up.45 Tranio prefers historical models: with his immortal deeds (facinora immortalia), he is equal if not superior to Agathocles and even Alexander the Great.46 Pseudolus, who boasts that he is destined to accomplish great deeds,47 is compared to Agathocles by his master,48 and Strobilus claims to be the great King Philip of Macedon.49 Thanks to his larger-than-life qualities and his privileged position with the audience, which is led to sympathize with him more than with the other characters, the servus callidus even delivers moral teachings and wisdom—more than any other figure in the comedy. Without going into the details of the “didactic” element of Roman comedy, we can simply note that the most serious concepts in Plautus’ comedies are often put in the mouths of cunning slaves.50 A simple invitation to drink, for example, becomes an occasion for Stichus to recommend moderation and to state that everyone should celebrate according to his means.51 Pseudolus tries to urge his young master to control himself and resist the temptation to surrender to passion,52 and dives into an ambiguous monologue that celebrates the power of Fortune in human life under the rule of “seize the day.”53 Palaestrio becomes an instructor in love to the adulescens Pleusicles, and accuses him of not being enough of a lover,54 while Milphio scolds his young master for having fallen in love with a greedy courtesan.55 In addition, the cunning slave often comments on other characters, in particular the old masters, underlining their stupidity or immoral behavior;56 a typical example is Palaestrio, who makes a fool of his new master, the miles gloriosus.57 We cannot exclude the possibility that these “didactic” and “moralistic” comments put in the mouths of
45 Bacch. 810: like Chrysalus, Bellerophon delivered a letter containing instructions to kill its bearer (Il. 6.155–95). On a lower level, even Epinacius, a young slave in the Stichus, when he has to send a message, promises to eclipse Talthybius and all (epic and tragic?) messengers (Sti. 305). 46 Most. 775–7. 47 Pseud. 590: magna me facinora decet efficere. 48 Pseud. 531–2. 49 Aul. 704. 50 In Terence and Menander, of course, the question is different, because serious concepts are more frequent and are voiced by different characters. 51 Sti. 692–5. 52 Pseud. 235–7. 53 Pseud. 667–87. Only an abrupt interruption stops him and decreases the seriousness of his words (Pseud. 687: sed iam satis est philosophatum; nimis diu et longum loquor). 54 Miles 624–5. 55 Poen. 291–2. 56 I have excluded from this list passages in which the cunning slave makes jokes against the young or old master without moral overtones, simply because it is normal for comic slaves to make fun of their masters. I have also omitted cases in which the slave makes affectionate fun of a young master who is in love (e.g. Pseudolus about Calidorus in Pseud. 1–96). 57 Miles 947–1083, 1200–83, 1311–77 (passim).
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slaves might also have an ironic twist, especially when uttered with a particular tone of voice or bodily movement. None of this, however, affects the general principle that the slave is allowed “didactic” comments which are never voiced by any of the other characters. The peculiar status of Plautus’ cunning slave is also highlighted “onstage” by his metatheatrical exploits. He is almost the only character allowed to break the fourth wall and address the audience. This is possible because the audience naturally sympathizes with him and is thus more prepared to accept a direct address from him than from any other character. Pseudolus can be taken as a model for this device. From the very beginning, he tries to bring the audience over to his side by advising them not to trust him,58 and he forms an alliance with them against their “common enemy,” the pimp.59 The complicity between Pseudolus and the audience surfaces again at the end of the play, when he invites them to applaud with the promise that he will invite them to dinner the next day.60 Similar “friendly” addresses to the audience are made by Chrysalus61 and Palaestrio.62 Milphio, on the other hand, clearly admits that he prefers the audience’s favor to his own master’s.63 The slave is also allowed to make metatheatrical comments about stock characters and stock scenes. Stichus, for example, reassures the audience that a slave can drink and party because this is possible in Athens (where the play is dramatically set),64 while Tranio and Milphio celebrate the comic gags of slaves in comedies.65 Pseudolus is particularly concerned about the difference between what the characters know and what the audience knows, as if he were an expert on comic irony: he refuses to tell Calidorus his plans, since they will be revealed to the audience in due course
58 Pseud. 125–8: “Now, in order that no one may say that he wasn’t told, I tell you all, to the adults here assembled, to all the people, I declare to all my friends and all my acquaintances, that for this day they must guard against me and not trust me.” 59 Pseud. 584–85: Nunc inimicum ego hunc communem meum atque vostrorum ominium / Ballionem exballistabo lepide. 60 Pseud. 1334–5. 61 Bacch. 1072–4: “But, Spectators, do not be surprised now that I don’t celebrate a triumph; this is too common, I don’t care about it. Still, the soldiers will be received with honeyed wine all the same.” On this scene, see Fraenkel, Plautine Elements in Plautus (above, n. 6), p. 162. 62 Miles 1130–1, where Palaestrio comments on Pyrgopolynices’ stupidity, addressing the audience. 63 Poen. 920–2: “I will go inside to tell this to my master. For it would be folly to summon him in front of the house and repeat here again the same things that you have just heard. I would rather be an annoyance to my master alone inside than to all of you here.” 64 Sti. 446–8. 65 Most. 1149–51; Poen. 427. But Milphio is not a typical cunning slave, as he is himself tricked. See Christopher Bungard, “L’ingannatore ingannato. I due aspetti di Milfione nel Poenulus,” in R. Raffaelli and A. Tontini (eds.), Lecturae Plautinae Sarsinates XV – Poenulus (Sarsina, 24 settembre 2011) (Urbino: Quattroventi, 2012), pp. 73–88 (and references therein).
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and he does not want the show to be too long;66 he also refuses to provide the details of the previous scenes, because the audience knows them already and the comedy is being performed for them.67 Chrysalus also refers at length to the theatrical world and its conventions: he complains about the “usual,” common comic slaves, “those Parmenos, those Syruses;”68 he hints at characters in another play;69 and he even refers to another comedy of Plautus, the Epidicus, and how much he likes the actor Pellio.70 In the Miles, in a postponed prologue, Palaestrio updates the audience about what happened before, the topic of the play and its Greek models.71 Plautus’ comedies are full of comic gags in which mimicry and coarse humor abound. Yet Plautus spares his servus callidus slapstick gags, while involving him in the so-called elastic gags.72 These consist of a series of repetitive wisecracks or remarks that can be added to indefinitely;73 they are the result of comic improvisation and belong to the comic repertoire, which Plautus, having been an actor himself, knew well. In Asinaria, for example, Libanius offers a long list of “heroic deeds” in order to glorify his own accomplishments, his companion Leonidas echoes this list with another, and finally Libanius returns the compliment by cataloguing all Leoni-
66 Pseud. 388. 67 Pseud. 720–1. The special link with the audience, together with comments on the theatrical role of the slave and the expectations of the audience, is summarized in a masterly fashion by Pseudolus himself (Pseud. 562–73a): “[To the audience.] I have a suspicion that now you suspect that I promise these great deeds to amuse you, while I perform this play, and that I will not do what I said I would do. I will not change my mind. In what way I will accomplish that, I do not know yet, I only know that it will happen for sure. For it is fit that the one coming forth onto the stage should bring, in a new manner, some new invention. If he is not able to do that, he should give place to someone who is able to do it. I want to go inside for some time, while I assemble together deceits in my mind. But I will come out, I will not keep you waiting; in the meantime this flute-player will entertain you.” 68 Bacch. 649: non mihi isti placent Permenones, Syri. 69 Bacch. 911–12. 70 Bacch. 213–15. Cf. John Barsby (ed.), Plautus, Bacchides (Warminster, Wiltshire: Aris & Phillips, 1986), pp. 115–16. 71 Miles 79–155; in particular, Palaestrio begins with these words (Miles 79–87): “I will have the kindness to tell you the subject-matter [of this play] if you have the courtesy to listen to me. Whoever does not want to listen, please let him rise and get out, in order that those who want to listen have a place to sit. Now because it is for this reason that you have sat down in this festive place, I will tell you the title and the subject-matter of the comedy that we are going to perform. Alazon is the name, in Greek, of this comedy; the same we call in Latin: ‘the Braggart’ (Gloriosus).” 72 On this expression, see Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), p. lvi n. 64 (with additional bibliography). 73 The comic force of these types of elastic gags was famously analyzed by Henri Bergson, Le Rire. Essai sur la signification du comique, first published in instalments in Revue de Paris, between 1899 and 1900. This important essay was first published in English in 1911 as Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of Comic, by Henri Bergson; authorised translation, by Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell (New York: Macmillan, 1911).
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das’ “achievements.”74 Onstage, this list can be extended ad infinitum for the amusement of the audience; by the same token, it can be curtailed if the joke is not going well. The same result, but with the goal of vituperation, is obtained in Persa, in which Toxilus rages against the leno Dordalus with an expandable list of insults.75 Linguistic playfulness necessitates inventiveness, which is why the cunning slave takes pleasure in it. Pseudolus, for example, is the only character in the play to mix Greek phrases with Latin;76 he also plays with language by inventing new names— e.g. Subballio77—and using alliteration.78 Alliteration and accumulation, as well as comic neologisms, are used by Palaestrio,79 while Chrysalus plays with his own name.80 Cunning slaves are also better with languages than their masters, so that Milphio works as a (comic) interpreter between his young master Agorastocles and the Carthaginian Hanno.81 The best example of linguistic inventiveness is Sagaristio, the second cunning slave in Persa; when impersonating a Persian and asked his own name, he proudly gives a true performance by telling “his name:” [My name is] Idle-speaker-dorus, Virgin-seller-ides, Nonsense-talker-ides, Silver-extractorides, Worthy-of-you-talker-ides, Nonsense-ides, Flatterer-ides, What-he-has-once-snatched-ides, Never-again-return-ides.82
The servus callidus embodies the spirit of carnival in one more aspect: he likes life and the pleasures that come with it. Gluttony is typical of all slaves in drama, and the cunning slave is not immune to this failing. One example that can stand for all is the praise of the joys of life offered by a drunken Pseudolus at the end of the comedy, where he also adds a little boasting about his own bravery with wine.83 Plautus’ servus callidus was thus the embodiment of the comic trickster at every level: in his role, his deserved self-confidence, his boasting, his language and his
74 Asin. 545–76. The text is partially corrupt. 75 Per. 406–11. 76 Pseud. 443, 483–84, 712. 77 Pseud. 607. 78 Pseud. 585 (Ballionem exballistabo, also with a neologism), 704–5. 79 Alliteration in Miles 189–92; neologism in Miles 649 (semisenem). 80 Bacch. 240 (opus est chryso Chrysalo) and 362 (facietque extemplo Crucisalum me ex Chrysalo). 81 Poen. 990–1027. Milphio was indeed originally from Carthage, which he left years before with his young master Agorastocles. While the latter candidly admits (Poen. 985–7) he has forgotten Punic, Milphio brags that no Punic man is more Punic than him (Poen. 991: Nullus me est hodie Poenus Poenior). In the scene, however, first Milphio seems to translate correctly Hanno’s words, but then his translation becomes comic, which shows his ignorance of the language as well as his linguistic inventiveness. On this scene, see Giovanni Garbini, “Il Poenulus letto da un semitista,” in: R. Raffaelli and A. Tontini (eds.), Lecturae Plautinae Sarsinates XV – Poenulus (Sarsina, 24 settembre 2011) (Urbino: Quattroventi, 2012), pp. 38–43. 82 Per. 702–5: Vaniloquidorus Virginesvendonides / Nugiepiloquides Argentumextenebronides / Tedigniloquides Nugides Palponides / Quodsemelarripides Numquameripides. 83 Pseud. 1246–82.
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privileged relationship with the audience. His flippant but not buffoonish comic vis was a staple of Plautus’ art and could hardly escape notice later on, when Italian literati decided to “translate” Roman comedy onto the Italian stage.
2. Servants in Commedia Erudita The so-called commedia erudita (“erudite comedy”) developed in the 16th century in Italy, partly in response to the discovery of new Plautine comedies.84 While Terence’s plays were known through the Middle Ages, twelve new comedies of Plautus were found by Nicholas of Kues in 1429, and this discovery had a major impact in Italy.85 The new comedies led to the production and performance of plays by Plautus and Terence in Italian courts. Even if these performances spread the popularity of Latin comedy, what may have also contributed to the development of the commedia erudita was the presence on the market of new illustrated editions of Plautus and Terence that presented characters of the Roman plays dressed in Renaissance costumes and with a “Renaissance background.” This mixture of ancient and contemporary elements was brought to the stage by the authors who wrote the first “erudite comedies,” that is, comedies written “à la mode” of Plautus but set in contemporary Italy and written in Italian. These authors were Ludovico Ariosto and Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena (called Bibbiena), who followed the Plautine model closely for their cunning slaves: Dulippo in the Suppositi (1509) and Corbolo in the Lena (1528) by Ariosto, and Fessenio in Bibbiena’s Calandria (1513). After these initial attempts at replicating Plautus’ characters, however, commedia erudita experienced an evolution that took the character of the servus callidus progressively to the margin of the action. Eventually, authors abandoned such characters or, like Machiavelli, retained the idea of a “cunning trickster” but transferred it into a new figure.
84 On the birth and development of commedia erudita, see Richard Andrews, Scripts and Scenarios: The Performance of Comedy in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Giorgio Padoan, L’avventura della commedia rinascimentale (Padua: Vallardi, 1996). The so-called “Humanist comedy,” written in Latin after the model of Plautus and Terence, developed in Italy before commedia erudita, which was written in Italian. Humanist comedy is a peculiar product and had no influence on commedia erudita or commedia dell’arte but remained an isolated “experiment.” For this reason, I omit it from my analysis. A new edition in Latin and English is now available in Gary Grund (ed. and transl.), Humanist Comedies, I Tatti Renaissance Library 19 (Cambridge Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 2005). See also Andrews, Scripts and Scenarios (above), p. 31; Charles Fantazzi, “Roman and Humanist Comedy on the Renaissance Stage,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 15 (2008), pp. 281–90. 85 In 1433, Giovanni Aurispa discovered Donatus’ commentary on Terence in Mainz. For a brief overview of the impact of these discoveries in Italy, see Fantazzi, “Roman and Humanist Comedy” (above, n. 84), pp. 288–90.
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Before analyzing the features of the servants in commedie erudite set in Italy, it is worth mentioning another comedy by Ariosto, the Cassaria (1508), which is considered the first commedia erudita. Although written in Italian, it does not take place in Italy but in Metellino, probably Mytilene at Lesbos, and has an “exotic” setting throughout. It is telling that the plot of the first commedia erudita in Italian is not set in Italy but “displaced” eastward, exactly as in Plautus’ comedies, which are never set in Rome. The Cassaria thus seems to be a bridge between Latin Humanist comedy, which was a pure remake of Plautus’ Latin comedies, and the “new” commedia erudita set in Italy. Ariosto’s Cassaria contains the servant characters closest to their Plautine models: Volpino and Fulcio almost compete with Pseudolus and Chrysalus in self-confidence, resourcefulness and boasting,86 sometimes interrupted by moments of despair when they seem to have no clue of what to do,87 and in their ability to take charge of the situation and dominate the action.88 Volpino excels in his rhetorical, playful use of language,89 and together with Fulcio he is the only character to break the fourth wall and refer to some “extra-theatrical” reality of Ferrara (where the comedy was performed).90 In the earlier examples of “real,” Italy-based commedia erudita, many features of the original servus callidus were maintained, though in a less flamboyant manner than in Cassaria. In Ariosto’s other comedies and Bibbiena’s Calandria, for example, the servants are very confident in their ability and wit. The typical Plautine scene in which the young master puts all his hope in the cunning slave, who in turn promises to help, as well as the typical scene in which the latter takes charge of the situation and explains his tricks to the former, were preserved. Fessenio in Bibbiena’s Calandria has no doubt that he will help his young master Lidio and takes the lead;91 this attitude surfaces again in Act V, when an unforeseen circumstance requires a new plan, which Fessenio devises by once more taking charge of the situation.92 A similar (but longer) scene between servant and young master is found in Ariosto’s Suppositi.93 The servant stars as the mover of the action again in Ariosto’s Lena, in which Corbolo equates himself with the “servi” he has seen in comedies for his “malizia,”94 and then congratulates himself about how the plot is developing.95
86 Cassaria Act II, i (Volpino); Act V, i (Fulcio). 87 Cassaria Act IV, i (Volpino), vii (Volpino), and viii (Fulcio). 88 Cassaria Act III, i (Volpino); Act IV, iii (Volpino). 89 Cassaria Act IV, ii: “A parlar per dritto, a torto ti corucci con lui” (“To tell it to you straight, it’s twisted for you to be angry with him”). 90 Cassaria Act IV, vii, where Volpino makes reference to the “Tavern of the Monkey,” and Act V, v, where Fulcio refers to the “Tavern of the Moor;” both were famous taverns in Ferrara. 91 Calandria Act I, iii. 92 Calandria Act V, iv. 93 Suppositi Act II, i. Here a false Erostrato (a disguised Dulippo, the servant) explains his plan to the false Dulippo (a disguised Erostrato, the young master). 94 Lena Act III, i. 95 Lena Act III, iii. Corbolo also seems to take pleasure in tricking his own master later in Act V, iii.
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Similarly, the dialogue between Cornelio and his servant Querciola in Piccolomini’s Alessandro (1544)96 is built around the servant’s confidence in his tricks and his insistence that he will solve his young master’s problems; the scene ends with the usual self-confident statement.97 Another typical feature of Plautus’ comedies that passed into commedia erudita is the moment of despair of the cunning slave, when he feels lost and wonders what to do. Corbolo, the cunning servant in Ariosto’s Lena, for example, goes through such a moment at the end of Act IV.98 Similarly, the cunning slave Dulippo in Ariosto’s Suppositi has a desperate outburst of hopelessness and dives into a series of selfdirected questions about his future course of action.99 At such uncertain moments, servants invoke their own “natural” resources just as Plautus’ servi do: Corbolo invokes his own lies (“bugie”) in Ariosto’s Lena,100 and Querciola his own wits (“ingegno”) in Piccolomini’s Alessandro.101 In the early phase of commedia erudita, especially in the plays of Ariosto, the braggart side of the servus callidus is also preserved, as in Ariosto’s Suppositi and Lena. Similarly, Fessenio in Bibbiena’s Calandria displays pride in his scheming,102 although with less braggadocio (and more vitriolic invective against the old master) than his Roman predecessors. Already in Ariosto’s Negromante (1528), however, the servant Temolo is the one who tricks the Magician (the “negromante”) and takes charge of everything,103 but he lacks many aspects of the cunning slave: no boasting, no moment of despair followed by recovered courage, and a generally weak leadership role. In the same way, Querciola in Piccolomini’s Alessandro stars in many “philosophical” and metatheatrical intrusions similar to those of Plautus’ cunning slaves, but beyond invoking his own wits, he never indulges in boasting. In the early comedies, the fascination of the Plautine models was strong and his comedies were followed closely. As time went on, however, the spell faded, authors began to depart from the model, and the cunning servant in commedia erudita experienced a marked evolution. In fact, more and more servants are introduced (or present themselves) as “servi callidi,” but in reality they play no role in advancing the plot. An interesting example is Annibal Caro’s Gli straccioni (1543, but published in 1582), a comedy reworking the Greek novel Leucippe and Clitophon by Achilles Tatius. In this
96 Alessandro Act I, v. 97 “Leave it to me, and I will be back shortly. Now let me plan some foxy trick to cheat the old geezer,” as translated in Donald Beecher (ed. and trans.), Renaissance comedy: the Italian masters, Vol. 1 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), p. 314. 98 Lena Act IV, ix. 99 Suppositi Act V, iii. 100 Lena Act III, vi (beginning). 101 Alessandro Act IV, ii (end). 102 Calandria Act II, ix (last utterance by Fessenio) and III, i. 103 Negromante Act IV, i (ll. 1427–31) and iii (ll. 1513–32).
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play, the servant Pilucca has no role in the resolution of a complicated plot. Despite this, Caro took pains to insert an entire scene (Act I, iv: a fast-paced dialogue between Pilucca and the steward Marabeo, both in the service of Madonna Argentina and Messer Giordano) in which Pilucca seems to fit the blueprint of the cunning slave. The author uses many of the typical features of Plautus’ cunning slave here: Pilucca addresses the audience, presents himself as a trickster and gives orders to Marabeo, who entrusts himself to him. Pilucca also engages in a question-and-answer exchange, typical of comic gags, to inform Marabeo of their master’s death,104 and finally jokes about philosophical schools by distorting their names (“Peripottetici” for Peripatetics and “Stronzici” for Stoics105). Yet the scene has no consequence for the plot, and it looks more like a tribute Caro wanted to pay to the classical model of the servus callidus, adding at the same time some comic flavor. In later plays, the servi callidi tend to become even more immaterial. Giorgetto of Cecchi’s Assiuolo (1550) boasts with his young master Giulio about his ability in matters of love and trickery;106 but even if Giorgetto’s plans eventually provide the happy ending, he is himself a marginal character and, far from being master of the play, is rarely present onstage. As time goes by, the servus callidus loses even more ground and becomes useless to the resolution of the story, because the happy ending is brought about by Fortune. A typical example is Trinca in Della Porta’s La sorella (1591/1598). Trinca is believed by his young master Attilio to be a “situation-solver,”107 who “can make miracles with a couple of words;”108 Trinca himself is proud of his lies and in asides to the audience comments on how his trick is developing.109 Yet his tricks are useless, and the problems are solved by Fortune. Plautus’ servus callidus also experiences an evolution in the style of his language, as not all his original features are preserved in his Renaissance heirs. Ariosto seems to be the only author who used military language for servants; Lena’s Corbolo, for example, seems fascinated by the military vocabulary he uses throughout Act V, with the metaphor of “his army of lies” that are ready to “win” over his “enemies.”110 Still, such moments are only an echo of the orgiastic military celebrations of Pseudolus, Toxilus, Tranio and the other Roman cunning slaves. Renaissance servants also seem to make no epic references, probably for two reasons. First, such references in the 104 In fact, Messer Giordano is not really dead but is simply believed to be dead by Pilucca. 105 Translated “Pleuripethetics,” “Stoiters” in Beecher, Renaissance comedy, Vol. 1 (above, n. 97), p. 230 (but this misses the vulgar joke with “Stronzici”). 106 Assiuolo Act I, i. 107 La sorella Act I, i. 108 Beecher, Renaissance comedy, Vol. 1 (above, n. 97), p. 388. 109 La sorella Act IV, ii. 110 Lena Act V, i: “Post’ ho l’artegliaria alli canti. Facciano qui testa ormai le bugie … non temo non averne poi vittoria”; Lena, Act V, vi: “Ben succede l’impresa: avrà l’essercito de le bugie, dopo tanti pericoli, dopo tanti travagli, al fin vittoria …; Lena, Act V, vii: “Da tante parti sí le forze crescere veggio ai nemici, che mi casca l’animo di potere a tanto impeto resistere.”
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mouth of a valet might have sounded too daring to the Renaissance élite, who were used to considering epic a high, noble genre ill-suited to comedy in general and servants in particular. Second, by mostly omitting the boasting and tricks of Plautus’ servus callidus, Renaissance authors lacked occasions for servants to dive into epic celebrations of their own abilities and successes.111 The “didactic” side, with its possible ironical overtones, has more luck in the servants of commedia erudita. Querciola in Piccolomini’s Alessandro becomes a “teacher of love” for his young master Cornelio when he explains that “love itself is a force,” meaning that Cornelio should not hesitate to “assault” his beloved.112 Fagiuolo, the servant of the Captain in Piccolomini’s Alessandro, mocks contemporary “philosophical” interest in ethical relativism when he argues for the relative value of beauty and goodness in the Captain’s wife.113 Comments on unethical masters are made by Fessenio in Bibbiena’s Calandria, when he makes a fool of the old, lascivious Calandro114 or comments on his stupidity with strong words in short monologues addressed to the audience.115 The case of Nibbio, the servant of the Astrologer/Magician in Ariosto’s Negromante, is similar. He is not a typical cunning slave, as the servus callidus role is fulfilled by Temolo (who tricks the Magician, a trickster himself), but Nibbio offers many asides about the dishonesty of his master,116 who is Ariosto’s polemical target. At the end of the play, Nibbio even decides to desert his “scelerato” master and gives a final moralizing speech to the audience.117 Aretino, in his dry satire of the nobility, launches his servant Rosso into a tirade against nobles who look respectable only because of their dress, and makes him say that everyone would bless
111 Only a brief reference to a contemporary epic can be found in Aretino’s Cortigiana, when Rosso tells his master Parabolano that he is as valiant as Astolfo, the paladin of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (Cortigiana Act II, xv). Aretino’s comedy, however, is a peculiar type of commedia erudita (see below) and his epic comparison is thus of no significance. 112 Alessandro Act IV, iv. 113 Fagiuolo explains to the Captain himself that his wife might be good and beautiful, but even if she were not, he should think she is, since the results will be exactly the same (Alessandro Act IV, vi). It is interesting that such references to contemporary culture and those “philosophical insights” are placed in the mouths of servants, even if the latter have no prominent role in the play. 114 Calandria Act I, vii; Act II, vi and ix. 115 Calandria Act I, vii (opening): “It is clear to me now: the gods have buffoons, just as mortals do. Love, who usually ensnares the hearts of the sensitive, has made his nest in that fool Calandro, and he’s not going to leave. It is not very smart of Cupid to take up residence in such a blockhead. But he has a purpose in mind: among lovers, this fellow can be like a donkey among monkeys. And could he have put the task in better hands? He’s got his feathers stuck in the birdlime” [trans. by Donald Beecher, Renaissance comedy: the Italian masters, Vol. 2 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), pp. 46–7]. See also Calandria Act II, ix (end). 116 Cf. Negromante Act II, iii (he also speaks Latin at l. 823); Act III, i and iv (esp. ll. 1322–1331). On this comedy, see Andrews, Scripts and Scenarios (above, n. 84), pp. 80–3. 117 Negromante Act V, vi.
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him if he were to rob his master;118 this is a harsh statement from a servant, but is in line with Aretino’s polemical attitude toward contemporary society.119 The most serious side of the servus callidus is thus maintained by Renaissance authors, probably because it felt less threatening than the boasting side or the leadership position; moreover, as noted, the possible ironic overtones of a “philosophizing” servant would have made such figures even less threatening. The metatheatrical ability of the cunning slave, a staple of Plautine comedy, remains alive in commedia erudita. Again, however, these direct addresses to the audience are very different from those of a Pseudolus or Chrysalus. The Roman slave almost challenged the audience to join him in his fictional disturbance of society’s hierarchy, by siding with him against stupid or immoral masters; for one night, the audience could be the accomplice of an otherwise criminal act. In Renaissance plays, on the other hand, addresses to the audience by servants lose this carnivalesque flavor and are generally reduced to the most trivial function: the invitation to applaud at the end of the play, as with Nibbio in Ariosto’s Negromante,120 Giorgetto in Cecchi’s Assiuolo, Querciola in Piccolomini’s Alessandro and Trinca in Della Porta’s La sorella. Only rarely do we find a bolder address, such as that in Bibbiena’s Calandria, where Fessenio explicitly addresses the audience in the opening scene of Act III, trying to bring them over to his side against the old Calandro, who becomes the common comic target. Similarly, metatheatrical references to the theatrical world and conventions are far less frequent in commedia erudita, although there are a few examples in Ariosto’s comedies,121 as well as in Piccolomini’s Alessandro122 and Aretino’s Cortigiana.123 Renaissance commedia erudita is particularly lacking in comic gags, and scenes of pure slapstick are rare. Despite their “erudite” nickname, however, Renaissance comedies do make use of obscenities, especially in the mouths of servants. In Ariosto’s Lena, for example, Corbolo repeatedly goes into sexual double entendres with Lena;124 118 Cortigiana Act I, xv. 119 Andrews suggests (per litt.) that—even with an element of social satire—the starting point of these scenes is a standard comic (or buffonesque) topos, meaning that if an idiot exists, it is a crime not to exploit him. 120 Even if the main cunning slave of the play is Temolo, not Nibbio. 121 Lena Act III, i (Corbolo comments that now he needs a servant’s trick, as he has sometimes seen in comedies); Suppositi Act II, ii (a reference to Cassaria by a minor servant) and Act V, vii (where it is the parasite Pasifilo, however, who says that one could write a play about the strange events that have just occured). 122 Alessandro Act II, iii (end) and v, with two references by Querciola to the Accademia degli Intronati (“Academy of the Deaf and Daft” in Andrews’ translation), which was founded in Siena in 1525 and produced several erudite comedies; Alessandro Piccolomini was a member of it. Cf. Andrews, Scripts and Scenarios (above, n. 84), p. 91–108. 123 Cortigiana Act I, xv (Rosso wants to play the trick that another fellow like him played in a story “everybody knows”). See also Andrews, Scripts and Scenarios (above, n. 84), p. 152, who quotes the “metatheatrical” speech of Ortica in Giancarli’s La capraria (The “Goat Comedy,” 1544). 124 Lena Act I, ii; Act II, iii; Act IV, ix.
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obscenities are also used by servants to attack enemies, as in Della Porta’s La sorella,125 or in short gags in which they make fun of an old man in love and tell him how to “approach” his beloved, as in Piccolomini’s Alessandro.126 Playing with languages, a specialty of Plautus’ servus callidus and a sign of his trickery, is used for comic effect also in commedia erudita. In La sorella by Della Porta, the servant Trinca poses as a fake Turkish interpreter in order to trick his master with a manipulated translation,127 and the scene’s comic effect depends entirely on the distortion of a foreign language. The inventiveness of Trinca recalls Milphio in Plautus’ Peonulus, with his colorful “personal” translation of Punic.128 In Renaissance society, then, the servant is still able to play comically with foreign languages. Here he also works as a foil for the (fake) “doctus,” who believes himself to be intelligent and educated and frequently uses Latin, often with many mistakes. While preserving a few original traits of the Plautine character, therefore, the servant of the commedia erudita lost his original primary features: leadership in action, intelligence and a carnivalesque status based on real cultural and intellectual superiority to his masters. As a result, the servus callidus became a pale, useless reflection of his Roman ancestor. The reason for this failure at reviving the character may be twofold. First, commedia erudita was not a universally accepted theatrical paradigm. There are many plays of the period written either ignoring classical models or even opposing them. Other Renaissance comedies, not based on Latin models or consciously avoiding them, simply omit the character of the servus callidus. Two authors in particular stand out as more independent of the classical model and can serve as examples: Aretino and Ruzante. Aretino never mastered Latin, and his comedies are thus less influenced by classical comedy;129 in La Cortigiana (1525), the servant Rosso, although he shares some features of earlier servi callidi (see above), does not behave like one. Ruzante, on the other hand, was a very sophisticated author who, rather than producing a re-enactment of Roman plays, chose to focus his attention on a crude and realistic depiction of the lower classes of the Venetian area. The main character of his plays (generally called Ruzante, Zilio or Bilora) is a vilified comic victim who is the antithesis of Plautus’ flamboyant slave. Ruzante’s view of reality, therefore, is antithetical to Plautus’ carnivalesque depiction of the victorious slave; his 125 La sorella Act I, v. 126 Alessandro Act III, i. 127 La sorella Act III, iv. 128 Poen. 990–1027. This scene also recalls the Persian ambassador Pseudoartabanes in Aristophanes’ Acharnians (Ach. 100, 104) or the barbarian god Triballus in Birds (Av. 1615, 1628–9, 1678–9). As Richard Andrews (per litt.) points out, linguistic distortion is typical of commedia dell’arte (see below). Della Porta’s plays date to the 1590s, when commedia dell’arte was already booming, so these scripted comedies were being influenced by improvised ones, as well as vice versa. These “linguistic games,” therefore, might not be a direct borrowing and reworking of the Plautine models, but Della Porta could have adopted them through the medium of commedia dell’arte. 129 Cf. Andrews, Scripts and Scenarios (above, n. 84), p. 69.
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main character has been defined as “an underdog,”130 whose personality almost excludes the presence in the play of another dominating, antithetical character like the servus callidus. There is no cunning servant in Ruzante’s comedies, Betía (1523–1525), Moscheta (1529), Parlamento (1529), Bilora (1529), and Fiorina (1531).131 Ruzante was nonetheless aware of classical comedies, and in fact he wrote two comedies after the Plautine model: Piovana (1532, based on Rudens) and Vaccaria (1533, based on Asinaria). In these works, a cunning servant very similar to the Roman models (especially Truffo in Vaccaria) plays the central role; yet the fact that in his masterpieces Ruzante avoided the servus callidus shows that his idea of “modern” comedy departed greatly from the classical model. Even more different is the isolated case of Giordano Bruno’s Il candelaio (The Candlestick, 1582), which includes servants in the cast, none of whom, however, follows Plautus’ model or has an important role in the comedy. The comedy, Bruno’s only play, is particularly heavy in sexual double entendres and the pervasive sense of Schadenfreude for the comic victims Bonifacio, Bartolomeo and Manfurio recalls Aretino’s polemical style. The production of these comedies, in which the servant played no major part or was even absent, may have suggested that other types of comedies, in which the servus was unimportant, were possible. In addition, the milder Terentian comedy, in which slaves were “tamer,” showed Renaissance playwrights that a servus callidus was not essential for a comedy.132 The second, deeper reason for the failure to revive Plautus’ slave is summarized by Anton Francesco Grazzini in the prologue of La strega (The Witch, 1545–1550), where the “Prologue” debates with the “Argument:” PROLOGUE : I do not want that we enter the sacristy, because neither the time nor the place require it, but I do maintain that observing the ancient rules, as Aristotle and Horace teach us, is most necessary. ARGUMENT : You are getting too excited, brother; Aristotle and Horace saw their own times, but our times are different: we have different costumes, a different religion and a different way of life, and therefore we must write comedies in a different way; in Florence people do not live as they lived in Athens or in Rome; there are no slaves, there are no adopted sons, there are no pimps to sell girls, nor do soldiers now when sacking cities and castles take new born baby girls and, raising them as if they were their own daughters, prepare a dowry for them. Rather, soldiers now think about stealing as much as possible, and if by chance they should capture grown up girls or married women, they would take their virginity and their honor (unless they expected to be able to gain a good ransom from them).
130 The expression is used for Ruzante by Andrews, Scripts and Scenarios (above, n. 84), p. 127, whose chapter on Ruzante (pp. 125–43) is a good introduction to this author. 131 Bilora (1529) has Zane, the Bergamask servant of Andronico, the old lover of Bilora’s wife. He is not a cunning slave, appears only in one scene (scene 12) and has no role whatsoever. It is interesting, however, that he has the name (Zane) and origin (Bergamo) which will become the staple of the servant of the Commedia dell’arte (see below). 132 The Venexiana, an anonymous comedy that is almost unique in Renaissance production, also consciously avoids the classical model and lacks servi callidi.
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Slaves in general, and cunning slaves in particular, did not fit in contemporary comedies, because they belonged to another society: their “Roman” features and tricks could not be recycled in Renaissance society. As a consequence, plays written after the classical model could only be pale copies of the originals; not adapting to modern society, they failed to revive classical comedy. Indeed, the play Il frate (The Friar, 1540) by Grazzini has no servant at all. Machiavelli, at least in his masterpiece Mandragola (1518), followed this idea. His play is modern, takes place in contemporary Florence, is populated by characters modeled on people of the author’s own time, and deals with contemporary issues, for example the (widespread) polemical attitude against corrupt religious figures, which is absent from Roman comedy. Machiavelli does use a few stock scenes and characters, but they have been given a new life. The key feature that ensured the success of the comedy is that Machiavelli, unlike the other authors of commedia erudita, did not limit himself to reproducing the old models but “translated” them into his own world. In fact, Messer Nicia, Fra’ Timoteo, Ligurio and Lucrezia have a personality that the other characters of commedie erudite lack. Machiavelli’s choice of the trickster in this play is particularly telling in this regard. Ligurio is exactly like the Plautine servus callidus, and the only “real” trickster in Renaissance comedy, yet he is neither a servant nor a slave, but a parasite. The real servant, Siro, is only a simple servant, while the parasite Ligurio devises the entire trick and brings the comedy to a “happy” ending for the young lovers, Callimaco and Lucrezia. Even if Plautus’ Curculio is already a parasitus callidus, Ligurio is markedly different to the degree that he displays many typical features of the Plautine cunning slave: he is witty, intelligent, selfconfident, boastful and quick to act. He even uses military language with the same force as a Pseudolus or Chrysalus in Mandragola, Act IV, ix. In this scene, Nicia, the husband of Lucrezia, prepares an ambush with Ligurio, Fra’ Timoteo and the servant Siro to kidnap Callimaco (who pretends to be a passerby) because they want a “victim” who will sleep with Lucrezia immediately after she drinks the dangerous mandrake.133 Here is how the “commander in chief” Ligurio arranges his comic army: Let’s not waste time here. I will be the captain and command the army for today. Callimaco134 will be on the right horn, I’ll be on the left, and the doctor [= Messer Nicia] will be here, between the two horns. Siro will be the rearguard to help out the side that might lose ground. The password will be Saint Cucu.
133 The core of the trick devised by Ligurio consists of convincing the stupid Nicia that his wife Lucrezia will become fertile after drinking the mandrake, but that the first person who sleeps with her after she drinks the magic potion will die. 134 Fra’ Timoteo in disguise (like the other members of the “army”) will pretend (for the unaware Messer Nicia) to be Callimaco, while the real Callimaco will impersonate a passerby, who will be ambushed and taken to Lucrezia.
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This is a masterpiece of comic double entendres by the “imperator” of the comic action. Not only does Ligurio use military metaphors, but his language has an additional layer of double entendres: the lawyer Nicia will be “between the two horns,” which alludes to his future status as cuckold (called “horned” in Italian). The concept is wittily underlined at the end by the password: “Saint Cucu,” hinting at the French “cucu,” which means both the bird “cuckoo” and “cuckold.” This piece is worthy of a Pseudolus or a Chrysalus at their best, but Machiavelli chose a more modern figure, the parasite. To the contemporary Florentines the sponger would certainly have appeared a much more likely candidate for the trickster than a humble servant. Interestingly enough, Machiavelli’s late play Clizia (1525) is a reworking of Plautus’ Casina, a play lacking a servus callidus. In Plautus as in Machiavelli the trick against the senex in love with a young girl is played by the senex’s wife. Yet Machiavelli has increased the role of the “cunning wife” compared to the model; while Plautus’ Cleostrata, though plotting the deception of her husband, does not behave onstage as a trickster, Machiavelli’s Sofronia, Nicomaco’s wife, is a real “comic hero”, who, unlike the Plautine counterpart, is also given the final and only direct address of the audience, celebrating female victory.135 While Machiavelli successfully develops a cunning parasite (Mandragola) and a matrona callida (Clizia), most erudite comedies try to replicate Plautus’ servus callidus—and they fail. It is indeed telling that one of the most cunning servants of Italian Renaissance comedy is Christoforo in Luigi Groto’s Emilia (1579), which is an adaptation of Plautus’ Epidicus. When a specific model to follow is lacking, however, commedia erudita’s cunning servants are dull copies of the Roman originals and progressively lose ground and status. After all, erudite comedies were largely an intellectual exercise, aimed more at following Horace and Aristotle than at achieving humor. Most of the authors were not men of the theater but Latinists or learned men of letters; they copied Plautus’ plots in an attempt to intellectually recreate the Roman world they loved to study and admired, but they could not reproduce the theatrical force of a true playwright.
3 Servants in Commedia Dell’Arte Commedia dell’arte plays began to be performed in Italy around the 1540s; they mainly consisted of an improvised form of theater based on scripts (scenari), which were limited to the outline of the plots and gave the artists (the comici) freedom to add set pieces of dialogue and comic gags as they saw fit.136 Even if this type of improvised 135 Clizia Act V, vii. 136 On the development and characteristics of commedia dell’arte, the best English introductions are Andrews, Scripts and Scenarios (above, n. 84), pp. 169–203; Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), pp. ix–li. See also Allardyce Nicoll, The World of Harlequin: a Critical
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theater “onstage” was rather different from the fully scripted commedia erudita, scholars agree that plots and characters of the written commedia erudita were adapted by the arte actors to a new audience and a new type of acting.137 It is difficult to trace exactly how the literate Renaissance comedy turned into the improvised, “oral” commedia dell’arte, which in its early phases had neither theoretical treatises nor, with the exception of Scala’s scenarios, fixed scripted texts that could be used as evidence for the connection. Still, the striking similarities between plots and stock characters in the two types of comedy, as well as their identical geographical location and proximity in time, can be taken as evidence of the influence of commedia erudita on commedia dell’arte. From this perspective, it is striking that commedia dell’arte brings the stock character of the servant back onstage and gives him a major role in its plots. Like its predecessors of Roman and Renaissance comedy, commedia dell’arte centered on two young lovers who must overcome various obstacles in order to fulfill their love; these obstacles were normally represented by blocking characters such as old fathers, braggart soldiers and the like, or obstacles arising from fortune and the vicissitudes of life.138 To help the audience to recognize the characters and follow the always varying story, characters became “masks.” “Mask” in this context means more than the actual masks the actors wore on the stage—some (the young lovers), in fact, acted without one. By “mask,” scholars mean instead a group of fixed characteristics that identified a character and were the same in all plays, regardless of the plot. These included the mask (if present), the costume, the behavior and even the Italian dialect which the character spoke. These characteristics made the character easily identifiable any time he/she appeared onstage, so that the audience knew who this was and what to expect even before a single word was said. Before discussing the servants in commedia dell’arte, it is necessary to briefly introduce the other main masks: – Pantalone is a wealthy Venetian merchant and normally plays the role of the old father and master who “blocks” the love story. – The “Dottore” (often called Graziano) is a comic pedant. He invariably comes from Bologna, which at that time was considered the prototype university town. He speaks with a thick Bolognese accent and talks nonsense rather than (mis)using Latin, like his counterparts in commedia erudita,139 because the audience of commedia dell’arte, being more culturally and socially diverse, often did not know Latin but could certainly laugh at nonsense. – The young lovers or “Innamorati” are fundamental, as their story is at the core of the play. They speak the Tuscan dialect, a more sophisticated language, and are
Study of the Commedia dell’Arte (Cambridge, Cambridgeshire and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1963); Henke, Performance and Literature (above, n. 5). 137 Cf. Andrews, Scripts and Scenarios (above, n. 84), pp. 169–75. 138 For a more detailed analysis of comic plots in commedia dell’arte, see Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), pp. xxxii–xxxvii. 139 As, for example, does Messer Nicia in Machiavelli’s Mandragola.
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the least comic of the characters. Even if their dialogue sometimes borders on the buffoonish, they still have “romantic” undertones. In Scala’s scenarios, the name of the young man is often Flavio or Orazio; the young ladies are called Flaminia and Isabella. Commedia dell’arte plays most often have two pairs of “Innamorati,” whose stories add complexity to the plot. The “Capitano” is one of the main blocking characters. He is a Spaniard and thus has a foreign accent. He is definitely the heir of the miles gloriosus of Plautus with his notably boastful attitude.
Servants in commedia dell’arte are called “zani” or “zanni,” a Venetian abbreviation of the name Gianni/Giovanni common in Northern Italy and especially among servants.140 In commedia dell’arte, the zani are characterized by a thick Bergamask accent. This is historically due to the fact that the city of Bergamo was under Venetian rule, and that many poor farmers from the Bergamo area emigrated to Venice to work as servants in rich Venetian families. Moreover, the Bergamask accent sounded (and still sounds) “primitive” to a native speaker of Italian, because it uses guttural sounds and words that seem harsh and unfamiliar to a non-Bergamask. This strange, heavy language made the zani character automatically comic.141 Commedia dell’arte scenarios usually include two zani: one is smart and tricky, the other dumb and only a victim of comic laughter.142 This is not an innovation; the stupid slave is found already in Plautus,143 and this type of physical buffoonery becomes a staple of the medieval fools. In Flaminio Scala’s scenarios, the first zani is called Pedrolino144 and the second Arlecchino. Other names of zani in commedia dell’arte are Burattino, Fritellino, Brighella, Scapino, Coviello and Pulcinella. (All but Burattino are absent from Scala’s scenarios.)145
140 Cf. Pandolfi, La Commedia dell’Arte (above, n. 5), p. 157. For a more complex analysis of the origin of the name Zanni and its connections with the name Giovanni, see Alessandra Mignatti, La maschera e il viaggio: sull’origine dello zanni (Bergamo: Moretti & Vitali, 2007), pp. 33–79. On the character of the Zani, see Pandolfi, La Commedia dell’Arte (above, n. 5), pp. 157–64. 141 On the effects of Bergamask dialect in scripted zani-texts, see Henke, Performance and Literature (above, n. 5), pp. 111, 114–15. The Bergamask accent and in general the ability to play with different languages for comic purposes was already used by the Venetian “buffoni,” another type of buffoonish figure typical of Venice; see Henke, Performance and Literature (above, n. 5), pp. 50–68, esp. 58–9, 68. 142 In the zani-texts, the differentiation between the first and second zani is not yet present: the zani is both smart and a buffoon. See Pandolfi, La Commedia dell’Arte (above, n. 5), p. 162. A predecessor of the two zani can be found in Ruzante’s plays (discussed above). As Richard Andrews points out, Ruzante in fact played regularly opposite his colleague Alvarotto, who impersonated a character who tricks and exploits Ruzante—Nale, Duozo, Menato, etc. The latter, however, is a trickster but not a servant. 143 Stace, “The Slaves of Plautus” (above, n. 6), calls them the “deceived slaves.” 144 Perhaps the French Pierrot, who appears in the 1660s, was derived from Pedrolino. See Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), p. xxvi. 145 Among all these zani, Arlecchino deserves more commentary. As Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), pp. xxvi–xxvii, explains, the name Arlecchino is the Italian
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The zani became the staple of commedia dell’arte, also known as “commedia degli zani.”146 Despite being apparently, although not directly, the heir of the cunning servant of Plautine comedy, the zani in commedia dell’arte is very different. In a sense, the evolution of the servus callidus that began with the commedia erudita is here brought to an extreme conclusion, with an important new twist. First, scenarios always seem to have two servants, both of whom play an important role in the spectacle. The closest to the original Plautine cunning servant is of course the smarter servant—the first zani. He opposes his old master in most commedia dell’arte scenarios; indeed, some scholars see the opposition between Pantalone and the first zani as the real core of commedia dell’arte, even more than the young lovers’ story.147 In this sense, the original opposition slave/old master of Plautine comedy and commedia erudita is maintained. On the other hand, the relationship between the cunning servant and the young master in love is almost lost in commedia dell’arte. In a few scenarios, Pedrolino does play the role of the helper, but in most cases there is no particular connection between the young lover and the zani. Even when there is one, the main goal of the zani is not to help the young lover but to have fun tricking Pantalone. Another difference from Roman comedy is that the first zani most often has his own agenda; in many cases, for example, the two zani compete for the love of Franceschina, another mask used for the female servant, and normally the first zani wins her. This love story among zani parallels that of the young lovers and provides an additional plot-layer.148 Even if the zani has a love story that makes him take the initiative, however, he loses his role as mover of the plot: not only is the second zani inept, but the first zani is also useless or unsuccessful. Indeed, in most of Flaminio Scala’s scenarios, the first zani Pedrolino does not help to resolve the plot, and even less does Arlecchino. The tricks Pedrolino devises are mostly “jokes” merely aimed at making the audience laugh (e.g. Day 1,
word for Harlequin, a character of Medieval French drama and a demonic figure derived from Northern Europe folklore. Harlequin became a sort of anarchic clown in France in the 16th century, and in this form he was imported into commedia dell’arte by Tristano Martinelli (1557–1630): Flaminio Scala included this mask out of admiration for the actor. The success of Martinelli’s Arlecchino eventually led to the popularity of this mask in commedia dell’arte. Arlecchino is thus not an original character of commedia dell’arte: his origin has nothing to do with a Plautine cunning slave but rather has dark connotations. In commedia dell’arte Arlecchino often plays the role of second (dumb) zani and he is thus completely different from the French original as well as the cunning slave. Because of his different original function and meaning, any attempt to identify Arlecchino as the ‘typical’ zani of commedia dell’arte is risky; an example is Nicoll, The World of Harlequin (above, n. 136), whose title is revealing. On Arlecchino, see also Pandolfi, La Commedia dell’Arte (above, n. 5), pp. 163–64. 146 Cf. Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), p. xi. 147 Cf. Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), p. xxi; Henke, Performance and Literature (above, n. 5), p. 27. 148 This type of device is also used, for example, in Molière’s Amphitryon, where the “love story” of Sosias with his wife Cleanthis and Mercury parallels the one between Amphitryon, Alcmena and Jupiter (while this second, slave-based love story is absent from the Plautine original).
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Day 2, Day 12, Day 16,149 Day 29, Day 38). Sometimes these scenarios involve a trickster, as in Plautus’ comedies, but he is one of the lovers and not the zani; in Day 28 (“Flavio finto negromante,” Flavio the Fake Magician), for example, Pedrolino would like to help the young lover, but Flavio himself directs the plot toward the happy ending, and Pedrolino and Arlecchino have no room to play their tricks.150 Similarly in Day 31 (“Il pedante,” The Tutor), Pedrolino seems to be in charge of everything (Act I, 6 and 12), but he is miserably beaten by Isabella and ends up weeping together with Arlecchino in a clownish scene (Act I, 13–14): it is Isabella, the young and beautiful wife of Pantalone, who devises the trick to get rid of the attentions of the awful Maestro Cataldo (Act III, 11). There are some exceptions. In Day 39 (“Il ritratto,” The Portrait), for example, Pedrolino is able to reconcile the two lovers and is thus successful at providing the resolution of the plot and the happy ending. Unlike the cunning slaves of Plautus, however, he does so without tricks but only through “normal” human interaction. In two other scenarios, Day 6 (“Il vecchio geloso,” The Jealous Old Man) and Day 9 (“Il marito,” The Husband), Pedrolino is successful. In particular, in Day 9 he plays the same role as Plautus’ servus callidus, by helping the young lover Orazio to defeat the old master Pantalone and marry his beloved Isabella. In this scenario, Pedrolino is really in charge of the plot and helps the young lovers against the old masters (Act III, 4 and 11), asks to be trusted (Act II, 2; III, 4 and 6), has a sort of didactic function by mocking the excessive jealousy of lovers (Act I, 10151), takes part in many elastic gags, and he even has a moment of doubt before carrying out his plans (Act III, 7152). It is thus unsurprising that Scala chose this scenario, in which the characters’ roles best resemble those of the “classical” comic plot, to develop into a fully scripted, five-act comedy (“Il finto marito,” The Fake Husband, 1618). In Day 21 (“Il finto negromante,” The Fake Magician), Arlecchino takes over the role of primo zani, replacing Pedrolino; starting as the usual stupid slave but from Act III, 13 on disguised as a magician, Arlecchino devises the final trick that leads to the happy ending.153 Aside from these exceptions, however, the zani generally loses the status of “master of the plot.” Nevertheless, this does not mean that commedia dell’arte servant has become a redundant, a relic of the past that has lost its meaning and has no true role. To the contrary, the zani has a new, central place in commedia dell’arte and can be considered one of its main constituents. The servant’s new role is that of buffoon. This new status uses (in a distorted way) some features of the old Plautine cunning servant, while introducing new ones. One new feature is dialect. As noted, the Bergamask dialect
149 In this scenario, Pedrolino does not play the role of the servant but rather of the friend; his mask, however, remains the same: with Arlecchino, a real servant, he does play tricks, though useless for the advancing the plot. 150 Cf. Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), pp. 169–71. 151 See also Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), p. 50. 152 See also Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), p. 51. 153 Cf. Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), p. 130.
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was typical of the zani, while a linguistic characterization of the servants was absent from both Plautus and commedia erudita. Bergamask was chosen not only because many peasants from Bergamo worked in Venice as servants, but to underscore that the zani is a primitive, ignorant person. The prejudice linking language and level of sophistication (still present in modern Italy) suggests that the role of the servant in society had changed for the worse, and this change influenced the portrayal of the servant onstage. First and foremost, a servant who speaks a rough dialect cannot be the plot-mover, nor can he be depicted as cunning while speaking a language that is— consciously or unconsciously—linked with uncivilized, primitive behavior. The roughness of the dialect also prevents the servant from using language as a tool for trickery or a means of celebration. In fact, cunning word-play seems to be absent from the zani character, both because the other characters already have a hard time understanding him when he speaks in his own dialect in the standard way, and because this is a sign of intelligence which a buffoon can hardly afford. The servant’s occasional boasting does not celebrate the wit and intelligence of the servus callidus, but is the ridiculous bragging of a rough peasant who has come to Venice from Bergamo and thinks he has mastered various disciplines, becoming a comic polymath, as we read in the second sonnet of “La Dottrina del Zani” (The Zani’s Education).154 Here the zani not only speaks a dialect but mixes nonsensical Latin into it with increased comic effect. Mythological references, abundant in speeches of Plautine slaves, who also brag about their literate culture, are mostly absent, appearing only at a very basic level (e.g. quick references to mythological models of love stories) or grossly distorted into a thick, heavy scene full of explicit, gross sexual references. In “Genealogia of Zan Capella” (Genealogy of Servant Capella), a scripted “zani-text,”155 the birth of the “zani race” is backdated to “Homeric” Troy, where the ur-zani Zampet is said to have been born of the union of the “famous blood of Troy” and a pig. This represents a pun on the double meaning of the Italian word “Troia:” the name of the ancient city of Troy, but also a female pig and, when applied to a woman, “slut.” Epic resonances are also present in the poem “Insonio del Zani” (The Zani’s Dream),156 where a zani dreams of going to Hell, paralleling Ulysses and Dante in their voyages to the Underworld. Unlike his more illustrious predecessors, however, the zani does not return from the trip a wiser man, but is left in Hell to be punished for his gluttony. The roughness of the language and the role of the zani also eliminates the didactic function the servus callidus once had: no lectures can be expected from a character who lacks intellectual superiority and dialectical ability. It is true that from time to
154 Pandolfi, La Commedia dell’Arte (above, n. 5), pp. 201–4; see Henke, Performance and Literature (above, n. 5), pp. 129–30. 155 Pandolfi, La Commedia dell’Arte (above, n. 5), pp. 253–7; see also Henke, Performance and Literature (above, n. 5), p. 122. 156 Pandolfi, La Commedia dell’Arte (above, n. 5), pp. 257–61; see Henke, Performance and Literature (above, n. 5), pp. 127–9.
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time a zani has a monologue that goes beyond the requirements of the story, but those lines are far from the philosophical or moral speeches of earlier slaves. The repertoire of the zani’s wisdom and philosophy rarely goes beyond the list of complaints about the hardship of a servant’s life.157 When more serious issues are touched upon by a slave, as in Pedrolino’s words about love to his master in Act I, 2 of Day 14 (“Il pellegrino fido amante,” The Faithful Loving Pilgrim), doubt rises as to whether Pedrolino, perhaps quoting some mythical examples,158 is to be taken seriously. Serious remarks going from the mouth of the zani to the ear of a bragging Captain might have a funny rather than a serious effect. Even when the servant comments on unethical masters, the effect is laughter rather than moral education. In Day 28 (“Flavio finto negromante,” Flavio the Fake Magician), for example, Pedrolino reproaches Pantalone, who is sleeping with Burattino’s wife Franceschina (Act II, 1), but Pedrolino himself has an affair with Franceschina, and he later (Act II, 9–10) jokes with her about the poor Burattino, who finally realizes that he is a cuckold: the didactic tone of the earlier comment is thus turned into a scene made for laughter. The possible irony looming behind Plautus’ slaves in their “didactic” mode, which became more evident in the servants of commedia erudita, is now the only raison d’être for the “didactic” and philosophical exploits of the zani in commedia dell’arte. The aspect of the servus callidus that is magnified in the zani of commedia dell’arte is the use of comic gags. These are in fact the heart of commedia dell’arte, and the zani develops comic gags into an “art:” the art of slapstick comedy.159 Beating, running and vulgarity are pervasive in Scala’s scenarios, even if the author attempted to tame the buffoonery, because slapstick was intrinsic to the genre in any case.160 These features were not absent from earlier theater. The comic hero sometimes beats a blocking character in Aristophanes (e.g. in Clouds and Birds), while in Plautine comedies the slave, always worried about being beaten himself or condemned to forced labor, often beats other characters. Yet the victims of this violence are “stupid” slaves or blocking figures, such as the pimp or the braggart soldier Pyrgopolynices,161 and never cunning slaves: Plautus spared his hero from such slapstick. Commedia dell’arte, on the other hand, does not refrain from beating the zani, even the smarter ones like Pedrolino, who sometimes beats the Captain (Day 37, Act II, 20) or chases him away (Day 29, Act I, 13), but is in turn chased and beaten by the Doctor (Day 15, Act I, 13) and his mistress Isabella (Day 31, Act I, 3 and 13162). This type of slapstick is even more common with the stupid slave Arlecchino, who is often merely a buffoon who excels in jumping
157 Such as the monologue that could be inserted by Arlecchino in Day 11 (“Il capitano,” The Captain), Act II, 7. See Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), p. 60. 158 See Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), p. 77. 159 Cf. Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), pp. xliv–xlvi. 160 Cf. Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), p. xli–xlii. 161 Miles 1394–1425. 162 Cf. Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), pp. 190 and 191.
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about (e.g. Day 15, Act II, 19) and producing chaotic noise (e.g. Day 37, Acts I, 9 and III, 7), and who is the victim of choice for violence. Beating and the exchange of violent injuries are also the typical outcome of the dialogue/contrast between master and servant as preserved in the “zani-texts.”163 Buffoonery is often based on elastic gags, which were already used by Plautus; commedia dell’arte has plenty of these and the zani thrives on them.164 Arlecchino often stars in elastic gags that can be extended ad libitum (e.g. Day 14, Acts I, 7 and II, 9165). His “acrobatic scenes” in particular can be extended as long as the audience keeps laughing (e.g. Day 21, Act I, 16–17, and Day 29, Act I, 15–16, where in almost identical sets of scenes Arlecchino repeatedly falls from a ladder166). Other typical repetitive scenes of commedia dell’arte have a zani refusing with endless excuses to open the door for someone, or a master calling for a servant who never shows up.167 In another case (Day 27, Act III, 7–18), Burattino performs in a puppet-like scene in which he is forced to stay mute by a trick of Pedrolino and communicates with other characters via comic gestures that can be repeated ad infinitum.168 Another typical buffoonish gag involves the zani running onstage in haste. This gag is taken from ancient comedy, where the servus currens is common:169 sometimes the servus callidus runs to deliver news or search for people (e.g. Epidicus in Ep. 194–200), but more often Plautus uses the device for “normal” slaves, who are not to be counted among his servi callidi (e.g. Thesprio in Ep. 1 and Mercury as “servant” of his father Jupiter in Amphitruo 984–98) or parasites who act only as “clowns” (e.g. Ergasilus in Capt. 776–80170). This gag is also used by authors whose slaves are not typically callidi, such as Menander (e.g. Dysc. 81–2171) and Terence (e.g. Andria 338–9; Eunuchus 643–4; Phormio 177, 840–45). Not only is it maintained in commedia dell’arte, but it is attached to Pedrolino, the first, smart zani, in particular: Pedrolino is pursued and runs to escape beating (Day 11, Act I, 17), or appears onstage “out of breath” to deliver important information to his master Pantalone 163 As in the “Dialogo del patron e del zane” (Dialogue of the Master and the Zani) in Pandolfi, La Commedia dell’Arte (above, n. 5), pp. 187–8; see Henke, Performance and Literature (above, n. 5), pp. 130–3. 164 Cf. Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), p. 61. 165 Cf. Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), p. 77–8. 166 Cf. Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), p. 180. 167 Cf. Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), p. xlv. 168 Cf. Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), p. 160. 169 On the servus currens, see George E. Duckworth, “The dramatic function of the servus currens in Roman comedy,” in: Classical studies presented to Edward Capps on his seventieth birthday (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1936), pp. 93–102; Stace, “Slaves of Plautus” (above, n. 6), p. 70; Anderson, “Servus Currens” (above, n. 2). 170 Where he equates himself to a “comic slave:” “Now the situation is clear [to me]: in the same way as the slaves in comedy do, I will throw my cloak around my neck [and run] in order that he hears first from me this news; I hope I will get endless food because of this announcement.” 171 See also Davos in Aspis 391–409, although he is also a would-be cunning slave; see Anderson, “Servus Currens” (above, n. 2), pp. 231–5.
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(Day 11, Act I, 4; Day 21, Act III, 12) or to young male lovers (e.g. Day 6, Act I, 4; Day 25, Act II, 8; Day 29, Act II, 13); in other cases, Pedrolino pretends to be out of breath to trick Arlecchino (Day 9, Act II, 6) and help the lovers. Even if in the last case Pedrolino’s behavior is consistent with that of the Roman servus callidus, the gag and its effects are far from Plautus’ original. The servus currens is thus adopted by the comici of commedia dell’arte because this is a clownish device, like beating and being beaten; it adds to the repertoire of the zani as buffoon and not as cunning servant. Physicality and lower status also imply an extraordinary appetite. The zani is even more of a glutton than his predecessors, and gags with food abound in commedia dell’arte, sometimes combined with elastic gags.172 Many of the “zani-texts” play with long lists of exquisite food173 and the dream of “Cuccagna,” the mythical land where all delicacies are available.174 Here the zani also becomes a braggart, but only to boast about his appetite and about being a “good eater” (“valent mangiador”).175 Other physical types of humor, such as obscenities, are absent from Scala’s scenarios, but since such jokes could be improvised onstage, the lack of them in the scenarios does not mean that they were not used. In the same way, it is difficult to know if the zani was allowed to break the fourth wall and talk to the audience as his predecessors were. An actor could easily improvise direct addresses, winks and gestures to the audience; there was thus no need to indicate this in the scenarios. On the other hand, written scenarios could contain more complex references to the performance and the theatrical events themselves. Among Scala’s scenarios, Day 39 (“Il ritratto,” The Portrait) explicitly includes metatheatrical elements: in Act I, 11, Pedrolino asks Orazio, who is having an affair with both his lady Isabella and an actress, how long it is since he went to a play, and inquires about the characters in the company of his mistress. The reference makes sense in the scenario, but it also provides opportunities to play with theatrical references, and Orazio and Pedrolino can easily be imagined listing the members of their own companies.176 Likewise, later in the scenario Pedrolino makes peace between Flavio and Flaminia, the other pair of lovers, and tells them “that they can now stay in bed and enjoy themselves until the end of the play, which lasts until midnight; and that they can do what other women do while their stupid husbands are laughing away at the comedy” 172 In Day 1, Act I, 3, Pedrolino is desperate at learning that his young master Orazio has decided to return to Pisa rather than going to the villa in the countryside, because this means that Pedrolino will miss a good dinner at the villa; such a scene, with lengthy descriptions of the food Pedrolino will miss, is an elastic gag that could be prolonged. See Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), p. 16. 173 As in “Il sontouso pasto fatto dal Zanni” (The Luxurious Meal Made by Zani) in Pandolfi, La Commedia dell’Arte (above, n. 5), pp. 192–6. 174 Henke, Performance and Literature (above, n. 5), pp. 126–7. 175 “Vanto del Zani” (Zani’s Brag) in Pandolfi, La Commedia dell’Arte (above, n. 5), pp. 246–52. Cf. Henke, Performance and Literature (above, n. 5), p. 135. 176 Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), p. 250.
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(Act III, 21).177 These metatheatrical remarks are strikingly reminiscent of the comments about being in the theater and the advantages of having wings sung by the chorus in Aristophanes’ Birds.178 The evolution of the servus callidus into the zani thus privileged physical over intellectual qualities. Still, part of the original Plautine servant was preserved in this evolution: his theatrical power. Like the Roman servus callidus, the zani is a pivotal figure in the commedia dell’arte: he becomes its staple, and rarely is such a character not part of a plot. This holds true even in scenarios that cannot be defined as comic (e.g. Day 40), and even those defined as “tragedy” (Day 41), “mixed drama” (Day 42), “heroic drama” (Day 44) or “pastoral” (Day 49). In all of these, Pedrolino and Arlecchino still star as comic buffoons, and their role is to lighten the tone of the play. The servant was still the center of the show, and we can even contend that in this respect commedia dell’arte was far more faithful to the original Plautine comedy than the plays of commedia erudita, in which the servant grew less and less useful.
4. Conclusions The evolution of the comic slave from the intelligent and clever master of the play (the servus callidus) to a comic buffoon with no particular intellectual qualities (the zani) developed from the already weakened role of the servant in the Renaissance commedia erudita. In the latter, the servant was in the ambiguous position of having inherited a leading role from the classical models without being able to lead the action: he was not the master of the play but merely pretended to be. This loss of identity and of the role of the cunning slave later led this character to borrow in part from a different tradition, the medieval buffoon with his physicality and theatricality. In fact, the zani was not a trickster but a clownish servant. We might speculate about whether and how this evolution was tied to the social context from which commedia dell’arte developed. The Counter-Reformation favored a conservative society that was uncomfortable with the idea of a character from the lower classes ruling the story, giving orders to his masters, and above all else being intelligent and using his head, because all of this was potentially subversive.179 The audience of commedia dell’arte was certainly more diverse than the one watching commedia erudita; in such a highly hierarchical and authoritarian society, it was crucial that the lower classes not be presented with the idea of subversion of roles and of a poor person taking a leading
177 Andrews, The Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala (above, n. 4), p. 247. 178 Av. 793–7: “If one of you, whoever he might be, is having an adulterous affair and sees the husband of his mistress in the seats reserved for the Council, he could flap his wings and fly away from you, and, having laid her, he could fly back here. Having wings, isn’t it the most valuable thing of all?” 179 On the Counter-Reformist obstacles to comedy, see Andrews, Scripts and Scenarios (above, n. 84), pp. 204–26, esp. 220–5.
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role in rich people’s lives. It was safer to offer such an audience a character with no intelligence and no wit, able to entertain them with foul language, gross behavior, physical gags and no high-level thoughts or ideas. Yet this “social” explanation does not satisfy entirely. The social context of Plautus may not have been much different from that of the Renaissance theater: Republican Rome too was an oligarchy based on slavery, and the audience of the theater in Plautus’ time was as diverse as the one watching commedia dell’arte.180 Why, then, did patricians in Republican Rome tolerate and enjoy his comedies delivering a potentially subversive message that involved a slave serving as a powerful agent? I suggest that the difference lies at the core of the comic hero, the slave/servant, and the historical change of status of such figures in these societies. In Plautus’ comedy, having a slave turn into a “hero” was funny because of the social extravagance of such a situation. Nevertheless, a Roman Republican audience was accustomed to intelligence in servants on a daily basis. Indeed, in Plautus’ time, prisoners of war from Greece were brought to Rome as slaves; many were highly educated and became teachers for rich patrician families. Terence himself was one of these. These slaves were intellectuals, who were sometimes even freed for their intellectual achievements; it is largely due to them that Horace famously said “Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit” (Epist. II, 1, 156). The situation is quite different in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy, where servants were usually uneducated people, not prisoners of war imported from another country, more culturally sophisticated than her conquerors. Instead, servants in Italy were often local people of lower social status or peasants from the poorest regions, like Bergamo. Some individuals must have been quite intelligent, but at a general level there was no expectation that servants were an especially “gifted” group that could defy their social class and be superior to “free men.” This, I suggest, is one reason for the evolution of the character of the slave/servant from Plautus to the commedia erudita and then commedia dell’arte. This complex character, characterized by the lowest social rank and the highest human virtus—intelligence—was plausible in Republican Rome, but it had no place in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy; in 16th-century Italy, a “cunning slave” had no social equivalent in everyday reality. For this reason, the authors of commedia erudita were uneasy with such a character, did not handle him well, and eventually failed to revive Plautus’ servus callidus. To survive, the absurd “cunning slave”—a contradictio in terminis by that time—had to be transformed into a buffoon, the zani of commedia dell’arte. The much greater success and popularity of the commedia dell’arte servant as opposed to his commedia erudita counterpart can be explained by the fact that arte actors, like Plautus, were men of the theater, stage professionals rather than armchair playwrights; they knew what the contemporary audience wanted and they gave it to them. In both Plautus and commedia dell’arte, the slave/servant is the comic hero:
180 Cf. Plaut. Poen. 23–35.
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smart or simply funny, the servant is the king of comedy when comedy is most faithful to its true nature. With its carnivalesque roots, and when developed by authors who know their audience and the art of theater, the genre gives center stage to the humblest portion of society: in late Renaissance commedia dell’arte, Pseudolus has changed his social and intellectual characteristics but not his theatrical force.
Robert S. Miola
Aristophanes in England, 1500–1660 Abstract: This essay traces the reception of Aristophanes in England from 1500 to 1660. After surveying editions and noting Aristophanes’ prominence in the educational curriculum, I observe his appearance in a variety of texts, especially Erasmus’ Adagia, for diverse purposes, “to point a moral or adorn a tale.” More serious engagements with the ancient playwright receive his works as satire, understood as the ridicule of real persons. Some, notably Puritan anti-theatricalists like Stephen Gosson and William Prynne, object to this ridicule as slanderous, while others justify it as corrective. Aristophanes’ ridicule of Socrates in Clouds becomes central to the debate and engages Thomas Stanley, who appends a partial translation of the play to his life of Socrates, and John Milton, who struggles with the example of Aristophanes in Areopagitica, his defense of uncensored printing. Aristophanes’ Plutus, his most popular play in the early modern period, appears in two 17th-century English translations that variously accommodate it to a Christian hermeneutic. I conclude by examining Aristophanes’ afterlife in selected early and later works of an accomplished English playwright, Ben Jonson.
Obscene, lyrical, rollicking and profound, Aristophanes came to full and varied life in the early modern period. Manuscript versions of the plays, often with Triclinius’ scholia, circulated throughout Europe before the Aldine editio princeps (Venice, 1498), comprising nine of the eleven surviving plays.1 The missing two, Lysistrata and Thesmophoriazusae, appeared in print soon after (Florence, 1516). Latin translations quickly proliferated, including Andreas Divus’ textually sophisticated and frequently reprinted version (Venice, 1538). Nicodemus Frischlin published five comedies in Greek and Latin (Frankfurt, 1586); others also published Greek-Latin editions, notably Edouard Bizet de Charlais and Aemilius Portus (Geneva, 1607), as well as Joseph Scaliger et al. (Leiden, 1624).
1 L.D. Reynolds and N.G. Wilson, Scribes & Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Latin and Greek Literature3 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), plate VIII, p. 318. For the survey in these two paragraphs, I draw upon Katherine Lever, “Greek Comedy on the Sixteenth Century English Stage,” Classical Journal 42 (1946), pp. 169–73; Vasiliki Giannopoulou, “Aristophanes in Translation before 1920,” in: Edith Hall, Amanda Wrigley (eds.), Aristophanes in Performance 421 BC–AD 2007: Peace, Birds, and Frogs (London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2007), pp. 309–42. Below I cite and quote Jeffrey Henderson (ed.), Aristophanes, Loeb Classical Library, 5 vols. (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998–2007). For early modern authors, I use the Early English Books Online data base and modern editions if extant. Here I wish to record my gratitude to Jeffrey Henderson for The Maculate Muse (1975), which opened up new vistas on Aristophanes and Greek comedy.
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Adaptations and translations into modern languages followed suit. Machiavelli’s lost Le Maschere (1504), reportedly based on Clouds and other plays by Aristophanes, attacked Italian contemporaries; Eufrosino Bonini’s Comedia di Giustizia, performed at the Medici Palace in 1512, adapted the first 800 lines of Plutus into 3 acts. Bartolomeo Rositini and Pietro Rositini published an Italian translation of all the comedies (Venice, 1545). Cesare Cremonini adapted Clouds into Le Nubi to satirize his colleague Giorgio Raguseo as a corrupter of youth. Hans Sachs adapted Plutus into German, Pluto dem Gott der reichtumb (Nuremberg, 1531).2 Isaac Fröreisen provided a loose German translation of Clouds to audiences of a performance of the play in ancient Greek (Strasbourg, 1613). Members of the Pléiade, Pierre Ronsard and Jean-Antoine de Baïf, experimented with French translations and productions of Plutus (1549, 1560). Pierre Le Loyer wrote Néphélococugie (Paris, 1579), a French reworking of Birds in Rabelaisian style. Pedro Simón Abril translated Plutus (1577) into Spanish. In England, only a Greek edition of Knights appeared (Oxford, 1593), along with, as we shall see below, English adaptations of Plutus by Thomas Randolph (London, 1651) and H. H. B. (London, 1659), and a partial translation of Clouds by Thomas Stanley (London, 1655). Aristophanes lived on as well in other ancient writers,3 many of whom were rediscovered and republished by the humanists. In Plato’s Symposium (189c–93d), Aristophanes famously explains eros as each human’s desire to recover his lost half, the original four-legged human body having been split in two by a punishing Zeus. Plutarch frequently mentions Aristophanes in his Lives and Moralia, and there is a notice as well in Achilles Tatius’ enormously popular romance Leucippe and Cleitophon. On an altogether different scale, Aristophanes lives again in the many satirical dialogues of Lucian, an ancient writer who creatively re-appropriates him. Unquestionably the most influential remembrances for early modern England appear in Horace, whose Fourth Satire (1.4.1–5) characterizes Old Comedy as the genre that routinely ridiculed real people, especially thieves, lechers and quarrelers.
The Poet Aristophanes, Eupolis, and Cratine, And ancients more, whose interludes are sauced with sayings fine, If any person were mislived in theft or lechers’ lore, Or were a roisting quareller, they would display him sore. (sig. Bvii(v))
Horace’s Ars Poetica (281–4), however, remembers Old Comedy, which “license hath made dissolute and lawless” until it was “stayed” by law “to her utter shame, / Because gone was her privilege so bitterly to blame” (Horace, his Art of Poetry, Pistles,
2 See Niklas Holzberg, “Die Tragedis and Comedis des Hans Sachs: Forschungssituation – Forschungsperspectiven,” in: H. Brunner et al. (eds.), Hans Sachs and Nürnberg, Nürnberger Forschungen 19 (Nürnberg: Selbstverlag des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg: Auslieferung an den Buchhandel M. Edelmann, 1976), pp. 105–36. For this reference, I am indebted to Wolfgang Haase. 3 Ewen Bowie analyzes reception in the 2nd and 3rd centuries BCE in “The Ups and Downs of Aristophanic Travel,” in: Hall and Wrigley, Aristophanes in Performance (above, n. 1), pp. 32–51.
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and Satires Englished, trans. Thomas Drant, 1567, sig. Bi(v)). This law, the scholiast explained, forbade comic ridicule of anyone by name. These contradictory Horatian assessments—one endorsing the corrective function of Aristophanic ridicule, the other censuring it as slander—echoed through later ages and became an important focus of controversy for the early modern period. Despite occasional doubts about propriety and morality, Aristophanes figures prominently in the educational curriculum of early modern Europe and England. Erasmus (1466–1536) in the influential handbook De Ratione Studii (1511) ranks Aristophanes first for study among Greek poets, ahead of Homer and Euripides. The 1520 daybook of John Dorne, Oxford bookseller, records sales of 12 copies of Aristophanes (one in Greek), fewer than Vergil, Terence and Ovid, but more than Horace, Sallust and Tacitus. The English educator C. Hoole prescribes Aristophanes’ comedies for sixth (and final) form grammar-school students.4 Thomas Elyot advises the study of Aristophanes in place of Lucian (The Book named the Governor, 1537, sig. Dvr-v; ed. S.E. Lehmberg, 1962, 29). Fondly remembering his Cambridge days, Roger Ascham recommends the study of Greek poetry, including Aristophanes, over the “mean” meter and verse of Plautus and Terence (The Schoolmaster, 1570, sigs. Riiiv–Riiii; ed. L.V. Ryan, 1967, 144). (This was a decidedly eccentric opinion.) Edward Leigh repeats the story that St. John Chrysostom (ca. 347–407) kept Aristophanes under his pillow (A Treatise of Religion and Learning, 1656, sig. Q4), and the bawdy ancient playwright appears throughout the period in unlikely hands. Thomas More’s Utopians read Aristophanes, as did Protestant leaders. Philip Melanchthon produced scholarly editions of Clouds and Plutus (Hagenau, 1528); Ulrich Zwingli mounted a Greek production of Plutus in Zurich (1531), even composing the choral music himself.5 But for all the remembrance and exhortation, the Greek Aristophanes reached relatively few early modern English readers. Fluency in that ancient tongue was a rare attainment and Aristophanes, like the other Greeks, usually traveled in England by translation, paraphrase and proxy. Still, through a combination of such means Aristophanes achieved a pervasive if intermediated presence in early modern humanist discourse. To later eyes, he took some unfamiliar shapes and served uses both various and strange. In what follows, I survey generally his appearances and reputa-
4 Craig R. Thompson (ed.), Collected Works of Erasmus: Literary and Educational Writings 2: De Copia/ De Ratione Studii (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), p. 669. On Dorne and Hoole, see T.W. Baldwin, William Shakspere’s Small Latine & Lesse Greeke (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1944), vol. 1, pp. 102–3, 457. 5 Aldo Manuzio first printed the story about Chrysostom in the editio princeps (1498), saying that Aristophanes gave the Bishop of Constantinople his golden eloquence and hatred of vice; see Louis E. Lord, Aristophanes: His Plays and His Influence (Boston: Marshall Jones, 1925), p. 97. See also Thomas More, Complete Works, Vol. 4: Utopia, ed. Edward Surtz S.J. and Jack Hexter (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), pp. 182–4; Charles Garside Jr., Zwingli and the Arts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), p. 72.
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tion in early modern England, then examine the appropriation and translations of Plutus, his most popular play in the period, and close with consideration of his influence on one important playwright, Ben Jonson.
“To point a moral, or adorn a tale” Like most classical authors, Aristophanes serves later writers most simply as an historical authority, a revealing witness to the customs and language of ancient Greece. Francis Rous’ Archaeologiae Atticae Libri Tres (1637), for example, frequently invokes Aristophanes to explain Athenian customs, geography and culture. Ralph Cudworth quotes Plutus (227–8) and the scholia to clarify ancient feasting practices, specifically the custom of carrying leftovers to friends (A Discourse concerning the True Notion of the Lord’s Supper, 1642, sig. C3). Sir Edward Dering (1598–1644) cites Acharnians (199 σπένδομαι κἀκπίομαι) to clarify the practice of ancient drink offerings and thus to support Protestant ideas concerning the priesthood and the Eucharist (A Discourse of Proper Sacrifice, 1644, sig. H1v). In this work, Aristophanes appears incongruously alongside Clement of Alexandria to attest that the ancients did not offer fluids as sacrifices but simply bore libations to altars. Sir Edward Dering’s use of an ancient Greek text to supply contemporary theological or philosophical argument constitutes an important trend of appropriation. Another Edward Dering (1540?–1576), the earlier controversialist and cleric, uses Aristophanes to confound Thomas Harding’s Greek and his defense of Catholic ceremony. In Galatians 4: 9 Harding understands πτωχὰ στοιχεῖα to mean “poor elements;” Dering reads instead “beggarly ceremonies,” citing Aristophanes’ distinction in Plutus between a πτωχός (a beggar who has nothing) and a πένης (a man who is poor but lives by his labor). “Now whether were better Grecian master Master Harding or Aristophanes, I think it may be soon judged” (A Sparing Restraint, 1568, sig. Ffii [misprinted Ggii]). Dering thus enlists the ancient comic playwright in his attack on popish ornamentation and superstition. Quotations of Aristophanes’ language furnish many such arguments, including those of John Gregory (Notes and Observations upon some Passages of Scripture, 1646), Henry Hammond (A Paraphrase and Annotations upon the Books of the Psalms, 1659) and the redoubtable Thomas Hobbes (Stigmai Ageometrias, 1657, sigs. C4v–D1). Aristophanes also serves frequently as a moral or philosophical authority, an ancient witness to timeless human folly and a source of wisdom. In The Arraignment and Conviction of Usury (1595), Miles Mosse compares the various kinds of usury to Empusa, the shape-shifting goddess in Frogs (289–90) who “seemeth everything, now an ox, now an ass, &c.” So likewise is the practice of usury, “for sometimes it seemeth to be buying, sometimes selling, sometimes letting, sometimes pawning, sometimes one thing, sometimes another” (sig. k2v). Philipp Caesar also turns to Aristophanes to condemn usury, citing him along with Aristotle, Plato, Plutarch and Cicero, all
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“philosophers” who “by the only light of reason” judged usury unnatural (A General Discourse Against the Damnable Sect of Usurers, 1578, sig. Miiv). Thomas Wilson recalls Clouds (1285–9), in which Aristophanes shows that “such money which bringeth forth money is a swelling monster, waxing every month bigger one than another, and so horrible swelleth from time to time, as no man by words is able to utter, contrary to nature, order, and all good reason” (A Discourse upon Usury, 1572, sig. Di(v)). Wilson also recalls the plot of this play by Aristophanes, “the most pleasant deviser of comedies and interludes that ever wrote,” and particularly Strepsiades’ desperate wish (749–56) for a Thessalian witch to stop the course of the moon in order to prevent monthly visits from creditors (sig. Xiiiv). Later Gerard Malynes adduces the same story to show how economic inequity causes men to resort to desperate measures: Aristophanes hath painted forth your agonies and perplexed minds, under the person of an aged man altogether shipwrecked by freighting with this monster [covetousness], who, thinking to have found out the way to be eased of his slavery, did propound unto Socrates this demand: That if he should by a witch of Thessalia and by her enchantments fetch the moon out of heaven, and bring it away, and afterwards enclose it in a case of glass, and so keep it, as if he would keep a fly in a box. Socrates demanding what good that would do him, he answered: “If the moon do never rise again and I, being constrained to feed this monster by the new moon, shall be freed of that trouble.” A strange shift that this poor man was driven unto, to pluck by violence the moon out of heaven. (Saint George for England, 1601, sig. F3r).
Strepsiades’ funny, fantastic proposal for avoiding monthly debt payments here furnishes Malynes’ complicated allegory of economics and the disordered commonwealth. The remedy, he believes, lies with St. George, patron saint of England and the Order of the Garter and symbol of Jesus Christ. As these examples illustrate, Aristophanes’ ancient authority extends to some surprising early modern places. William Painter mentions Aristophanes’ report of Timon’s misanthropy (Lys. 807–19) in his collection of stories, The Palace of Pleasure (1566, sig. Pi(v)), a book that may have contributed to Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens. Aristophanes’ observations on the natural world supply such standard reference works as Edward Topsell’s The History of Four-Footed Beasts (1607) and John Gerard’s The Herbal (1633). Thomas Moffett also cites Aristophanes the naturalist in Insectorum sive Minimorum Animalium Theatrum (1634), as does John Swan, explaining the phrase “wasp-waisted” (Speculum Mundi, 1635, sigs. Ggg4r–v). Aristophanes makes three appearances in J. B.’s dictionary of hand-gestures, Chirologia (1644, sigs. E6v– E7, G3, I1). The playwright’s portrayal of Dionysus’ journey to Hades in Frogs twice confirms the placement of Hell under the earth for the serious Bishop Thomas Bilson (The Effect of Certain Sermons, 1599, sig. Bbb2; The Survey of Christ’s Sufferings, 1604, sig. Ggg1). More than any other single author, the great Dutch humanist Erasmus brought Aristophanes, or at least parts of him, to Europe and England. Aristophanes appears throughout Erasmus’ Adagia, a monumental collection of proverbs first published in
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1500 (818 adages) and finally in 1536 (4151 adages).6 Explaining each Greek or Latin adage, Erasmus ranges widely over ancient language, history and culture, proposing etymologies, illuminating customs and supplying background information. He draws upon the entire extant corpus of classical writing, including the Aldine Aristophanes (1498) with scholia, manuscript versions of Thesmophoriazusae and Lysistrata, as well as dictionaries, encyclopedias and lexicons, notably the Greek collections of Zenodotus (fl. 280 BCE), Diogenianus (1st–2nd century) and the Suda (10th century). Erasmus himself reflected upon the vast scope and manifold difficulties of the project—the loss and corruption of texts, the demands on memory, stamina and eyesight, and the task of translation—in an entry appropriately entitled Herculei labores, “the labors of Hercules” (34: 167–82). Erasmus’s labors, however, did bring Aristophanes new life in the early modern world. Readers could see and hear, many for the first time, his language frequently quoted, translated, paraphrased and explained. Glossing ἀγαθῶν σωρός (Plutus 804, “a heap of good things”), for example, Erasmus notes the slave’s cheeky wordplay on σορός (269–70, “burial coffin”) (31: 260–1) in conversation with the old man. Erasmus traces the word lachanizare (“to wilt”) to betizare (“to wilt like a beet”), and after citing Catullus, Martial and Diogenes Laertius, to bliteus (“stupid”), βλάζ (“lazy”), and finally Aristophanes’ Birds (1323) ὡς βλακικῶς διακονεῖς (“how sluggishly you do your job!”) (33: 227). Elsewhere, Erasmus comments on Aristophanes’ figurative use of language in that play, the verb πτερορρυεῖν (“to shed feathers”) frequently appearing “in a humorous sense” to mean “to lose possessions” (36: 332). Here and elsewhere, Erasmus appreciates the ancient playwright’s wit and comedy, noting at times his invention of portmanteau words: “In Aristophanes [Knights 1067, 1069; Lys. 957] someone is said to be a κυναλώπηξ, ‘a fox-dog’ because he combined the shamelessness of the dog with the cunning of a fox” (35: 114). Quoting Birds 638–40, Erasmus comments: “The Old Comedy invented a joke word Μελλονικιᾶν [‘to hang about like Nikias’], made up of μέλλειν, ‘to be always on the point of, to delay,’ and Νικίας, the commander’s name” (36: 407–8). As elsewhere, Aristophanes here serves to illuminate ancient Greek custom, history and culture. Erasmus traces the origins of the saying ἀγαθοῦ δαίμονος (“Here’s to good luck”) to the scholiast on Wasps 525 (and to Knights 85, 106; Peace 300), and ultimately to the Greek custom of bringing on neat wine after dinner for good luck (32: 38–9). The ancient playwright and commentary on him continually reveal details of everyday Athenian life: the practice of the sycophants, despised professional informers, gathering around a statue of Lycus (Wasps 819 in 33: 338); the use of garlic and Laconian spurge as a home-remedy for poor vision (Ec. 404–6 in 34: 88); the place-
6 Margaret Mann Philipps, R.A.B. Mynors et al. (eds.), Collected Works of Erasmus, vols. 31–6: Adages (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), vol. 31, p. xiii. I have cited further references to this work parenthetically in the text.
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ment of pots of water on the roof to keep away screech owls (Birds 357–8 in 35: 137); the pouring of stones from a great jar into a bonze vessel to simulate thunder on stage (Clouds 293–4 in 32: 113); the playing of Old Comedy in wagons by young men with faces smeared with wine-lees for greater satirical freedom (Clouds 296 and Knights 464 in 32: 110–11). Athenian history appears refracted through the topical lenses of Aristophanic comedy. Cleon’s capture of Messenian Pylos in 425 BCE supplies the description in Clouds (186) τοῖς ἐκ Πύλου ληφθεῖσι τοῖς Λακωνικοῖς (“like the Spartan captives from Pylos”) (35: 507), a simile describing wretched victims. This historical event partially inspired the attack on Cleon in Knights, and Erasmus well absorbed Aristophanes’ critical spirit. Tracking the metaphor ἀετὸς ἐν νεφέλαις (“an eagle in the clouds”) through Knights 1012–13, 1087 and Birds 978, Erasmus glosses the expression as referring to something great but not easily achieved, or to the people of Athens, “unless we prefer to see it as an allusion to their empty hopes of world-rule” (32: 191). In his essay on the proverb ἡ τῶν Ἀθηναίων δυσβουλία (“the ill-counsel of the Athenians”), Erasmus recalls Poseidon’s curse of dysboulia (folly and ill-counsel) on the city, “and thereafter this defect was endemic in the Athenians” (Clouds 587–8 in 32: 147). Throughout the Adagia, Aristophanes is also adapted to supply moral and religious lessons for Christian Europe. The word βωμολόχος (“an altar-scrounger”) also mocks those who today “during a mass … busily fill someone’s ear with chatter” (Clouds 910, 970 in 35: 256). The expression from Frogs (1247) ὥσπερ τὰ σῦκ᾽ ἐπὶ τοῖσιν ὀφθαλμοῖς ἔφυ (“as sties grow on the eyes”) points to troublesome growths that cannot be removed by force, i.e., Erasmus explains, to princes who are merciless in their tyranny, “equipped for public devastation,” as well as to corrupt clergy (34: 74– 6). One should incite princes to love of virtue by “baiting the hook” with praise (Knights 789 in 33: 274); all too often, however, they “hunt eels” by stirring up mud in the water, i.e. by sowing discord and starting wars so they can tax the people to satisfy their greed (Knights 864–7 in 35: 165). Aristophanic metaphor even illuminates Gospel teaching. The sentence in Plutus οὔτε γὰρ ὁ μισθὸς οὐδὲν ἔστ᾽ οὔθ᾽ ἡ τέχνη (408), “there’s neither any wage at all nor any art,” encourages public recognition of virtuous action; a good deed should not be hidden like the light under the bushel in the Gospel (Matt. 5: 15 in 32: 174). Paphlagon’s (Cleon’s) offer of a bribe to the people κριθὰς ποριῶ σοι καὶ βίον καθ᾽ ἡμέραν (Knights 1101), “I’ll give you barley and your living day by day,” is supplied with a surprising Christian gloss: “to live from one day to the next is to be content with your present lot and live on what you have at hand, without thought for the future … Such a way of life was approved as the best of all by Christ, for He both followed it Himself and prescribed it for His Apostles” (32: 160–1). Such evidence demonstrates that the humanist appropriation of Aristophanes, like that of other classical figures, was often both fervent and fragmentary. Reliant on classical “auctorite” and none too particular about original context, early modern writers plundered the playwright for their own rhetorical, polemical, historical and moral purposes. The resulting dislocations and dissonances can be striking. Intent on
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teaching Positions … which are Necessary for the Training up of Children (1581), the schoolmaster Richard Mulcaster cites Clouds as evidence that horse-riding “was a gentlemanly train, even among the principles of education in Athens” (sig. Miiiiv). So much for Pheidippides’ hippomania, Strepsiades’ noisy complaints and the playwright’s mockery. Defining antistrophon as the rhetorical trick of turning an opponent’s arguments against him, Thomas Wilson recalls the “wonderful pretty talk” in Aristophanes (Clouds 1408–75), where the son proves it lawful to beat his father (The Rule of Reason, 1551, sigs. X1r–v). Wilson thus admires the very sophistry that Aristophanes zestfully exposes to ridicule. Whatever the brief, Aristophanes in the form of quotation, reference or mere association could furnish an argument or ornament.
Satire As noted above, Horace’s Fourth Satire characterizes Old Comedy as the genre that ridicules the vices of real people. Horace goes on to suggest that Roman satire derives its essentials from Old Comedy through the intermediary of Lucilius (2nd c. BCE), who was in his view the inventor (Sermonum 1.10.48; cf. 2.1.61–2) of that later genre: hinc omnis pendet Lucilius, hosce secutus mutatis tantum pedibus numerisque; facetus, emunctae naris, durus componere versus. (1.4.6–8)7 It is on these [Aristophanes, Eupolis, Cratinus] that Lucilius wholly hangs; these he has followed, changing only meter and rhythm. Witty he was, and of keen-scented nostrils, but harsh in framing his verse.
Commenting on this passage, Niall Rudd observes that both Aristophanes and Lucilius were witty (facetus) and quick to detect vice (emunctae naris); both wrote in verse, although the latter was harsh (durus). Horace situates his own work within this tradition, although distinguishing it from that of Lucilius by claiming more careful, polished composition. Furthermore, declaring a disinclination to publish his work, Horace asserts that he takes no pleasure in malice (quod vitium procul afore chartis / atque animo prius, 101–2) but finds amusement and instruction in observing folly. Such observation, he argues, has always been an important part of his moral education: insuevit pater optimus hoc me, / ut fugerem exemplis vitiorum quaeque notando
7 I quote text and translation from H. Rushton Fairclough (ed.), Horace: Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica, Loeb Classical Library (1926; rpt. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991). The reference immediately following is to Niall Rudd, The Satires of Horace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), pp. 88–9. See also Matthew Steggle’s illuminating “Aristophanes in Early Modern England,” in: Hall and Wrigley, Aristophanes in Performance (above, n. 1), pp. 52–65.
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(105–6), “’Tis a habit the best of fathers taught me, for, to enable me to steer clear of follies, he would brand them, one by one, by his examples.” Given the influence of this Horatian text, it is unsurprising that Aristophanes often appears to early modern eyes as a satirist. Some admirers wish Aristophanes could wield the satiric lash against current abuses. Disgusted with ignorant linguists who think Flemish the most ancient language, John Eliot muses generally: “If the comical Aristophanes were alive, he should have here a good argument to write a comedy of their impudency” (Ortho-epia Gallica, 1593, sig. F3). Recalling his strictures against the tables of the Syracusans and the voluptuous abundance of the Sybarites (fr. 225), Ulrich von Hutten asks: “If at that time he blamed such things, what would he say if he now lived and saw our banqueting and feasting, our quaffing and drinking?” (De Morbo Gallico, 1533, sig. Giiiiv). The ancient playwright thus appears as a medico-moral authority in the German reformer’s popular book on the French pox, syphilis. Others simply apply old Aristophanic taunts to new abuses. Aristophanes’ description of Cleon as having one foot in the senate and the other in the field (Knights 75–6) is turned by John Hooper “with sorrow and grief of heart” to the English, who have “one hand at the plough, and the other against their magistrates” (A Godly Confession, 1550, sig. Fiiiv). Crediting Aristophanes with the proverb Dorica musa (“Dorian Muse”), said of those greedy for reward, Johannes Ferrarius applies the phrase to dishonest contemporaries (A Work … Touching the Good Ordering of the Commonweal, 1559, sig. Hiiii). But Aristophanes never used this proverb, which originated, as Erasmus explains (Adagia, 33: 261), in punning mockery of Cleon, who would play his lyre only in the Dorian mode (Knights 989 Δωριστί) because he wanted only to receive bribes (Knights 996 Δωροδοκιστί). Ferrarius obviously knows Aristophanes only through faulty memory, imperfect intermediation or inaccurate report. In an extraordinary transference, François Gentil-homme recalls and abbreviates Plutus (1–2) to excoriate Spanish colonialism and articulate the plight of the oppressed native population. He asks, “Do we think there is any Indian under the subjection of the Spaniards which cryeth not ten thousand times a day in his language this sentence of Aristophanes: ὡς ἀργαλέον δοῦλον γενέσθαι παραφρονοῦντος δεσπότου. Alas, how hard a thing it is to serve against one’s will A master that of wit, of sense, and reason can no skill [not comprehend].” (A Comparison of the English and Spanish Nation, translated R. A., 1589, sig. F3)
Here the Greek slave’s complaint about his dim-witted master is transformed into the cry of the Indians, victims of colonization and genocide. Unfortunately not a genuine plea for toleration and humane treatment, this appropriation of Aristophanes serves specific political purposes. In the company of other classical writers (Sophocles,
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Aristotle, Euripides), Aristophanes gives a veneer of classical authority to Gentilhomme’s larger project, the defeat of the French League’s plan to dissolve bonds with England and enter into an alliance with Spain, here vilified as cruel and imperialistic. Robert Ashley (the R. A. of the title page) translated the treatise into English in 1589 to compliment his English readers and with an eye to attaining another specific political objective. Far from promoting tolerance, Ashley hoped that his work would reinforce crude ethnic stereotypes, teaching the English “to despise those magnificent Don Diegos and Spanish cavalieros, whose doughtie deeds are brags and boastings, and themselves, for the most part, shadows without substance” (sigs. A2v–A3). Not everyone in the period, of course, admired satire and considered Aristophanes a moral guide whose plays scourged ancient and modern vice. The Puritan anti-theatricalist Stephen Gosson, for example, roundly condemns all satiric playwrights as abusive: “to revenge their own cause,” they present an enemy onstage, “ruffle and taunt, scoff and nip, thunder and lighten, and spew up their cunning to deface him.” True correction,” he goes on to say, “should proceed out of compassion, not malice or corruption” (Plays Confuted in Five Actions, 1582, sigs. D1v, D3v). Like Gosson, William Prynne also objects to the “profane and gross obscenities, those amorous strains, lascivious passages, and unsavory jests which are scattered in Aristophanes” and other comic playwrights (Histrio-mastix, The Players’ Scourge, 1633, sig. K3v). The Puritan charge here extends to the bawdy language and bodily humor of Aristophanic comedy. The eloquent divine Jeremy Taylor, author of Holy Living and Holy Dying, accuses comic playwrights of pandering to the laughing rabble “with a slovenly and wanton word, when they understood not the salt and ingenuity of a witty and useful answer or reply, as is to be seen in the intemperate textures of Aristophanes’ comedies.” Saint Paul, Taylor goes on to explain, prohibits all such licentious jesting (Ephes. 5: 4 μωρολογία ἢ εὐτραπελία). The Church Fathers Saints Ambrose, Basil and Jerome, Taylor similarly insists, all warn that profane laughter could lead to neglect or contempt for God’s precepts (Eniautos, A Course of Sermons for all the Sundays in a Year, 1653, sigs. Cc3r–v). In this view, satire in general and satirical poetry in Aristophanes in particular do not effect moral improvement but induce moral degeneration. Such attacks evoked serious defenses. Recalling Horace, Thomas Lodge answers Gosson by claiming that Eupolis, Cratinus and Aristophanes attacked abuses with “their eloquenter vein and perfection of style,” keeping men in awe and restraining the “unbridled commonality” (Protogenes can know Apelles, 1579, sig. C3). He wishes for more satirical poets “to decipher the abuses of the world in the person of notorious offenders” (sig. C4). Taking a more nuanced view in A Discourse of English Poetry (1586), William Webbe observes that the old drama “began to present in shapes of men the natures of virtues and vices, and affections and qualities incident to men as justice, temperance, poverty, wrath, vengeance, sloth, valiantness and such like, as may appear by the ancient works of Aristophanes” (sigs. Diir–v; ed. G. Smith, Eliza-
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bethan Critical Essays, 1904, 1: 249). In time, however, he concedes, the plays lost their moral purpose, and the instructive presentation of virtues and vices deteriorated into libelous mockery. “The old manner of comedies decayed by reason of slandering, which therein they used against many, for which there was a penalty appointed lest their bitterness should proceed too far” (sig. kiiv; ed. Smith, 1: 295). Thomas Heywood, a prolific playwright himself, similarly criticizes those who write “lascivious shows, scurrilous jests, or scandalous invectives,” but excepts the ancient comic playwrights from his censure. Instead he commends Eupolis, Cratinus and Aristophanes, who “with large scope and unbridled liberty boldly and plainly scourged all such abuses as in their ages were generally practiced to the staining and blemishing of a fair and beautiful commonweal” (An Apology for Actors, 1612, sigs. F4r–v). Here Aristophanic satire not only corrects personal vice but serves the larger moral end of improving the commonwealth. But defenders such as Lodge, Webbe and Heywood leave unanswered one serious objection to satire in general and Aristophanes in particular. How can one justify comedic satire that exposes virtue, not vice, to ridicule? This is exactly the charge prompted by the mocking treatment of Socrates in Clouds. Socrates himself, according to Plato (Apology 19c), blamed Aristophanes for the slander that eventually led to his trial and execution, and this indictment echoes through the ages.8 Staging “scoffing and leaping songs … the skipping of fleas and dancing of clouds,” Eunapius declared, Aristophanes infected the minds of the audience and turned them against Socrates (The Lives of Philosophers and Orators, 1579, sigs. Ciiiiv–Di). Attracting readers literary (John Donne, Robert Burton), religious (Thomas Fitzberbert, William Barlow) and historical (William Camden, John Selden), Eunapius (4th–5th c.) thus gives additional circulation to Plato’s account. Aristophanes’ portrait of Socrates in Clouds evokes almost universal disapproval in the early modern period. Stephen Gosson impugns the playwright’s motives, declaring that Anytus and Melitus hired Aristophanes to discredit the philosopher (sig. D3v). The splenetic William Prynne concurs: Aristophanes, “that scurrilous, carping comedian, … personally traduced and abused virtuous Socrates on the stage by the instigation of some lewd Athenians who maligned him for his resplendent virtues” (Histrio-mastix, 1633, sig. R). Robert Albott says that Aristophanes “slandered Socrates (a man so much beloved of the gods)” (Wit’s Theater of the Little World, 1599, sig. R6). John Ford remembers good Socrates “scurrilously by Aristophanes the poet derided before the people” (A Line of Life, 1620, sig. F4v). Nathanael Culverwel predicts divine punishment: Socrates, the virtu-
8 See K.J. Dover (ed.), Aristophanes: Clouds (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968), pp. xxxii–lvii; on some later reactions, Kevin J. Berland, “Bribing Aristophanes: The Uses of History and the Attack on the Theater in England,” in: Greg Clingham (ed.), Sustaining Literature: Essays on Literature, History, and Culture, 1500–1800 (Cranbury N.J.: Associated University Presses, 2007), pp. 229–46. Jonas Barish provides an illuminating context for Gosson, Prynne and related issues in The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).
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ous pagan, “shall taste a milder cup of wrath, when as Aristophanes shall drink up the dregs of fury” (An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature, 1652, sig. Dd2v). In ancient and early modern times, Socrates’ calm response to Aristophanes’ slander became an exemplum for moral lessons. To teach children to restrain the tongue and subdue wrath, Plutarch recalls Socrates’ response when asked if he was angry at the portrayal: “It grieveth me no more to be scoffed at in the hall, where plays be accustomed to be, than if it were at a feast or banquet” (Plutarch, The Education or Bringing up of Children, tr. Thomas Elyot, 1532, sig. Eii). Translating Seneca’s De vita beata, Thomas Lodge has Socrates explain that he actually enabled the slander for the moral improvement of others. He ministered matter to Aristophanes for “envenomed scoffs” so that his virtue might grow more famous “by these very means whereby they assailed her, for it behoveth her to be produced and attempted. Neither do any men more understand what she is than they who by provoking her have tired her forces” (The Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, 1614, sigs. Ggg4v–Ggg5; Dialogorum Libri Duodecim, ed. L. D. Reynolds, 1977, 196). In Thomas Tomkis’ Lingua (1607), Memoria recalls the original performance of the play and Socrates’ philosophic tranquility: “I saw Socrates abused most grossly, himself being then a present spectator. I remember he sat full against me and did not so much as show the least countenance of discontent” (sig. E1). In The History of Philosophy (1655), Thomas Stanley gives the fullest account of Aristophanes’ treatment of Socrates and the circumstances behind Clouds. To settle a personal score, Anytus “suborns” Aristophanes to place Socrates onstage, “taxing him with crimes which most men knew him free from, impertinent discourse, making an ill cause by argument seem good, introducing new and strange deities, whilst himself believed and reverenced none.” Complying, Aristophanes treats “the best of the Grecians … a person dear to all the gods” with “much abusive mirth” (sig. Yy1). The envious Athenians revel in the ridicule, while the philosopher serenely enjoys the play. Remarkably, Stanley goes so far as to append to his account a translation of Aristophanes’ play. Cutting some bawdy parts, choruses and the agôn between the Just and Unjust Arguments, Stanley offers a lively English version of Aristophanes’ Clouds. He renders the clouds’ opening choral song into skilful couplets: We humid, fleeting deities, The bright, unbounded clouds thus rise From our old sire, the grumbling flood, Above the tallest hill or wood, To those high watchtowers, whence we may The hallowed, fruitful ground survey, Rivers that in soft murmurs glide, And the loud sea’s rebellious tide, From thence heaven’s restless eye betrays
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The splendor of his glorious rays, Chasing all dusty mists, that we In shapes divine may mortals see. (sig. Iii2)
Marginal notes point to biographical connections and distortions. Socrates’ first questions to Strepsiades (345–52), for example, illustrate “The Socratic way of dispute by question” (sig. Iii3v), while his urging of apt response (489–90) recalls the quick answers of other Socratic students, “especially Xenophon and Plato” (sig. Kkk2). Stanley expands Strepsiades’ unspecified payment for services (1146) to a “bag of meal” with this explanation, “Such gifts Socrates sometimes accepted, though not money” (sig. Mmm1v). Stanley believes that the play has some basis in fact: “That Socrates had a proper school may be argued from Aristophanes, who derides some particulars in it and calls it his Phrontisterium” (sig. Pp2). But he is quick to point out satiric distortion: he glosses Socrates’ comments on thunder (380–2) and on grammatical gender (662–3) thus: “Deriding Socrates as ignorant in natural philosophy” (sig. Kkk) and “Deriding Socrates as ignorant in grammar” (sig. Lll). When Socrates tells Strepsiades to ignore the biting bedbugs (634–5), Stanley recalls Phaedrus (37b): “So Socrates disputes in Plato’s Phaedrus that exterior objects might not divert him, which Aristophanes here derides” (sig. Lll1v). Stanley finally highlights the choric moralization of Strepsiades’ final beating (1311–20) by adding a direct address to the audience: “Now observe what ’tis to bend / Studies to an evil end” (sig. Nnn1v). Aristophanes’ Clouds thus makes its first appearance in English “not as a comical divertissement … but as a necessary supplement to the life of Socrates” (sig. Hhh). John Milton (1608–1674), finally, struggles with the scurrility of Aristophanes’ satire and his treatment of Socrates in his classic argument for the liberty of unlicensed printing, Areopagitica (1644). Aristophanes furnishes Milton with a test case for his opposition to censorship. Milton makes no effort to hide his disapproval of the Vetus Comoedia and its satire, its “open way of defaming” (sig. A4; ed. M. Hughes, Prose Selections, 1947, 208). He notes, however, that Plato himself, although he banished poets from his imaginary commonwealth, read Sophron and Aristophanes, “books of grossest infamy,” and even commended Aristophanes, “though he were the malicious libeler of his chief friends, to be read by the tyrant Dionysius who had little need of such trash to spend his time on” (sig. C1v, ed Hughes, 231). The allusion to the libeled Socrates here is as clear as Milton’s disapproval. But Athens never suppressed the writings of those old comic poets Milton goes on to observe, objectionable though they were. The moral of this story is therefore clear: the English Parliament may imitate either the enlightened Greek model of tolerance or Catholic Spain’s tyrannical censorship. What is more, Milton argues, base matter such as the Old Comedy may serve higher purposes. St. John Chrysostom read Aristophanes, “the loosest of them all,” every night, and had the art “to cleanse a scurrilous vehemence into the style of a rousing sermon” (sig. A4; ed. Hughes, 209). Any attempt to license art in this world as opposed to an imaginary Platonic republic, Milton wearily concludes, “must needs be
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vain and fruitless” (sig. C1v; ed. Hughes, 231). For him, evidently, the price of freedom from censorship is endurance of Aristophanes.9
Plutus Aristophanes’ final surviving play, Plutus (388 BCE), which departs from the freewheeling satirical lyricism of his earlier works, achieved great popularity in the Byzantine period: 148 manuscripts survive, as opposed to 127 for Clouds and 78 for Frogs.10 Because of its realistic presentation, its moral concerns and its use of character types familiar from later Attic comedy of the 4th Century (the so-called Middle Comedy), Plutus became the most popular Aristophanic play in the early modern period, the first to appear in Latin translation (partially in Florence, c. 1440; fully in Parma, 1501). It appeared on stage in Zwickau (1521), Zurich (1531) and Cambridge (1536 and 1588), and achieved two full-scale adaptations in English. Plutus presents the poor old Athenian Chremylus, who returns from Delphi trailing an old blind beggar, the god Plutus or Wealth. Thinking that Plutus’ blindness, a punishment from Zeus, is the source of much misfortune and inequity in the world, Chremylus determines to take him to Asclepius for a cure, so that wealth can be distributed to the deserving. Poverty argues against the scheme, claiming that she, not Wealth, is the true source of most good in the world, but Chremylus proceeds with the cure and subsequent redistribution of riches. A series of visitors then comes to his house, some glad, most distressed by the change in their fortunes, culminating in Hermes and a priest of Zeus, who complain that the gods are now ignored. Erasmus remembers Aristophanes’ play in his genealogy of Folly, Plutus’ child, begotten before Plutus “was blind and scarce able to go for age and goutiness, as the poet Aristophanes describeth him [88–92, 266]” (The Praise of Folly, 1549, sig. Aiiii; ed. C. H. Miller, Amsterdam, 1979, Ord. 4, t. 3: 78). Pierre de La Primaudaye rehearses Poverty’s arguments and her claim to be the true benefactor of mankind [467–600]: “‘Poverty,’ saith Aristophanes, ‘is the mistress of manners’” (The French Academy, 1586, sig. Aav). Robert Burton writes that Aristophanes’ portrait of Plutus as fearful, pale, anxious and suspicious signifies that covetousness is a cause of melancholy (The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621, sig. K6; ed. T.C. Faulkner et al. 1989, 1: 286). To make a theological and moral point, William Sancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury, creatively misremembers Plutus’ explanation of his poverty and blindness, Ζεὐς με ταῦτ᾽ ἔδρασεν ἀνθρώποις φθονῶν (88, “Zeus did this to me because he resents mankind”): 9 For illuminating discussions, see Irene Samuel, “Milton on Comedy and Satire,” Huntington Library Quarterly 35 (1972), pp. 107–30; Joel Morkan, “Wrath and Laughter: Milton’s Ideas on Satire,” Studies in Philology 69 (1972), pp. 475–95. 10 Giannopoulou, “Aristophanes in Translation” (above, n. 1), p. 330.
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The money god in Aristophanes pretends a command from Jupiter to distribute as great a largesse to the wicked as to the good, because if virtue should once impropriate riches, that fair goddess would be more wooed for her dowry than for her native beauty. So if religion were attended with those outward allurements that most take the senses, we should be apt to follow Christ for the loaves and overlook the more spiritual charms and more noble ends of Christianity (Modern Policies taken from Machiavel, Borgia, and other Choice Authors, 1643, sigs. D12v–E1).
The Archbishop here transforms Zeus’ irrational envy of mankind, particularly the good (90), into providential design. The divinely-mandated capriciousness of fortune, along with the resulting disjunction between wealth and desert evident everywhere in the world, teaches that virtue should be its own reward. If fortune rewarded only the virtuous, Sancroft observes, people might choose to be good for the wrong reasons, simply for the reward instead of for love of God. Christians, he goes on to say, should follow Christ for spiritual rather than material gain. Contradicting Aristophanes’ basic premise (Zeus’ envy), Sancroft arrives at a conclusion consonant with the end of Aristophanes’ play: after Plutus recovers his sight and redistributes wealth to the good, people stop worshipping the gods. Hermes complains, “No one has offered us gods any sort of sacrifice: no incense, no bay, no barley cake, no victim, not a single thing” (1114–16). The adaptation of Plutus to Christian morality evident here continues variously in two full-scale translations that appear in the mid-17th century. The Cambridge wit and poetic “son of Ben” Jonson, Thomas Randolph (1605–1635), titles his rambunctious version, Hey for Honesty, Down with Knavery (1651). According to Cyrus L. Day,11 one “F. J.” later revised this play, adding attacks on Puritans, who had closed the theater for nine years, and about 70 allusions to incidents that occurred after Randolph’s death in 1635. These include references to the Civil War, the Irish rebellion (1641), the ghost of John Pym (who died in 1643), John Milton’s divorce pamphlets (1643–1644), Pope Innocent X (1644) and the death of William Laud (1645). These additions enhance Randolph’s imaginative reworking, and the result is a rollicking satire that skillfully adapts the ancient play to the contemporary scene. “If it be biting, ’tis a biting age we live in; then, biting for biting” (sig. A2v), writes F. J. in “The Preface to the Reader.” Hey for Honesty adds to Aristophanes four country swains, the rich parson Dicaeus, the poor curate Clip-Latin, and the Amsterdam puritan Ananias Gogle, among others. Four soldiers form the hapless army of Penia-penniless (Poverty): the Welsh Caradock, the Scottish Brun, the English Higgen and the Irish Termook. (Shades of Fluellen and company from Henry V.) The play is the funniest, most stage-worthy English adaptation of Aristophanes in the period. The slave Carion, for example, describes the opening action to his neighbors: “Why, you villiagoes, my master has
11 Cyrus L. Day, “Thomas Randolph’s Part in the Authorship of Hey for Honesty,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 41 (1926), pp. 325–34; see also G.C. Moore Smith, “The Canon of Randolph’s Dramatic Works,” Review of English Studies 1 (1925), pp. 309–23.
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brought home an old, lame, rotten, mangy, toothless, sapless, bald-pate, rusty, musty, crusty, fusty, dusty old dotard, just such another as my neighbor Stiff or Lackland, or you, Clodpole, with a slimy nose and a great bunch-back” (sig. C1v). Aristophanes’ word play οὐ γὰρ πείσεις, οὐδ᾽ ἢν πείσηις (600, “Because you won’t persuade us, not even if you persuade us”) receives Baroque expansion: “Persuaded! We will not be persuaded for we are persuaded not to be persuaded, though we be persuaded. Thus we are persuaded and we will not be persuaded to persuade ourselves to the contrary, any ways being persuaded” (sig. C4). The play is thick with contemporary jokes and allusions, to Shakespeare’s comedies, Hamlet, local red-light districts and prostitutes (in place of Aristophanes’ Corinthian courtesans), roundheads, cavaliers, the Gunpowder plot, a two-penny loaf, roast beef, porridge, the Sternhold psalms, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, Moll Cutpurse, Anabaptists, Philip of Spain (in place of Aristophanes’ Persian basileus), Lord Cromwell and Cardinal Richelieu. Hey for Honesty satirizes Puritans in the person of Ananias Gogle, as greedy for wealth as his counterparts Ananias and Tribulation in Ben Jonson’s Alchemist (on Jonson, see below). But it reserves special scorn for Roman Catholicism and the pope. “‘No penny, no pater-noster,’ quoth the pope,” Carion jeers (sig. B3). The priest of Asclepius who nicks the cheesecake and figs from the holy table becomes in this play the bald friar who eats the religious cake and cracks the consecrated nuts, a familiar figure of anti-Catholic satire (sig. E1v). Equally familiar are the jokes about lecherous clergy. The libidinal old woman laments the loss of nunneries, in reality “zealous bawdy houses,” and she misses the old sacrament of Penance for earthly reasons: “’Twas a good world too in the days of Queen Mary: a poor woman might have desired a kindness from a lusty friar in auricular confession” (sig. F1v). Aristophanes’ final disgruntled visitor, the priest of Zeus (1171–95), here becomes the Pope, now poor, in the climactic scene of the play. “For a broiled spat I pawned my triple crown, / And now for one red herring will I mortgage / All Peter’s large possessions.” Dull-pate twits the pontiff: “Is all the roast in Purgatory spent / Are all your bulls devoured … No relics left, nor chips o’the cross to feed on?” (sig. G2v). In exchange for food, the Pope promises to grant absolution even if the sinner equivocate, ravish nuns, kill a king, cuckold his father, whore his mother, piss in the pyx and so on: “Pope: A leg of mutton wipes all sins away.” The scene ends with a musical number in which the Pope sings: “I had rather eat a meal than tell a story, / Of limbo patrum or of Purgatory; / No blessings like the pleasure of the tastibus, / No relics holier than the venison pastibus” (sig. G3v) [tastibus, “taste sense;” pastibus, “pie”]. At the end, Plutus marries Honesty, a scrivener’s daughter. In 1659, another translation appeared, The World’s Idol; or Plutus, the God of Wealth, by “H. H. B.”12 This is a fairly accurate if relatively stolid version that switches
12 Rosie Wyles argues unpersuasively that this translation takes an oppositional stance to the English occupation of Ireland in “Publication as Intervention: Aristophanes in 1659,” in: Hall and Wrigley, Aristophanes in Performance (above, n. 1), pp. 94–105.
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speakers now and then, drops lines and makes some attempt to render the bawdy. Philological notes in the margin occasionally expand the text in new directions. H. H. B., for example, glosses Poverty’s distinction (550–4) between πενία and πτωχῶν (glossed here as “wanting and begging”) with reference to Cynic philosophy, its advocacy of poverty and embrace of hardship and toil. The gloss continues with allusion to Saint Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthians to live holy, abstemious lives, μηδὲν ἔχοντες καὶ πάντα κατέχοντες (2 Cor. 6: 10 “having nothing and yet possessing all things,” sig. C4v). Scriptural citation elsewhere glosses the text, notably Carion’s delighted report that the household enjoys abundance that never diminishes (803 μηδὲν ἐξενεγκόντ᾽ οἴκοθεν). “Because there is a god in the house, everything is by miracle replenished still as it wastes; so the prophet 2 Kings 4” (sig. D3v). The allusion to Kings refers to the story of the prophet Elisha, who protects a poor widow from creditors by making her pot of oil flow endlessly. H. H. B. develops these hints of a Christian hermeneutic into full-blown allegory in his concluding essay, “A Short Discourse on the preceding Comedy.”
Plutus with his eyes open may allude to us Adam in his innocency, his blindness our fall; and his being brought to Asclepius his temple to receive his sight again may not unfitly emblem to us our seeking of a Savior to bring us into that state again we fell from. (sig. F)
In this rambling epilogue (neither a short nor a coherent discourse), H. H. B. looks forward to a Second Coming, “that day when Christ shall come and finish the work of a second Adam, when, as the text saith, he shall have put down all rule and power and authority, that is, whatever we now call propriety and right, except the common natural right of other creatures” (sig. F2). Saint Paul says that we shall all be changed in a moment, and Aristophanes expresses “with great ingenuity … the sudden reconciliation of the world” (sig. G). The just man changes his rags for the rich clothing of the sycophant; the old woman loses her lover; the invented arts (law, medicine, religion) fall into disuse. Mercury, so instrumental to human business and action, the technê of life, will no longer have office (sig. G2). There will be no more conquests in the name of Christ over the Moors and Indians (sigs. G2r–v). The clergy will forsake self-interest and the idol of the golden calf, and will use their “gravity and formalities” to assist in the ceremonies of Plutus, just bestower of worldly goods (sigs. G3r–v). The ancient comedy here supplies general ruminations on the Fall and the yearnings of a Christian eschatology, the time of the Second Coming.
Ben Jonson In his long, productive career as critic and playwright, Ben Jonson (1572–1637) frequently engaged Aristophanes. In Every Man Out of his Humour (1599), Cordatus, a commentator on the play, sketches the history of comedy:
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Comedia was at first nothing but a simple and continued satire, sung by one only person, till Susario invented a second, after him Epicharmus a third; Phormus and Chiomides (sic) devised to have four actors, with a prologue and a chorus, to which Cratinus long after added a fifth and sixth; Eupolis more; Aristophanes more than they: every man in the dignity of his spirit and judgement supplied something.13
In Cordatus’ view, comedy originated in sung satire and proceeded through a long history of change. One in a sequence of ancient innovators, Aristophanes here authorizes diversion from tradition. Though Jonson was probably mistaken in specifics (the origin of the multiple actors remains obscure), his understanding of Aristophanes is crucial to his own poetics, as Herford and Simpson, quoting Cordatus’ later comment, observe: If classical comedy was thus built upon the defiance of precedent, “I see not then, but we should enjoy the same license or free power to illustrate or heighten our invention as they did, and not be tied to those strict and regular forms which the niceness of a few (who are nothing but form) would thrust upon us.” This, far more than the peremptory classicism of Every Man In his Humour expresses the inner mind of Jonson.14
Throughout his career, Jonson ceaselessly modifies received models, classical, medieval and native, mixing old and new, restlessly experimenting. In an “Apologetical Dialogue” added to the 1616 printing of Poetaster (1601), Jonson again invokes the ancient comic playwright, this time to justify the attacks of personal satire. Polyposus rehearses the charge that such writing is “mere railing;” the Author answers: Ha! If all the salt in the Old Comedy Should be so censured, or the sharper wit Of the bold satire termèd scolding rage, What age should then compare with those for buffoons? What should be said of Aristophanes, Persius or Juvenal, whose names we now So glorify in schools, or at least pretend it.15
Like Horace in the Fourth Satire, Jonson here invokes Aristophanes, notable for his “salt,” as predecessor to the Latin satirists Persius and Juvenal. He thus provides an ancient and distinguished literary precedent for his own satire in the play. Furthermore, throughout Poetaster Jonson identifies himself with the character of Horace, satirist, poet, critic, arbiter elegantiarum; this new Horace pillories his enemies, Marston and Dekker, in the persons of ancient Horatian victims, Crispinus and 13 Every Man Out of His Humour, ed. Helen Ostovich (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), Induction, ll. 247–54. 14 C.H. Herford and Percy Simpson (eds.), Ben Jonson, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1925), p. 376. 15 Tom Cain (ed.), Poetaster (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), lines 173–9.
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Demetrius. Here Aristophanes inspires a living tradition of Roman satire, born again in the Elizabethan stage-dispute that came to be known as the “War of the Theatres.”16 Later, Aristophanes joins other Latin writers, Plautus and Terence, to supply Jonson’s praise of Shakespeare in commendatory verses to the First Folio (1623): The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes, Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please, But antiquated and deserted lie, As they were not of Nature’s family. Yet must I not give Nature all; thy art, My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part. (sig. A4v)
The masters of ancient comedy, Old and New, including “tart” (i.e. “biting, sharp, acrimonious”) Aristophanes, now retire before the new prodigy, “gentle Shakespeare.” Jonson treats Aristophanes at greater length in his Discoveries, a commonplace book published posthumously in 1640–1641, its entries probably dating from after 1623.17 First he commends Aristophanes for his mockery of Euripides: Many things in Euripides hath Aristophanes wittily reprehended, not out of art, but out of truth. For Euripides is sometimes peccant, as he is most times perfect. But judgement, when it is greatest, if reason doth not accompany it, is not ever absolute. (2598–2602)
The Jonson who here appreciates Aristophanes’ mockery of Euripides in Frogs and elsewhere likewise ridicules contemporary tragic plays and playwrights, especially Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. Plays such as The Spanish Tragedy, Tamburlaine and Titus Andronicus continually evoke his scorn as old-fashioned and bombastic. But Jonson goes on to offer an extended consideration of Old Comedy and a criticism of Aristophanes. He begins with Aristotle’s observation that the depraved or ugly stirs laughter: And therefore it was clear that all insolent and obscene speeches, jests upon the best men, injuries to particular persons, perverse and sinister sayings—and the rather unexpected—in the Old Comedy did move laughter, especially where it did imitate any dishonesty and scurrility came forth in the place of wit … Of which Aristophanes affords an ample harvest, having not only outgone Plautus or any other in that kind, but expressed all the moods and figures of what is ridiculous, oddly. In short, as vinegar is not accounted good until the wine is corrupted, so jests that are true and natural seldom raise laughter with the beast, the multitude. They love nothing that is right and proper. (2669–83)
16 See Matthew Steggle, Wars of the Theatres: The Poetics of Personation in the Age of Jonson (Victoria: English Literary Studies, 1998). 17 I cite this work from Ian Donaldson (ed.), The Oxford Authors: Ben Jonson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).
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Derived largely from the Dutch humanist Daniel Heinsius (1580–1655), who shaped the reception of classical literature for England and Jonson particularly,18 this account portrays Aristophanes as staging dishonest and scurrilous entertainments to please his brutish audiences. Jonson then adduces the inevitable example of Clouds and the mockery of Socrates—“that example of all good life, honesty and virtue”—hoisted up by a pulley and playing the philosopher in a basket, measuring the distance “a flea could skip geometrically by a just scale” (2686–9). In this passage, Jonson turns the criticism from Aristophanes to indict popular theater and its boorish audiences: “This was theatrical wit, right stage-jesting, and relishing a playhouse invented for scorn and laughter” (2690–2). This criticism of Aristophanes, recorded in a gathering of witty remarks and wise sayings, does not represent Jonson’s final judgment but only one aspect of his complicated response to the ancient playwright. Despite such censure, Aristophanes served as a model and inspiration for Jonson’s plays, early and late. As one contemporary noted in 1602, Jonson “has become nowadays something humorous and tootoo satirical up and down, like his great-grandfather Aristophanes.”19 The speaker refers specifically to the satirical “humours” comedy Jonson made popular around the turn of the century, Every Man In His Humour (1598), Every Man Out of his Humour (1599) and Poetaster (1601). This comedy ridicules types of folly and specific individuals, all jostling one another in the gritty, crowded, noisy city—early modern London instead of ancient Athens. Like Philocleon the “jury-addict” in Wasps or the horsemad Pheidippides in Clouds, characters exhibit “humours,” ruling obsessions, compulsions, anxieties, aspirations or affectations, which render them absurdly mechanical and laughable. The humours range from the silly to the serious, from Bobadilla’s pride in fencing, Stephano’s desire to be melancholy and Matteo’s poetic pretension, to Thorello’s corrosive jealousy and Giuliano’s violent anger (EMI); from Fastidious Brisk’s wish to be a courtier, Puntarvolo’s eccentric chivalry and Fungoso’s love of fashion, to Macilente’s spiteful envy (EMO). In Poetaster, as we have seen, Jonson pillories specific targets, the contemporary poets John Marston and Thomas Dekker. Critical discussions of Aristophanes and Jonson have yielded parallel passages, based on similarities—some general, some specific—of phrasing or idea.20 Jonson did 18 See Paul R. Sellin, Daniel Heinsius and Stuart England (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 1968); J.H. Meter, The Literary Theories of Daniel Heinsius (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1984). 19 Jesse Franklin Brady and Joseph Quincy Adams (eds.), The Jonson Allusion-Book (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1922), p. 33. 20 See Lord, Aristophanes (above, n. 5), pp. 157–61; P.H. Davison, “Volpone and the Old Comedy,” Modern Language Quarterly 24 (1963), pp. 151–7; John M. Potter, “Old Comedy in Bartholomew Fair,” Criticism 10 (1968), pp. 290–9; Coburt Gum, The Aristophanic Comedies of Ben Jonson (Hague: Mouton, 1969); Aliki Lafkidou Dick, Paedeia through Laughter: Jonson’s Aristophanic Appeal to Human Intelligence (Hague: Mouton, 1974); Eugene M. Waith, “The Appeal of the Comic Deceiver,” Yearbook of English Studies 12 (1982), pp. 13–23; and Patterns and Perspectives in English Renaissance Drama (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1988), pp. 89–106.
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own a copy of Aristophanes, the de Charlais and Portus Greek and Latin edition of 1607 (see above) with scholia and selective editorial commentary.21 He even quoted Greek lines of Plutus (850–2) in a late play, The Devil is an Ass (1616, ed. Peter Happé, 1996, 5.8.112–14). Another late play, The Staple of News (1625), shows specific if glancing influence. The Phrontisterion or “Thinkery” of Socrates in Clouds probably inspires the “Staple” or commercial news center; Plutus joins other allegorical representations of Wealth in the genealogy of Lady Pecunia. The farcical dog-trial scene in Wasps is replayed at the conclusion of this play with a difference: the original scene constitutes a political satire that exposed the excesses and injustices of Athenian jury practice, whereas this one shows Pennyboy Senior’s money-mad descent into delirium. Recent critical analyses have focused on formal elements as evidence of a longrunning intertextual relationship between Aristophanes and Jonson. Helen Ostovich, for example, has perceptively analyzed Every Man Out of his Humour as a comedy in the “Aristophanic mode.”22 She notes the transformation of the classical chorus into the “Grex,” i.e. the censors Cordatus and Mitis who, like their ancient counterparts, comment critically on the action before finally achieving some satisfaction with it. Jonson transforms the choral parabasis (direct address to the audience, often expressing authorial complaint) into his Induction. Here Asper defends Jonson’s work as moral and attacks the work of other poets as hypocritical. Later Grex commentaries (after 2.1. and 3.1) interrupt the action in Aristophanic fashion to register additional complaints. Ostovich goes on to discuss Aristophanes’ “rhetoric of comic exposure,” specifically his use of invective, onomastics and obscenity. Jonson too uses crude language and outright attack to shock his characters out of their humours. He too gives his characters speaking names—“Macilente is ‘Skinny,’ Deliro is ‘Crazy,’ Sogliardo is ‘Hog.’” And he too deploys sexual reference for satirical purpose, but prefers “double entendre to explicit bawdy.” Ostovich concludes her discussion with notice of the parallels between Aristophanic and Jonsonian play structures, both of which present “moments of hyperbolic and fantastic comic vision, exposing characters and the consequences of their behaviour to the laughter of the audience.” The action does not rise and fall organically, but has the “fluidity of a modern revue,” composed of various bits, pieces, monologues, dialogues and ensemble scenes all reflecting on a
21 See David McPherson, “Ben Jonson’s Library and Marginalia: An Annotated Catalogue,” Studies in Philology 71 (1974), pp. 3–106. McPherson locates the copy at Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, but says that the few scattered markings are “not of the kind usually made by Jonson” and “The hand does not look like Jonson’s” (p. 26). 22 See her edition of EMO (above, n. 13), pp. 14–15, 18–28. Thomas K. Hubbard, The Mask of Comedy: Aristophanes and the Intertextual Parabasis (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 231–40, argues further that the parabasis of Clouds provides a general model and specific source for Jonson’s literary theory and polemic.
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common theme. Both playwrights often feature a hero with a grandiose comic scheme who eventually exposes, expels or vanquishes impostors. Some of Jonson’s zany monomaniacs get put out of their humours: Carlo Buffone has his lips sealed, Brisk suffers mockery and awaits trial, and Macilente finds redemption in his vision of the queen. The exodus or finale celebrates a new order.23 Aristophanes thus appears transformed on the early modern stage, combined with native forms and conventions, adapted to satirize new types of urban folly. By the time of Jonson’s masterpieces—Volpone (1606) and The Alchemist (1610)—the ancient writer has been thoroughly integrated into a new style of satiric urban comedy.24 The parabasis of complaint appears in “The Epistle” prefacing Volpone, in which Jonson laments that the “too much licence of poetasters in this time hath much deformed their mistress”; he also complains about the prevalence onstage of “nothing but ribaldry, profanation, blasphemy, all license of offense to God and man” (ll. 12–13). Jonson goes further than his ancient predecessor in articulating a theory of poetry and the poet here, claiming that one cannot be a good poet without first being a good man, as the primary office of the former is to inform, instruct and inflame audiences to virtue. Jonson then answers specific charges and closes with a promise to “raise the despised head of poetry again … and restore her to her primitive habit, feature, and majesty” (118–20). He repeats some of these claims in the rhymed Prologue. The Alchemist likewise begins its address “To the Reader” with a warning about the current degenerate age of plays and an assertion of the author’s good intentions. The Prologue offers a display of London types, “Bawd, squire, impostor, many persons more, / Whose manners, now call’d humours, feed the stage,” then promises “wholesome remedies” and “fair correctives” (8–18). The conventional parabasis achieves a new level of apology and argumentation. Jonson also deploys the Aristophanic rhetoric of comic exposure throughout these plays. Aristophanes features humans-as-animals literally—the birds, wasps and frogs, for example, that lend their names to three plays. Drawing on medieval traditions as well, Jonson features humans-as-animals figuratively and onomastically: Volpone “the fox,” Mosca “the fly,” Voltore “the vulture,” Corbaccio “the raven,” Corvino “the crow,” Peregrine “the pilgrim-hawk.” Sir Politic Would-Be’s name is shortened to Pol (“Parrot”) and he crawls about under a tortoise shell in Act 4.
23 Ostovich, Every Man (above, n. 13), pp. 21–5. 24 Perhaps the first to discuss Aristophanes in relation to these two plays is Henry Fielding in his Preface to Joseph Andrews (1742). Fielding quotes Plutus (32–8), where Chremylus explains that he wants to abandon morals and get rich for the sake of his son: “Ben Jonson, who hath founded two of his best plays on the passion of avarice, seems to have an eye to this; for he introduces every man pursuing riches on the pretense of doing good to others or the public,” D. H. Craig (ed.), Ben Jonson: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 400–1. For references to these plays, I have used Brian Parker (ed.), Volpone, rev. edn. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999); F.H. Mares (ed.), The Alchemist (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967).
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Jonson is one of the few English playwrights who can stand comparison to Aristophanes’ rich play in sound and music: the lyric meters, obscene slang, high-flown grandiloquence of tragic parody (Thesmophoriazusae and Frogs) and use of dialects (the Spartan Lampito in Lysistrata, the barbarian Triballos in Birds, the Boeotian and Theban in Acharnians). Jonson shows a similar range of sonic and linguistic invention. Volpone sings a lyrical love song, “Come, my Celia,” and smoothly spouts the jargon of the mountebank as Scoto of Mantua; The Alchemist resounds with clashing voices and dissonant idioms: scientific mumbo-jumbo, Spanish, the cant terms of thieves, the pseudo-biblical style of Ananias and Tribulation. Most important, as Anne Barton argued, Aristophanes provided Jonson with a model for comic structure. In his early plays, Jonson had not really managed to replace “the well-tried organizational principles of contemporary comedy with any effective dramatic, as opposed to literary, structure. From this impasse he was rescued by Aristophanes.”25 Supplying a workable alternative to the romantic comedy plot, Aristophanes features comic heroes with fantastic, often self-interested schemes: Dicaeopolis makes a separate peace with the Spartans (Acharnians); Trygaeus flies to Olympus on a dung-beetle to find Peace (Peace); Peisetaerus grows wings and builds a fantasy city in the clouds (Birds); Lysistrata and Praxagora seize power from the men (Lysistrata and Ecclesiazusae). Similarly, Jonson’s clever Volpone amasses a fortune by pretending to be wealthy, dying and uncertain about his heir. His Subtle and Face dupe clients by pretending to know the secrets of alchemy. The action in both plays becomes a series of visitations, displays and scams, all interlocking variations on a theme rather than an organically developing action. Various urban types parade across the stage to get their comeuppance. There are hilarious scenes of gulling and fleecing. In the end, sometimes the schemes collapse and the schemers are punished: just as Strepsiades is beaten, Volpone is sent to prison. More often, the comic rogues escape and emerge victorious: Peisetaerus marries the divine Basileia, while Face regains his former identity as Jeremy, servant to Lovewit. Aristophanes finds his truest early modern English descendant in Ben Jonson. But the ancient playwright makes one final stage appearance in the period, this time in propria persona, some years after the Puritans closed the theaters and banned public performances in 1642. In 1656, Sir William Davenant produced The First Day’s Entertainment at Rutland House, not one of those proscribed “plays” per se but a theatrical and musical entertainment he calls an “opera,” the first work to bear that name in English.26 The First Day’s Entertainment presents two musical debates, one between a Parisian and a Londoner on their respective cities, inconsequential for our
25 Anne Barton, Ben Jonson, Dramatist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 114. 26 The Dramatic Works of Sir William D’Avenant (1872–1874, rpt. New York: Russell & Russell, 1964), vol. 3, pp. 193–230. See Alfred Harbage, Sir William Davenant, Poet Venturer 1606–1668 (1935, rpt. New York: Octagon, 1971), pp. 121–3; Mary Edmond, Rare Sir William Davenant (New York: St. Martin’s, 1987), pp. 122–6.
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purposes, and another between Diogenes and Aristophanes. These two ancient figures “declaim against and for public entertainment by moral representations” (199). Aristophanes discourses on the human need for common recreation and on the evils of solitude. He defends the ancient practice of presenting heroic virtue in drama and outlines the therapeutic benefits of music, which “doth not heighten melancholy into madness, but rather unites and recollects a broken and scattered mind” (211). He concludes with a defense of the imagination that looks backward to Sir Philip Sidney and forward to Percy Shelley: He [Diogenes] is offended at scenes in the opera, as at the useless visions of the imagination. Is it not the safest and shortest way to understanding, when you are brought to see vast seas and provinces, fleets, armies, and forts, without the hazards of a voyage, or pains of a long march? Nor is that deception where we are prepared and consent to be deceived. Nor is there much loss in that deceit, where we gain some variety of experience by a short journey of the sight. (p. 212)
The ancient author often criticized for immorality in the period here defends for all England the power of the imagination and the moral value of public entertainment and theater. Surely Aristophanes himself would have appreciated that ironic reversal.
Maik Goth
Exaggerating Terence’s Andria: Steele’s The Conscious Lovers, Bellamy’s The Perjur’d Devotee and Terentian Criticism Abstract: This article takes a fresh look at the reception of Terentian comedy in 18thcentury drama and criticism, and reassesses the view that Terence was a forbear of sentimental or “weeping” comedy. I offer comparative readings of two plays adapted from Terence’s Andria, Richard Steele’s quintessential “weeping comedy” The Conscious Lovers and Daniel Bellamy’s little-known “laughing comedy” The Perjur’d Devotee, situating them in contemporary literary debates, in which Terence is cited as an authority to consolidate theories and modes of comedy and used as a source for critical attacks and defences. I begin with an examination of Steele’s sentimental interpretation of the homo-sum passage in Heautontimorumenos, and then offer select analyses of both adaptations. I close with a reading of critical responses to Steele’s The Conscious Lovers by writers such as John Dennis, the anonymous author of The Censor Censured and George Colman, who critique him for misunderstanding and misrepresenting Terentian drama.
1. Introduction The course English drama took after the Renaissance is marked by a major historical event: in 1642, the Puritans under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell passed a law against acting and effectively closed the theaters. They remained closed until 1660, when Charles II returned to England to restore the monarchy.1 These changes had a substantial impact on the development of comedy. According to the prevalent view, playwrights first liberated themselves and their audiences from Puritanism after the theaters were re-opened in the wake of the Restoration with comedies that displayed a heady mix of sex and libertinism. Then in the early 18th century, a younger generation
I thank Douglas Olson for inviting me to join the ranks of contributors for Ancient Comedy and Reception, and for his support and guidance during the preparation of this article; Burkhard Niederhoff for generous advice and criticism, and for allowing me to use material from his forthcoming monograph, Die englische Komödie: Eine Einführung (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2013); and Michael Fontaine for sharing with me his excellent article “The Terentian Reformation: From Menander to Alexandria,” from the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy. 1 For a nuanced account, see Emmet L. Avery and Arthur H. Scouten, “The Theatrical World, 1650– 1700,” in: William van Lennep (ed.), The London Stage: 1600–1800, Part 1 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1965), pp. xxi–xxviii.
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of playwrights took offence at these so-called “rake comedies” and established a new comic mode: sentimental or “weeping” comedy, which shunned immorality and bawdy humor and offered instead what Richard Steele famously called “a Joy too exquisite for Laughter.”2 The spirit of mirth was allegedly reclaimed only when Goldsmith and Sheridan advocated “laughing comedy” in the 1770s.3 This widely-disseminated view radically oversimplifies the complex history of English theater.4 In fact, weeping comedy still contains features familiar from Restoration comedy, and laughing comedy coexisted with weeping comedy in the 18th century.5 Like the history of English comedy after 1660, Terence’s role in the evolution of English drama and criticism has been oversimplified by critics. The master narrative has it that Terence helped refine the English stage from immoral “rake comedy” to morally oriented “weeping” comedy.6 This assumption is due in no small part to Richard Steele’s massively publicized view that Terence’s plays contain a type of humanitas that prefigures sentimentalism.7 In this article, I reassess Terence’s pro-
2 Richard Steele, “Preface to The Conscious Lovers” (1722), in: Shirley Strum Kenny (ed.), The Plays of Richard Steele (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 299. 3 Oliver Goldsmith, “An Essay on the Theatre; or, A Comparison between Laughing and Weeping Comedy” (1772), in: Arthur Friedman (ed.), Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), vol. 3, pp. 209–13. 4 Malcolm Kelsall repeats this reductive view in “The Classics and Eighteenth-Century Theatre,” in: David Hopkins and Charles Martindale (eds.), The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, 1660–1790 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 469. 5 On the continuity between Restoration and sentimental comedy, see e.g. Burkhard Niederhoff, “Rule of Contrary:” Das Paradox in der englischen Komödie der Restaurationszeit und des frühen 18. Jahrhunderts (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2001), pp. 225–7. On laughing comedy, see David Arthur Nelson, The Laughing Comedy of the Eighteenth Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1965); Richard W. Bevis, The Laughing Tradition: Stage Comedy in Garrick’s Day (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980); Robert D. Hume, “Goldsmith and Sheridan and the Supposed Revolution of ‘Laughing’ against ‘Sentimental’ Comedy,” in: Paul J. Korshin (ed.), Studies in Change and Revolution: Aspects of English Intellectual History 1640–1800 (Menston: Scholar Press, 1972), pp. 237–76. 6 Malcolm Kelsall, “Terence and Steele,” in: Kenneth Richards and Peter Thomson (eds.), The Eighteenth-Century English Stage: The Proceedings of a Symposium Sponsored by the Manchester University Department of Drama (London: Methuen, 1972), pp. 11–27; Eugene M. Waith, “Aristophanes, Plautus, Terence, and the Refinement of English Comedy,” Studies in the Literary Imagination 10 (1977), pp. 91– 108. Even the most comprehensive work treating the Terentian influence on post-Renaissance comedy, Marion McGinnis, The Terentian Mode in English Comedy, 1676–1778 (Diss. Virginia, 2006), considers sentimentalism an inherent quality of Terentian comedy and claims that Steele’s The Conscious Lovers is the first specimen of a properly “Terentian” comedy in England (cf. p. 314). On Terence’s influence on Augustan comedy, cf. also H. Samson Grant, “Terence, Comic Patterns, and the Augustan Stage,” in: Karelisa V. Hartigan (ed.), All the World: Drama Past and Present, II (Washington: University Press of America, 1982), pp. 85–92. 7 Kelsall, “Terence and Steele” (above, n. 6), p. 11, claims that “Terence is a sentimentalist of classic theatre.” Although taking a promising direction by opening up the discourse on humanitas to include the corrupt nature of human beings, Kelsall mainly reiterates the classical view that Terence is a protosentimenalist. In Latin studies, A.S. Gratwick, “Drama,” in: E.J. Kenney and W. Clausen (eds.), Cam-
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fessed sentimentality and contend that it is counterproductive to conceive of him exclusively as a proto-sentimentalist playwright, a view that rests on aesthetic premises Terence did not share. To illustrate the complexity of Terence’s reception in the early 18th century, I take a fresh look at two adaptations of his Andria, Sir Richard Steele’s sentimental comedy The Conscious Lovers (1722) and Daniel Bellamy’s humorous The Perjur’d Devotee (publ. 1739),8 and explore how these hypertexts relate to the hypotext that inspired them with recourse to the terminology developed by Gérard Genette in his landmark study Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree.9 Both plays fall under Genette’s category of heterodiegetic transposition, because they transfer the action of Terence’s plays into a different diegesis (“world”), here that of early 18th-century England.10 I first offer comparative readings of both plays that cover the building blocks of the dramas (plot, character) and the theories of comedy implicit in them, and then advance close readings of the opening scenes of the hypotext and the hypertexts it inspired. I conclude with a discussion of contemporary critical commentary on Steele’s The Conscious Lovers, in which Terence is cited as an authority to attack Steele’s allegedly “Terentian” mode of comedy, namely John Dennis’s “Remarks on a Play, Call’d The Conscious Lovers, a Comedy” (1723), the anonymous The Censor Censured (1723) and George Colman’s commentary on his translation of Andria (1765).11 I attempt to show that adapters and commentators on both sides of the dramatic divide monopolized Terence for their own ends by exaggerating different aspects of his comedies, ultimately seeking to implement an official, authoritative history of comedy.
bridge History of Classical Literature I: Latin Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 122–3, attempts to liberate Terence from the entrenched view that his comedies invented humanitas. 8 For the play, see Daniel Bellamy, The Dramatic Pieces, and other Miscellaneous Works in Prose and Verse, 2 vols. (London: Printed for the Author, 1739–1740), vol. 1. 9 Gérard Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), p. 5, explains that hypertextuality refers to “any relationship uniting a text B ([…] the hypertext) to an earlier text A ([…] the hypotext), upon which it is grafted in a manner that is not that of commentary.” 10 Genette adds that “the habitual movement of diegetic transposition is a movement of proximization (in temporal, geographic, or social terms): the hypertext transposes the diegesis of its hypotext to bring it up to date and closer to its own audience” (Genette, Palimpsests (above, n. 9), p. 304). 11 See John Dennis, “Remarks on a Play, Call’d The Conscious Lovers,” in: Edward Niles Hooker (ed.), The Critical Works of John Dennis (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1939–1943), vol. 2, pp. 251–74; The Censor Censured; or, The Conscious Lovers Examin’d: in a Dialogue between Sir Dicky Marplot and Jack Freeman into which Mr. Dennis is introduced by Way of Postscript; with some Observations on His late Remarks (London: T. Warner, 1723); Terence, Translated into Familiar Blank Verse by George Colman (London: Printed for T. Becket, 1765).
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2. Homo sum: Terence, Richard Steele and Sentimentalism When Sir Richard Steele (1672–1729) began adapting Terence’s Andria into a comedy of his own, the Roman playwright was already well known among educated Englishmen, not least because he was widely taught in schools and at university.12 In fact, Terence exerted a pervasive influence on the theatrical and intellectual landscape in England after 1660. His plays were frequently translated,13 but they also inspired many contemporary adaptations, the chief examples of which are Sir Charles Sedley’s Bellamira (1687), one of no less than four English Eunuchs written between 1675 and 1778,14 and Thomas Shadwell’s The Squire of Alsatia (1689), an adaptation of Adelphoe that relocates the play to late 17th-century London.15 Playwrights also resorted to famous Terentian motifs such as senes quarrelling about proper parenting, and used
12 See T.W. Baldwin, William Shakespere’s Small Latine and Lesse Greek (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1944), p. 116. On Terence’s influence on French theatre, particularly Molière, see Philip Ford’s article in this volume; and for his impact on Spanish theatre, see the article by Benjamín GarcíaHernández, Rosario López Gregoris and Carmen González-Vázquez. 13 See e.g. Laurence Echard’s Terence’s Comedies Made English (1689); Thomas Cooke’s Terence’s Comedies in two volumes (1747–1748); and George Colman’s blank verse translation (1765). These translations, all prefaced by critical essays on Terentian comedy, differ substantially in accord with the translators’ aesthetic preferences and cater to the public’s changing literary tastes: Echard updates Terence as a Restoration playwright in a fairly loose translation spiced up with modish language; Cooke aims at recreating Terence’s choice Latin in a close, word-by-word translation; and Colman casts Terence’s comedies into poetic blank verse. For the texts, see Terence’s Comedies: Made English, with His Life, and Some Remarks at the End; by Several Hands [trans. Laurence Echard et al.] (London: A. Swall and T. Childe, 1689); Terence’s Comedies […], trans. by Th. Cooke, 2 vols. (London: Printed for R. Ware et al., 1747–1748); Terence, Translated into Familiar Blank Verse by George Colman (London: Printed for T. Becket, 1765). For a survey of Terence in English, see John Barsby, “Terence in Translation,” in: Antony Augoustakis and Ariana Traill (eds.), A Companion to Terence, Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World 103 (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), pp. 446–65. 14 Two of the four adaptations are from the 17th century: William Wycherley’s The Country Wife (1675) is a loose, playful adaptation of Terence’s play, while Charles Sedley’s Bellamira (1687) blends relatively faithful translations of Terence’s Eunuchus with new characters and scene-types familiar to Sedley’s audience. From the 18th century, two adaptations have come down to us: Thomas Cooke’s The Eunuch, or The Darby Captain: A Farce (1737), which reduces the Terentian source to its bare essentials, and Edmund Ball’s The Beautiful Armenia, or The Energy and Force of Love: A Comedy (1778). For the texts, see Arthur Friedman (ed.), The Plays of William Wycherley (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979); V. de Sola Plata (ed.), The Poetical and Dramatic Works of Sir Charles Sedley, 2 vols. (London: n.p., 1929; repr. New York: AMS Press, 1969), vol. 2, pp. 1–97; Thomas Cooke, The Eunuch, or, The Darby Captain, a Farce. As it is Acted by his Majesty’s Servants at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane (London: Printed and Sold by J. Isted […] A. Dodd […] and E. Nutt, 1737); Edmund Ball, The Beautiful Armenia, or The Energy and Force of Love: A Comedy (London: John Cattlin, 1778). 15 For the text, see J.C. Ross (ed.), The Squire of Alsatia: A Critical Edition (New York: Garland, 1987).
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them in contemporary educational disputes.16 Terence’s own pronounced engagement in theater criticism in the prologues to his comedies also made him a favorite among English critics; a ubiquitous presence in treatises, prefaces and prologues, he often becomes an involuntary plaything in vitriolic theatrical debates.17 Steele turned to Terence when he attempted to fashion a new kind of comedy. Following Jeremy Collier’s call in A Short View of the Immorality, and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698) for a reform of English drama,18 Steele envisioned sentimental drama as a new comic mode that would bring about moral improvement. Such moral drama was designed as an antidote to the irresponsible, corrupt libertinism of the Restoration;19 whereas the world of rake comedy was peopled by libertines and coquettes bent on satisfying their immoral, solipsistic desires, the world of sentimental comedy was peopled by good, virtuous, honest characters who felt compassion for their fellow human beings. Terence played a decisive role in Steele’s critical move and was established by him as the forbear of a new type of drama in an issue of The Spectator, a periodical Steele founded with Joseph Addison (1672–1719) which ran from 1711 to 1712. In issue 502 (1712), Steele praises Heautontimorumenos as “from the Beginning to the End a perfect Picture of humane Life” without a single “Passage that could raise a Laugh.”20 To Steele, Heautontimorumenos is not a mimetic representation of human life as it is, but stages a desirable ideal: humane life, the ability to live according to humanitas.21 Steele’s choice of epithet is important, for it associates Terence with a particular comic aesthetics. In theoretical terms, Steele assigns the
16 The motif of senes exemplifying diametrically opposed morals and mores reappeared in numerous plays over the course of more than a century, and drew especially on the brothers Micio and Demea from Terence’s Adelphoe. Among their 17th-century descendants are Sir John Everyoung and Sir Samuel Forecast in Sedley’s The Mulberry Garden (1668), as well as Sir Timothy Treat-All and Sir Anthony Merriwell in Aphra Behn’s The City Heiress (1682). For the texts, see Sedley, The Poetical and Dramatic Works (above, n. 13), vol. 1, pp. 99–186, and Janet Todd (ed.), The Works of Aphra Behn, ed. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1996), vol. 7, pp. 1–87. On the motif of the fathers, see also Derek Hughes, The Theatre of Aphra Behn (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), pp. 152–4. 17 See below on the contemporary reception of The Conscious Lovers. 18 Jeremy, Collier, A Short View of the Immorality, and Profaneness of the English Stage (London: S. Keble, 1698). 19 See Ernest Bernbaum, The Drama of Sensibility: A Sketch of the History of English Sentimental Comedy and Domestic Tragedy 1696–1780 (1915, repr. Gloucester Mass.: Peter Smith, 1958); James Cox, The Rise of Sentimental Comedy (Folcroft: Folcroft Press, 1926), pp. 1–6; Arthur Sherbo, English Sentimental Drama (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1957), pp. 1–31. Frank Hale Ellis’s Sentimental Comedy: Theory and Practice, Cambridge Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) remains an unsatisfactory attempt to categorize this comic mode. 20 Richard Steele, The Spectator, ed. by Donald Bond, 5 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), vol. 4, pp. 280–3. Steele, p. 281, explains that Terence’s original audience “was entertained with Satisfaction by so sober and polite Mirth.” 21 See OED, “humane, adj.”
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coercive didactic effect of comedy not to the presentation of imperfect human beings given to folly,22 but to the portrayal of perfect humanity based on sympathy and the individual’s responsibility to create a humane society. Steele’s praise of Terence’s humanitas culminates in a translation of the famous Terentian line, homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto (“I am human, and I regard no human business as other people’s”; Heautontimorumenos 77):23 “In the first Scene of the Comedy, when one of the old Men accuses the other of Impertinence for interposing in his Affairs, he answers, I am a Man, and cannot help feeling any Sorrow that can arrive at Man.”24 Steele is right about the context: Chremes seeks to justify his interest in Menedemus’ self-castigation by expressing his interest in his fellow human beings. But he significantly changes the wording of the Terentian source. While in the original Latin Chremes uses the phrase humani nil to stress his general curiosity about his neighbors’ affairs, Steele limits it to sorrow in order to recontextualize the Terentian line in a sentimental discourse of pity. Sorrow is here characterized as the innate sympathetic response of the ideal sentimentalist (“cannot help feeling”) and is triggered by the awareness that unhappiness can be the result of external circumstances (“arriving at man”), which necessitates assistance from the community. Steele, acting as traduttore traditore, alters Terence’s Latin to consolidate his own comic theory. He thus positions himself in a tradition stretching back as far as Cicero and Augustine,25 but goes beyond it by exaggerating the opening scene of Terence’s Heautontimorumenos, and with it the entire play, into a manifesto of sentimentalism.26 From this personal reassessment of Terence’s comedy Steele derives the playwright’s task of producing exemplary comedy, which brings to the stage characters better than real human beings in order to reform the audience.
22 See e.g. Shadwell’s definition of comedy and its aims in his “Preface to The Humorists”: “As for the reformation of Fopps and Knaves, I think Comedy most useful, because to render Vices and Fopperies very ridiculous, is much a greater punishment than Tragedy can inflict upon ’em. There we do but subject ’em to hatred, or at worst to death; here we make them live to be despised and laugh’d at, which certainly makes more impression upon men, than even death can do.” Montague Summers (ed.), The Complete Works of Thomas Shadwell, 5 vols. (1927; repr. New York: Fortune Press, 1964), vol. 1, p. 184. 23 Texts and translations of Terence’s plays are taken from John Barsby (ed. and trans.), Terence, Comedies, 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001). 24 Steele, The Spectator (above, n. 20), vol. 4, p. 280. 25 For Cicero, see De legibus 1.33; De finibus bonorum et malorum 1.3, 3.63; De officiis 1.30; for Augustine, see Epistulae 155, 14 and Contra Iulianum 4.83. The texts are collected in Eckard Lefèvre’s exhaustive list of loci from classical antiquity to the 20th century in Terenz’ und Menanders “Heautontimorumenos,” Zetemata 91 (Munich: Beck, 1994), pp. 27–30. 26 Kelsall, “Terence and Steele” (above, n. 6), pp. 14, 17, goes so far as to elevate Chremes to a figuration of Terence the playwright. In his discussion of Heautontimorumenos 77–9, Kelsall first reads Chremes as “a moral empiricist” who “studies human nature in all its aspects so that he may learn good from evil, that he may follow the good, and seek to preserve others from going astray,” and then explains that “Terence is empirical.”
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Judging by the pertinacity with which drama criticism has repeated Steele’s claim that Terence was a sentimental comedian avant la lettre, one cannot dispute the success of Steele’s strategy.27 Although Bernbaum criticized this view as early as 1915,28 critics have carried it well into the 21st century. A brief look at the context in which the Terentian phrase is uttered underlines the extent to which Steele rewrites his source by strategically misrepresenting its context: MEN CHR MEN
CHR
Chreme, tantumne ab re tuast oti tibi aliena ut cures ea quae nil ad te attinent? homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto. Chremes, do you have so much free time from your own business that you concern yourself with other people’s affairs when they have nothing to do with you? I am human, and I regard no human business as other people’s. (Heautontimorumenos 75–7)
Chremes’s “manifesto” of humanitas is in fact merely a bit of quick-witted repartee, for Chremes picks up Menedemus’s aliena to support his dominant role in the dialogue. He thus hides the polypragmôn’s true motivation, meddling in other people’s affairs, behind the front of a righteous homo humanus.29 18th-century scholars were aware of this misreading of Chremes’ speech. In 1753, Richard Hurd cautioned readers against misinterpreting these lines by taking them out of context: “We are not to take this, as hath constantly been done, for a sentiment of pure humanity and the natural ebullition of benevolence. We may observe in it a designed stroke of satirical resentment. The Self-Tormentor […] has ridiculed Chremes’ curiosity by a severe reproof. Chremes, to be even with him, reflects upon the inhumanity of his temper.”30 In 1765, George Colman followed Hurd’s reading, astutely observing that “[t]he original contains a play of words between homo and humani, and a retort of the alienum.”31 The dispute on Terence sketched out here testifies to the complicated critical debate on the Roman playwright but also gives a first hint at Steele’s method of exaggerating Terence: the original, comparatively innocuous phrase is exchanged
27 Lisa Zunshine, “Bastard Daughters and Foundling Heroines: Rewriting Illegitimacy for the Eighteenth–Century Stage,” Modern Philology 102 (2005), p. 521, calls Terence “the patron saint of new comedy.” 28 See Bernbaum, The Drama of Sensibility (above, n. 19), p. 11, who criticizes the “sentimental misinterpretation” of Terence; Waith, “Aristophanes, Plautus, and Terence” (above, n. 6). 29 McGinnis, Terentian Mode (above, n. 6), pp. 253–4, attempts to save the humanitas reading of the passage by pointing to the situational context of Chremes’s utterance. Claiming that the notion of sorrow is supplied by the context of the scene, he disregards the larger context of the entire play. 30 Richard Hurd, Dissertation on the Provinces of the Drama in: Q. Horatii Flacci Epistolae ad Pisones et Augustum, with an English Commentary and Notes, 2 vols. 3rd edn. (Cambridge: W. Thurleybourn, 1757), vol. 1, p. 275. 31 Colman, Terence (above, n. 11), p. 222.
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for one with loaded terms, suggesting that Steele essentially produces a “sentimental parody” of Terence.32
3. Terence’s Andria and Steele’s The Conscious Lovers Steele’s sentimental reading of Heautontimorumenos heavily influenced his composition of The Conscious Lovers.33 Andria, the play Steele selected as the hypotext onto which he would graft his new comedy, features a rich array of characters, intrigues, counter-intrigues, recognitions and reversals that testifies to Terence’s precocious mastery of the New Comic style. But Terence’s play is more than a well-served réchauffé of earlier hypotexts, for it already flaunts specifically Terentian attributes: a double love plot, an expertly-handled story-line and realistic language and characters. In addition, the prologue serves no expository function but acts as the poet’s selfdefence against Luscius of Lanuvium’s charge that he contaminated Menander’s Andria by adding scenes from Menander’s Perinthia (contaminari non decere fabulas, Andria 16).34 Already in his first play, Terence thus moved away from earlier Roman models, and he maintained that course for the rest of his dramatic career. 32 Other examples from the 17th and 18th centuries corroborate the creative appeal and interpretive openness of the line. In 1676, John Dryden, disappointed by the negative reception of his tragedy Aureng-Zebe, comments on the volatility of critics and human beings in a letter to his patron. When considering the possibility of altering the ending of his tragedy, he quotes Terence’s homo sum, and translates it thus: “as I am a man, I must be changeable” (quoted in Tom Mason, “Dryden’s Classicism,” in: Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, 1660–1790 (above, n. 4), pp. 91–2). And in 1722, Steele himself radically reworks the Terentian citation for The Conscious Lovers, where Isabella admonishes Indiana not to trust Bevil: “he is a Man, and therefore a Hypocrite” (Conscious Lovers II.ii.53–4; see Kelsall, “Terence and Steele” (above, n. 6), p. 11). Unlike Steele’s sentimental parody in The Spectator, which promoted the source text into a moral absolute, Dryden’s letter and Isabella’s warning are examples of burlesque travesty which trivializes the hypotext by exchanging humani with human flaws (on the five types of parody, see Genette, Palimpsests (above, n. 9), pp. 19–24). 33 The close relation between Steele’s journalism and playwriting is discussed in John Loftis, Steele at Drury-Lane (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952), pp. 183–93. 34 On Terence’s achievements in the field of comedy, see the essays in Peter Kruschwitz, WiduWolfgang Ehlers and Fritz Felgentreu (eds.), Terentius Poeta, Zetemata 127 (Munich: Beck, 2007), and A.J. Boyle (ed.), Rethinking Terence, Ramus 33 (2004). See also Michael Fontaine’s forthcoming “The Terentian Reformation: From Menander to Alexandria,” in: Michael Fontaine and Adele Scafuro (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). On Terence’s prologues, see Karl Büchner, Das Theater des Terenz (Heidelberg: Winter, 1974), pp. 484–97. I am not suggesting that Terence single-handedly invented the features I mention above; what I want to emphasize is his achievement in developing them. On the hypertextual practices employed by Roman comedians adapting Greek drama, see Michael Fontaine’s article in this volume, as well as Boris Dunsch’s close reading of Syra’s complaint about the sexual double standard in Mercator 817–29.
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First performed at the Megalesian Games in 166 BCE, Terence’s debut comedy revolves around a double love-plot. Nine months before the play, Pamphilus raped Glycerium, the supposed sister of the recently deceased Andrian courtesan Chrysis. Upon learning that Glycerium is pregnant, he promises to marry her and take care of their child. Meanwhile, Pamphilus’ father Simo, unaware of his son’s sexual exploits and marital commitments, has arranged his marriage to Philumena, the daughter of his neighbor Chremes. Philumena in turn is the love-interest of Pamphilus’ friend Charinus. This second love-plot is intricately connected to the first, but is not developed in much detail.
Protagonist
Antagonist/Obstacle
Goal
Pamphilus
Simo rival: Philumena
Glycerium (revealed to be Pasibula, Chremes’s daughter)
Charinus
Chremes rival: Pamphilus
Philumena35
In the course of the play, Chremes finds out about Pamphilus’ affair and calls off the marriage, while Simo tests his son by pretending that the marriage will still take place as planned. Pamphilus’ wily servant Davos talks his master into accepting the marriage, since he knows that it must have been called off. The servant’s clever plot is thwarted when Simo convinces Chremes that Pamphilus and Glycerium have broken up, and Chremes agrees to continue with the wedding. As if this were not confusion enough, Glycerium gives birth to a boy, which Davos uses as means of convincing Chremes to cancel the wedding. In true New Comic style, an anagnorisis brings about the comic peripeteia of the plot: when Crito, an old man from Andros and cousin of the deceased courtesan Chrysis, comes to claim his inheritance, Chremes recognizes him as an old acquaintance. It turns out that Glycerium was once brought to Andros by Phania, Chremes’ brother, and is Chremes’ long-lost daughter Pasibula: Phania had left home to escape the war but was shipwrecked; Pasibula was then brought up by Crito’s brother, the father of Chrysis (Andria 922–35). Happiness ensues, since Pamphilus can marry Glycerium/Pasibula and Charinus can ask for Philumena’s hand. Steele uses Andria as the touchstone of his new dramatic aesthetics: by way of heterodiegetic transposition, he transfers Terence’s turbulent, complex comedy to 18thcentury London and thus into a world in which Restoration libertinism has been superseded by a new, sentimental ethics.36 The Terentian street-scene is changed to the 35 I owe this idea of representing plot in comedies to my colleague Burkhard Niederhoff, who uses it throughout his forthcoming Die englische Komödie: Eine Einführung (Berlin: Erich Schmitt, 2013). 36 Kelsall, “Terence and Steele” (above, n. 6), p. 13, fully endorses Steele’s adaptation as true to its source: since Steele “sought to touch with delight the moral sense of the wise rather than to draw
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drawing-rooms of the aristocracy and the merchant class as well as to St. James’s Park, and the Roman characters are merged with character-types known either from Steele’s essays or from earlier comedies.37 At the same time, Steele finds in Andria topics still current in his own day and age, such as the nature of proper parenting and the problem of forced marriage. To bring Terence’s comedy up-to-date, Steele also introduced the smouldering conflict between the gentry and the merchants into the play by turning Simo into the landed squire Sir John Bevil and Chremes into the wealthy merchant Sealand.38 The Conscious Lovers is thus very much a contemporary play. Despite its modern additions, Steele’s hypertext is determined by the plot and character constellations of its hypotext. Protagonist
Antagonist/Obstacle
Goal
Bevil
Sir John Bevil rival: Lucinda
Indiana (later revealed to be Mr Sealand’s daughter by his first wife)
Myrtle
Mr Sealand (formerly Danvers) rival: Bevil Mrs Sealand rival: Cimberton
Lucinda
laughter by ridiculing folly and vice, he was, in The Conscious Lovers, emulating the spirit and not merely following the plot of Terence’s Andria.” Loftis, Steele at Drury-Lane (above, note 33), p. 200, similarly explains that Steele chose Terence for his “humanity” and for “providing ample incident for displaying tender emotions.” Both misrepresent Terence’s Andria by reading it through Steele’s hypertext. Barkhausen advances a much more nuanced comparative analysis, which works out similarities and differences between both texts. See Die Vernunft des Sentimentalismus: Untersuchungen zur Entstehung der Empfindsamkeit und empfindsamen Komödie in England (Tübingen: Narr, 1982), pp. 259–76. 37 Steele had established many of the characters appearing in The Conscious Lovers in his periodical The Theatre. Its fictitious editor, Sir John Edgar, is an early figuration of Sir John Bevil, his virtuous son Harry the blueprint for Bevil Junior, and his servant Humphrey the prototype of the eponymous character in The Conscious Lovers (Kenny (ed.), The Plays of Richard Steele (above, n. 2), pp. 279–80). Steele had also already introduced Mr Sealand, Lucinda and Myrtle in The Theatre 3 (1720). For the text see John Loftis (ed.), Richard Steele’s “The Theatre” 1720 (Oxford: Clarendon 1962), pp. 9–14; see also Loftis, Steele at Drury-Lane (above, n. 33), pp. 183–93. 38 On the relation between aristocrats and merchants in The Conscious Lovers, see John Loftis, Comedy and Society from Congreve to Fielding, Stanford Studies in Language and Literature 19 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959), pp. 84–5. Loftis essentially argues that supremacy is assigned to the diligent and persevering merchants and not to the otiose gentry (with reference to the famous dispute between Sir John and Seaman in The Conscious Lovers IV.ii). For a survey of critiques of such clear-cut oppositions, see J. Douglas Canfield, “Shifting Tropes of Ideology in English Serious Drama, Late Stuart to Early Georgian,” in: J. Douglas Canfield and Deborah C. Payne (eds.), Cultural Readings of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Theater (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1995), pp. 219–23.
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The main romantic plot revolves around Young Bevil (Pamphilus), who is in love with the orphan girl Indiana (Glycerium). Bevil’s father Sir John Bevil (Simo) has arranged for his son to marry Lucinda (Philumena), the daughter of the rich merchant Sealand (Chremes). Mrs Sealand, his second wife, has other designs and seeks to marry the girl to the aristocrat Cimberton. Lucinda’s real suitor, however, is Bevil’s friend, the commoner Myrtle (Charinus). Steele thus builds The Conscious Lovers around Terence’s basic plot-points. Sealand, like Chremes, finds out that Bevil keeps another woman and suspects her to be his mistress. When he finally meets Indiana in her lodgings, he recognises her as his long-lost daughter from his first marriage by a bracelet she throws away in emotional turmoil. This brings about a happy ending for Young Bevil and Indiana, as well as for Myrtle and Lucinda. Now that Sealand has two daughters, he can offer each one only half the dowry. Disappointed by the loss of money, Cimberton is no longer interested in Lucinda, who can now marry Myrtle. While Steele took care to modernize Andria, his creative engagement with the Roman original bespeaks a manipulative transformation of the hypotext to augment and expurge it. Steele altered Terence’s debut comedy by using two strategies that, taken together, constitute Genette’s notion of amplification: thematic extension, which consists in adding and elaborating on characters, inventing additional plots and tying up loose ends; and stylistic expansion, which employs a verbal lengthening of the hypertext on the basis of the hypotext.39 Some of these changes were necessitated by different theatrical conventions. In New Comedy, female love-interests such as Glycerium in Andria or Pamphila in Terence’s Eunuchus remained offstage or silent. Like other English adapters before him, Steele accordingly develops the hypotext’s female characters into “proper” onstage characters. As part of this transformation, he embellishes Indiana’s story considerably to include financial difficulties, voyages, pirates, deaths and the pirate’s lewd lawyer brother, from whose clutches she is saved by Bevil.40 The twists and turns of Indiana’s past bear witness to Steele’s exaggeration of the orphan motif, which is geared toward stirring the audience’s pity. In addition to developing the heroine of the main romantic plot, Steele expands the subordinate love story in Andria (Charinus–Philumena) into a more distinctive plot in The Conscious Lovers. He does so by introducing an additional rival for Myrtle: Cimberton, a hybrid character combining features of the Restoration rake and the fop.41 Although
39 These mechanisms are described in Genette, Palimpsests (above, n. 9), pp. 254–69. 40 Indiana’s father, the Bristol merchant Danvers, fell upon hard times and went to the Indies to improve his financial condition, leaving his family behind. His wife, daughter and sister followed later, but were captured by a pirate. Indiana’s mother died at sea, but the pirate captain raised her with his wife. When he too died at sea, his possessions, and with them Indiana, passed on to his brother, who desired the young woman. Indiana resisted his advances and was about to be thrown into prison when she was rescued by Bevil Junior, who brought her and her aunt to London. 41 The fop, a staple of Restoration comedy, is an aristocratic character who flaunts his French fashion, modish language and superior artifice. See Susan Staves, “A Few Kind Words for the Fop,” Studies in
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Steele distances himself from the comic ridiculum in the preface to The Conscious Lovers, he construes Cimberton as a character whose view of marriage as an unnatural limiting of sexual partners makes him the target of derision.42 Not only does Steele complicate the secondary love-plot, however, by introducing a new character, but he also augments it by tying up loose ends. While Charinus’ betrothal to Philumena remains a mere possibility in the Terentian hypotext,43 Myrtle’s engagement to Lucinda is finalized in the closing scene of the hypertext. A double marriage at the end of The Conscious Lovers makes the play conform to the generic features of the architext, which posits that love relationships are resolved by marriage, and is the logical endpoint of a properly Terentian double love-plot.44 At the end of the play, Steele also attempts to out-Terence Terence by dispensing with the outside character (Crito) whose appearance brings about the peripeteia. Instead, he adds various incidents to disclose that Sealand is Indiana’s father and Isabella’s brother. Steele first stages Isabella’s recognition of her brother (she here takes on the role of Crito), who does not disclose the recognition immediately, however, and then, during the first meeting of father and daughter, has Indiana throw away her bracelet, which Sealand recognises as the token he gave to his wife when he left to make his fortune in the Indies. Steele thus combines a double anagnorisis with a comic peripeteia, which is further evidence of his attempts to exaggerate the hypotext for sentimental ends.45 In addition to augmenting the Terentian original, Steele ostentatiously attempted to excise potentially offensive material from the hypotext.46 As he aimed to establish his comedy as a corrective to the libidinal excess of Restoration comedy, the sexual content of Andria is missing from The Conscious Lovers.47 Pamphilus, the flawed adulescens from Andria who undergoes significant development in the course of the
English Literature 22 (1982), pp. 413–28; Moira E. Casey, “The Fop: ‘Apes and Echoes of Men’: Gentlemanly Ideals and the Restoration,” in: Vicki K. Janick (ed.), Fools and Jesters in Literature, Art, and History: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook (Westport: Greenwood, 1998), pp. 207–14. 42 See Steele, The Conscious Lovers III.i.224–46. 43 Some manuscripts of Terence include an alternative ending that concludes the subplot with Chremes betrothing Philumena to Charinus. Like The Conscious Lovers in the 1700s, this ending was supposed to tie up loose ends but was already identified as spurious by Donatus. See Barsby on Andria 981. 44 In a similar vein, Steele adds a third love-plot by expanding the relation between Davos and Mysis into Tom’s courtship of Indiana’s maid Phillis. Unlike Cimberton, who becomes the object of the other characters’ and the audience’s scorn, even the servants have a relation that is coloured by sympathetic elements (see Niederhoff, Die englische Komödie (above, n. 35)). Kelsall’s censure of their lustfulness is a critical misjudgement; see “Terence and Steele” (above, n. 6), pp. 17–19. 45 Niederhoff interprets the bracelet scene as a paradoxical peripety: Indiana is reunited with her lost family the very moment she symbolically severs the bond with them by casting away the token (see “Rule of Contrary” (above, n. 5), pp. 214–15). 46 On expurgation, see Genette, Palimpsests (above, n. 9), pp. 234–5. 47 Zunshine, “Bastard Daughters” (above, n. 27), pp. 514–17, elaborates on the problems the premarital intercourse and Glycerium’s state as future courtesan posed for 18th-century audiences.
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play,48 is transformed into Young Bevil, a consummate sentimental gentleman who keeps his sexual urges in check. Thus no sexual violation has occurred, and no child is born during the play.49 Steele establishes Bevil as the epitome of virtue by transferring the sexual violence associated with Pamphilus in Andria to the evil brother of the pirate captain and to Cimberton, and by making Bevil the hero who saves the damsel from distress.50 Bevil thus represents the ideal of the homo humanus Steele identified in Heautontimorumenos. Violence too is erased from the play. In Andria, Davos is punished and bound because he allegedly attempted to deceive Chremes, a charge from which he is never fully exculpated.51 In The Conscious Lovers, no such violence is launched against servants; to the contrary, the relations between the Bevils and their servants Humphrey and Tom are defined by trust and friendship.52 The one critical moment in the play when violence threatens, in the form of a duel between Myrtle and Bevil, becomes an emphatic call against duelling.53 Steele creates The Conscious Lovers by exaggerating the aspects of his Terentian source that fit his overall educational program. His adaptation hence changes the value system of the source play, a hypertextual practice Genette terms transvaluation:54 the hypotext is rendered more sublime and idealistic in its appeal to human sympathy, the protagonists are firm examples of Steele’s new comic ethics, and the play rid of potentially offensive dialogue.55 This manipulative remoulding creates a close bond between the hypotext and the hypertext grafted upon it; readers are now required to read Terence’s Andria, and indeed the Terentian oeuvre, through Steele’s sentimental reinterpretation. This connection has proven so inseparable that even modern critics at times fail to differentiate between the different textual layers.
48 Kelsall, “Terence and Steele” (above, n. 6), p. 16, maintains that “[t]here is no lover in Terence with more humane sentiment than Pamphilus.” 49 Henry Brooke’s late 18th-century adaptation of Terence’s Hecyra, The Charitable Association (1778), keeps the birth scene, a staple of New Comedy. For the text, see Henry Brooke, A Collection of the Pieces formerly Published by Henry Brooke [..], 4 vols. (London: Printed for the Author, 1778), vol. 4, pp. 207– 56. Eckard Lefèvre, Terenz’ und Apollodors “Hecyra,” Zetemata 101 (Munich: Beck, 1999), pp. 22–3, offers a concise discussion of this little-known play. 50 McGinnis, Terentian Mode (above, n. 6), p. 313, downplays the significance of Steele’s transformation of Pamphilus. 51 See Terence, Andria 965–82. 52 Bevil’s servant Tom makes this explicit in The Conscious Lovers I.i.138–9. 53 After almost killing another man in a duel, Steele critiqued this practice both in his essays (The Spectator 84 (above, n. 20), vol. 1, pp. 357–60) and in his plays, chiefly in The Lying Lover (1703), which revolves around Young Bookwit’s drastic fifth-act conversion after he almost kills his friend Lovemore in a skirmish. 54 See Genette, Palimpests (above, n. 9), pp. 367–75. 55 See Loftis, Steele at Drury-Lane (above, n. 33), p. 197.
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4. Daniel Bellamy’s The Perjur’d Devotee Steele’s adaptation of Andria into the quintessential sentimental comedy and his close alignment with Terentian drama make the Roman playwright part of England’s official theatrical history. A relatively unknown adaptation of Andria, however, offers instructive insights into the polyvalent nature of Terentian comedy and the processes involved in adapting the source to different comic modes: The Perjur’d Devotee, or The Force of Love by Daniel Bellamy, which supposedly predated The Conscious Lovers but was published only in 1739.56 Bellamy drew substantially on Terence’s original Latin and includes many literal translations, which he often embellishes with modish language and develops into longer speeches.57 The most significant difference between The Conscious Lovers and The Perjur’d Devotee is the lack of Steele’s sentimental aesthetics in the latter. The tonal difference lies inter alia in the play’s debt to laughing comedy, which is apparent in both its chief characters and its keener satirical edge.58 When the anonymous author of the prologue mentions Terence, he does so without touching on the humanitas of the latter. Instead, he underscores Terence’s theatrical proficiency: Terence […] had the Rules by Heart; Disposed his Dishes with the utmost Art; But kept the healthful Appetite in view, And season’d not his Sauce au grand Haut-Gout. Simple, tho’ elegant, was each Design: On such the Scipio’s of that Age could dine. (p. 84)
To the prologue-speaker, Terence’s superb plotting and adherence to the patterns of comedy eclipse his other accomplishments, so much so that simplicity and elegance, traditionally regarded as features of the poet’s language,59 are here relocated to the “design” of the play, which the culinary metaphor suggests is balanced, tasteful and
56 Cf. the editorial note Bellamy Jr. prefaced to the two-volume edition: “The principal Characters of our PERJUR’D DEVOTEE are copied, as any One who is the least conversant with the Classicks will discern at first View, pretty closely from the ANDRIA of TERENCE; and that the main Plot bears some distant Analogy to that justly admir’d Performance of the late Sir Richard Steele, intitled, The CONSCIOUS LOVERS. All the Apology that I think needful to make, with respect to that Incident, is to assure my Friends, that the Former was wrote by my Father, and carefully revised and alter’d by a very judicious Friend of his, some Years before the Latter appear’d upon the Stage” (Bellamy, Dramatic Pieces (above, n. 8)). 57 A similar method is used in Sedley’s Bellamira, and Shadwell’s The Squire of Alsatia (see above, nn. 14 and 15). 58 Cf. also the satire on gossips (Lady Tattle), libertines and fops (e.g. The Perjur’d Devotee I, p. 29). 59 The traditional praise for Terence’s elegant style originates from a fragmentary poem by Cicero, preserved in the Vita Terentii: Cicero claims that Terence alone has translated Menander into lecto sermone (“elegant speech”). Caesar similarly lauded Terence as a puri sermonis amator (“lover of pure
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palatable. This echoes a similar assessment of Terence from the late 17th century, Charles Gildon’s dedicatory letter to Thomas Durfey’s The Marriage-Hater Match’d (1692). Citing Horace’s dictum that Terence’s excellence lies in his art (Epistulae II. i.59), Gildon explains that the Roman playwright may deservedly be praised for his pure language, but his accomplishments also lie in the “Plot or Intrigue in his Plays[:] there is nothing so evident, as that Terence took care of Plot as well as words, and was not less skilled in the Protasis, Epistasis, Catastasis, and Catastrophe, than in the Dialogue, or Discourse.”60 That Gildon offers an analytical plot synopsis of Andria to prove his point demonstrates the positive contemporary opinion of Terence’s theatrical achievements. Bellamy accordingly recycles Terence’s double love-plot rather faithfully, with Sir Toby Testy’s son Valentine and Sir Paul Pliant’s daughter Silvia taking the parts of Pamphilus and Glycerium, and Worthy and Olivia (Sir Toby’s daughter) taking the parts of Charinus and Philumena. To these two romantic plots Bellamy adds a third, in which Captain Beaufort seeks to marry Sir Toby’s daughter Charlotte. Bellamy thus supplements Terence’s two love-plots with a third one, a ploy that suggests the homosocial triads of men and women familiar from earlier comedy and its occasional finale in a triple marriage. But this is not the only means by which Bellamy multiplies the conflicts in the play. Applying Terentian contaminatio to a Terentian source, he adds material from Abraham Cowley’s Latin play Naufragium ioculare (1637) and turns it into an additional subplot, in which Plotwell (Davos) tricks Sir Timothy, suitor to Beaufort’s love-interest Charlotte and alleged son of Sir Paul, into believing that he has been kidnapped by a pirate.61 But while Terence turned two relatively similar Menandrian hypotexts into his Andria,62 Bellamy merges two heterogeneous texts, so that the hypertext offers “Terentian Humour, join’d with Cowley’s Wit,” as the prologue announces. The addition of the third love-plot requires another resolution: Beaufort is eventually revealed to be Sir Paul’s son and thus Silvia’s brother, while the hapless Sir Timothy is not Sir Paul’s son.
language”). Both texts are cited from Edward Courtney (ed.), The Fragmentary Latin Poets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 153. 60 For the text, see Thomas Durfey, The Marriage-Hater Match’d: A Comedy (London: Richard Bentley, 1692). 61 See Abraham Cowley, The Complete Works in Verse and Prose, ed. Alexander B. Grosart, 2 vols., Anglistica & Americana (1881; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1969), vol. 1, pp. 67–97. Cf. Bellamy Jr.’s note: “As to the Under Characters, I readily acknowledge that they are all extracted from the late Mr. Cowley” (see above, n. 49). Plotwell, Davos’ stand-in, connects the sub-plot with the main love plot, and is so ubiquitous that he seems to exist twice in the play. 62 Defending himself against the poeta vetus’s charge of contaminating sources, Terence (Andria 10) underlines the identity between Menander’s Andria and Perinthia: qui utramvis recte norit ambas noverit (“If you know one, you know them both”).
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Protagonist
Antagonist/Obstacle
Goal
Valentine
Sir Toby Testy rival: Olivia
Silvia (Arabella, daughter of Chevalier de Boureau)
Worthy
Sir Paul Pliant (formerly Chevalier de Boureau) rival: Valentine
Olivia
Captain Beaufort (real son of Sir Paul)
Sir Toby Testy rival: Timothy (raised as his own son by Sir Paul, but later revealed to be the son of his deceased servant)
Charlotte
I argued above that Steele attempted to strategically expurgate and augment Andria to make the play conform to his sentimental aesthetics. Bellamy also changes his source partly by thematic extension and stylistic expansion (the latter frequently manifested in the passionate, hyperbolic rhetoric of the lovers), but unlike Steele he does not erase potentially offensive material from the play. He thus keeps the sexual intercourse but makes it more palatable by changing Pamphilus’ violation into mutual attraction between lovers, with a few hints at Valentine’s seduction of Silvia. Valentine, Silvia confesses, “took all my Senses captive, and drew my Thoughts from Heaven to taste of worldly Joys” (I, p. 20).63 As in Andria, premarital intercourse results in an unexpected pregnancy, but whereas Pamphila is in labor and gives birth during the course of the play, Silvia has already given birth to a boy before the action begins. In true New Comedy style, the infant is brought onstage in Act IV of The Perjur’d Devotee, which creates further misunderstandings and makes the play more Terentian than Steele’s.64 Bellamy likewise retains the violence in the play. As the characters are not bound by sentimentalist ethics, masters such as Sir Toby Testy do not treat their servants with leniency and understanding. On the contrary, their relations are determined by open antagonism. When at the end of the play Plotwell finds himself in the same quandary as Davos at the end of Andria, his punishment is turned into a scene of brutal onstage slapstick: Plotwell and his factotum Snapsack are forced to whip one another (Act V, pp. 78–9). Yet while Davos’ punishment takes place offstage,65 Plotwell’s is relocated to the stage: Bellamy thus exaggerates the hypotext to exploit the scene’s comic potential. The conflicts between the Terentian characters are also maintained and exaggerated in the relations between parents and their children. So irascible is Sir Toby (Simo) when he finds out about his son’s liaison with Silvia, that he plans to “be 63 While Valentine thinks about “Joys […] untasted” (I, p. 5), Silvia calls Valentine “the Tempter that undid me” (I, p. 19). 64 On illegitimate children in 18th-century comedy, see Zunshine, “Bastard Daughters” (above, n. 27). 65 See Terence, Andria 865–6.
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reveng’d upon my ungracious Dog” (I, p. 14).66 The relation between the fathers in The Perjur’d Devotee is also marked by animosity: unlike Sir John and Seaman in Steele’s play, Sir Toby and Sir Paul are constantly locking horns, so much so, in fact, that their final reconciliation is barely convincing. That Bellamy does not weave the knot of sentimental humanity also becomes apparent in another incident at the end of the play: defrocked as the son of Sir Paul’s servant, Sir Timothy is rejected, and the patrilinear line restored. Such a turn of events differs radically from Steele’s joining the lower gentry with the merchant in the marriage between Bevil and Indiana.67 Although each of these aspects suggests that Bellamy’s interpretation of Terence is in some respects diametrically opposed to Steele’s, the plays have one major change in common: they expunge the funeral scene, in which Pamphilus and Glycerium reveal their affection for one another when overcome by grief for Chrysis. At the behest of Colley Cibber (1671–1757), Steele substituted the Terentian funeral scene with one from a masquerade, during which Old Bevil discovers his son’s love for Indiana.68 Cibber, one of the most influential and celebrated actors of his day, may have urged Steele to alter the narrative analepsis to render the play more palatable to an audience that might be dismayed by the emotional description of a funeral. Much like Steele, Bellamy replaces the funeral with a ball held at Lady Lurewell’s house, an event described by Valentine at the beginning of the play. When Sir Toby announces the arranged marriage between Valentine and Olivia, Silvia swoons—and Valentine catches her, revealing his true love interest: “I ran and caught her in my Arms, and cry’d, my charming Silvia!” (I, p. 8). This event, which sets off the conflict between father and son at the beginning of The Perjur’d Devotee, bears some resemblance to Steele’s masquerade, casting doubt on Bellamy Junior’s claim that his father wrote the play before Steele wrote his. In tone, however, Bellamy’s description of the ball gestures to earlier romantic comedy, whereas Steele’s is firmly placed in his new comic aesthetics. Bellamy’s adaptation may differ from Steele’s in retaining potentially offensive material, albeit in subdued form. But Bellamy also attempts to augment his Terentian source by adding characters, incidents and plots, and especially by introducing the
66 Sir Toby’s negative opinion of Valentine comes to the fore when he suspects that Valentine will play “a slippery Trick” on him (III, p. 48). For the conflict between Sir Paul and his daughter Olivia see III, p. 51. 67 Where pity and sorrow, the major features of sentimentalism, are mentioned, they do not necessarily appear within the framework of a humanity bent on morality as in Silvia’s story in Act I (p. 19). When Olivia and Charlotte discuss the disclosure of Silvia’s love for Valentine at Lady Lurewell’s ball, they are concerned more with public opinion than with sympathy for Silvia’s emotional turmoil: “I protest that I myself, in the midst of all my good Fortune, have some secret Reserve (I think) of Sorrow; I’m sure, at least, ’tis Pity for unhappy Silvia.—Oh Charlotte! Sure it must be miserable!—to be so exposed!” (II, p. 27). The overall tone of the play also qualifies the reconciliation at the end of the play and the praise of providence expressed in Sir Paul’s closing speech. 68 See Kenny (ed.), The Plays of Richard Steele (above, n. 2), p. 409, note to “Preface,” l. 63.
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triple love-plot familiar from earlier comedy, resulting in a different, more playful type of drama. Most strikingly, Bellamy too attempts to out-Terence Terence at the end of the play by multiplying recognition-scenes and reversals, but he does so differently than Steele and more in the vein of Terentian New Comedy. The peripeteia is triggered by a double recognition, in which two characters are successively revealed to be Sir Paul’s children. First, Silvia’s true identity is disclosed by Olivia, and her past is revealed to be just as troubled as Glycerium’s (p. 73): she is the daughter of Chevalier de Boureau, who killed another nobleman in a duel 15 years ago. Her mother died of grief; her father had to flee, and took one son and one daughter with him; and her uncle, to whom she was entrusted, placed her in a convent. There she met Valentine, fell in love with him, and escaped with him to England. Second, when Beaufort recounts his military past, Sir Paul recognises him as the son he lost during a shipwreck near the Dutch coast (V, pp. 81–2).69 This second recognition is a departure from the Terentian source and will thus have taken Terentian connoisseurs by surprise, but it is in keeping with the type of anagnorisis familiar from New Comedy: like Pasibula in Andria, Beaufort was the victim of a shipwreck, and is now reunited with his family. For Sir Timothy, this recognition leads to a negative reversal: as the son of a former servant, he is discarded from Sir Paul’s family. With the usurper out of the way, the heir apparent can be reinstated, and the male line of the Pliants continued. Bellamy’s doubling of the recognition testifies to his creative engagement with his source: his imitation of classical anagnorisis gestures to his writing in the tradition of the New Comic architext, and his doubling of recognition-scenes specifically bespeaks his emulation of the double plot of Terence’s plays. Such attempts at exaggerating Terentian plot-patterns may not be exactly elegant, but they are arguably closer to Roman New Comic standards than are Steele’s. That Bellamy furnishes such scenes with metatheatrical commentary gives the adaptation a decisively playful note not unlike Terence’s in Andria,70 but again in exaggerated form.71 While both Steele and Bellamy recognize the dramatic potential of Terence’s Andria, they approach the hypotext with markedly different programs. The Con-
69 In Andria, the anagnorisis is also the result of a conversation during which Chremes discovers that Crito’s brother reared Pasibula (904–51). Bellamy transfers Terence’s onstage dialogue into a brief narrative analepsis that explains the recognition. 70 On Terence, see Ortwin Knorr, “Metatheatrical Humour in the Comedies of Terence,” in Terentius Poeta (above, n. 34), pp. 167–74. 71 Cf. Sir Paul’s ruminations at the beginning of Act V: “here, I warrant, I shall have ’em come by and by, just as at the latter End of a Comedy, Hand in Hand together, down o’ their Knees, ask Pardon and Blessing, and think all will be well; but they shall find themselves very much mistaken” (V, p. 68). The metatheatrical quality of the resolution is enhanced when Sir Paul mentions the “the surprizing Turns of Fortune” in the closing speech of the play (V, p. 83), because turn was synonymous with dramatic reversal. Charles Gildon, for example, commends Terence for his “several neat turns,” which “keep the minds of the Auditory employ’d with expectation, hope, and desire,” and “which all end in satisfaction, at the conclusion or unravelling of the Plot” (see Gildon’s letter cited above, n. 60).
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scious Lovers, designed to propagate the ideal of a humane comedy, illustrates Steele’s attempts to make Terence part of official theatrical history by stressing the Roman playwright’s difference. Steele thus exaggerated the qualities of the Terentian source that supported his humane philosophy. Bellamy, on the other hand, did not conceive of The Perjur’d Devotee as a widely publicized drama that would mark a sea-change in comedy. As his interest lay in creating a hypertext that would by and large follow older comic standards, he exaggerated the more comic elements of the play and upped the ante by “contaminating” Andria with the simpler and more straightforward Naufragium. In the words of Plotwell after duping Sir Timothy: “The hum’rous Scenes can never fail to please, / And universal Mirth in a gay Audience raise” (II, p. 34).
5. Three Beginnings The different creative approaches Steele and Bellamy adopted to their Terentian hypotext are exemplified particularly well by the opening scenes of their adaptations. Terence divides the beginning of his play into two scenes figuring different masterservant configurations, with Simo as the link between them. The first section, Andria 28–174 (I.i), serves as a duological exposition that introduces Terence’s audience to the characters, important previous events (the funeral and the arranged marriage) and the main conflicts. Dispensing with the expository prologue of earlier comedy, Terence employs Sosia as a prosôpon protatikon,72 but takes care to endow this minor role with a back-story and character; once purchased by Simo as his slave, he has long since become a freedman, not least due to his fides (loyalty) and tacurnitas (discretion).73 In Andria 175–205 (I.ii), this character configuration shifts with the departure of Sosia and the arrival of Davos, Pamphilus’ wily servant, whom Simo warns about thwarting the wedding. Fraught with suspicions, suppositions and threats, this scene differs in tone from the exposition.74 Indeed, Simo’s discontinuous behavior has puzzled generations of critics. Attempts have been made to explain the change via reference to two Menandrian hypotexts, one of which featured a lenient, the other a strict father, referred to as Simo A (derived from Andria) and Simo B
72 On the role of Sosia, see Eckard Lefèvre, Terenz’ und Menanders “Andria,” Zetemata 132 (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2008), pp. 53–5, 90–2. R.H. Martin (ed.), Terence, “Phormio” (London: Butler and Tanner, 1959), p. 88, defines a prosôpon protatikon as “a character introduced to facilitate the exposition of the plot […], whose only function is to have the facts of the situation explained to him.” 73 See Terence, Andria 32–45. The dramatic quality of Sosia has been questioned by critics; see the survey in Lefèvre, “Andria” (above, n. 72), pp. 53–5. Büchner, Das Theater des Terenz (above, n. 33), p. 31, underscores the humanitas permeating Andria I.i. 74 On the scene, see Eckard Lefèvre, “Die Inszenierung des Zweikampfs zwischen Simo und Davos in Terenz’ Andria,” in: Terentius Poeta (above, n. 34), pp. 189–206; and “Andria” (above, n. 72), pp. 93–5.
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(derived from Perinthia).75 But Terence did not necessarily make a rookie mistake in his comic debut. As Lefèvre persuasively argues, the scene focuses on the generic antipathy between senes and servus. Since Simo attempts to warn Davos about the outcome of meddling in his affairs,76 he adapts himself to a character configuration with an entirely different balance of power. The duologue thus also casts doubt on Simo’s earlier statements about leniency and humane behavior. From the point of view of the adapter, the opening scenes of Andria offer very different comic possibilities. Steele’s The Conscious Lovers begins with a relatively close adaptation of Andria I.i and draws in particular on the expository characterisation, explicit and implicit, provided by Simo and Sosia. Their conversation focuses on the adulescens Pamphilus and the incident at Chrysis’ funeral. Simo relates these events from the beginning (a principio, Andria 48) and prefaces his narrative with a character sketch of his son (Andria 51–61): SIM
SOS SIM
SOS
SIM
SOS SIM
SOS
nam is postquam excessit ex ephebis, Sosia, et liberius vivendi erat potestas (nam antea qui scire posses aut ingenium noscere, dum aetas, metus, magister prohibebant?)— itast. —quod plerique omnes faciunt adulescentuli, ut animum ad aliquod studium adiungant, aut equos alere aut canes ad venandum aut ad philosophos, horum ille nil egregie praeter cetera studebat et tamen omnia haec mediocriter. gaudebam. non iniuria; nam id arbitror apprime in vita esse utile, ut ne quid nimis. After [my son had] finished his military service and had the opportunity to live with greater freedom—for how would you know him or judge his character before, while he was restrained by age and apprehension and a tutor?— Quite so. —he behaved as all young lads tend to do, involving themselves in some pursuit like breeding horses or hounds or studying philosophy. However, he didn’t pursue any of these things in particular but all of them in moderation. I was delighted. And rightly so. I believe the best principle in life is nothing in excess.
75 See V. Martin, “Die Dramaturgie des Terenz in der Andria,” Altertum 10 (1964), pp. 234–49; M. Weißenberger, “Der ‘doppelte Simo’. Zur Komposition der Andria des Terenz,” Drama 5 (1997), pp. 105–18. 76 See Lefèvre, “Inszenierung des Zweikampfs” (above, n. 74).
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Simo, whom Terence fashioned on the character type of the irate old man,77 here characterizes himself as a pater lenis who allowed his son to live after his own designs without the pressures other fathers apply. Only the absence of constraints (aetas, metus, magister) will bring out his son’s true character. Simo’s trust in his son is apparently repaid; while Pamphilus tries out different kinds of entertainments and interests, he does so with moderation (mediocriter). Simo’s assessment is asserted by Sosia’s sententious ne quid nimis, the very definition of the golden mean.78 The context of this dialogue and the subsequent development of the plot belie Simo’s leniency, cast doubt on his notion of humanitas, and mark him as a character tainted by self-righteousness;79 despite his positive self-assessment as pater lenis, Simo acts as a pater durus, forcing his son into marriage.80 Steele converts Simo’s duologue with his libertus Sosia into Sir John’s conversation with his servant Humphrey. While the opening scene of The Conscious Lovers might thus appear to be the most faithfully “Terentian” section of the play, Steele engages in a complex transformative interaction with his hypotext. Like Simo, Sir John relates the events from the beginning and gives a profile of his son’s character, but with notable differences (I.i.27–43): Sir John Bevil. Honest Humphrey, have patience and I’ll tell thee all in Order. I have my self, in some part of my Life, liv’d (indeed) with Freedom, but, I hope, without Reproach: Now, I thought Liberty wou’d be as little injurious to my Son; therefore, as soon as he grew towards Man, I indulg’d him in living after his own manner: I knew not how, otherwise, to judge of his Inclination; for what can be concluded from a Behaviour under Restraint and Fear? But what charms me above all Expression is, that my Son has never in the least Action, the most distant Hint or Word, valued himself upon that great Estate of his Mother’s, which, according to our Marriage Settlement, he has had ever since he came to Age. Humphrey. No, Sir; on the contrary, he seems afraid of appearing to enjoy it, before you or any belonging to you—He is as dependant and resign’d to your Will, as if he had not a Farthing but what must come from your immediate Bounty—You have ever acted like a good and generous Father, and he like an obedient and grateful Son.
Obedient to his father, endowed with an excellent moral conscience, and conscientious about his inheritance, Bevil is presented as the very model of virtue. His character
77 Sander M. Goldberg, “The Dramatic Balance of Terence’s Andria,” Classica and Mediaevalia 33 (1981/1982), p. 139, labels him a senex iratus. 78 Sosia often replies to Chremes’s statements positively, which makes the professed bond between them manifest. See Terence, Andria 60–1, 67–8, 141–3. 79 Peter Kruschwitz, Terenz (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2004), pp. 45–7, correctly interprets Simo as a negative character: he may exhibit fatherly care, but his actions are motivated by the frustration of his marriage plans and not by the disappointment about his son’s secrecy regarding Glycerium. That his actions do not meet his own moral standards is demonstrated by his obsession with intrigues and his attempts to force his will on others. 80 See also Lefèvre, “Andria” (above, n. 72), pp. 175–6.
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reflects positively on Sir John’s philosophy of parenting; as a father remembering the folly of youth, he practices lenience in order to give his son the opportunity to live according to his own designs.81 Such a view of parenting differs from that in Restoration comedies, where the relationship between the generations was marked by conflict and at times exacerbated by sexual rivalry.82 Moreover, Bevil’s praises are sung not only by his father but by his servant Humphrey, so that Steele establishes an equality of ideas between master and servant and transposes the relation between Simo and Sosia into his humane philosophy, which breaks with the traditional depiction of the servant in Restoration comedy, where masters had good reason to distrust their often scheming personnel. Steele rehearses key terms from Andria, e.g. the opposition between liberty (liberius vivendi … potestas) and fear (metus), and uses them as the matrix on which he establishes Bevil’s character (ingenium). But Steele differs from his Terentian source in two important respects. First, he adds a passage to the end of Simo’s speech which underlines that it is Bevil’s innate virtue that makes him act properly and not his financial dependence on his father (“But what charms … since he came to Age”, I.i.33–7).83 Second, Steele cuts all the sections that could taint Bevil’s flawlessness in the slightest degree, such as Pamphilus’ interest in horses, hounds and philosophers. Unlike Pamphilus, Bevil pursues no idle frivolities and never joins his friends for a tête-a-tête with a prostitute: Steele’s is not a play of easy morals, and those who publicize them, like Cimberton and Mrs. Sealand, are stigmatized. Pamphilus thus lives according to the maxim ne quid nimis (61), while Bevil follows the doctrine of “nothing at all.” Steele here chooses sections from Andria that he finds suitable to propagate his new comic aesthetics and embellishes them with an additional programmatic passage, while excising negative or at least potentially problematic character traits from the Terentian source. He thus ennobles the characters from the hypotext: Sir John does not conform to the type of the potentially irate senes Simo, and Bevil is not the type of adulescens Pamphilus is.84
81 Micio’s introductory speech in Adelphoe is perhaps the most frequently cited passage on proper parenting in the Terentian canon. See especially Micio’s self-characterisation as pater lenis in Adelphoe 70–7, which seems to have influenced Steele’s creation of Sir John. 82 Alexander Leggatt, English Stage Comedy 1490–1990: Five Centuries of a Genre (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 97–101, offers a concise overview of the relation between parents and their children from Restoration to 18th-century comedy. Barkhausen argues that Steele keeps the conflict between father and son but motivates it differently: whereas the conflict between Simo and Pamphilus arises from monetary and hereditary issues, the conflict between Sir John and Bevil is an emotional one, because it originates from mutual love (Die Vernunft des Sentimentalismus (above, n. 36), p. 269). Genette calls the process by which one motivation is substituted by another transmotivation (Palimpsests (above, n. 9), pp. 324–7). 83 Genette terms such embellishments thematic extensions (Palimpsests (above, n. 9), pp. 254–9). On the significance of Steele’s addition, see Niederhoff, Die englische Komödie (above, n. 35). 84 Cf. also Terence, Andria 186–9.
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That Steele takes cues from the Terentian hypotext and develops them into his new mode of comedy is again apparent in his introduction of Indiana. In the Latin hypotext, Terence elaborates on the unknown girl during the funeral narrative in lively and emotive detail (Andria 117–23): SIM
SOS SIM
SIM
SOS SIM
inter mulieres quae ibi aderant forte unam aspicio adulescentulam forma— bona fortasse. —et voltu, Sosia, adeo modesto, adeo venusto ut nil supra. quae tum mihi lamentari praeter ceteras visast et quia erat forma praeter ceteras honesta ac liberali[.] Meanwhile among the women who were present I caught sight of one young lass whose looks were— Not bad, perhaps. —and whose expression, Sosia, was unsurpassably modest and lovely. Her grief seemed to me deeper than the others, and her appearance more dignified and ladylike than the others.
Terence introduces the grieving Glycerium, the alleged sister of a meretrix, as an exceptional young woman (adeo, praeter ceteras); noble, dignified and modest, she appears to be of higher social standing than her situation suggests.85 In addition to these character-related epithets, Simo describes Glycerium’s attractiveness, her forma and voltus venustus.86 The latter adjective is derived from the divine name Venus and refers to elegance and grace; Glycerium, whose name is a cognate of glykos, “sweet,” combines a superior character with great beauty. When Steele introduces Indiana in Sir John’s narrative of the masquerade, he again takes his cues directly from the hypotext: Sir John is immediately struck by “Her uncommon Air, her noble Modesty, the Dignity of her Person” (I.i.86–7). Steele culls the epithets modestus, honestus and liberalis, as well as the superlative praise of Glycerium’s character, from the hypotext (nil supra and praeter ceteras) and develops them into Indiana’s key qualities. He heavily condenses these into the definition of his new type of heroine: Indiana’s noble character, modest attitude and dignity mark her as the quintessential heroine of
85 James Curtiss Austin, The Significant Name in Terence, University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature 7.4 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1921), p. 74, calls her “a character of irreproachable respectability.” 86 Simo recognises Glycerium’s physical appeal. See Sidney G. Ashmore (ed.), The Comedies of Terence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1908), ad loc.
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sentimental drama, and thus as Bevil’s equal. At the same time, Steele again censors the hypotext by deleting references to Glycerium’s physical beauty (forma) and Simo’s susceptibility to her charms: physical attraction, a major motor in Terentian drama, has no overt place in Steele’s new comedy. Bellamy takes a different approach to the beginning of Andria: he radically reimagines the expository dialogue between Simo and Sosia as a scene in which the three romantic heroes converse about love, and it is in this context that Valentine informs them of the discovery of his relationship with Silvia at Lady Lurwell’s ball. By transferring the narrative from one speaker to another (a technique Genette calls transvocalisation),87 Bellamy uses Valentine’s monologue to showcase amorous hyperbole (I, p. 7). Unlike Steele, who begins directly with a scene culled from Terence’s play, Bellamy draws explicitly on the Terentian hypotext only in the second scene of his comedy. It is then that Sir Toby Testy (Simo) enters the action, giving vent to the anger caused by his discovery that his son appears to be keeping a mistress: “Why! what a sly young Dog is this Son of mine, to keep a Whore all this while and nobody ever mistrust any Thing of the Matter!” (I, p. 13). In the ensuing duologue between Sir Toby and Valentine’s aptly-named servant Plotwell, Bellamy seeks to capitalize on the conflict presented in the Terentian hypotext by developing Simo’s doubts and misgivings into downright contempt. In a particularly well-handled passage of Terence’s comedy, Simo feigns ignorance about the true relationship between his son and his mistress, and seeks to catch Davos off guard by charging him with being an accessory to the liaison, as it were (Andria 184– 5): rogas? / meum gnatum rumor est amare (“As if you didn’t know. There’s a rumor that my son’s in love”), to which Davos replies, id populus curat scilicet (“It’s a matter of public interest, obviously”). In the verbal powerplay between master and servant, Davos has been evading his master’s queries, and he again deflects Simo’s insinuations with the ease befitting a servus callidus.88 Bellamy takes up Terence’s relatively neutral hypotext and develops it into a more acerbic duologue, with Sir Toby attacking Plotwell (I, p. 14): “What! Your Rogueship knows nothing of the Matter now I warrant you.—My Son keeps a Whore, and the Town rings on’t.” As in the Latin hypotext, Plotwell replies cleverly: “The Town’s mighty well employ’d, Faith.” Bellamy underscores Sir Toby’s irate, vengeful nature by replacing innocuous phrases with loaded terms: loving (amare) with whoring, mere hearsay (rumor est) with all of London ringing with infamous and damning news. These lines, with their emphasis on roguery, prostitutes and scandal, in fact read very much like Restoration comedy. Bellamy employs a method that is highly reminiscent of burlesque parody, in that the characters of the hypotext remain the same but use language lower than that in the 87 See Genette, Palimpsests (above, n. 9), pp. 212–14. 88 See also Lefèvre, “Inszenierung des Zweikampfs” (above, n. 74), p. 192. Ultimately, Simo loses the verbal battle to Davos. On the history of the servus callidus, see Francesca Schironi’s article in this volume.
Exaggerating Terence’s Andria
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source play. Sir Toby’s speech is thus considerably more offensive. The passage is so exaggerated that the neutral Terentian hypotext becomes as good as invisible under Bellamy’s exaggerated hypertext.89 As Bellamy follows a comic aesthetics diametrically opposed to Steele’s, he retains not only the sexuality in the play but also the verbal and physical violence against servants. In Andria, Simo seeks to prevent Davos from plotting against his marriage arrangement with Chremes by threatening him with physical punishment (Andria 196–201): SIM
si sensero hodie quicquam in his te nuptiis fallaciae conari quo fiant minus, aut velle in ea re ostendi quam sis callidus, verberibus caesum te in pistrinum, Dave, dedam usque ad necem, ea lege atque omine ut, si te inde exemerim, ego pro te molam. quid, hoc intellexti? an nondum etiam ne hoc quidem?
SIM
If I find you attempting any trick today to prevent this marriage, or trying to show how clever you are in this situation, I shall whip you to the point of death and send you to the mill, Davus, on the solemn condition that, if I release you from there, I will work the mill myself in your place. Well, have you understood? Or is even that taking time to sink in?
Neither whipping nor sending a servant to the mill would have been acceptable to Steele. Bellamy, on the other hand, embraces the opportunity and transposes Simo’s admonition to 18th-century England: Sir Toby: If I catch your politick Brains at work To-day, or making the least Attempt tow’rds defeating my Designs, and disappointing my Son’s Wedding; you shall find to your Cost, that you are making a Lash for your own Back. Bridewell shall be your Portion; there beat Hemp, and be hang’d; and if ever thou com’st out but to be hang’d, I’ll beat Hemp, and hang for you.—Is this plain English Sir? Is your weak Capacity able to comprehend the Meaning of this, ha? (I, pp. 15–16)
Bellamy sticks fairly close to the Latin original, but updates it to contemporary standards: beating and hanging were widely practiced at the time, and Bridewell was a notorious house of correction where prisoners were subject to whipping and hard labor.90 Bellamy thus finds a contemporary equivalent for the kind of punishment in
89 Bellamy’s rendering of the Terentian line even surpasses Echard’s modish Restoration translation: “And ask Questions too?—Sirrah, ’tis the Town-talk that my Son keeps a Miss” (Terence Made English (above, n. 13), p. 7). 90 Bellamy’s method mirrors Echard’s late 17th-century translation: “Look ye Sirrah! If I catch ye in any of your Roguy Legerdemain tricks to hinder this Match, or that ye have a Mind to shew how shrewd you are at Plotting: I’ll ha’ your Skin stript o’re your Ears, and you sent to Bridewel Sirrah! there to lye
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store for slaves in classical comedy. At the same time, he preserves much of the Latin source, with one notable difference already traceable in the passage discussed above: Bellamy uses contemporary derogatory terms (“your politick Brains … your weak Capacity”), which lower the level of diction in Terence’s play but heighten the aggressiveness already apparent in the hypotext.91 Steele and Bellamy conceive the beginning of their plays by assessing the opening scenes of Andria rather differently. While Steele translates and paraphrases passages from Andria I.i and then abandons Terence’s Latin for the rest of the play, Bellamy radically transforms the first scene and only begins to adapt the original Latin beginning with Andria I.2. Both dramatists thus choose different passages from the source play to introduce their adaptations, and exaggerate the Terentian hypotext by creating different fathers, sons and servants. In Steele, the pater lenis Simo becomes the pater lenissimus Sir John; in Bellamy, the pater durus Simo becomes the pater durissimus Sir Toby. Steele’s Bevil emerges as the apex of courtesy, polite behavior and restraint, whereas Bellamy’s Valentine has traits of the rake, and as such is experienced in amorous liaisons. The playwrights also exhibit different attitudes toward servants. Steele establishes a kinship between Humphrey and Sir John that is absent from the Terentian hypotext, because he intends to publicize a humane ethics. Bellamy focuses instead on the traditional antagonism between master and servant, and in particular expands Plotwell’s role as the master-schemer who holds both plots together. In Genettian terminology: Steele’s manoeuvre is one of revaluation, which consists in turning the characters from Andria into better, more attractive ones, whereas Bellamy mainly practices devaluation, which creates characters worse than in the original.92 Such transformations ultimately stem from different attitudes toward humanity, both of which are inherent in Terence’s comedy but are exaggerated by Steele and Bellamy to opposite ends: where Steele portrays sympathy, Bellamy depicts conflict and keeps it till the end of the play.
and rot, upon this Condition, and by this token, that when e’re I take you out, I’ll give you leave to put me in.—What, does your Rogueship understand me now? Han’t I spoke plain enough yet?” (Terence Made English (above, n. 13), p. 8). On substituting Bridewell for the mill, see also Cooke’s translation and accompanying note (above, n. 13), pp. 78–9 n. 23. 91 Sir Toby’s final retort to Plotwell corroborates this impression: “Rogue, do you jeer me too? But take fair Warning, and keep your Neck out of the Collar; for if I catch it in the Noose, I’ll make thee an Example to all the politick, pimping, pick-thank Rogues in the Kingdom, you Dog, you” (I, p. 16). That Sir Toby has other tricks up his sleeve is shown by his first onstage confrontation with Sir Paul. When Sir Paul complies with Sir Toby’s marriage arrangement, this is largely due to Sir Toby’s smooth tongue: “I play’d my Part like an Orator with him” (III, pp. 47–8). Such connivance would clearly not be acceptable for Steele’s Sir John. 92 On these mechanisms, see Genette, Palimpsests (above, n. 9), pp. 343–50, and pp. 354–8.
Exaggerating Terence’s Andria
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6. Commentary and Response While Bellamy’s The Perjur’d Devotee generated no detectable contemporary reaction, The Conscious Lovers met with a myriad of responses, not least due to Steele’s adeptness at publicizing his reformatory poetics. Steele’s self-confident promotion of The Conscious Lovers came at a price; his professed Terentian aesthetics made him the target of critics ill-disposed to his comic theory and practice. Only two months after The Conscious Lovers premiered at the Theatre Royal on 7 November 1722, John Dennis published his “Remarks on a Play, Call’d The Conscious Lovers, a Comedy.”93 The essay was the result of a previous critical skirmish. In Issue 65 of The Spectator (1711), Steele had attacked George Etherege’s comedy The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter (1676) for its immorality. Dennis, who defended Etherege’s play against Steele’s accusations in a vitriolic pamphlet a mere five days before The Conscious Lovers premiered at Drury Lane,94 now took umbrage at Steele’s comedy and branded it a “deplorable Imitation of the Andria” written by a writer whose no-laughs approach betrayed an ignorance of comedy.95 Dennis launches his attack with great precision and offers lengthy, detailed and at times astute comparisons between the Terentian source and Steele’s adaptation, which cover various aspects of characterization and plot. Dennis uses Terence’s characters as a foil to find fault with Steele’s. Terence’s characters, he writes, are drawn from nature, whereas Steele’s are little more than cardboard cut-outs: Most of the Characters are faintly and coarsely drawn, which is very strange, if we consider the admirable Patterns that Terence has laid before him. The Characters of the Comick Poet […] are so strong in Nature, that they may be taken for the Life, may be taken for Persons rather than Pictures, and for real rather than dramatick Persons.96
93 See John Dennis, “Remarks on a Play Call’d The Conscious Lovers” (above, n. 11), vol. 2, pp. 251–74. The pamphlet was published on 24 January 1723. On the influence of Dennis on English criticism, see Paul D. Cannan’s excellent The Emergence of Dramatic Criticism in England: From Jonson to Pope (London: Palgrave, 2006), pp. 109–24. 94 John Dennis, “A Defense of Sir Fopling Flutter,” published on 2 November 1722. For the text, see Dennis, Critical Works (above, n. 11), vol. 2, pp. 241–50. 95 See Dennis, “Remarks” (above, n. 11), vol. 2, pp. 258, 260. 96 Dennis, “Remarks” (above, n. 11), vol. 2, p. 273. Dennis’s praise of Terence’s representation of life suggests the praise that Aristophanes of Byzantium (c. 265/257–c. 190/180 BCE) couched in an emphatic question: Ὦ Μένανδρε καὶ βίε, πότερος ἄρ’ ὑμῶν πότερον ἐμιμήσατο; (“O Menander and Life, which of you imitated the other?”) (Menander test. 83; R. Kassel and C. Austin (eds.), Poetae Comici Graeci (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1998), vol. 6, part 2). Some 20 years after Dennis, Richard Patrick (trans.), Terence, Comedies (London, 1745), p. vii reiterated this praise: Terence’s plays “are a Picture of the Times in which he wrote. In them real Life is represented, real Characters are introduced, and his Scenes are the very Language and Conversation of that Age.”
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Young Bevil fares particularly badly in Dennis’s criticism, because he is simply too good to be true: always obedient to his father, ever restraining his passion,97 his behavior beggars belief while also violating the notion that comedy presents the faults of individuals in order to reform them. So morally refined are father and son that they have no genuine conflict at the beginning of the play: whereas Simo, according to Dennis, has every right to be offended by his son’s rejection of the dowry and his affair with Glycerium, Old Bevil has no reason to doubt his son’s faithfulness. What is worse, Dennis ultimately accuses Bevil scathingly of being a hypocrite (like the author who created him) because he pretends to comply with his father’s wishes in the hope that Lucinda will settle matters for him. To Dennis, Bevil is thus a jarring combination of “Religion and Dissimulation, Morality and Fraud; […] Circumspection and Folly.” That Dennis employs the term dissimulation is notable, for young Bevil summarizes his practice of polite behavior in the face of his quandary in the paradoxical phrase “honest Dissimulation” (I. ii. 15): Bevil seemingly obeys his father’s marriage plans, hoping that Lucinda will prevent them.98 Dennis, whose criticism revolves around disapproval of Steele’s sentimental ethics, ostentatiously seeks to beat Steele at his own game by taking this central paradox ad absurdum. Dennis likewise criticizes Steele’s handling of the plot and takes particular offense at the catastrophe in The Conscious Lovers. While admitting that the scene is “very moving,”99 Dennis criticizes Steele for turning an effective and emotional single anagnorisis into a sequence of two recognition scenes. The first of these weakens the coercive force of the peripeteia, because Isabella recognizes Sealand as her brother before he discovers that Indiana is his daughter. Dennis also finds it impossible to believe that Isabella is not overcome with joy when she recognises her long-lost brother. The second discovery occurs when Indiana “In her Disorder” throws away her bracelet (V.iii.159, st. dir.). Dennis argues with some justification that one cannot shrug off the feeling that it is not Indiana who throws away the bracelet but the author himself.100 What makes matters worse, is Steele’s recourse to the oldest of plot mechanisms, the discovery by token. Not only is this an element alien to Andria, it is also handled so artificially that it violates the directive that comedy imitate life.101
97 Dennis, “Remarks” (above, n. 11), vol. 2, pp. 263–6. 98 Bevil is “as arrant an Hypocrite as a certain Author” (Dennis, “Remarks” (above, n. 11), vol. 2, p. 272). Dennis then surveys examples where Young Bevil schemes against his father and abuses Myrtle. 99 Dennis, “Remarks” (above, n. 11), vol. 2, p. 267. 100 Zunshine, “Bastard Daughters” (above, n. 27), p. 527, agrees with Dennis in regarding the incident as superfluous. 101 “[…] those Discoveries are but dully made, which are made by Tokens” (Dennis, “Remarks” (above, n. 11), vol. 2, p. 267). In his earlier play The Tender Husband, or, The Accomplished Fools, Steele poked fun at such recognition scenes: Biddy Tipkin tells her aunt that “I am not satisfy’d in the point of my Nativity. Many an Infant has been placed in a Cottage with Obscure Parents, till by chance some Ancient Servant of the Family has known it by its Marks” (The Tender Husband II.ii.53–6). On recogni-
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Dennis’s verdict is damning indeed; whereas the Aristotelian rule has it that “there is to be no Incident in a Dramatick Poem, but what must be founded on Reason […], there is no Incident in the Conscious Lovers but what is attended by some great Absurdity.”102 Dennis criticizes Steele for riddling The Conscious Lovers with un-Terentian material and thus directly attacks Steele for seeking to expurgate and augment his original. Dennis’s favorable opinion of Terence is noteworthy, since it counters the argument that Terence was particularly favored by the writers of sentimental comedy.103 Dennis’s alignment with Terentian comedy thus ties a double knot between the Roman poet and sentimental drama: while Steele draws on Terence to establish a sentimental aesthetics, Dennis uses Terence to fashion an anti-sentimental criticism and, in one fell swoop, to save Terence from being branded a sentimental playwright. Reacting to Steele’s attempts to make the audience read Terentian drama through his sentimental reinterpretation, Dennis aims to sever the bond between hypotext and hypertext and to make his readers aware of the “true Terence” concealed beneath Steele’s selfimportant and imposing adaptation. Terence may be a formative influence for sentimental drama, but he is also a major figure in what Sherbo calls “the war against sentimental comedy.”104 Dennis’s caustic pamphlet was not a singularity.105 Just a few months after the “Remarks” were published, another publication continued to tie a double knot between sentimentalism and anti-sentimentalism: The Censor Censured; or, The Conscious Lovers Examin’d. This anonymous pamphlet takes the form of a dialogue between Sir Dicky Marplot, a satirical portrait of Sir Richard Steele, and Jack Freeman, a representative of Steele’s detractors. In the postscript, the two are joined by a raging and railing John Dennis. The author’s point of attack is the observation that Steele publicized praise for his comedy before it appeared, and thus attempted to self-fashion unanimous critical approval of his work.106 The criticism in The Censor Censured is opprobrious; proclaiming that he saw “Terence abused in a Translation; his Characters murder’d” at Drury Lane, the author particularly stresses that The Conscious Lovers is not “a Comedy just in its Rules, and nobly instructive in its Morals; diverting with chast Wit, free from Obscenity and Profanity.”107 The verdict is especially damning because it
tion scenes in Terence’s comedies, see Terence Cave, Recognitions: A Study in Poetics (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), pp. 256–7. 102 Dennis, “Remarks” (above, n. 11), vol. 2, p. 267. 103 Dennis’s sincere interest in Terentian drama is among others attested by his letter “To Henry Cromwell, Esq.; On the Vis Comica; 1717” in Critical Works (above, n. 11), vol. 1, pp. 150–61. 104 Sherbo, English Sentimental Drama (above, n. 19), p. 5. 105 Pace Kelsall, who erroneously claims that Dennis’ was “almost a lone voice” (Kelsall, “The Classics” (above, n. 4), p. 469), cf. Loftis, Steele at Drury Lane (above, n. 33), pp. 195–213. 106 The Censor Censured (above, n. 11), p. A2. 107 The Censor Censured (above, n. 11), pp. A4–5.
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denies Steele’s new comedy exactly those qualities Steele claimed for it. The dialogue, which takes the form of burlesque parody, then offers lengthy discussions of various aspects of the play (characters, plot) and, like Dennis, employs lengthy comparisons to distinguish the original from its adaptation. These comparisons are set against the backdrop of Marplot’s self-congratulatory attitude in augmenting and exaggerating Terence: “the Beauty of my Translation (upon which I highly value myself) so far exceeds the Original, that every body will be sensible I’ve done the old Roman an Honour, in bestowing so fine a Dress on his naked Thoughts.”108 Marplot—whose very name suggests that he ruined his source play—accordingly underscores the brilliance of his exemplary characters (who lack the faults of their Terentian originals), his plot and his comic program.109 Unsurprisingly, Freeman’s assessment of The Conscious Lovers is diametrically opposed to Marplot’s and covers all the points Dennis criticized earlier, among them the inferiority of Steele’s characters,110 Bevil’s paradox of “honest Dissimulation” and the bracelet scene.111 On more than one occasion, Freeman accuses Marplot of “making free” with Terence,112 charging him with “marring” the hypotext by transforming it into an unfaithful, un-Terentian hypertext. Like Dennis before him, the anonymous author thus seeks to detach Steele’s adaptation from its source via exhaustive comparisons that hammer home the distortion of the source. That he does so in the time-honored genre of the dialogue gives him the opportunity to present this comparison in the form of thesis and antithesis, a method that involves the reader in examining and evaluating both texts. This involvement goes as far as the level of individual words. When the two contestants discuss the opening scene of The Conscious Lovers, Marplot exuberantly praises his literary and dramatic achievements, whereas Freeman severely criticizes the playwright’s liberty with the original. Freeman’s criticism is quite involved and does not restrict itself to particular sections such as the masquerade, which he considers an incongruous substitution for the more effective funeral in Andria.113 Indeed, Freeman even picks apart Marplot’s translation of Terence. In the exposition of The Conscious Lovers, for example, Sir John commends his son for not being “guilty of that rough Sincerity which a Man is not call’d to” (The Conscious Lovers I.i.46–7). Terence’s original is far more straightforward, since Simo praises Pamphilus for being advorsus nemini, “against no-one” (Andria 64). Freeman not only takes umbrage at what he considers a clumsy and opaque translation, claiming ignorance as to the
108 The Censor Censured (above, n. 11), p. 5. 109 See The Censor Censured (above, n. 11), pp. 6–7. 110 When Marplot asks Freeman whether he would have preferred to plagiarize Terence’s characters (i.e. transfer them with no alterations), Freeman answers: “I think that had been more pardonable, than, by altering ’em, to turn ’em into Monsters” (The Censor Censured (above, n. 11), p. 33). 111 See The Censor Censured (above, n. 11), pp. 49–50, 72–3. 112 See e.g. The Censor Censured (above, n. 11), pp. 14, 16. 113 See The Censor Censured (above, n. 11), p. 16.
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meaning of “rough Sincerity,” but adds a corrected version: “You might as well then have said, he was not possess’d by the Spirit of Contradiction, which I take to be the more proper Translation of advorsus nemini.”114 Although Freeman’s paraphrase is closer in meaning to the original than Steele’s, his attitude to Steele’s hypertext is highly manipulative: by singling out and exaggerating inconsistencies in biased comparative readings, he makes short shrift of The Conscious Lovers on all levels. As participants in a dialogue, the opponents present exaggerated points of view. Freeman criticizes Steele, for instance, for placing Humphrey in a quandary between Sir John and his son, and praises Terence for dispensing with Sosia after the opening scene: Terence, “not to destroy the Character of Honesty and Integrity, which Simo had bestow’d on his Servant, never suffer’d him to appear in the Scenes after the Orders given.” Such reasoning likewise exaggerates the correctness of the Terentian source—Sosia is merely a prosôpon protatikon, after all, and is thus readily dispensable. Marplot, although depicted as an arrogant, dim-witted hack, is not far off the mark when he asserts that Freeman exhibits “the ill-natur’d Severity of a Critick” rather than the “ingenuous impartiality of a Friend” in this context.115 Yet it is Marplot who loses the battle of wits. When Dennis enters in the postscript, Marplot is so incapable of defending himself against the critic’s overbearing allegations that Freeman must now reason for him. More than 40 years after Dennis and the Censor, the Steele-Terence debate was still going on. In 1765, George Colman the Elder, a prolific and successful playwright, published his blank verse translation of Terence’s comedies and included critical notes on The Conscious Lovers in his commentary on Andria. Unlike Dennis, he does not engage with Steele’s comedy in order to condemn it a priori, which makes his critical glosses more nuanced than those of his predecessors. As a dramatist who used elements of Terentian drama in his own plays,116 he is nonetheless specific about the standards of Terence’s comedy. Some earlier criticisms accordingly reappear like memes in Colman’s notes, although in mitigated form. Inter alia, Colman finds fault with Steele’s characters, who are not as clearly delineated as Terence’s, and especially with Sir John, who pales in significance when compared with Simo, “the most finished character in the play.”117 Bevil fares little better. He may be “the most laboured character” in Steele’s play, but compared to Pamphilus, he is “the more cool and refined” of the two, whereas Pamphilus is “the more natural and pathetick.”118 Col-
114 See The Censor Censured (above, n. 11), p. 15. 115 The Censor Censured (above, n. 11), p. 48. Cf. Marplot’s earlier remark, “I see you are prejudiced in favour of Terence” (The Censor Censured (above, n. 11), p. 15). 116 See e.g. The Jealous Wife (1761), which is indebted to Adelphoe, and The Man of Business (1774), which is substantially based on Phormio. For the plays, see George Colman, The Dramatick Works, 4 vols., Anglistica et & Americana (1777; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1976), vol. 1, pp. 1–147. 117 Colman, Terence (above, n. 11), p. 19. 118 Colman, Terence (above, n. 11), p. 25.
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man’s criticism is noteworthy, in that he criticizes The Conscious Lovers for making Bevil unemotional, a remark that cuts to the heart of Steele’s aesthetics of emotional involvement. In addition, Colman critiques Bevil’s “honest dissimulation” and praises the handling of the plot in Terence, where Pamphilus is driven to dissimulation by Davos’ designs. In a similar vein, Colman claims that the mutual dissimulation between father and son is better handled in Andria: Colman praises Terence for staging “characters in motion” and for “produc[ing] many affecting, and pleasant situations,” while criticising Steele for the “uniformity in the adventures [and] character of Bevil,” which impair “the vivacity of the Drama.”119 The category here is that of theatrical experience: in comparison to his Terentian source, Steele’s drama lacks liveliness and sheer dramatic suspense. It also comes as no surprise that Colman follows earlier criticism of the bracelet scene, remarking with Donatus that it is the greatest praise for a playwright if all incidents seem “to happen by chance,”120 whereas in The Conscious Lovers Steele is patently pulling the strings. Colman’s critique thus echoes Dennis, but his choice of words and citation of a textual authority to support his argument points to a more neutral involvement in his reading. Indeed, Colman endorses some of Steele’s augmentations of the Terentian hypotext, especially those related to embellishment of the sub-plots and their characters. He emphatically assesses Steele’s handling of the Charinus subplot as an improvement on the source: the Myrtle plot is “more artful and interesting,” and Myrtle, whose character is more carefully developed than Charinus’, is “more essential” to the plot than the model.121 In addition, Colman maintains that Steele “modernized the characters of Davos and Mysis with great elegance and humour in his sprightly Footman and Chambermaid, Tom and Phillis.”122 In Colman’s view, Terence left some aspects of Andria underdeveloped, and Steele turned them into more functional and selfcontained units of his adaptation, while updating them to the 18th century. Such statements reveal that Colman’s is a more objective view of the play, because he is able to appreciate augmentations in the hypertext. Behind this assessment stands Colman’s dramatic aesthetics, which posit adherence to dramatic rules for the sake of a well-balanced play. Perhaps Colman’s most significant critical remark concerns the difference in humor between Steele’s The Conscious Lovers and Terence’s Andria: “It is very remarkable, that though Terence is generally considered to be a grave author, as writer of a Comedy, the Andrian has much more humour and pleasantry, than” The Conscious Lovers.123 Colman, who has been rightly placed in the tradition of laughing comedy,124
119 120 121 122 123 124
Colman, Terence (above, n. 11), p. 40. Colman, Terence (above, n. 11), p. 99. Colman, Terence (above, n. 11), p. 32. Colman, Terence (above, n. 11), p. 19. Colman, Terence (above, n. 11), p. 100. See Bevis, Laughing Tradition (above, n. 5), pp. 174–88.
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here assigns Terence a quality the propagator of sentimental comedy saw lacking in Terence. Indeed, he remarks that the scenes in Act IV which revolve around the presentation of Pamphilus’s son would be “the best means of confuting those infidel Critics, who maintain that Terence has no humour.”125 As a playwright without a “humane” mission statement, Colman thus had a different and more nuanced opinion of Terence’s comic qualities, and exposes the view that Terence was devoid of humor as a critical exaggeration. He would hence have approved of Act IV in Bellamy’s The Perjur’d Devotee, because it keeps the entire Terentian sequence, with Plotwell, Lucy and Sir Paul acting out the parts of Davos, Mysis and Chremes (pp. 56–63). Bellamy’s choice of scene marks the Perjur’d Devotee’s closeness to the laughing tradition, and casts light on Terence’s comedic achievements. Although couched in earlier critical views, Colman’s metatext offers a relatively balanced assessment of The Conscious Lovers that identifies aspects of Steele’s play that are inferior to the Terentian source, but also points to passages in the hypertext that bring out Steele’s craftsmanship—a quality of The Conscious Lovers no earlier criticism favoring Terence over Steele had deemed worthy of mention. But Colman’s allegiance ultimately rests entirely with Terence, to wit he decides the querelle des anciens et des modernes in favor of the former.
7. Concluding Remarks Throughout the Restoration and the 18th century, the admiration for Terence and his comedies crossed ideological divides. This resulted in a clash of ideas, comic theories and ideologies documented by an enormous number of hypertexts and metatexts. In the early 18th century, Steele made Terence the champion of his sentimental comedy, downplaying the copious discussions the Roman playwright had already generated at the intersection of literary translation, creative adaptation and drama criticism. Steele did not only read the famous homo-sum passage from Heautontimorumenos as a profound expression of humanity and commend the entire play as an exemplary comedy without laughter. He also put this theory into practice when he turned Terence’s Andria into The Conscious Lovers, the landmark play with which he intended to change the course of English comedy. Steele’s attempts at self-fashioning Terence’s reception as a sentimental dramatist resulted in a verbal dispute over the provenance of Terentian drama. Critics like Dennis and the anonymous writer of The Censor Censured compared Steele’s adaptation negatively to its source, criticizing Steele for misrepresenting Terence. Using Terence as a classical authority in antisentimental discourse, they aimed to sever the bond between hypo- and hypertext
125 Colman, Terence (above, n. 11), p. 80. For a scenic reading of this sequence in Andria IV, see Adele Scafuro’s article in this volume, pp. 552–3.
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Steele tried to establish. Together, Steele and his detractors created a close connection between Terence and sentimental comedy and ensured Terence’s central role in the comedy and criticism of the 18th century both in its weeping and laughing variety. That Terence’s Andria should not be seen as the blueprint of sentimental drama is demonstrated by Bellamy’s little-known The Perjur’d Devotee, a laughing comedy with little impact on the development of English comedy. What unites Steele’s and Bellamy’s versions is a tendency to exaggerate different aspects of the hypotext. While Steele amplified the qualities of Andria he deemed proto-sentimental, Bellamy modelled the Roman original’s more tumultuous and amusing passages into a play that bears a more than passing resemblance to rakish comedy. Both adaptations hence demonstrate Genette’s claim that “there is no such thing as an innocent transposition.”126 Steele and Bellamy change the meaning of the Terentian hypotext with deliberation, drawing Andria to opposite ends of the comic spectrum: while the former ennobles the characters of the hypotext to passive vessels of immaculate virtue, the latter reimagines them as playing out a more traditional type of laughing comedy featuring a vivacious triple love plot.
126 Genette, Palimpsests (above, n. 9), p. 294.
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Roman Comedy and Renaissance Revenge Drama: Titus Andronicus as Exemplary Text Abstract: Scholars have generally seen little influence of Roman Comedy on Renaissance revenge drama, usually restricting it to motifs of intrigue—e.g. the use of deceptive letters and disguises. Recently, Lorna Hutson ascribes a more pervasive influence to the “forensically based plots of Latin intrigue comedy” on Renaissance dramas that grapple with “the popular practices of detection and evidence evaluation that defines their own culture of trial by jury.” I appropriate the bare bones of Hutson’s analysis of Titus Andronicus but suggest a deeper influence of Roman Comedy: not only has the play been constructed so as to be attentive to the discovery of evidence and the formulation of proofs, it seems also to have appropriated a template of parallel scenes of proving, discovery and improvisation from Terence’s Andria and particular motifs such as child-bearing and the proving of paternity from that play and other Roman models—though the Greek novel must be added to the mix.
The violence and mutilation is unrelenting if not stunning. In the first act, Titus’ sons march Tamora’s eldest son away to lop his limbs to decorate the tomb of Titus’ 21 sons; later, Titus kills one of his own sons for his sympathetic protection of Lavinia and her betrothed. In Act 2, the two sons of Tamora (now the new Empress) murder Bassianus, the new Emperor’s brother, and participate in the framing of two sons of Titus for the crime. The offstage rape and mutilation of Lavinia at the end of Act 2 mark a turning point for gruesomeness in Act 3: the ensuing competition for a hand chopped off to ransom the lives of Titus’ sons who have now been condemned for murder is rewarded with the return of their heads. In Act 4.2, the Nurse who was present at Tamora’s birth-giving is stabbed onstage—the midwife will be killed shortly, and in the following scene, a Clown is condemned to death for delivering a petition to the Emperor. In the final act, Tamora’s sons, their throats slit onstage, are chopped up offstage into a Senecan pie for the delectation of Emperor and Empress
It is a pleasure to dedicate this essay to Jeff Henderson, who was a new Assistant Professor of Classics at Yale University when I began my graduate studies there, now 40 years ago. He has from the start been teacher and friend; so too now, and may it be so for many years to come. In writing this essay, I am grateful to David Konstan, Mike Fontaine and the anonymous readers for the volume who offered many helpful suggestions; I am also grateful to Peter Brown for responding to queries regarding early translations of Plautus’ Amphitruo.
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onstage; Lavinia is killed by her father, who then kills Tamora; Saturninus kills Titus in retaliation; and Lucius, Titus’ sole remaining son, kills Saturninus. 14 corpses, Alarbus’ lopped limbs, three hands, two heads, a tongue. A good revenge drama— good? Well, wonderfully popular, as a character in the Induction to Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair (1614) famously (and ironically) said, “Hee that will sweare Jeronimo or Andronicus are the best playes, yet shall passe unexcepted at heere as a man whose judgement shewes it is constant and hath stood still these five and twentie or thirty yeeres.”1 But Roman Comedy?
I. Revenge Drama and its Roots Titus Andronicus, the collaborative work of Shakespeare with George Peele, belongs to a genre of tragic drama that became popular in the Renaissance.2 Its composers, as one critic bloodlessly put it, “focus on the contests between the Law of the state, tested and found wanting by the protagonist, and the protagonist’s private remedy, revenge.”3 An initial murder (often of a ruler or someone from a ruling family) and a ghostly visit of the victim to a kinsman are characteristic features of the genre (though no ghost appears in Titus); so too are intrigue and plotting by murderer and avenger, leading to more murders, often gruesome. Characteristic also are the avenger’s delay and real or pretended madness; a “play within a play” or a banquet provides impulse or setting for more murders; a final crisis leaves the stage littered with bodies,
1 Jonson’s “five and twentie or thirty yeeres” is not a literal dating device for either Spanish Tragedy (Jieronimo?) or Titus; cf. Jonathan Bate (ed.), Titus Andronicus: The Arden Shakespeare (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 71–2; Alan Hughes (ed.), Titus Andronicus: Updated edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 4 with n. 3. The entry in Philip Henslow’s record of plays performed at the Rose Theatre, often used to date the first performances of Titus to early 1594, was re-interpreted by Winifred Frazer, “Henslowe’s ‘ne’,” Notes and Queries 236 (1991), pp. 34–5, so as not to refer to Titus as a ‘new’ production; the date is open: see Brian Vickers, Shakespeare, Co-Author (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 148–9. 2 The authorship of the play has been controversial at least since Ravenscroft’s publication of an “altered version” in 1678; that the play was not Shakespeare’s at all gradually became the hegemonic view and lasted into the early 20th century, when collaboration with George Peele was posited. Vickers (above, n. 1), pp. 148–243, 449–73, collects earlier arguments as well as original ones and compellingly demonstrates that, while Shakespeare wrote most of the play, Peele wrote 1.1, 2.1, 2.2 and 4.1; Shakespeare’s “beginning point” is at 2.3 (i.e. adhering to the traditional act division), where Aaron enters alone, carrying a money-bag. Aaron’s speech, “Now climbeth Tamora…” (after 1.1.499 in editions that include 1.1.35–8 of Q1) marks the traditional (and no doubt incorrect) beginning point of Act 2; he has remained onstage after the others have exited. Citations of the play are from Bate, Titus Andronicus (above, n.1), except that the traditional numbering of scenes is followed here. 3 Heather Kerr, “Aaron’s Letter and Acts of Reading: the Text as Evidence in Titus Andronicus,” AUMLA: Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association 77 (1992), pp. 1–9.
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including the avenger’s.4 Thomas Norton’s and Thomas Sackville’s Gorboduc (1561) and John Pykerynge’s Horestes (1567) are prototypes or else the earliest English examples (Gorboduc with evident Senecan influence), but Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (1587) is usually looked to as the first major revenge drama. Titus Andronicus (early 1590s?) or The True Tragedy of Richard the Third (1594, anon.) may have been the next. After this followed plays such as Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge (1600), Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1601), Chettle’s Hoffman (1602), Chapman’s The Revenge of Bussy d’ Ambois (1604), and the anonymous The Revenger’s Tragedy (1606 or 1607). Frequent revivals of The Spanish Tragedy and Hamlet left in their wake impetus for emulation and even parody.5 Both the popularity of revenge drama and an early recognition of its choicest parts might be seen in the Induction to the anonymous A Warning for Faire Women (1599), in which personifications of Comedy, Tragedy and History debate who should rule the stage that day. Comedy typifies Tragedy with jaded disgust—and with a catalogue of components of revenge dramas, as if Tragedy had become only that: How some damd tyrant to obtaine a crowne, Stabs, hangs, impoysons, smothers, cutteth throats, And then a chorus, too, comes howling in And tels us of the worrying of a cat: Then of a filthie whining ghost, Lapt in some fowle sheete, or a leather pelch, Comes skreaming like a pigge halfe stickt, And cries, Vindicta, revenge, revenge: With that a little Rosen flasheth forth, Like smoke out of a Tabacco pipe, or a boyes squib: Then comes in two or three like to drouers, With Taylers bodkins, stabbing one another, Is not this trim? is not here goodly things?6
4 For detailed analysis of revenge plays in different periods, see Fredson Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy 1587–1642 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940), esp. pp. 101–53; Charles Hallettt and Elaine Hallett, The Revenger’s Madness: A Study of Revenge Tragedy Motifs (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980), esp. pp. 265–300. 5 For the relationship between e.g. Shakespeare’s Hamlet and The Revenger’s Tragedy, see Howard Felperin, Shakespearean Representation. Mimesis and Modernity in Elizabethan Tragedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1977), pp. 159–70; Scott McMillin, “Acting and Violence: The Revenger’s Tragedy and Its departures from Hamlet,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 24 (1984), pp. 275– 91; Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 139–50. For the influence of The Spanish Tragedy on The Revenger’s Tragedy, see Alfred Harbage, “Intrigue in Elizabethan Tragedy,” in: Richard Hosley (ed.), Essays on Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1962), p. 39. 6 Tudor Facsimile Texts, Vol. 110 (Amersham, 1912). The cries of “Vindicta” no doubt recall the entrance of Hieronimo (The Spanish Tragedy 3.13.1), slightly mad, carrying a volume of Seneca, and
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Senecan tragedy (e.g. Thyestes) is often thought to be a major root of revenge drama,7 and Greek tragedy has also been adduced.8 Roman Comedy (first through the Italian commedia erudita) has its supporters as well, as does ancient rhetoric and its medieval and Renaissance substantiations.9 There is of course no single “root” for English revenge drama in particular—nor for Renaissance drama in general (to the shaping influences upon which ancient epic and novel, medieval romance, chronicles and histories, ancient and later, must all be added). Nevertheless, the Roman Comedy/ Rhetoric roots played an important role in the emergence of revenge drama and are the main focus of this essay. The Renaissance was a significant period for the revival of Roman Comedy: in 1429, Nicolaus Cusanus brought to Rome a manuscript with 16 comedies of Plautus, 12 of which had been lost for centuries;10 four years later, Donatus’ commentary on Terence came to light in Mayence (Mainz).11 The editio princeps of Terence appeared in 147012 and that of Plautus (Giorgio Merula) two years later. Scholastic productions of Latin drama in Rome soon followed; by the late 1480s and over the next 50 years, performances of Plautus and Terence, often in translation, were frequent in the major
reading “Vindicta mihi!” Ben Jonson darts his arrows at The Spanish Tragedy in Everyman in his Humour 1.3. 7 For different perspectives, see the review of Gordon Braden’s Renaissance Tragedy and the Senecan Tradition: Anger’s Privilege (New Haven; Yale University Press, 1985) by Marion Trousdale in Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 4 (1989), pp. 223–7. 8 John Kerrigan, Revenge Tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 170–92. Kerrigan makes his case by discussing John Pykerynge’s Horestes (1567) as the first example of the English genre. For the distinction between Greek tragedies of revenge and later revenge drama, see Anne Pippin Burnett’s elegant preface and introductory chapter, “Huge Frenzy and Quaint Malice: Seneca and the English Renaissance,” in her Revenge in Attic and Later Tragedy, Sather Classical Lectures 62 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), pp. xiii–xviii, 1–32. 9 See esp. Lorna Hutson, The Invention of Suspicion. Law and Mimesis in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Hutson comprehends more than revenge drama in her thesis; see e.g. pp. 130–1 with n. 75, where she discusses “the contribution made by Roman intrigue comedy and neoclassical comedy to the varied genres of English Renaissance drama, including chronicle history play, revenge tragedy, and romance comedy.” 10 The ms. was Vat. lat. 3870; see Phyllis W.G. Gordon, Two Renaissance Book Hunters: the Letters of Poggius Braccolini to Nicolaus de Niccolis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), p. 315 n. 4. 11 This was Giovanni Aurispa’s discovery; for the vicissitudes of this manuscript and Nicolaus Cusanus’ part in them, see Charles H. Beeson, “The Text Tradition of Donatus’ Commentary on Terence,” Classical Philology 17 (1922), pp. 285–6; Remigio Sabbadini, Storia e Critica di Testi Latini. Cicrone, Donato, Tacito, Celso, Plauto, Plinio, Quintiliano, Livio e Sallusto, Commedia ignota, Biblioteca di Filologia Classica 10 (Catania: Francesco Battiato, 1914), pp. 214–16. For Nicolaus Cusanus, see Letters 5 and 9 on pp. 232–3, 236–8. 12 Indeed, multiple editions are attested at about the same time; texts nos. 1–11 in Giovanni Cupaiuolo, Bibliografia Terenziana (1470–1983), Studi e testi dell’ antichità 16 (Naples: Società Editrice Napoletana, 1984), pp. 37–8, are editions produced between 1470–1472 in Strassbourg, Naples (?), Rome, Venice and Paris.
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cities of Italy. A second phase of Renaissance invention began in the first third of the 16th century, with the creation of a new form of Italian drama that imitated Plautus and Terence, the commedia erudita. Productions of Ariosto’s La Cassaria (indebted to Mostellaria, Poenulus and Rudens) and I Suppositi (indebted to Eunuchus and Captivi) led the way in the carnival seasons of 1508 and 1509 in Ferrara; Machiavelli’s Mandragola (1518), a splendid intrigue, is perhaps the masterpiece of the genre.13 The new texts of Plautus and Donatus, as well as those of the new Italian comedies, soon crossed the Channel. Terence was a staple of the grammar school curriculum (and Plautus for older students) by the 1520s.14 Productions of Plautus and Terence both in schools and universities began during that decade; productions for the royal court are likewise attested in the 1520s.15 Translations into English may have been slower to arrive; the Andria was translated first in 1520, again in 1588, and a complete set of Terence’s plays by Bernard in 1598.16 Only one Plautine translation is known to have been published in England in the 16th century: W. Warner’s Menaechmi in 1595.17 The late, slow appearance of translations suggests a widespread knowledge of Latin. Meanwhile, by the 1550s, the first comedies composed in English appeared: Nicholas Udall’s Ralph Roister Doister (ca. 1552), based on Plautus’ Miles Gloriosus with additional material from Terence’s Eunuchus, and the anonymous Jack Jugeler (ca. 1553), based on Amphitruo. Later, in 1566, George Gascoigne’s The Supposes, a translation of Ariosto’s I Suppositi, was performed for the first time and marks the happy blending of Italian and Roman elements on English soil. At the same time, comedies by Plautus and Terence continued to be performed in Latin in the universities, the Andria at Oxford in 1559 and the Aulularia at Cambridge in 1564.18
13 Leo Salingar, Shakespeare and the Traditions of Comedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), pp. 175–218, for Shakespeare and Italian comedy in general; pp. 175–7, for four periods of development (the third ca. 1540, when “Italian men-of-letters began to expound the newly available text of the Poetics to frame rules for literature,” and the fourth ca. 1545, when professional actors began forming companies to perform what became known as commedia dell’ arte). 14 T.W. Baldwin, William Shakespeare’s Small Latine and Lesse Greek, 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956). 15 For productions at Cambridge, see the “Chronological Table” at the end of G.C. Moore Smith, College Plays Performed in the University of Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923). For discussion of these and the court productions (of an unnamed Plautine play in 1520, Menaechmi in 1526 and Phormio in 1527), see Bruce R. Smith, Ancient Scripts and Modern Experience on the English Stage, 1500–1700 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 134–9, 150–1. 16 Henrietta Palmer, List of English Editions and Translations of Greek and Latin Classics Printed before 1641 (London: Blades, East & Blades, 1911), p. 103. 17 Palmer, List (above, n. 16), p. 86, for Menaechmi and the anonymous Jack Jugeler. For a phantom translation of Amphitruo by an E. or W. Courtney in 1562–1563, see J.C. Maxwell, “‘Amphytrio’ or ‘Jack Juggler’,” The Times Literary Supplement (London, May 17, 1957), p. 305; H. Nørgaard, “Translations of the Classics into English before 1600,” The Review of English Studies, New Series 9 No. 34 (1958), p. 164. 18 For a notion of Plautus’ vast influence on Roman Comedy throughout the Renaissance world and beyond, consult the nearly 800-page study by Karl von Reinhardstoettner, Plautus: Spätere Bearbeitun-
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But what have the revival of Roman Comedy and its various transformations in the early and mid-16th century to do with the appearance of revenge dramas later in that century? To answer that question, we must begin with a brief examination of the influence of Roman Comedy on the larger mix of Elizabethan genres represented by Shakespeare’s plays; then we can turn again to revenge drama and to Titus Andronicus in particular.
II. Roman Comedy and Shakespeare In using Titus Andronicus as an exemplary revenge tragedy by which to study the genre’s relation to Roman Comedy, investigation is at first glance simplified by the fact that its major author is Shakespeare (in collaboration with Peele: see n. 2) and that Shakespeare is known to have adapted plots of Roman comedies, sometimes almost whole-cloth—The Comedy of Errors (1594) is based on Menaechmi with additional material from Amphitruo—and sometimes to a lesser extent—e.g. The Taming of the Shrew (1593) borrows from those same Plautine plays as well as from Mostellaria, The Merry Wives of Windsor (1600) from Casina but also from Miles Gloriosus and Eunuchus.19 Shakespeare’s adaptations of Roman Comedy plots (as distinct from other elements of the genre) are largely limited to his comedies, and to a lesser degree his romances. He and other Elizabethan dramatists, however, seem also to have appropriated more broadly the “double-plot” structure of Terence’s comedies (e.g. The Taming of the Shrew, Merchant of Venice);20 additionally, the stock characters of Roman Comedy, often mediated by commedia erudita, are visible on the Elizabethan stage—and not only in comedies.21 Viewers of Hamlet no doubt see Polonius as a
gen plautinischer Lustpiele: Ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Literaturgeschichte (Leipzig: Verlag Wilhelm Friedrich, 1886; available online by Google); the author devotes a chapter to each play of Plautus and then collects later re-makings, giving brief descriptions act by act (see e.g. his treatment of Shakespeare’s Errors, pp. 570–6); the focus is on the structure of the plays. 19 See e.g. Robert Miola, Shakespeare and Classical Comedy: The Influence of Plautus and Terence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 20–38 (Errors), 63–79 (Shrew), 103–22 (Wives). Some of Peeles’s borrowings can be seen on the verbal level: for his “Thrasonical huffe-snuffe” in The Old Wives Tale, see Miola p. 120; Terentian Latin tags appear here and there: a misquotation of Adelphoe 790 at Old Wives Tale 10; the remark “facinus scelus” at Edward I xxv.81 spoken by the King as his dying Queen confesses an earlier infidelity has resonances with Terence’s “facinus indignum” at And. 1.1, Hec. 3.3, Ad. 1.1. 20 See Richard Hosley, “The Formal Influence of Plautus and Terence,” in: John Russell Brown and Bernard Harris (eds.), Elizabethan Theatre (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1967), p. 133; also Marvin T. Herrick, Comic Theory in the Sixteenth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1950), p. 6. Elizabethan dramatists more generally assimilated the larger ordering of plot from Roman Comedy, what Salingar, Shakespeare (above, n. 13), p. 76, calls “‘the artificial order’ of a continuous plot unfolding causal connexions between its incidents as it advances.” 21 General discussion in Hosley, “Formal Influence” (above, n. 20), pp. 130–45.
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busybody of an old man planning to pry into his son’s private life as he enjoins Reynaldo in Act 2.1 to travel to Paris, discover the haunts of the young man and make delicate inquiries of his new acquaintances, insinuating “such wanton, wild, and usual slips / As are companions noted and most known / To youth and liberty” (22–4). This “fetch of wit,” Polonius predicts, will entice Reynaldo’s newly found confidante to reveal Laertes’ peccadilloes (59–65): “I saw him enter such a house of sale,” Videlicet, a brothel or so forth. See you now— Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth And thus do we of wisdom and of reach, With windlasses and with assays of bias, By indirections find directions out.
Readers of Terence’s Andria will see more in this exchange than an elderly gentleman issuing sly commands to his servant in Elsinore, and will recall Simo in the opening narratio, where he explains how he has acted as a sleuth in the past, inquiring into his son’s conduct, hot on the trail for any new clue; he even recites early morning visits outside a courtesan’s house to query the slave attendants about his son’s activities during the night (1.1.56–8). Dissatisfied with the absence of evidence for any misbehavior, he creates a trap for his son, leading him to think he is to be married that very day; the certain refusal of the sham marriage will provide a vera obiurgandi causa (“a real cause for rebuke,” 1.1.131).22 In 2.1 of Hamlet, there are no verbal echoes of Terence’s scene, but the characterization of the fathers as they inquire about their sons, and their uncertainty, suspicion and willingness to use similar inquisitorial tactics to “get the dirt,” make it certain that the Reynaldo/Polonius scene is modeled on Andria 1.1.23 Robert Miola has warned against narrow critical approaches privileging verbal echo and parallel passages: “The realities of Renaissance imitation must broaden our conception of influence to include various manifestations, verbal and also non-verbal—‘transformed convention, rhetorical or structural format, scenic rhythm, ideational or imagistic concatenation, thematic articulation.’ These realities must also attune criticism to the fact of mediated or collateral influence.”24 The influence of Roman Comedy on Shakespeare is pervasive even if transmuted through its own reception in later genres and Roman authors (e.g. Roman elegy, Ovidian epic, the novel) and through prior receptions in Italy and elsewhere in Europe.
22 For detailed discussion of Simo’s narration, see Adele Scafuro, The Forensic Stage: Settling Disputes in Graeco-Roman New Comedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 354–77. 23 For similar assessments of the relationship between Andria 1.1 and Hamlet 2.1, see Miola, Shakespeare and Classical Comedy (above, n. 19), p. 178; Hutson, Invention (above, n. 9), p. 140. 24 Miola, Shakespeare and Classical Comedy (above, n. 19), p. 14, citing himself in Shakespeare and Classical Tragedy: The Influence of Seneca (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 8.
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III. Roman Comedy, Rhetoric and Revenge Drama So far, I have not addressed Shakespeare’s absorption of the intrigue plots of Roman Comedy—plots characterized by deceptions and the tricksters who use them. Bold tricksters such as the slave Pseudolus in the eponymous play come readily to mind. By a great stroke of luck, Pseudolus discovers a way to pay the double-dealing pimp Ballio 500 drachmas, the remaining sum needed to purchase the courtesan his young master Calidorus wants for himself: he accidentally intercepts Harpax, a soldier’s attendant sent to deliver the money, acquires the soldier’s letter and token that allow release of the courtesan to Harpax, ensconces him in a nearby inn, and finds a slave (Simia) to impersonate him and make the final purchase. The intrigues of Roman comedy are often components of amatory plots, as here, and so too are Shakespeare’s adaptations and transformations, as e.g. in The Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado About Nothing.25 Harbage argued persuasively half a century ago, however, that Elizabethan dramatists borrowed the same devices and plots from Roman Comedy for the creation of a special kind of “tragedy of intrigue.”26 Thomas Kyd was the innovator here, employing “comic methods with tragic materials, thus creating a species of comitragedy;”27 even tragedies less conspicuous for intrigue (e.g. King Lear) might “contain at least one sequence in which a clever man manipulates several others to his own destructive ends, employing … most often a letter, but also a dead body, a weapon, an article of attire, or (alas) a handkerchief.”28 What is viewed in this context as “intrigue” might elsewhere (below, §IV.a) also be seen as a “forensic strategy,” for often the aim of an intrigue is to concoct a plan (even in the course of an amatory plot, as examples below from Roman Comedy demonstrate) for finding persuasive proof so as to enforce the law against an enemy (much like a courtroom strategy), or to pervert proof and elude the law (a manipulation of forensic strategy). More profound than the comic arsenal of intrigue (forged letters, disguises, feigned madness, plays-within-plays) in both Roman Comedy and “tragedies of intrigue” is the intellectual agenda that drives the plotting argument.29 This is where rhetoric enters the picture—and where we may return to dramas of revenge through
25 See Miola, Shakespeare and Classical Comedy (above, n. 19), pp. 62–100; also Salingar, Shakespeare (above, n. 13), pp. 104–28. 26 Harbage (above, n. 5), pp. 37–44. Miola, Shakespeare and Classical Comedy (above, n. 19), pp. 171– 2, has suggested that moralizing commentaries (e.g. by Evanthius) in which comedy is polemicized “to find in every scene morally instructive ‘theses,’ for example, confers upon the action a consequence and seriousness appropriate to tragedy.” Audiences trained on such commentaries, he suggests, may have viewed the adaptation of comedic devices to tragedy as “an entirely natural, indeed inevitable, development.” 27 Harbage (above, n. 5), p. 37. 28 Harbage (above, n. 5), p. 39. 29 Joel B. Altman, The Tudor Play of Mind: Rhetorical Inquiry and the Development of Elizabethan Drama (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 130–47.
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the vision of a contemporary critic, Lorna Hutson, who shifts attention away from Renaissance theater’s visual impact and turns instead to the forensic rhetoric of plot.30 Hutson suggests that “even in revenge tragedy, the bloodiest of genres, the shaping epistemology of plot is … derived from the common ground which English dramatists perceived to exist between the forensically based plots of Latin intrigue comedy and the popular practices of detection and evidence evaluation that defined their own culture of trial by jury;” she concludes with a compelling interpretation of Titus Andronicus that depicts the play as “a perfect example of how Elizabethan revenge tragedy is self-consciously plotted to distinguish the participatory, open, and adversarial jury trial from the inquisitorial system [that preceded].”31 Hutson thus argues for a plot construction (and not only in Titus) that to some extent reflects trends in contemporary legal culture in the late 16th and 17th centuries, when the jury was emerging as a more active assessor of evidence.32 That Shakespeare would take note of a contemporary juristic advance should come as no surprise to those familiar with the tradition of Shakespearean scholarship that focuses on the playwright’s pervasive use of a technical legal vocabulary and his penchant for designing legal scenarios and trial scenes; indeed, alongside the early fundamental scholarly question, “Who was Shakespeare?” (i.e. the question of authorship), there arose the question, “Was Shakespeare a lawyer?”33 A rhetorical training that may have anticipated a career in the Inns (whether to be fulfilled as a barrister or not) or more likely the role of a juror began early for an English schoolboy and laid the groundwork for evaluating proofs and constructing a coherent narrative of an event from bits and pieces of evidence. Not only was the study of Cicero and Quintilian, with their schematization of proofs, part of the educational program of schoolboys, so too was the study of Terence.34 While some editions provided commentaries on syntax, metrics, diction and rhetorical figures, and while some of these prefaced each scene 30 Hutson, Invention (above, n. 9), pp. 66, 68. 31 Hutson, Invention (above, n. 9), p. 68 with n. 14. 32 Hutson, Invention (above, n. 9), p. 88 with n. 85 “… these participatory procedures [the pre-trial investigations before grand juries as well as the juries’ participation in trials] permitted lay people to become acquainted with ways of thinking about how to present or evaluate narratives as evidence at the same time as some popular drama was (as we shall see) encouraging the development of a similar kind of awareness.” 33 The question seems to have been in circulation for some time before it surfaces in William L. Rushton, Shakespeare a Lawyer (London: Longman Brown Green Longmans and Roberts, 1858). The question continues, in different shapes, as in studies of Shakespeare’s presentation of trial scenes; see e.g. Jean-Paul Pittion, “Borrowing the Language of Lawyers: The Rhetoric of Law in Shakespeare’s Comedies,” Le Journal de la Renaissance 1 (2000), pp. 189–203. 34 Hutson, Invention (above, n. 9), p. 122, argues for the “specifically legal pedagogy of narrative” and points out that Renaissance schoolboys “learned about narrative from the elementary reading and composition exercises in Aphthonius’ Progymnasmata, which … they read in a Latin edition enriched by the commentaries of Reinhardt Lorichius.” A beautiful digital copy of the text can be read online: digitale.bibliothek.uni.halle.de/um/um:nbn:de:gbv:3:1-122342. For Shakespeare’s knowledge of Aph-
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with moral explications, others gave equal or more attention to rhetorical theory and argument. Willichius, for example, published an edition in the 1550s that was eventually used in English schools. Marvin Herrick describes his method: Willichius thought of each scene in a play as an oration; the short scene was often a little oration, an oratiuncula. When he could, he analyzed the quantitative structure of the scenes according to the conventional rhetorical scheme of exordium, statement of facts (narratio), proof (confirmatio), disproof (refutatio), and peroration. He did not neglect the traditional dramatic analysis (itself rhetorical in origin) of prologue, protasis, epitasis, catastrophe, but showed how the rhetorical form and expression of individual scenes supported the dramatic pattern of the play.35
While “proofs” played an important role in many commentators’ works on Terence, Willichius seems to have taken particular delight in citing as many instances as possible. Notable is his depiction of Andria 2.2.359–69, where he points out “six signs” used by Davos in his deductive proof that the wedding Pamphilus’ father had planned for him that day was sham.36 This is a memorable proof, one observed by Donatus and no doubt popular with Terentian spectators and readers.37 Indeed, proofs abound, of all sorts of things, in New Comedy: in Andria, e.g., that Pamphilus will marry Philumena, that Chremes has not promised his daughter to Pamphilus, that Glycerium is the daughter of Chremes; in Menander’s Epitrepontes (“The Arbitrators”), that Charisius raped a girl at the Tauropolia; and in his Samia, that Chrysis is the mother of the child she nurtures. In a recent essay on the Samia, I pointed out the attentiveness to proving in a number of plays of Menander and in several Menandrian-based plays of Plautus and Terence: Aspis, Epitrepontes, Samia, Sikyonios, Cistellaria, Adelphoe, Andria, Eunuchus and Heauton Timorumenos. I suggested that Menander’s preoccupation with “proving” has both a philosophical basis and a foundation in the tradition of rhetoric: while it cannot be proven that Menander is reproducing Peripatetic ideas, his intellectual
thonius, see William C. McAvoy, “Form in ‘Richard II’, II.1.40–66,” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 54 (1955), pp. 355–61. 35 Herrick, Comic Theory (above, n. 20), p. 6, refers to a copy of the commentary published in Zurich in 1550. While the physical volume appears to be available in very few libraries (different editions, of 1550 and 1555), Google provides a digital online copy from the library of the University of Ghent: (Jodicus) Refellianus Willichius, Commentaria In Omnes Terentii Fabulas Compendiosa (Eichorn: Frankfurt on Oder: 1555). 36 Willichius, Commentaria (above, n. 35). Pages are unnumbered; commentaries are provided after each scene; comments on the “six signs” follow the Latin text of 2.2. 37 Cf. Altman, Tudor Play (above, n. 29), pp. 134-43, with liberal quotation from Willichius and Melanchthon. He sums up the commentators’ analyses of different arguments (including the “proof” in 2.2) in Andria (p. 143) thus: “These examples indicate one way in which those who studied Terence were led to think about playwriting. A Terentian comedy was a running controversy waged by characters whose ruminations, inquiries, laments, and rejoicings were imaged responses to the need for proofs required to win the argument.”
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framework for proving and argumentation shares common ground with that school.38 The Menandrian-Peripatetic framework was transformed into a Roman context in less than a century (as is manifestly demonstrated at Andria 2.2.359–69); later, multiple cultures of the Renaissance would appropriate the new Roman framework, the comedy of intrigue (or comedy of forensic strategy), along with the later Roman tradition of rhetoric and oratory (notably Cicero and Quintilian). These phenomena of transformation and appropriation attest both the strength of the association of Greek New Comedy with a brilliant tradition of rhetoric honed for lawcourt argumentation and the incredible elasticity of the Latin language as it was stretched by inventive writers to translate and transform Greek ideas for Rome and then to transform Roman ideas for what would become the nation states of Europe.39
IV. Titus Andronicus Scholars and critics have dealt with this troublesome play for centuries and have perhaps given the most attention to its violence;40 my treatment is limited to demonstrating its reception of Roman Comedy. Before going further, it should be noted that while Titus is one of Shakespeare’s five Roman plays, only recently have critics accorded attention to its Romanitas.41 While they now have granted it a firm setting in Rome and have paid special heed to its dense Roman literary allusions (predominantly Ovidian and Vergilian) and to the powerful Roman patriarchal ideology in the
38 See Adele Scafuro, “When A Gesture Was Misinterpreted: didonai titthion in Menander’s Samia,” in: Geoffrey W. Bakewell and James P. Sickinger (eds.), Gestures. Essays in Ancient history, Literature, and Philosophy Presented to Alan L. Boegehold (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2003), pp. 114–15 with n. 8. 39 I omit here the transformation of the “Roman framework” in the context of medieval Europe; for a stimulating portrait of that context in medieval France, see Jody Enders, Rhetoric and the Origins of Medieval Drama (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992). 40 The oft-cited damning critiques of Ravenscroft, Coleridge and Dover Wilson can be found in the opening paragraph of Eugene M. Waith’s seminal essay, “The Metamorphosis of Violence in Titus Andronicus,” Shakespeare Survey 10 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957). For a brief and selective survey/critique of criticism focusing on the horrors of the play, see Hughes, Titus Andronicus (above, n. 1), pp. 31–7, to which add Heather James, “Cultural Disintegration in Titus Andronicus: mutilating Titus, Vergil, and Rome,” in: James Redmond (ed.), Violence in Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), and the strand of criticism influenced by Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, e.g. Karen Cunningham, “‘Scars Can Witness’: Trials by ordeal and Lavinia’s Body in Titus Andronicus,” in: Mark Rose (ed.), Shakespeare’s Early Tragedies: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1995), pp. 65–78. 41 Plutarchan sources unite the other four plays (Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus and Timon of Athens); the ahistoricity of this one holds it apart. The source for Titus may have been an older edition of a short prose chapbook, History of Titus Andronicus, published between 1736 and 1764, possibly reprinted from an older edition no longer extant; an Italian original may have preceded it. See Hughes, Titus Andronicus (above, n. 1), pp. 6–10, for different views.
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person of Titus himself,42 only Hutson, so far as I know, has looked to the influence of Roman Comedy on the plotting of the play. To be sure, some critics have seen comedic and farcical aspects in Titus, but that is not the same thing.43 Hutson opens her analysis by depicting Titus “as a play which presents political tyranny as the refusal of an open hearing of the evidence.”44 Titus’ rejection of the crown and his choice of Saturninus as emperor in Act 1 sets Rome on the road to imperial, hereditary rule; the republican/imperial contrast plays out in the course of the tragedy “as the distinction between an open, participatory justice system and one which, like the Roman canon law system, precludes public inquiry.”45 Roman Comedy informs the plot structure and the deceptions it deploys so that “[T]he errors of a comic plot become deceptions as to the facts of a recent homicide, and the middle acts of the play represent the characters trying to reason out, from the uncertain, ambiguous probabilities of evidence, what the true facts are.”46 The plot is not a “whodunit”—the audience knows the identities of the murderers and rapists—but a narratio that explores the pathways to discovering the killers of the Emperor’s brother Bassianus and nailing the proof; the obstacles to discovery are the almost perfect framing of Titus’ sons and the silencing of the one witness, Lavinia. Thus after the first act (according to the traditional act division: see n. 2 above) and the turn to hereditary rule: Shakespeare sets in motion a version of the erotic intrigue plot typical of Roman New Comedy as a plot of incrimination, in which the villains employ a rhetoric of probability to frame the guilt of the Andronici family. The subsequent refusal, by Rome’s emperor, to allow for an open examination of the deceptive evidence is followed by scenes of an extraordinary mixture of pathos teetering on the brink of farce, in which Lavinia’s mutilated and speechless person embodies the uncertainty of evidence as to the question of her condemned brothers’ guilt. The slow and painful attempts of Marcus, Titus, and young Lucius to interpret Lavinia’s signs are a displaced form of inquiry into the evidence denied by official justice, the outcome of which inquiry is commu-
42 E.g. Grace Starry West, “Going by the Book: Classical Allusions in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus,” Studies in Philology 79 (1982), pp. 62–77; Robert S. Miola, “Titus Andronicus: Rome and the Family,” in his Shakespeare’s Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Coppélia Kahn, “Shakespeare’s classical tragedies,” in: Claire McEachern (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 204–23. 43 E.g. Richard T. Bruchner, “‘Tragedy, Laugh On’: Comic Violence in Titus Andronicus,” in: Leonard Barkan (ed.), Renaissance Drama, New Series 10 (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1979), pp. 71–92. While the body-part count (heads, hands, tongue—and Alarbus’ lopped limbs in the opening scene) is high in Titus, the black humor (if that is what it is) is not exclusive to revenge plays or tragedies (although certainly a real feature in the former); consider the “heads” in Measure for Measure 4.2 and 3, where Duke Vincentio, in the guise of a friar, insists on the substitution of the head of one man for another’s— neither executed yet—to be delivered to the temporary ruler Angelo as if it were Claudio’s (“O, death’s a great disguiser” 4.2.172). 44 Hutson, Invention (above, n. 9), p. 91. 45 Hutson, Invention (above, n. 9), p. 92. 46 Hutson, Invention (above, n. 9), pp. 91, 92.
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nicated to the wider Roman world by the corroborating proof represented by Aaron’s paternity of Tamora’s child.47
Hutson follows this general summary with a detailed depiction of the comic/juristic plot. The Terentian template becomes visible in Act 2.1, when Chiron and Demetrius, Tamora’s sons, affect love for Lavinia; the scene “bears a close structural resemblance to other English Renaissance imitations of the initiation of Terentian plots of seduction.”48 The plotting, however, leads to more brutal ends, the mutilation of Lavinia and the murder of Bassianus. The comic template is visible again when the emperor Saturninus arrives: “The Terentian comic plot, with its sequence of artificial proofs designed to blind the fathers and enable rape or consensual adultery, becomes here a test of the father’s—for which read here the magistrate’s—capacity for just judgement;”49 but the magistrate (like so many senes in Roman Comedy) will be duped. The birth of Tamora’s child in Act IV.2 is a punned and contentious “issue” (Aaron: “a joyful issue,” 65; Nurse: “A joyless, dismal, black, and sorrowful issue,” 68) that signifies both the child itself and a cause at law (“the baby’s colouring will clarify the issue before the jury in the last act”); paternity, in this instance, will not be a matter of conjecture “but a manifest, inartificial proof.”50 I am at one with Hutson’s analysis of Titus Andronicus, but I hope to show more of the influence of Roman Comedy by focusing on several points in the play (2.3; 5.2; 4.2; 5.1, 3) that are suggestive of specific transformations from Roman Comedy and from Terence’s Andria in particular. As noted above (§III), Andria was particularly popular in the Renaissance; indeed, Shakespeare seems to have ingested not only its rich characterizations (as in the dialogue between Polonius and Reynaldo in Act 2.1 of Hamlet; see §II, above) but its investigatory paradigms and dramatic topoi.
IV.a The dramatization of improvising proof: Titus 2.3 I turn now to Titus Andronicus and to Act 2 in particular.51 In the first scene, Aaron has recommended to Tamora’s sons a joint rape of Lavinia as an antidote to rivalry. In the second, the various participants in the day’s hunt gather and take their start: the Emperor’s household (Saturninus, his new wife Tamora, her children) and the Andronici (Titus, his three sons and brother, his daughter Lavinia and her betrothed Bassianus) congregate. In the next woodland scene (2.3), Aaron enters and plants a bag of gold beneath a tree, “A very excellent piece of villainy” (2.3.7), he tells the 47 48 49 50 51
Hutson, Invention (above, n. 9), p. 92. Hutson, Invention (above, n. 9), p. 94, with examples from Taming of the Shrew. Hutson, Invention (above, n. 9), p. 96. Hutson, Invention (above, n. 9), p. 100. See the end of n. 2 above, on the numbering of scenes in Act 2.
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audience, but leaves the “stratagem” unexplained. Tamora then enters in amorous mood. Aaron’s thoughts are elsewhere; “Vengeance,” he says, “is in my heart, death in my hand, / Blood and revenge are hammering in my head” (2.3.38–9). He explains (42–50): This is the day of doom for Bassianus. His Philomel must lose her tongue today, Thy sons make pillage of her chastity And wash their hands in Bassianus’ blood. Seest thou this letter? Take it up, I pray thee, And give the king this fatal-plotted scroll. Now question me no more: we are espied. Here comes a parcel of our hopeful booty, Which dreads not yet their lives’ destruction.
His explanation is at first a dire prediction; then prediction turns into instruction. But he has little time for specifics, for Bassianus and Lavinia are approaching. He leaves the stage with a final order for Tamora (53–4): Be cross with him, and I’ll go fetch thy sons To back thy quarrels, whatsoe’er they be.
Te planted bag of gold, the letter for Saturninus, predictions of death for Bassianus and mutilation for Lavinia, a directive to be cross, the rounding up of Chiron and Demetrius for timely appearance and support: Aaron has set the stage not only for a crime but (as we shall see) for the framing of that crime on the innocent brothers by the careful contrivance of deceptive proofs (the gold, the “fatal-plotted scroll”). He has directed Tamora to carry the plan a stage further. Roman Comedy is full of plotting slaves who give directions to fellow slaves to win some object, e.g. money or a lover for a young master. The playwright/directors of Roman Comedy generally offer more instruction than Aaron does here, providing costumes where necessary and insisting on rehearsals. Pseudolus (see above, §III), after locating the slave (Simia) to impersonate Harpax to dupe the pimp Ballio, responds to the young men’s query about the “next act” (‘sed quid es acturus?’, 2.4.751) thus (751–5): Dicam. ubi hominem exornavero, subditivom fieri ego illum militis servom volo; sumbolum hunc ferat lenoni cum quinque argenti minis, mulierem ab lenone abducat: em tibi omnem fabulam. ceterum quo quicque pacto faciat, ipsi dixero.52
52 “I’ll tell you. When I’ll have costumed my man, I’ll turn him into the pretended servant of the soldier; let him take this token to the pimp with five minæ of silver; let him bring away the woman.
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Some Plautine slave directors plot pseudo-crimes and some even real crimes. Two examples will suffice. In Miles Gloriosus, the slave Palaestrio arranges for Pyrgopolynices to be enticed into engaging in illicit sexual relations (Acts 3–5). The soldier is more likely to take the bait if Acroteleutium (in fact a slave meretrix) is living alone, and he is accordingly misled to believe that she is divorced (1276–8). Acroteleutium had been instructed in her role onstage (3.3) and then retired offstage for further rehearsal; the witnesses are all fellow-conspirators. Her (alleged) marital status is revealed only at the moment of flagrant discovery (1402). In Persa, the slave Toxilus plans to trick the pimp Dordalus into buying a citizen girl to make him liable to a charge of kidnapping or enslaving a citizen (1.3 and 4.3–9). He is only liable to a charge of illicit enslavement if the parasite’s daughter is an Athenian citizen, so he is misled to believe she is a foreign captive. Both citizen Saturio’s daughter (3.1 and 4.2) and Sagaristio, Toxilus’ fellow slave, arrive onstage (4.2), fully instructed by Toxilus and dressed for their parts; asked by Toxilus if they have rehearsed satisfactorily, Sagaristio responds, “Tragici et comici numquam aeque sunt meditati” (“Tragic and comic actors have never rehearsed so well!” 4.2.465–6). In Miles, the offence is makebelieve: the woman cast for the role of “respectable divorced woman discovered to be still married” is really a courtesan; the soldier is to be framed for a “crime” that is no crime at all.53 In Persa, however, the framing of the offender is perfectly contrived: the parasite’s daughter is really a citizen—framing might be a “play,” but the offence is not. Motives for the “crimes” vary. Each plotter ultimately aims at helping the young man win his lover; only in Persa does the motive additionally appear vengeful. Toxilus plans the entrapment because of the hard terms imposed by Dordalus for the sale of his beloved slave: either the money was to be paid that very day and Lemniselenis freed, or she would remain a slave forever (34–4a, and cf. 81–2, 431–2, 783–5). Like the slave director in Persa, Aaron in Shakespeare’s drama has plotted a crime; his overall strategy, however, outdoes any plot in Roman Comedy, as does his power to manipulate his actors. If the “actors” in the “plot” of Persa successfully deceive the pimp, the latter will transgress the law and be held liable, as we have just seen, for the offense. But if Tamora is successful in carrying out Aaron’s directions, not only will crimes be committed (Bassianus killed and Lavinia raped and mutilated), but the doers of the crimes will escape penalty: two innocent brothers will be executed for the murder committed by the two execrable ones. Yet the instructions he leaves for Tamora are vague—to be precise, he is prevented from giving any detail by the arrival of Lavinia and Bassianus (“Now question me no more; we are espied” 2.3.48). At a crucial moment, Tamora is left to improvise.
Voilà! There’s the whole plot for you. As for the rest, in what way he is to execute each thing, I’ll instruct himself.” 53 A similar scenario occurs in Plautus Poenulus 3.3-6; see Scafuro, Forensic Stage (above, n. 22), pp. 337–8.
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Improvising on a “director’s instructions” has Roman counterparts as well. In an appendix to his second edition of Plautus in Performance, Niall Slater has taken up the topic of improvisation in Plautus, noting numerous instances. All, however, are on a much smaller scale than Tamara’s improvisation—as e.g. in Pseudolus 4.2.987, when Simia in the guise of Harpax, in the course of being questioned by Ballio, forgets the name of the soldier he is pretending to serve; without the aid of a prompt, he turns the investigation around and demands that the pimp tell him the name ut sciam te Ballionem esse ipsum (“that I may know that you are Ballio himself”).54 A lengthier improvisation on a “director’s instructions” occurs in Terence’s Andria 4.4, and it is worthwhile to examine this one in some detail. Pamphilus is madly in love with Glycerium, whom he has got pregnant; he wants to marry her. She is supposedly the sister of the Andrian courtesan Thais, but will turn out to be the long-lost daughter of Chremes, the next-door neighbor; Glycerium knows she was born a citizen but has been unable to locate her parents and does not know who they are. In 3.1 she gives birth to an infant off-stage, signaling the critical moment with an invocation to Juno Lucina (473). In 4.3, Davos comes onstage with the infant in his hands; Mysis, Glycerium’s maid, awaits him. Advising her that exprompta memoria atque astutia (“quick recall and wit” 723) are needed, he directs her first to set the stage: the infant is to be put before the door of his master’s house; she is to take some branches from the altar and lay them underneath (726–7). The sudden arrival of Chremes, the father of Pamphilus’ bride-to-be, causes Davos to change the script abruptly: he himself will pretend to be entering from the right, and Mysis’ part is now to follow his lead (734–6). In the “scene of improvisation” (4.4) that follows, Davos occasionally gives Mysis stage directions in asides to move this way or that (751, 759– 60). For most of the scene, however, he manipulates the responses of the loyal maid by asking questions that put her mistress in the worst possible light and incriminate Pamphilus beyond any reasonable doubt for fathering a child upon her. At the end of this baiting, as if it were the last straw in the trumped-up scandal against his young master, Davos says, with mock disgust and with interruption from the eavesdropping Chremes (779–81): DA. iam susurrari audio / civem Atticam esse hanc. CH. hem. DA. “coactibus legibus / eam uxorem ducet.”55 Chremes, who throughout the scene has remained hidden, as he supposes, from their view, has been convinced; he soon comes forward, announces he has heard everything (785), and departs resolutely for Simo’s house, leaving no doubt that he intends to cancel the wedding agreement. Left alone onstage, Mysis reproaches Davos for mistreating Glycerium. Davos then explains the purpose of their little play: Chremes is the father-in-law! (791). To Mysis’ complaint
54 Niall W. Slater, Plautus in Performance: The Theatre of the Mind2 (Amsterdam: Hardwood, 2000), pp. 166–7. 55 Da.: “Now I hear it whispered that she is an Attic citizen.” Ch.: “Ahem!” Da.: “‘Compelled by the laws, he will take her as his wife!’”
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that she should have been forewarned, the director responds (794–5): paullum interesse censes ex animo omnia /ut fert natura, facias an de industria?56 Davos has expertly managed Mysis’ improvisation. The staging in 4.3 and 4 has provided proof of the existence of Glycerium’s and Pamphilus’ son and so parallels Simo’s earlier proof to Davos in 3.1 and 2 that the infant did not exist.57 Master and slave are accordingly shown in parallel positions of creating proofs, interpreting phenomena and demonstrating truth—for a second time: a similar paralleling of deductive faculties appeared when Simo’s investigation into his son’s conduct and his invention of the sham wedding plan to trap his son (1.1) were juxtaposed with Davos’ proof that the nuptiae were falsae (2.2). Davos, however, has gone a step further here (4.4): while he has allowed Mysis to provide proof of the infant’s birth, he himself has planted the suspicion that Pamphilus is about to commit a crime, marriage to a foreigner, on the fallacious grounds, publicized by the couple, that Glycerium is an Athenian citizen. The final proof, that of Glycerium’s identity as the citizen daughter of Chremes, will be the culmination (5.4). Proving has become a thematic concern in the play—indeed, it drives it forward from the very beginning. The search for and creation of proofs onstage in this play and elsewhere in New Comedy has appropriated its own dramatic baggage, by which I mean that certain dramaturgic motifs have become associated with forensic stagings: an actor/director’s plot to entrap or frame someone, improvisation when the plot is disrupted, metatheatrical language that acknowledges the plotting, epideictic demonstrations of artificial proofs, and triumphant acknowledgments of inartificial ones—a ring, a footprint, a piece of clothing, a mother’s cry of childbirth. A search for an analogue to Tamora’s lengthy scene of improvisation initiated this detour to Roman Comedy; examination of the dynamics of Terence’s improvisation in Andria 4.3–4 within the larger framework of the comedy indicates that it is a suitable foil against which to examine proving strategies and dramatic technique in Titus Andronicus. To turn to the improvisatory scene (2.3) in that play: Bassianus is the first to greet Tamora, and he reads suggestive signs of scandalous conduct in her pastoral clothing—why else should the Empress be “Unfurnished of her well-beseeming troop?” (56). Tamora meets the pastoral provocation: if she really were Dian (as 56 “Do you think it matters little whether one acts as nature prompts, doing all from emotion—or from studied skill?” 57 Both proofs are executed through the help of theatrical conventions: Simo argued that the timing of the labor shrieks was too perfect (3.1.474–6), and that the mid-wife’s issuing of instructions to the “new mother” from outside the house was too obvious a device for ensuring a hearing by an external audience (3.2.490–1)—these are the conventions of the theater not of real-life births! Davos, on the other hand, exploits the techniques of acting to make his proof persuasive: having once cast Mysis in the role of loyal supporter, he produces an improvised scene staged to perfection. The very plotting he ascribes to Glycerium in 4.3 is the one he had devised in 3.2 (511–16) to assist Simo in his self-induced misinterpretation; but in 4.3, Davos’ presentation of this plotting against the background of Mysis’ protests allows for no belief in his sham refutation.
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Bassianus had suggested), she would furnish him with Actaeon’s horns (61–3). Lavinia herself now enters the fray: “Tis thought you have a goodly gift in horning / And to be doubted that your Moor and you / Are singled forth to try experiments” (67– 9). Bassianus presses home his reading: why else has she dismounted “And wandered hither to an obscure plot, / Accompanied but with a barbarous Moor, / If foul desire had not conducted you?” (77–9). Lavinia adds a taunt; Bassianus promises to tell his brother; Lavinia rubs salt into the wound (80–7). Clearly Tamora has had little need to improvise “crossness” (53). On cue, her two sons arrive; now Tamora delivers a flawless inflammatory speech mixing a spoonful of truth into a teacup of prevarication: Lavinia and Bassianus have enticed her to this “barren detested vale” (93); have threatened to bind her to a yew tree and leave her to a miserable death; and have called her “foul adulteress, / Lascivious Goth” (109–10); she begs her sons to seek revenge. Bassianus is stabbed; Lavinia, after futile pleading, is drawn away—but not before the young men remember Aaron’s directions about the corpse: “This is the hole where Aaron bid us hide him” (186). There is something dramaturgically disturbing here: we expected that Tamora would have to bend Bassianus’ words to find a motive for crossness, but on the contrary, he and Lavinia have readily supplied the fuel.58 “Double time” (more adroitly employed by Shakespeare elsewhere) is evident in Lavinia’s remark about Saturninus at the end of the opening exchange (“Ay, for these slips have made him noted long,” 86);59 we may infer, I think, that the Emperor has already been the subject of scandalous gossip, quite likely by his brother and betrothed (cf. Lavinia’s remark at 67–9). Aaron, having seen the couple approach, may have counted on the verbal attack. Aaron’s hand is evident elsewhere in the “improvisatory scene,” for it turns out that the boys have not only been sent to the lonely spot to back Tamora’s quarrels (54), they have also been instructed where to deposit the corpse of Bassianus—from which we must infer that they have also been directed to slay the man. Little, if anything, has been left to chance improvisation. Instructions for intrigue in Andria and Titus, followed by interruption, operate in similar ways although in different registers. Neither Davos nor Aaron have left the improvising actress without support. In the Roman comedy, Davos remains onstage and himself provokes the improvising maid to a perfectly natural response of artless indignation as she hears the truth about her mistress foully denied; Aaron leaves the experienced Queen onstage to be provoked by truthful statements meanly made—and her response, the lengthy, artful and indignant speech of threatened death bound to a dismal yew, is hardly different in affective pitch from her lenghthy, artful speech inviting Aaron to mythic love-making moments before—the earlier speech depicting 58 This scene marks the point where Shakespeare has taken up the pen from Peele; can this “fueling” by Bassianus and Lavinia be Shakespeare’s way of joining the two scenes—the early hour (2.2.14–17) possibly providing the crustiness to the newly married young couple? 59 Hughes, Titus Andronicus (above, n. 1), p. 95, calls it a “rudimentary instance.”
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the woodland alive with birds that “chant melody on every bush,” with snakes “rolled in the cheerful sun,” and green leaves that “quiver with the cooling wind” (12–14), and the later depicting “[A] barren detested vale” and “[T]he trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean” (93–4).60 The diptych of her contrapuntal narrationes cracks the dramatic illusion of her performance by baring its foundation in words. Tamora remains herself, unnatural and artful as that may be. All this is hardly to say that Andria 4.3–4 serve as a dramaturgic template for the scene. Nonetheless, that statement may call for revision when we turn to 4.2 of Titus. Before that, it will be worthwhile to pause and consider the end of 2.3 and the framing of Titus’ sons Martius and Quintus for the murder of Bassianus.
IV.b The dramatization of proving: Titus 2.3 After Chiron and Demetrius deposit the corpse in the pit and lead Lavinia away, the Empress exits and Aaron brings the innocent fraternal pair onstage. First Martius falls into the pit with Bassianus’ body in it, and then Quintus, as he tries to rescue him, falls in as well. Although they share the pit with a corpse, the falling of the one and then the other is farcical—but there is no known analogue in Roman Comedy.61 More relevant is a question put by Quintus as he kneels at the rim of the pit before his fall; in response to his brother’s report that Bassianus lies dead “like to a slaughtered lamb / In this detested, dark, blood–drinking pit” (223–4), Quintus asks, “If it be dark, how dost thou know ’tis he?” (225). The request looks to the evidentiary foundation for Martius’ observation and as such connects to the “proving theme” of the play. Martius responds with an elaboration of one of the major tokens of identity in Roman Comedy, a ring—although here it does not identify its owner so much as illuminate the wearer:62 “Upon his bloody finger he doth wear / A precious ring that lightens all this hole” (226–7). Meanwhile, Aaron has gone to fetch Saturninus, and their entrance is soon followed by that of Tamora, Titus and Lucius (his son). Saturninus addresses the young men in the pit and Martius reports that the Emperor’s brother is dead. Tamora now delivers the “fatal-plotted scroll”: “Then all too late I bring this fatal writ, / The complot of this timeless tragedy” (264–5). Her language plays with law (“writ” as
60 See Hutson, Invention (above, n. 9), pp. 135–7; Kerr (above, n. 3), pp. 9–10; Miola, “Titus Andronicus” (above, n. 42), p. 53. 61 Cnemon’s fall into a well in Dyskolos would not be known. For the metaphors of sightlessness in this part of the long scene, see Hutson, Invention (above, n. 9), pp. 95–6; for the tomblike quality of the pit, Miola, “Titus Andronicus” (above, n. 42), pp. 55–6. 62 Curc. 2.3; HT 4.1; Hec. 5.3 (821). Rings as tokens of proof are significant elsewhere in Shakespeare, e.g. in the trial scene that concludes All’s Well That Ends Well (5.3) and in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, where Julia produces two rings (her own and Sylvia’s).
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legal action, though not precisely used) and metatheatrics (“complot of this timeless tragedy”), and puns on “complot” (the pit, a plot of land shared, com-, between a corpse and killers implicated by a plot).63 Saturninus reads the letter aloud, assumes the plotting epistolographers are the brothers in the pit, and easily identifies the elder tree and pit of the letter, where a reward is promised the addressee for killing Bassianus (“Do thou so much as dig the grave for him. / Thou know’st our meaning”), in case they fail to carry out the deed (268–75). The Emperor ends his reading with directions to his attendants: “Look, sirs, if you can find the huntsman out / That should have murdered Bassianus here.” Aaron diverts attention from this loose thread, the addressee of the letter, by discovering the gold; the loose thread is apparently forgotten altogether. Saturninus now directs his attendants to drag the young men from the pit to the prison while Titus begs for his sons, promising that “if the faults be proved in them—” (291), but is cut off by Saturninus: “If it be proved! You see it is apparent.” In fact, “fault” is not at all proved, but Saturninus is unlike Quintus, who shortly before asked his brother for proof that he could identify Bassianus (“If it be dark, how dost thou know ’tis he?”) and unlike Hieronimo in Spanish Tragedy, who, as Hutson has pointed out, tests the authenticity of the letter from Belimperio before acting on its contents,64 and more like Simo in the Andria, who misreads the signs of his son’s character, and exceedingly like any of the recipients of the fraudulent letters in Plautus: like them, he believes without doubt. Six letters are read aloud or composed onstage in Plautus. All appear in comedies of intrigue,65 and they are usually presented in the process of being forged or are the product of forgery. If authentic (as in Bacchides and Pseudolus), they are used fraudulently, e.g. the forged instructions to Lyco the banker in Curculio (429–36) to release a pre-arranged sum of money for the purchase of a girl, a forged letter in Persa (501–12) advertising the sale of an Arabian captive, and an authentic letter in Pseudolus (998–1001, 1009, 1011–14) delivered by Harpax but intercepted by the eponymous slave. The forged letter of intrigue is at home, then, in Roman Comedy; it has migrated to dramas of revenge.66
63 “Plot” appears in Aaron’s speech at 2.1.114–16, and “path” at 110–11: see Miola, “Titus Andronicus” (above, n. 42), p. 51, for earlier in the scene when Aaron is in dialogue with Tamora’s sons. 64 Hutson, Invention (above, n. 9), p. 96. 65 The obverse of this phenomenon is that letters do not form a part of comedies of identification— unless we include the lettering that appears on the tiny sword and double-headed axe at Rudens 1156– 64. Of the six letters mentioned here, only Phoenicium’s letter to Calidorus at the opening of Pseudolus is not directly a part of the play’s intrigue. See Adele Scafuro, “The rigmarole of the parasite’s contract for a prostitute in Asinaria: legal documents in Plautus and his predecessors,” Leeds International Classical Studies 3 (2003/04), pp. 1–21. Electronic publication (http://www.leeds.ac.ak/classics/lics). 66 E.g. Hamlet’s letter (Hamlet 3.4.202–9).
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IV.c Mirrored plots: Titus 2.3 and 5.2 By the time the actors arrive onstage in 5.2, the mutilated Lavinia has been discovered by her uncle Marcus (2.4). Titus’ two sons have been sent to execution for murdering Bassianus; Lucius, his remaining son, has been condemned to exile for trying to rescue them. Titus has had his hand chopped off in his own last-ditch effort to rescue them, and has been rewarded with their heads; Lucius has obeyed his father’s behest to go to the Goths and raise an army there (3.1). Lavinia has indicated, by pointing out the relevant passage in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the crime committed against her body and, by writing with a stick held between her unhanded arms and guided by her tongueless mouth, has revealed the names of the perpetrators. Marcus, Titus and Lucius his grandson (and son of the exiled Lucius) have sworn revenge (4.1). Tamora has given birth to an infant of dark complexion and has wanted it killed; Aaron has devised a different plan and has left to join the Goths (4.2); Aemilius the messenger has announced the arrival of the Goths with Lucius at the head of their army (4.4); and in 5.1, Aaron, the infant in his arms, has been captured by those Goths. At the end of Act 4, Tamora conceived a plot to wean Lucius from his troops and meanwhile scatter the Goths: Lucius is to be invited to a banquet in his father’s house. She enters the stage with her sons in 5.2, herself (barely, so it seems) disguised as “Revenge,” knocks on Titus’ door (apparently a “stairway door” that Titus will have to descend), and announces that she has been sent “to ease the gnawing vulture” of Titus’ mind (5.2.31); she has brought along “Rape” and “Murder” (her two sons), who take vengeance on men who commit those crimes. Titus is not fooled (“Good lord, how like the empress’ sons thay are, / And you the empress!” 5.2.64–5) but pretends his eyes are mistaken and promises to embrace her soon; as he descends from above, Tamora addresses her sons, “This closing with him fits his lunacy. / Whate’er I forge to feed his brainsick humours / Do you uphold and maintain in your speeches” (5.2.70–2). Her instructions echo Aaron’s in 2.3, when he proposed to fetch her sons “To back thy quarrels, whatsoe’er they be” (2.3.54). This is the same dramaturgy of improvisation, but now Tamora has set the stage—though Titus will soon take over.67 When she exits in 5.2, having achieved her aim—Titus sends a summons to Lucius— she addresses him, “Farewell, Andronicus; Revenge now goes / To lay a complot to betray thy foes” (5.2.146–7). “Complot” echoes the earlier scene: Tamora, as she delivered the “fatal-plotted scroll” to Saturninus in 2.3, the scroll forged by Aaron to frame Titus’ sons for the murder of Bassianus, designated it “The complot of this timeless tragedy” (2.3.265); “complot” joins the plotting scenes and plotters together. The earlier scene was filled with one event after another: the meeting of the lovers, Tamora’s encounter with Lavinia and Bassianus, the abduction of the former
67 Bate, Titus Andronicus (above, n. 1), p. 22, neatly observes how Titus appropriates Tamora’s plot and shows superb mastery of improvisation.
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and slaying of the latter, the deposit of the corpse in a pit—followed by the falls of Titus’ two sons into the same pit, and their implication in the murder and condemnation by Saturninus. The later scene, on the other hand, is dramatically taut and comically dense, but contrapuntal with the earlier one in its dénouement. The barely disguised self-proclaimed Revenge meets the undisguised Avenger—or rather an Avenger who is armed with the testimony of Lavinia provided in 4.1 about her ravishers and who is now barely disguised by madness, feigned on the spot like that of the Syracusan twin brother in Menaechmi. And the mistress of deception is so flagrantly deceived that the scene seems to allegorize a Plautine cautionary tale as iterated Daemones in Rudens: dum praedam habere se censeret, interim / praeda ipsus esset, praeda praedam duceret” (1261–2).68 At the end of the scene, after Revenge has left the stage, while Lavinia holds a basin to catch the blood, Titus slits the throats of Chiron and Demetrius: Tamora’s two sons pay for the murder of Bassianus and for the condemnation of Titus’ two sons in the earlier scene and the rape and mutilation of Lavinia that followed. The earlier and later scenes have parallel plotters (Aaron and Tamora), parallel improvisations and parallel dénouements.
IV.d The dramatization of proving paternity: Titus 4.2 and 5.1 and 3 We must return to an earlier scene (4.2) for the full impact of the later ones (5.1 and 3). 4.2 opens with young Lucius carrying out Titus’ instructions: he delivers a gift of weapons, wrapped with a scroll, for Demetrius and Chiron, and quickly exits. The latter recognizes the verses (Odes 1.22.1–2) written on the scroll as Horace’s (“I read it in the grammar long ago,” 23), but only Aaron takes in their meaning (in an aside, “The old man hath found their guilt,” 26) and acknowledges that Tamora would enjoy Titus’ conceit. Aaron now turns back to the young men and leads conversation to their mother; Demetrius suggests they all pray for her in her pains. A stage direction appears in our texts: “Trumpets sound.” Demetrius asks why; Chiron responds, “Belike for joy the emperor hath a son.” News of the birth comes as a surprise; there has been no preparation onstage, no verbal anticipation. Pregnant women and their births are infrequent in Shakespeare and almost unknown in the extant plays of his contemporaries; among the latter group, the exception may be George Peele: in Edward the First, Queen Elinor dandles the new-born Edward the Second in her lap and his father plans the christening
68 “While he was thinking that he himself had hold of loot, in the interim he would himself have been looted: loot would have led loot away.”
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(scene ix).69 In Henry VIII, John Fletcher’s collaboration with Shakespeare, the Queen’s labor pangs are announced to the King in the opening Shakespearian scene of Act 5 (67–8) and the birth of the princess is announced at its end. In Fletcher’s 5.4 of that same play, the christening is anticipated and in the next and final scene, infant Elizabeth is paraded onstage. In the Shakespearian portion of Pericles, Prince of Tyre, the eponym’s wife Thaisa appears pregnant in the “Dumbshow” preceding Act 3, gives birth offstage during a terrible storm at sea, and is thought to have died; birth is anticipated first by Gower’s (prologue’s) utterance, “The lady shrieks, and well-a-near / Does fall in travail with fear” and then by Pericles’ prayer, “Lucina O / Divinest patroness,” and is substantiated by the midwife’s presentation of the infant to her father, along with the announcement that the Queen is dead. In The Winter’s Tale, Hermione, wife of Leontes, King of Sicily, visibly pregnant in Act 1, is accused of adultery by her husband in 2.1 and sent to prison where she bears a daughter offstage in 2.2, and permits her noble friend Paulina to present the infant to her husband. Leontes’ response after Paulina’s departure is violent: addressing Antigonus, he threatens, “The bastard brains with these my proper hands / Shall I dash out. Go, take it to the fire” (2.3).70 Eventually, he allows Antigonus to carry the infant away and abandon her in a remote foreign land.71 As the birth of an infant in a Shakespearean play is infrequent, we can be sure that it signifies something important; in Titus, it is something sensational.72 Although an actor plumped ambiguously in the belly in earlier scenes of Titus could stifle astonishment over Tamora’s birthgiving,73 we must surely think in terms
69 Dates of composition and first production are unknown, but a text was finished by early October 1593: see A.R. Braunmiller, George Peele (Boston: Twayne, 1983), pp. 87–8. Pregnancy and onstage delivery is not uncommon in medieval drama: Salingar, Shakespeare (above, n. 13), p. 43 with n. 8. 70 There is similar but figurative barbarity at MacBeth 1.7.54–9; the play is littered with images of infants and children, e.g. images of infants maltreated: 4.1.30–1; 4.1.151–3; 4.3.204–5; 4.3.217–20; less sensational: 3.4.102–5; 4.1.86–9; 4.2.6; 5.3.4; child-bearing mentioned: 4.81; 5.8.15–16. 71 For the storm at sea (and much else) in Pericles, Shakespeare is indebted to Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri (Carol Gesner, Shakespeare & the Greek Romance (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970), pp. 84–8; Gower’s version (in Confessio Amantis VIII) was printed by Caxton in 1493 and later in 1532 and 1554 (see Salingar, Shakespeare [above, n. 13], p. 62). Robert Greene’s novel Pandosto is a major source for The Winter’s Tale, which also draws on the ancient Greek novels of Longus and Heliodorus (Gesner, pp. 116–25). 72 It is difficult to assess the phenomenon that three of the four Shakespearian plays with births were collaborations and that one of Shakespeare’s collaborators had written a play with the birth of a future king at its end. But it is a red herring to consider this particular plot component (birth-giving) as of one stripe; it may be three: one leading to later romance plays (see Vicars, Shakespeare [above, n. 1], pp. 448–9; another producing grandiose displays of future English monarchs; and the third producing, at one and the same time, a botched romance and botched succession. Shakespeare may have chosen to experiment with collaborators, using birth now one way and now another. 73 The pen-and-ink drawing that tops the Longleat manuscript of 40 lines of dialogue (attributed to Tamora, Titus and Aaron) shows, among other characters in the play, Tamora kneeling, “pleading for
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of Shakespearean “doubletime”—and at the same time look to New Comedy for the model of the “five month pregnancy”74 and to a Greek novel for further complication. In Titus, the trumpet’s flourish has replaced the offstage labor shriek (cf. e.g. Ter. Andria 473; Ad. 486; Plaut. Aul. 692). The Nurse carries an infant onstage and announces the delivery: “Our empress’ shame and stately Rome’s disgrace” (4.2.60). Were Tamora an unmarried girl, or a young married woman giving birth to an infant of unknown paternity in a Roman Comedy, the sentiment might well be similar, and likewise the impulse to abandon it. So it is in Terence’s Hecyra. There, when Pamphilus discovers that his estranged wife has given birth, her mother (Myrrina) begs him to keep it secret, promising to expose the infant; whether he will take her daughter back is to be his decision (Hec. 382–401). The infant born by Callicles’ unwed daughter in Plautus’ Truculentus was apparently rushed from the house soon after birth; via a serial route, passing from one woman to another, he lands in the lap of a prostitute, to be passed off as her son. The female members of the households are anxious to be rid of the infants—and with good reason: in Truculentus, the infant is born out of wedlock and so destroys the reputation and future marriageability of Callicles’ daughter; in Hecyra, community knowledge of the infant’s birth combined with uncertainty over paternity destroys her reputation and thus her chance for a second marriage now that the current one has been imperilled.75 The aftermath of Tamora’s birth in Titus follows the pattern of the Roman Comedy plots insofar as the women of the household want to be be rid of the infant —but with a sinister shift emerging from a Greek novel: a married woman has given birth to an infant, not of uncertain paternity but of one all too certain, “A joyless, dismal, black, and sorrowful issue” (4.2.68). In Roman Comedy, where pregnancy and the birth of an infant is often proof of sexual violation but only rarely of adultery (Amphitruo), proving paternity is often a problem and its solution (helped along by a token of identity such as a ring) leads to marriage or marital stability. The additional ingredient here of racial complexity (i.e. an infant of a different color from her putative parents) as a dramatic motif, however, may have had its origin in paternity disputes and adultery charges reflected in Jerome’s testimony for a lost controversia of Quintilian, in qua accusabatur matrona quod Aethiopem peperit (“in which a married woman was subjected to accusation because she gave birth to an
her sonnes going to execution.” Her gown billows downward, pear-like, to her knees; s/he could be imagined pregnant. 74 Men. Epitr. 1116; similarly, Ter. Hec. 392–4. We might compare the element of surprise with that in Plautus, Truculentus: there is not even a hint that the girl exists (and has got pregnant and given birth) until 4.2 and 3. 75 Similar abandonment of the child born out of wedlock forms the background of Plautus Cist. In the background of Terence HT, Chremes ordered his wife Sostrata not to raise the infant she was bearing if it was a girl; instead (for it was a girl), she gave her to a Corinthian woman to expose (625–30).
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Ethiopian”).76 The motif blossoms wonderfully in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica (3rd or 4th century CE), a work certainly known to Shakespeare;77 here, the dark Ethiopian Queen Persinna, upon bearing a fair complected girl and therefore fearful of accusations of adultery, pretends that the infant was still-born and has her exposed. Many years later, the grown-up daughter (now called Chariclea) learns her identity; a letter from her mother, written on a ribbon, reveals that she is truly the daughter of the royal Aethiopian couple. The Queen had thought that no one would believe the cause of the infant’s complexion: during conception she gazed at a painting of a naked Andromeda at the moment that Perseus carried her down from the rocky crags, and her child took on the fair hue of the damsel in distress.78 In Titus, Tamora does not even try “the Andromeda defense.” The infant itself is patent proof of paternity and of its mother’s adultery at one and the same time; public discovery will lead to the end not only of Tamora’s marriage (a consequence Myrrina fears in Hecyra) but of her reign. The mother has ordered the infant killed; Aaron, unlike any father taken unawares in New Comedy by the birth of a son, evinces instantaneous love and protests. Tamora’s sons, together with the Nurse, however, second the murderous behest. Demetrius will put it to the sword: “I’ll broach the tadpole on my rapier’s point. / Nurse, give it me; my sword shall soon dispatch it” (4.2.85–6). Violence offered an infant is not unheard of in Roman Comedy; indeed, Davos in the Andria, under the pretense that the infant was not fathered by his young master Pamphilus, threatened to roll Glycerium’s new-born son into the road, and the Nurse along with it in the mud. But Davos’ aim was to elicit the father’s identity from the mother’s maid for the benefit of his young master and to promote the marriage of the infant’s father and mother. Demetrius’ aim is to preserve his mother’s marriage with the Emperor. Aaron stops him: “Stay murderous villains; will you kill your brother?” (4.2.88).
76 Quaestiones Hebraicae in genesim 30.32, cited by Michael Winterbottom, The Minor Declamations ascribed to Quintilian (Berlin: De Gruyter), p. 290; the woman offered the “Andromeda defense” (see below, n. 78); the Greek woman in Plutarch Moralia 563a who bore a black child and was tried (krinomenē) for adultery discovered that she was fourth in descent from an Aithiops. 77 The novel was highly esteemed in Europe after its rediscovery and publication in the early 16th century; it was imitated by Sidney in the Arcadia and proclaimed by him in the Defense of Poesie. Different avenues have been suggested for Shakespeare’s knowledge of the work: Thomas Underdowne’s English translation (1569?) was based upon the Latin translation of Stanislaus Warschewski (1551); Shakespeare may have known the English or Latin translation, or have studied the original in school; see Simon Reynolds, “Cymbeline and Heliodorus’ Aithiopika: The Loss and recovery of Form,” Translation and Literature 13 (2004), pp. 24–48. 78 M.D. Reeve, “Conceptions,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society NS 35 (1989), pp. 81– 112, traces the intellectual evolution of what he calls “the Andromeda effect,” which may have had its origins in discussions of perception and its effects on pregnant animals among natural philosophers (e.g. Empedocles) and medical writers.
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So a conundrum: what are the three men to do with the infant? The solution Aaron settles upon will keep him alive without threatening Tamora’s imperial position: after first wiping out dangerous informants (he kills the Nurse onstage and plans to kill the midwife soon thereafter), he will substitute his dark complected son with the new-born infant, born fair, of another mixed couple, the preceding night—the father is his countryman (4.2.153–62). The plan, the substitution of one set of parents for another, one of royal status and the other lowly, represents an alteration—and a bizarre one—of a common folk motif in Greek and Roman literature.79 Elsewhere there is no “exchange”: one infant or a twin pair (e.g. Amphius and Zethos in Euripides’ Antiope, Glycera and Moschion in Menander’s Perikeiromene) is transferred to another parent or couple (and sometimes to an animal, e.g. Hippothoon in Euripides’ Alope, Romulus and Remus in various tellings in Rome). Occasionally the infant is transferred to a mother who has recently given birth to an infant that did not survive (Cyrus the Great in Herodotus 1.107–22; the infant in Menander’s Epitrepontes and possibly in Samia), but in no case is a live infant exchanged for another live infant. The alteration is fantastical (that another mixed couple in the vicinity should have born a child of fair complexion on the same day!) and fairy-tale like—and a brilliant riff on Alcmene’s twin parturition in Amphitruo: instead of bearing twins, one like to each father, this less than mythic lady bears one like to her Moor lover while another bears the one like to herself. The infant never arrives at his fairy-tale foster-home—nor was that its father’s intention. Aaron outlines a second plan after Demetrius and Chiron have left the stage: he will carry the boy to the Goths, the Empress’ friends: “I’ll make you feed on berries and on roots / And fat on curds and whey, and suck the goat, / And cabin in a cave, and bring you up / To be a warrior and command a camp” (4.2.179–82). In the last act, Aaron, carrying the infant in his arms, appears onstage once again, this time the captive of the Goths who have transferred their loyalty to Lucius and are about to march on Rome. Lucius the commanding general insults him, provocatively; Aaron remains silent. Lucius gives the order: “A halter, soldiers! Hang him on this tree / And by his side his fruit of bastardy” (5.1.47–8). Aaron protests: “Touch not the boy,” and goads: “he is of royal blood.” Lucius: “Too like the sire for ever being good. / First hang the child, that he may see it sprawl: / A sight to vex the father’s soul withal” (5.1.50–2). A final plea from Aaron persuades Lucius: if he saves the child, he will show him “wondrous things.” The infant, up until now the silent proof of Aaron’s paternity and Tamora’s adultery, turns into a bargaining chip for the final ironclad spoken testimony: Aaron acknowledges paternity (87), attests that Demetrius and
79 For convenient lists of the motif (infant exposed and taken in by, or otherwise transferred to another parent) in Greek tragedy, New Comedy and Roman Comedy, see Gilbert Murray, “Ritual Elements in the New Comedy,” Classical Quarterly 37 (1943), pp. 47, 49, 50–1; details of our understanding of many of the plots of the fragmentary plays have been altered as new papyrus texts have been recovered.
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Chiron were the murderers of Bassianus and the rapists and mutilators of Lavinia (91–3), and confesses his own part in all the wretched deeds—his instructions to the young men, his plotting, letter-writing, gold-planting, hand-chopping trick—and countless other cruelties. In 5.3, the final scene, Lucius with Titus’ brother and the Goths have arrived in Rome; Aaron and the infant are their captives. Aaron is to provide testimony against the empress. The banquet prepared by Titus is served; the killings follow, leaving among the major players only Lucius, Aemilius and Marcus alive to address the Romans. Lucius, fresh with the testimony of Aaron, can at last name the killers of Bassianus and the ravishers of Lavinia; Marcus can point to the infant and announce its parentage: “Behold the child. / Of this was Tamora delivered, / The issue of an irreligious Moor, / Chief architect and plotter of these woes” (5.118–21). Aemilius and Marcus acclaim Lucius emperor. Aaron is returned to the stage “To be adjudged some direful slaughtering death” (143); Lucius sentences him: “Set him breast-deep in earth and famish him; / There let him stand and rave and cry for food: / If anyone relieves or pities him, / For the offence he dies” (178–81). The uncertainties of the middle acts have disappeared; the “inartificial proof” provided by the infant’s complexion has been replaced by the verbal testimony of Aaron; judgment has been rendered.80
V. Conclusions Roman comic structure and plotting seem to have influenced Shakespearian tragedies of intrigue and revenge to a great extent. In Titus Andronicus, as Hutson neatly puts it, “[T]he errors of a comic plot become deceptions as to the facts of a recent homicide, and the middle acts of the play represent the characters trying to reason out, from the uncertain, ambiguous probabilities of evidence, what the true facts are.” To achieve this knowledge, actors formulate plots for discovering evidence and use proofs and deductions. I have argued in this essay that Terence provided a dramatic template for their deployment, using multiple parallel scenes, in one creating a false proof, in another deconstructing that proof. In Titus, the authors have Aaron contrive a plot with false evidence to incriminate the sons of Titus for Bassianus’ murder (2.3) and they parallel that with scenes of fact-finding (4.1, in which Lavinia “writes” the names of her ravishers and the murderer of her betrothed) and of plotted accountability (5.2, in which Titus uses his acquired knowledge to justify his retaliation against the sons of Tamora for ravishing Lavinia and framing his own sons). The plotting characters carry along with them motifs more generally borrowed from Plautus’ intrigue plays: one forges a letter, and two (Aaron in 2.3, Tamora in 5.2) instruct others on the parts to
80 For the treatment of the final speeches in the play, amounting to a jury trial with speeches made to the “jury” of the Romans, see Hutson, Invention (above, n. 9), pp. 102–3.
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play to deceive their enemies; they costume themselves, and one feigns madness; but a plotting director’s demand for improvisation appears to be Terence’s contribution (for the improvisations in 2.3. and 5.2, cf. Andria 4.4). The motif of child-bearing in Titus aligns the play even more closely with Roman Comedy, especially as the motif is frequently associated with sexual violation and proving paternity is often a problem. In Titus, the infant itself is manifest proof of both paternity and its mother’s adultery. The sensational ingredient of the infant’s color is borrowed from a Greek novel, but the paternity motif nevertheless maintains the trajectory of a Roman Comedy. Threatened to be dispatched by a sword in 4.2, and to be hung, haltered, on a tree before its father’s eyes in 5.1, the infant is finally transformed into a bargaining chip for proof of the crimes against Bassianus and the Andronici; it has become a stage prop. So too was the infant in Terence’s Andria 4.4, when Davos insists that Glycerium’s new-born infant be placed before the door of his master’s house, and uses it to create a proof for Chremes that Pamphilus was indeed its father. Infants serve elsewhere as props in Menandrian New Comedy (e.g. in Samia and Epitrepontes or “The Arbitrators”), but nowhere in Roman Comedy is an infant used to the same degree and so dramatically as in Terence’s play.81 And nowhere in Shakespeare does an infant play so like a role.
81 It is not certain that the infant in Truculentus appeared onstage; even if not, he still plays an important role. In Cistellaria 4.2 (apud fin.), stage-action might suggest that Phanostrata treats the casket containing the tokens that identify her grown-up daughter as if it were a new-born.
Philip Ford
Molière and the Roman Comic Tradition Abstract: This essay seeks to assess the the traditional judgment that Molière was not much influenced by Plautus and Terence, by analyzing elements of his comedies that seem to draw on the legacy of the Roman comic tradition.
Traditional criticism has tended to play down the influence of the Roman comic theater on Molière’s plays, emphasizing instead the importance of his formation as an actor during his tours of provincial France before he settled in Paris in 1658. W. D. Howarth is typical in this respect when he writes: “But when we come to enquire into the relationship between the Latin dramatists and the particular kind of comedy we associate with Molière, it seems that any direct influence, particularly in the case of Terence, must have been considerably attenuated by Molière’s debt to other traditions.”1 This essay will seek to assess the extent to which this judgment is correct by analyzing those elements of Molière’s comedies that may seem to draw on Plautus and Terence, and the legacy of the Roman comic tradition.
Molière’s education at the collège de Clermont Born in 1622, Molière, it has been claimed, received little formal education before the age of 14, when he was sent as a dayboy to the Jesuit collège de Clermont in Paris (now the lycée Louis-le-Grand).2 Despite somewhat troubled beginnings, this school, which like other Jesuit colleges in Europe offered free education to non-boarders, was able to open its doors to teach the full secondary curriculum in 1618. Its teaching, as in all Jesuit colleges, was determined by the 1599 Ratio studiorum of the Company of Jesus, which set out in great detail every aspect of the organization of school life.3 In
1 W.D. Howarth, Molière, a Playwright and his Audience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 108. 2 Molière’s first biographer, Jean-Léonor de Grimarest, in his Vie de Mr de Molière (Paris: Jacques Lefebvre, 1705), writes: “ces bonnes Gens [Molière’s parents] n’aïant pas de sentimens qui dûssent les engager à destiner leur enfant à des occupations plus élevées: de sorte qu’il resta dans la boutique jusqu’à l’âge de quatorze ans; et ils se contentèrent de lui faire apprendre à lire et à écrire pour les besoins de sa profession” (p. 4). I have consulted this text in the reprint edited by A.P.-Malassis (Paris: Isidore Liseux, 1877), available on the Gallica website , consulted on 11 May 2011. 3 For an English translation, see The Jesuit Ratio studiorum of 1599, translated into English with an Introduction and Explanatory Notes by Allan P. Farrell, S.J. (Washington: Conference of Major Superiors of Jesuits, 1970).
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order to be admitted to the College, boys had to be interviewed by the Prefect of Lower Studies, who conducted a fairly rigorous examination: First, he should ask them what studies they have had and to what extent. Then he should have them write a composition on an assigned topic. He should likewise question them on some of the precepts of the subject they have studied. Finally, he should have them translate some short sentences into Latin or, if he prefers, have them interpret some passage in an author. … He should seldom admit to the lowest class either those who are rather old or are very young, unless they are unusually capable. He is not to relax this rule even though the pupil is sent merely for the advantages of the moral training. (“Rules of the Prefect of Lower Studies,” sections 10 and 12)
Unless, as seems unlikely, the rules were broken to accommodate Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, his knowledge of Latin at the age of 14 may have been more advanced than is normally assumed.4 The curriculum of the grammar and rhetoric classes was entirely focused on learning Latin and Greek. Cicero was the only prose writer put forward as a model: “Cicero is to be the one model of style, though the best historians and poets are to be sampled.”5 Plautus and Terence, however, were not included in the curriculum because of their lack of morality. While Plautus had likewise been excluded from 16thcentury humanist colleges in France, Terence, because of his good colloquial Latin style, had found more favor. Thus some of the youngest pupils at the collège de Guyenne in Bordeaux (in the octavus ordo) studied “unus ex selectis epistolis Ciceronis, alter ex aliquot scenis Terentii, tertius ex Colloquiis Mathurini Corderii.”6 The Jesuits’ fear of morally corrupting texts, however, meant that Terence did not appear even in an expurgated form. As A.P. Farrell notes: Ignatius commissioned Father André des Freux to prepare expurgated editions of Horace, Martial, and Terence. In reply, des Freux said that he found no difficulty in preparing editions of Horace and Martial, but that Terence was taxing his ingenuity because the poison was often in the very structure and argument of his works. … Ignatius banned the works of Terence from Jesuit classrooms in 1553. More than a century later father Joseph de Jouvancy published expurgated editions not only of Horace, Persius, and Juvenal, but also of Terence.7
4 Grimarest writes of Molière’s time at the collège de Clermont: “Le jeune Pocquelin étoit né avec de si heureuses dispositions pour les études, qu’en cinq années de tems il fit non seulement ses Humanitez, mais encore sa Philosophie,” Vie de Mr de Molière (above, n. 2), p. 6. 5 Farrell, Jesuit Ratio studiorum of 1599 (above, n. 3), p. 73. 6 “… first some of the selected letters of Cicero, second some scenes from Terence, and third some of Mathurin Cordier’s Colloquies.” For a modern edition of the statutes of the college, see J. de Carvalho, Notícias chronológicas da Universidade de Coimbra, III. I (Coimbra, 1944). This quotation is taken from p. 261. 7 Farrell, The Jesuit Ratio studiorum of 1599 (above, n. 3), p. 118 n. 21.
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This would have been too late for Molière, whose interest in Terence, and certainly in Plautus, must therefore have been pursued outside the classroom. Nevertheless, the Jesuit use of drama as a pedagogical aid is likely to have interested the young Molière. According to the Rules of the Rector, 13: Tragedies and comedies, which are to be produced only rarely and in Latin, must have a spiritual and edifying theme. Whatever is introduced as an interlude must be in Latin and observe propriety. No female make-up or costume is to be permitted.
How far this rule was observed must, however, be in doubt. Plays by teachers at the collège de Clermont, such as Denis Petau (1583–1652) and Louis Cellot (1588–1658), certainly included female characters.8 There do not appear to be any reports of Molière’s participation in college productions, but it is highly likely that he would have been involved. In addition, he might have tried his hand at some composition in Latin. According to another of the rules of the Ratio: At times the teacher can assign the writing of some short dramatic episode instead of the usual topic, for example, an eclogue, a scene, or a dialogue, so that the best may afterwards be performed in class, with the roles portioned out to different pupils. But no costumes or stage settings are to be allowed.9
We can conclude that Molière would have gained a good knowledge of Latin, and probably Greek, during his time at the collège de Clermont, and that he would have had the chance both to perform in school drama and to write short scenes himself, but that any acquaintance with Plautus or Terence would have to have come from outside the school setting.
Molière’s debt to Plautus and Terence It is, of course, possible to cite examples of the influence of the two Roman writers on Molière, at least on a thematic level. Amphitryon, first performed in 1668, borrows its plot from Plautus’ play of the same name, while L’Avare (produced in the same year) includes the Aulularia among its sources (as well as Pierre Larivey’s Les Esprits, first published by Abel L’Angelier in Paris in 1579). But most critics deny any real influence at a deeper level. W.D. Howarth, once again, in his consideration of comedy and character in Molière, concludes that “both the manner in which Molière conceived of character in dramatic terms, and the techniques he used to exploit it for comic effect, show that in the essentials of his craft he was completely independent of both masters
8 See my article “Neo-Latin Literature in Seventeenth-Century France,” Newsletter of the Society for Seventeenth-Century French Studies 3 (1981), pp. 62–3. 9 Farrell, The Jesuit Ratio studiorum of 1599 (above, n. 3), p. 79.
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of Latin comedy.”10 More recent scholarship has set out to show that Molière may owe more to the prologues of Terence’s plays, which the author uses to defend his practice of composition, than to the contents.11 As indicated, the most obvious aspect scholars have identified in relation to Molière’s debt to Plautus and Terence is at the level of plot. Like the Roman comic writers themselves, however, Molière inevitably engages in a process of contaminatio, whereby elements from different plays are brought together to create a new work. As Terence writes in the prologue to the Heauton timorumenos: nam quod rumores distulerunt maliuoli, multas contaminasse Graecas, dum facit paucas Latinas: id esse factum non negat neque se pigere et deinde facturum autumat. habet bonorum exemplum, quo exemplo sibi licere id facere quod illi fecerunt putat. (16–21) As to the malicious rumors that he creates a few Latin plays by taking a lot of Greek ones and “spoiling” them for others, he doesn’t deny this; in fact he is quite unrepentant and declares he will do the same again. He has good precedent, and sees no reason why he shouldn’t follow it in doing what others have done.
This process can be seen at work, for example, in the two plays identified above as drawing on Roman comedy: Amphitryon, which is inspired both by Plautus’ play of the same name and by Rotrou’s Les Sosies, and L’Avare, with its debt to both Terence (the Aulularia) and Pierre Larivey’s Les Esprits. Other plays clearly influenced by the Roman theater include L’Ecole des maris, based on Terence’s Adelphoe, and Les Fourberies de Scapin, where many elements taken from Terence’s Phormio are combined with details from Cyrano de Bergerac’s Le Pédant joué.12 As a man of the theater, Molière was happy to draw material from all possible sources for his plots, which are in fact relatively unimportant factors in his plays, or for individual comic scenes, which are in many ways more important for him.13
10 Howarth, Molière (above, n. 1), p. 114. Howarth devotes pp. 106–14 to this subject, taking issue in particular with the thesis of K.E. Wheatley on this topic, Molière and Terence: A Study in Molière’s Realism (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1931). 11 See Michael Call, “A Comedic Practicum: Molière and Terence Revisited,” Seventeenth-Century French Studies 31 (2009), pp. 123–36. 12 On this, see Harry Levin, “From Terence to Tabarin: a Note on Les Fourberies de Scapin,” Yale French Studies 38 (1967), pp. 128–37. 13 In general terms, the plots of Molière’s plays are often simply pegs on which he hangs the comic scenes. Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, a comédie ballet, is an extreme example of this, where the first two acts present a series of scenes in which humor derives from Monsieur Jourdain’s encounters with various tutors and tradesmen, but whose only purpose is to amuse and, in plot terms, to establish the protagonist’s character. Not until Act III does the love theme (Monsieur Jourdain’s wooing of the marquise Dorimène) emerge.
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It is probably less on the level of plot and character, however, that Molière is influenced by his classical models, and more in his general conception of the comic theater. He appears to have established his own practice on the basis of the conventions of the Roman dramatists, before going on to innovate in a number of key areas. I have already referred to the question of contaminatio, and with the legacy of the Roman theater clearly present in the plays of his French and Italian predecessors, it may appear difficult—and fruitless—to try to determine precisely what Molière owed to whom. But it will be useful to consider those aspects of his writing that derive ultimately from Roman sources in order to see what he retains and what he discards.
Theatrical conventions: place Roman comedy took place in the street. The doors of a number of houses, labeled with the names of their owner, indicated the origins of the characters who emerged from them, while the direction from which someone entered the stage indicated whether he or she was arriving from the country or the harbor (stage left) or the forum (stage right). Palladio’s famous classically-inspired theater at Vicenza reflects this practice, and Sebastiano Serlio’s designs for comic theater settings also reproduce such models in an elaborate form, exploiting the use of perspective. Molière’s predecessors, including Pierre Larivey and Jean de Rotrou, followed this convention, which may have begun to appear a bit forced and limiting in the 17th century. Molière himself, however, sets a number of plays in the street. Apart from the early farces written while he was touring in the provinces, these include L’Ecole des femmes (the scene for which is set “dans une place de ville”), Amphitryon (set in Thebes, “devant la maison d’Amphitryon”), George Dandin (“devant la maison de George Dandin”) and Les Fourberies de Scapin (where Molière only mentions that the action takes place in Naples). These plays belong to various points in Molière’s career—they were written between 1662 and 1671—and do not suggest a neat, linear evolution. Many of his other plays break with the conventions of the Roman stage by setting the action indoors, including the first of Molière’s Parisian plays, Les Précieuses ridicules (1659).14 Different types of setting offer different advantages and limitations. The chief advantages of the street-setting involve various comic elements: mistaken identity, central to L’Ecole des femmes, for example, in which the young lover, Horace, is unaware of the identity of the man (Arnolphe) who is virtually incarcerating the girl with whom he is in love (Agnès) because he does not associate him with the house in which Agnès lives; chance encounters and overheard conversations and remarks, common in Les Fourberies de Scapin; farcical action, once again frequent in Les
14 For details on the performances of Molière’s plays, see Howarth, Molière (above, n. 1), pp. 305–6, 311–12.
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Fourberies de Scapin. None of these elements would be possible or likely within the more intimate setting of a house.15 Molière takes care to choose the most appropriate setting, and in one of his least regular but most original plays, Dom Juan, where we are simply told that “la scène est en Sicile,” both indoor and outdoor scenes are used as required.
Characters and plot The plots of the majority of Roman comedies are intimately bound up with the character types found in the plays: one or more senes; one or more adulescentes; one or more servi; one or more meretrices. Various other characters might also be thrown in: lenae, matronae, nutrices, ancillae. The fact that the list of dramatis personae identifies characters according to their social position, age and function is significant at a number of levels. On the one hand, it reflects the way in which both Aristotle and Horace conceived the idea of characterization through language (decorum), according to which any type, as determined by age, sex and class, would have a particular style of behaving and speaking.16 On the other hand, the character types provide the basic elements of the plot of the play.17 Normally, one or more young men are in love with one or more young women (often meretrices), but their fathers are opposed to their marrying, until it is discovered that the young women are in fact the long-lost daughters of the father’s best friend. The role of the slaves is generally to provide support to the young men through their greater resourcefulness or intelligence, while the secondary characters often serve a particular function, such as the nutrix who is able to identify a girl from a birthmark or piece of jewelry. Other figures, for example cooks in Plautus’ plays, may have a purely comic role, contributing little to the advancement of the plot. One aspect of plot already hinted at, which is particularly associated with Terence, is the double plot, allowing for a more complex story-line and contrasting pairs of characters.18 This may be partly explained by the practice of contaminatio, but is also meant to provide a higher level of intrigue in the comedies. The basic plots of Roman comedies are relatively predictable and unimportant in themselves, but they offer the pretext for humor based on the character traits of the protagonists, who tend toward various kinds of excess: avarice, misanthropy, disso-
15 On the other hand, Molière’s innovation in setting plays in the intimacy of the home allows for a different kind of comedy, based more on contemporary social mores than the broader themes in the plays we have been considering. 16 See Aristotle, Poetics 1454a16–b18 on suitable behavior according to age, sex and class, and Horace, Ars poetica, 112–17, on stylistic decorum in relation to the same factors. 17 Etienne Souriau, Les deux cent mille situations dramatiques (Paris: Flammarion, 1970), offers a structuralist analysis of plot based on character types and their associated functions within a play. 18 Cf. the Adelphoe, Eunuchus and Heauton timorumenos.
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luteness, etc. In addition, Plautus and Terence came up with a number of more idiosyncratic figures, such as the parasite, braggart soldier and melancholic. The nominally Greek settings of all the plays, however, based as they are on Greek New Comedy, excludes types that might have been more closely linked to contemporary Rome. If we look at Molière’s practice in light of these remarks, we once again find that some of his plays conform to Roman practice. The characters follow, mutatis mutandis, the types found in Roman comedy, though whereas in the Roman theater they tend to be described in terms of their age, in Molière it is their relationships: père de x rather than senex, fils de y rather than adulescens, amante de z rather than meretrix or virgo. Similarly, the extreme character traits of many of his protagonists determine important aspects of the plot and even provide the names of his plays: Les Fâcheux, Le Tartuffe ou l’Imposteur, Le Misanthrope, L’Avare, Le Malade imaginaire. Molière’s genius lies in his ability, unlike his immediate predecessors in France, to create highly contemporary, socially recognizable types: the faux dévot (Tartuffe), the society flirt (Célimène in Le Misanthrope), or the social climber (Monsieur Jourdain in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme). In addition, his use of female characters is more elaborate and innovative. The Roman servus is often replaced by an equally cunning and resourceful servante or suivante (cf. Dorine in Tartuffe, Toinette in Le Malade imaginaire),19 while female types can even provide the central comic interest (e.g. Les Précieuses ridicules, Les Femmes savantes and even Le Misanthrope in the form of Célimène and Arsinoé). Again, all these female characters are closely linked to 17th-century society. As I have already suggested, the essential plots of Molière’s plays are relatively unimportant and, like Roman comedy, often involve some form of love intrigue leading to a happy ending. A number of plays closely follow the Roman pattern of dénouement based on recognition: this is true of L’Ecole des femmes, where Agnès, the object of Horace’s affections but destined to marry her guardian, Arnolphe, turns out to be the daughter of Enrique, a close friend of Horace’s father, Oronte. The two fathers have determined that their children should marry, robbing Arnolphe of his innocent bride. Similarly, at the end of L’Avare, the old Anselme, who is supposed to be marrying Harpagon’s daughter Elise, realizes from Valère’s life story that Valère and Mariane are in fact his children, whom he thought had perished at sea. This too allows for a traditional happy ending, with Valère marrying Elise and Cléante marrying Mariane. More idiosyncratic characters from Roman comedy also turn up in Molière in modern guise. Aspects of Pyrgopolynices, the original braggart soldier from Plautus’ Miles gloriosus, may be seen, for example, in scene xi of Les Précieuses ridicules, where Mascarille and Jodelet, servants pretending to be noblemen at the request of their
19 The comic effect deriving from the reversal of social roles is, of course, only increased in Molière’s universe, where women would have had in any case a lower hierarchical position than men.
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masters in order to humble the eponymous précieuses, Cathos and Magdelon, combine boasting of their martial exploits with encouragement to the young women to feel their wounds: Mascarille: Te souvient-il, Vicomte, de cette demi-lune20 que nous emportâmes sur les ennemis au siège d’Arras? Jodelet: Que veux-tu dire avec ta demi-lune? C’était bien une lune toute entière. Mascarille: Je pense que tu as raison. Jodelet: Il m’en doit bien souvenir, ma foi: j’y fus blessé à la jambe d’un coup de grenade, dont je porte encore les marques. Tâtez un peu, de grâce; vous sentirez quelque coup, c’était là. Cathos: Il est vrai que la cicatrice est grande. Mascarille: Donnez-moi un peu votre main, et tâtez celui-ci, là justement au derrière de la tête: y êtes-vous? Magdelon: Oui, je sens quelque chose. Mascarille: C’est un coup de mousquet que je reçus la dernière campagne que j’ai faite. Jodelet: Voici un autre coup qui me perça de part en part à l’attaque de Gravelines. Mascarille: mettant la main sur le bouton de son haut-de-chausses. Je vais vous montrer une furieuse plaie. Magdelon: Il n’est pas nécessaire: nous le croyons sans y regarder.
In this scene, we have the humor produced by the increasing claims of the two men in terms of the wounds they have received in battle21 coupled with the slapstick element of encouraging the young women to feel them, until it comes to Mascarille’s more intimate wound, which Magdelon declines to see. Molière thus produces a heightened level of comedy by combining verbal with visual humor, all with reference to recent events and giving new life to the miles gloriosus figure. Similarly, Molière may have drawn inspiration in Le Misanthrope from the figure of Menedemus in Terence’s Heauton timorumenos (The Self-Tormentor), an essentially melancholic figure who punishes himself for having driven his son away. Like Alceste, he is at odds with normal social conventions, and both plays open with conversations with more sociable, conventional characters (Chremes and Philinte), who offer a contrast to the protagonists. The dynamics of the opening scenes in the plays are similar: in Terence, Chremes attempts to engage in conversation with Menedemus, his neighbor, who is unwilling to break off laboring on his fields. Chremes tells him:
20 Demi-lunes or ravelins were a type of fortification, of which there are examples at both Arras and Gravelines. There is no such thing as a lune in fortification terms, which highlights the empty boasting of the two men. 21 Arras and Gravelines would have been part of the war with Spain which ended in 1659 by the Treaty of the Pyrenees, according to whose terms both cities were annexed to France. The siege of Arras took place in 1654, while the final battle for Gravelines was in 1658, only one year before the first performance of Les Précieuses ridicules.
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tamen uel uirtus tua me uel uicinitas … facit ut te audacter moneam et familiariter, quod mihi uidere praeter aetatem tuam facere et praeter quam res te adhortatur tua. (Terence, Heauton timorumenos, ll. 56–9) However, either your personal qualities, or the fact that we are neighbors, … make me speak out to you boldly and familiarly. You seem to me to be acting wrongly for a man of your age and for what your circumstances require of you.
Molière’s opening to Le Misanthrope offers a similar situation, though Alceste and Philinte have known each other longer: Philinte: Alceste: Philinte: Alceste: Philinte: Alceste: Philinte:
Qu’est-ce donc? Qu’avez-vous? Laissez-moi, je vous prie. Mais encor dites-moi quelle bizarrerie… Laissez-moi là, vous dis-je, et courez vous cacher. Mais on entend les gens, au moins, sans se fâcher. Moi, je veux me fâcher, et ne veux point entendre. Dans vos brusques chagrins je ne puis vous comprendre … (Molière, Le Misanthrope, Act I. i)
Molière does not follow his sources slavishly, and even in Amphitryon, modeled as it is on Plautus’ play of the same name, he makes interesting changes. While both plays begin with a prologue that features Mercury, in Plautus’ case the messenger god addresses the audience directly to root out hired hands who may have been recruited to form a claque for any particular playwright. Molière, on the other hand, has Mercury sitting on a cloud, addressing Night in her chariot with a request to her on behalf of Jupiter to slow down in order to allow the king of the gods more time with his latest mortal love, Alcmène. The more spectacular opening in the French version, with its use of machines, would have impressed French audiences more than Mercury’s long prologue in Plautus. On the other hand, while maintaining the disposition of the beginning of the first act—Amphitryon’s slave Sosia’s frightened monologue as he goes through the dark streets of the city, and the encounter between Sosia and Mercury, who has taken on the slave’s appearance—Molière draws matters out for comic effect, constructing an imagined dialogue between Sosie and his mistress in Act I. i and extending the scene between Mercure and Sosie with, inevitably, a large amount of slapstick humor. Once again, Molière builds on his Roman model. Other examples of such adaptation could be cited, for example Harpagon’s debt to Euclio in Plautus’ Aulularia, the origins of Frosine, also in L’Avare, in the figure of the laena or go-between (cf. Plautus’ Melaenis in the Cistellaria), and the elements of the parasite character of Roman comedy (cf. in particular Terence’s Phormio) found in Tartuffe. Moreover, apart from the use of identical characters in Amphitryon as a source of comedy, Molière would have found the device of masters and servants
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appearing in disguise (cf. Dom Juan Act III) in Plautus’ Captivi. What is important here is the way Molière is able to adapt and extend character types and scenes drawn from Roman sources.
Language, style, and humor Terence’s popularity in humanist colleges, if not Jesuit schools, was due in part to the quality of his colloquial Latin, while Plautus’ style was far more extravagant, including elements of obscenity, neologisms and widely differing styles. This diversity in Plautus serves in many cases to characterize the speakers in his plays, in a deliberately comic version of the Horatian principle of linguistic decorum, and is something Molière adopted in his own plays. In this sense, Molière differs from his immediate predecessors in France, whose writing styles are more uniform. Indeed, in Molière language itself often becomes the focus of humor. This is certainly true in Les Précieuses ridicules, where he produces an exaggerated form of speech inspired by the précieux movement, evident at the beginning of scene vi, where the servant Marotte bluntly announces the arrival of a visitor to the house: Marotte:
Voilà un laquais qui demande si vous êtes au logis, et dit que son maître vous veut venir voir. Magdelon: Apprenez, sotte, à vous énoncer moins vulgairement. Dites: “Voilà un nécessaire qui demande si vous êtes en commodité d’être visibles.” Marotte: Dame! Je n’entends point le latin, et je n’ai pas appris, comme vous, la filofie dans le Grand Cyre.22
The contrast between the rudeness of the servant and the almost meaningless circumlocutions of the mistress is highly effective. This use of elocutio for the purposes of both comedy and character can be found more clearly in Plautus than in Molière’s French predecessors. Code-switching, for example, is a feature of Mercury’s speech in the prologue to Amphitryon, where the god alternates between pomposity and a deliberately familiar style. The following extract is a good example of this, as well as of Plautus’ virtuoso use of language: atque ego quoque etiam, qui Iovis sum filius, contagione mei patris metuo malum. propterea pace advenio et pacem ad vos affero: iustam rem et facilem esse oratam a vobis volo, nam iusta ab iustis iustus sum orator datus.
22 Artamène, ou le grand Cyrus, by Madeleine and Georges de Scudéry, published between 1649 and 1653, was a model for précieux speech and behavior. Marotte may not have benefited from its “filofie” (philosophy), but she is at least aware of its impact.
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nam iniusta ab iustis impetrari non decet, iusta autem ab iniustis petere insipientia est; quippe illi iniqui ius ignorant neque tenent. (Plautus, Amphitryon 30–7)23 Yes, and the same is true of me, the son of Jupiter: once my father has some trouble I am afraid I shall catch it too. [rather pompously again] Wherefore I come in peace and peace do I bring to you. It is a just and trifling request I wish you to grant: for I am sent as a just pleader pleading with the just for what is just. It would be unfitting, of course, for unjust favors to be obtained from the just, while looking for just treatment from the unjust is folly; for unfair folk of that sort neither know nor keep justice.
The repetition and consistent use of alliteration draw attention to sound-patterns and the comic resources of language which go well beyond the intrinsic meaning of the text. The different meters used by Plautus in his comedies allow for such variety, whereas the use of the alexandrine in much French comedy of the 17th century tended to restrict stylistic variation. Molière may well have felt this constraint, given that a significant proportion of his output is in prose rather than verse. This allows for the kind of rapid, natural speech we find in many of his plays. One example where the links with Plautus are evident is Act IV. vii of L’Avare, in which Harpagon becomes aware that he has been robbed, and, breaking with normal dramatic conventions, addresses the audience directly. This scene is closely based on Plautus’ Aulularia, IV. ix, where Euclio makes a similar discovery: Perii, interii, occidi. quo curram? quo non curram? tene, tene. quem? quis? nescio, nihil video, caecus eo atque equidem quo eam, aut ubi sim, aut qui sim, nequeo cum animo certum investigare. obsecro ego vos, mi auxilio, oro, obtestor, sitis et hominem demonstretis, quis eam abstulerit. quid est? quid ridetis? novi omnes! scio fures esse hic complures, qui vestitu et creta occultant sese atque sedent quasi sint frugi. quid ais tu? tibi credere certum est, nam esse bonum ex vultu cognosco. hem, nemo habet horum? occidisti. dic igitur, quis habet? nescis? (Plautus, Aulularia 713–20) Euclio [running wildly back and forth] I’m ruined, I’m killed, I’m murdered! Where shall I run? Where shan’t I run? Stop thief! What thief? Who? I don’t know! I can’t see! I’m all in the dark! Yes, yes, and where I’m going, or where I am, or who I am—oh, I can’t tell, I can’t think! [to audience] Help, help, for heaven’s sake, I beg you, I implore you! Show the man that took it. Eh, what’s that? What are you grinning for? I know you, the whole lot of you! I know there are thieves here, plenty of ’em, that cover themselves up in dapper clothes and sit still as if they were honest men. [to a spectator] You, sir, what do you say? I’ll trust, I will, I will. Yes, you’re a worthy gentleman; I
23 Cited from Paul Nixon (ed.), Plautus, Loeb Classical Library, 5 vols. (London and Cambridge Mass.: William Heinemann and Harvard University Press, 1966), vol. I. 8–9. The entire speech is characterized by these changes of register.
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can tell it from your face. Ha! None of them has it? Oh, you’ve killed me! Tell me who has got it, then. You don’t know?
Plautus’ use of short, exclamatory sentences, of repetition again, the direct address to members of the audience, provide all the elements that Molière used in his own version of the scene: Harpagon: (Il crie au voleur dès le jardin, et vient sans chapeau.) Au voleur! au voleur! à l’assassin! au meurtrier! Justice, juste Ciel! Je suis perdu, je suis assassiné, on m’a coupé la gorge, on m’a dérobé mon argent. Qui peut-ce être? Qu’est-il devenu? Où est-il? Où se cache-t-il? Que ferai-je pour le trouver? Où courir? Où ne pas courir? N’est-il point là? N’est-il point ici? Qui est-ce? Arrête. Rends-moi mon argent, coquin… (Il se prend lui-même le bras.) Ah! c’est moi. Mon esprit est troublé, et j’ignore où je suis, qui je suis, et ce que je fais. Hélas! mon pauvre argent, mon pauvre argent, mon cher ami! on m’a privé de toi; et puisque tu m’es enlevé, j’ai perdu mon support, ma consolation, ma joie; tout est fini pour moi, et je n’ai plus que faire au monde! […] N’y a-t-il personne qui veuille me ressuciter, en me rendant mon cher argent, ou ne m’apprenant qui l’a pris? Euh? que dites-vous? Ce n’est personne. […] Que de gens assemblés! Je ne jette mes regards sur personne qui ne me donne des soupçons, et tout me semble mon voleur. Eh! de quoi est-ce qu’on parle là? De celui qui m’a dérobé? Quel bruit fait-on là-haut? Est-ce mon voleur qui y est? De grâce, si l’on sait des nouvelles de mon voleur, je supplie que l’on m’en dise. N’est-il point caché là parmi vous? Ils me regardent, et se mettent à rire. Vous verrez qu’ils ont part, sans doute, au vol que l’on m’a fait. (Molière, L’Avare IV. vii)
Clearly, Molière found some of Plautus’ gags here so good that he could not resist including them in Harpagon’s speech: “quo curram? quo non curram?” rendered as “Où courir? Où ne pas courir?”, as well as the opening “Perii, interii, occidi” which Molière retains as “Je suis perdu, je suis assassiné, on m’a coupé la gorge.” As usual, there are additions as well: the slapstick element of grabbing his own arm, and the treatment of the stolen money as though it were a lost friend or lover: “j’ai perdu mon support, ma consolation, ma joie.” But the Plautine influence is clear. Like Plautus, Molière also uses parody for comic effect. Alceste’s exclamation in Act IV. ii of Le Misanthrope on discovering Célimène’s fickleness is couched in an exaggerated tragic style: Ah! tout est ruiné; Je suis, je suis trahi, je suis assassiné: Célimène… Eût-on pu croire cette nouvelle? Célimène me trompe et n’est qu’une infidèle.
In Le Malade imaginaire, Thomas Diafoirus, in attempting to court Angélique, uses completely inappropriately the language of scholasticism to persuade his reluctant beloved: Angélique:
Donnez-vous patience: si vous m’aimez, Monsieur, vous devez vouloir tout ce que je veux.
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Thomas Diafoirus: Oui, Mademoiselle, jusqu’aux intérêts de mon amour exclusivement. Angélique: Mais la grande marque d’amour, c’est d’être soumis aux volontés de celle qu’on aime. Thomas Diafoirus: Distinguo, Mademoiselle: dans ce qui ne regarde point sa possession, concedo; mais dans ce qui la regarde, nego.
The use of Latin for comic purposes is part of the legacy of the pedant doctor figure, much used in earlier French and Italian comedy, and to be found in some of Molière’s own early plays, such as La Jalousie du Barbouillé. But we find other examples of the comic use of either dialect or foreign languages in his plays, and he may have been inspired in this by the opening of Act V of Plautus’ Poenulus, in which Hanno, the Carthaginian of the play’s title, delivers an opening address in Punic, which would have been incomprehensible to the Roman audience. Molière makes similar use of fabricated or macaronic language in Act IV, scenes iii–v of Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, in the preparation and staging of the mock ceremony in which Monsieur Jourdain is made a Mamamouchi, while Le Malade imaginaire climaxes in another mock ceremony in macaronic Latin to make Argan a doctor. In other plays, such as Dom Juan and Les Fourberies de Scapin (both set in Italy), Molière uses French dialect for comic purposes. In Dom Juan, Act II, this is one of the principal comic resources in the scenes with the peasants, Charlotte, Mathurine and Pierrot, while in Les Fourberies de Scapin, the eponymous hero imitates various dialects or foreign versions of French in the notorious sack scene (III. ii), in which the servant Scapin beats Géronte, whom he has hidden in the sack, by pretending to be a series of men who are out to get him: Scapin: Cachez-vous, voici un spadassin qui vous cherche. (En contrefaisant sa voix.) “Quoi! jé n’aurai pas l’abantage dé tuer cé Géronte et quelqu’un par charité ne m’enseignera pas où il est?” (A Géronte, avec sa voix ordinaire.) Ne branlez pas. (Reprenant son ton contrefait.) “Cadedis! jé lé trouberai, se cachât-il au centre de la terre.”
Here, Molière uses a kind of stage Gascon (indicated by the confusion between b and v, the mute e pronounced as é, and dialect words such as Cadedis), and this is followed up soon after by a stage Swiss French.24 Thus, whether he is directly inspired by Plautus, as in L’Avare and Amphitryon, or indirectly influenced by the Plautine comic tradition, Molière continues the Roman playwright’s practice of exploiting language for its comic potential.
24 Le Médecin malgré lui and Monsieur de Pourceaugnac also contain scenes in which dialect plays a role.
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Conclusion Etudiez la cour et connaissez la ville: L’une et l’autre est toujours en modèles fertile. C’est par là que MOLIÈRE, illustrant ses écrits. Peut-être de son art eût remporté le prix, Si, moins ami du peuple, en ses doctes peintures, Il n’eût point fait souvent grimacer ses figures, Quitté, pour le bouffon, l’agréable et le fin, Et sans honte à Térence allié Tabarin. ns ce sac ridicule où Scapin s’enveloppe, Je ne reconnais plus l’auteur du Misanthrope. (Boileau, L’Art poétique III. 391–400)
Boileau’s verdict on Molière shows that he was no fan of the more farcical side of Molière’s plays, yet in many ways Les Fourberies de Scapin is almost more typical of his comic output than Le Misanthrope. Molière wrote only six regular comedies, if by that we refer to five-act plays in alexandrines, and none between 1666 and 1672, the year before his death, when he was at the height of his career.25 It is also significant in this passage that Boileau chooses Terence as his Roman model in contrast to the popular writer of farces Antoine Girard (1584–1626), known as Tabarin. Terence represents for Boileau the high end of Roman comedy, yet as we have seen, it is in many respects the more extravagant Plautus from whom Molière learns his comic technique. The rich tradition of comedy Molière had at his disposal makes definitive statements about the primacy of any particular tradition problematic. Medieval farce, commedia dell’arte, commedia erudita, French comic writers from Pierre Larivey to Jean Rotrou and Tristan L’Hermite, all undoubtedly made their mark, not to mention his experience before returning to Paris of touring with a theater company in the French provinces. But it is unlikely that he forgot his student reading of Plautus and Terence, which would almost certainly have been all the more enjoyable at the time due to its forbidden status at the collège de Clermont. Molière shared with Plautus a similar fate at the hands of literary critics. In Epistles II. 1. 170–6, in a passage Boileau may well have had in mind in the Art poétique, Horace accuses the Roman playwright of being more interested in box-office success than in writing a good play: …adspice Plautus quo pacto partis tutetur amantis ephebi, t patris attenti, lenonis ut insidiosi, quantus sit Dossenus edacibus in parasitis,
25 Le Misanthrope dates from 1666, while Molière’s penultimate comedy, Les Femmes savantes, was first performed in March 1672, eleven months before he died.
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quam non adstricto percurrat pulpita socco. Gestit enim nummum in loculos demittere, post hoc securus cadat an recto stet fabula talo. See how carelessly Plautus sustains the roles of the young lover, the thrifty father, the conniving pimp, how important Dossennus is amongst the greedy parasites, how Plautus dashes across the stage in loose slippers! For he is eager to drop cash into his coffers, and after that he cares little whether the play is an aesthetic failure or a firm success.
In contrast to Horace, Molière too felt that a play’s popular success was as good a judgment of it as any other. Siding perhaps with Plautus, he has his spokesman, Dorante, in scene 6 of La Critique de l’Ecole des femmes, exclaim: “Je voudrais bien savoir si la grande règle de toutes les règles n’est pas de plaire, et si une pièce de théâtre qui a attrapé son but n’a pas suivi un bon chemin.” This interest in the reception of the play and the awareness of what is likely to please an audience were surely points Molière had in common with his ancient predecessor. From this and many other points of view, Plautus had much to teach France’s greatest comic writer.
Gesine Manuwald
Jacob Masen’s Rusticus imperans (1657) and Ancient Theater Abstract: This article looks at the “historical comedy” Rusticus imperans by the German-born Jesuit poet Jacob Masen (1606–1681), which is often regarded as one of the most famous examples of Jesuit drama, but is rarely studied with reference to its ancient sources. Masen took the tale of an ordinary person made “king” for a day from earlier post-antique accounts, and adapted it with significant alterations; thereby he turned it into an edifying and entertaining story for audiences, in line with the function of comedy described in the third volume of his treatise Palaestra eloquentiae ligatae (1657), developed on the basis of Aristotle’s Poetics. While the plot is presented as an allegory for human life, it is heavily influenced by Plautine comedy in terms of style, language and comic motifs.
Introduction When the reception of Roman theater began in northern Europe during the Renaissance, Humanist drama in Latin emerged on this basis. Initially it had a mainly didactic aim and was intended to increase students’ command of Latin and rhetoric. In the context of the Reformation, Humanist drama developed into a vehicle also used for religious argument. In reaction to this, Jesuit dramas appeared, intended to entertain and move spectators emotionally and thus prompt them to convert to Catholicism. A successful tradition of Jesuit drama established itself, ending after the dissolution of the order in 1773.1 It was not only theater practice, however, that was significantly influenced by the renewed attention to classical drama (which led to the first performances of clearly structured literary dramas since antiquity); ancient sources too had an impact on discussions of dramatic theory. These were primarily based on Aristotle’s Poetics, Horace’s Art of Poetry and Aelius Donatus’ commentary on Terence, which was discovered in Mainz (Germany) in 1433. On the basis of Aristotle’s works (Arist. Poet.
1 For overviews of Jesuit theater, see William H. McCabe, S.J., An Introduction to the Jesuit Theater. A Posthumous Work. Edited by Louis J. Oldani, S.J. (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1983), pp. 1–68; on Neo-Latin drama, see J. IJsewijn / D. Sacré, Companion to Neo-Latin Studies. Part II. Literary, linguistic, philological and editorial questions. Second entirely rewritten edition, Suppl. Humanistica Lovaniensia XIV (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1998), pp. 139–64; for thoughts on the role of religious drama, see James A. Parente, Jr., Religious Drama and the Humanist Tradition. Christian Theater in Germany and the Netherlands 1500–1680, Studies in the History of Christian Thought XXXIX (Leiden / New York / Copenhagen / Cologne: Brill, 1987).
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1449a32–4; 1453a17–22), for example, normative rules regarding the social class of dramatic characters were drawn up, and remained in place until the 18th century, according to which tragedies were meant to present the fate of higher-class individuals and comedies to deal with the experiences of ordinary, bourgeois people.2 Neo-Latin drama, influenced particularly by Roman comedy, flourished in the German world from the late 15th to the 18th century.3 One successful German-born writer of Jesuit drama was Jacob Masen (1606–1681), also the author of important treatises on poetics.4 Masen was born in the Rhineland and educated at the Jesuit grammar school in Cologne. In 1629 he joined the Jesuit order in Trier and later worked as a respected teacher, priest and writer mainly in the Lower Rhine area (in cities such as Cologne and Düsseldorf) and in Trier. As a student and then a teacher, he had become familiar with the conventions of Jesuit theater and had been involved
2 Cf. e.g. Iulii Caesaris Scaligeri viri clarissimi, Poetices libri septem. Ad Sylvium filium. Editio secunda ([Lyon?]: Apud Petrum Santandreanum, 1581), lib. III, cap. XCVII: “Tragœdia, quanquam huic Epicæ similis est, eò tamen differt, quòd rarò admittit personas viliores: cuiusmodi sunt nuncii, mercatores, nautæ, & eiusmodi. Contrà, in Comœdia nunquã Reges, nisi in paucis: quêadmodum lusit Plautus in Amphitryone. de palliatis loquor: nã Togatarũ & Trabeatarũ dignitates pro suo arbitrio Romani confinxere. … Tragœdiæ ac Comœdiæ idem modus repræsentandi: sed diversæ res & ordo. Res Tragicæ grandes, atroces, iussa Regum, cædes, desperationes, suspendia, exilia, orbitates, parricidia incestus, incendia, pugnæ, occæcationes, fletus, vlulatus, cõquestiones, funera, epitaphia, epicedia. In Comœdia, lusus, comessationes, nuptiæ, repotia, servorum astus, ebrietates, senes decepti, emuncti argento.” (“Tragedy, although it is similar to epic poetry, differs, nevertheless, in that it rarely admits baser characters; of this type are messengers, merchants, sailors and others of this kind. On the contrary, in comedy there are never kings, except for a few cases, as Plautus sports in Amphitruo. I am talking about palliatae; for the Romans have created levels of dignity for togatae and trabeatae according to their own views. … Tragedies and comedies use the same manner of representation, but subject matter and arrangement are different. The matter of tragedy is great and atrocious, orders of kings, deaths, desperation, hanging, exiles, orphanhood, killing of relatives, incests, fires, battles, blinding, weeping, wailing, lamenting, funerals, epitaphs, funeral songs. In comedy there is play, feasts, weddings, drinking parties, tricks of slaves, drunkenness, deceived old men, tricked out of their money.”) Cf. Masen, Palæstra (below, n. 33), vol. III, lib. I, cap. II§2: “Tragicæ igitur personæ ab Imperatoribus ad Comites usque, Episcopos Belli Duces, ac Reipubl. præsides censeri possunt.” (“Thus characters in tragedy can be regarded as ranging from generals to their officials, bishops, leaders in war and the foremost men in the state.”) All English translations are by the author unless otherwise indicated; translations of Masen’s works have been inspired by Halbig’s versions (see below, nn. 11 and 33). 3 See e.g. J. IJsewijn, Companion to Neo-Latin Studies. Part I. History and diffusion of Neo-Latin literature. Second entirely rewritten edition (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1990), p. 186. 4 For biographical overviews and bibliographical information on Masen, see e.g. N. Scheid, Der Jesuit Jakob Masen, ein Schulmann und Schriftsteller des 17. Jahrhunderts (Cologne: Görres-Gesellschaft, 1898); Heinz Kindermann, Theatergeschichte Europas. III. Band. Das Theater der Barockzeit (Salzburg: O. Müller, 1959), pp. 450–1; Gerhard Dünnhaupt, “Jacob Masen S.J. (1606–1681),” in: Personalbibliographien zu den Drucken des Barock. Zweite, verbesserte und wesentlich vermehrte Auflage des Bibliographischen Handbuches der Barockliteratur. Vierter Teil: Klaj–Postel (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1991), pp. 2673–95; Peter Orth, “Jacob Masens Übungsplatz für die gebundene Beredsamkeit. Die “Palaestra eloquentiae ligatae” (1654–1657),” Analecta Coloniensia 6 (2006), pp. 171–4.
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with it since his student days; he composed plays himself, and he seems to have produced some of them and even to have acted in performances. His most influential works in the long term were his writings on history and poetic theory. The latter include a three-volume treatise entitled Palaestra eloquentiae ligatae (“Primer of poetic speaking”), published in Cologne in 1654–7, in which, among other aspects of literary theory, he discussed drama, mainly on the basis of Aristotle’s Poetics. Masen’s work, which became one of the most influential Humanist poetics, stands out from contemporary writings by the frequent use of examples drawn from ancient drama and particularly from his own plays: seven of Masen’s plays, including Rusticus imperans (lit. “The Peasant Ruling”), were printed at the end of the third volume of Palaestra eloquentiae ligatae, illustrating the types of drama discussed in the preceding sections; the volume also has an appendix of passages from Plautus worth imitating. Masen’s dramatic works include tragedies, comedies and plays of mixed genre. His Rusticus imperans is defined as a “historical comedy” (comoedia historica), and it became the most famous and most frequently performed Jesuit drama;5 many modern scholars regard the play as the best or “classic” representative of the genre.6 When it was printed, Masen himself described it, like his other dramatic pieces, as a (not entirely polished) work of his youth.7 The play is likely to date to the 1640s: it seems to
5 See e.g. Willy Flemming, Geschichte des Jesuitentheaters in den Landen deutscher Zunge, Schriften der Gesellschaft für Theatergeschichte 32 (Berlin: Selbstverlag der Gesellschaft für Theatergeschichte, 1923), p. 95; Johannes Müller S.J., Das Jesuitendrama in den Ländern deutscher Zunge vom Anfang (1555) bis zum Hochbarock (1665). Zweiter Band, Schriften zur deutschen Literatur 8 (Augsburg: B. Filser, 1930), p. 31; Kindermann, Theatergeschichte (above, n. 4), p. 451; Harald Burger, “Jacob Masens “Rusticus imperans”. Zur lateinischen Barockkomödie in Deutschland,” Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft 8 (1967), p. 32; Jean-Marie Valentin, Le théâtre des Jésuites dans les pays de langue allemande (1554–1680): Salut des âmes et ordre des cités, 3 vols. (Bern / Frankfurt a.M. / Las Vegas: Peter Lang, 1978), p. 821; Jean-Marie Valentin, Les Jésuites et le théâtre (1554–1680). Contribution à l’histoire culturelle du monde catholique dans le Saint-Empire romain germanique, La mesure des choses (Paris: Desjonquères, 2001), p. 584; Michael C. Halbig, The Jesuit Theater of Jacob Masen. Three Plays in Translation with an Introduction, American University Studies, Series XVII: Classical Languages and Literature, Vol. 1 (New York / Bern / Frankfurt a.M. / Paris: Peter Lang, 1987), p. 10; Orth, “Übungsplatz” (above, n. 4), p. 184. 6 See e.g. Flemming, Geschichte (above, n. 5), 95; Willi Flemming, Das Ordensdrama, Deutsche Literatur, Sammlung literarischer Kunst- und Kulturdenkmäler in Entwicklungsreihen, Reihe Barock, Barockdrama, Band 2 (Leipzig: Philipp Reclam jun., 1930), p. 26; Kindermann, Geschichte (above, n. 4), p. 451; IJsewijn, Companion (above, n. 3), p. 188. 7 Masen, Palæstra (below, n. 33), vol. III, lib. II, p. 131 (Ad Lectorem): “Tu delectum, mi Lector, institue, atque illic ubi majorem gustum senseris, tua si lubeat, imitatione immorare. Siquid inveneris neglectiori expolitum pumice, juvenili studio, quo hæc pleraque fudi ignosce.” (“You, my reader, make a selection, and where you will feel greater taste, stop, if you please, and imitate. But if you should find anything polished with a rather careless file, pardon the youthful eagerness, with which I have mostly produced this.”).
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have been performed in Münster in February 16458 and is also thought to have been performed in Cleve before the Grand Duke on 4 July 1647.9 Although Masen is generally acknowledged to have been an important Jesuit dramatist and is frequently mentioned in handbooks, his works and even his most important play, Rusticus imperans, have received little detailed study;10 only in 1969 did a critical edition of the Latin text appear, and not until 1987 was an English translation of three of his plays, including Rusticus imperans, published.11 Given Masen’s familiarity with classical drama and dramatic theory, however, as well as his own activity in poetics and play-writing, it seems obvious to ask how ancient precedent influenced his theory and practice and how the two relate to one another.12 The discussion that follows attempts to answer this question by looking at Rusticus imperans and sections from Palaestra eloquentiae ligatae relevant for assessing the play. At first glance, Masen’s drama might seem far removed from ancient drama, since it does not rework a well-known plot from Greek or Roman literature. But closer
8 See Halbig, The Jesuit Theater (above, n. 5), pp. 3, 4. 9 See Flemming, Geschichte (above, n. 5), p. 94. Valentin (Le théâtre [above, n. 5], p. 821; Les Jésuites [above, n. 5], p. 584) mentions a performance in Emmerich. 10 See Burger, “Barockkomödie” (above, n. 5), p. 32: “Angesichts dieses für den Literaturhistoriker nicht erfreulichen Bildes scheint es nicht unnötig, den Blick auf ein Werk zu lenken, das zwar in den meisten Handbüchern erwähnt, aber in seiner Bedeutung für die Literatur- und Theatergeschichte des 17. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland kaum je gewürdigt wird: Jakob Masens ‘Rusticus imperans’. Das Stück gilt allgemein als die meistgespielte und beliebteste lateinische Schulkomödie des Jahrhunderts, eine eingehende Deutung wurde dem Werk aber bisher nicht zuteil.” For literature on Masen up to 1982, see Ruprecht Wimmer, “Neuere Forschungen zum Jesuitentheater des deutschen Sprachbereiches. Ein Bericht (1945–1982),” Daphnis 12 (1983), pp. 652–3. 11 For a critical edition of the Latin text, see Harald Burger, “Jacob Masen ‘Rusticus imperans’. Kritische Edition,” Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft 10 (1969), pp. 53–94 (line references, as bare numbers, and Latin quotations follow this edition). For an English translation, see Halbig, The Jesuit Theater (above, n. 5); and see already Michael Carlos Halbig, The Dramatist Jacob Masen: A Translation and Critical Introduction (Volumes I and II) (Diss. Yale, 1975), pp. 2.3–68: translation; pp. 2.69–97: commentary. 12 See already Burger, “Barockkomödie” (above, n. 5), p. 32: “Es soll im folgenden versucht werden, die Komödie mit Masens eigenem dramentheorischen Werk in Beziehung zu setzen und sie in den geistigen Horizont des Barockdramas hineinzustellen.”; p. 35: “Bezeichnenderweise erscheinen Masens Theaterstücke im Anhang zu seiner Dramaturgie als exempla für die einzelnen Dramen-Gattungen (…). Da er seine eigenen Dramen häufig zitiert und auslegt, um die theoretischen Grundsätze zu erläutern, dürfen wir umgekehrt das dramatische Werk zunächst aus Masens eigener Theorie zu erhellen versuchen.”; Halbig, The Dramatist (above, n. 11), p. 2.70: “As should be apparent from the chapter above, it is useful to view Masen’s theory and his practice together, since they tend to be mutually illuminating.”; Halbig, The Jesuit Theater (above, n. 5), p. 8: “As already noted, Masen’s theater comes near the end of the Jesuit School Theater tradition. Behind lay over a century of successes, failures, and admonitions to take into account as he turned to writing his own plays. The judgments which Masen made—and stated explicitly in his Primer for Drama—strongly reflect his background as a schoolman, his personal experience in the theater, and a deep-seated dedication to moral education.”
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inspection reveals connections with both classical poetics and Roman comedies, because Masen drew from these sources for his Palaestra eloquentiae ligatae as well as for his dramas.
Rusticus imperans: overview of the plot Rusticus imperans consists of a prologue and an epilogue framing four acts.13 In the prologue, the speaker explains that the story is set not in the German town of Münster, but in the Belgian city of Bruges, ruled by Prince Philip the Good, and goes on to introduce the protagonist, who was once a farmer, but now works as a blacksmith in the city, remaining constantly drunk and mistreating his servant. In line with this presentation, the first scene shows the master Mopsus and his servant Congrio on their way home from the tavern. Congrio, severely beaten by his master, tries to lead him home, but eventually gives up and lets him lie in the street; Congrio then decides to bring his case before Philip the Good. Philip, out for a walk with his courtiers, chances upon Mopsus lying in the street; for fun, he orders his men to bring Mopsus to the palace, clean him up, change his clothes and put him into his own bed. When Mopsus wakes up in a new outfit and new surroundings in the palace, he does not understand who he is, where he is or what is happening to him, and he makes efforts to confirm his identity; in the end, however, he believes the courtiers who repeatedly tell him that he is Prince Philip, and he begins to enjoy being waited upon, being served large quantities of good food and wine and even being offered the daughter of the King of England in marriage (although he briefly hesitates, considering how his actual wife Gretula might react). When his servant Congrio appears to present his case to the Prince, Mopsus is confused again; but when he realizes that Congrio does not recognize the “Prince” as his master, he moves on to judging the case and orders that Congrio be freed and that his former master serve him, believing that he is now the Prince and this will not affect him. Seeing Mopsus’ success, Salpa, the “wise” court jester, cleverly thinks that it should be possible to imitate such a change of fortune, and he therefore puts on the blacksmith’s clothes and lies down in the same place in the street. But two of the Prince’s servants fool him: they pick him up and make him believe that they are carrying him to the palace, but then abandon him blindfolded and bound. As for Mopsus, the Prince decides at this point that the play should be over and Mopsus be returned to the street. In the meantime, Congrio has got back home and
13 On Rusticus imperans, see Scheid, Der Jesuit (above, n. 4), pp. 43–50 (with an overview of the plot); Burger, “Barockkomödie” (above, n. 5); Halbig, The Dramatist (above, n. 5), pp. 2.69–97; Thomas W. Best, “On Psychology and Allegory in Jacob Masen’s »Rusticus imperans«,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 13 (1977), pp. 247–52; Thomas W. Best, “Time in Jacob Masen’s Rusticus imperans,” Humanistica Lovaniensia 27 (1978), pp. 287–94; Valentin, Les Jésuites (above, n. 5), pp. 584–7.
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tried to convince Mopsus’ wife Gretula that he is now the master. When Mopsus awakes in the street, he remembers his experiences and still feels like the Prince; he does not deny the judgement he passed as Prince when Congrio presents him with this decision and its consequences. Only when Mopsus returns to the court and is confronted with Philip himself, is he forced to admit that he is a blacksmith, while Philip confirms the judgement passed by Mopsus: he has no choice but to serve Congrio and to be beaten and ordered about by him. The epilogue speaker voices the moral of the story: Mopsus, a toy of fickle fortune, provides the audience with a mirror of their own weaknesses. With respect to eternity, however, everyone is in a position to shape their fortune by arranging their lives on earth.
Rusticus imperans: place in the history of the plot The plot of Rusticus imperans is based on the story of “peasant as prince” or “king for a day.”14 Its nucleus is a traditional tale first attested among the stories of Arabian Nights (night 315; tale of Abu Hassan): a man (benumbed by wine and some opiate powder given to him by his guest, the caliph) is brought to the caliph’s palace in his sleep, made to play the role of the caliph for a day and then returned to his former status amid confusion. The first European version is found in the letters of the Spanish Humanist Ludovicus Vives (1556),15 and the Somnium vitae humanae of the northGerman priest Ludovicus Hollonius (1605) is the first recorded dramatic version in Germany.16 The story became popular in the wake of Jakob Bidermann’s narrative Utopia (1640).17 Because of its potential moral implications, the plot was particularly attractive for Jesuit dramatists.18
14 On the history of this story in world literature, see Elisabeth Frenzel, Stoffe der Weltliteratur. Ein Lexikon dichtungsgeschichtlicher Längsschnitte, 5., überarb. und erw. Aufl., KTA 300 (Stuttgart: Kröner, 1981), pp. 78–82, s.v. “Bauer, Der träumende.” 15 Cf. Ioannis Lodovici Vivis Valentini Epistolarum, quae hactenus desiderabantur, Farrago: adiectis etiam ijs, quæ in istius operibus extant (Antverpiæ: Apud Guilielmum Simonem, ad insigne Psittaci, 1556), pp. 25b–7b. 16 For a modern edition of this play, see Ludwig Hollonius. Somnium vitae humanae. Drama. Text und Materialien zur Interpretation besorgt von Dorothea Glodny-Wiercinski, Komedia 16 (Berlin, De Gruyter: 1970). For a comparison of the shaping of the basic story in Hollonius, Masen and Christian Weise, see James A. Parente, Jr., “Baroque Comedy and the Stability of the State,” German Quarterly 56 (1983), pp. 419–30. 17 For a modern edition of this text (4.10–47), see Margrit Schuster (ed.), Jakob Bidermanns ‘Utopia’. Edition mit Übersetzung und Monographie, nebst vergleichenden Studien zum beigedruckten Plagiat des Christoph Andreas Hörl von Wattersdorf (‘Bacchusia oder Fassnacht-Land …’), 2 vol., Europäische Hochschulschriften, Reihe I: Deutsche Sprache und Literatur, Vol. 794 (Bern / Frankfurt / Main / New York: Peter Lang, 1984). 18 See Frenzel, Stoffe (above, n. 14), p. 80: “Die dem Stoff seit Vives anhängende Moral von der Nichtigkeit alles Irdischen kam den Intentionen des Jesuitendramas entgegen, in dessen Bereich er
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In one of Vives’ letters the story is reported as a narrative by an old man who was a servant of Prince Philip the Good (i.e. Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, 1396– 1467) in his youth. There is little embellishment in the tale, but it contains the main elements that continue to appear: Philip and his retinue find an ordinary man, drunk and asleep, in the street and wish to use this example to determine “what a show our life is” (quale esset vita nostra ludicrum), a topic they had been discussing. The man is taken to the palace and waited on like a prince. Although confused at first, he plays his part. After he is drunk and asleep again, he is returned to the street. When he awakes, he comes to the conclusion that this must have been a dream. The author adds reflections on the tale and points out that the protagonist’s experiences are similar to every human life. The story has thus been given a clear moral meaning as a mirror of human existence.19 The tale is narrated again in the next century in Bidermann’s Utopia; here it includes a number of further stories as inserted narratives, making the plot less concise. It is also presented as an entertaining tale: a group of men around the prince’s son intend to play an enjoyable trick on a sleeping drunk farmer. They take him to the imperial palace and transform his appearance; when he wakes up, he is confused about his identity and his whereabouts, but is persuaded to follow the princely routine until he is cast out again. When he narrates his strange experiences to his wife, she does not believe him, but beats him, puts him on a diet and thus sobers him up. Although different in presentation and less focused on the actual plot, this version includes several key elements also found in Masen, such as the immoderate behaviour of the protagonist, as both an ordinary person and a prince, and the emphasis on his uncertainty about his identity after his “transformation” into a prince, which leads him to ask questions and look in the mirror.20 Closer to Masen in form, “historical” basis and obvious moral is the earlier Somnium Vitæ Humanæ by Ludovicus Hollonius, although the extent to which this play had a general reception and a lasting impact is unclear.21 Here the subject matter has been put into dramatic form, and the play bears the subtitle: “Das ist: Ein Newes Spiel. Darin aus einer lustigen geschicht von Philippo Bono, für hundert vnnd acht vnnd dreissig Jahren, einem Weisen, Frommen vnd Mechtigen Hertzogen der Burgunder vnnd Niederländer etc. Gleich in einem Spiegel gezeiget wird, das vnser zeitlichs leben, mit all seiner Herrligkeit nur ein nichtiger vnd betrieglicher Traum sey.” (“This
zum ersten Male 1623 in Ingolstadt erscheint (Iovianus castigatus) und dann nach der Erzählfassung BIDERMANNS (in Utopia 1640) besonders häufig bearbeitet wurde. … Wie verbreitet der Stoff um die Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland war, beweist die Verwendung in HARSDÖRFFERS Frauenzimmergesprächsspielen (1641/49), wo die Geschichte als die »bekannteste« zu einem Tapetenmotiv vorgeschlagen wird.” Masen’s version is not mentioned in Frenzel’s overview. 19 See e.g. Burger, “Barockkomödie” (above, n. 5), p. 33. 20 See Burger, “Barockkomödie” (above, n. 5), pp. 44, 49. 21 See Glodny-Wiercinski, Somnium (above, n. 16), p. 84.
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is: a new play. In which by means of an entertaining story about Philip the Good, a hundred and thirty-eight years ago a wise, pious and powerful duke of Burgundy and the Netherlands etc., it is shown as in a mirror that our life on earth with all its pleasures is only a vain and deceitful dream.”). In the dedicatory letter22 Hollonius explains that his choice of genre was based on the view that “Comedies are images of truth and mirrors of everyday life” (“Comœdiæ enim sunt imagines veritatis et quotidianae vitæ specula”), an idea drawn from Aelius Donatus’ commentary on Terence, where it is transmitted as a statement by Cicero.23 Hollonius regards it as his duty to encourage people to reflect on human life on earth and its ephemeral nature; because comedy represents human life, he sees it as the most suitable vehicle for teaching audiences. Accordingly, Hollonius says, he wanted to use a famous and truthful example; looking for such an example among the works of trustworthy historians, he claims, he could discover no more appropriate story than the tale of Prince Philip, as narrated by his teacher David Chytraeus in the third book of Chronicon Saxoniae, where he followed the letters of Ludovicus Vives. Hollonius thus presents the story as a historical event, for which he cites a historical source. He obviously believes that a “historical” event is a particularly appropriate reflection of human life and thus well suited to didactic purposes. Masen’s precise sources have not yet been identified,24 but he may have known Hollonius’ piece and developed features only hinted at in the earlier play to their full dramatic function. At any rate, Masen too seems to have regarded the plot as historical, and he therefore defined his play as a “historical comedy” (comoedia historica). By emphasizing the historicity of the subject matter, he was able to forestall the possible objection that the story was mere fiction, which would have reduced its moral impact. Nevertheless, Masen can be shown to have added fictional elements to the standard plot. He apparently took the basic structure of the story as found in earlier versions as his starting point: an ordinary workman is made “king” for a day and then returned to his former status. Yet at the same time Masen introduced significant changes: since the main character seems to have become known as a peasant (as in Bidermann), Masen kept this social status in the title (rusticus) and in some comments in the body of the play; actually, however, his protagonist (Mopsus) is a blacksmith by profession and is given an individual identity (12–13).25 In addition, Masen has a court jester (Salpa) who takes a prominent role, a named wife for Mopsus (Gretula), who is not just the addressee of his narrative at the end, and a suffering servant of Mopsus (Congrio), who manages to get an imperial decision on his situation
22 See Glodny-Wiercinski, Somnium (above, n. 16), pp. 7–11. 23 Cf. Don. Com. 5.1 = Cic. Rep. 4.13 comoediam esse Cicero ait imitationem vitae, speculum consuetudinis, imaginem veritatis (“Comedy, Cicero says, is an imitation of life, a mirror of customs, an image of truth.”). 24 See Burger, “Barockkomödie” (above, n. 5), p. 34 and n. 15. 25 See e.g. Scheid, Der Jesuit (above, n. 4), p. 44; Burger, “Barockkomödie” (above, n. 5), p. 38.
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confirmed by his master while he is prince, so that Mopsus’ deeds while in this position continue to have an effect after he is returned to his former status.26 Masen has been criticized for flaws in psychology and allegory caused by these modifications,27 as well as for his handling of time,28 while other scholars have regarded the introduction of the servant as a dramatic advantage.29 In any case, these changes open up further dramaturgic possibilities and contribute to emphasizing the intended message of the play: the addition of the servant allows for more on-stage action and produces a blurring between Mopsus’ real life and his life as a prince, since he meets the same characters in both guises, and actions carried out and decisions taken in one role have consequences on the other. It is true that the temporary existence as a prince can therefore no longer be discarded as a dream, so that the play needs an ending different from the peasant simply returning and relating his experiences. But this also means that the results of wrong behavior and the illusionary nature of fortune are brought out more clearly. Mopsus, who has no control over himself, as either an ordinary person or a prince (when he is encouraged by the courtiers30), receives complete punishment in the end, since he is not merely returned
26 See e.g. Scheid, Der Jesuit (above, n. 4), pp. 44–5; Burger, “Barockkomödie” (above, n. 5), p. 38; Valentin, Le théâtre (above, n. 5), p. 824. Cf. Masen, Palæstra (below, n. 33), vol. III, lib. I, cap. VII§2: “Deinde videndum, quo hanc rem modo accommodè ad finem præfixum possis exponere. Hunc enim verisimiliter simulque jucundè variis protagonistæ erroribus adornare (cum historia illos non tradiderit) maximè poeticum est. Fabrum igitur fingimus, cui famulum adjunximus injuria ab hero læsum, idque per ebrietatem potiùs, quàm aliud vitium, ne à causa erroris præcipui, adeoque extra limites deflecteremus. Hinc datur famulo causa heri apud Principem accusandi: itaque in herum Principem creatum incidit. Quæ res non injucundè fabrum Protagonistam implicat, dum ipse in suum denique caput sententiam dicit, atque ex principatu haud multò post in servitutem incidit.” (“Then it has to be seen in what way one can outline this matter suited to the stated aim. For to adorn this matter in a plausible and simultaneously pleasant way with various errors of the protagonist (while history has not transmitted those) is most poetic. Accordingly, we create a blacksmith, to whom we have added a servant, injustly hurt by his master, and this because of drunkenness, rather than because of any other vice, so that we do not turn away from the cause of the foremost error and even beyond the limits. Hence the servant is given a reason for accusing his master before the Prince: therefore he happens accidentally upon his master turned prince. This matter throws the protagonist, the smith, into trouble, not unpleasantly, as he himself passes judgement upon himself, and not much later he falls from princehood into servitude.”) A fool and peasants who want to make a complaint to the “prince” already briefly appeared in Hollonius’ version, but without gaining dramatic significance; only in Masen do these figures and actions become integral parts of the plot and the message of the play. 27 See Best, “Psychology” (above, n. 13). 28 See Best, “Time” (above, n. 13). 29 See Scheid, Der Jesuit (above, n. 4), pp. 44–5 (also on possible reasons for this change); Burger, “Barockkomödie” (above, n. 5), p. 34. 30 In addition to a general moral that might apply to anyone, the play has been seen to have a political dimension in the shape of anti-courtly criticism (see Parente, “Baroque Comedy” [above, n. 16], pp. 423–4, 427) or to scrutinize behavior among the higher ranks of society (see Burger, “Barockkomödie” [above, n. 5], p. 45).
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to his former environment, but forced to move down the social ladder.31 A greater role for Mopsus’ wife makes it possible to illustrate the effect of the status changes on people other than those directly affected: although Gretula realizes that her husband has been away for a day, she cannot accept that anything has changed and does not believe that the servant Congrio is now the master. By contrast, Mopsus has no problem with this reversal of roles, since he remembers that it was he who ordered it; he simply believes that he can change his status back to prince. Both Mopsus and Gretula must struggle physically with Congrio. The inclusion of a “wise” court jester who tries to imitate Mopsus’ fate by placing himself in the street helps illustrate the moral of the play voiced elsewhere: one cannot force one’s luck or rule one’s fortune. Such an experience happened to Mopsus once and unexpectedly, but it cannot be provoked. Moreover, the fool’s attempt demonstrates to the Prince the potential consequences if the game he initiated is pursued further. In Masen’s version the entire story is presented as a play within a play, since Prince Philip instructs the servants to effect these transformations and frequently refers to the set-up as a “play” (fabula) or a “comedy” (comoedia). On the one hand, Prince Philip directs events and people according to his own wishes; on the other, he is made to voice the moral already during the action (949–69). He presents Mopsus’ fate as a symbol for human life (949–51): Quem nos hodie illo in homine lusum lusimus, / Deus ac natura ludunt nobiscum indies. / Personam tanquam in scena agendam sumimus. (“The game we played with this man today, God and nature play with us each day. Just as on stage, we take up a role and act it out.”). The essence of the play is repeated in the epilogue (1232–72), emphasizing that this spectacle is a metaphor for the changing nature of life, so that the rise and fall of the protagonist should move the audience to conduct their own lives properly in the theater of eternity. The play ends with the following appeal (1266–72): Istic quem te esse velis, nunc vide in tempore: / Ex Rustico esse Rex, an ex Rege Rusticus? / Ex felice miserrimus, an ex misero felicissimus? / In hac vita, dum licet, tibi personam elige. / Fortunam Faber fabricare tuammet tibi. / Vbi mors, ut sopor oppressit, vitae ebrium. / Humilis assurgit Rusticus, Rex arrogans cadit. (“Consider now in your time who you wish to be there: will you change from peasant to prince, or from prince to peasant? From being a happy man to being the most wretched, or from being a wretched man to being the happiest? Choose your role in this life, while you may. Create your own fortune for yourself, craftsman. When death, like sleep, comes over him who has drunk the fullness of life, the humble peasant will rise and the proud prince will fall.”). The choice of a blacksmith rather than the traditional peasant may thus have been intended to allow for connections to the proverb faber est suae quisque fortunae
31 This is reminiscent of the fate of the emperor Claudius in Seneca’s satire Apocolocyntosis: after Claudius ends his life on earth, he is not accepted in the heavens; he is not just returned to earth, however, but rather pushed down to the Underworld as a punishment.
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(“Everyone is the architect of their own fortune.”), attributed to Appius Claudius Caecus (cf. Sall. Orat. ad Caes. 1.2).32
Palaestra eloquentiae ligatae The third volume of Masen’s Palaestra eloquentiae ligatae33 includes a discussion of tragic, comic and comico-tragic drama.34 In this discussion Masen refers to the views of Plato, Aristotle and Horace on poetry, sometimes making specific references to their works or to chapters within them. Masen also obviously knows the writings of lateantique scholars such as the grammarian Diomedes, which shows that his entire approach to drama is influenced by ancient precedent. As he presents his dramatic theory by means of “rules” and “examples,” he uses his own plays as paradigms; hence Rusticus imperans is not only one of the seven plays printed at the end of the treatise, but is quoted and discussed throughout.35 Masen concludes the poetological exposition of this treatise, in the context of discussing dramatic techniques, with the statement (Palæstra, vol. III, lib. II, cap. XXII) “I have discovered this by practising” (expertus didici), before moving on to reproduce the text of his plays; thereby he implicitly claims that the dramatic theory outlined here has been developed from his practice as a playwright.36 The claim may
32 Cf. also Plaut. Trin. 363–4: nam sapiens quidem pol ipsus fingit fortunam sibi: / eo non multa quae nevolt eveniunt, nisi fictor malust. (“For I tell you, a man, a wise man, moulds his own destiny: so not much happens to him that he does not want, unless he be a poor moulder.”) [trans. P. Nixon]. 33 Cf. Palæstra Eloquentiæ Ligatæ. Dramatica. Pars III. & ultima, quæ complectitur Poesin Comicam, Tragicam, Comico-Tragicam. Præceptis & historiis rarioribus, cum Exemplis singulorum Pœmatum illustrata, Et Auctario Elegantiarum Plauti. Nova editio. Priori longè correctior. Autore R.P. Iacobo Masenio, è Societate Jesu. Coloniæ Agrippinæ, Apud Hermannum Demen. Anno M.DC.LXXXIII. Cum Privilegio Superiorum. The work was first published in 1654–7, followed by further editions in 1664 (“nova editio, priori longè correctior”) and 1683 (see Burger, “Edition” [above, n. 11] p. 53). A digital version of the 1683 edition, used here, is accessible via the Corpus Automatum Multiplex Electorum Neolatinitatis Auctorum (CAMENA) at http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/camena/masen1/te01. html. An English translation can be found in Halbig, The Dramatist (above, n. 11), vol. 1. 34 On Masen’s poetics and dramatic theory, see e.g. Scheid, Der Jesuit (above, n. 4), pp. 37–40; Bruno Markwardt, Geschichte der deutschen Poetik. Band I: Barock und Frühaufklärung, Grundriss der Germanischen Philologie 13/I (Berlin / Leipzig, De Gruyter: 1937), pp. 101–15; Burger, “Barockkomödie” (above, n. 5), pp. 35–7; Thomas Erlach, Unterhaltung und Belehrung im Jesuitentheater um 1700. Untersuchungen zu Musik, Text und Kontext ausgewählter Stücke, Musikwissenschaft / Musikpädagogik in der Blauen Eule 73 (Essen: Die Blaue Eule, 2006), pp. 43–65. 35 See Orth, “Übungsplatz” (above, n. 4), pp. 183–4: “Getreu seiner Leitlinie, exempla und praecepta zu kombinieren, hat Masen nicht nur Dichtungen der kanonischen Autoren besprochen, sondern, wie schon erwähnt, in erheblichem Umfang eigene als Anhang hinzugefügt und mit analytischen Erklärungen versehen.” 36 See Scheid, Der Jesuit (above, n. 4), p. 40; Flemming, Ordensdrama (above, n. 6), p. 18.
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make his views more plausible; but since the plays precisely fit the theory, developed on the basis of classical sources, the sequence might not be so straightforward. One can assume, at any rate, that these “rather unpolished works of his youthful eagerness” represent Masen’s concept of ideal drama. In his description of dramatic genres, Masen begins with tragedy, characterizing it with explicit reference to Aristotle’s Poetics (Palæstra, vol. III, lib. I, cap. II§2):37 “It is defined by Aristotle as follows: it is an imitation of an action, illustrious and complete, based on metrical structure, song and dance, bringing about, not by narrating, but in dramatic manner, through pity and fear, a purging of similar emotions.”38 Masen follows Aristotle’s phrasing closely,39 and he adds, again like Aristotle, an explanation of the definition’s individual elements. There he describes the intended effects of tragedy (Palæstra, vol. III, lib. I, cap. II§2.5):40 “The aim of tragedy is to purge pity and fear by reducing them in the spectator to a medium level.” Masen defends this interpretation of “purgation” with reference to Aristotle against the views of other interpreters not mentioned by name. He also attacks those who do not share his reading of Aristotle to the effect that tragedy must have a negative ending; in this context he mentions his contemporaries Daniel Heinsius (1580–1655) and Alexander Donatus (1584–1640) as proponents of a contrary view.41 He concludes (Palæstra, vol. III, lib. I, cap. II§2.5):42 “However, how they accept this definition as Aristotelian, as they certainly do, I have not yet understood. For it is obvious that a person who emerges from ill fortune to unexpected happiness, does not arouse in the spectators pity and fear, the emotions characteristic of tragedy, but
37 See Masen, Palæstra (above, n. 33), vol. III, lib. I, cap. II§2: “Definitur ab Aristotele hoc sensu. Est imitatio actionis illustris ac absoluta: metro, harmonia, ac saltu constans; non enarrando, sed Dramaticè per misericordiam & metum inducens similium perturbationum purgationem.” 38 Masen had already referred to Aristotle’s Poetics in the first sentence of this book (Palæstra [above, n. 33], vol. III, lib. I, cap. I§1); when he introduced the idea of purgation later in the chapter, he explicitly added “as Aristotle says” (Palæstra [above, n. 33], vol. III, lib. I, cap. I§2: “ut Aristoteles loquitur”). 39 Cf. Arist. Poet. 1449b24–8: ἔστιν οὖν τραγῳδία μίμησις πράξεως σπουδαίας καὶ τελείας μέγεθος ἐχούσης, ἡδυσμένῳ λόγῳ χωρὶς ἑκάστῳ τῶν εἰδῶν ἐν τοῖς μορίοις, δρώντων καὶ οὐ δι’ ἀπαγγελίας, δι’ ἐλέου καὶ φόβου περαίνουσα τὴν τῶν τοιούτων παθημάτων κάθαρσιν. (“Tragedy, then, is mimesis of an action which is elevated, complete, and of magnitude; in language embellished by distinct forms in its sections; employing the mode of enactment, not narrative; and through pity and fear accomplishing the catharsis of such emotions.”) [trans. S. Halliwell]. 40 Cf. Masen, Palæstra (above, n. 33), vol. III, lib. I, cap. II§2.5: “Finis Tragœdiæ est, ut misericordiam & metum in spectatore ad mediocritatem expurget.” 41 On the reception of Aristotle’s poetics in earlier Italian writers, see B. Kappl, Die Poetik des Aristoteles in der Dichtungstheorie des Cinquecento, UaLG 83 (Berlin / New York: De Gruyter, 2006). 42 Cf. Masen, Palæstra (above, n. 33), vol. III, lib. I, cap. II§2.5: “Hi tamen quomodo Aristotelicam definitionem admittant, ut sanè faciunt, nondum intelligo. Siquidem manifestum est illum, qui ab infelicitate ad insperatam felicitatem emergit, non misericordiam ac metum, affectus Tragœdiæ proprios: sed spem ac gaudium Comœdiæ familiares motus, in spectatoribus concitare.”
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hope and joy, the typical feelings of comedy.” This shows that Masen accepts as a matter of course that comedy also affects two emotions, in this case hope (spes) and joy (gaudium). Masen does not reveal whether this view is based on a source or has been developed by himself. At any rate, the terms spes and gaudium as descriptions of emotions connected with comedy already appear in Alexander Donatus’ poetic treatise (Ars poetica, lib. II, cap. LIII, pp. 240–1).43 Masen’s subsequent full definition of comedy clarifies how, in his view, those emotions can be created and become effective; he says explicitly that comedy is defined on the model of tragedy (Palæstra, vol. III, lib. I, cap. II§3):44 “It is described on the model of tragedy. It is an imitation of an action, entertaining and complete, based on common metrical structure, bringing about, in dramatic fashion, through hope and joy, a purging of similar emotions.” In view of the preceding description of tragedy, the purging of hope and joy is most likely to be interpreted in the sense that watching a comedy leads to the reduction of hope and joy in members of the audience to a moderate level.45 Further explanations, added in the same manner as in the discussion of tragedy, indicate that Masen understands hope and joy in a specific way (Palæstra, vol. III, lib. I, cap. II§3.4):46 “It [i.e. comedy] particularly arouses the emotions of hope and joy. Hope within the uncertain fortune of men and their efforts to strive for a better position, joy, however, in the unexpected attainment of this very fortune and the good.” This means, in connection with the notion of purging, that comedy is intended to make spectators restrain their hopeful efforts to achieve some-
43 Cf. Ars Poetica sive Institutionum Artis Poeticae Libri Tres. Autore R.P. Alexandro Donato Senensi, è Soc. Iesu (Coloniae Agrippinae: Apud Ioannem Kinchium sub Monocerote, 1633), lib. II, cap. LIII, pp. 240–1: “Comœdia est imitatio deterioris actionis in eo vitij genere, quod risum mouet, metro ac dramatico modo, quæ Spem, & Gaudium inducendo huiusmodi affectus moderatur. … Spem, & Gaudium inducendo, proprios Comœdiæ affectus, ex dubia primum, postremo secunda fortuna promanantes. Spes enim tendit in bonum difficile acquisitu, quod primo exprimit omnis actio comica, & in fine Gaudium; quæ de eiusdem boni possessione voluptas est.” (“Comedy is the imitation of a worse action in this kind of vice that provokes laughter, in verse and dramatic form, which, by rousing hope and joy, moderates the emotions of this kind. … By rousing hope and joy, the emotions specific to comedy, pouring fourth from fortune that is doubtful at first and eventually good. For hope strives for a good that is difficult to reach, which initially the entire comic action expresses, and in the end joy, which is happiness about the possession of this very good.”). 44 Cf. Masen, Palæstra (above, n. 33), vol. III, lib. I, cap. II§3: “Describitur appositè ad Tragœdiam. Est imitatio actionis ridicula & absoluta, metro familiari constans Dramaticè per spem ac gaudium inducens similium affectionum purgationem.” 45 Again Masen does not name a source, so that it remains unclear whether or how far this definition is his own. In what follows, he acknowledges that the definition of comedy as imitation is based on Chapter 5 of Aristotle’s Poetics. The notion that comedy, like tragedy, can create a purifying, moderating effect, is already found in Iamblichus (Myst. 1.11). 46 Cf. Masen, Palæstra (above, n. 33), vol. III, lib. I, cap. II§3.4: “Affectus spei gaudiique præcipuo surget. Spem in anxia hominum fortuna eorumque industria ad meliorem enitendi gaudium verò in ejusdem fortunæ ac boni insperata consecutione.”
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thing better despite the varying fortunes of life or their unlimited joy in reaction to unexpected good luck.47 Masen opens his detailed presentation of comedy with a more precise description of the “actio ridicula.” For this purpose he quotes the beginning of Chapter 5 of Aristotle’s Poetics (in abbreviated form), accepting that comedy is an imitation of “baser individuals” and basing his exposition on the notion that a “fault or mark of shame which involves no pain or destruction” is its appropriate object.48 Masen’s list of examples closes with the following observation (Palæstra, vol. III, lib. I, cap. II§3.1):49 “Finally, it will be pleasing whatever deserves laughter due to its rarity, if only it lacks pain, if there is punishment or change of fortune, and lacks indignation if is counted among crimes: just as drunkenness among the Germans. Nevertheless, sometimes wrongdoing is punished in light fashion, like our Rusticus: since he had oppressed his servant with immoderate servitude, he is in turn forced to serve the latter.” Masen obviously sees his Rusticus imperans as a comedy conforming to the definitions outlined by Aristotle. By contrast, Masen regards ancient comedies as unsatisfactory (Palæstra, vol. III, lib. I, cap. I§2):50 “In this type of poetry [i.e. drama], the surest law and rule, supported
47 This definition of the emotions of spes and gaudium differs from Alexander Donatus (Ars poetica, lib. II, cap. LIII, p. 241; see above, n. 43) because of its different emphasis: while Donatus describes spes and gaudium as associated with the starting point and the end of the dramatic action, Masen discusses them without connection to the plot; they thus appear as independent emotions of men that occur without moderation and must be reduced to a moderate level by comedy. 48 Cf. Arist. Poet. 1449a32–7: ἡ δὲ κωμῳδία ἐστὶν ὥσπερ εἴπομεν μίμησις φαυλοτέρων μέν, οὐ μέντοι κατὰ πᾶσαν κακίαν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ αἰσχροῦ ἐστι τὸ γελοῖον μόριον. τὸ γὰρ γελοῖόν ἐστιν ἁμάρτημά τι καὶ αἶσχος ἀνώδυνον καὶ οὐ φθαρτικόν, οἷον εὐθὺς τὸ γελοῖον πρόσωπον αἰσχρόν τι καὶ διεστραμμένον ἄνευ ὀδύνης. (“Comedy, as we said, is mimesis of baser but not wholly vicious characters: rather, the laughable is one category of the shameful. For the laughable comprises any fault or mark of shame which involves no pain or destruction: most obviously, the laughable mask is something ugly and twisted, but not painfully.”) [trans. S. Halliwell]. Cf. Masen, Palæstra (above, n. 33), vol. III, lib. I, cap. II§3.1: “Dicitur actionis ridiculæ quæ scilicet a gravibus personis ac tragicis aliena vilioribus competat, atque ad risum excitandum idonea sit, uti certè scelera & lenonum ac meretricum consuetudines esse nequeunt, cum vitium nullum risu aut gaudio; sed indignatione potius excipiendum videatur quod apertè etiam Aristoteles de Comœdia cap. 5. tradit, videlicet.” (“This refers to poetry with a humorous action, which, obviously, foreign to serious and tragic chacters, is suited for baser people and is appopriate to rousing laughter, as certainly wrongdoings and the habits of pimps and courtesans cannot, since it seems that one should react to no vice with laughter or joy, but rather with indignation, a view that Aristoteles clearly states in chapter five on comedy.”). 49 Cf. Masen, Palæstra (above, n. 33), vol. III, lib. I, cap. II§3.1: “Placebit demum quicquid raritate suâ risum meretur, modò dolore careat, si pœna aut casus sit; & indignatione, si inter crimina censeatur: qualis ebrietas apud Germanos. Lepidè tamen aliquando scelus etiam plectitur, ut Rusticus noster, quod immoderatâ servitute pressisset servum, vicissim illi servire cogitur.” 50 Cf. Masen, Palæstra (above, n. 33), vol. III, lib. I, cap. I§2: “De quo Poematis genere certissima atque ab Aristotele, Horatio aliisque recentioribus recepta Lex ac regula est: Hoc Poema ad delectationem simul ac pravorum affectuum purgationem (ut Aristoteles loquitur) instituendum esse. Quam
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by Aristotle, Horace and other, more modern writers, is the following: such a poem should be written both to please and to purge base emotions, as Aristotle says. Without the exercising of virtue, no philosopher accomplishes this purging in man. It is no wonder, then, that, so as not to be excluded from being called poetry, a work must achieve the common goal of poems, in that it commingles the useful and the enjoyable. Who thinks that the Greek and Roman comic poets in particular have ever adequately pursued this end? For what else did these authors ever present besides adultery, incest and unchastity? Consider the great Terence, who even today is so popular, what did he bring on stage that did not include pimps and courtesans? Even when he brings these together in marriage in the end, to what gain in virtue has this been done when he has presented an alliance put on man by nature alone and not unknown among the animals, and when he shows no other avenue to such a bond than through immorality? The Christian poets should take note of and be embarrassed at the emptiness of those writers, even in this age, who give us laws for comedy and tragedy from the examples of these authors, of the sort that they regard it as a crime to deviate from those occasionally; I do not know whether this is rather a sign of a knowledge claimed in vain or of lost virtue.” Masen evidently rejects not only ancient comedies, particularly Roman ones, for reasons of content, but also those by “modern” writers in so far as they slavishly use ancient comedies as models. Masen’s own theory of comedy stems from his understanding of the genre’s poetic purpose developed on the basis of Aristotle’s Poetics, namely that it is to purge certain emotions: he criticizes the failure of ancient writers and their followers to observe Aristotle’s rule, i.e. purging such emotions by means of the ridiculous. Therefore, in Masen’s view, these comedies do not lead to poetry that mixes the “enjoyable” and the “useful,” a function Masen calls for in line with Horace.51 Since Masen did not see this combination realized in the works of others, the
absque virtutum exercitio nemo Philosophus in homine collocat: Nimirum ut à Poesi non excludatur, hunc communem poematum finem assequatur necesse est, quo misceat utile dulce.* Hunc scopum, quis olim Græcos Latinosque præsertim Comicos, satis attigisse sentiat? quid enim hi aliud ferè præter adulteria, incestus, stupra? Unum tantæ etiamnum famæ expende Terentium, quid hic sine Lenonibus ac Meretriculis in scena egit? quos si deniq; nuptiis colligavit, quo illud emolumento ad virtutem factum est, cum societatem hominibus à natura persuasam, neque bestiis ignotam proponeret, neq; aliam ad hanc rem viam nisi per vitia aperiret? Videant igitur atque erubescant Christiani Poetæ, illorum hoc etiam ævo vanitatem, qui ex horum nobis authorum exemplaribus Comœdiæ Tragœdiæque leges ita condunt, ut aliquando deflectere nefas existiment, majori nescio scientiæ quam frustra profitentur, an virtutis profligatæ notâ?” 51 See Heinz Meyer, “Nutzen und Wirkungsabsicht des Theaters nach Paratexten lateinischer Dramen der frühen Neuzeit,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 41 (2007), p. 223: “Die Diskussion über Nutzen und Zielsetzung des Theaters steht im Zusammenhang der Rezeption der Poetik des Horaz, von deren Grundsatz aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetae die gesamte Wirkungspoetik der frühen Neuzeit geprägt ist; das prodesse ist dabei im Sinne moraldidaktischer Intentionen verstanden, wie es die bei Horaz bald folgende Variante delectando pariterque monendo nahelegt. Antike Schriftsteller haben nach der Überzeugung der Humanisten ihre Werke mit der Absicht verfasst, der sittlichen Belehrung
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predominance of comedies among his own plays printed as examples at the end of the treatise apparently reflects a perceived lack of suitable models among both ancient and “modern” poets.52 As his argument reveals, Masen has developed his own theory of comedy in critical engagement with comedies and theoretical positions from antiquity as well as with “modern” comedy and scholarly discussions of his time. What is remarkable are his direct references to Aristotle and Horace. The characteristics of Masen’s view become particularly clear when his definition of comedy is compared with that of Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484–1558), who speaks of a dramatic piece of poetry, full of action, with a happy ending and in colloquial style.53 But the parallelism between a
und Erziehung des Menschen zu dienen, und in dieser Intention soll der zeitgenössische Autor ihnen folgen.”; p. 224: “Wichtiger als die Horazrezeption ist für die Frage nach der Wirkungsabsicht und dem Nutzen des Theaters die Lehre von den Wirkungen der Tragödie nach Aristoteles, wenn sie auch für das Theaterverständnis der Frühen Neuzeit nicht von so großer Bedeutung war, wie es die spätere Dramenpoetik der Modernen – insbesondere wegen der von Lessing angeregten und auf ihn bezogenen Erörterung – erwarten lässt. Die bisherige, keineswegs abgeschlossene Forschung zur Rezeption der Tragödientheorie des Aristoteles geht davon aus, dass die Wirkungen der Tragödie (misericordia, terror und purgatio) im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert von einem Interpretationswillen betrachtet wurden, der durch das pädagogisch-ethische Verständnis der Dramen weithin festgelegt war und eine moralische Umdeutung der Katharsis verlangt.” On views of the role of theater in Neo-Latin theater texts and on the influence of Aristotle, Horace and Roman comedy, see Meyer, “Nutzen”. On the character of comedy in Germany at the time, see Eckehard Catholy, Das deutsche Lustspiel. Vom Mittelalter bis zum Ende der Barockzeit (Stuttgart / Berlin / Köln / Mainz: Kohlhammer, 1969), p. 95. 52 Cf. Masen, Palæstra (above, n. 33), vol. III, lib. II, p. 130 (Ad Lectorem): “In Comicis aliquanto profusiori esse libuit; quod hæc à plerisque aliis, ea ferè ratione, quæ ad purgationem affectuum, per ridiculum spectaret (qui finis est ab Aristotele præscriptus) adhibita vix fuerint. Sed aut vitiis magis propagandis, quàm eliminandis usurpata sint ut factum à veteribus aut certè à novis invitâ propemodum Minerva prodierint.” (“As regards comic poetry it seemed appropriate to be somewhat more profuse, since most others, frequently for that reason, have hardly taken into account that issue that concerns the purging of the emotions through the ridiculous (a goal that has been prescribed by Aristotle). Instead, they have been employed to spread vices rather than to eliminate them, as it has been done by the older (writers) or they certainly have come forth in that way from the newer (writers), almost against Minerva’s will.”). 53 Cf. Scaliger, Poetices libri (above, n. 2), lib. I, cap. V: “Comœdiam igitur sic definiamus nos, poema dramaticum, negotiosum, exitu lætum, stylo populari. Errarunt enim qui Latinis sic definiuêre, privatarũ personarum, ciuilium negotiorum comprehensio, sine periculo. Principiò aliis quoque fabulis conuenit non dramaticis, quæ simplici narratione recitari possunt. Deinde in Comœdia semper est periculũ, alioquin exitus essent frigidissimi. Quid enim est aliud periculum, quàm imminentis mali aditio siue tentatio? Præterea non solùm pericula, sed etiam damna lenonibus, rivalibus, & servis, & heris. quemadmodum in Asinaria, & in Mostellaria ipsi quoque heri malè mulctantur.” (“Hence let us define comedy as follows: a dramatic poem, busy with action, with a happy ending, in colloquial style. For they make a mistake, who have defined it for the Latins as follows: a presentation of private individuals and civil business without danger. First of all, this also applies to other stories, nondramatic ones, which can be told in a simple narrative. Secondly, there is always danger in comedy; otherwise the endings would be rather uninteresting. For what else is danger if not the arrival or attack
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definition of comedy and Aristotle’s definition of tragedy as found in Masen (and Alexander Donatus) occurs elsewhere in the tradition of dramatic theory, for example in the so-called Tractatus Coislianus, of whose history before 1643, however, when it was sent to Séguier from Cyprus, little is known. There, in line with Aristotle’s definition of tragedy, the effect of comedy is defined as purging pleasure and laughter.54 Masen, like Alexander Donatus,55 calls the emotions belonging to comedy hope (spes) and joy (gaudium), and he gives them a significant moral and didactic function, as his explanation shows, since he assumes a greater awareness and moderation of hopes with respect to the vagaries of fortune in human life as the intended effect on audiences. That this view is to be seen against the background of a Christian happiness in eternity can be assumed. In view of the rejection of ancient comedy as a model for Christian writers, it might seem surprising at first glance that the third volume of Masen’s Palaestra eloquentiae ligatae closes with an appendix of “Selectorum ex Plauto discursuum, Phrasium, Verborum maxime imitatione dignorum” (“conversations, phrases and words selected from Plautus and most worthy of imitation”). Going through Plautus’ 20 surviving plays in alphabetical order, Masen lists phrases excerpted from them that he considers useful for someone writing comedy in Latin, although, as the introduction to the section indicates, he does not approve of full-scale imitation, but rather recommends that one’s own writings be enriched thereby; while he obviously disapproves of the morals on display in those comedies, he wishes to use them as an inventory of phrases and comic structures to be inserted into one’s own writings.56
of imminent evil? Further, not only dangers, but also damage for pimps, rivals, slaves and masters, as in Asinaria and in Mostellaria the masters themselves are badly punished.”). 54 Cf. Tractatus Coislianus 3: κωμῳδία ἐστὶ μίμησις πράξεως γελοίας καὶ ἀμοίρου μεγέθους, τελείας, χωρὶς ἑκάστῳ τῶν μορίων ἐν τοῖς εἴδεσι, δρώντων καὶ δι’ ἀπαγγελίας, δι’ ἡδονῆς καὶ γέλωτος περαίνουσα τὴν τῶν τοιούτων παθημάτων κάθαρσιν. (“Comedy is an imitation of an action that is absurd and lacking in magnitude, complete, the several kinds (of embellishment being found) separately in the (several) parts (of the play); (directly represented) by person acting, and by means of narration; through pleasure and laughter achieving the purgation of the like emotions.”) [text and trans.: Richard Janko, Aristotle on Comedy. Towards a reconstruction of Poetics II (London: Duckworth), pp. 24–5; on the text and its sources, cf. Janko, pp. 4–8]. 55 On Alexander Donatus’ views on tragedy and their relationship to earlier Italian writers, see M. Lurje, Die Suche nach der Schuld. Sophokles’ Oedipus Rex, Aristoteles’ Poetik und das Tragödienverständnis der Neuzeit, BzA 209 (München / Leipzig: Saur, 2004), pp. 305–9; see also above, n. 47. 56 Cf. Masen, Palæstra (above, n. 33), vol. III, lib. II, p. 597 [sic, leg. 497]: “Cum Plautus à juventute parvo eruditionis fructu, virtutis nullo legatur: censui illa, quæ ad stylum ex illo, comica venustate & lepore ornandum potissimum facerent, cùm aliquibus etiam interpretationis obscuriorum notis, breviter pro coronide subiicienda esse. Quæ non sine delectu excerpta, magis obsoletis absonisque praeteritis, facili opere lectorem studiosum, jamque in ceteris latinè scribendi generibus utcumque versatum, ad singularem Comicorum indolem geniumque stylum docebunt inflectere. Tantum hæc volvere scripturum comicè quandoque non pigeat, ut discrimen observatum imitatione assequatur. Sed meminerit hæc salis loco aspergenda non ubique ingerenda esse.” (“Since Plautus is being read by the young
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Admiration for Plautus’ style and wit is noticeable; otherwise, such phrases would be unsuitable for enriching one’s own writings. But in this sweeping condemnation of ancient, particularly Roman, comedy and the strict distinction between content and style, Masen ignores attempts to raise the moral level in ancient comedy itself. The moral fabric of a comedy is a topic in Plautus’ Captivi, for example. The prologue asserts (54–8a): “It will undeniably be to your profit to pay attention to this play. It is not composed in the hackneyed style, is quite unlike other plays: nor does it contain filthy lines that one must not repeat. In this comedy you will meet no perjured pimp, or unprincipled courtesan, or braggart captain.” The epilogue confirms (1029–33): “Spectators, this play was composed with due regard to the proprieties: here you have no vicious intrigues, no love affair, no supposititious child, no getting money on false pretences, no young spark setting a wench free without his father’s knowledge. Dramatists find few plays such as this which make good men better.”57 While statements like these show an awareness of the potential moral quality of comey on the part of Roman playwrights (and audiences), these descriptions are used to advertise the play and explain its unusual setup; they do not indicate distinctive beliefs on the dramatist’s part, as the existence of other Plautine plays of a different character reveals. These remarks are also concerned with the moral level of the protagonists rather than with the effect on audiences.
Rusticus imperans: a comedy according to Masen’s “Aristotelian” definition of comedy If one considers Rusticus imperans against the background of the definition of comedy outlined by Masen in Palaestra on analogy with Aristotle’s definition and description of tragedy, it becomes clear why he regarded the play as a paradigmatic example of a
with little benefit to their education, with none to their virtue, I have decided that those elements from him that mostly contribute to embellishing the style due to their comic beauty and charm should be added briefly (with some notes on the interpretation of the more obscure items), functioning as a closing sign. These things, excerpted not without selection, omitting the more obsolete and incongruous stuff, will teach with little effort the eager reader, already well-versed in writing in other genres in Latin, to turn their pen to the singular genius and gift of the comic poets. To read so much of comic writings should not be irksome, so that one achieves to observe a difference in imitation. Yet one should remember that this is to be spread just as salt and not to be inserted everywhere.”). 57 Plaut. Capt. 54–8a: profecto expediet fabulae huic operam dare. / non pertractate facta est neque item ut ceterae: / neque spurcidici insunt versus, immemorabiles; / hic neque periurus leno est nec meretrix mala / neque miles gloriosus; …; 1029–33: spectatores, ad pudicos mores facta haec fabula est, / neque in hac subigitationes sunt neque ulla amatio / nec pueri suppositio nec argenti circumductio, / neque ubi amans adulescens scortum liberet clam suom patrem. / huius modi paucas poetae reperiunt comoedias. [trans. P. Nixon].
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perfect comedy. The protagonist Mopsus is an ordinary person with obvious vices, due to both his social status and his behavior. He is not only a drunkard (drinking is mentioned as a prototypical vice of the Germans in Palæstra, vol. III, lib. I, cap. II§3.1), but he is also unable to exercise restraint, as either master or prince. By introducing the servant Congrio, whom Mopsus treats in an appalling manner, Masen creates the dramaturgic possibility of presenting light punishment of incorrect behavior on stage as described in Palaestra (vol. III, lib. I, cap. II§3.1). Such punishment will seem justified to audiences because of Mopsus’ behavior, and they may realize for themselves that one should aim for moderation. Moreover, Mopsus’ rise and fall present a more profound mirror of life, since they show that joy over an unexpected bit of good luck should be limited, as it could prove false. Awareness of these facts follows logically from the action on stage, and this doctrine is voiced explicitly by Prince Philip (949–69). In addition, the behavior of the “wise” fool Scarpa, who tries to force good fortune like what has happened to the blacksmith Mopsus, but is unsuccessful in his attempt and only meets with ridicule, can be interpreted as an exaggerated image of the (false) hopes of men. This means that Masen’s Rusticus imperans has been shaped according to the aims of comedy derived from its “Aristotelian” definition, the purgation of (false) hope and (false) joy. The consequences to be drawn from the doctrine illustrated in the play, namely that humans are toys of fortune, are made explicit in the epilogue and are related to the finiteness of life (1232–72): although everyone shapes their own fortune, one’s fate is measured according to expectations regarding eternal life. On earth, one is king for one day only, a theater king; one must organize one’s life so as not to experience a terrible fall after death (1246–7): Hodie vivis, flores, laetaris, Rex es hodie: / Cras non futurus. (“Today you live, you flourish, you rejoice; today you are a prince; tomorrow you will not.”). That Masen has the epilogue speaker say that he hesitates to voice such messages, since he may destroy the audience’s happy mood upon leaving (1247b–51b), may indicate that Masen was conscious that, with his moralizing approach, he was almost stepping over the boundaries of the dramatic genre of comedy.
Rusticus imperans: a “Plautine” comedy As becomes evident from Palaestra, Masen was familiar with Roman comedy, in particular the works of Plautus. That Plautus’ plays should be taken as formal models is not merely a theoretical recommendation to other writers, for Masen himself follows this paradigm in Rusticus imperans. Perhaps even the title has been shaped on analogy with titles such as Plautus’ Miles gloriosus.58 At any rate, connections are
58 On title formation, cf. Masen’s comments in Palæstra ([above, n. 33], vol. III, lib. I, cap. VI§1): “Titulus vel à primaria persona, vel ab eventu, vel à loco aliove adjuncto sumitur, modò emineat inter
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obvious in the prologue (1–32), which, like the epilogue, is delivered by someone other than one of the characters of the plot. An additional, unspecified prologue speaker is known from Plautus and Terence, whose prologues may end with an address to the audience asking them to pay attention (e.g. Plaut. Amph. 151–2; Asin. 14–15; Ter. Eun. 45–6). A request for applause, often closing a Plautine play (e.g. Cas. 1210; Mil. 1437; Rud. 1423; cf. Hor. Ars 154–5; Quint. Inst. 6.1.52), is placed at the end of the prologue by Masen (30–2), presumably because it would not have fit the serious, moralizing epilogue detached from the dramatic action. The function of Masen’s prologue also agrees with the typical role of Plautine examples, serving to introduce the audience to the place of action (3) and the main protagonists (4–5, 12– 13, 18–19) as well as to the plot and its background (12–29).59 One of the most obvious features in the dramatic set-up of Masen’s play is the fact that Prince Philip, although a character, directs the main action of the play as well as the activities of other characters required to realize it (147–54a).60 Philip says explicitly that a “play” (fabula) or “comedy” (comoedia) is being enacted (237, 261, 940), and he calls Mopsus a “stage prince” (256 scenicum … principem). His men or, in other words, the other players are not offered an overview of the planned action and thus become curious about the outcome (156, 364b, 806b–7a). Philip ends the trick and orders Mopsus to be returned to his former status (939–47) when the scheme has fulfilled its function (949–69). This notion of enacting a play is taken up by other characters, who contribute to enhancing it by a “double deception” (duplex … deceptio), when they arrange for the servant Congrio to meet Mopsus while he is prince (335–8), or when characters developing a trick to be used against the fool describe the planned measures as a “new play” (904b–5 novam fabulam). Emphasis on the fact that the characters are playing roles in a play is in accord with the metatheatrical nature of many Plautine plays. Prince Philip as organizer of the action resembles Plautus’ scheming slaves in leading roles, such as Tranio in Mostellaria and Pseudolus in Pseudolus: they come up with an intrigue in support of their masters, direct other characters to play their parts in carrying it out and only reveal the entire plan bit by bit, because they seem to create it as they go along (e.g. Pseud. 394–414, 562–74; Mostell. 387–418, 510; Mil. 596–610, 770–811, 874–935). In contrast to Prince Philip, these slaves have a clear goal in mind, namely to save their
cetera.” (“The title is taken from the protagonist, from the ending, from a location or from something else connected with the play, if only it stands out from others.”). 59 In Palæstra ([above, n. 33], vol. III, lib. I, cap. IV§1) Masen states that the necessary details concerning a play’s plot should be outlined in a detached prologue, with explicit reference to ancient practice. 60 See Valentin, Le théâtre (above, n. 5), p. 821: “…, Masen, par la technique du théâtre sur le théâtre, confie en effet à Philippe le soin de ‘mêtre en scène’ la comédie et de la conduire à son terme.” Philip’s role as director of the play prepares the transfer of the dramatic action to the lives of human beings on earth ruled by God.
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masters (and themselves), and are forced to react to developments; dramatically, however, the positions are similar. It has been suggested that these slaves might be compared to the poet; at any rate, the invention of intrigues is occasionally compared to what a poet does (e.g. Pseud. 401–4a; Cas. 860–1). A similar set-up applies with reference to Prince Philip in Masen’s play. While drawing connections between poets and their characters can be problematic, it is true that Prince Philip has the “play” enacted for amusement and education (cf. 335–6a, 949–69), which agrees with Masen’s requirements for good drama.61 At the same time, in the tradition of Plautine comedy, Masen has a considerable amount of physical action take place on-stage (rather than moving it off-stage, as the priest Ludovicus Hollonius did), and he adds further figures to the plot to give it a distinctive twist. By pairing the character whose status is changed with a servant, Masen not only creates a more complex dramatic action, but also intensifies the theme of status and social class, as Mopsus successively occupies three positions. Masen makes the situation of a slave even more prominent by having Congrio reflect on it (33–44, 98–108). Although Congrio is not comparable to active Plautine slaves, they too sometimes complain about their plight and the punishment they fear, and they may be set free in the end (e.g. Epid.). The ultimate reversal in the roles of master and slave, when the servant moves into a position to command his master (814–46, 1086– 1135, 1195–1231), can also be compared to Plautine scheming slaves, who sometimes issue orders to their masters when they require them to play a part in a deceitful scheme (e.g. Mil.; Most.). In Masen’s play the reversal is based on the prince’s order, and there is no intrigue; nonetheless, the structure is similar. The confrontation between the master (and his wife) and the servant allows for vivid stage action involving the motif of beating,62 a ubiquitous feature in Plautine comedy and constantly feared there by slaves. Mopsus’ changes of status and personality and his consequent doubts about his identity, although elements of the chosen plot, especially recall the plight of the slave Sosia in Plautus’ Amphitruo, who similarly begins to doubt whether he is himself when he is confronted with the god Mercury impersonating him and well aware of his
61 See Halbig, The Jesuit Theater (above, n. 5), p. 11: “It is significant that in the one recorded performance of this play, Masen himself played Philip. In Masen’s version, Philip is cast as an earnest, moderate moral reformer who believes in the positive consequences of comedy and who is, above all, a teacher. As a play-making prince, Philip not only shapes the action personally during the transformation of Mopsus, but is the chief spokesman for the moral lessons Masen would convey to his audience. He is, for this reason, as close a self-portrait of Masen as there exists in any of the plays.” 62 See Masen, Rusticus imperans 82–7: Quem pessimis hactenus tractavit modis. / Enimvero Cyclopum ex genere herum habeo, / Officio Fabrum, qui, nisi me cottidie / Ad incudem & malleum fabrè exerceat, / Flagris hinc atque inde terendum flagrantibus, / Fabrum sese fuisse putat inutilem. (“So far he has treated me [Congrio] in the worst possible way. Indeed I have a monster from the race of the Cyclopes as a master, by profession a blacksmith. If he did not practice his trade on me with hammer and anvil every day, to wear me down with fiery blows on all sides, he would regard himself as a useless blacksmith.”).
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innermost secrets (Amph. 373–462, 551–634). This is particularly true for the scene in which Mopsus, having just returned to his former status, meets Congrio (1047–1135). Since Masen has added the servant to the standard plot, he must have created this scene. Apart from the fact that in Plautus Sosia is also beaten by Mercury to make him concede that the latter is the “real Sosia,” the scene in Masen follows a similar structure: just as Mercury deals with Sosia, so Mopsus tries to convince his servant that he is the person he claims to be, namely Philip, by recalling details of events at the time he passed judgement on the blacksmith, which could only be known to the prince. Both Mercury and Mopsus try to use the information they possess to prove that they are someone they are not. Their interlocutors are surprised at their knowledge and are forced to admit that the details are true, but this does not cause them to accept the professed identity, while Sosia is readier to give in because of the physical force Mercury applies. In dramatic technique as well, Masen seems to have been partly inspired by Plautus: Rusticus imperans lacks stage directions, and there are no indications as to how the different locations and props mentioned in the characters’ utterances are to be displayed on-stage. The scenes at court are envisaged as taking place inside, so presumably the set is not the classical stage with a street in front of three doors/ houses. But some activities of the characters are narrated by others rather than or in addition to being acted out (e.g. 339–47, 895–9), a technique also used in Plautus, most famously for the description of the slave working out a plan in Miles gloriosus (196–215). Several times one character overhears another and comments on what they are saying and doing, with the other character remaining unaware of this, and the two only recognize one another and engage in conversation when it is appropriate for the plot, for example, when Congrio first comes to court, watched by the servant Stasimus (301–34). When Mopsus is returned to the street and wakes up watched by Congrio, they both talk to themselves, without hearing or noticing one another; they only see one another when the background to the situation has been established (1047–88). This is a common device in Plautine comedy to make the action more vivid and to get the plot, especially intrigues, going (e.g. Epid. 526–48; Most. 690–718; Pseud. 130– 246). In terms of dramatic structure, however, Masen did not follow classical models closely. In Palaestra he argues for the importance of plot and action over words,63 and he therefore recommends a structure of acts and scenes that suits the plot rather than prescribing a fixed number; the aim of a drama should be the starting point, and the
63 On plot as the most important element of tragedy, cf. Arist. Poet. 1450a38–9. See also Halbig, The Jesuit Theater (above, n. 5), p. 9: “Masen is not an extreme formalist, particularly when seen against the background of his time. He repeatedly advocates the supremacy of action over form, clear dramatic purpose over rules, and effective, theatrical impact over long and complicated prose. The “proper place of the dramatist,” he writes, “is with the actor in the theater.” The stage is not a place for long, wooden speeches. “Art,” not formal prescription, should be the dramatist’s guide.”
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action should be shaped accordingly. Only against the background of the ancient rule that a drama should have five acts (e.g. Hor. Ars 189–90), which also influenced early modern editions of Roman comedies, does this discussion make sense, and this is why Masen justifies the four-act structure of Rusticus imperans in great detail in Palaestra (vol. III, lib. I, cap. VII§2).64 As for language and style, the area in which Masen recommended Plautus as a model, there are close similarities in his own work.65 The appearance of the fool gives rise to a scene full of comic banter and witty repartee, often based on literal interpretation of common phrases (534–84),66 a frequent element in Plautine comedy. Just as in Plautus, there is much word play in Masen’s drama, including pompous-sounding nonce words (esp. 354 Crateropotinosymbolophilus, 860 Archistrategus; cf. e.g. Plaut. Mil. 14), colorful terms of abuse (e.g. 45 trifurcifer, 1171 trifur and furfuracee), play with juridical terminology and legal situations (98–108; cf. e.g. advocati in Plautus’ Poenulus), imitation of military language (303b–4, 868–73), agglomeration of synonyms and similar sounding words (872, 1029, 1102, 1113) and literal interpretation of common phrases. Long lists of similar items, most impressively in the enumeration of types of food offered to Mopsus at court (499–533), recall lists of occupations, luxury items and food in Plautus (e.g. Epid. 219–35; Poen. 265–70). Like Plautus with respect to his Greek models, Masen invented his own names for his characters (apart from the “historical” character Prince Philip). These are not characteristic names of ancient comedy, but all of them, with the possible exception of Gretula, sound classical because of their form. Some are even attested Latin words and may be intended to suggest connotations, like some speaking names in Plautus. The name of the peasant Mopsus may refer to the herdsman by that name in Vergil’s Fifth Eclogue, while Congrio is the Latin word for “conger eel” and the name of a cook in Plautus’ Aulularia, likewise a character from a lower social level. Salpa, the name of the court jester, is a term for another type of fish (cf. Plin. Nat. 9.68; Ov. Hal. 121). Cleobulus, one of the people at court, has the same name as one of the Seven Sages. There are numerous allusions to classical mythological figures in the speeches of all characters (e.g. 40, 83, 124, 146, 286, 287, 406, 452, 457, 596, 608, 650, 651, 887, 1035), endowing Masen’s play with a classical atmosphere. These references are so 64 In this discussion, Masen may follow Aristotle, who argues for a coherent, logical plot but does not have a fixed number of acts or scenes; at any rate Masen uses the Aristotelian term “epeisodia” rather than Horace’s “actus.” Masen also approaches the handling of place and time as well as the creation of tension with great freedom. Taking note of the practicalities of theatrical production in this way seems to agree with his times (cf. e.g. Markwardt, Geschichte [above, n. 34], pp. 113–14). 65 See Halbig, The Dramatist (above, n. 11), p. 2.90: “It is the language of Masen’s comedy Rusticus imperans that reflects most strongly the influence of Roman Comedy.” 66 See Halbig, The Jesuit Theater (above, n. 5), p. 10: “For Masen there was the additional chance to bring his own brand of theatricality, visually and verbally vivid, to this material: sparkling Plautean repartee, the humorous spontaneity of the commedia dell’arte, and elaborate linguistic and visual detail when he evokes life at the court in Acts Two and Three.”
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general that they can hardly be associated with particular ancient texts. Nonetheless this linguistic shape contributes to the impression that the mirror of life presented by the comedy is set in a world distinct from the spectators’ own.
Conclusions Jacob Masen met with success and had a lasting impact with both his theoretical treatises and his drama Rusticus imperans. On the basis of a Christian-moral point of view and a didactic impetus, he rejects ancient Roman comedy because of its moral depravity and lack of edifying morals. For Masen comedy is not a non-committal piece of entertainment, but a serious, educational performance. That in Palaestra he distinguishes himself from other writers who imitate ancient comedy, suggests that he did not assume that his position was generally accepted. Still, his rejection of Roman comedy for moral reasons was not completely novel or unique.67 Despite his rejection of Roman comedy, Masen clearly took ancient dramatic theory and practice as a starting point for both his treatises and his dramas, paying attention also to contemporary theoretical discussion and theater business. This context is obvious in his definition of comedy, outlined in Palaestra, which is drawn up in parallel with Aristotle’s definition of tragedy, but is also a development of an approach published a little earlier by the Jesuit Alexander Donatus. The purpose of comedy, according to Masen, is to purge hope and joy, i.e. to moderate feelings of confidence and happiness in human lives. In his view, these feelings must be put into perspective with a view to the happiness of eternal life, which is most important for human beings. He thus sees comedy as a combination of the useful and the enjoyable, in line with Horace’s precepts. Rusticus imperans is an actual example of such a comedy, as the epilogue indicates (1232–72). That this play is frequently mentioned in the discussion of comedy in Palaestra and that its text printed in full at the end of the treatise demonstrates that Rusticus imperans, contrary to first impressions, is based entirely on a theory derived from ancient thought. But this does not fully define the relationship between the piece and ancient sources. Palaestra also reveals that Masen appreciated the dramaturgic
67 On the preface to Homulus by Christian Ischyrius, a Latin version of the Dutch story of Everyman from the late 15th century (printed: Cologne 1536), see Meyer, “Nutzen” (above, n. 51), pp. 227–8: “Die gesamte Vorrrede besteht aus der Abgrenzung des eigenen Werkes von den Komödien des Plautus und Terenz, deren literarische Qualität zwar eingeräumt, die aber wegen ihres Inhaltes abgelehnt werden. Habes candide lector, comoediam non minus lepidam quam piam, quae tametsi Terentij venustatem aut Plauti non redoleat eloquentiam, tamen Christiani hominis vitam, mundique huius luxus fugacitatem, tanquam ex quodam perpendiculo depingit et aestimat. In ea siquidem non turpes amorum illecebras, non vitae infamem luxum, non denique amandi conciliationes, vt in Terentij Plautinisque comoedijs deprehendes.”
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and linguistic potential of Roman comedy, and the similarities in this area, particularly between Masen and Plautus, thus come as no surprise. Despite following ancient precedent in theory and practice, Masen does not slavishly imitate the constituent elements of comedy as transmitted from antiquity. Just as he develops Donatus’ “Aristotelian” definition of comedy, he deals with formal rules in a free way: he does not adopt the five-act structure demanded by Horace, and with his “historical comedy” he creates a dramatic subgenre that did not exist in the ancient world. The intriguing classification seems to be based on the fact that he regarded the plot as comic and as having a historical basis, but at the same time believed that a poet was free to embellish truth and history so long as the story remained plausible. This explains why Masen apparently saw no problem with adjusting the basic plot, provided historical truth was not compromised.68 Thus the job of blacksmith is an additional qualification for the protagonist, but does not affect his social status (12–13): Argumento erit homo illic natus Rusticus / Quamvis in urbe, officio, ni fallor, faber. (“The protagonist of our story is a fellow from the country, born there, even though he lives in town now, by profession, if I am not mistaken, a blacksmith.”). But it does enable the poet to phrase the moral of the play in the words of a well-known proverb at the end (1270), while the final line (1272) takes up the contrast between rusticus and rex introduced in the prologue. This notion of sudden and significant change of fortune as indicated in the prologue (29) by Vti Rex è Rustico, è Rege factus Rusticus (“and changed him from peasant into prince, then back to peasant”) recalls tragic plots; the phrasing in particular is similar to the description of the fate of Orestes in a fragment on fortuna by the early Republican dramatist Pacuvius.69
68 Cf. Masen, Palæstra (above, n. 33), vol. III, lib. II, cap. XIII§2: “Ita, hac in re, censeo ad perfectissima quæque Dramata, hoc quod in iis præcipuum est ex historia petendum esse Rusticus noster exemplo in Comicis tum etiam ollaria esse poterit. Illic præcipua Dramatis pars est Rustici in Principem mutatio, ipso per ebrietatem ignorante, fal cta [sic, i.e. facta], Philippi Principis auspiciis, de modo, adjunctis, variisque perplexitatibus, quibus hæc actio geritur, ornatur, implicatur; sua Poetæ fingendi, ad veri speciem, libertas relinquitur. Quæ cum veritatem historiæ non destruat, sed explicet, ornetque: eandem, quam ipsa, dignitatem obtinet, cum enim aliquo geri res modo debuerit: Poetæ erit, ita ad verum rem componere, ut delectationi esse possit.” (“Accordingly, in this matter, I believe that for the very best plays their main subject matter has to be taken from history. Our Rusticus and particularly our Ollaria can serve as examples in the area of comic plots. In the former the main element of the drama is the transformation of a peasant into a prince, without him realizing it because of his drunkenness, accomplished under the direction of Prince Philip; as regards mode, additions and various confusions through which the action is presented, it is embellished and made more complex. Freedom to make inventions according to the shape of truth is left to the poet. When this does not destroy historical truth, but develops and embellishes it, such treatment wins the same authority as history itself. For when an action should have happened in a particular way, it will be the poet’s job to compose the matter with a view to the truth so that it can create pleasure.”). 69 Cf. Pacuvius, Trag. 375 R.3 = Trag. inc. 46 W. (Rhet. Her. 2.36): velut Orestes modo fuit rex, factust mendicus modo (“as Orestes has just been a king and has now been turned into a beggar”).
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Overall, Masen knowledgeably engaged with the ancient theatrical tradition in theory and in dramatic production and adapted it to the demands of the contemporary theater and his own views on the character and purpose of drama, namely that its goal is to provoke a moderation of emotions. The comedy Rusticus imperans translated this synthesis into practice, apparently with great success.
Benjamín García-Hernández, Rosario López Gregoris y Carmen González-Vázquez
La recepción de Plauto y Terencio en la literatura española “Me doctarum hederae praemia frontium dis miscent superis …” Hor. Carm. I, 1, 29–30, to Prof. Henderson
Abstract: Amphitruo and Menaechmi, the two Plautine comedies of double identity, have been the most fortunate. The reception of the first in particular involved a successive process of translation, adaptation and imitation between the 16th and 18th centuries. This process seems to repeat itself during the 19th and 20th centuries. Menaechmi went from an anonymous translation to Timoneda’s adaptation, but its main story line was complicated before long with twins of different sexes or of different upbringing, royal and rustic. In the last two centuries, this twin theme has come back into force, and new adaptations of the Plautine text are being created for the stage. In the second part of this chapter, we consider the antecedents of Plautus’ recovery, which was at first merely nominal and linked with Terence. The true recovery of Plautus is seen in the novel La Celestina, although he is not cited and the social reality of the author often imposes itself on the Roman model, which in turn comes from Italian adaptations of Plautus. Lope de Vega re-introduced the cunning slave figure in his development of the gracioso; and the Comedies of the Golden Age, with their successors until the 18th century, brought about the recovery of the Miles Gloriosus through the figurón. The interest of 19th-century scholars enabled the historiography recovery of Plautus and his work in Spain, resulting in an interest in a complete translation of his comedies, completed in the 20th century.
Knowledge of Terence was produced by the edition of the comedies (in 1498), by the first translation into Spanish (in 1577) and through the use of his comedies to learn Latin. To understand his influence in Spanish literature, we must assess the poetic assimilation since the 16th century. Terence’s capacity of combining argument and scenic development, the clarity of his dialogues and the drawing of his characters, the elegance, purity and finesse of his words, and the efficiency of his language for memorizing sentences—along with his soft and intelligent humor— made him an ideal author. The use of the verses to make ironic remarks about “vices” or customs of daily life was the means to introduce Terence in proverbs and popular culture.
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1. La ventaja de las comedias de doble: Amphitrvo y Menaechmi Si se echa una ojeada al Diccionario de argumentos de la literatura universal de E. Frenzel,1 se hallarán tres entradas netamente plautinas, correspondientes a los títulos de tres comedias: Anfitrión, Menecmos y Miles gloriosus. No debe de ser casualidad que estas sean las únicas traducidas al castellano en el siglo XVI. Son sin duda las más afortunadas en la tradición literaria occidental. Pero otras comedias con otros temas, como el del avaro de Aulularia, merecerían figurar también en ese diccionario. Las dos primeras, que han sido las más atractivas, tienen la particularidad de ser comedias de doble y la tercera lo es en su primera parte. Esta prelación general no varía en lo que atañe a la literatura española, en cuyos periodos renacentista y barroco el tema del doble gozó del gusto de autores y público. Ello justifica que dediquemos la primera parte de la tradición plautina a este popular subgénero cómico. Aunque las comedias de doble son tratadas a veces como simples comedias de equívoco, en realidad son una especie de estas. Esa falta de precisión en la crítica literaria nos ha llevado a diferenciar el equívoco producido por el personaje doble de otros tipos de equívoco y a definir el doble y describir sus características en una monografía titulada Gemelos y Sosias,2 Personaje doble es el que por su parecido físico y por sus señas de identidad, verdaderas o falsas, es susceptible de confundirse con otro. Hay un doble añadido, en el que 1 + 1 = 1. Tal es el caso de los dos Sosias y los dos Anfitriones3 o el de los dos Menecmos. Y hay un doble escindido, en el que 1 = 1 + 1. Este es el caso de Filocomasia en Miles gloriosus, pues unas veces es ella y otras una fingida hermana gemela, llamada Dicea. Aunque el doble clásico suele adaptarse a una de esas dos fórmulas, no termina ahí la cuenta de los dobles, particularmente en las versiones más recientes. Como ocurre en la categoría de número gramatical, en el doble, además de unidad y dualidad, puede haber pluralidad. La pluralidad abierta (1 = 1 + 1 +1…) es la fórmula que corresponde a la reproducción de los clones.
1 Elisabeth Frenzel, Diccionario de argumentos de la literatura universal (Madrid: Gredos, 1976), pp. 27–9, 324–5, 330–1. Este trabajo ha sido elaborado dentro del proyecto de investigación titulado Comedia y Tragedia romanas. Edición crítica, traducción, estudio y tradición (Referencia: FFI201123198), dirigido por C. González Vázquez y subvencionado por el Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación de España. B. García-Hernández se ha encargado de la primera parte de Plauto (1. La ventaja de las comedias de doble: Amphitruo y Menaechmi) y de la coordinación del conjunto, R. López Gregoris de la segunda parte de Plauto (2. La recepción general de Plauto) y C. González Vázquez de Terencio (3. Los caminos de Terencio). 2 Benjamín García-Hernández, Gemelos y sosias. La comedia de doble en Plauto, Shakespeare y Molière (Madrid: Ediciones Clásicas, 2001), pp. 19–64, 269–346. 3 Que ya no ay dos adonde dos son uno, “Loa para la comedia,” en: José de Cañizares, Amor es todo invención: Júpiter y Amphitrion (Madrid, ca. 1720).
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No toda comedia en la que figuran personajes dobles puede clasificarse como comedia de doble; esto dependerá de la proporción en que la confusión creada por los dobles afecte a la acción. En cinco comedias plautinas aparece la figura del doble (Anfitrión, Las Báquides, Los Menecmos, El militar fanfarrón y El Persa). Para determinar en qué medida son comedias de doble hemos expuesto en la monografía mencionada sus argumentos escena por escena y establecido el cómputo de las escenas en que opera la confusión de los dobles. Ello arroja unos resultados claros. En Anfitrión y Los Menecmos el equívoco producido por los dobles alcanza, directa o indirectamente, a más de dos tercios de las escenas y las escenas excluidas son introductorias o de transición, por lo que ambas son comedias de doble cabales. En cambio, en Las Báquides, considerada tradicionalmente comedia de doble, el quiproquo solo afecta a un personaje en tres escenas de las veinticuatro conservadas. En nuestra opinión, ese doble no pasa de ser nominal: las dos hermanas son cognomines (frg. III), pero no gemelas. Lo que descarta la pertenencia a esta comedia del fragmento V (sicut lacte lactis similest), cuya atribución era ya dudosa. En El Persa el doble surte efecto solo en dos de las veintidós escenas. Por el contrario, El militar fanfarrón, a menudo dejada de lado en este aspecto, es comedia de doble en su primera parte, en la que cobra protagonismo Filocomasia (las seis escenas del acto II), y en el desenlace.4 En esa monografía se hace el catálogo y la clasificación de los tópicos de la comedia de doble sobre los cuatro modelos superiores: el Anfitrión de Plauto y el de Molière, Los Menecmos de Plauto y La comedia de las equivocaciones de Shakespeare. Aunque no es el objeto principal de investigación, no se olvidan las relaciones intertextuales. Precisamente, el análisis de los recursos del doble en el Anfitrión plautino nos lleva a confirmar que Descartes construye su edificio filosófico sobre el argumento de esta tragicomedia. En efecto, los cuatro pilares fundamentales del sistema cartesiano, a saber, el cogito y las tres figuras divinas (Genius malignus, Deus fallax y Deus non fallax) se inspiran directamente en Amphitruo (cogito de Sosia en el verso 447, dios Mercurio como doble de Sosia, Júpiter como doble impostor de Anfitrión y Júpiter como deus ex machina).5 Ello explica por qué la crítica ha creído a veces, basándose en ciertas analogías de pensamiento, que Molière, a la hora de componer su Amphitryon, se
4 George Fredric Franko, en una reseña breve (Classical World 97 (2004), p. 205) y la única negativa— lo es cien por cien—de las dieciséis que conocemos, parece no haber entendido que la exposición completa o parcial del argumento de estas comedias por escenas conduce precisamente a determinar en qué porcentaje son comedias de doble, cosa que la crítica no siempre ha tenido clara. Ese es un objetivo acorde con el título del libro; en cambio, la historia social romana y el estudio de los modelos griegos, que él echa en falta, están fuera de lugar en una investigación que se presenta en el Prólogo (p. 16) no como una Quellenforschung, sino como una Toposforschung. 5 B. García-Hernández, Descartes y Plauto. La concepción dramática del sistema cartesiano (Madrid: Tecnos, 1997), pp. 87–168.
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había inspirado en Descartes. En realidad, ambos tienen como fuente común el Anfitrión de Plauto.
1.1 Anfitrión Es la primera comedia traducida en español y será la más imitada. Aunque el ser la primera por orden alfabético del corpus plautinum puede haber influido en su mayor fortuna, la razón principal es su peculiaridad. Y esta consiste en parte en ser comedia de doble, como Los Menecmos, pero sobre todo en su carácter de tragicomedia, cuya acción está movida por dobles divinos. Estos sosias impostores tienen mayor predicamento que los gemelos de Menaechmi, donde el error de los dobles es ingenuo. Inspirándose en ciertos compuestos griegos, Plauto creó en el Prólogo de Anfitrión (v. 59) la palabra tragico[co]moedia, con la que dio nombre a un subgénero mixto que gozaría de gran éxito en el teatro renacentista y barroco. Esta palabra entra en la literatura española tres lustros antes de ser traducida la obra plautina. En 1499 se publica La Celestina, una novela dramática, cuyo autor es el judeoconverso Fernando de Rojas; en ella la huella de Terencio es superior a la de Plauto;6 pero la influencia de este, al menos indirecta, se ve ya en la clasificación que recibe la obra desde la edición de 1502 en el título: Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea. El precedente inmediato está en el drama humanístico Fernandus servatus (1493) de Marcellino Verardi, en cuyo prólogo su tío Carlo Verardi deja constancia de que se trata de una tragicocomoedia.7 Tal denominación se justificaba en Plauto, según el criterio aristotélico, por la diferente calidad de los personajes,8 aquí por el final feliz tras el atentado que sufre Fernando el Católico y en la obra de Rojas por la mezcla de placer y dolor. Francisco López de Villalobos (1473–1549), médico zamorano de ascendencia judía y gran humanista formado en Salamanca,9 publica la primera versión castellana de la tragicomedia plautina en 1515, veintiocho años después de la italiana de Pandolfo Collenuccio (1487). La media docena de ediciones que tiene en ese siglo10 da idea de su éxito. Con la traducción se propone ayudar a los estudiantes de poesía a
6 Florentino Castro Guisasola, Observaciones sobre las fuentes literarias de “La Celestina” (Madrid: CSIC, 1973), pp. 50–7, 80–94. 7 Ferruccio Bertini, “I rifacimenti spagnoli dell’Amphitruo plautino nel XVI secolo,” Studi Umanistici Piceni 23 (2003), pp. 221–2. 8 Carmen González Vázquez, Diccionario del teatro latino. Léxico, dramaturgia, escenografía (Madrid: Ediciones Clásicas, 2004), pp. 252–3. 9 María Jesús Pérez Ibáñez, El humanismo médico del siglo XVI en la Universidad de Salamanca (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1998), pp. 70–2. 10 Theodor S. Beardsley, Hispano-classical translations printed between 1482 and 1699 (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1970), p. 29. Manuel A. Marcos Casquero, “Plauto en la literatura española de los siglos XV y XVI,” en: Id. (coord.), Estudios de tradición clásica y humanística (León: Universidad de León, 1993), pp. 131–2.
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entender el latín de Plauto. De acuerdo con este fin didáctico, suprime las partes que considera relevantes solo para la escena y menos convenientes para la lectura. Así, el largo Prólogo y los monólogos de carácter metateatral, en que Mercurio y Júpiter ponen al descubierto los hilos de la acción que ellos manejan.11 En compensación, dota a la comedia de un nuevo resumen argumental, en el que la importancia que concede al enfrentamiento dialéctico de Mercurio y Sosia revela la fuerte impresión que le produce esa primera escena, como ocurrirá a otros muchos lectores, traductores e imitadores del Anfitrión plautino: Mercurio guarda la puerta: en esto llega Sosia. Mercurio no le dexa entrar, diciéndole: “Yo soy Sosia, y tú no”. Altercan mucho sobre esta quistion, y despues que Mercurio hubo mostrado todos los argumentos y señales como él era Sosia, el verdadero Sosia, atónito y lastimado con bofetones y puñadas, vuelve al puerto sin entrar en casa de su amo, y dice a su señor Anfitrion: “Yo me halle a mi mismo a la puerta, que estaba allá antes que yo llegase, y me di a mí el que iba de acá muy grandes bofetones, et yo el que quedo allá estorbé la entrada a mí el que vuelvo acá; et así, no hice cosa de lo que mandaste.”12
Según decimos en otra parte, «el traductor demuestra una fina sensibilidad, al destacar en ese resumen la función de doble que desempeñan los dioses y el efecto de desdoblamiento que se produce en la identidad de Sosia. Con ello, acierta a descubrir dónde se halla el fondo dramático de la obra, frente a otros aspectos tragicómicos, míticos o farsescos que lleva aparejados el engaño amoroso de Júpiter».13 La mayor novedad es la escena final que añade como «cumplimiento de la comedia, sacado de otro original». En ella intervienen los personajes de la casa de Anfitrión, liberados ya de la pesadilla de los dioses impostores. Anfitrión presenta sus excusas a Alcmena y esta lo disculpa, como si todo hubiera sido un ataque de celos. Pero Sosia tiene todavía las huellas de los puñetazos de Mercurio y bromea sobre lo ocurrido con Bromia, que abandona el tono trágico, y con Tésala, que deja de ser un personaje mudo. El humanista cordobés Fernán Pérez de Oliva (1494–1533), que fue estudiante, profesor de Filosofía Moral y rector de la Universidad de Salamanca, hizo una refundición novedosa de Anfitrión. Parece que la comenzó muy pronto y la acabó después de realizar estudios en Roma y París.14 Se imprimió en Sevilla en 1525.
11 María Jesús Pérez Ibáñez, “La traducción de Anfitrión del doctor López Villalobos,” Minerva 4 (1990), pp. 267–75. 12 Francisco López de Villalobos, Anfitrión, comedia de Plauto, que traduzía el doctor Villalobos, la cual glosó el en algunos pasos obscuros (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Españoles 36, 1950), p. 462. 13 B. García-Hernández, “La tragicomedia Anfitrión y sus dioses en Villalobos y Oliva,” en: Mª Asunción Sánchez Manzano (ed.), Gramática y comentario de autores en la tradición latina (León: Universidad de León, 2000), p. 65. 14 Raymond L. Grismer, Influence of Plautus in Spain before Lope de Vega (Nueva York: Hispanic Institute, 1944), p. 91.
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Menéndez Pelayo juzgó la obra como si fuera una traducción y, aunque su estilo es correcto y elegante, no perdona al autor, entre otras muchas, la alteración del acto quinto: Omitió el monólogo de Bromia, con que principia, así como la aparición de Júpiter, deus ex machina del poeta romano. De esta suerte echó a perder el desenlace. Por otra parte, faltando a la veneración, siempre debida a los modelos de la antigüedad, intercaló trozos propios, que son casi siempre impertinentes añadiduras.15
Sin embargo, el maestro Oliva estaba en su derecho de hacer una imitación libre según su propio criterio. La intención didáctica de la traducción de Villalobos no fue estéril y debió de encontrar un lector aventajado en el joven cordobés. Pero la transformación más profunda de este, lejos de consistir en las supresiones y añadidos de texto, reside en el cambio de perspectiva que confiere al argumento. Fija el punto de vista no en la relación amorosa de Júpiter con Alcmena, sino en el nacimiento de Hércules. Eso lo deja claro desde el título (Muestra de la lengua castellana en el nascimiento de Hércules o comedia de Amphitrión), en la dedicatoria a su sobrino Agustín de Oliva (hete pues escrito el nascimiento de Hércules) y en el Prólogo de Mercurio (la más agradable de ellas es el nascimiento de Hércules, que agora en comedia os representaremos).16 Aunque suprime el episodio final del parto de Alcmena, las referencias al hijo engendrado son recurrentes.17 El padre de los dioses se prodiga en atenciones y recomendaciones a Alcmena embarazada, a fin de que lleve a buen término la gestación; así, tras el conflicto con el marido: JÚPITER.- Quiero tornar a Alcumena a deshazer las injurias que le dixo Amphitrión, que no es razón que padezca mal por ser amada de mí; principalmente que en esta tempestad en que anda peligra mi hijo que en su vientre tiene (ibid. 28: esc. VI).
El personaje de Júpiter se aleja de la figura de mítico donjuán que desciende del Olimpo para correr sus aventuras humanas y se halla aún más lejos del amante apasionado y galante que presentará Molière. Júpiter mantiene la función de protagonista del modelo plautino, como Sujeto de la acción dramática. Pero el Objeto ya no es tanto Alcmena como el hijo, por quien el progenitor muestra continuos desvelos. Este Júpiter es más padre que amante, de manera que Alcmena, en tanto que abandona la posición prioritaria de Objeto, pasa a ser el medio utilizado por el dios para procrear un héroe benefactor. La mujer de
15 Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Biblioteca de traductores españoles (Madrid: CSIC, 1953), t. IV, pp. 72– 3. 16 George C. Peale (ed.), Fernán Pérez de Oliva, Teatro (Córdoba: Real Academia de Córdoba, 1976), pp. 4–5. 17 García-Hernández, “La tragicomedia Anfitrión” (supra, n. 13), p. 69.
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Anfitrión viene a asumir así el papel secundario de mediadora o Ayudante18 de la acción. Esa elevación del hijo de Júpiter a la posición de Objeto es la que justifica el nuevo título (el nascimiento de Hércules).19 Hoy estamos en condiciones de explicar el hecho histórico que debió de motivar esta ascensión de Hércules al nivel de Objeto actancial. El motivo no está en que Hércules sea un paralelo de Jesús de Nazaret, como lo vería J. Burmeister.20 El motivo real lo hallamos en la iconografía de la fachada de la Universidad de Salamanca, erigida entre 1520 y 1526, cuya programación Oliva debió de conocer. Como un libro abierto en tres páginas superpuestas, la fachada es un canto épico a la Monarquía Española y a su enlace con el Sacro Imperio Romano Germánico en la persona de Carlos V. En ella Hércules es la figura más recurrente, como fundador legendario de la realeza hispánica y como patrón mítico del Imperio.21 Veinte años más tarde, en 1545, el gran poeta portugués Luis de Camoens dio a la luz su Auto dos Anfitriões, en el que Sosia habla en castellano y asimismo Mercurio, en tanto que suplanta a Sosia. Mª I. Resina Rodrigues analiza las concomitancias y diferencias con los Anfitriones vecinos de Villalobos, Oliva y el posterior de Timoneda.22 Pero hay un dato biográfico, no mencionado, que puede ayudar a entender la relación de Camoens con los dos primeros. Es el probable paso del joven poeta por la Universidad de Coimbra, tradicionalmente hermanada con la de Salamanca y como ella promotora del teatro universitario23. En ese medio debió de conocer las obras de 18 En contra de la mala opinión que manifiesta G. F. Franko acerca de las relaciones estructurales en la reseña mencionada en la n. 4, más allá del estricto nivel oracional, en el argumento de cualquier drama, que es ‘acción’ por definición, hay unas funciones de Sujeto y Objeto, de Oponente y Ayudante, de Destinador y Destinatario; por lo general, los cuatro primeros son encarnados por personajes de carne y hueso y los dos últimos por fuerzas abstractas, que antes o después se hacen explícitas en alguna recreación de la obra plautina. Ante el horror que muestran algunos críticos literarios por la “árida” lingüística, cabe preguntarse qué sería de la literatura sin la lengua. 19 El título es normalmente congruente con la función actancial más relevante. En este sentido, el título plautino Anfitrión ha de corresponder no tanto al marido, que desempeña la función de Oponente de la acción dramática, como al amante divino, Sujeto y protagonista de la acción. El Anfitrión falso es, en realidad, el verdadero Anfitrión literario. Véase B. García-Hernández, “Anfitrión y sus Anfitriones. De Plauto a Molière,” en: Dan Munteanu Colán (coord.), Imágenes y ficción. Ocho ideaciones clave en la cultura occidental (Las Palmas: Gobierno de Canarias, 2003), pp. 35–6. 20 Johannes Burmeister, M. A. Plauti renati siue Sacri Mater Virgo (Lüneburg, 1621). 21 B. García-Hernández, El desafío de la rana de Salamanca. Cuando la rana críe pelos (Madrid: Ediciones Clásicas, 2009), pp. 141–4, 152–3, 160–4, 169–70. 22 María Idalina Resina Rodrigues, “Anfitriões peninsulares quinhentistas,” en: Estudos ibéricos. Da Cultura à Literatura. Séculos XIII a XVII (Lisboa: Instituto de Cultura e Lingua Portuguesa, 1987), pp. 115–32. Andrés José Pociña López, “El encantamiento lusitano sobre base plautina: El Auto dos Enfatriões de Camões,” en: Andrés Pociña & Beatriz Rabaza (eds.), Estudios sobre Plauto (Madrid: Ediciones Clásicas, 1998), pp. 167–8. 23 Raúl M. Rosado Fernandes, “O tema de Anfitrião em Camões,” Occidente 54 (1958), p. 65; Hernani Cidade, Luis de Camões, a obra e o homem (Lisboa: Arcádia, 1979), p. 140; Clara Rocha (ed.), Camões, Auto dos Anfitriões (Lisboa: Comunicação, 1981), p. 13.
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los precursores españoles e iniciar la composición de la suya, que publicó cuando solo tenía veintiún años. Esa fue la primera imitación portuguesa del tema plautino, pero siglos más tarde la lengua de Camoens producirá otras recreaciones muy notables. La traducción de Villalobos se anticipa a otros Anfitriones europeos.24 Pero esta iniciativa particular surge en un marco institucional, la Universidad de Salamanca, cuya importancia como centro difusor del tema de Anfitrión en el Renacimiento peninsular cabe destacar. Los Estatutos universitarios promueven decididamente el teatro universitario con referencia expresa a los comediógrafos latinos. Los de 1538 contienen la siguiente prescripción: «Item de cada colegio, cada año se representará una comedia de Plauto o Terencio o tragicomedia, la primera el domingo de las octavas de Corpus Christi y las otras en los domingos siguientes».25 En esa norma, que no hace sino fijar un uso anterior, nos parece muy significativo el último término de la disyuntiva (o tragicomedia), que ha de referirse, antes que a otra, a la tragicomedia por excelencia que venimos tratando aquí. Y creemos que no le resta valor el que a continuación en el mismo texto se hable de «comedias o tragedias». No está de más añadir que durante 1526 y 1527 Ignacio de Loyola estudia en la Universidad de Alcalá y pasa por la de Salamanca, antes de viajar a París en 1528. En ellas debió de apreciar las virtudes de las representaciones teatrales, con vistas a preparar oradores sagrados. Lo que parece estar en el origen del futuro teatro jesuítico, que será regulado en las sucesivas ediciones de la Ratio studiorum. Este fue un importante teatro escolar que, además de fomentar el gusto por la escena entre muchos hijos de la clase burguesa, formó a grandes dramaturgos; en colegios de jesuitas estudiaron Lope de Vega, P. Calderón de la Barca, P. Corneille, J. Rotrou o Molière. A esos nombres nosotros unimos el de Descartes, que a menudo piensa en clave dramática y recibió una formación teatral comparable con la de los dos últimos, excelentes recreadores de la tragicomedia plautina (Les Sosies, 1638, Amphitryon, 1668). Aunque en la normativa de la Ratio se da ventaja a Terencio por sus valores educativos, el espíritu jocoso y divertido de Plauto ejerce una gran atracción.26 La tragicomedia plautina, en particular, tenía el interés de contribuir al culto mítico de la monarquía, que es fomentado activamente en la educación y en el teatro jesuítico27 y
24 Karl von Reinhardstoettner, Plautus. Spätere Bearbeitungen plautinische Lustspiele (Leipzig: W. Friedrich, 1886), pp. 138–40; Örjan Lindberger, The Transformations of Amphitryon (Estocolmo: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1956), p. 52. 25 Enrique Esperabé de Arteaga, Historia pragmática e interna de la Universidad de Salamanca (Salamanca: Imp. y lib. Fr. Núñez, 1914), t. I, p. 203. 26 García-Hernández, Descartes y Plauto (supra, n. 5), pp. 201–41. 27 B García-Hernández, “La revolución cartesiana: del culto mítico de la realeza a la proclamación del sujeto personal,” en: Antonio Cascón Dorado & al. (eds.), Donum amicitiae. Estudios en homenaje al Profesor Vicente Picón García (Madrid: Universidad Autónoma, 2008), pp. 687–99.
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fuera de él, como se ve en varios dramas calderonianos. De forma particular llaman la atención los paralelos que ofrecía el argumento de Anfitrión con las aventuras amorosas de Luis XIV. Molière no podía desaprovechar esas oportunas coincidencias para componer un Anfitrión al estilo de la sociedad galante de Versalles. No solo la figura del padre de los dioses, la de su hijo Hércules era un fecundo motivo de referencia monárquica. Lo hemos señalado, a propósito de Oliva, en el programa iconográfico de la fachada de la Universidad de Salamanca. Pero, a diferencia del padre, el hijo era un modelo inconmensurable de virtudes heroicas que el teatro jesuítico no podía desaprovechar. Como tal aparece en la breve pieza dramática conocida por el título Hércules, vencedor de la ignorancia, una especie de entremés o “entretenimiento”, conservada junto con la Tragedia de San Hermenegildo en la Real Academia de la Historia (Ms. 9/1567). Ambas son anónimas y debieron de ser compuestas por el mismo autor en 1580, con ocasión de la inauguración del colegio de San Hermenegildo en Sevilla.28 Además de la elección del protagonista, que pasaba por ser el fundador legendario de Sevilla, de los personajes alegóricos y de los fines morales de la composición, interesa destacar aquí la presencia de dos pares de dobles impostores no divinos, cuyas analogías y diferencias respecto del Anfitrión plautino, ha puesto de manifiesto E. Marqués.29 Mientras en la tragicomedia plautina Blefarón no acierta a distinguir entre uno y otro Anfitrión, aquí Hércules logra, tras varias pruebas, desenmascarar a los impostores. La traducción de Villalobos no fue la única del Anfitrión plautino en el siglo XVI. Hay una versión anónima fechada en Toledo en 1554.30 El autor se presenta como un prudente lector que dice hacer una traslación al amparo de la labor anterior de Oliva y Villalobos. En realidad, siguiendo el criterio de añadir y suprimir libremente pasajes, hace un arreglo «porque assi sea mejor entendida y apazible». Con ese propósito, además del argumento inicial, dota de breves resúmenes a catorce de las quince escenas. Se queda sin él la última, en la que «hazense las amistades entre Jupiter y Amphitrion». Como ocurría ya en Oliva, la acción se inicia con una escena en que Alcmena recibe a Júpiter acompañado de Mercurio, a la que sigue el enfrentamiento dialéctico de este y Sosia. Según indicó Th. S. Beardsley, la refundición de las obras de sus precursores se concreta así por escenas o “autos”: «I and VI deriving from Pérez de Oliva, VII and IX from both Oliva and Villalobos, and all the other autos from Villalobos».31 Queda por añadir la última, que en las palabras finales de
28 Justo García Soriano, El teatro universitario y humanístico en España. Estudios sobre el origen de nuestro arte dramático; con documentos, textos inéditos y un catálogo de antiguas comedias escolares (Toledo: 1945), pp. 112–13. 29 Eva Marqués López, Recepción e influencia del teatro de Plauto en la literatura española (Logroño: Universidad de La Rioja, Tesis doctoral inédita, 2003), pp. 196–203. 30 Biblioteca Nacional: R-1379. M. Menéndez Pelayo, Bibliografía hispano-latina clásica (Madrid: CSIC, 1951), t. VII, pp. 358–60. 31 Beardsley, Hispano-classical translations (supra, n. 10), p. 45.
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Anfitrión incorpora el toque cristiano de Oliva: «…pero algún dios sancto y bueno destos malos nos dara venganza…». El dramaturgo valenciano Juan de Timoneda imprimió en 1559 tres comedias en prosa, las dos primeras de argumento plautino, Amphitrión y Los Menemnos. Como dice en la dedicatoria adoptó el estilo cómico de La Celestina, pero a la vez compuso obras breves y representables, como las que hacían otros en verso. Por lo que atañe a la primera, en el título (La comedia de Amphitrion traduzida por Juan de Timoneda, y puesta en estilo que se puede representar) y en el Introyto (p. 254) da a entender que se trata de una traducción propia. Aunque maneja otras fuentes e introduce elementos originales, en realidad se basa en la versión de Villalobos.32 De hecho, la escena final que este introdujo entre los cinco personajes de la casa de Anfitrión anuncia el tono cómico de Timoneda. Es más, el personaje novedoso de Tésala, que allí comparte papel con Bromia, aquí la desplaza por completo en las dos últimas escenas. Eso sí, el suyo es el primer intento serio de llevar una adaptación plautina a la escena española.33 Júpiter, protagonista y Sujeto de la acción, confiesa desde el principio verse dominado por el amor: Mercurio, hijo mío, has de saber que amor es causa de todo esto (Esc. 1, p. 256).34
Este sometimiento, como dios enamorado, a una fuerza superior, que es el motor inicial de la acción y en la que reconocemos la función actancial de Destinador, supone un menoscabo de su majestad divina, según le hace ver Mercurio en un largo razonamiento de corte filosófico: Mira lo que hazes: olvídala: mira que amor y magestad no caben en un subiecto: mira que será gran baxeza en tu estado, y gran disfamia si se sabe (Ibid.).
Por otra parte, el personaje de Sosia gana terreno, interviene activamente en seis de las diez escenas y está presente en las cuatro últimas. Como si fuera paisano del autor, él pone las notas de sabor local. Para saciar su hambre, aspira a hartarse de arroz, como si hoy dijéramos de “paella valenciana”. En la escena final, presidida por Júpiter como deus ex machina, en el momento del reconocimiento, con su constante desenfado se atreve a calificar la cruda realidad que corresponde a cada personaje:
32 Un estudio comparativo, escena por escena, de la inspiración de Timoneda en Villalobos puede verse en Albert R. Baca, “A Study and Comparison of the Amphitryon Theme in Francisco de Villalobos and Juan de Timoneda,” Hispanófila 15 (1969), pp. 1–17. 33 James P.W. Crawford, “Notes on the ‘Amphitrion’ and ‘Los Menemnos’ of Juan de Timoneda,” The Modern Language Review 9 (1914), pp. 250–1 “Il rifacimento di Timoneda risulta vivace e divertente per una platea di spettatori spagnoli, proprio perché l’autore ha liberamente adattato alla scena la materia…” (Bertini, “I rifacimenti spagnoli dell’Amphitruo plautino” [supra, n. 7], p. 235). 34 Eduardo Juliá Martínez (ed.), Obras de Juan de Timoneda (Madrid: La Sociedad de Bibliófilos Españoles, 1948), T. II, pp. 249–52.
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No sé qué me diga de vosotros, dioses, y de vuestras obras: el padre adúltero, el hijo homicida y Sosia apuñeado, Alcumena afrentada y Amphitrión cornudo (esc. 10, p. 290).
Siguiendo el modelo del veneciano Ludovico Dolce, que en Il marito (1545) humanizó por completo los personajes de Anfitrión, Matías de los Reyes compuso El agravio agradecido (1629). El argumento plautino pasa a ser una comedia al estilo de Lope de Vega, en la que desaparecen los dioses, pero se mantienen sus papeles. Como dice Fabio, uno de los criados: La historia de Amphitreon / se renueva oy en el mundo, Pues es Jupiter segundo / mi amo en esta ocasión (fol. 210 v).
Con la humanización de los personajes, el autor evita, por una parte, la cuestión de la transformación divina, que podía afectar a la doctrina cristiana de la transustanciación, y por otra, el tema del honor del marido agraviado por la divinidad, difícil de perdonar y menos de agradecer para la mentalidad del espectador de la época.35 Contando, pues, con un argumento grecorromano, un modelo italiano y la técnica de Lope de Vega, el autor logra una comedia excelente. La suplantación de la identidad personal es posible gracias a la magia, que constituye un recurso capital de la trama.36 La virtud transformadora de esta, que se manifiesta en un conjuro y en la posterior resolución del hechizo, sustituye al poder impostor de los dioses plautinos. Conviene recordar que el factor mágico que se explota aquí, sin personajes divinos, está ya presente en la tragicomedia plautina, particularmente en la “copa de oro” (patera), que desaparece del cofre, sellado por Anfitrión, en manos de Sosia y aparece en las de Alcmena, como obsequio de Júpiter; no es casualidad que la sierva, a quien Alcmena manda sacar la copa, se llame Thessala (v. 770), pues Tesalia era la tierra proverbial de la magia. Pero no es solo este elemento maravilloso, que corresponde además al “manto” (palla) de Los Menecmos, a la “cadena de oro” (the chain of gold) de La comedia de las equivocaciones de Shakespeare y al “nudo de diamantes” (le noeud de diamants) del Anfitrión de Molière; son sobre todo las acusaciones de praestigiatrix (782) que Anfitrión lanza contra su mujer y las de praestigiator (830) y Thessalus ueneficus (1043) que lanza contra su doble impostor. La sensación de moverse en un ambiente de magia es un tópico
35 Carroll B. Johnson, “Amphitryon: Plautus and Matías de los Reyes,” Ibero-romania 4 (1970), pp. 250–2; Matías de los Reyes and the craft of fiction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), p. 86. 36 Johnson, “Amphitryon: Plautus and Matías de los Reyes” (supra, n. 35), pp. 87–9; Eva Marqués López, “El agravio agradecido de Matías de los Reyes: recepción y adaptación del Amphitruo de Plauto en el teatro clásico español,” en: José María Maestre & al. (eds.), Humanismo y pervivencia del mundo clásico. (Alcañiz / Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Humanísticos / CSIC, 2002, 2081–2090), III.4, pp. 2084–8.
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característico del doble, como el recurso al doble es común en el mundo de la magia.37 Transcurrido el Siglo de Oro, que en realidad abarca casi dos siglos de fértil producción teatral, en los dos siglos siguientes hay al menos un Anfitrión de cierta relevancia en cada uno de ellos. En el siglo XVIII el melodrama musical, en dos jornadas y precedido de una “Loa para la comedia”, de José de Cañizares, Amor es todo invención: Júpiter y Amphitrion (Madrid, ca. 1720). En él han desaparecido Sosia y su doble divino; en cambio, hacen acto de presencia otros dioses, cuales Juno, Cupido, Venus, Neptuno, un coro de tritones, otro de ninfas y numerosas divinidades abstractas, cuales los cuatro Elementos, las tres Gracias, la Noche, la Aurora, el Engaño, el Olvido etc. También se incrementa el elenco de personajes humanos; entre ellos, Thelebo, rey de Etolia, mientras Amphitrión aparece con el título de rey de Thebas, las comparsas de uno y otro, etc. Desde el argumento plautino, el Amor y la Malicia divina ejercen la función de Destinadores respectivos de la acción principal (Júpiter ama a Alcmena)38 y de la acción secundaria (para amar a Alcmena, Júpiter engaña a la familia de Anfitrión). Ambos se encuentran personificados aquí en Cupido y el Engaño. La importancia del primero se destaca desde el título: Amor es todo invención … Y desde el principio Júpiter pide consejo a Cupido sobre el mejor modo de acceder a la hermosa Alcmena. Otras divinidades se distribuyen entre las funciones de Ayudante y Oponente. Las Gracias son invitadas a conseguir una perfecta transformación de Júpiter como marido de Alcmena; claro que lo que vale para engañar a la amante no engaña a la esposa: no bien se halla el Anfitrión furtivo al lado de su amada, se presenta Juno y huye despavorido… En el siglo XIX no encontramos una adaptación para la escena, sino una traducción que merece citarse por ser la primera hecha con el rigor filológico que anuncia una nueva forma de acercarse a los autores clásicos. Se trata de El Anfitrión de Plauto (1859), publicado por Salvador Costanzo en edición bilingüe.39 En la Introducción pone la obra de Villalobos como ejemplo retrospectivo de una traducción que no
37 García-Hernández, Gemelos y sosias (supra, n. 2), pp. 79–80, 111–14, 179–81, 226–9, 297–301. De nuevo Franko (supra, n. 4) nos sorprende señalando nuestro capítulo sobre la patera como modelo de exposición carente de interés en un libro “not recommended”. Sin embargo, como si fuera cosa de magia, el personaje doble rompe las relaciones intersubjetivas (Alcmena ha recibido de Anfitrión la pátera que Anfitrión no le ha dado) y las relaciones intrasubjetivas (Sosia está a la puerta de la casa de Alcmena, antes de llegar a ella). Más detalle en nuestro artículo “Paradoxes in the Argumentation of the Comic Double and Classemic Contradiction,” Argumentation 17 (2003), pp. 99–111. 38 El Amor es un Destinador común en la Comedia Nueva y en la fabula palliata. Luego el impulso amoroso tiene varias formas de realizarse, según revela el sermo amatorius. Véase Rosario López Gregoris, El amor en la comedia latina. Análisis léxico y semántico (Madrid: Ediciones Clásicas, 2002), pp. 17–25. 39 Salvador Costanzo, El Anfitrión de Plauto y La Andriana de Terencio (Madrid: Tipografía P. Mellado, 1859).
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respeta el original. Con el texto latino delante, el traductor se impone un nivel de exigencia que le supuso «largos desvelos y un trabajo ímprobo». Su labor es precursora de la nueva preocupación filológica que van a manifestar los humanistas de la llamada “Edad de Plata.”40 Anfitrión, en particular, y Plauto, en general, han despertado en el último cuarto del siglo XX y siguen despertando en el actual un vivo interés en los escenarios públicos y con mayor frecuencia en los escolares. Si los primeros Anfitriones del siglo XVI han tenido la importancia de ser eslabones primordiales en el desarrollo del tema dentro y fuera de España, las dos últimas recreaciones españolas, las más originales, pueden competir con las obras de Molière, Kleist o Giraudoux. Son Los dioses y los cuernos (1995) de Alfonso Sastre y Anfitrión (1996) de José Luis Alonso de Santos. Quizá no es casualidad que hayan aparecido en años consecutivos. El segundo autor venía trabajando desde hacía años en el texto dramático de Plauto y la aparición de la obra del primero debió de ser un estímulo para presentar la suya. A. Sastre, nacido en Madrid (1926) y asentado en el País Vasco, es un gran dramaturgo con una amplia producción en su haber. La recreación plautina consta de once escenas, con prólogo y epílogo en el Cielo, o sea en el Olimpo. Los personajes femeninos crecen en número e incrementan su papel. Juno comparte el prólogo y el epílogo con Júpiter y Mercurio. Bromia, además de estar al servicio de Almena, es novia de Sosia y está presente en varias escenas: primera, séptima, octava y última.41 En la línea de Plauto, el autor inserta con cierta frecuencia comentarios y citas que rompen la ilusión escénica; pone en boca de los personajes referencias cultas, literarias, cristianas; así, la procedente de Los Sosias de Jean Rotrou y del Anfitrión de Molière a propósito del nombre del protagonista (Anfitrión es un buen anfitrión, pp. 110 s., 123). Es una licencia anacrónica, análoga a la de oír a los personajes plautinos jurar por Hércules (hercle). No falta el elemento maravilloso correspondiente a la pátera, “el gran prendedor de diamantes y esmeraldas”, que desaparece de donde estaba custodiado y aparece donde no estaba; se le concede la importancia que merece (pp. 48-9, 60, 95–8), como símbolo emblemático de todos los dobles reales y posibles: Sosia.- Porque igual que yo he parido, sin darme cuenta, otro Sosia, y Anfitrión otro Anfitrión, puede parir un Blefarón, a poco que se descuide. También el prendedor de diamantes, que es único en el mundo, se dobló. Todos estamos doblados. (pp. 124–5). Cf. Nunc si patera pateram peperit, omnes congeminauimus (Plaut. Amph. 786).
40 Salomé Blanco López, La desigual fortuna de Plauto y Terencio durante la ‘Edad de Plata’ de la Cultura Española (1868–1936) (Madrid: E-Excellence – www.liceus.com, 2009), pp. 71–4. 41 Alfonso Sastre, Los dioses y los cuernos (Hondarribia, Gipuzkoa: Argitaletxe HIRU, 1995). De su interés por el tema habla el hecho de que en la misma editorial se han publicado en español (1998) el Auto de los Anfitriones de L. de Camoens y Anfitrión o Júpiter y Almena de António José da Silva O Judeu, con prólogo del propio A. Sastre (“Anfitrión en Portugal”) y traducciones de José Manuel Dasilva e Isabel Morán Cabanas.
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El nuevo título de la obra (Los dioses y los cuernos) recuerda el Amphitrión de Timoneda, donde Sosia tilda a su amo de cornudo y Mercurio de cornudo y apaleado, de acuerdo con la expresión proverbial tras cornudo, apaleado. La perspectiva actancial no solo es la común de las producciones dramáticas anteriores, sino que el Destinatario de la acción, la Humanidad, aparece explícito, como no se ha hecho en ninguna de ellas: Júpiter.-…Esta noche será recordada eternamente por la Humanidad, pues de tu vientre, oh Almena nacerá un muchachito al que pondrás el nombre de Hércules. (Almena se remueve y murmura como en sueños:) Almena.- Hágase en mí, según tu palabra (p. 75).
José Luis Alonso de Santos nace en Valladolid en 1942 y vive en Madrid desde 1959. Ha pasado por varios oficios en el mundo del teatro: ha sido actor, es director de escena, autor de numerosas comedias y, además, enseña teoría y práctica teatral desde su cátedra en la Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático de Madrid. Con tal dedicación al arte de Talía, no es extraño que se haya sentido siempre muy próximo a Plauto. Atraído por «su sentido lúdico del juego teatral, su humor fresco y vital, su rica imaginación, y su tremendo amor a la vida,»42 ha sabido guardar un difícil equilibrio entre tradición y modernidad, para renovar en sus versiones la incontenible fuerza cómica de los originales latinos. Su Anfitrión consta de dos actos de siete escenas cada uno, prólogo y epílogo. Están los personajes plautinos con alguna adición. Hay dos hermanos legionarios que llevan el nombre de Blefarón y Tésala actúa junto con Bromia. Pero la mayor novedad en este aspecto ha consistido en introducir como personaje al propio Plauto y no es corto su papel. Recita el prólogo y el epílogo e interviene en la escena I 7, que sirve de transición entre uno y otro acto. Este Plauto revela en el prólogo que, como actor, va a encarnar a los dos Anfitriones, al marido y al amante, y presenta al nuevo autor como amigo suyo: Me ha ayudado en el regreso un autor de vuestra época, antiguo amigo mío, que ha trabajado sobre mi texto con tanto amor como desenfado y libertad, que es lo mismo que yo hacía con los originales griegos que servían de base a mis espectáculos (p. 34).
Un templo de la diosa Fortuna al lado del palacio de Anfitrión, ante cuya puerta tiene lugar la acción, es un novedoso elemento escénico que da gran juego a los personajes. En suma, no solo están estos, las escenas fundamentales y las situaciones importantes, está sobre todo el drama con sus conflictos de identidad y la constante cuestión de la verdad. En esta última versión española hay mucho Plauto, en sus mejores
42 José Luis Alonso de Santos, Mis versiones de Plauto: Anfitrión, La dulce Cásina y Miles gloriosus (Madrid: UNED, 2002), p. 21.
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esencias. Es un gran Anfitrión, moderno y clásico. Un disfrute para el espectador y para el lector. Como conclusión, quisiéramos añadir que los autores dramáticos se han mantenido más o menos fieles a la orientación dramática del original plautino, protagonizado por Júpiter. Tendría que llegar un joven filósofo43 para transformar profundamente esa perspectiva y convertir el drama en un ensayo tan diferente, en sus resultados, de la fuente inspiradora que su relación intertextual ha permanecido oculta durante tres siglos y medio. Aun así, no deja de revelarse en diversos niveles. El más abstracto es el de la estructura actancial, pero también el de mayor alcance, puesto que afecta a la reorganización de todo el argumento. Descartes, en la génesis de su sistema, adopta el punto de vista de los personajes que en Plauto cumplen la función de Oponente a los planes divinos. Asume, de forma personal, los papeles de Sosia y Anfitrión, víctimas de la malicia y del engaño divinos, y frente a los dioses impostores logra, pronunciando el cogito, afirmar su identidad mental; pero no alcanzará la garantía de que su percepción del mundo extramental se adecua a la verdad, hasta que el Deus fallax se torna Deus non fallax, en función de deus ex machina. Creará así la filosofía del Sujeto humano, del individuo que lucha por vencer imposturas superiores a él, que afectan a su ser y a su percepción del mundo. Desde Descartes la filosofía moderna lleva esta impronta dramática. Gracias a él, pocas obras clásicas han tenido la trascendencia del Amphitruo plautino. Él ha sido su lector más profundo y, gracias a él, nuestra visión e interpretación de la tragicomedia plautina es hoy diferente.44
1.2 Los Menecmos El éxito de Menaechmi en la literatura española no parece inferior al de Amphitruo, si se considera ciertas variantes que llegaron de Italia; su fortuna en el Renacimiento italiano fue claramente superior. La trama de esta comedia, con una pareja de dobles gemelares y no impostores, es más sencilla; pero su argumento derivaría pronto hacia formas de mayor complejidad. En 1555 hay ya constancia de una traducción española, 43 Descartes concibe su sistema filosófico a partir del episodio de los Sueños de Suabia en el otoño de 1619, a la edad de 23 años. En ese momento tenía a su lado el Corpus omnium ueterum poetarum latinorum, editado por Petrus Brossaeus (Lyón 1603, Ginebra 1611), cuya primera pieza completa es el Amphitruo de Plauto. Más detalle en García-Hernández, Descartes y Plauto (supra, n. 5), pp. 245–80; y “Literatura y filosofía. De la inspiración entusiástica de Descartes en Plauto,” Silva 2 (2003), pp. 65–8. 44 Hemos dejado de lado el movedizo terreno de la novela, en el que las referencias plautinas, además de otras más próximas, se dejan ver a veces desde el título. Así, en Amphitryon del escritor mexicano Ignacio Padilla (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 2000), en cuyos personajes cabe reconocer las funciones impostoras de Júpiter y Mercurio y la del hijo procreado (Francisco García Jurado, “El doble en su laberinto: Amphitryon, de Ignacio Padilla, o la sombra de Plauto,” Nostrodomo. Revista Crítica Latinoamericana II, 2, 2008–9) [http://nostromovirtual.wordpress.com/proximo-numero/].
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junto con la del Miles gloriosus. Se publicó de forma anónima en Amberes: La Comedia… Mílite Glorioso… y Menechmos. Aunque se ha propuesto la autoría del humanista zaragozano Juan Verzosa,45 no es segura. Cuatro años después, en 1559, publicó Juan de Timoneda su Comedia de Los Menemnos. Pese a que la presenta como una traducción, es en realidad una adaptación del argumento plautino. Parece que recurre a la versión anónima de Amberes; pero las pruebas no son tan fehacientes como en la inspiración de su Amphitrion en la traducción de Villalobos. En cambio, puede comprobarse que a veces recupera referencias del original eliminadas en dicha versión; por lo que es probable que se sirviera del texto plautino.46 Un naufragio a causa de una tempestad separa a los gemelos que viajaban con su padre desde Sevilla y el extraviado va a parar a Valencia, tierra del autor, donde transcurre la acción. Sin personajes míticos, se acentúa el tono popular, característico de la comedia española. Timoneda cambia los nombres de los personajes, excepto los de los gemelos; suprime algunos e introduce otros de resonancia hispánica, como el criado Lazarillo al servicio del médico Averroyz. La novedad que introdujo, a principios del s. XVI, Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena en La Calandria, convirtiendo uno de los gemelos en gemela, favoreció el desarrollo del factor erótico por encima de la confusión gemelar y constituyó una importante derivación que se aparta en buena medida del argumento plautino: la hermana gemela disfrazada de hombre suscita en otra mujer unos sentimientos amorosos a los que no puede corresponder. La aparición oportuna del hermano, que ocupa su lugar, salva la situación. Con diversas variantes, el tema de los gemelos heterosexuales, que se cruza con el ovidiano de la mujer travestida, se propagó de Italia a las literaturas europeas, principalmente por medio de una recreación anónima, Gl’Ingannati. Esta fue imitada en latín (Decepti) por Juan Pérez, Petreyo, y en español, entre otros, por Lope de Rueda en Los engañados, comedia compuesta a mediados del s. XVI47. Otra derivación importante es la de los gemelos de origen real que reciben, al modo terenciano, educación diferente. El que hereda el trono es de carácter despótico y el villano, por su buen temple moral, será llamado a reemplazarlo. Este tema del hombre llano elevado al puesto de gobernante es muy popular en el teatro del Siglo
45 Manuel Artigas, “Juan Verzosa, traductor de Plauto,” Universidad 2 (1925), pp. 25–9. 46 María Ruiz-Funes Torres & Alicia Morales, “Notas sobre adaptaciones de Menecmos de Plauto en las traducciones españolas del siglo XVI,” Myrtia 11 (1996), p. 122. Marqués, Recepción e influencia del teatro de Plauto en la literatura española (supra, n. 29), pp. 384–7. 47 Sobre el desarrollo de estos modelos italianos en la literatura española, véase Marqués, Recepción e influencia del teatro de Plauto (supra, n. 29), pp. 329–96. Cf. también Carmen Bravo-Villasante, La mujer vestida de hombre en el teatro español (Madrid: Mayo de Oro, 1988) y Mónica Mª Martínez Sariego, La mujer travestida de hombre: la tradición del mito ovidiano de Ifis en la cultura occidental (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Universidad de Las Palmas, Tesis doctoral inédita, 2008).
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de Oro. Entre las numerosas obras en que se desarrolla basta citar El Palacio confuso, atribuido a Lope de Vega y también a Mira de Amescua.48 El tema de Los Menecmos resurge con fuerza en el teatro español en la llamada Edad de Plata, que comprende el último tercio del s. XIX y el primero del XX (1868– 1936). En ese periodo se ponen en escena al menos cuatro comedias de gemelos; pero, más que inspirarse en Plauto, coinciden en emplear los recursos característicos del doble gemelar. La más próxima al argumento de Menaechmi es en realidad una adaptación, estrenada en 1909, de Les jumeaux de Brighton de Tristan Bernard.49 En cambio, del texto plautino y de sus traducciones parte la adaptación de A. Marquerie, que eligió Los gemelos para representar a Plauto en un volumen de teatro griego y latino (1966), debido a su gran fortuna desde Shakespeare.50 Sin renunciar a la naturalidad y el desenfado del lenguaje plautino, rebaja el tono cómico cuando este le parece atrevido para el gusto de la época. En la larga escena final no solo evita el encuentro de los dos hermanos, por la dificultad técnica de conseguir su parecido físico, sino que elimina todo lo que considera repeticiones innecesarias. Plauto y Terencio siguen vivos no solo en la tradición literaria, sino en la representación escénica escolar y profesional. En el primer ámbito, hay que destacar la labor de Alfonso Martínez Díez, Profesor de Filología Griega en la Universidad Complutense y fundador de Ediciones Clásicas en 1989 y de CRETA (Centro para la Representación y Estudio del Teatro Antiguo) en 2000. Desde hace 27 años organiza, por diversas ciudades de España, representaciones de teatro clásico destinadas a estudiantes de bachillerato y universitarios. En sus programas están presentes, además de los dramaturgos griegos, Plauto y Terencio. Gracias a sus buenos oficios, el Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia de España ha convocado en los últimos cinco años un Concurso Nacional de Teatro dotado de importantes premios, en el que han participado cada año una veintena de grupos. Plauto siempre ha llegado a la fase final de estos concursos y ha obtenido el primer premio con Los Gemelos en el año 2009 (Grupo Siberia Extremeña de Talarrubias, Badajoz) y con Anfitrión en 2010 (Grupo In albis, de Morón de la Frontera, Sevilla). El Instituto de Teatro Grecolatino de Segóbriga, para conmemorar el 25 aniversario de su creación, ha publicado (2008) un volumen en que se dan noticias de las numerosas representaciones de Anfitrión y de Los Menecmos desde 1983. Las versiones seguidas en estas representaciones han sido realizadas por Ricardo Martín, José Antonio Enríquez y Antonio López Fonseca. Ediciones Clásicas las ha publicado, así como las correspondientes guías didácticas para el estudio previo a las representaciones. En el ámbito de la representación profesional pocos escenarios hay tan apropiados como el del Teatro Romano de Mérida (Emerita Augusta), mandado construir 48 Marqués, Recepción e influencia del teatro de Plauto (supra, n. 29), pp. 414–18. 49 Blanco López, La desigual fortuna y Terencio (supra, n. 40), pp. 122–7. 50 Alfredo Marquerie, Versiones representables de teatro griego y latino (Madrid: Aguilar, 1966), pp. 395–438.
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por Marco Vipsanio Agripa en los años 16–15 a. C. Su capacidad era de 6.000 espectadores y hoy, una vez rehabilitado, es superior a tres mil. Se inauguró en 1933 y en 1939 se hizo ya una representación de Aulularia. Desde 1971 cada verano se ha organizado un Festival de Teatro Clásico. Anfitrión se ha representado del 9 al 11 de agosto de 1984, en versión de Juan Pedro de Aguilar, y del 26 al 31 de julio y del 1 al 4 de agosto de 1996, en versión de José Luis Alonso de Santos, con una media de 2.200 espectadores por función. Rudens, del 16 al 20 de julio de 1987, en versión de Patricio Chamizo. Miles gloriosus, del 29 de junio al 2 de julio de 1989, en versión de J. L. Alonso de Santos. La dulce Cásina, adaptación de J. L. Alonso de Santos, del 26 al 30 de julio de 1995. El Eunuco de Terencio, del 29 de julio al 2 de agosto de 1998, también en versión de J. L. Alonso de Santos. En la LV edición (2009) se ha representado por primera vez Los Gemelos de Plauto, del 29 de julio al 2 de agosto y del 5 al 9 de este mes. El dramaturgo Miguel Murillo Gómez ha sido el autor de la versión española y la dirección escénica ha corrido a cargo de la inglesa Tamzin Townsend. La crítica, en consonancia con el disfrute de los espectadores, ha acogido con encendidos elogios la puesta en escena de esta prodigiosa comedia de equívocos: «un montaje vital y colorista, lleno de energía y sorpresas, con diez actores de alto nivel, músicos en directo, acróbatas y bailarines.»51 Y sobre todo Plauto, como lo recordaba su epitafio: la risa, el juego, la chanza y los ritmos innúmeros.
2. La recepción general de Plauto La escasa presencia de Plauto en el s. XV, situación que puede extenderse a toda la Edad Media, oscila entre dos posturas, bien recogidas y argumentadas por Edwin T. Webber:52 como autoridad del mundo clásico, citado junto a otros autores asociados al saber antiguo y a veces confundido con Platón, o como autor de comedias, siempre emparejado a Terencio. Pero las citas seguras de sus comedias son ciertamente raras. Esta débil presencia plautina obedece, como es sabido, al olvido o censura de las obras de Plauto durante toda la Edad Media, a la pérdida de las doce últimas comedias de la llamada edición varroniana (posiblemente en el s. XI) y, finalmente, a la confusión de Plauto con el autor anónimo de Querolus siue Aulularia, probablemente un galo del s. V, que pronto se identificó con el cómico latino. Sobre esta comedia Vitale de Blois escribió las suyas Geta y Aulularia, que inauguran en el s. XII, en palabras de M. Molina,53 la comedia elegíaca o comedia latina medieval. Poco
51 Carmen Rodríguez Santos, “Plauto en Mérida: la risa y el juego,” ABC 11 VIII 2009, p. 29. 52 Edwin T. Webber, “The Literary Reputation of Terence and Plautus in Medieval and Pre-Renaissance Spain,” Hispanic Review 24.3 (1956), p. 205. 53 Manuel Molina, “La Aulularia de Vitale de Blois a la luz de la teoría poética de los siglos XII y XIII,” Revista de Filología Románica 3 (1983), pp. 275–87; el mismo autor recoge y amplía la idea en “La
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queda del verdadero Plauto en ellas, ni siquiera de la palliata, pero reintroducen en el panorama literario europeo la conciencia de que hubo un género cómico de argumento amoroso, con partes dialogadas y personajes de origen humilde, cosechado con éxito por Plauto, que se convierte en un modelo que se quiere superar: Hec, mea uel Plauti, comedia nomen ab olla / traxit, sed Plauti que fuit, illa mea est. / Curtaui Plautum: Plautum hec iactura beauit (vv. 23–25). Es evidente que este género, tan peculiar y característico de la tendencia medieval al popurrí de elementos de variada procedencia, es una de las primeras vías de recuperación de la figura y posteriormente de la obra de Plauto, también en España. Sin embargo, a lo largo del s. XV la presencia palpable de Plauto es muy exigua y poco significativa, salvo la cita en latín de la comedia Aulularia que Alonso Fernández de Madrigal, conocido como El Tostado (1410–1455) y formado en la Universidad de Salamanca, introdujo en su obra Sobre los dioses de los gentiles, cuando ejemplifica el sobrenombre de Lucina de los romanos para referirse a la diosa Juno: “Otrossí Plauto poeta, en la comedia llamada Aulularia [691–692], introduze a la moça preñada diziente: Perii, mea nutrix, obsecro te, uterum dolet, Iuno Lucina, tuam fidem.”54 Hay que añadir a esta cita la del Marqués de Santillana (1398–1458), que, al referirse a su abuelo, recuerda que este “Usó una manera de dezir cantares así commo cénicos plautinos e terencianos,”55 cuyo significado último aún está en discusión. En este trabajo, los cantos escénicos plautinos y terencianos se entienden como una suerte de verso dialogado, posiblemente de origen popular. La referencia debe entenderse en todo caso como una cita al modo de composición y no a las comedias de los comediógrafos latinos, ni siquiera al género cómico. Sin embargo, los aires del Humanismo empiezan a llegar a la Península a finales de siglo mediante dos vías imparables. Fundamental, por una parte, resulta la recuperación durante el Renacimiento de las comedias plautinas gracias a la edición princeps de Giorgio Merula en 1472,56 con las consiguientes traducciones y adaptaciones, primero en italiano, especialmente en la corte de Ferrara, luego en español (pensemos en Francisco López de Villalobos, Fernán Pérez de Oliva, Juan de Timone-
recepción de Plauto y Terencio en la comedia latina medieval,” en: Pociña y Rabaza (eds.), Estudios sobre Plauto (supra, n. 22), pp. 71–100, donde discute además sobre el género de estas piezas. 54 Citamos por la edición de Pilar Saquero y Tomás González Rolán, Sobre los dioses de los gentiles (Madrid: Ediciones Clásicas, 1995), p. 147. Esta obra también es conocida como Las XIIII cuestiones. 55 José Luis Alborg, Historia de la Literatura, (Madrid: Gredos, 1992) vol. I, p. 343 n. 46. 56 En esta propagación fue decisiva la llegada a Madrid de un manuscrito que contenía veinte comedias, doce de ellas completamente desconocidas hasta entonces, acontecimiento que debió de ocurrir después de 1429, fecha de la introducción en Roma, procedente de Alemania, de un manuscrito con dieciséis comedias, doce desconocidas hasta entonces. El lector español ya disponía, pues, de todas las comedias plautinas y estaba en disposición de leerlas, traducirlas, adaptarlas e imitarlas. Cf. Webber, “The Literary Reputation,” (supra, n. 52), p. 205.
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da57 y Juan Verzosa, si es cierta la atribución que se le hace,58 por citar solo las más sobresalientes, ya en siglo XVI). Este interés por el mundo clásico arraigó con fuerza en primer lugar en las universidades españolas, especialmente en la Universidad de Salamanca y después en la de Alcalá, donde los autores arriba citados fueron receptivos a las nuevas corrientes procedentes de Italia de recuperación y admiración por los textos clásicos. A esta circunstancia académica hay que añadir la influencia italiana en el nacimiento de la comedia española y, por ende, en la recuperación de los cómicos latinos, porque, si bien es cierto que las obras dramáticas españolas se cimientan sobre el elemento de lo popular, tan propio del medievo, también es verdad que se adoptaron sin remilgos cuantos elementos renacentistas y, claro está, clásicos les llegaron de las adaptaciones italianas, desde la temática hasta los personajes59. Pues la comedia italiana surgió desde un principio con las adaptaciones de la antigua palliata y el oficio de las compañías de Commedia dell’arte: así Cassaria de Ariosto, Clizia de Maquiavelo y Calandria de Bibbiena, comedias de temática clásica, fuertemente inspiradas en Plauto. Si esta combinación se bascula al principio (s. XV) del lado del elemento popular (La Celestina, Juan de Encina), poco a poco los elementos italianizantes fueron ganando terreno (Bartolomé de Torres Naharro y Lope de Rueda), hasta la explosión total de originalidad que supuso la nueva forma de hacer comedias del genio lopeveguesco, que no dudó en cerrar bajo llave los preceptos de los antiguos.
2.1 Plauto en los siglos XV y XVI Cualquier lector avezado siente al terminar la lectura de La Celestina (impresa por vez primera en Burgos en 1499) que ha transitado por un lugar conocido, aunque se ve incapaz de señalar exactamente de qué lugar se trata. Los personajes, la trama, algunas situaciones, el engaño, los nombres propios de los sirvientes (Sosia, el esclavo de Plauto y Terencio; Pármeno, nombre de esclavo habitual en Terencio)60 y, en general, el ambiente son reconocibles y comparables a las comedias de Plauto y
57 Marqués, “La presencia de Plauto en España. Primeras traducciones del siglo XVI,” en: Christoph Strosetzki (coord.), Actas del V Congreso Internacional de la Asociación Internacional Siglo de Oro (AISO) (Madrid: Vervuert Verlagsgesellschaft Iberoamericana, 2001), pp. 841–51. 58 Artigas, “Juan Verzosa,” (supra, n. 45), pp. 25–9, defiende con argumentos históricos la pertenencia de la traducción anónima de las comedias Milite glorioso y Menechmos (1555) a este erudito aragonés del s. XVI. Marqués, “La presencia de Plauto en España” (supra, n. 57), pp. 846–7, no ve razones de peso para esta atribución y ofrece datos sobre el proceso de traducción, que ella denomina adaptación, al eliminar el autor escenas demasiado cercanas al mundo romano, abreviar pasajes largos, cambiar los nombres de las divinidades y no traducir los términos o pasajes escabrosos (procedimiento similar al del propio Plauto en la composición de sus obras). 59 Othón Arróniz, La influencia italiana en el nacimiento de la comedia española (Madrid: Gredos, 1969), p. 11. 60 Marcos Casquero, “Plauto en la literatura española” (supra, n. 10), p. 138.
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Terencio, pero ninguna de estas similitudes certifica que Fernando de Rojas hubiera leído las comedias de Plauto. De hecho, el comediógrafo latino ni siquiera aparece nombrado dentro de la obra, aunque el corrector de la misma, Alonso de Proaza, lo trae a colación como autoridad: “No dibujó la cómica mano / de Nevio ni de Plauto, varones prudentes, / tan bien los engaños de falsos sirvientes / y malas mujeres en metro romano”. Esta alusión del corrector introduce un elemento que podríamos denominar un déjà vu, eso es lo que siente continuamente un lector moderno, pero también lo que sentían los lectores cultos del siglo XVI, que La Celestina era un compendio extremadamente inusitado de elementos cómicos reconocibles. En apoyo de esta sensación de ambiente de palliata cabe señalar la presencia de Plauto y Terencio, como autores más citados, en el libro de María Rosa Lida de Malkiel sobre la originalidad de La Celestina, según el índice de nombres y obras,61 dato que puede dar una idea de la influencia directa e indirecta de las comedias de ambos en la tragicomedia de Fernando de Rojas. Como esos elementos cómicos reconocibles en lo que a Plauto respecta han sido ya ampliamente señalados por otros,62 merece en primer lugar una breve alusión, pues ya ha sido explicado arriba, el empleo del término “tragicomedia” a partir de la edición de 1502 (cf. supra), presente en Amphitruo (v. 59). Pero sobre todo hay que dedicar más atención al personaje de Celestina, que, dada su fuerza en la comedia, ha suplantado el título original de Comedia (Tragicomedia) de Calisto y Melibea. El personaje de la alcahueta (lena) o mediadora entre enamorados es una figura de larga raigambre literaria,63 reconocible posiblemente en ese momento de la historia de España como personaje real, sobre el que se podía delinear un personaje estereotipado: vieja, pobre, procaz, avara, antigua prostituta, medio hechicera, borracha y aprovechada. Precisamente todas esas cualidades se dan en la vieja borracha Leena de Curculio, guardiana del burdel adonde se dirige el enamorado Fédromo, acompañado de su fiel esclavo Palinuro, tan canalla como la vieja, que, además, es capaz de entonar una especie de sortilegio fúnebre, como alma que se ve atraída por el vino igual que los muertos por la sangre: El aroma de un vino añejo me ha golpeado las narices, / las ganas me arrastran ávida hasta aquí en medio de las tinieblas. / Allí donde esté, está cerca de mí. ¡Bien! ¡Ya es mío! / ¡Te saludo, alma mía, encanto de Líber! / ¡Viejo añoso, con lo vieja y añosa que soy, cuánto te deseo! / Pues el olor
61 María Rosa Lida de Malkiel, La originalidad artística de La Celestina (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1970). En concreto, Plauto es citado en 489 páginas y Terencio en 176 de un total de 730. 62 Hay dos estudios básicos sobre las fuentes clásicas en La Celestina, el de Castro Guisasola, Observaciones sobre las fuentes literarias (supra, n. 6); y el de Grismer, The influence of Plautus (supra, n. 14). 63 Marcos Casquero, “Plauto en la literatura española” (supra, n. 10), p. 138, enumera certeramente las muchas alcahuetas de la literatura clásica: Acántide de Propercio; Canidia de Horacio; Dipsas de Ovidio, Pánfila de Apuleyo; Trotaconventos del Arcipreste de Hita y, especialmente, Cleereta de Asinaria, Scapha de Mostellaria, Syra de Cistellaria, Astafia de Truculentus y Leaena de Curculio.
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de todos los perfumes, que no sea el tuyo, me resulta nauseabundo: / para mí eres mirra, cinamomo, rosa, / eres azafrán y canela, eres alholva, / pues allí donde te derraman, allí anhelo ser enterrada. (Curc. 96–104).64
Será ella la que franquee la puerta al amante, después del pago en vino, la que convenza a la joven para que acoja al enamorado, la que sepa ganarse con sus halagos la confianza del amante, la que despierte la envidia del esclavo Palinuro y la que se enzarce con él en un intercambio de insultos terribles que desnudan el alma de la vieja: borracha, supersticiosa, ávida y desconfiada. Este es el retrato más completo de la alcahueta plautina, personaje tipo de la palliata, que la figura de Celestina reintrodujo en la literatura española. Tampoco a Celestina le falta la pizca de nigromancia necesaria para completar el estereotipo, como es el conjuro con Plutón (pp. 108–9 de la ed. de Bruno M. Damiani, Cátedra, Madrid, 1981), menos cómico y más trágico, como conviene a sus fuentes, posiblemente Lucano. El personaje del criado fiel a su señor también procede de la palliata romana y sobre todo de Plauto; pero el gran protagonista de las comedias plautinas, el esclavo astuto (seruus callidus) y urdidor de estratagemas para ayudar a su señor, queda arrumbado en La Celestina en beneficio de la alcahueta, y se perfila en los esclavos celestinescos la típica pareja bueno-malo, ingenuo-listo, con triunfo del esclavo malo y listo, Sempronio, que arrastra al más fiel, Pármeno, a traicionar a su dueño. Sin embargo, es cierto que la primera aparición de Sempronio desempeña la misma función que las escenas iniciales de Plauto donde amo y esclavo mantienen un diálogo que informa al espectador de la situación, el amo se lamenta de su triste suerte y el esclavo se dispone a ofrecerle su ayuda; exactamente así ocurre con Sempronio en su primer diálogo con Calisto: debe soportar el enfado de su señor, escuchar la causa del mismo y ofrecerle consejo.65 La construcción literaria del criado se decanta por los perfiles que la realidad ofrece a Fernando de Rojas, esclavos canallescos más cercanos al esclavo del lenón o proxeneta de la comedia romana: Sincerasto, en Poenulus, por poner un ejemplo, no duda en traicionar a Licón, el dueño del burdel, para provocar la ruina económica total: Milf: ¡Que los dioses te pierdan a ti y a tu amo! / Sinc: A mí no me perderán; pero, si yo quisiera, / podría hacer que lo perdieran a él, a mi señor, de no temer por mí mismo, Milfión” (Poen. 863–5).66
64 Traducción de Rosario López Gregoris, Plauto. Comedias. El gorgojo, El ladino cartaginés, Las tres monedas, El fiero renegón (Madrid: Akal, 2004), p. 105. 65 Cf. Marqués, Recepción e influencia (supra, n. 29), pp. 220–59. 66 La escena es bastante más larga (vv. 823–909), y en ella Sincerasto cuenta a Milfión, esclavo del enamorado, todo lo que este necesita saber para arruinar al lenón. Cf. López Gregoris, Plauto. Comedias (supra, n. 64), pp. 199–200.
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La fidelidad a ultranza del esclavo del enamorado, por muy astuto y falaz que sea con los demás, desaparece en La Celestina, donde todos los personajes buscan satisfacer sus deseos. Posiblemente esta sea la gran diferencia entre la palliata y la obra de Fernando de Rojas, el realismo de la última, que propicia la desgracia, frente a la actitud utópica de Plauto, que siempre conlleva un final feliz. Ahora bien, sí es propia de la actitud utópica de la palliata que el joven enamorado no piense más que en su enamorada y nunca en el matrimonio. Precisamente esta es la inexplicable actitud de Calisto, cuyo ardiente deseo lo enloquece de amor y lo empuja a gozar de Melibea sin plantearse el paso previo del matrimonio; esta especie de irrealidad (los dos jóvenes y de buena familia) dentro del ambiente realista de la obra tiene que ver con una tradición heredada y no con un problema social irresoluble: la comedia romana y la comedia elegíaca que se nutre de ella y la comedia humanística que imita a la primera perpetúan la construcción cultural del amor como enfermedad y nunca buscan solucionarlo con el matrimonio, que, en la palliata, sobre todo en Plauto, funciona como castigo en toda regla para el joven disoluto. Hay otro personaje de tintes farsescos que aparece al final de La Celestina, Centurio, contratado por las pupilas de Celestina, Elicia y Areúsa, para matar a Calisto. A primera vista la asociación con la estirpe de los milites gloriosi es casi instantánea: ducho en armas, de boca caliente, cruel con sus mujeres y poco feliz finalmente en sus empresas bélicas. Sin embargo, un análisis más detenido del personaje siembra dudas sobre su linaje antiguo, y algunos aspectos realistas y poco cómicos de su personalidad han llevado a María Rosa Lida de Malkiel67 a rechazar toda relación entre Centurio y el personaje tipo y protagonista de la comedia Miles gloriosus y a apostar por la figura real y odiada del Capitano Spagnolo, símbolo de un imperio decadente y poco receptivo a los cambios. Es cierto que Centurio es pobre y, a pesar de ello, sí enamora a las mujeres y además no se deja engañar, para lo cual hace ejercicio de fina retórica, aspectos todos ellos ajenos al miles, pero no es menos cierto que el cambio en el registro, de comedia a sátira realista, o sea, tragicomedia, es lo que provoca los cambios en el personaje. A poco que nos detengamos en alguno de los milites plautinos, como Pirgopolinices (Miles gloriosus) o Estratófanes (Truculentus), se observa que sus amenazas para con las prostitutas que pretenden gozar no llegan a nada, porque hay un personaje (el enamorado, el esclavo del enamorado, etc.) o una situación (anagnórisis que lo convierte en hermano de su pretendida) que lo impiden, pero, y esto es esencial, estos fanfarrones son muy capaces de maltratar a sus adversarios en amor; ahora bien, no hay que olvidar que se trata de comedias, sin pretensión realista y sin vocación satírica, todo lo contrario de La Celestina, por ello resulta difícil negar el
67 Estudios de literatura española y comparada (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1966), pp. 176–8. James P. W. Crawford, “The Braggart soldier and the Ruffian in the Spanish Drama of the Sixteenth Century,” Romanic Review 2 (1911), pp. 186–208, añade un elemento más de complejidad al ver en Centurio los rasgos del miles, por un lado, y del personaje del rufián, por otro.
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parentesco literario entre Centurio y cualquiera de los milites plautinos,68 sin que este parentesco anule por completo el efecto que sin duda la presencia de los soldados españoles, representantes del imperio invasor, ejercía en la imaginación del escritor. Veamos algún ejemplo: Terapontígono: Yo vengo ahora furioso con la misma furia / con la que aprendí a llevar la ruina a ciudades. / Si no te das prisa en entregarme aprisa las treinta minas / que dejé en depósito en tu banca, disponte deprisa a dejar la vida (Curc. 533–6).69 Centurio: La noche pasada soñaba que hacía armas, en un desafío por su servicio, con cuatro hombres, que ella bien conoce, y maté al uno; y de los otros que huyeron, el que más sano se libró me dejó a los pies un brazo izquierdo (Celest. Ed. de Bruno M. Damiani, pp. 272–3).
Si La Celestina supuso la recuperación al menos de los caracteres más representativos del teatro plautino, no fue así con la técnica teatral. El llamado padre del drama español, Juan del Encina (1468–1529), escribió catorce églogas, donde unos pastores o bobos intercambiaban diálogos, interrumpidos por canciones, más o menos agudos hasta que un acontecimiento normalmente de índole divina los sacaba de su conversación. Ello indica a las claras que la producción de Juan del Encina entronca directamente con la tradición litúrgica medieval. Sin embargo, se sabe que este autor estuvo al menos en dos ocasiones en Italia y representó su última égloga en Roma ante el arzobispo de Arborea y otros grandes señores italianos, como Federico Gonzaga, futuro Marqués de Mantua, lugar donde las imitaciones plautinas tenían mucha aceptación.70 Es más que probable que sus estancias en Roma influyeran en la última etapa de su producción, y que las obras Aucto de repelón, Égloga de Cristino y Febea y sobre todo la Égloga de Plácida y Vitoriano fueran permeables a técnicas teatrales ya usadas en Italia, como llamar a un personaje para que entre en escena, introducir el tema del hambre entre los pastores y el tema amoroso, aunque al final la conclusión unánime es que Juan del Encina se dejó influir poco o nada por la adaptación clásica del teatro italiano71 y mucho más por la égloga pastoral que se cultivaba en Roma en aquellos años.72 Sin embargo hay dos aspectos de la producción del autor que llaman la atención a cualquier latinista habituado a la lectura de Plauto, en primer lugar, el uso de la música y los continuos interludios musicales con
68 Así opina Grismer, The influence of Plautus (supra, n. 14), pp. 113–15, siguiendo a Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Orígenes de la novela (Madrid: NBAE), p. 34. 69 Cf. para la traducción López Gregoris, Plauto. Comedias (supra, n. 64), p. 130. 70 Consta que la égloga no gustó a D. Federico, más acostumbrado a las adaptaciones clasicistas de la corte de Mantua: cf. Arróniz, La influencia italiana (supra, n. 59), pp. 40–1. 71 Grismer, Influence of Plautus (supra, n. 14), p. 130; Marcos Casquero, “Plauto en la literatura española” (supra, n. 10), p. 139; Arróniz, La influencia italiana (supra, n. 59), p. 39. 72 Crawford, “The source of Juan del Encina’s Egloga de Fileno y Zambardo,” Revue Hispanique 38 (1916), pp. 218–31.
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que adereza sus églogas, hasta el punto de que más de uno ha dicho que el interés profundo del dramaturgo eran las composiciones musicales en detrimento de la acción dramática, afirmación que podría extenderse casi sin matiz a Plauto, pues ambos fueron muy receptivos a las tendencias teatrales populares. Esta coincidencia no tiene por qué considerarse heredada, aunque sea muy llamativa, sino más bien producto de una poligénesis que nace de la confluencia de intereses y sensibilidades. El segundo elemento llamativo en las églogas no es otro que el desarrollo de caracteres muy típicos del teatro plautino, especialmente el del gracioso, que aún está en pañales con respecto al gran desarrollo que recibirá de manos de Lope de Vega, pero que en sus primeros pasos recuerda a la pareja cómica eterna del esclavo listo y el esclavo tonto, caracteres que Plauto tomó, casi con total certeza, del mimo preliterario latino y desarrolló con gran aprovechamiento en el personaje tipo del seruus callidus. Este antagonismo de pastores listos y bobos que se agudiza en diálogos vivos y divertidos puede apreciarse en Casina, entre Olimpión y Calino, y en Miles gloriosus, entre Palestrión y Esceledro. De nuevo es casi imposible hablar de tradición directa en esta coincidencia literaria, pero en este caso la influencia del teatro italiano pudo ser más decisiva.73 De quien sí es posible afirmar que conocía, y bien, la obra de Plauto es el dramaturgo extremeño Bartolomé de Torres Naharro (ca. 1484–1530). Parece que tuvo una vida aventurera y pasó alguna temporada en Italia, donde llegó a representar sus obras en Roma ante la corte papal. La influencia de la literatura italiana y la recuperación del teatro antiguo se hacen evidentes en versos del propio autor: “Pues, mis amos, / la comedia intitulamos / a tinelo, Tinellaria, / como de Plauto notamos / de asno dixo Asinaria” (90–4). Hay numerosos elementos74 más que hablan a las claras de la cercanía e influencia que las imitaciones, traducciones, adaptaciones italianas de Plauto ejercieron sobre el autor, por no hablar de una lectura directa del mismo, como buen conocedor que fue del latín. Sin embargo es de cita obligada la adaptación de una escena de Asinaria a su Tinellaria,75 la más plautina de sus comedias, en la que la criada Dileta se aprovecha de una noticia venturosa para su princesa Felicina, a la que somete a varias humillaciones antes de sacarla de la incertidumbre, por ignorar esta la buena nueva. En Asinaria son los esclavos Líbano y Leónidas los que aparecen con la suma de dinero necesaria para que el joven Argiripo disfrute de su amada Filenia; pero antes de entregarles el dinero, ambos esclavos
73 Según Grismer, Influence of Plautus (supra, n. 14), pp. 131–2, Lucas Fernández, alumno de del Encina, sí hizo uso del miles plautino en su creación del Soldado en su Farsa o cuasi comedia, donde un soldado bravucón lanza todo tipo de bravatas contra el pastor Pascual: “Pasc.: Vos habreis matado ciento / Sold.: Son tantos, que no hay cuento. / Pasc.: Quizás que ño fuesen piojos”. 74 Uso del introito y del argumento, división de la obra en actos, criados astutos, criadas procaces, oír a través de la pared para descubrir secretos, el reconocimiento final, etc. 75 Tomo la noticia de Marcos Casquero, “Plauto en la literatura española” (supra, n. 10), pp. 145–57; y este a su vez de A. Lenz, “Torres Naharro et Plaute,” Revue Hispanique 57 (1923), pp. 99–107.
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someten a los jóvenes a varias pruebas humillantes, como montar a caballo del joven amo, ser besado por Filenia y alguna más. Con respecto a la comedia Soldadesca, parecería la obra perfecta para una recuperación del miles plautino; pero de nuevo el realismo del autor y la época ofrecen una galería “de los eternos tipos de la milicia,”76 desde el joven recluta, nostálgico de su tierra, hasta el presumido Mendoza y el orgulloso Guzmán, que amortiguan la influencia del personaje clásico. La figura de Lope de Rueda (1500–1565) debe definirse como la de un hombre de teatro de los pies a la cabeza: fue actor, abandonó su oficio anterior y siguió a una compañía de actores italianos de Commedia dell’arte, escribió sus propias piezas pendiente de los gustos del público y dirigió su propia compañía. Nunca estuvo en Italia y, sin embargo, supo adaptar los modelos clásicos italianos a la perfección; sus obras fueron editadas con cuidado a su muerte por su buen amigo, Juan de Timoneda, traductor de Plauto. Una vida agitada que se asemeja mucho a la vida casi fabulosa que se refiere de Plauto. Introdujo en sus obras los caracteres sobresalientes del teatro plautino: el simple, el soldado, la vieja alcahueta, los enamorados, el padre viejo, los amigos, etc. La obra donde con más claridad se aprecia una adaptación plautina es Los engañados, reescritura de Menaechmi, a través de la adaptación italiana Gl’Ingannati (cf. supra). Pero siempre mantuvo su originalidad introduciendo caracteres hispanos y populares, lo que no le impidió desarrollar el fino humor de sus simples de raigambre plautina: Verginio (padre de Lelia): ¿Sabes tú, inocente, si tengo yo alguna cabalgadura en casa? Pajares (simple): ¿Quién le demanda cabalgadura? Cabalga blanda me diesse vuessa merced, que cabalga dura ni grado ni gracias. Verginio: ¿Qué’s cabalga blanda? Pajares: Un rollo o rosca do aquello que han amasado hoy, porque vaya caballero mi estrógamo. Y, a necesidad, un buen mendrugo de pan en las manos es bueno, por no ir hombre pensando mal ni murmurar de nadie. (…) Verginio: Pues yo os prometo, don asno, que si apaño un garrote, que yo os haga ir presto. Pajares: No me prometa vuessa merced cosa alguna, qu’esso de garrote no es cosa que me conviene por agora. (Los engañados, esc. V).77
Recurrir al hambre, a los golpes del amo y a los juegos de palabras es sencillamente la esencia del humor plautino; cualquier seruus plautino que se precie emite decenas de gracias como la del simple Pajares, por otro lado buen nombre parlante, como la de 76 D.W. McPheeters, Bartolomé de Torres Naharro. Comedias, (Madrid: Castalia, 1973), p. 24; Lida de Malkiel, “La originalidad artística” (supra, n. 61), pp. 194–5, insiste en la falta de convenciones literarias en el retrato de los soldados. 77 Alfredo Hermenegildo (ed.), Las cuatro comedias (Madrid: Cátedra, 2001), p. 191.
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su señor Verginio. Aunque no es el mismo contexto, el tema del hambre es recurrente en Plauto, como en este diálogo, lleno de juegos de palabras: Gorgojo (parásito): ¡Estoy muerto! Apenas veo nada, tengo los dientes llenos de legañas, mi boca está ciega de hambre; y por la falta de comida vengo con las tripas escurridas. Fédromo (enamorado): Ya comerás algo. Gorgojo: ¡Por Hércules! No quiero algo: prefiero “un algo” más seguro. Palinuro (esclavo): Si supieras qué manjares tenemos… Gorgojo: Preferiría saber dónde están, pues mis dientes necesitan dar con ellos. (Curc. 317–22).
Es evidente que la obra de Lope de Rueda merece un análisis a fondo, porque de todos los autores del siglo XVI es el que muestra una cercanía mayor al teatro de Plauto, aunque sea por vía indirecta. El siguiente hito en este apresurado recorrido por el teatro español es el propulsor de una nueva manera de hacer comedia, que, según él, no sigue los preceptos aristotélicos ni el estilo de los viejos Plauto y Terencio; se trata, por supuesto, de Lope de Vega (1562–1635), que, a pesar de sus palabras, tiene en su haber la asunción, transformación y desarrollo en clave hispánica y popular del seruus callidus, que, bajo su arte, se transformó en la figura del gracioso. Esta es la tesis que sostiene Charles D. Ley,78 a saber, la estrecha dependencia de pastores, bobos, simples y finalmente graciosos con el esclavo astuto, logro imperecedero de Plauto. Téngase en cuenta que Lope de Vega dio un paso atrás en la tradición con respecto a La Celestina en el tratamiento de los criados: como se ha dicho antes, la típica fidelidad del esclavo plautino desaparece pronto en los personajes de Pármeno y más aún de Sempronio, caracteres malvados y finalmente ajusticiados. Sin embargo, los graciosos de Lope recogen de nuevo el vínculo de la fidelidad estrecha con sus señores, a pesar de no haber compensación económica segura en época de hambre y escasez; por tanto, esa fidelidad que Lope atribuye a sus graciosos literarios no es reflejo de ninguna realidad social, y sí una clara herencia de una relación literaria, procedente de las comedias plautinas y, en general, romanas. La fidelidad del esclavo al amo es una convención literaria poco o nada ligada a la realidad, aunque nazca de la asunción natural, tanto de esclavos como de amos, de un orden social tenido por inamovible.79
78 Charles D. Ley, El gracioso en el teatro español de la Península. Siglos XVI–XVII (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1954), pp. 60–1. 79 Alicia Soler, “Aspectos literarios sobre las figuras del esclavo en Plauto y del gracioso en el Siglo de Oro y en Escalante: características, afinidades y diferencias,” en: Actas del VIII Congreso Español de Estudios Clásicos, III (Madrid: Ediciones Clásicas, 1994), p. 590.
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Para ilustrar lo dicho, el propio Charles D. Ley80 ejemplifica no solo la figura del gracioso, sino todo el argumento de la Francesilla, basado en la típica situación de partida de las comedias antiguas: el joven Feliciano ha gastado en juego el dinero que le había entregado su padre; como castigo, el padre lo envía como soldado junto a su lacayo, Tristán. En Francia conoce a Clavela, con quien se casa; pero habrán de pasar dificultades varias hasta poder reunirse de nuevo en Madrid; en ayuda de la joven pareja acude el gracioso Tristán, que es el motor del humorismo y un ejemplo de fidelidad al amo. Se trasluce de la lectura de sus comedias que Lope conocía a la perfección las comedias antiguas, posiblemente por haberlas leído en antologías o tratados, apreciaba la importancia de la técnica teatral antigua (los apartes, el reconocimiento final, la ironía, el argumento amoroso, la fidelidad del criado, la dificultad que superar, etc.), y usaba la uis comica antigua, cuando la ocasión se lo aconsejaba. Era muy consciente de hollar las pisadas de los antiguos poetas y, cuando llegaba el momento, lo decía, como en El peregrino en su patria, al describir a Aurelia en estos términos: “libre en sus costumbres y de aquel género de vida que describen en su fábulas Terencio y Plauto;”81 sabía muy bien de lo que hablaba y su ambivalencia con Plauto y Terencio fue pose y verdad.
2.2 Plauto en el s. XVII: el figurón La continuación más palpable del personaje del miles gloriosus en la literatura española es la creación del personaje dramático del Siglo de Oro conocido como “el figurón”. Sus antecedentes se encuentran, según el parecer de los expertos, en la comedia de Lope de Vega La contienda de García Paredes y el capitán Juan de Urbina (1600).82 En ella, dos grandes capitanes españoles, García de Paredes y Juan de Urbino, compiten hasta el ridículo en varios aspectos: valor, crueldad, capacidad dialéctica y jactancia. Las características fundamentales de la comedia de figurón son los defectos físicos o morales del figurón llevados a la exageración, que suelen ser motivo de burla de los demás personajes, la función satírica que se hace de esos
80 Ch. D. Ley, “La importancia de la comedia grecorromana como fuente de las comedias de Lope,” en: Giuseppe Bellini (ed.), Actas del VII Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas (Roma: Bulzoni, 1982), p. 689. 81 Cita tomada de Irving P. Rothberg, “Algo más de Plauto, Terencio y Lope,” en: Manuel Criado de Val (dir.), Lope de Vega y los orígenes del teatro español, Actas del I Congreso Internacional sobre Lope de Vega, (Madrid: Edi–6, 1981), p. 64. 82 Esta es la tesis que sostiene Antonio Sánchez en “Del miles gloriosus al figurón: los orígenes de la comedia de figurón en La contienda de García de Paredes y el capitán Juan de Urbina (1600) de Lope de Vega,” en: Luciano García Lorenzo (ed.), El figurón. Texto y puesta en escena (Madrid: Fundamentos, 2007), p. 124.
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defectos y la incapacidad del figurón para corregirse.83 Estas características se van a dar de lleno en muchas comedias de los siglos XVII y XVIII, hasta el punto de que va a aparecer un subgénero centrado en este personaje, la comedia de figurón.84 Aunque la fuente directa no es la obra de Plauto, sino el canto XXVII de la epopeya Carlo famoso de Zapata de Chaves, lo cierto es que Lope aprovechó el material épico que le ofrecía su fuente y lo trasladó al estereotipo latino, que, además, venía a adaptarse como un guante al tópico del Capitano Spavento, creación italiana para criticar la presencia militar española en Italia y, por ende, en otros lugares de Europa. Estos soldados de mal vivir, ladrones y héroes a tiempo completo, reflejan una realidad que de nuevo se cuela en la comedia de Lope, pero que a lo largo de siglo XVII y más aún del XVIII se evaporó para convertirse en un tópico literario, como en su momento lo fue el miles. El Siglo de Oro español también supo aprovecharse de las consecuencias en materia de tópicos que genera el amor insatisfecho; ya se dijo al principio que La Celestina hereda el argumento del enamoramiento enloquecido, en este caso el de Calisto por Melibea; pero con el andar de los años, Lope, Calderón y Tirso sacaron gran rendimiento al catálogo de tópicos cómicos asociados al enamoramiento:85 la esclavitud que supone el Amor, la muerte como liberadora de las penurias de los enamorados, la locura de amor de no estar o poseer al ser amado, el fuego interior que abrasa al desear gozar de la amada, la insensatez del enamorado, la ruina económica que suele conllevar el amor, la belleza sin par de la amada (“Don Pedro: Era virtuosa / como bella, y en belleza / la misma exageración. / Agudo: ¿Pintótela algún poeta?”, La villana de Vallecas, de Tirso),86 la militia amoris, la supuesta virginidad de la amada, tópico más español que latino, el reconocimiento final, y el viejo enamorado, que compensa sus muchos años con sus muchos bienes.
83 Olga Fernández, “Estructuras funcionales de la comedia de figurón: la función del figurón en Entre bobos anda el juego,” en: Felipe P. Pedraza et alii, Francisco Rojas Zorrilla, poeta dramático. Actas del XXII Jornadas de Teatro Clásico (Almagro: Univ. De Castilla-La Mancha, 2000), p. 133. 84 Se consideran las primeras de este subgénero El lindo don Diego (1605) de Agustín de Moreto, Cada loco con su tema (¿1619?) de Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza, El Narciso en su opinión (antes de 1625) de Guillén de Castro, Guárdate de agua mansa de Calderón, El castigo del Pensequé (1627) de Tirso y El marqués del Cigarral (1634) de Alonso Castillo Solórzano. Todas ellas posteriores a la comedia de Lope. Datos tomados de Antonio Sánchez, “Del miles gloriosus” (supra, n. 82), p. 112. 85 Esto no es más que un breve recorrido por el bien ejemplificado trabajo de Carmen González “Tópicos del amor en la comedia latina y su recepción en Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega y Tirso de Molina,” Edad de oro 24 (2005), pp. 145–63. 86 B. de los Ríos (ed.) (Madrid, 1963), p. 795, dato extraído de González, “Tópico del amor” (supra, n. 85), p. 153.
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2.3 Epígonos El s. XVIII y la primera mitad del s. XIX se olvidó de Plauto; el gran éxito del teatro del Siglo de Oro supuso su conversión en modelo con el arrumbamiento definitivo de los autores cómicos latinos; Lope de Vega supuso el comienzo de unas nuevas reglas teatrales que propugnaban una concepción dramática más atenta a los gustos del público, de origen popular, con más atención al argumento y a la realidad social, y menos a la unidad de espacio, tiempo y lugar. Lope y todos los autores del XVII eran el modelo y todo lo anterior dejó de valer como fuente de inspiración teatral. Así las cosas, hubo que esperar a mediados del s. XVIII para que de nuevo los eruditos universitarios de Europa y, por contagio, de España, comenzaran su tarea del estudio de la historiografía latina, es decir, el estudio de los textos latinos como textos de un pueblo, el romano, con su etapas y evolución. Como bien explica Salomé Blanco,87 la clave está en el cambio de concepción de la asignatura de retórica, cuando dejó de ocuparse de los textos considerados excelentes para aprender a escribir como los grandes maestros, esos que desde Quintiliano no dejaban de repetirse en gramáticas y retóricas. Este cambio de concepción del arte de la literatura, de objeto único a instrumento para entender una cultura, supuso la recuperación de todos los autores dentro de su género y en su contexto histórico. La consecuencia inmediata fue que un grupo de profesores universitarios y eruditos se interesaron por Plauto, y sus obras comenzaron a estudiarse y representarse de nuevo en las aulas universitarias; citemos, por esenciales, las figuras de Gregorio Mayans y Siscar, Alfredo Adolfo Camús, Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Leandro Fernández de Moratín, etc. La primera consecuencia que tuvo este nuevo interés fue la reedición de las traducciones plautinas del s. XVI, la de Villalobos, Pérez de Oliva y Juan de Timoneda. Es inevitable comparar este renacer de Plauto en los albores del s. XIX con lo ocurrido en el Renacimiento italiano y posteriormente con el Humanismo español: desde la universidad se reintrodujo y vuelve a introducirse Plauto en el panorama literario y cultural español. La segunda consecuencia fue el deseo editorial por completar la traducción de toda la obra de Plauto; deseo que no se cumplirá hasta después de la guerra civil española. Sin embargo, poco a poco emergen traducciones renovadas de alguna de las comedias plautinas, como, por ejemplo, la traducción del propio Menéndez Pelayo
87 Blanco, La desigual fortuna de Plauto y Terencio (supra, n. 40), pp. 19–22. Consúltese allí la bibliografía sobre el proceso académico que se describe, especialmente el trabajo de Francisco García Jurado “¿Por qué nació la juntura ‘Tradición Clásica’? Razones historiográficas para un concepto moderno,” Cuadernos de Filología Clásica. Estudios Latinos 27 (1997), pp. 161–92. Todos los datos que se ofrecen a continuación proceden de la tesis inédita de S. Blanco, cuyo director es precisamente D. Francisco García Jurado.
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de Captiui para una representación universitaria (1879),88 recogida por él mismo en su imprescindible Bibliografía89. Antonio González Garbín, por su parte, tradujo La Marmita ó El avaro (1877), es decir, Aulularia, y Los cautivos (1879–1880). Hay que destacar que todas estas traducciones ya se realizaron bajo el criterio del escrúpulo filológico, pues no en vano los traductores eran profesores universitarios, con absoluto respeto por el texto latino y sin alterar o eliminar pasajes del original. Algunas de ellas se acompañan de notas y comentarios, otras ofrecen simplemente la traducción. La tercera consecuencia fue la puesta en escena de algunas comedias de Plauto, adaptaciones que llegaron al gran público; la primera, la ya citada de Los cautivos en 1879, de Menéndez Pelayo en el Teatro Español, en latín, con éxito de prensa.90 Por el eco periodístico que obtuvo se ha de calificar el evento de excepcional, pues permitió a más de uno reflexionar sobre la conveniencia del estudio del latín. Por magra que nos parezca la presencia plautina en la España del XIX, comparada con la constante aparición de traducciones y representaciones en Francia y Alemania, no se ha de tener opinión ligera al respecto, porque ese impulso del s. XIX logró para el s. XX que por fin la obra completa de Plauto se leyera en castellano de la mano de José Velasco y García que publicó en cuatro tomos en la editorial Prometeo hasta catorce de las veintiuna fábulas varronianas (1925–1927), y de Pedro Antonio Martín Robles para Hernando que publicó (1932) las seis primeras comedias de Plauto; y también en catalán gracias a la traducción de Marçal Olivar para la colección Bernat Metge (1934). El s. XX ha vuelto a acoger a Plauto en el contexto universitario; las ediciones de los grandes filólogos alemanes e ingleses han permitido leer y traducir a Plauto en todo su esplendor. Las traducciones completas de Plauto no son una rareza en el panorama editorial español, ni siquiera una novedad, sino un hueco que había que llenar y cuya traducción generacional ya forma parte de la normalidad cultural española.91 Pero el s. XX ha hecho suyo el talento plautino por medio de un canal distinto del literario, el cine y la televisión. Los personajes estereotipados, las come-
88 Antes había adaptado el texto plautino para una representación universitaria en latín, muy encomiada por Leopoldo Alas Clarín en uno de sus Paliques. 89 Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Bibliografía hispano-latina clásica, ed. de Enrique Sánchez, http:// descargas.cervantesvirtual.com/servlet/SirveObras/78036288760125020021457/029347.pdf?incr=1 [consul. Julio de 2010]. Esta obra ha sido fundamental para la redacción de esta parte del trabajo; aquí solo hemos extraído una mínima información del inmenso caudal que recogió el insigne profesor español. 90 Para leer las críticas, véase Blanco, La desigual fortuna de Plauto y Terencio (supra, n. 40), pp. 88– 93. 91 Las versiones plautinas del s. XX están recogidas por Andrés Pociña, “Versiones de Plauto al castellano publicadas en España (siglo XX),” en: Pociña y Rabaza (eds.), Estudios sobre Plauto (supra, n. 22), pp. 307–14. Y para hacerse una idea del interés de Plauto en el ámbito universitario, véase Aurora López, “Estudios sobre Plauto en España durante los años 1940–1996,” en: Pociña y Rabaza (supra), pp. 291–301.
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dias de situación, los chistes sin referencia al contexto histórico, los juegos de palabras, el planteamiento utópico, el argumento amoroso, la repetición de las mismas situaciones una y otra vez, el ambiente teatral, todos estos ingredientes plautinos constituyen la esencia de las llamadas comedias de situación (sitcom), cuyo éxito en España, equiparable al de otros países, cuenta con producción propia. Desde luego la comedia más conocida es Friends, pero ha tenido continuación en España a través de Siete vidas o Aquí no hay quien viva. Este es un apartado de la recepción de Plauto en España que está por escribir, pero del que ya tenemos conciencia.92
3. Los caminos de Terencio 3.1 Los vehículos de la transmisión93 3.1.1 Los manuscritos, ediciones, comentarios y traducciones de Terencio. En España se conservan veintiocho manuscritos (ss. XI–XV) donde están copiadas las comedias de Terencio total o parcialmente, pero que conservan el orden fijado por la tradición textual y que en muchos casos van acompañados de información aneja: la biografía de Terencio, la discusión sobre si su obra es “comedia” o “tragedia”, los comentarios de Donato u otros comentaristas del Cuatrocientos,94 las categorías de la acción según la división aristotélica, y dibujos de atrezo e instrucciones sobre la actio de los actores.95 Hay que esperar a que en 1498 el impresor alemán Juan de Rosenbach publicara en Barcelona la editio princeps, de autor anónimo. Le siguieron en el s. XVI otras once ediciones (que reproducían el texto de las obras fijado por autores europeos, tendencia que se mantendrá en los siglos siguientes), cinco en el s. XVII y dos en el s. XVIII. Aunque en el s. XX hay en España nuevas ediciones, es la publicada con traducción por L. Rubio la que incorpora al texto variantes nuevas y la lectura por
92 Rosario López y Luis Unceta, “Comedia romana y ficción televisiva: Plauto y la Sitcom,” Secuencias 33 (2011), pp. 93–110. 93 Luis Gil, “Terencio en España: del Medievo a la Ilustración” en: Andrés Pociña et al. (eds.) Estudios sobre Terencio (Granada: Univ. De Granada & Univ. de Coimbra, 2006), pp. 431–60 (reed. de Estudios de humanismo y tradición clásica, Madrid, 1984, pp. 95–125). Este autor asocia el reconocimiento de Terencio como modelo de latinidad a Erasmo y a su De pueris statim ac liberaliter erudiendis (1529), en la estela de Guarino Guarini (pp. 437–8) y ofrece interesantes citas de autores españoles antierasmistas que recomiendan la lectura directa de los dramaturgos latinos, pese a ser libros “mundanos,” al tiempo que atacan su popularidad (pp. 443–5). 94 Edwin J. Webber, “Manuscripts and Early Printed Editions of Terence and Plautus in Spain,” Romance Philology 11 (1957), pp. 29–39. La norma establecía este orden: Andria, Eunuchus, Heautontimorumenos, Adelphi, Hecyra, Phormio. Así se mantuvo en las traducciones al español. 95 Mª Jesús Framiñán, “Vestigios de Terencio en el primer teatro castellano,” en: Actas del III Congreso de la Asociación Hispánica de Literatura Medieval (Salamanca: 1994, vol. I), pp. 343–58.
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primera vez de un manuscrito español sito en El Escorial.96 Muy importantes son los Prolegomena de las ediciones y los comentarios,97 pues vinculan la obra terenciana con la retórica y con la teoría dramática. Me parece fundamental para entender la influencia de Terencio en la literatura española la reinterpretación de Aristóteles a partir de la lectura del comediógrafo, es decir, la asimilación de la poética a partir del siglo XVI: su obra ha de ser valorada desde el punto de vista de la teoría literaria (no sólo dramática) y del estilo (cómo debe un autor plantear una obra, o, por lo contrario, romper con la tradición), además de los temas, motivos y personajes que pervivirán con sus especiales características durante los siglos siguientes. Un personaje anónimo tradujo Andria en 1549, pero fue Pedro Simón Abril quien en 1577 tradujera con intención docente todas las comedias contribuyendo a que se divulgara el conocimiento del autor, lo que explica también la influencia del dramaturgo en la literatura española (especialmente en el s. XVI): su traducción se reimprimió hasta incluso 1917, pues las restantes traducciones son sólo parciales (cuatro comedias entre los ss. XVIII y XIX).98 A partir de 1950 Terencio está disponible en lengua española (desde 1936, completa en catalán, y algunas en gallego) y la última traducción completa y bilingüe es de 2001.99 Hay que vincular la recuperación de Terencio a partir del XVIII con el empeño de M. Menéndez Pelayo y otros eruditos de la Ilustración por los clásicos latinos –en contra de la escolástica y de la influencia jesuítica– y por la concepción de los autores en el marco de la Historiografía Literaria, con la explicación de Terencio en las aulas en el s. XIX.100
96 Lisardo Rubio, Terencio. Comedias (Barcelona: Alma Mater, 1957–1966), 3 vols. En la Introducción recoge datos sobre las ediciones de Terencio, pero preferimos los datos aportados por Gil, “Terencio en España” (supra, n. 93). 97 Manuel Molina Sánchez, “Prolegomena Terentiana. Modelos de introducción y comentario en las ediciones renacentistas de Terencio,” en: Estudios sobre Terencio (supra, n. 93), pp. 461–78; Milagros del Amo-Filomena Fortuny, “Terencio explica a Terencio. Las citas terencianas en el comentario de Juan de Fonseca a Andria,” Myrtia 20 (2005), pp. 223–41; José David Castro de Castro, “El comentario a la Andria (1569) de Pedro Fuentes,” Myrtia 27 (2009), pp. 181–205; José Closa, “Calpurnius Brixiensis, o la lectura humanística de Terencio,” en: Humanismo y Pervivencia (supra, n. 36), vol. III, 3, pp. 1167– 78. 98 Hay constancia de algunas traducciones y ediciones que no llegaron a la imprenta en los ss. XVII y XIX: Mª Teresa Beltrán Noguer, “Sobre una edición inédita de la Andria terenciana,” Estudios Románicos 16–17 (2007–2008), pp. 261–5; José C. Miralles Maldonado, “Terencio en España: La traducción del Heautontimorumenos realizada por José Musso Valiente,” en: José Musso Valiente y su época (1785– 1838): la transición del Neoclasicismo al Romanticismo (Lorca, 2006), pp. 2593–2606; Milagros del Amo-Filomena Fortuny, “Terencio explica a Terencio. Las citas terencianas en el comentario de Juan de Fonseca a Andria,” Myrtia 20 (2005), pp. 223–41. 99 José Román Bravo, Terencio. Comedias (Madrid: Cátedra, 2001). 100 Blanco, La desigual fortuna de las traducciones de Plauto y Terencio (supra, n. 40), pp. 50–62.
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3.1.2 La enseñanza. No faltaban las fabulae de Terencio ni en las bibliotecas (desde el s. XIII) ni en la instrucción de los bachilleres desde el último cuarto del s. XV.101 Sus versos se utilizaban para hacer gramáticas y enseñar latín, y así se mantuvo hasta 1780. Sus comedias formaban parte de las lecturas obligatorias que se asignaban a los estudiantes –p. e., en el curso de los “Menores” y de “Medianos” en la universidad de Salamanca–, y eran imprescindibles en las aulas universitarias españolas, pues su lenguaje se consideraba canónico en cuanto a pureza, propiedad y elegancia, razón por la que era considerado por el magister B. Mates en su Ars Grammatica (Barcelona, 1468) un “autor autenticus”.102 Aunque Terencio sobrevivió a la Inquisición,103 cuando los alumnos podían elegir no estaba entre sus preferencias de lectura, probablemente por el uso que se hacía de su obra para memorizar la gramática básica.104 Una manera de motivar al alumnado salmantino era premiar con seis ducados a las “compañías” de actores estudiantiles,105 actividad que se consolidó a lo largo del XVI106 en las distintas universidades españolas (Alcalá, Sevilla, Valladolid, Valencia, Barcelona, Granada y Santiago de Compostela)107 y que se retomaría en el s. XVIII.108 En este contexto surge una interesante obra de Juan Lorenzo Palmireno, El estudioso de la aldea (1568) (a la que siguió El estudioso cortesano, de 1573): una guía del estudiante para aprender latín y transformarlo en un cristiano auténtico, en un
101 Marcos Mayer, “Una biblioteca de estudiante de finales del siglo XV,” CFC 21 (1998), pp. 97–104. 102 Josep Closa Farrés, “‘De libris doctissimis’: notas sobre la enseñanza de las Humanidades en Cataluña de los siglos XV al XVII,” Pedralbes: Revista d’historia moderna 13, 2 (1993), pp. 369–76. 103 Luis Gil, “Terencio en España” (supra, n. 93), p. 447. 104 Acta del Archivo Universitario de Salamanca 46 (1577–1578), fol. 115 r.; Framiñán, “Vestigios de Terencio” (supra, n. 95), pp. 345, 347. Los salarios más bajos de la universidad los percibían los titulares de las “cátedra y catedrillas de Terencio” (p. 349); Framiñán, “Actividad dramática en el Estudio salmantino del Renacimiento: Plauto y Terencio,” en: Humanismo y Pervivencia (supra, n. 36), vol. III, 3, pp. 1187–1200. 105 Estatutos de 1538, Título LXI, en: Historia de la Universidad de Salamanca (supra, n. 25), p. 203. Gil, “Terencio en España” (supra, n. 93), pp. 438–40. 106 Framiñán, “Estudio documental sobre teatro en Salamanca (1500–1630): avance de resultados,” Criticón 96 (2006), pp. 115–37; García Soriano, El teatro universitario y humanístico (supra, n. 28); Julio Alonso Asenjo, “Teatro humanístico-escolar hispánico: relación de textos conocidos y de sus estudios y ediciones,” Voz y letra: Revista de literatura 17, 1 (2006), pp. 3–46. 107 Es interesante destacar que en Monforte estudió el Conde de Lemos, mecenas de Cervantes, Lope y Quevedo, por lo que una y otra vez se pone de manifiesto la estrecha relación entre la enseñanza, el conocimiento de Terencio en España y su desarrollo literario y cultural. Por ejemplo, en la Epístola al Conde Lemos escribe Lope: “Los preceptos guardando a la comedia, / hablaré con lenguaje de criado / en postas de Terencio legua y media”. Julio González Montañés, “El teatro en la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela durante la Edad Moderna,” Teatresco. Revista del Antiguo Teatro Escolar Hispánico 3 (2008). 108 Blanco, La desigual fortuna (supra, n. 40), pp. 32–3.
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hombre cortés, en un buen latinista capaz de desenvolverse en la vida, algo difícil para quien viene “de la Aldea, que no sabe más que leer y scriuir”.109 En el “Capitulo segundo como se mortificara y hara deuoto”, recomienda “libros deuotos” en romance y en latín: “Quando començaras de entender medianamente a Terencio, leeras en Latin alguno de los siguientes (…)”.110 Compaginó una intensa actividad docente en sus cátedras de griego, retórica y oratoria en Alcañiz, Zaragoza y Valencia, con la creación de obra filológica y literaria, y quizás a él se refiera un soneto de Pere Juan de Stornell que aparece en la obra dramática Los Amantes, de Rey de Artieda (1581) y que recoge la consideración de Terencio en el XVI: “El hijo del gran Turia se ha mostrado / en nuestra noble patria valentina / muy caballero en su arte y disciplina / de rosas y de lirios coronado. (…) / Es Terencio el delicado”. Luis Vives no esconde su animadversión por el teatro romano y lo critica por su peligroso influjo en la población y su temática. Pero lo aprovecha como metáfora de la vida.111 Aborda el género en el libro III de De ratione dicendi a propósito de la narratio en la oratoria didáctica,112 pues entiende que la “verosimilitud” permite abordar dos tipos de narración: el apólogo y la poesía (a pesar de que también denuncia su “falsedad”).113 A Vives le interesa Terencio “por la elegancia de su lenguaje”,114 desde el punto de la técnica dramática (perfección en la combinación del argumento y su desarrollo escénico, claridad de los diálogos y perfil de los personajes) y porque su lenguaje es eficaz al memorizar las sentencias y pensamientos redactados en verso, especialmente en los diálogos, que son un instrumento muy útil para abordar cuestiones filosóficas; Vives lo utilizó en sus obras, como se puede comprobar en la Exercitatio linguae latinae, en De tradendis disciplinis o en piezas representables como Euntes ad ludum. Dado que enseñar, persuadir o retener la atención del oyente “son las finalidades de la oratoria didáctica” (De rat dic. III, 2), el teatro de Terencio es aprovechado por Vives, quien utiliza las citas para delimitar estructuras narrativas,115
109 Andrés Gallego Barnés, Juan Lorenzo Palmireno (1524–1579). Un humanista aragonés en el Studi General de Valencia, Institución Fernando el Católico 913 (Zaragoza, 1982), pp. 165–6. 110 Gallego Barnés, Juan Lorenzo Palmireno (supra, n. 109), pp. 219–21. 111 Satellitium animi 87 y 88 y en su Fabula de homine, donde presenta el mundo como un teatro en el que todo tiene su papel (quoniam et homo ipse ludus ac fabula est). 112 Carmen Bernal Lavesa, “Plauto y Terencio en las obras didácticas de J. L. Vives,” en: La Universitat de València i l’humanisme: “Studia Humanitatis”i renovació cultural a la Europa i al nou món (Valencia, 2003), pp. 351–65. 113 De concordia et discordia IV. 114 De tradendis disciplinis III, 6. Terencio es equiparable a Cicerón, en contraste con Plauto y su horrida compositio (“Caesar Terentium puri sermonis amatorem uocat”ibid.), recomienda su lectura (p.e. en De Ratione studii puerilis, carta 2ª) y justifica sus errores (De rat dic. II, 16). Ya desde época medieval hasta el s. XV es valorado Terencio como modelo de estilo, además de como poeta del amor: Webber, “Literary Reputation” (supra, n. 52), pp. 195–202. 115 Bernal, “Las referencias al mundo clásico en De officio mariti de L. Vives: su función en la estructura de la obra,” en: Homenatge a M. Dolç (Palma de Mallorca: 1997), pp. 457–61.
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para ejemplificar factores externos que afectan al ser humano o una idea moralizadora; en este caso manipula a veces los textos supeditándolos a la moral, aunque denuncie a los comentaristas indoctos que contribuyen a un mal conocimiento de Terencio: "todo cuanto consignaron por escrito Terencio o los otros poetas cómicos o trágicos… imaginaron ellos ser expresión directa de su propio pensar (…) y tergiversan las palabras hasta un punto que nunca hubieran podido imaginar sus autores, tal como explicando las intenciones de Terencio lo hace el gramático Donato” (De rat dic. III, 7). Los versos terencianos sirven para ironizar sobre “vicios” o “costumbres” de la vida cotidiana, según se hará en las centurias siguientes, donde los versos de Terencio forman parte del refranero popular.116 La inclusión de Terencio en los planes de estudio y la exigencia de conocer su obra en profundidad para poder superar los exámenes para optar a una plaza de profesor serán en los ss. XIX y XX dos vehículos de transmisión, claves, sin duda, en la revitalización del comediógrafo.117
3.2 Siglos XVI–XVII El autor se excusa de su “yerro” en el prólogo de La Celestina: “Jamás yo no vi terenciana, /después que me acuerdo, ni nadie la vido, / obra de estilo tan alto y subido / en lengua común vulgar castellana”. Decir “Terencio” significa teatro de amor, de camaradería y de ardides en cuanto a los temas, a la concepción urbana de los personajes y a conflictos familiares en el entorno social, con la continua tensión que supone encontrar el equilibrio de intereses.118Así se desarrollan en La Celestina. Tampoco faltan la técnica teatral (monólogos, acotaciones, diálogos y réplicas, apartes, ironía…) ni los rasgos esenciales de los personajes (el hijo, la amada, el padre, las criadas, los criados…).119 El nombre del criado Pármeno rememora el del esclavo de Eunuchus y conserva su lealtad, su “picaresca” –con dosis de codicia–, su ingenio mordaz en las réplicas, su agudeza en las observaciones. No es un esclavo al estilo plautino (fallax, urdidor de engaños y resoluto), sino terenciano:120 una comparsa que acompaña al enamorado, que contribuye al embrollo y a la intriga, sin intervenir directamente en el conflicto amoroso de su amo, como lo es el Pármeno celestinesco. También Lucrecia conserva los rasgos de la ancilla como criada fiel y
116 Para recomendar la frugalidad: “[Nepotulo] Dime, por favor, ¿qué es lo que cenais? / [Pison] Los manjares de Syro, que refiere Terencio” (Refectio scholastica, Convivium Syru apud Terentium = Ad. 376 ss.). 117 Por ejemplo, Real Cédula de Su Majestad de 1825, artículo 207; o la de 1826, artículo 81. 118 González Vázquez, “Poética de la comedia romana,” en Teatrología (Madrid: Ñaque, 2010), pp. 246–9. 119 María Rosa Lida de Malkiel, La originalidad artística de La Celestina (supra, n. 61). 120 González Vázquez, Diccionario del teatro (supra, n. 8), s.v.
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honesta –y con poco papel–, aunque en una posterior edición su personaje se revisara y se le añadieran rasgos psicológicos “realistas”. Según la segunda edición de la Celestina, dividida en 21 actos, la escena de la muerte de Calisto por las escaleras no se produce por azar, sino que la caída de la escalera se produce por la intervención de Traso, cuando Sosia advierte de la llegada de “alguien” que puede descubrir el amor ilícito de Calisto. Traso, un sicario profesional y leno, no llega por casualidad a la calle donde vive Melibea: recibe de Centurio el encargo de ir allí para punir a Calisto, responsable de tres muertes anteriores (Celestina, Sempronio y Pármeno).121 El apodo de “cojo” remite a la vida de lupanar y aparece acompañado de otros bellacos y rufianes que sólo deben asustar a Calisto. En el Argumento del Auto XIX (p. 561), una vez más se nombra a Traso y su aparición se relaciona con el castigo que reciben los amantes de amores ilícitos: «Estando Calisto dentro del huerto con Melibea, viene Traso y otros por mandado de Centurio a complir lo que avía prometido a Areúsa y a Elicia. A los quales sale Sosia; y oyendo Calisto desde el huerto, onde estava con Melibea, el ruido que traían, quiso salir fuera; la qual salida fue causa que sus días peresciessen…» Es Traso un personaje “mudo” que no pronuncia palabra, pero que determina el desenlace trágico. Su nombre se menciona en tres ocasiones y se narra su aciaga actuación, pero transforma en muerte lo que Centurio le había encomendado como barullo, cumpliendo, sin saberlo, la promesa de matanza que Centurio había hecho a las dos rameras y que éste no quiso hacer por cobardía. Con esta segunda redacción, el autor de La Celestina utiliza a Traso como típico personaje secundario de la comedia palliata, imprescindible para hacer avanzar la trama o para resolver el desenlace dramático, sin el cual, por poco papel que tenga o poca presencia que ocupe en el escenario, es imposible llegar al final.122 El Thraso militar del Eunuchus aparece en escena en pocas ocasiones (III, 1 y 2; IV, 7; V, 7, 8 y 9), pero es el elemento funcional que permite comprar un eunuco (y que el joven lo suplante para estar con su enamorada dentro de la casa de Tais). Como el Traso de La Celestina, se mueve en el mundo del burdel y, aunque fanfarrón, presume de sacar su espada a la mínima provocación (III, 1). En IV, 7 decide asaltar la casa de Tais y propinar una paliza, armando alboroto con unos compinches (el “centurio” Sanga, Dónax, Simalión y Sirito), acción que pretende ejecutar en V, 7 y a la que se oponen Gnatón y Parmenón. En Toledo, en 1526, Ramón de Petras imprime por primera vez una edición de La Celestina con un acto más (el XIX nuevo, de unas 6 páginas) que eleva el total a 22: «Y nueuamente añadido el tratado de Centurio y el auto de Trasso y sus compañeros. Nuevamente historiado (…) «Este auto decimo nono fue añadido en la presente obra,
121 Patrizia Botta, “… y nuevamente añadido el Auto de Traso y sus compañeros”, Ínsula. Revista Bibliográfica de Ciencias y Letras, Año 28, 633 (1999), pp. 9–11. 122 González Vázquez, “El personaje secundario en las comedias de Terencio,” en: Estudios sobre Terencio (supra, n. 93), pp. 291–312.
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que hasta aquí no estaua.».123 En este Auto de Traso se le adjudica un papel, un ambiente, una amiga, unos enemigos, otros rufianes que le acompañen en su empresa, y se le otorgan rasgos semejantes a Centurio. Y sobre todo se le adjudica un rol criminal, tan sobresaliente en tiempos pasados que le dejó fama de matón en frase proverbial que corría por toda la ciudad (ed. Criado y Trotter, p. 316): «… la maldicion mas comun que por boca de todos se usaua: “A manos de Traso mueras, en su poder fenezcas”»; el autor de El Auto (probablemente un jurista procesado en Toledo por la Inquisición en 1555 y absuelto por intercesión de amigos) reconoce la herencia de Terencio, al que alude cuando denomina «Terencia» a la tía de la ramera. También en Celestina comentada,124 el primer comentario extenso que ilustra cómo se leía la Celestina en el XVI, ocupa Terencio un lugar importante. Interesa el Terencio sentencioso y moralista, inspirador de temas y motivos para Fernando de Rojas, pues el autor observa que determinados versos terencianos aparecen adaptados en la Celestina (una treintena, según he encontrado). Así se comprueba, p. e., en el verso 20 del Auto Segundo: “que nunca yerro vino desacompañado”. Estas son palabras en efecto de Terencio en la 2125 comedia en el acto 5 que dize ansi: «Aliud ex alio malum»”; o en 12, 9 “Adonde ai verdad. Estas son palabras de Terencio en la 3 commedia [escena 3] que dize: « Ubinam est fides?». No podía Pedro Manuel de Urrea sustraerse a la influencia de Terencio al componer su Penitencia de amor (1514), donde el amor difícil del joven por la amada, la ayuda de sus criados y las peripecias se escriben al modo y estilo “humilis” terencianos: “Esta obrezilla por ser toda su calidad cosa de amores, pareçe que se aparta de la condición y virtud de vuestra señoría (…). Esta arte de amores está ya muy usada en esta manera por cartas y por çenas, que dize el Terencio; y naturalmente en estylo del Terencio lo que hablan en ayuntamiento. Mas ésta es cosa que el stylo no se puede quitar ni vedar, pues que las mismas razones no sean (…). Ninguno puede hazer ni dezir cosa que no paresca a lo dicho y hecho; nadie puede trobar syno por el estylo de otros, porque ya todo lo que es a sido”.126 Francisco de Aldana compone las Octavas del Juicio Final donde describe la salida de los muertos de sus tumbas, la resurrección de la carne, los cadáveres en descomposición con sus lápidas a cuestas, etc. El poema, de clara escenografía medieval, tiene una configuración teatral en torno a tres espacios: Paraíso, Tierra e Infierno. Terencio es un personaje de la escena que asume el papel de prólogo-testigo que informa y participa de los hechos que describe (vv. 61 ss.): está situado delante de
123 Botta, “y nuevamente” (supra, n. 121). 124 He utilizado la edición de Louise Fothergill-Payne et al., Celestina comentada (Salamanca: Ed. Univ. de Salamanca, 2002), que edita el Ms. 17631 de la Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid. Peter E. Russell, “El primer comentario crítico de La Celestina: cómo un legista del siglo XVI interpretaba la Tragicomedia,” en: Temas de La Celestina y otros estudios: del Cid al Quijote (Barcelona: Ariel: 1978), pp. 293–321. 125 Eunuchus, v. 987 (supra, n. 94). 126 Prólogo. Edición de José Luis Canet, Anexos de la Revista Lemir (2003), p. 49.
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un atril leyendo las obras de Terencio, mientras “abajo” actúan unos actores, originando un metateatro que se apoya en la tramoya, pues unos espíritus alados construyen una “máquina” que ilumina el Paraíso y muestra a los personajes como actores, enseñando ese movimiento a la vista del público.127 Juan del Encina (1468–1530) aprendió de Nebrija el sermo humilis de Terencio. Sus Églogas V, VII y VIII son “cuadros escénicos” de poesía en los que utiliza distintas técnicas expresivas y dramáticas heredadas de la palliata terenciana: p.e., las expresiones “Dame a Dios que…” (Égl. V, 8; Égl. VII, 175) remiten al “ita me di ament” (Eun. 474); o el saludo de Pascuala “Mingo, Dios te dé salud” (Égl. VII, 34) evoca el de Siro “Di, tibi, Demea, omnes semper omnia optata offerant” (Ad. 978). La fórmula de presentación de personajes en sus Églogas reproduce las acotaciones escénicas “procede tu huc, accede huc”, como “Ha, Mingo, ¿quedaste atrás? / Passa, passa acá delante” (Eun. 469 ss.). Versos en los que se alude al buen consejo –recte suades, bene mones (Heau. 996, An. 374)- los encontramos en “Muy bien me has aconsejado. / Más tengo mucho temor / de caer en muy gran falta” (Égl. VIII, 64 ss.); también aquellos en los que se protesta por la burla del interlocutor: “[Mingo]: ¿Dime, dime qués aquesso?/ ¿Es cosa de carne y huesso? / ¿O soncas burlas de mí? [Gil]”Guárdeme Dios. ¿Yo de ti?” (Égl. VIII, 450–3 y Ad. 696–7). Tampoco se sustrajo el poeta a ciertos monólogos sufridos, como en la Representación ante el Príncipe don Juan (vv. 317– 320): “Y este triste, sin sentido, / tan vencido, / tan preso, tan cativado” (Eun. 305 y An. 82–3).128 Bartolomé de Torres Naharro (1485–1530) expone en el Prohemio de su Propalladia la preceptiva teórica sobre la “comedia a fantasía”, inspirada en Donato. La división en cinco jornadas (con “descansaderos”, para evitar el mortal aburrimiento que sentían ciertas damas en las representaciones de Plauto en Italia) y la ampliación del número de personajes (cuatro le parecían limitados) son dos innovaciones que triunfarían después, pero mantiene dos conceptos terencianos importantes: la revisión del entorno social en el escenario y el “decoro”, entendido no en términos morales, sino “dando a cada uno lo suyo”, es decir, adecuando a cada personaje las características que necesita: p.e., la chica humilde con la que pretende casarse Floribundo en la Calamita tiene la oposición del padre, Euticio, hasta el descubrimiento de que ella es la hija perdida de un caballero, con unos criados que mantienen las convenciones del género (concretamente del Heautontimorumenos).129 La crítica aleja a Torres Naharro de la poética terenciana en el tratamiento de sus personajes (separación de amos y criados en grupos sociales que no interaccionan), pero el uso
127 Lola González, “Iconografía y dramaturgia medieval en las Octavas sobre el Juicio Final de Francisco de Aldana,” en: Actas del XII Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas (Birmingham: Universidad of Birmingham, 1995), pp. 257–65. 128 Framiñán, “Vestigios de Terencio” (supra, n. 95), pp. 355–7. 129 McPheeters, Bartolomé de Torres Naharro (supra, n. 76), pp. 10–13, 31–2.
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que hace del personaje de los criados –con otro dibujo más perfilado– sigue las pautas literarias de la palliata. Ya desde el s. XVIII se ha identificado la huella terenciana en la obra de Lope de Rueda (1510–1565): en el monólogo del criado Gargullo, p. e., en la comedia Medora, donde, además del tono y del estilo –“sus comedias y farsa tienen una nativa gracia que deleyta y no se descubre fácilmente (…), restaurador del buen gusto en el Theatro”–,130 hay suplantación, la petición de ayuda al público (los “vecinos”) y el engaño de la bolsa de dinero tan típicas de la palliata. La comedia humanística latina nace y se desarrolla en el ambiente escolaruniversitario y en ellas hay un profundo conocimiento de Terencio: son comedias a imitación del teatro romano, pero sin el rigor clásico (no se dividen en actos, porque tampoco lo estaban los manuscritos), escritas en prosa (con argumento y prólogo), de temática amorosa (y sexual), con personajes “tipo” (padres severos, jóvenes enamorados, criados, medianera, matronas que se lamentan por la infelicidad en su matrimonio…) y final feliz. En esta tradición nacen en España las comedias anónimas de 1521 Thebayda, Seraphina e Hypólita, deudoras de La Celestina (entre otras obras), pero también de Terencio. La influencia –con diferencias de tratamiento entre ellas– se comprueba en el ambiente, en la configuración de personajes, en las fórmulas compositivas (p.e. en la “fórmula de despedida”: “Y así os quedá y holgaos entre esa gente de palaçio, y regozijaos bien, que yo, Pinardo, acabo de representar la comedia Serafina” (p. 394, ed. Canet, 1993) y en el espacio escénico (delante de la puerta de las casas), aunque se amplía con un segundo espacio (una habitación). Los temas se repiten: amor (sensual) y sus locuras, debates por la educación de los hijos, crítica del vicio, amor como esclavitud y dolor, etc. La intriga la complican los sirvientes y es Pinardo el que más se asemeja al esclavo terenciano en su caracterización. En el marco europeo del “Terencio cristiano” hay una tragicomedia de Romañá, de temática bíblica que sirve de excusa para poner en escena una palliata.131 La Comedia de Sepúlveda132 (ca. 1550) es el intento fugaz de introducir la comedia renacentista italiana (comedia erudita) en España, que habría de influir en Lope de Rueda y Timoneda. El autor se basó en Il Viluppo (1547) de G. Parabosco, pero en el prólogo manifiesta su interés por Terencio y Plauto (entre otros): no es
130 Blas Antonio Navarro, Prefacio de Comedias y Entremeses de Cervantes (Madrid: Imprenta de Antonio Martín, 1749), vol. I, p. 21 ss.; Casiano Pellicer, Tratado histórico sobre el origen y progresos de la comedia y del histrionismo en España (Madrid: Imprenta del Real Arbitrio de Beneficencia, 1804), pp. 22–30. 131 José Luis Canet Vallés, De la comedia humanística al teatro representable (Valencia: Uned, 1993), pp. 11–68; Manuel Molina Sánchez, “Plauto y Terencio en el Renacimiento español: la Tragicomoedia Gastrimargus de Jaime Romañá,” Florentia Iliberritana 18 (2007), pp. 311–31 (editada en Teatresco). 132 Alonso Asenjo, La comedia de Sepúlveda. Estudio y texto paleográfico-crítico (Londres: Támesis Books, 1990), y “La comedia de Sepúlveda y los intentos de comedia erudita” en: Teatro y prácticas escénicas (Valencia: Institució Alfons El Magnànim, 1984), pp. 301–28.
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sólo el amor contrapuesto al deber filial (y los distintos enfoques generacionales), sino otros elementos como la dualidad ciudad-campo, el triunfo del amor en la clase alta, el enredo, la función dramática en el desarrollo de la acción de los personajes “tipo” (el padre, el criado, el enamorado…), uso de acción “doble” (suplantación), pérdida del hijo (luego recobrado), acción dramática unitaria, estructura en argumento, prólogo (con captatio benevolentiae) y cuatro actos133 (no “jornadas”, como harán los imitadores de Torres Naharro), además de la pintura convencional de los caracteres. Aunque en 1553 San Ignacio ordenó la supresión de la lectura de Terencio en sus Colegios, lo cierto es que en la comedia jesuítica es evidente la huella de la palliata. Esto es posible porque se cribaba enseñando a los alumnos a “Terencio sin Terencio” a través de textos escolares adaptados (expurgados) y de representaciones escénicas propias con cierto estilo terenciano que trataban de superar los preceptos clásicos influyendo en el futuro teatro nacional.134 Lo cierto es que la producción dramática que salía de los colegios jesuíticos en España tuvo una gran repercusión social y literaria, muchas de cuyas obras (no sólo las de imitación clásica), además de tener un uso docente para la enseñanza del latín, conservan el desarrollo de la acción dramática, algunos temas terencianos, la uis o la emoción de la comedia latina (anticipación de la situación al principio de una escena o anticipación parcial para desarrollar la intriga después), la caracterización de los personajes y las fórmulas de presentación de los mismos (con soldados, rústicos, etc.), la forma externa de expresión (distribución del diálogo, de los monólogos y de los soliloquios) e, incluso, el acompañamiento de música.135 No es de extrañar que, además de encontrar alusiones, paráfrasis y ecos, incluso se cite al propio Terencio en las obras, como, p.e., en la Occasio de Acevedo (vv. 1570–1575 ed. Sierra, 1997): “Hinc ego arbitror adolescentes flagitosos reddi, senibus quod uideant interdum scelera approbari. Sic enim ille terentianus Mitio mitis in adolescentem supra modum et plus aequo blandus atque
133 Así lo hará otro representante de la comedia erudita española: Alfonso Velázquez de Velasco en su Lena o El Celoso (1602). 134 Gil, Panorama social del humanismo español (1500–1800) (Madrid: Alhambra, 1981), pp. 155–63, 518. Gil, “Terencio en España” (supra, n. 93), pp. 447–50. A este respecto señala González Montañés, “El Teatro de los Jesuitas en Galicia en los siglos XVI y XVII,” Teatresco 2 (2007), p. 2: “En España se conservan algo más de dos centenares de obras, muchas mediocres pero algunas de alta calidad literaria, la mayoría anónimas y otras de autores conocidos (…) que cuentan entre los grandes dramaturgos del XVI, se inspiran frecuentemente en el teatro de Plauto y Terencio, y sirven de eslabón entre la generación de Lope de Rueda y las de Lope de Vega y Calderón, no por casualidad educados en los jesuitas” (http://parnaseo.uv.es/Ars/teatresco/Revista/Revista2/Revista2.htm); Jesús Menéndez Peláez, “El teatro jesuítico: sistema y técnicas escénicas. Las raíces del teatro de Calderón de la Barca,” en: Calderón, sistema dramático y técnicas escénicas (Almagro, 2001), pp. 33–76. 135 Teatro escolar latino del s. XVI: la obra de Pedro Pablo de Acevedo S.I., ed. V. Picón, A. Cascón, P. Flores, C. Gallardo, A. Sierra, E. Torrego (Madrid: Ediciones Clásicas, 1997 y 2006), vol. I y II (intr. V. Picón, pp. 7–46). Consúltese la bibliografía de estos autores.
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indulgens: non est flagitium (mihi crede) adolescentem scortari neque potare, non est neque fores effringere (…)”. Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio (1562–1635) es el exponente de la creación de la Comedia Nueva española y de la ruptura con la preceptiva clásica. Sin embargo, Góngora lo denominó “terenciano Lope” y el dramaturgo parecía no renegar de ello, pues Lope se lo tornó en “el español Terencio”.136 Lope conocía la obra terenciana y los comentarios sobre ella de Donato y de Robortello, cuyos versos recrea en sus obras con aforismos como en El peregrino en su patria (p. 561 y p. 322 ed. Peyton, 1971): “Con razón se admira Terencio de este género de enfermedad que así transforma a los ombres” (Eun.), o “Terenzio dize que carece de razón y de consejo” (Eun.); o en La Dorotea (p. 417, ed. Morby: 1968): “Tenéis razón, y más por el dicho vulgar, que las iras de los amantes son redintegración del amor” (An.). Lope se liberó del corsé que le impedía crear con libertad (“los que miran en guardar el arte, / nunca del natural alcanzan parte”),137 pero retuvo en su teatro temas y técnicas de la comedia terenciana (y plautina) importantísimas: el uso de la ironía, de la suplantación y del metateatro; el tipo del criado (gracioso, pedigüeño, enredador más que engañador, siempre ayudante solícito), el del hijo de familia enamorado y su duro padre (el conflicto generacional), el del hostelero (es decir, el “cocinero”, como en La Francesilla), el del militar fanfarrón y de la cortesana “discreta, pícara, grave, / decidora, limpia, vana, / cuanto en una cortesana / de Plauto y Terencio cabe” (La prueba de los amigos, v. 125b), aunque las amadas de Lope suelen ser la hija de una familia con buena posición con algún impedimento para la boda entre los jóvenes.138 Personajes, temas y tópicos que se mantienen y se renuevan.139 Los jóvenes enamorados pierden la libertad, como se lamenta Secretario (El Príncipe inocente, Acto 3, p. 122 ed. GómezCuenca, 1993): “Siempre he de ser desdichado; / algo me tiene guardado / amor, cuyo esclavo soy” o Liseno “amor mis caducos pasos mueve” (ibid. p. 83). El amor los abrasa y desespera: “¡por tu imposible amor me abraso y quemo!” (ibid. p. 88; Eun. vv. 72–73). A diferencia de la amada terenciana, la mujer en Lope no muestra pudor al exhibir sus más íntimos sentimientos: “rendida voy, y casi por la herida / el alma sale, / en llamas encendida” (Los hechos de Garcilaso, Jornada 1ª, p. 9). No pierde la razón y en muchas comedias de Lope lleva ella el impulso de la acción dramática, superando la pasividad que encontramos en la de Terencio. En el Quijote está presente Terencio en algunas citas sentenciosas, como “todo es morir y acabóse la obra y, según Terencio, más bien parece el soldado muerto en la batalla, que vivo y salvo en la huida” (2ª parte, cap. 24), pero Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547–1616) lo introduce de forma variada en su obra. En Los trabajos de
136 Soneto de Góngora a Quevedo y Sátira de Lope a Torres Rámila. Irving Rothberg, “Algo más sobre Plauto,” (supra, n. 81), pp. 61–6. 137 Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 77, 76 a, apud Rothberg (supra, n. 81), p. 64. 138 Ley, “La importancia de la comedia” (supra, n. 80), pp. 689–90. 139 González Vázquez, “Tópicos” (supra, n. 85), pp. 145–63.
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Persiles y Segismunda se ha sugerido la influencia de Adelphoe: “El yugo del matrimonio, que en la imaginación se representa tan apetecible y llevadero, suele agobiar los hombros que oprime (…). Caséme, dijo el otro ciudadano de Aténas, introducido en el Adélphos de Terencio (Acto V, esc. IV) y ¡oh, cuántas miserias esperimenté en el matrimonio!”.140 Buen conocedor de la teoría teatral, además de encontrar el argumento y motivos de Hecyra en La fuerza de la sangre y en La ilustre fregona, reflexiona a modo de prólogo sobre la tradición de la comedia (con Terencio como referente) y los límites de la innovación dramática en El rufián dichoso (esc. I, 2ª jornada) y en los versos finales de Pedro de Urdemalas. Su técnica compositiva revela la influencia de la palliata tanto en la estructura de la acción en algunas obras como El trato de Argel, como en la pervivencia de ciertos personajes (adulescens, criados, amada, etc.)141 Tirso de Molina (1579–1648) y Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681) mantienen en sus obras la huella terenciana que he señalado para Lope,142 pero cabe destacar el análisis que Juan Martínez de Salazar hizo en 1738143 entre Calderón y Terencio tanto en la estructura como en la dramaturgia según la Poética aristotélica, pues enfatiza la coincidencia en “el bosquejo de la fábula (…) y en él apuntar, y desmarcar distintamente las partes de cada persona, los costumbres, los genios, los fines, las escenas (…)”, reconocibles en la obra calderoniana y en la de Tirso (sea por influencia directa o por tradición). Otro “Terencio español” es Ruiz de Alarcón (1581–1639),144 un clásico entre modernos o un moderno para su época, el creador de un teatro ético en España según Corneille: “Escribe él para aleccionar. Escribe para que cada espectador asome su alma al espejo de la moralidad y se vea como es y reaccione y procure mejorarse. […] Alarcón se refiere a casos, a cosas, a sucesos perfectamente humanos. Nada de andarse por las nubes”.145 Falta un estudio minucioso para establecer si hay una relación directa entre Alarcón y Terencio, pero observo que en su prólogo de La verdad sospechosa aprovecha el recurso forense terenciano: «El autor al vulgo»: Contigo hablo, bestia fiera, que con la nobleza no es menester, que ella se dicta más que yo sabría. Allá van esas Comedias, trátalas como sueles, no como es justo, sino como es gusto, que ellas te miran con desprecio, y sin temor, como las que pasaron ya el peligro de tus silbos y ahora pueden sólo pasar el de tus rincones. Baltasar Gracián y Morales (1601–1658) nombra a Terencio –a quien leía en latínen tres obras: El Héroe, Arte de Ingenio y en El Criticón. En su polémica epistolar con Manuel de Salinas éste utiliza también al comediógrafo para justificar sus argumen-
140 Trabajos de Persiles y Segismunda, prefacio de J. Antonio Pellicer (Nueva York, 1827), vol. I, p. 24. 141 González Vázquez, “La influencia de la dramaturgia latina en el teatro de Cervantes,” en: Cervantes y el Teatro, Theatralia 5 (2004), pp. 77–86. 142 González Vázquez, “Tópicos del amor” (supra, n. 85). 143 Diario de los literatos de España (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1738), vol. IV, p. 56. 144 Elisa Pérez, “La influencia de Plauto y Terencio en el teatro de Ruiz de Alarcón,” Hispania 11 (1928), pp. 131–49. 145 AA. VV., Historia General de las Literaturas Hispánicas (Barcelona: Barna, 1953), vol. III, p. 276.
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tos, moviéndose entre el desprecio por el género cómico y el aprecio por Terencio como autor modélico en cuanto a estilo y sentencias didácticas.146 El sistema de trabajo de Gracián con las fuentes clásicas consistía en la creación de un codex excerptorius a partir de sus lecturas, del que extraía los textos anotados para utilizarlos en sus escritos o para justificar sus polémicas literarias en su epistolario.147 Gracián apoda a Agustín Moreto y Cavana (1618–1669) el “Terencio de España” (Criticón, 3ª parte, crisi octava) por su humor elegante e inteligente, porque evita las situaciones farsescas o la exageración de los caracteres en la búsqueda de nuevas variaciones de viejos temas, con unos criados que tratan de mantener a su señor lejos del error. Agustín de Salazar y Torres (1642–1675) compuso cuatro comedias de amor en las que encontramos los tópicos de la comedia romana y sus temas, si bien es difícil establecer si esta influencia procede del teatro áureo (o incluso de la ópera). En También se ama en el Abismo y en La gran comedia de Tetis y Peleo los amantes y sus criados pertenecen al mundo de la mitología, pero el amor, sus impedimentos y sus cuitas se mantienen en la estela terenciana (“Non plus ultra era su cuello / en columna de marfil, / como quien dice, lo hermoso / pudo llegar hasta aquí”, Tetis, vv. 563–566). A pesar de que en el XVII Terencio es desterrado de las escuelas y no hay nuevas traducciones de sus comedias, estas muestras me permiten incidir en un aspecto: en esta época no sólo es Terencio modelo de estilo para la composición literaria, sino que su influencia se extiende por la cultura popular, tanto en el refranero (en refranes se convierten sus sententiae), como en anécdotas: “En Alcalá porfiaua un hombre con su mujer que estaua muy salada la olla. Y sobre esta porfia preguntaronlo à la una niña, que estaua en la mesa, si estaua salado, y gustando el potage respondió: en verdad que puede leer a Terencio. Estaua entonces en Alcala un catedratico, que leya a Terencio, que se llamaua Salado”.148 En esta difusión sin duda influyó el libro del s. XVI de Alonso Sánchez de la Ballesta, Diccionario de vocablos castellanos aplicados a la propiedad latina (Salamanca, 1587), donde Terencio aparece bien representado.
3.3 Siglos XVIII–XIX Ese calado en la cultura popular nos conduce hasta un Terencio que sirve para explicar el origen del refranero español: “Vean finalmente con qué corazón pueden hacer banquetes los que saben aquello que dice Terencio: no tiene que ver la luxuria
146 Pablo Cuevas Subías, “Salinas y los clásicos: el autor epistolar,” Alazet 14 (2002), p. 112. 147 María Pilar Cuartero, “La pervivencia de los autores clásicos en Gracián,” Alazet 14 (2002), pp. 77–101. 148 Melchior de Santa Cruz, Floresta española de apoteghmas, o sentencias, sabia y graciosamente dichas de algunos españoles (Bruselas: Casa de Huberto Antonio, 1629), p. 374.
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con la mesa templada. Escóndese el ídolo de la invidia debaxo de un refrancillo que no tiene autor y dice: primero a mí y después á ti”.149 Como icono cultural, Terencio interesa como “teorización” para explicar cómo deben insertarse sentencias en una comedia para no incurrir en el abuso o en el aburrimiento, o como ejemplo de elocuencia del personaje cuando se declama un parlamento: “El estilo ha de ser llano, puro, natural, y fácil, sin quitar por esso el que en alguna ocasion levante la voz (…) Las sentencias han de guardar un medio, no han de ser tantas, que se fastidie el auditorio; ni tan de tarde en tarde, que se pierda el fin de la comedia, que es limpiar el alma de vicios (…) y deben decirse sin mucha magestad, y en boca de quien por su edad, oficio y costumbres, parezca bien la doctrina. Cotejese esta sentencia de Terencio: tal es cada uno, qual quiere que sea su hijo”.150 El comediógrafo romano es muy valorado por los eruditos; en las reseñas de prensa de los nuevos autores o en las introducciones de obras literarias y académicas se incide en este “nuevo arte poético” y en su aplicación a la literatura (antigua y contemporánea), especialmente por la belleza de sus diálogos y el encanto de su estilo y dicción, o por la aplicación política y didáctica de la moral y de la cultura a través de las letras (una especie de “filosofía teatral”), lo que podemos entender como una reescritura de la (vieja) poética en la que la moderación de la vis comica y la acción tranquila caracterizan a Terencio y a sus imitadores.151 Por eso, que Leandro Fernández de Moratín (1760–1828) utilice la escena para poner en evidencia la crítica social, su compromiso con el individuo, la contraposición entre campo y ciudad, el triunfo del sentimiento y, sobre todo, su estilo elegante en el marco del clasicismo teatral español lo acercan a la comedia terenciana. En El sí de las niñas encontramos la unidad de tiempo y acción, la tranquilidad en el ritmo de la acción (comedia “stataria”), la dualidad de personajes (enamorada y criada, enamorado y criado, “matrona” y “viejo” contrapunto de la mujer) y un tema amoroso conocido en la palliata plautina: el del viejo que se casa con la chica pobre. Sin embargo, Don Diego no es un viejo152 plautino, pese a su
149 Antonio de Capmany, Teatro histórico-critico de la eloquencia española (Madrid, 1786), vol. 1, p. 253. 150 Real Seminario de Nobles de Madrid, Colección de varios tratados curiosos, proprios y muy utiles para la instrucción de la noble juventud española (Madrid: Oficina de Joseph Rico, 1757), vol. IV (De la Poesía), p. 368. 151 Por poner algunos ejemplos, consúltense Pedro Estala, El Pluto. Comedia de Aristófanes traducida del griego en verso castellano con un discurso preliminar sobre la comedia antigua y moderna, (Imprenta de Sancha: Madrid, 1794), pp. 22 ss.; Melitón Fernández, Lección poética. Sátira contra los vicios introducidos en la poesía castellana (Madrid: Real Academia Española, 1782), p. 30; José Antonio González de Salas, Tragedia práctica i observaciones que deben preceder a la tragedia española (Madrid, 1778), pp. 33–4; Francisco Sánchez Barbero, Principios de retórica y poética (Madrid, 1805), p. 241; Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro, Historia de la vida del hombre (Madrid, 1789), vol. IV, cap. VII, p. 427, llega a escribir: “Terencio colocó las suyas [comedias] en la virilidad, con su pensar patético y sublíme”. 152 González Vázquez, Diccionario (supra, n. 8), s.v. senex.
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empeño matrimonial, sino terenciano, pues en él presenta Moratín la confrontación entre dos generaciones que, como en Adelphoe o en Heautontimorumenos, utiliza su autoridad para que triunfe el amor de los jóvenes sobre sus propios intereses, siempre en aras de lo que debe ser la buena educación de la juventud: “esto resulta del abuso de autoridad, de la opresión que la juventud padece…” (p. 164, ed. J. Montero: 1980).153 Un guiño al servus es la crítica a enseñar a las mujeres “el temor, la astucia y el silencio de un esclavo” (p. 144) y la caracterización psicológica de los personajes es la misma que encontramos en la comedia terenciana, cuya deuda se reconoció ya en la época: “cuáles son los progresos que el arte debe á los ingenios que le han cultivado, puede responderse que la poesía les debe todo, pues que les debe su restauración un tiempo en que ya no había musas en España (…) Lo es la comedia de Terencio, no conocida tampoco en toda su pureza hasta que con tanto aplauso la presentó en el teatro Moratín”.154 En este contexto llegaron a la escena dos comedias costumbristas de inspiración terenciana y autores anónimos: Glyceria (el manuscrito, fechado en 1775, se encuentra en la Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid y consta su representación en Valladolid, en 1787) y La suegra y la nuera, que se representó en el Teatro de la Cruz de Madrid en 1781, el mismo escenario en el que fue representada en enero de 1801 la comedia en tres actos y verso de Francisco Meseguer (autor de una perdida traducción de Andria), El chismoso, que trata el tema de la mentira con influjo terenciano.155 Hasta encontrar en 1875 una curiosa comedia firmada por Enrique Pérez Escrich, El maestro de hacer comedias, de gran raigambre literaria que busca pretendida e irónicamente la herencia de la palliata y de su tradición (ambientación, temática, metateatro, personajes…): REDONDO: “Es justo que dos ingenios como nosotros se vean postergados? ¿No rendimos a Plauto y Terencio venia? CUADRADO: ¿No nos ajustamos siempre a sus preceptos y reglas? JERÓNIMO: Todo lo tiene bueno la Baltasara; Todo lo tiene bueno, también la cara”156.
153 Hay que analizarlo con la distancia del tiempo, pues el influjo de otros dramaturgos, como Molière o Calderón puede rastrearse como influencia directa. De hecho, Don Carlos se hace llamar Don Félix de Toledo en esta comedia en honor de los galanes, como el protagonista de Antes que todo es mi dama. 154 Juan Manuel Josef Quintana, Tesoro del Parnaso Español (París, 1838), vol. XV, p. 422. 155 Blanco, La desigual fortuna (supra, n. 40), pp. 32, 34, 79; Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Biblioteca hispano-latina clásica Vol. 44 (Madrid: CSIC, 1952), pp. 107, 116. 156 No tengo hueco para ampliar el análisis de esta obra, que se puede consultar en la Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes (http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/).
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3.4 Siglo XX José Luis Pinillos (1875–1922) usaba el pseudónimo de “Pármeno” en honor al criado celestinesco (y terenciano) por su valentía, atrevimiento y travesura: esto desvela una literatura implacable que en su obra dramática se traduce en un drama urbano, donde se plantea la dualidad campo–ciudad, las dificultades sociales que debe afrontar el individuo, el distinto planteamiento de la vida entre padres e hijos o la presentación idealista frente a la racionalista al abordar los conflictos, incluso los de carácter doméstico, con títulos como El vencedor de sí mismo (1900) o Los malcasados (1923).157 No parece Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) un autor en el que haya influido Terencio. En el marco de su concepción del drama, género en que la dimensión poética debe ser restituida como fruto de un esfuerzo consciente y en el que no cabe la improvisación, aparece la dramatización del personaje del poeta y su defensa por parte de un “Prólogo” que reproduce las convenciones de los prólogos terencianos. En el Retablillo de Don Cristóbal. Farsa para guiñol (1931) abre la comedia el “Prólogo hablado”: “Señoras y señores: El poeta, que ha interpretado y recogido de labios populares esta farsa de guiñol tiene la evidencia de que el público culto de esta tarde sabrá recoger, con inteligencia y corazón limpio, el delicioso y duro lenguaje de los muñecos (…) Así pues, el poeta sabe que el público oirá con alegría y sencillez (…) (Sale el poeta) “Hombres y mujeres, atención; niño, cállate. Quiero que haya un silencio tan profundo que oigamos el glú-glú de los manantiales (…) para oír y ver las cosas de doña Rosita, casada con don Cristóbal, y las cosas de don Cristóbal, casado con doña Rosita (…)”. En La zapatera prodigiosa es el “Autor” el que personifica el papel de “Prólogo” oratorio o forense y pide la captatio benevolentiae para el poeta pervirtiendo ciertas normas de la palliata: “Respetable público… No, respetable público no, público solamente, y no es que el autor no considere al público respetable, todo lo contrario, sino que detrás de esta palabra hay como un delicado temblor de miedo y una especie de súplica para que el auditorio sea generoso con la mímica de los actores y el artificio del ingenio. El poeta no pide benevolencia, sino atención (…). Por ser el teatro en muchas ocasiones una finanza, la poesía se retira de la escena en busca de otros ambientes donde la gente no se asuste (…)”. La poesía de vanguardia no huye de Terencio, del que se valora el valor humano y el compromiso solidario del poeta con el mundo que lo rodea, la humanitas tantas veces reivindicada, según se comprueba en la generación del 27:158 Vicente Aleixandre, en el comienzo de una de las Primeras prosas poéticas, “Mundo poético” (p. 1491), recrea el famoso verso del Heautontimorumenos (v. 77) y lo adapta al mundo del poeta, convirtiéndolo en un compromiso social de su literatura: “Poeta eres y nada 157 Didier Awono Onana, El teatro de López Pinillos, “Parmeno” (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 2004). 158 Andrés Ortega Garrido, La materia clásica en las vanguardias españolas (Madrid: Universidad Complutense, 2009), pp. 588, 602–3.
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de la poesía te es ajeno”. En “Versos humanos” (I, 561), que abre el libro Hasta siempre, Gerardo Diego asume la filosofía terenciana para insertarse en el mundo, conformando una parte sustancial de la tendencia tradicionalista en la obra del poeta santanderino: “Versos humanos, ¿por qué no? Soy hombre y nada de lo humano debe serme ajeno. Pena, amor, amistad. Si hay quien se asombre, si hay quien se escandalice, es que no es bueno”.
Dentro de la sección “Epigramas” de Y otros poemas (p. 401), Jorge Guillén da una vuelta de tuerca e invierte la aseveración del cómico latino, quizás planteando un “humanismo pragmático”: El insensato, fanfarrón, nos dijo: “Heme aquí. Nada, nada me es ajeno”. Sonrió, muy cortés, el más sensato. Hombre soy. Casi todo me es ajeno.”
Si he empezado relacionando a Terencio con la universidad, así concluyo, pues nuestro autor se redescubre gracias a la universidad de Valencia (Grup Sagunt) en colaboración con el dramaturgo Juanjo Prats, cuyo texto, Terentius (en valenciano), dirigido por Pep Cortés, se estrenó en 1997. Aparece en él la esencia tantas veces repetida que caracteriza al autor romano: no sólo la estructura, los personajes y la técnica de sus comedias se reconocen, también la presencia de reflexiones, la unión entre acción y reflexión, y la crítica social por la situación actual del teatro y de los artistas.159
159 Carmen Morenilla-Patricia Crespo, “Terentius o el arte viejo de hacer comedias nuevas,” en: Estudios sobre Terencio (supra, n. 93), pp. 479–511.
Robert Tordoff
Reform: A Farce Modernised from Aristophanes (1792) Abstract: In 1792, a pseudonymous adaptation of Aristophanes’ Wealth 112–246 was printed in London. The most striking aspect of the translated text is the transformation of the blind god Ploutos into the British national caricature of John Bull, and of Chremylus into Thomas Paine. The latter tries to open the former’s eyes to the sink of political corruption in which he is mired and to his power to bring about revolutionary change. The text, titled Reform: a farce modernised from Aristophanes, was published by Francis Wrangham (1769–1842), a 23-year-old Cambridge graduate with a talent for classical languages, an interest in radical politics and aspirations to an academic career. The latter two qualities turned out to be incompatible, and Wrangham’s wit proved his undoing when his election to a Cambridge fellowship was blocked in 1793. Reform reveals an intriguing fusion of late 18th-century political satire and classical scholarship. Its author adapts Aristophanes’ verses on the corrosive power of money to a dialogue between a conservative establishment and its most vehement critics in a Britain in crisis.
The Title Page On the title page of Reform: a farce modernised from Aristophanes, authored by S. Foote Jr.1 (with the select annotations of Bellend., Mart. Scrib., T.P., and the complete annotations of Cantab., Anti-P., and Hyper-Bell.), stand two epigraphs; the first is in Latin, the second in English. Unusually in this slender octavo volume, which
This essay—no more than an eclectic footnote in the history of translating Aristophanes—is offered to the honorand of this volume, Jeffrey Henderson, in gratitude for many things, among them his very great contribution to the translation of Aristophanes into English. I would like to thank S. Douglas Olson for painstaking editorial work on this piece, and Wolfgang Haase for the original invitation to contribute an essay and for his judicious guidance in its earlier stages. Translations of classical authors are from the Loeb Classical Library unless otherwise indicated. All remaining errors and infelicities are my own. 1 S. Foote Jr. (= Francis Wrangham), Reform: a farce modernised from Aristophanes (London: R. Edwards, 1792). Samuel Foote was an actor and dramatist whose career flourished in the 1740s and 1750s and who styled himself “the English Aristophanes.” As Edith Hall, “The English-Speaking Aristophanes, 1650–1914,” in: Edith Hall and Amanda Wrigley (eds.), Aristophanes in Performance 421 BC– AD 2007 (Oxford: Legenda, 2007), p. 74, explains, Foote’s comedy had little to do with Aristophanes; instead, his soubriquet was intended to advert to an “apolitical brand of satirical revue, involving ad hominem jokes and mimicry at the expense of what we would now call ‘celebrities’.” Our author therefore fashions himself as the heir to a tradition of personal, not political, satire.
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sold originally for one shilling,2 the Latin tag is accompanied by a citation explaining that the quotation begins from Horace’s Satires I.4.3. Si quis erat dignus describi, quod Malus aut FUR, Quod MOECHUS foret aut SICARIUS aut alioqui Famosus, multa cum libertate notaba[n]t. If there was anyone deserving to be drawn as a rogue and a thief, as a rake or cut-throat, or as scandalous in any other way, [they] set their mark upon him with great freedom. (Trans. H. R. Fairclough)
Satires I.4.3–5 is an apt motto for this translation and adaptation of Aristophanes. The subject of the main clause, the mysterious “they” (or, as printed, “he”—an inadvertent slip or a deliberate alteration underlining the creative appropriation of classical texts?), is left undefined, perhaps gesturing to the disguise of the Reform’s authorship. The opening lines of Satire I.4 in fact praise the license with which the Old Comic poets of Athens practised their art. Among them, in the unquoted first line, Horace singles out Aristophanes (in company with the other canonical representatives of the genre, Cratinus and Eupolis) for special mention. The “great freedom” with which they were able to pursue their victims, whether scoundrels, thieves, adulterers, assassins or other reprobates, contrasts tellingly with the secrecy—and the constraint it implies—surrounding the identity of the author who has adapted Aristophanes’ Wealth in Reform. The first epigraph also stands as a signpost toward the writer’s poetics of learned allusion. Satires I.4 presents a series of criticisms of poets who have attempted to write satire, and a genealogy of the form, with Lucilius following in the tracks of the Greek poets of Old Comedy, adapting only the meters to the Latin language (lines 6–7, 39– 48).3 As the reader will discover, this is a self-reflexive, meta-poetic gesture toward the very practices of translation and adaptation through which Reform was created. Furthermore, Horace’s satire pointedly presents its author as someone who has no wish to make a name for himself (I.4.71–8): he does not place his works upon a pillar (i.e. to display them for sale) or a market stall, nor does he recite them in the Forum or the bath-house with its marvellous acoustics; instead, he performs them exclusively
2 Reform was printed for Richard Edwards, bookseller, of 142 Bond Street, London. It may have been one of Edwards’ earliest ventures, since the first reference to his bookselling business I have been able to trace appears in the 1792 issue of Kent’s Directory: Cities of London and Westminster, and Borough of Southwark. An alphabetical list of the names and places of abode of the directors of companies, persons in public business, merchts., and other eminent traders in the cities of London and Westminster, and Borough of Southwark (London: 1792). 3 For the tradition of Lucilius as the “inventor” of the genre of satire, see Hor. Sat. I.10.48. After experimenting with various other metrical forms, Lucilius chose the hexameter and is thus credited with establishing it as the “default” for the genre.
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among friends, and even then only with their express encouragement.4 The subtlety of the first allusion in Reform is such that even the apparently seamless integument behind which the author conceals himself is itself disguised by an allusive literary synecdoche. The second epigraph, immediately below the first, reads thus: Were any FAITHLESS TO HIS WEDDED JOAN, SMUGGLER, or RUFFIAN, or the THREE IN ONE, The Bard with honest Liberty of Pen Expell’d him from the “cheerful Haunts of Men;” Pursued him through his Labyrinth of Sin; First mark’d him selling Stays, then seizing Gin; Next of his Country’s Foes the Scribe and Friend, And last – But who shall say WHERE those Things end? ANON.
Not only is the author’s name concealed, but the identity of the target of Reform is veiled by the playful allusions in these verses. As the reader will only be surely informed on p. vii of Reform, it is in fact Thomas Paine (1737–1809): inventor, revolutionary and author of The Rights of Man, the first part of which was published in 1791, the second in 1792, the same year as Reform. This is made less than precisely clear at this point, however, by the vague charges of marital infidelity, smuggling and violence, which roughly translate the Latin fur, moechus and sicarius. As later becomes apparent from the footnotes to Reform, its author has read Francis Oldys’ hatchet-job biography of Paine, the first edition of which was published in London in July 1791;5 the charge of infidelity (“FAITHLESS TO HIS WEDDED JOAN”6) for example, as one discovers by reading Oldys, is an allusion to Paine’s separation from his wife, Elizabeth Ollive, in 1774, when Paine left England for Philadelphia.7
4 For the professed hesitation to publish, cf. 22–3. 5 F. Oldys, The Life of Thomas Pain, the author of Rights of Man. With a defence of his writings (London: John Stockdale, 1791). Francis Oldys is another pseudonym; he was in fact George Chalmers (1742– 1825), Scots lawyer, author and employee of the Board of Trade, who published in 1782 an Estimate of the Comparative Strength of Great Britain, which became a standard work of reference for facts about British trade. Chalmers was paid handsomely by the British Government (he received 500 pounds) to write a damning popular biography of Paine. It is largely due to this act of political propaganda and character assassination that we know much in detail about the first 37 years of Paine’s life. For Chalmers and the importance of his work to biographers of Paine, see D.F. Hawke, Paine (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), pp. 231–2. 6 “Wedded Joan” is probably drawn from the popular phrase “Darby and Joan,” which can be traced back to at least the mid-18th century and was used to refer to an elderly, long-married couple. Its first known occurrence is in a ballad by John Woodfall published in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1735. See Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable s.v. “Darby and Joan.” 7 The marriage was never consummated, and Thomas and Elizabeth agreed to separate; they were never divorced and neither remarried. See Hawke, Paine (above n. 5), pp. 19–20. The sordid and
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Thomas, son of Joseph Pain8 and Frances (née Cocke), was born on 29 January 1737 (O.S.) and grew up in Thetford, England. There he learned his father’s trade of stay-making, which explains the first of three further allusive references to him in the phrases “selling stays,” “seizing gin,” and “of his country’s foes the scribe and friend.” Making stays was the highly skilled trade of crafting the rigid, whalebone struts used in women’s corsets. Paine himself followed the trade at more than one point in his impecunious and itinerant early adult life.9 “Seizing gin” refers to Paine’s employment (1764–1765) as an excise man in the town of Alford in Lincolnshire. In this post, Paine received a salary of 50 pounds per annum, out of which he was required to maintain a horse, on which he policed the “Alford Out-Ride.” The coast in that part of England was once a favorite landing spot for Dutch smugglers bringing gin into the country, because of its sandy shores and the absence of significant cliffs. Bribery, corruption and collusion with smugglers were rife among excise men, and even the honest were encouraged to cut corners by the impossible scale of the task confronting them. Chief among the techniques of corner-cutting was “stamping”: to save time, an excise man would take an importer’s word as to the amount and value of taxable goods he carried, without actually auditing the merchandise. In July 1765, the accusation that Paine had “stampt his whole ride” was lodged against him; he confessed and was relieved of his duties.10 The phrase “scribe and friend of his country’s foes” refers to Paine’s years in America and the patriotic “American Crisis” pamphlets he wrote there between 1776 and 1783. He was appointed Clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1779.11 His publication of the first and second parts of The Rights of Man in 1791 and 1792, in reply to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), sealed his notoriety, bringing upon him on December 18 1792 a prosecution in absentia for publishing works of seditious libel.12 Paine was sentenced to the medieval status of outlawry, according to which he was banished and his property declared forfeit, and he himself made liable to summary execution if he set foot in the country
unfortunate details of Paine’s protestations in defence of his sexual potency and the letter of consolation written by his mother to Elizabeth are collected by Oldys (above, n. 5), pp. 33–8. 8 Note the orthography of the surname. Paine only began to spell it with an “e” after his emigration to America in 1774. See Hawke, Paine (above, n. 5), p. 8. Cf. Oldys, Pain (above, n. 5), p. 2. 9 See Hawke, Paine (above n. 5), pp. 10–11. A caricature of 1793 “Fashion before Ease;—or—A good Constitution sacrificed for a Fantastick Form,” depicts Paine in a tricolor cockade, violently tightening Britannia’s corset while her spear and shield lie discarded on the ground. For the illustration, see T.L. Hunt, Defining John Bull: Political Caricature and National Identity in late Georgian England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), p. 134 ill. 57. 10 Hawke, Paine (above, n. 5), p. 12. 11 Hawke, Paine (above, n. 5), p. 102. 12 For a concise account of the trial, see C.B. Cone, The English Jacobins: Reformers in late 18th century England (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968), pp. 137–9.
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again.13 He never returned to England, dying in New York on June 8, 1809. This is the hidden target at whom, the author of Reform slyly insinuates, he will aim his satirical barbs. Taken together, the epigraphs and their significant juxtaposition parade the business of imaginatively perverse translation of classical languages into modern English and the habit of learned or abstruse allusion, which prove to be two of the guiding principles of the literary design of Reform. The armatures these principles form are fleshed out in the Preface and Introduction, which interpose themselves between the title page and the main body of the text of Reform; but this is perhaps the moment to reveal the man who wrote under the pseudonym “S. Foote Jr.”
The history of S. Foote Jr. Behind the mask of S. Foote Jr. is the face of the young Francis Wrangham, at the time the holder—with numerous distinctions—of a Cambridge B.A. Later, he became Archdeacon Francis Wrangham, devoted churchman, diligent servant of his parishioners, passionate advocate for and innovative implementer of charitable improvement in the lives of the poorest among his flock; moreover, father, poet, collaborator with William Wordsworth, scholar, biographer, undaunted lifelong supporter of liberal politics and self-confessed bibliomaniac.14 Francis Wrangham was born on June 11 1769 at Raysthorpe near Malton in Yorkshire, where his father George (1742–1791) was a tenant farmer. Francis, the only son, received a church education from the age of seven; subsequently, he attended Hull Grammar School for two years, before matriculating at Magdalen College,15 Cambridge, in October 1786, at the age of 17. At Cambridge, Francis swiftly achieved
13 For the sentence, see J. Hostettler, Thomas Erskine and Trial by Jury (Chichester: Barry Rose Law Publishers, 1996), p. 96. 14 Wrangham’s most assiduous biographer is Michael Sadleir, Things Past (London: Constable, 1944), pp. 201–24, originally published as Archdeacon Francis Wrangham. Supplement to the Bibliographical Society’s Transactions 12 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937). The latter contains detailed appendices, including a catalogue of Wrangham’s published works. For a short biography of Wrangham, see The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Wrangham, Francis. For Wrangham’s collaboration with Wordsworth on an imitation (never published) of Juvenal’s eighth Satire, see S. Gillespie, English Translation and Classical Reception: Towards a new literary history (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), pp. 123–49. For Wrangham’s book-collecting activities, see A. Bell, “Portrait of a bibliophile XX: Archdeacon Francis Wrangham, 1769–1842,” Book Collector 25 (1976), pp. 514–26. 15 The modern spelling “Magdalene” is a 19th-century innovation. Wrangham himself knew his college as Magdalen. It is thus that he spells it ca. 1830 in his manuscript autobiography (for which, see below, n. 49).
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academic reward and recognition, winning in his first year Sir William Browne’s gold medal for composition of epigrams in Greek and Latin.16 At the beginning of the following academic year, Dr. Joseph Jowett, Professor of Civil Law and Principal Tutor at Trinity Hall, invited the young Wrangham to transfer his talents to his college, whither the promise of minor scholarship beckoned. Wrangham accepted and took his B.A. in January 1790 at the age of 20, winning among other distinctions the Chancellor’s Medal for Classics. The son of a humble Yorkshire farmer seemed destined to rise to preferment, perhaps even greatness, in the University. Fully confident of election to the next fellowship available in the college, Wrangham passed up the well-remunerated post of tutor at Trinity Hall, meanwhile acting as tutor to the Duke of Manchester’s son, Lord Frederick Montagu, between July 1791 and the turn of 1792.17 In March 1793, Wrangham took his M.A., and in July of that year, at the age of 24, he was ordained, having obtained letters testimonial to the Archbishop of York from the tutors of Trinity Hall, Dr. Jowett and Mr. Wollaston; formally he was qualified to embark upon an academic career at Cambridge. In August 1793, a fellowship in Divinity became vacant at Trinity Hall, but a scholar of Queen’s College named John Vickers was elected in preference to Wrangham. Henry Gunning, a friend of Wrangham’s, reports the matter as follows in his memoirs of Cambridge life: Mr. Wrangham being qualified according to the statutes in point of residence, and as not possessing preferment in the Church of the annual value of six marks,18 offered himself a candidate; but the Rev. John Vickers, M.A., Fellow of Queens’ College, in the University of Cambridge … was on the first of November elected.19
Gunning provides the most detailed contemporary account available of the circumstances. He was acquainted with both Wrangham and George Smith, who represented Wrangham in his subsequent appeal to the Lord Chancellor, Lord Loughborough. With Vickers’ appointment, the rules as set out in the college statutes against electing a man who held an ecclesiastical office carrying a salary of more than six marks had been flouted. The election being void, Vickers duly resigned his ecclesiastical post on November 5 and was re-appointed to the Fellowship on the same day, after a second, hastily-run election. Wrangham protested. Michael Sadleir, Wrangham’s only modern biographer, regards the episode as a regrettable example of
16 These appear in his first volume of poetry, Poems, by Francis Wrangham (London: J. Mawman, 1795). 17 Sadleir, Things Past (above, n. 14), p. 203. 18 The mark was a unit of account equal to 13s 4d, or two-thirds of a pound. Thus six marks was four pounds. 19 Henry Gunning, Reminiscences of the University, town, and county of Cambridge from the year 1780. By the late Henry Gunning, M.A. Christ’s College; Senior Esquire Bedell2 (London: G. Bell, 1855), vol. II, p. 16.
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youthful enthusiasm for radical politics, and he forebears to uncover more details of the trial than is strictly necessary for a brief factual account of the matter.20 For the curious reader, Henry Gunning’s account is where a more detailed narrative of the trial and its circumstances may be unearthed; we shall turn to it presently.21 Although the delicacy with which Sadleir handles the subject belongs to a now vanishing age, and although nearly 220 years is a considerably longer span of time than the distance of 135 at which Sadleir wrote, it is saddening to think that the present essay does more to draw attention to the mordant and detectably juvenile humour of the young man who wrote Reform22 than to the life-long achievements of a man of the cloth, who died at the age of 73 after nearly 50 years of service to the Church and care for the corporeal as well as spiritual health of his parishioners, not to mention prolific publication; everything we know on the subject of Wrangham’s biography radiates energy.23 By way of small recompense, I hope that this piece will at least show how voracious a reader and how dedicated—if mischievous—a scholar of Latin and Greek Francis Wrangham was. Wrangham brought his petition to the Lord Chancellor as University Visitor, alleging procedural irregularities (some of the very few Fellows of Trinity Hall had not been present at either election, and one had voted in the first but been absent for the second) and a breach of the college statutes lacking any precedent; according to the 14th-century statutes of Trinity Hall, a Minor Scholar of the college was supposed to be preferred to all other candidates, provided he was idoneus moribus et ingenio.24 On the
20 Sadleir, Things Past (above, n. 14), p. 206. 21 The trial is recorded by F. Vesey, Reports of cases argued and determined in the High Court of Chancery from the year MDCCLXXXIX to MDCCCXVIII (Great Britain: Court of Chancery, 1844), vol. II, pp. 609–25, s.v. Wrangham, ex parte. Gunning’s account, which draws heavily on the court reports of the hearing, is found in Gunning, Reminiscences (above, n. 19), vol. II, pp. 12–32. More recent discussion of the trial and its circumstances may be found in C. Crawley, Trinity Hall: the history of a Cambridge college 1350–1975 (Cambridge: University Printing House, 1976), pp. 136–9. 22 Reform was published in 1792 and almost certainly after Wrangham turned 23 on June 11 of that year. The terminus post quem is provided by footnote b on p. v of the Introduction, in which the author quotes from the May 25 1792 edition of the newspaper the Morning Chronicle. Hall, “English-Speaking Aristophanes” (above, n. 1), p. 75, misleadingly asserts that Wrangham wrote Reform as an undergraduate. In fact, he had taken his B.A. in January 1790. Although it is possible that he worked on parts of Reform over several years, the extensive use of material published in 1792 (including the newspaper article mentioned above, the second volume of Paine’s Rights of Man and the third volume of Wakefield’s Silva Critica, see below nn. 84, 90) makes this unlikely. 23 For Wrangham’s charitable work, see Sadleir, Things Past (above, n. 14), pp. 218–19, 221–4. Among other activities, Wrangham was a tireless advocate for education for the poor; he also established a free dispensary in his parish of Hunmanby, founded with Dr. Lettson the Northern Sea Bathing Infirmary at Scarborough, established a Cow-Club in the East Riding (a kind of insurance scheme for small farmers) and founded a Savings Bank for small depositors, again to help the poor. For a catalogue of his published work, see Sadleir, Archdeacon Francis Wrangham (above, n. 14), Appendix II. 24 See Gunning, Reminiscences (above, n. 19), vol. II, p. 16. The relevant sections of the statutes of Trinity Hall are quoted by Vesey (above, n. 21), vol. II, pp. 609–11.
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other side, the Master of Trinity Hall, Sir William Wynne, and eight fellows of the college submitted sworn affidavits stating that Wrangham was not a “fit and proper person” to be elected. The issue of the subsequent trial, held in late June 1795, took a philological turn: it devolved upon the meaning of the Latin word mores. The college argued that it was not to be understood in the narrow sense “morals” but in the broad sense “manners,” and that while Wrangham’s “idoneity” in morals was above reproach, in respect of manners he was unsuitable. Wrangham constructed his petition, brought by the Solicitor General and his counsel Mr. G. Smith, on the argument that whereas mores in the best Latin authors applied to a society or nation must mean “manners,” when referring to an individual it had to mean “morals,” and that in no context could it embrace both meanings. His case presented a barrage of quotations from Terence, Quintilian, Horace, Virgil, Tacitus, Juvenal and Martial in support of this claim (in the order they were presented in the hearing: Ter. An. 395; Quint. Inst. XII.2.1; Hor. Carm. III.24.35, IV.4.35, Epist. I.2.20; Ars P. 156; Verg. Aen. I.264; Tac. Hist. II.95.3; Germ. I.19.5; Juv. 3.63, 140; Mart. X.32.5; XI.5.3; IX.101.21). In response, the fellows of the college, through their counsel Mr. Mansfield, cited a line of Ovid that concerns the difficulty encountered by the poet when faced with a sharp contrast between two objects of affection; Gunning quotes it thus: Haec specie melior, moribus illa fuit.
The verse in question is Amores II.4.46, and the couplet to which it belongs appears in the modern edition of McKeown thus: me nova sollicitat, me tangit serior aetas haec melior specie, moribus illa placet.
The college submitted that here mores cannot mean “morals” but must mean “manners,” given that the point of the comparison is between two ladies of what was once called “easy virtue.”25 The Chancellor concurred, supplying quotations from Cicero and Horace to support the point (Cic. Off. I.17.55–6; Hor. Epist. II.1.1–2). Wrangham’s petition was dismissed. Gunning’s assessment of the trial and the Chancellor’s decision is even-handed, despite his evident fondness for Wrangham.26 In his view, the petitioner, with an entirely unnecessary display of classical learning, set off on a wild-goose chase that ended in disaster when the college was able to knock down his case with half an elegiac couplet of Ovid. Meanwhile, the meaning of mores in the college statutes is to
25 E.J. Kenney, “Notes on Ovid,” CQ NS 8 (1958), pp. 54–66 (quotation p. 60), agrees: “mores means no more than ‘character,’ good or bad, often nearly = ‘behaviour’, and this is possessed even by ladies who are no better than they should be.” See also J.C. McKeown, Ovid Amores, vol. III: A Commentary on Book Two (Liverpool: F. Cairns, 1998), p. 83. 26 H. Gunning, Reminiscences (above, n. 19), vol. II, pp. 25–8.
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be sought in what Gunning calls “monkish” rather than classical Latin; in that context, of the Latin of the mid-14th-century statutes, it clearly does mean “morals” not “manners,” and those are the grounds on which Wrangham should have prepared his case. A number of factors contributed to Wrangham’s fall from favour. His humble background was undoubtedly one, but at the time the proximate cause was reportedly a bilingual pair of epigrams, allegedly composed by Wrangham, ridiculing Dr Joseph Jowett, his former sponsor at Trinity Hall: THIS little garden little Jowett made And fenc’d it with a little palisade: A little taste hath little Doctor Jowett This little garden doth a little shew it.27
Its Latin translation ran as follows: Exiguum hunc hortum fecit JOWETTULUS iste Exiguus, vallo et muniit exiguo Exiguo hoc horto forsan JOWETTULUS iste Exiguus mentem prodidit exiguam.28
Jowett, stung by the poem, replaced the shrubs with gravel, but then a two-line addendum was circulated: But when this garden made a little talk, little Jowett made a little gravel walk.29
In his autobiographical account of his years at Cambridge, Wrangham claims that he did not write the poem, pointing out that it would have been the height of foolishness to do so, given his reliance on Jowett’s good opinion.30 Furthermore, Gunning avows that … even after it was reported that Wrangham was to be opposed, and that one of the charges against him was his having written epigrams reflecting on Jowett, the latter still spoke of him with great kindness.31
27 More than one version of the English was in circulation, as Wrangham himself notes in the Preface to the original 1795 edition of his Poems. This is the version he quotes there in his account of his “Academical Life.” See Sadleir, Archdeacon Francis Wrangham (above, n. 14), p. 55. 28 Sadleir, Archdeacon Francis Wrangham (above, n. 14), p. 55. 29 Quoted by Gunning, Reminiscences (above, n. 19), p. 30. 30 “Who, that knew my fate to be dependent upon the nod of DR. JOWETT, could suppose I would incur the risque of being detected as the author.” Quotation: Sadleir, Archdeacon Francis Wrangham (above, n. 14), p. 55. 31 Gunning, Reminiscences (above, n. 19), vol. II, p. 28.
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Instead, Gunning suggests that the fuss over the epigrams was a distraction from the real motives behind the preferment of Vickers over Wrangham: Isaac Milner, Vice Chancellor of the University and President of Queens’ College, was the true architect of Wrangham’s fall, and one of his reasons for acting against Wrangham was a wish to install in the post a compliant supporter, through whom he would eventually exercise control over the college: Milner, however, was very desirous that a person should be appointed, who, when he succeeded to the government of the College, should be as obedient to his wishes as Jowett had always been. Vickers was a Fellow of Queens’, who had from his first coming, been patronised by Milner. His personal appearance was far from prepossessing, his manners were awkward and uncouth, and his classical attainments were of an inferior order.32
There was also a further, darker purpose behind Milner’s desire to prevent Wrangham’s election. It was quite clear that the Chancellor was perfectly acquainted with the real objection of the Fellows to the election of Wrangham, viz. his supposed attachment to republican principles.33
In Gunning’s view, Wrangham was the victim of a whispering campaign instigated by Milner: The more effectually to injure Wrangham, reports were circulated that he was a friend to the French Revolution, one who exulted in the murder of the king, and that he was in fact a republican. To the falsehood of these charges, every one who knew Wrangham (and his acquaintance was very extensive) could bear testimony.34
Gunning opines35 that behind Wrangham’s rejection there was at work the “sinister influence” that earlier led to the somewhat more high-profile departure from Cambridge of mathematician and political radical William Frend, fellow of Jesus College, whom the Vice-Chancellor’s Court banished from the University on the 30 May 1793, and whose cause Wrangham was said to have supported.36 The “sinister influence” was the determination of Milner to conjure up the spectre of a French party at Cambridge and then take the heroic lead in ensuring its extirpation. In Gunning’s view, the
32 Gunning, Reminiscences (above, n. 19), vol. II, p. 28. 33 Gunning, Reminiscences (above, n. 19), vol. II, pp. 30–1. 34 Gunning, Reminiscences (above, n. 19), vol. II, p. 29. 35 Gunning, Reminiscences (above, n. 19), vol. II, p. 31. 36 Gunning’s account of the Frend trial: Gunning, Reminiscences (above, n. 19), vol. I, pp. 255–85. The fullest and most proximate record of the proceedings is John Beverley, The Trial of William Frend, M.A. and Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge: in the Vice-Chancellor’s Court. For writing and publishing a pamphlet intitled Peace and Union (Cambridge: F. Hodson, 1793). For a study of the circumstances, proceedings, and the issue and aftermath of the Frend trial, see F. Knight, University Rebel: the life of William Frend (1757–1841) (London: Gollanez, 1971), pp. 118–70.
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Master of Trinity Hall, Sir William Wynne, “was made to believe by Milner that Wrangham was disaffected, and from that instant his fate was sealed.”37 Milner had written to Wilberforce after the Frend trial, claiming that the trial had destroyed Jacobinism “as a University thing,” the remnants of the French party being all but entirely confined to the enclave of Trinity College.38 And it was to Trinity that Wrangham went after the failure of his bid for election. There he made a living by tutoring until he obtained a position as curate in Cobham, Surrey in 1794.39 Late in 1795, after his petition failed that summer, Wrangham was made rector of Hunmanby-with-Folkton near Scarborough, with an income of 600 pounds per annum. He rose at the apogee of his career to become in 1828 Archdeacon of the East Riding of Yorkshire. If Milner did organize a plot against Wrangham, it was plausibly devised, and Wrangham’s own actions probably contributed greatly to its plausibility, especially if Reform had already been attributed to him. Regardless of the precise literary dynamics of Reform (discussed below), the content of the pamphlet is such as to have been grist to the rumor mill: merely by scripting a dialogue between Tom Paine and the British national caricature “John Bull”40 that pokes fun at both and does neither much if any credit, Wrangham tarred himself with the same brush that had blackened radical politics, Jacobin sympathies and republican tendencies. Levity on such subjects was unwise; although Britain had become resigned to the loss of the “colonies in rebellion” in North America as an accepted—if regrettable—fait accompli, distanced by several thousand miles of ocean, events across the Channel in 1789 were another matter. The French Revolution was a source of deep disquiet for the British landowning classes, who now feared a similar political earthquake in their own country. This was especially the case in 1793, the year of Wrangham’s failed election bid, after
37 Gunning, Reminiscences (above, n. 19), vol. II, p. 31. 38 Gunning, Reminiscences (above, n. 19), vol. I, p. 283. 39 Wrangham had plenty of (apparently lucrative) experience in tutoring. C. Wordsworth, Scholae Academicae: Some account of Studies at the English Universities in the Eighteenth Century (London: Frank Cass & Co., 1968 [1877]), p. 255 n. 1, quotes an advertisement, posted by the Rev. F. Wrangham and Basil Montagu, M.A., of a course of lectures in two parts on mathematics and natural philosophy, to be held on November 2 1793—just three days before Wrangham lost the election. Students were charged 5 guineas per part or 8 for the whole course. 40 The figure of John Bull was originally created by John Arbuthnot in Law is a Bottomless Pit; or, the History of John Bull (1712). In the earlier 18th century, John Bull was represented in accordance with his name as an animal, dumb but powerful if provoked; as the century wore on, anthropomorphic depictions became increasingly common. Hunt, Defining John Bull (above, n. 9), pp. 121–69, shows how his popularity as a symbol for the British people rose sharply in the 1790s, while at the same time the use of Britannia to stand for the nation declined due to the polemical association of revolutionary France with female government. M. Taylor, “John Bull and the Iconography of Public Opinion in England, c. 1712–1929,” Past and Present 134 (1987), pp. 93–128, demonstrates that John Bull was never used exclusively to represent one political interest or social class, but stood as a vaguely defined symbol for an imaginary British community.
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the execution of Louis XVI on the January 21 and the outbreak of war between Britain and France in February.41 Gunning’s assessment of Wrangham’s culpability is scrupulously fair-minded. He arrives at the view that Wrangham’s politics were partly responsible for his failure in the election, but that his reputation as a satirical poet was also damaging: the publication of his Latin verses ridiculing various heads of colleges “gave great offence to persons of authority, and produced no small commotion in the University.”42 It is possible that Wrangham did not regret the incident as much as others did on his behalf.43 He maintained a life-long attraction to liberal politics.44 15 years later he was distributing prospectuses for the progressive newspaper The Examiner and writing to Leigh Hunt in 1808 with words of support when the latter faced prosecution for sedition.45 In the preface to his first published volume of poetry (1802), Wrangham wrote the following: … I had long ago prepared a short ‘Account of my Academical Life’, in order to obviate any unfavourable inferences, which might otherwise be deduced from my silence upon the subject of my rejection at Trinity-Hall. Such inferences, I am aware, would but too readily obtrude themselves, even upon many not naturally uncandid, who knew that my moral conduct (in a college, not remarkable for its regularity) had been unexceptionable; and that, upon taking my bachelor’s degree in 1790, I had obtained the third Wranglership, the second Mathematical Prize, and the first Classical Medal. But this would probably be deemed querulous; and the circumstances of my exclusion, whatever were its cause, has too long appeared to me in the light of a blessing, to
41 For the flavor of the hysteria in Britain about revolution and treasonous plotting against the King following the execution of Louis XVI, see J. Barrell, Imagining the King’s Death: Figurative Treason, Fantasies of Regicide 1793–1796 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 49–124. For the (reactionary) cultural response to the French Revolution in the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, cf. W.R. Ward, Victorian Oxford (London: Cass, 1965), pp. 13–14. 42 Gunning, Reminiscences (above, n. 19), vol. II, p. 29. 43 For example, the great bibliographer Thomas Frognall Dibdin, who met Wrangham soon after the event at Lincoln’s Inn in the Chambers of Wrangham’s close friend Basil Montague, exclaims in his Reminiscences of a Literary Life (London: J. Mayor, 1836), vol. I, pp. 140–2, “What a period for friendship’s trial! What a period for its consolidation and invulnerability against the efforts of petty artifice, base suspicion, and disgraceful machinations.” 44 Hall, “English-Speaking Aristophanes” (above, n. 1), p. 75, claims that “Wrangham later became a moderate Whig.” This looks like a misunderstanding of Wrangham’s later self-characterization in a letter to Wordsworth (15 February 1819), “even I, Whig as to a very moderate degree I still continue, find infinite beauties in several of the Papers of the Political Department. I wish I knew who was their writer,” quoted by Sadleir, Things Past (above, n. 14), p. 213, and in abbreviated form in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Wrangham, Francis. The point is not that Wrangham’s politics became more liberal, but that his liberalism was gradually tempered by his advancing years. In consequence, Hall’s overall view of Wrangham’s Reform as “politically conservative” is misguided. The several irreverent references to members of Pitt’s (Tory) administration should be enough on their own to alert even the casual reader to the difficulty of seeing Reform as uncomplicatedly conservative. 45 For the letter to Leigh Hunt, see Sadleir, Things Past (above, n. 14), p. 220.
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demand or justify complaint. It has not much, I would hope, diminished my utility; while it has certainly very much promoted my happiness. Without any oppressive sense of obligation therefore, to its human contrivers, I feel deeply grateful for its accomplishment to the Providence, whose judgements are far above out of their sight; and willingly dismiss the subject—perhaps for ever. F.W.46
The account of his “Academical Life” to which he refers was the Preface to the original, unpublished edition of the Poems (1795), discovered by Sadleir and reproduced as Appendix I in his 1937 study of Wrangham; it contains a fuller apologia.47 There, among other statements of his reconciliation to his lot, Wrangham quotes Milton (Elegy 1.17–20): Si sit hoc exilium patrios adiisse penates, Et vacuum curis otia grata sequi; Non ego vel profugi nomen sortemve recuso Laetus et exilii conditione fruor.48
46 F. Wrangham, Poems (London: J. Mawman, 1802 [1795]), p. vii. The original version, prepared for publication in 1795, was almost certainly never published as it was designed; instead the poems appeared in 1802 “with the date ‘1795’ bracketed on the title-page;” see Sadleir, Archdeacon Francis Wrangham (above, n. 14), Appendix II, p. 62. 47 Sadleir, Archdeacon Francis Wrangham (above, n. 14), Appendix I = pp. 53–7. In this account, Wrangham lays out the facts of the appeal and quotes from the Statutes of Trinity Hall in support of his claim that Vickers’ election was invalid. He also refers to a handful of episodes of youthful exuberance during his degree that might have caused the fellows to have reservations about his “manners.” On pp. 55–6, he defends himself with the words: “That the interval, between October 1787 and January 1790 (exclusive of a few trivial interruptions from idleness, or misdirected industry) was not very ill employed, my degree will perhaps best declare.” In greater detail on p. 55, he refers to the affair of the “Tripos of 1788” written for the Rev. F.J.H. Wollaston of Trinity Hall (for whose career, see J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses: A Biographical List of All Known Students, Graduates and Holders of Office at the University of Cambridge from the earliest times to 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940–1954), Part VI, vol. ii, p. 551): “Of the Tripos of 1788 … I am sincerely ashamed: It was a boyish composition; but it was composed by a boy. Having been informed however that Mr. W. had frequently, since its appearance, professed an entire ignorance of its nature and purport (though he must be conscious that he saw it in every stage of its progress, and spoke of it prior to its appearance in terms of high and undeserved approbation) I wrote to him upon the subject; and, in his answer, he seems reluctantly to confess that he ‘cannot disclaim all knowledge of the publication’.” The “Tripos of 1788” was a poem composed by Wrangham in Latin hexameters describing a boxing match between Daniel Mendoza and Richard Humphreys (on whom, see below). The piece, entitled Immiscentque manus manibus, pugnamque lacessunt, was printed in Cambridge in 1789 as Tripos verses 1789.1 (Feb. 26 1789) for distribution on the first “Tripos Day” of 1789 (either Wrangham later mistook the year or, more likely, he means that he was at work on the composition in 1788). Lastly, Gunning, Reminiscences (above, n. 19), vol. I, p. 187, refers to an impromptu visit to Lancaster during which Wrangham dazzled and flattered the young ladies of the town with his poetic compositions. 48 Sadleir, Archdeacon Francis Wrangham (above, n. 14), p. 56. The emphasis is Wrangham’s.
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If it be exile to return to my ancestral home And free from cares to follow welcome leisure, Then I object to neither the name nor the lot But gladly rejoice in the condition of exile.
But the subject was not quite dismissed forever, as Wrangham intimated in the 1802 Preface. In his short manuscript autobiography, which is interleaved—with the evident intention of compiling an updated edition—in his personal copy of the Reverend Thomas Zouch’s Sketches of Yorkshire Biography (now kept in the British Library), Wrangham writes: The Events of his Academical Life [“his undertaking the tuition of Lord Fred. Montagu &” is inserted here above the line] are detailed briefly in a Preface to his Poems, which however in mercy to Dr. Jowett he suppressed—after losing his fellowship at College—as [“far” is inserted as a later correction above the line; it appears in a darker ink] greater men had done before him— Dryden, & Spenser, & Benjamin Stillingfleet.49
Zouch’s Sketches of Yorkshire Biography was privately printed, probably about 1830, and the autobiographical notes in Wrangham’s hand go only as far as 1828. At the time of writing, Wrangham must have been nearly 60, if not already in his early 70s. His attitude to the episode more than 35 years after the event is curiously ambivalent. On the one hand, he says little, but then Zouch’s biographical sketches are designedly brief; on the other, it is striking that he mentions the suppressed Preface at all, or indeed hints at the reason for the suppression, the reason being that it contains the epigram and its Latin translation on Jowett’s little garden, which has already been quoted. Evidently, soon after leaving Cambridge, Wrangham realized that even by offering a fuller account of his “failure” at Cambridge in his own defence he would cause Jowett further embarrassment, and he therefore relented. But more than 35 years later it is clear that he still wished his act of mercy towards Jowett to be remembered. Such is the history of S. Foote Jr., author of Reform. Although Wrangham was not, as William Frend had been, fellow of a college, and although he had not published a tract like Peace and Union recommended: to the associated bodies of republicans and anti-republicans, establishing himself as a political voice in the way Frend had done, his failure in the election and subsequent departure from Cambridge was a widelyreported scandal. In 1798, a two-volume compendium called Literary Memoirs of
49 Wrangham’s copy of Zouch, containing his manuscript autobiographical sketch: British Library, UIN: BLL01003999726. Dryden and Spenser require no glossing. Benjamin Stillingfleet (1702–1771), famous botanist and author, was passed over for a fellowship at his former college, Trinity, in 1726. His rejection was reputedly the work of the Master of Trinity and great classical scholar Dr. Richard Bentley, who is said to have declared that Stillingfleet was too much of a gentleman to be buried in a college! In his will, Stillingfleet expressed his wish to be “buried in the plainest and cheapest manner in my parish church.” See the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Stillingfleet, Benjamin.
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Living Authors: arranged according to an alphabetical catalogue and including a list of their works with occasional opinions upon their literary character appeared. This catalogue of more or less brightly shining literary luminaries includes a brief entry on Wrangham, most of which is occupied with his quitting Cambridge: After acquiring honours almost unprecedented in the University, he was rejected when the looked-for vacancy was made, on the most pitiful and shameful pretences; and, with a spirit becoming his high desert and its scandalous requital, left the society in the utmost detestation of its principles and conduct.50
The author of this entry notes that Wrangham had published Reform: a farce modernised from Aristophanes and the poem “The Restoration of the Jews” (which won the Cambridge University Seaton Prize in 1794). The literary “opinion” included in regard to these two very different works is: “Both of these are highly creditable to his talents and his years.”51 It is therefore clear that Wrangham was widely known to be the author of Reform within a few years of its publication.52 It remains unknown, however, whether Reform was cited as evidence of Wrangham’s “unsuitability” during the Petition, which was heard three years later on the 24, 27 and 30 June 1795, or if it played any role in Wrangham’s failed fellowship bid. At the time of the trial, given that the court agreed with the college that it was not incumbent upon the fellows to explain how they had arrived at their view of Wrangham’s mores, it seems on balance unlikely that Reform was cited. Sadleir, carefully construing the available information about the proceedings, says “Possibly reference was made to a pseudonymous and rather foolish work, known to be by Wrangham …”53 He continues to speculate that: Because a number of the non-resident Fellows of Trinity Hall were at the time Members of Parliament, and because the whole collection regarded Paine and all he advocated as ethically abominable and, in practice, likely to cause them severe discomfort, they may well have been sensitive to the argument that the mind behind Reform lacked a decent respect for established things.54
50 Anon., Literary Memoirs of Living Authors (London: R. Faulder, 1798), vol. II, p. 396. The work is attributed to the Rev. David Rivers. 51 Anon, Literary Memoirs (above, n. 50), p. 397. 52 The earliest reference to Reform of which I know is a review from the November of the year of publication printed in The Critical Review, or Annals of Literature, N. Ar. Vol. 6 (1792), pp. 257–9. The piece does not identify Wrangham. The reviewer writes (p. 257): “The second scene of the first act of the ‘Plutus’ of Aristophanes is ‘modernised’ by our author, in a free translation. He might have rather said, distantly and loosely imitated, since it is not always for a common eye to discern the similarity. To a classical scholar, the imitation and the notes will appear highly interesting and humorous. The manners of the author of Martinus Scriblerus [a creation of John Arbuthnot, whose name is given to one of the six annotators in Reform] and Swift are united, and his sly unexpected strokes at some modern critics add greatly to the pleasure. The poor Chremylus is Thomas Paine, and Plutus John Bull.” 53 Sadleir, Things Past (above, n. 14), p. 206 (my emphasis). 54 Sadleir, Things Past (above, n. 14), p. 206.
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Wrangham makes no direct mention of Reform in the published 1802 Preface to his Poems nor indeed in the suppressed 1795 Preface. What is certain, however, is that within six years of Reform’s publication and four years after Wrangham’s departure from Cambridge, it was public knowledge that he was the author of the satirical dialogue adapted from Aristophanes’ Wealth. At a time when prosecutions for writing and publishing seditious works and accusations of treason were beginning to fly thick and fast, it would have been unwise to attract more attention than absolutely necessary, and if Reform was not brought up in the circumstances surrounding the hearing in the summer of 1795, Wrangham was doubtless happy to let it rest. Having now dragged the matter into the light of day after over two centuries, let us turn to the work itself, to see in what ways it may or may not be justly described as “foolish” and “highly creditable to his talents and years.”
The Translated Dialogue of Reform To give the reader some grasp of the “action” of Wrangham’s short farcical drama by the quickest route, I have excerpted his English “translation” of the Greek text of Aristophanes’ Wealth (112–246), presenting the dialogue stripped of the Greek and its original extensive footnotes, which have been replaced with some of my own where elucidation of text or context is required. The system of line numbers is adopted from the original. THOMAS PAINE Now learn what advantages, if you take fire, Will straightway attend you: - Tom Paine is no Liar! I soon shall a Cure for your Blinking devise, And furnish your Head with regenerate Eyes. JOHN BULL. No, no; whether Blinking or Blindness it be, It shall rest. T. PAINE. “None so blind are, as those that won’t see.” Why, you cowardly D-v-l! the K—g and his Crown, If you but look up and reclaim what’s your own, Are not worth three farthings.55
55 Three quarters of a penny: a risibly small sum. A laboring man’s wage in the period might be as low as eight shillings (a shilling = 12 pence) a week; this was sufficient for his subsistence but not enough to support a family. See R. Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 13. The three farthings are the equivalent of Aristophanes’ reference to the triobolon, pay for assembly attendance introduced by Agyrrhius in the 390s BCE. See Frogs 367 with scholia ad loc. and [Arist.] Ath. 41.3. For discussion, see P. Gauthier, “Sur l’institution du misthos de l’assemblée à Athènes (Ath. Pol. 41,3),” in: M. Piérart (ed.), Aristote et Athènes (Aristoteles and Athens) Fribourg
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J. BULL. Cease, cease to pretend By these impious—T. PAINE. Nay prithee have patience, my Friend;56 And soon you shall own that SUPREMACY SPRINGS FROM YOURSELF, and that you make and can unmake Kings: For whence does the ROYAL AUTHORITY rise O’er your Jura Divina, those RIGHTS above Price? From what JOHN abundantly raises, SUPPLIES: To the CIVIL LIST57 Monarchy owes its Support; TO the CIVIL LIST rises the Incense of the Court: For Places and Pensions the Laity fawn, The Clergy creep, cringe, and crawl forward for Lawn.58 TO JOHN these Abuses are owing, and He Might correct them with Ease, if he would. – J. BULL. Can it be? T. PAINE. No Off’rings would GEORGE from his Subjects receive, Unless in return He had something to give: No BULSES59 – J. BULL. How, Wretch? – T. PAINE. I say, certainly none; Unless you gave him Money and Power, Friend JOHN: And thus, “for Misconduct cashiered,”60 ‘tis plain, You might send him to H-N-V-R packing again.
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(Suisse) 23–5 mai 1991 (Fribourg: Séminaire de l’histoire ancienne de l’université de Fribourg, 1993), pp. 231–50. 56 Paine’s repeated use of the appellation “Friend” is probably made with reference to The Friends of the People, which, like the London Corresponding Society and the Society for Constitutional Information, was a radical society devoted to the production of political pamphlets, the organizing of petitions and the political education of the lower classes. 57 The Civil List and the sinecures and pensions dispensed by government were the subject of complaint throughout the century on the part of all those, from aristocratic reformers and gentry to artisans, not profiting from the system. In the 1780s, the growth of corruption had been slowed by a new generation of political leaders (including Fox and the Younger Pitt) who saw the need for prudent restraint. Edmund Burke’s Civil Service Establishment Act of 1782 importantly gave the Treasury control of the expenditure of the Royal Household, and in 1789 Pitt axed no fewer than 765 jobs. Nevertheless, in broad terms the old system of patronage continued unchecked through the later 18th century and into the 19th. See Porter, English Society (above n. 55), p. 136. 58 “Lawn” is fine cotton fabric used in particular to make the sleeves of a bishop’s Episcopal robes; hence to “crawl forward for Lawn” is to aspire to elevation to the episcopate. It was a preferment to which Wrangham would never rise; in a postscript to a letter to Wordsworth of the 29 September 1827, he writes: “My hair to be sure is gone—but then there is always, at the worst, or best, the resource of a wig. The Episcopal one, of course, is out of the question” (quoted by Sadleir, Things Past (above, n. 14), p. 218). 59 A “bulse” is a packet for holding diamonds, gold dust or other extremely high-value contents. 60 Echoing Paine’s The Rights of Man, Part I: see T. Paine, Rights of Man /Common Sense, with an introduction by Michael Foot. Everyman’s Library (New York: Alfred A. Knopff, 1994), p. 10.
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But Riches have now alas! absolute Sway, And subjugate England: – ’Twas but t’other Day Even I for a pitiful Sum was made Prize: For Money the JOURNEYMEN-SHOEMAKERS rise:61 For Money T-m Ersk-ne62 exposes his Brass: For Money the Treasury governs D-nd-s:63 For Money, at DURHAM does B-rr-ngt-n64 pray; His modester Namesake at BOTANY-BAY:65 For Money M-nd-za tans H-mphr-ys’ Hide,66 And C——t with Razors the Freshmen supplied.67 By Money the GRAND MONARQUE, à la distance,
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61 In February 1792 in London, about 1000 journeyman shoemakers assembled in a mob protesting the arrest of 21 of their number for organizing a strike in pursuit of a wage increase. See R. B. Shoemaker, The London Mob: Violence and disorder in eighteenth-century England (London: Hambledon and London, 2004), p. 147. 62 Thomas Erskine (1750–1823), son of Henry Erskine, 10th Earl of Buchan; lawyer and politician. He made his reputation in 1781 defending Lord George Gordon, who stood accused of treason after the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of the previous year. Erskine, a spirited champion of the freedom of the press, defended a number of men on charges of publishing and distributing libellous materials, including Dr. William Shipley, Dean of St. Asaph in 1784; John Stockdale, London bookseller, in 1789; and Thomas Paine himself in December 1792. For Erskine’s career, see Hostettler, Erskine (above, n. 13), esp. pp. 43–52 (on Shipley), 66–77 (on Stockdale), 88–96 (on Paine). 63 Henry Dundas (1742–1811), 1st Viscount Melville. Dundas, a close ally of Pitt, was appointed Treasurer of the Navy in 1782, and in 1785 passed legislation to reform its chaotic finances: see M. Fry, The Dundas Despotism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992), pp. 91, 110. In 1805, he achieved the dubious distinction of being the last person in British history to be impeached; he was accused (and acquitted) of misappropriating Navy funds (for the impeachment, see Fry, p. 262). 64 Shute Barrington (1734–1826) was made Bishop of Durham in 1791: see the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Barrington, Shute. 65 George Barrington (1755–1804), notorious thief, “the Prince of Pickpockets,” was transported to Australia in 1791 after a spectacular and widely reported criminal career. See N. Garvey, The Celebrated George Barrington (Sydney: Hordern House, 2008), pp. 11–71. 66 Daniel Mendoza (1764–1836), legendary Jewish boxer, the “father of scientific boxing” and author of The modern art of boxing, as practised by Mendoza, Humphreys, Ryan, Ward, Watson, Johnson and other eminent pugilists (London: 1789). Richard Humphreys, “The Gentleman Boxer,” was Mendoza’s trainer and later opponent in three celebrated bouts fought between 1788 and 1790. Mendoza lost the first but won the second and third, forcing Humphreys into retirement. The classic, eye-witness account of Mendoza’s career is that of boxing fanatic and journalist Pierce Egan in his Boxiana, or, sketches of ancient and modern pugilism (London: G. Smeeton, 1812), reprinted in J. Ford (ed.), Boxiana, or, sketches of ancient and modern pugilism: a selection, edited and introduced by John Ford (London: Folio Society, 1976), pp. 38–47. For general discussion of Mendoza and his place in the history of English boxing, see Bob Mee, Bare Fists, rev. ed. (London: CollinsWillow, 2001), pp. 33–6, 38–41. 67 A footnote provides a clue to the identity of this man, remarking that “this Piece of University History is well known to J-hnians.” The allusion is to Thomas Cockshutt (1748–1812), Fellow of St John’s College 1773–92, Senior Dean 1784–1791. See Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses (above, n. 47), Part II, Vol. ii, p. 83. My thanks to Malcolm Underwood, Archivist of St John’s College, Cambridge for his assistance on this point.
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ENCHANTED and HUMBLED the People of France: For Money the NATIONAL SYNODS assemble: J. BULL. And by Money our ARMAMENTS made mad Kate68 tremble. T. PAINE. Polemical Politics own it their sword, And Victory follows the TREASURY LORD. J. BULL. You seem to speak plausibly; yet, I confess, This wonderful Pow’r, which you say I possess (If your scheme indeed is not a popular Bubble69) I fear I shall never reclaim without Trouble. T. PAINE. John Bull is a coward. – J. BULL. That no one believes; But when I’m assail’d by REPUBLICAN Thieves (Whom extravagant Prospects of Plunder allure) In a good CONSTITUTION they find me secure: Then my Care is call’d Cowardice. —— T. PAINE. Prithee, no more; But GO IT, and I will your Eyesight restore: At the Risk of my Life I engage for Success; We shall soon raise a Force, whose Wrongs call for Redress: The Journeymen come, who have nothing to eat, From patching old Slippers to patch up the State; J. BULL. Such sneaking ASSOCIATES I ne’er can endure: T. PAINE. The R-gues will be honest with Money and Pow’r. My Alf-rd ACCOMPLICES some one call in (Who wretchedly live upon P—ching and G-n70)
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68 They had done nothing of the sort. “Mad Kate” is Catherine II (“The Great”) of Russia, as the footnote attached to the phrase makes clear, referring to her by, among other things, the sobriquet the “Messalina of the North.” The reference is to Pitt’s failed “Russian Armament” and the Ochakov Crisis of March–April 1791. The episode was an embarrassment for Pitt, who sent Catherine an ultimatum on March 27 requiring her to relinquish all her recent acquisitions except the Crimea. Subsequently Pitt failed to win support in the House of Commons and was forced—and forced Britain with him—into a humiliating climb-down. For a full discussion, see Jeremy Black, British Foreign Policy in an Age of Revolutions, 1783–1793 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 285–328. 69 The South Sea Bubble of 1720, which ruined a generation of British investors, is part of the allusion, but the footnote accompanying this part of the text with its references to an “inflammable balloon … venturing into the atmosphere” makes it clear that the author is thinking of aviation balloons. These were a French invention and the subject of intense interest in the late 18th century. The balloon was pioneered by the Montgolfier brothers’ hot-air balloon in June 1783 and J.-A.-C. Charles’ hydrogen balloon in August of the same year. On October 15 1783, J. François Pilâtre de Rozier (1754–1785) became the first successful aeronaut in history; he died two years later attempting an ascent with twin hot air and hydrogen balloons, with—from the vantage point of modern chemical knowledge— predictably tragic consequences. The first crossing of the English Channel by balloon was made in January 1785 by Jean Pierre Blanchard and Dr. John Jeffries. See further W. F. Burbidge, From Balloon to Bomber: A complete history of aviation from earliest times until the present day (Bournemouth: John Crowther, 1946), pp. 17–34. 70 “Gin” is a reference to Paine’s former employment in the customs and excise service (discussed above). Poaching was a site of severe social tension. Since the game laws of 1671, the right to take game even on one’s own property was reserved for holders of land worth more than 100 pounds per annum;
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That by EQUAL Partition the Feast they may share: And some Member take in our REFORM’D Bill of Fare.71 Do you, my dear JOHNNY, now follow your Friend; By Hook or by Crook I will compass my End. J. BULL. I like not the Man, who abroad was my Foe; And rebellions have been the sad Parents of Woe: T. PAINE. Why, a MODERATE Man never fell in your Way; I’M YOUR SORT: follow me, and I’ll win you the Day.
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Readers acquainted with the Aristophanic Urtext will recognize in an instant its distant but distinct echoes. Having presented the structure of the translated dialogue, let us turn to the Preface and Introduction that precede it.
The Preface To a Publication of this kind little can with propriety be prefixed: The Reader, if it have one, will peruse it with the Candour of a Gentleman and a Scholar: He will consider whether it may not be of some Use at present in a political View by shewing the Absurdity of modern Innovation; and determine whether, by endeavouring to repress the Rage of conjectural Emendation and Criticism, it may not render a small Service to the Cause of Literature.
Such is the first paragraph of the Preface, composed of a page of English followed by a page consisting of four epigraphs in Latin and Greek. The first sentence, with its address to “The Reader,” if any such should appear, as a Gentleman and a Scholar, establishes the contractual obligations incumbent on the interpreter of the text. Reform is directed toward a social and intellectual elite; the latter aspect of its exclusivity is forcefully underscored by the four untranslated epigraphs on the following page. If we turn to these, ignoring for now the second paragraph of the Preface, we find that the first quoted passage, also the shortest, presents itself to the Gentleman and Scholar in the more familiar Latin language. It is a single line of verse from that most canonical of Roman authors, Horace:
thus, even relatively well-off tenant farmers and small land-owners were denied the pleasures and nutritional supplements afforded by hunting. This was a source of increasing resentment and conflict in Georgian Britain, especially from mid-century on, when aristocratic landowners and gentlemen began to clamp down on the activities of poachers more aggressively (probably because the latter were starting to use guns), establishing Game Associations to smooth the passage of prosecutions. See Porter, English Society (above, n. 55), pp. 77–8, 153. 71 Two caricatures of 1792 depict the typically fat and well-fed John Bull in pointed contrast to a skeletal, starving sans-culotte: see Hunt, Defining John Bull (above, n. 9), p. 160 with ills. 65, 66 (pp. 154–5). The phrase “reform’d bill of fare” alludes to Pitt’s failed “Parliamentary Reform Bill,” which was defeated in 1785.
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Tu, quid ego & POPULUS mecum desideret, audi. Ars Poetica 153 Now hear what I, and with me the public, expect. (trans. H. R. Fairclough)
The apparent simplicity disguises, however, a troubling potential duality of meaning, advertised by the typesetting of the word “POPULUS” in majuscule. Does “What I, and with me the people, want” introduce a hegemonic vision, an aggregative politics, in which the author who addresses himself to gentlemen and scholars will shepherd the people through traditional authority? Or does the sharp, personal second-person address (audi) buttonhole the educated gentleman reader, to whisper into his ear hushed truths of popular resentment and words of reformist zealotry? The immediate uncertainty on this point gestures toward the mischievousness in the full text to follow of the author’s recessive, elusive, meiotic voice, which is protected first by the blind of the nom de plume and then by the manner in which the authorial persona fragments and divides against itself, as the various annotators subject text and translation to their critical scrutiny. Verse 153 of Horace’s Ars Poetica marks the beginning of a passage relevant to S. Foote Jr.’s translation of Aristophanes in two further ways. First, the context: Horace is setting forth the precepts of elementary showmanship in theatrical productions. Given that Reform is anything but a script for performance, but rather a brutally truncated dialogue based on a modest gobbet of Aristophanes’ Wealth, the importance of ensuring that one’s audience will sit contentedly through the play to the end before responding with appreciative applause is on the face of it minimal. On the other hand, the prolixity and the frequently untranslated material of the footnotes will ensure that the reader is kept busily occupied for some time. The hint at applause when the curtain falls is important: for the gentleman scholar, who knows the context from which this Horatian tag is drawn, the provocation of the double political significance of the verse is softened by the reassurance that by the final curtain the audience will have enjoyed the show. Second, the particular precept of writing dramatic poetry to which Horace draws attention in this passage is the need for a poet to characterize appropriately, with due regard for age (Ars P. 153–78): certain behaviors are fitting for boys, youths and men at various stages of maturation and eventual senescence. As will become clear, the charge of juvenility is a particular concern of the author of Reform, and one he attempts on more than one occasion to anticipate and deflect. The three epigraphs below the verse of Horace are in the less immediately accessible Greek, and, although none is obscure, it rapidly becomes apparent that the guiding principle of the author’s poetics of allusion is to provoke the reader into a recourse to the texts alluded to, prodding him toward a re-reading. For eventual ease of verification, all three Greek epigraphs come from a single passage of Aeschines’ speech Against Ctesiphon. The first and longest is an appeal to traditional authority (Aeschin. 3.134–5):
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Ευ γαρ περι τοιουτων ὁ Ποιητης αποφαινεται· λεγει γαρ που, παιδευων τα πληθη και συμβουλευων ταις πολεσι, τους ΠΟΝΗΡΟΥΣ των Δημαγωγων μη προσδεχεσθαι· λεξω δε κᾳγω τα επη· δια τουτο γαρ οιμαι ἡμας παιδας οντας τας των ποιητων γνωμας εκμανθανειν, ἱν’ ανδρες οντες αυταις χρωμεθα.72 Well does the poet … speak concerning such men; for he says somewhere, instructing the people and advising cities not to take to themselves corrupt politicians—but I will myself recite the verses; for this is the reason, I think, that in our childhood we commit to memory the sentiments of the poets, that when we are men we may make use of them. (trans. C. D. Adams)
The unnamed “poet” (Wrangham has removed Hesiod’s name from the Greek, as he will do again below), we are told, advises against listening to the worthless men among the leaders of the people (the demagogues), and a quotation of his words is promised yet never actually appears. The second passage remarks, with reference to Demosthenes (who will appear again in the third passage), that “no one of the former ‘gutter politicians’ [πονηροί] was ever such a magician or sorcerer” (Aeschin. 3.137): Ουδεις πωποτε των παλαιων ΠΟΝΗΡΩΝ τοιουτος μαγος και γοης εγενετο. … nor [did] any other of the traitors of ancient times ever prove himself such a conjurer and cheat as this man. (trans. C. D. Adams, with minor modifications)
The “Poet” is mentioned again in the third passage of Greek, in which Aeschines observes that if the audience extracts the meaning and ignores the metre, they will find that the lines are a prophecy regarding the politics of Demosthenes (Aeschin. 3.136): Εαν δε, περιελοντες του Ποιητου το μετρον, τας γνωμας εξεταζητε, οιμαι ὑμιν δοξειν ου ποιηματα ειναι αλλα Χρησμον εις Δημοσθενους (τουτεστι του Δεινου) πολιτειαν. if you disregard the poet’s metre and examine only his thought, I think this will seem to you to be not a poem … but an oracle directed against the politics of Demosthenes [that is to say this villain here]. (trans. C. D. Adams)
In the first two passages, the adjective poneros (in each instance used substantively) appears in majuscule and in type more than double the size of the majuscule “POPULUS” higher up the page. The identity of the poet in the first and third quotations remains a puzzle only because in both cases, where the name “Hesiod” appears in the text of Aeschines, the author has obliterated it from his epigraphs; furthermore,
72 The Greek in Reform is unaccentuated and only rough breathings are marked. The Byzantine ligature of omicron-upsilon and the “stigma”, the ligature of sigma-tau, which I have not reproduced, are printed in all miniscule portions of the text.
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the verses of the Works and Days (240–5) quoted by Aeschines occur in precisely the part of Against Ctesiphon 135 that our author omits. The missing passage of Hesiod, as Aeschines has it, is: πολλάκι δὴ ξύμπασα πόλις κακοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἀπηύρα, ὅς κεν ἀλιτραίνῃ καὶ ἀτάσθαλα μητιάαται. τοῖσιν δ᾽ οὐρανόθεν μέγ᾽ ἐπήγαγε πῆμα Κρονίων, λιμὸν ὁμοῦ καὶ λοιμόν, ἀποφθινύθουσι δὲ λαοί· ἢ τῶν γε στρατὸν εὐρὺν ἀπώλεσεν ἢ ὅ γε τεῖχος, ἢ νέας ἐν πόντῳ ἀποτείνυται εὐρύοπα Ζεύς. Often enough the whole city had paid for an evil man who does wrong and devises deeds of wickedness. Upon them from heaven Cronus’ son brings great woe, famine and plague together, and the people perish. He may destroy their vast army or their walls or take vengeance on their ships at sea, far-seeing Zeus.73
Two important observations follow. First, the target of the passages from Aeschines is Demosthenes, whose characterization as a worthless demagogue is emphasized by the capitalization of the adjective PONEROS. Demosthenes in turn is linked to the troubling “POPULUS” in the first epigraph, because it is also capitalized, and in this context the semantic value attaching to the nominal elements of his name (demos: people; sthenos: strength) is heightened.74 In late 18th-century Britain, “democracy,” with which Demosthenes could be uncomplicatedly associated, was a decidedly dirty word. Second, with the deliberate masking of Aeschines’ references to and quotation of Hesiod, the author makes the epigraphs more elusively allusive; this excludes the reading public, who do not cut the mustard as gentlemen and scholars, and simultaneously inculcates a set of iterative, academic, quietist reading practices, according to which the gentleman and scholar is encouraged to re-read in order to establish the meaning and intent of the text, and is directed to the library rather than the haunts of political debate or the streets of political protest. The author treads a precipitous satirical tightrope, secured between pillars of lofty academicism and reactionary conservatism, above an abyss of radical politics; walking it, he flirts with the possibility that at any moment his text might pitch one way or the other and plunge headlong
73 Translation: C. Carey, Aeschines, The Oratory of Classical Greece vol. III (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000), p. 210. 74 The link between Demosthenes and Thomas Paine is made again on p. vii, in footnote i, where Aeschines III.78 is quoted on Demosthenes’ visit to Macedon, which “changed his position but not his disposition” (C.D. Adams’ Loeb translation of the Greek οὐ τὸν τρόπον ἀλλὰ τὸν τόπον μόνον μετήλλαξε). The author compares the absence of any effect on Paine of his emigration to America with the Horatian adage caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt (Ep. I.11.27), “they who cross the seas have a change of scene but not of heart.”
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into the revolutionary mob below. Reform is constructed on a funambulist poetics, in which the possibility that the siren voice of Paine might end up leading the stubbornly resistant John Bull by the nose in the dialogue is precariously balanced above the cacophony of mocking voices in the footnotes below, some mischievously rabblerousing, others indignantly harrumphing.75 Returning now to the English text on the previous page, the second paragraph anticipates a number of potential objections to and criticisms of the publication, the first of which is the suspicion that the very short text has been “framed as a Vehicle” for the accompanying notes. In case the reader does not agree that the notes “repress the Rage of conjectural Emendation and Criticism …” and thus “… render a small Service to the Cause of Literature,” the author appeals to the “sufficient Authority” of the “poetical Structure of the Rolliad and the Botanic Garden.” These contemporary works were well known at the time of writing, especially The Botanic Garden, one of the best-selling works of 18th-century English literature; both are all but forgotten today. The Botanic Garden is an epic poem in two parts, each divided into four cantos, the work of Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), grandfather of Charles Darwin. Erasmus Darwin, a doctor, immensely gifted scientist and rather more amateurish poet, was persuaded to write a didactic poem revealing the mysteries of botany and Linnaeus’ system of the classification of plants for a popular audience.76 Botany was a fashionable subject at the time. In 1770, Captain Cook’s first place of landfall on the southeast coast of Australia was named Botany Bay precisely because of the passionate interest in the vegetable kingdom that inspired Joseph Banks’ researches and collection of specimens there. Darwin published Part II of The Botanic Garden first in 1789; with its fine illustrations and the titillating delicacy with which the poem describes the “sexual system” of the classification of plants, The Loves of Plants achieved immediate and universal acclaim. Part I (The Economy of Vegetation) followed in 1791. It is a
75 As will become clear in the following discussion, I do not agree with the assessment of Hall, “English-Speaking Aristophanes” (above n. 1), p. 75, that John Bull “wins the argument,” and I find her judgement that it is a mistake to think that Reform is “in any respect sympathetic to Tom Paine” (p. 75 n. 49) too hasty, though her remarks on Wrangham’s precariously balanced politics (p. 75 n. 51) are nearer the mark. Reform satirizes almost everyone and everything indiscriminately, and the ending leaves the argument unresolved. The open-ended, polyphonic nature of the text seems deliberately contrived to resist reduction to a simple, clear political stance. Hall’s summary of John Bull’s arguments against Paine (p. 75), that he had “proved himself unpatriotic during his involvement with American revolutionaries, and that the French Revolution was problematic [sic!],” underestimates the gravity of these issues in early 1790s Britain. 76 For a biography of Darwin, see D. M. Hassler, Erasmus Darwin (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1973). For Darwin as a poet, see J. V. Logan, The Poetry and Aesthetics of Erasmus Darwin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1936). For analysis of The Botanic Garden, see Stuart Harris, Erasmus Darwin’s Enlightenment Epic: A study for the evidence for sequential design in ‘The Botanic Garden’ [1791] and ‘The Temple of Nature’ [1803] (Sheffield: S. Harris, 2002).
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much more difficult work, ranging widely across the entire gamut of scientific knowledge as it stood at the time; but after the success of the lighter Part II, it too sold extremely well. Both parts of The Botanic Garden are accompanied—and this is the point of the reference to its “poetical structure”—by a string of explanatory footnotes in which the author enlarges in prose upon the subject matter of the verses. The Criticisms on the Rolliad languishes in the 21st century in obscurity yet greater than even the Botanic Garden. Originally serialized in the newspaper The Morning Herald between 1784 and 1785, this work of Whig satire, whose authors have never been identified with any certainty, appears in the form of an exegetical commentary on a putative epic poem concerning Rollo, Duke of Normandy and forefather of the ancient lineage of the Rolles.77 The ostensible target is Devonshire MP John Rolle, but insofar as the Tory Rolle was a more-or-less consistent supporter of William Pitt the Younger, the Criticisms on the Rolliad are criticisms of Pitt and his Tory administration. The series was widely enjoyed; a volume of its collected episodes was published in 1784–1785 and ran to 22 editions.78 The references to these now obscure publications are designed to raise certain expectations of the text to which the reader will soon turn. Following the pattern of The Botanic Garden, there will be “scientific” footnotes expounding (perhaps difficult) matters of (perhaps popular) intellectual appeal; after the model of the Rolliad, a multiple-authored, pseudonymous commentary on a poetic text will furnish a stalking-horse behind which the satirist will approach his quarry. In the final sentence of the Preface, the author admits the lack of absolute originality in his work (“The Writer does not deny that in some of his Observations he has been anticipated”), acknowledging that whatever originality there is may be the result of insignificance, and in tongue-in-cheek manner declines to appeal either “to his own Age [or] that of the Poem in Justification of its Juvenilities and Mistakes.” The anxiety that Reform will be dismissed as juvenilia has been mentioned already and will reappear in the Introduction, where we will examine it in more detail. The Preface concludes with a restatement of the ephemeral nature of the work: “without the Possibility of being read by the past, or the Probability of being remembered by the future, [the author] would feel himself happy in the Prospect of being 77 It was the first of a series of four works of satire probably by the same group of authors, who have never been securely identified. Lee Erickson, “‘Unboastful Bard’: Originally Anonymous English Romantic Poetry Book Publication, 1770–1835,” New Literary History 33.2 (2002), p. 276 n. 10, notes that the satires “are said to have been started by the “Esto Perpetua” Club, of which Dr. French Laurence, George Ellis, General Richard Fitzpatrick, and Lord John Townsend were members. However, exactly who or who else wrote what is not known.” Other names routinely connected to the Rolliad include Joseph Richardson and Richard Tickell. The three works following the Rolliad and, along with a number of other publications, attributed to the same group of writers are Political Eclogues, Political Miscellanies and Probationary Odes for the Laureatship; see R.D. Havens, “An Earlier and a Later Rolliad,” The Review of English Studies 3 (1927), pp. 218–20. 78 See Erickson, “Unboastful Bard” (above, n. 77), p. 274.
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relished by the present, Generation.” After more than two centuries, while Reform may not be relished, it is now at least remembered.
The Introduction A four-page Introduction follows the Preface, with half the room overgrown by the dense underbrush of tangled footnotes. This prepares the reader more surely for the style of the text and commentary to come, as hinted at in the references to the Botanic Garden and the Rolliad in the Preface. The first paragraph of the Introduction (p. v) commences with remarks on the subject of prophecy and the difficulty of its interpretation: THAT Prophecies are seldom rightly interpreted till their Completion, must always be less the Fault of the Prophet than of the Commentator; who, being more sparingly gifted with the Spirit of Vaticination, is left to supply the Defect by Conjecture. It was Kuster’s Misfortune to publish ARISTOPHANES before the End of the eighteenth Century;79 and, as he could not with equal Certainty anticipate the mysterious History of that eventful Period, we need not be surprised that he has totally mistaken his Author.
The central thematic point here is that the relationship of interpreter to (classical) author is designated as that not of the casual reader but of the commentator and textual critic. The poet is none other than the creator of prophetic language, while the editor and critic, for all his learned exegesis and brilliant conjectural emendation, may in the end subject his text to deluded misinterpretation. The time for the true revelation of the import of Aristophanes’ prophetic verse, S. Foote Jr. hints, has only lately arrived. The proof that the true significance of these prophecies has now come to light, as the next paragraph implies, is to be sought in the radical politics of recent years—the reformist movement. Although the political battlefield could be characterized as a clash of those who think like the revolutionary Thomas Paine against those on the side of the conservatism of Edmund Burke, in reply to whose Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) Paine wrote Rights of Man, the positions held on either side ranged both subtly and greatly.80 As our author too is eager to remind the reader,
79 Kuster is Ludolph Küster (Kusterus), who published a Greek and Latin edition of Aristophanes in Amsterdam (with Thomas Fritsch) in 1710, Aristophanis comodiae undecim, Graece et Latine, with emendations and some new scholia to Lysistrata from the Codex Vossianus. 80 E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London: V. Gollancz, 1963) and Cone, English Jacobins (above, n. 12) provide excellent discussions contextualizing Paine among contemporary reformers. For the relationship between Paine and Edmund Burke, see R.R. Fennessey, Burke, Paine and the Rights of Man: A difference of political opinion (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1963); I. Kramnick, The Rage of Edmund Burke: A portrait of an ambivalent conservative (New York: Basic Books, 1977).
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there were many different strains of the reformist movement; he quotes Ovid describing the 50 daughters of Nereus: … facies non omnibus una, nec diversa tamen … They have not all the same appearance, and yet not altogether different. (Trans. F.J. Miller)
Their faces are not all the same, but neither are they different—just as sisters should be, as Ovid continues (Metamorphoses II.13–14). From this crowd of similar faces, one is singled out: Thomas Paine, although he is not named just yet. Leaving the authors of the Jockey Club to their sordid pursuit of “the man,” our pamphlet promises at this point merely to “expose the Patriot.”81 This statement of purpose is accompanied by footnote d, which clarifies the matter: We wish to effect in Politics what has already been so happily accomplished in Poetry: Qui BAVIAD non odit, amet mea Carmina.82
“Whoever does not dislike the Baviad, will like my verses,” the author promises. The Baviad was an exercise in vicious persiflage, directed at a group of sentimentalist poets who called themselves the Della Cruscans: it was published in 1791 by rabid reactionary poet, critic and editor William Gifford (1756–1826), the man who later “killed Keats.” The elitist and conservative Gifford saw the sentimentalism of Robert Merry and his circle as a retrograde poetic innovation to be stamped out as swiftly and ruthlessly as possible; this he proceeded to do in the Baviad (an imitation of Persius’ first Satire) with a savagery that now seems entirely out of proportion to the objective.83 Footnote d, with its declaration of political intent, pulls worryingly against the earlier hints (discovered in the quotation of Horace on the title page) of the lack of any pretension to provoke public animadversion. As Reform moves toward p. vii, on which its target, Thomas Paine, is conclusively revealed, the text becomes little by little more politically aggressive and its public voice grows louder.
81 The Jockey Club, or a Sketch of the Manners of the Age by Charles Pigott (London: H.D. Symonds, 1792) is a collection of satirical character sketches of prominent members of the upper echelons of British society, beginning with King George III. Along with its companion volume, The Female Jockey Club, the publication established Pigott as one of the first British writers to make a name by exposing the decadence of the British aristocracy. See N. Rogers, “Pigott’s Private Eye: Radicalism and Sexual Scandal in Eighteenth-Century England,” Canadian Historical Association Journal 4 (1993), pp. 247–63. 82 Adapted from Verg. Ecl. 3.90. 83 See W.B. Carnochan, “Satire, Sublimity, and Sentiment: Theory and Practice in Post-Augustan Satire,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 85 (1970) 260–7; M. Gamer, “Authorizing the Baviad: William Gifford and The Satires of Juvenal,” European Romantic View 12 (2001), pp. 206–15.
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At this point, however, the target of Reform remains anonymous. Now the author proceeds to tie together the topics of political and literary “Innovation.” In other words, this particular modernization of Aristophanes is equated to the radical politics of the day and described by three sets of terms: “bold,” “impertinent and puerile,” and “unseasonable.” Each characterization is footnoted, in the case of the latter two, heavily so. Discussion of these footnotes will follow shortly, but this is the moment to glance over the logical progression of the argument of the Introduction as a whole. After annotation on the boldness, puerility and unseasonable nature of text and political context, the author deals with some minor matters of the literary adaptation. He apologizes for condensing the scene from Aristophanes’ Wealth in order to present it as a dialogue of only two characters, writing out the slave Cario; on this point, he explains that assigning multiple roles to characters is felicitous because it is analogous to the manner in which politicians of the day hypocritically play a plurality of parts. Next, he justifies casting Chremylus as Thomas Paine (openly naming his target for the first time on p. vii) and Ploutos as John Bull by reference to “the Poverty of the first and the Opulence of the latter.” The Introduction then closes with a further caveat directed to the reader, who is to be careful in formulating a reaction to the text (a note of warning we have already heard in the Preface); with a disclaimer of responsibility for the contemporary references, the blame for which is laid outrageously upon the text itself (“the personal Satire into which I have been betrayed in the TRANSLATION”); and finally with an apology for prolixity and making unnecessarily heavy weather of the textual criticism in the notes (“the digressive Variety of Correction”), precedent for which is said to be securely established by “the great modern Authority of Wakefield.”84 To leap ahead and draw the necessary deductions about the programmatic force of the Introduction, we can say the following. S. Foote Jr.’s modernisation of Aristophanes runs some 130 lines of the Wealth through what might be described as a literary-interpretive mangle, with the express purpose of wringing out every last drop of malicious satirical ooze. This is done with two particular aims. First, to expand by a vast degree of magnitude the field of reference of a few lines of Greek, making the
84 Gilbert Wakefield (1756–1801), religious dissenter, political radical (in 1799 he was convicted of seditious libel and imprisoned for two years) and prolific classical scholar. For a brief overview of his life and work, see Dictionary of British Classicists, ed. R.B. Todd (Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004), vol. III, s.v. Wakefield, Gilbert. Of particular significance to Wrangham in writing Reform, Wakefield published a massive collection of textual-critical notes that exemplify his “authority” and “digressive variety of correction”: Silva Critica: sive in auctores sacros profanosque commentarius Philologus (5 vols.). Vols. I–III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1789–1792), vols. IV–V (London: E. Hodson, 1793–95). Wakefield’s learned and political poetics of allusion are discussed by M. Hiscock, “The politics of classical allusion at the end of the eighteenth century: radical or redundant?,” Cambridge Classical Journal 56 (2010), pp. 95–139.
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commentary an exploded-view drawing, as it were, of the text that is the machinery of contemporary political struggle in late 18th-century Britain. Far from merely directing a polemic against Paine, the text will remark on the endemic folly and corruption pervading British society. Second, to ridicule an overly confident and ingenious school of textual and literary criticism by what comes close to a reductio ad absurdum. The techniques by which these aims are achieved are essentially three: (1) “Translation”: the author pursues a strategy of the deliberately fanciful and frequently perverse rendering of Aristophanes’ Greek into English; the translation is in fact an act of aggressive appropriation and conscious misprision, creating an ever more capacious field of potential meaning and thus a maximally capricious interpretation of the text. (2) “Textual criticism”: the notes added by the translator, although ostensibly provided to clarify the translation and furnish it with scholarly respectability, are in fact the creation of a disputatious and captious intelligence geared toward increasing the torque and traction provided by textual variation and philological disagreement, expanding once again the text’s field of reference. (3) Commentary: finally, with the text’s referential potential maximized by the first two techniques, the commentators (plural) are unleashed to exercise their ingenuity in relating the material generated by the translation of this text of uncertain authenticity to the contemporary political scene, a task they take up with all the monomaniacal bias and misguided enthusiasm of Nabokov’s Professor Kinbote. To return to the footnotes on boldness, puerility and talking out of turn, footnote e on page vi supplements the observation that “Innovation is often bold” with a snippet of Cicero. Animus paratus ad perciulum, si sua CUPIDITATE non UTILITATE COMMUNI impellitur, audaciae potius nomen habeat quam fortitudinis. Even the courage that is prompt to face danger, if it is inspired not by public spirit, but by its own selfish purposes, should have the name of effrontery rather than of courage. (Trans. W. Miller)
The source of the quotation (De Officiis I.19.63) is not specified, but the Gentleman and Scholar presumably knows this or is at least reassured by the insistence on the distinction between courage and mere rashness promoted only by personal ambition. The marked, majuscule opposition, however, of one man’s selfish motivation and the “public good” leads into more hazardous territory. Behind Cicero’s text stands Plato (Laches 197b), although invocation of any particular philosophy is hardly the point; what matters is that the text fashions itself as one that partakes of a tradition of critical thought about politics. This is a sign that political criticism in the text will be constructed in the business of translation: as from Plato’s Greek to Cicero’s Latin, so from Aristophanes’ Greek to S. Foote Jr.’s English rhyming couplets. Furthermore, utilitas communis directs the reader toward a contemporary reference: the reformist politics of men like Thomas Paine and Joseph Priestley, the latter another outspoken
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supporter of the French Revolution as well as a dissenting clergyman, early utilitarian (his work inspired Bentham and Mill) and discoverer of oxygen. As tensions rose after the Revolution, the established order closed ranks against such enlightened thinkers; on 14 July 1791, Priestley’s house and chapel in Birmingham were attacked and burned by a “Church and King” mob.85 The troubling aspects of this become clear when the reader reconsiders the full context of the footnote. Without condescending to mention the wretched Plagiarism, by which (as appears from the Proceedings of the political Dramatists) the Impieties of the old Greek Comedian have been revived for modern Exhibition, we may observe, that Innovation is often bold, impertinent, and puerile, and at the present Moment unseasonable.
On whose side is the author? He is himself guilty of reviving the impieties of Aristophanes for contemporary publication, but although he apparently condemns reformminded politics as rash rather than courageous, the footnoted quotation of the De Officiis associates courage with the concept of public utility. Text and footnote are in a troubling, unresolved tension with one another. Footnote f is among the lengthiest in the work, quoting no fewer than five classical sources. This barrage of verbiage appears à propos of the remark that “Innovation” is puerile. As the reader will recall, the author has already acknowledged the problem of youthful exuberance in the Preface. The first passage quoted (Hesiod, Works and Days, 40) sets the tone: Νηπιοι ουδ᾽ ισασιν ὁσῳ ΠΛΕΟΝ ἩΜΙΣΥ ΠΑΝΤΟΣ
Fools, who do not know how much greater is the half than the whole! “Whatever Euclid (I Elem. Ax. 9) may say to the contrary,” the author adds sardonically. Foolishness is now refined as specifically youthful folly by modified quotations from Herodian (Ab excessu divi Marci I.1.6) and, in square parentheses, Cicero’s Letters to Friends: [ADOLESCENTEM etiam ERRARE cum excusatione posse (MAT. ad CIC. Ep. 28 lib. 11. ad Fam.) is no Apology for Errors which arise from the premature Anticipation of Manhood and a Disavowal of the Age of Venialness.]86
85 Joseph Priestley (1733–1804). His publication of An Essay on the First Principles of Government and on the Nature of Political, Civil, and Religious Liberty (London: J. Dodsley, T. Cadell and J. Johnson, 1768) marked him as a political radical. For Priestley’s political radicalism and influence on Bentham, see R.E. Schofield, Enlightenment of Joseph Priestley: a study of his life and work from 1733–1773 (University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), pp. 206–12. For the destruction of his house in 1791, see Schofield, Enlightened Joseph Priestley: a study of his life and work from 1773–1804 (University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), pp. 283–9. 86 The Latin, which the author has very slightly adapted from Matinus’ original words to Cicero, reads: “That a young man may even go astray and be pardoned …” (Cicero, Letters to Friends, Book XI.28.5 = 349.5 Shackleton Bailey).
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The connecting theme running between this note and the previous one is rashness. As the following two quotations from Pliny and Lucan show, it is not only on the slippery paths of youth that men fall into folly. Pliny, Letters X.96 (numbered as X.97 in Reform)—the original, to the emperor Trajan, concerns the prosecution of Christians at Rome—is quoted to show that men of any age and rank, and indeed women too, are susceptible (the Latin is in fact a conflation of phrases drawn from Letters X.96.4 and 96.9): Fuerunt & alii similis amentiae cives: Multi enim OMNIS AETATIS, OMNIS ORDINIS, UTRIUSQUE SEXUS etiam vocantur in periculum (v. 49) & vocabuntur. There have been others similarly fanatical who are citizens … for a great many individuals of every age and class, both men and women, are being brought to trial, and this is likely to continue. (trans. B. Radice)
The cross-reference to v. 49 points the reader to the Greek text of the dialogue on p. 24 and the note that subtends it, informing him that this text is to be carefully read and re-read. The sententious statement of Pliny the Younger is accompanied by a more allusive quotation from Lucan (I.383–6), prefaced by the remark that the mob of enthusiasts identified in the quotation from Pliny are “disinterested Cosmopolites” who “generously offer their Service to the Arch-Engineer:” Tu quoscumque voles in planum effiundere MUROS, (v. 46) His aries actus disperget saxa lacertis Illa licet, penitus tolli quam iusseris urbem, ROMA sit - - - - - - - - - - - [I swear that] if you want any walls levelled to the ground, these arms of mine will drive the ram to scatter stones, even though the city whose annihilation you command be Rome. (trans. S. H. Braund)
There is again a cross-reference to the Greek text, this time on p. 22, and to the note that accompanies it. The Arch-Engineer is another oblique reference to Paine through his design, on which he began working in 1785, of a single-arch iron bridge.87 The bridge was constructed by the Walker ironworks in Yorkshire in 1789 and exhibited in Paddington, then a village just outside London, in 1790.88 Returning to the substance of the Lucan quotation, with Laelius’ vow that for Caesar he and his men are prepared to besiege any city, even Rome itself, the text crosses a referential Rubicon and ad-
87 A wooden model of the bridge was built in 1785 and an iron one in 1786; both were exhibited in Benjamin Franklin’s garden in Philadelphia. See Hawke, Paine (above, n. 5), pp. 163–8. 88 See Hawke, Paine (above, n. 5), pp. 191–2, 210–11.
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dresses the prospect of revolution and civil war.89 The youthful folly, which began as the author’s, has now become that of the cheerleaders and ardent followers of Paine. Thus this section of the text with its series of notes and its artful slippage from one subject to the next emphasizes the digressive bent of Reform: every instance of textual elucidation opens new avenues of satirical commentary. Third and finally, footnote g furnishes the reader with commentary on the unseasonable nature of innovation, incorporating three passages of Latin (in order: Panegyrici Veteres XII.4.2 Mynors; Cic. De or. II.4.17; Ov. Rem. am. 625) followed by a quotation from Shakespeare’s Henry IV (Part I, Act II, Scene iii: “The Purpose you undertake, is dangerous; the Friends you have named, uncertain; the TIME itself unsorted; and your whole Plot too light for the Counterpoise of so great an Opposition”). The first passage, adapting an address to the emperor Constantine, echoes the appeal to “vaticination” in the Introduction, describing the awakening of a millenarian sense among an unspecified faction of the arrival of the time for the freeing of the nation, despite the advice and warnings of men and prophets alike. The appeal to Cicero is again an appropriation rather than a quotation of his De Oratore, this time on the subject of propriety and tact in conversation: Qui autem TEMPUS quid postulet non vident, aut PLURA LOQUUNTUR, aut SE OSTENTANT, aut EORUM QUIBUSCUM SUNT rationem non habent, ii INEPTI esse dicuntur. Those who fail to realize the demands of the occasion, or talk too much, or advertise themselves, or ignore the prestige or convenience of those with who they have to deal … they are described as “tactless.” (trans. E.W. Sutton and H. Rackham, with minor modifications)
In the original Ciceronian context, these faults are attributed especially to the Greeks, who have a tendency to plunge into long, over-involved discussion at any moment; this is probably intended to reflect on S. Foote Jr.’s choice of a Greek text as the vehicle of digressive annotation. The verbs have been converted from singular to plural, embracing the plurality of reformists whose differences the author earlier declined to describe and widening the range of identified targets—with the consequent heightening of anxiety and urgency—from Paine in the singular to the plurality of a revolutionary faction. Finally, the Ovidian tag (Rem. am. 625 proximus a tectis ignis defenditur aegre, “it is difficult to fend off a fire next door;” directed to a man who ran into a former girlfriend while ill-advisedly traversing her neighborhood and re-opened old wounds) gestures toward the dangerously inflammatory properties of constitutional reform, from which the British landowning classes and the monarchy had much to fear. The last page of the Introduction (p. viii) urges against a hasty reaction to the text or the political circumstances in which it is issued:
89 Paine published in 1787 a pamphlet entitled “Prospects on the Rubicon,” an attempt to dissolve escalating tensions between Britain and France.
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Finally and seriously, let us not by the hasty Adoption of any crude Proposal justify the Charge of national Credulity [this is illustrated by a quotation from the Rolliad] … Let us not risque the Possibility of deteriorating our Condition by the rash Application of empirical Nostrums and Elixirs: Ægrescere medendo (Virg. Æn. xii. 46) was the Misfortune of the Italian who, as a Warning to others, ordered the following Epitaph to be inscribed on his Tomb: “I was well: I endeavoured to be better; and here I lie.”
The final paragraph disclaims authorial responsibility on the ground that “I am only the Interpreter of Aristophanes” and blames the excess of textual critical zeal, “which prevails throughout the COMMENTARY,” on the principles followed by Gilbert Wakefield, as remarked above.90 In the final part of this essay, I examine what the author of Reform achieves by applying Wakefield’s “digressive variety of correction” and his particular style of commentary to the text of Aristophanes’ Wealth and its English adaptation.
Satirical strategies in Reform A complete discussion of the footnotes to the Greek text and its translation is out of the question, given the amount of space available here and the extent and density of the material. What can be achieved, however, is an illustration of the three principal techniques outlined above, by which the author turns recherché academic discussion of Aristophanes into a caricature of political discourses in Britain in 1792: translation, textual criticism and literary exegesis. It will already be apparent from the English dialogue quoted above that the author’s translation—or as he justly calls it “modernisation”—of the Greek text is often highly imaginative, not to say perverse; this serves the obvious purpose of including otherwise extraneous material in the notes, satirizing Paine, MPs, Churchmen, Cambridge academics, classical scholars and George III. One favorite tactic by which the author renders the commentary more widely digressive and finds inventive ways to attack his targets is through reference to the scholia to Wealth. For example on p. 16, footnote k attaches to the Greek: ΜΕΓΑΣ δε ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ ουχι δια τουτον ΚΟΜΑ; Doesn’t the Great King preen on his [i.e. Wealth’s] account? (trans. J. Henderson)
This is translated in Reform on the facing page by the verses: By Money the GRAND MONARQUE, à la distance, ENCHANTED and HUMBLED the people of France.
90 The asterisk attached to the mention of Wakefield (p. viii, n. *) makes mischievous reference to several phrases lifted from Wakefield’s Silva Critica (above, n. 84), vol. III (1792), pp. 68, 88, 121.
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Footnote k elucidates as follows: ΚΟΜΑ δε ειπεν, τουτεστι, ΣΕΜΝΥΝΕΤΑΙ τῃ ΠΕΡΙΟΥΣΙΑ της ΑΡΧΗΣ (Schol.) Vocem αρχη hic obiter notandum tam in v. 14. quam in v. 56. de Imperio pleno sive de Dominatione accipi debere: Quod enim ad v. 14. attinet, disertis verbis Painius, “There is a natural Impossibility of uniting in the same Person the Principles of Freedom and the Principles of DESPOTISM or (as it is usually called in England) ARBITRARY POWER. A German Elector is in his Electorate a DESPOT: How then could it be expected that he should be attached to the Principles of Liberty in one Country, while his Interest in another was to be supported by DESPOTISM? The Union cannot exist; and it might easily have been foreseen that German Electors would make German Kings:” Ad v. 56. Taciti conversam (quod amant dicere Mathematici) propositionem adhibebimus “LIBERTATIS nemo Vocabulum usurpavit, quin DOMINATIONEM concupisceret.91
The discussion of the meaning of the verb as “priding himself in the abundance of his power” leads to a cross-reference to the cognate verb ἄρχειν found at verse 14 of the Greek. The verse to which the note makes reference, poses the question: ΑΡΧΕΙ δια τιν᾽ ὁ ΖΕΥΣ των ΘΕΩΝ; Through whom does Zeus rule over the gods?
This is translated in the English dialogue: “For when does ROYAL AUTHORITY rise o’er your Jura Divina?” The cross-reference to the question mark over the divine right of kings provides the springboard from which the text leaps to the otherwise gratuitous quotation of Paine attacking the Hanoverian dynasty, which is then knocked down by the Tacitean axiom that whoever appropriates the language of freedom does so only in the pursuit of power. A further example of imaginative use of the scholia occurs in the following line of the Greek, which questions the means by which the Assembly is convened: ΕΚΚΛΗΣΙΑ δ᾽ ουχι δια τουτον γιγνεται; And on his account [i.e. Wealth’s] doesn’t the Assembly meet? (trans. J. Henderson)
91 The quotation from the scholia is from the commentary of Tzetzes: see Scholia in Aristophanem Vol. III.4b, ed. M. Chantry (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1996) ad 170c, and Scholia in Aristophanem Vol. IV.1 Commentarium in Plutum, ed. L.M. Possitano (Groningen: J.B. Wolters, 1960) ad 170a. The opening remarks read “He [i.e. Aristophanes] has written “preen,” that is “pride oneself on the opulence of one’s rule [Gk. arche].” The word “rule” [arche] here, to be noted in passing both at v. 14 and v. 56, may be taken to refer to complete power or despotism: for the sense in v. 14 is expressed clearly by Paine.” Then, following the quotation of Paine, the commentary adds: “To v. 56 we shall add the contrary proposition (as the mathematicians love to say) of Tacitus: “no man usurps the vocabulary of freedom who does not desire tyranny.’” The reference to Tacitus is not a quotation; it appears to be a paraphrase of Hist. IV.73.3 and Ann. XI.17.2.
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Here footnote l glosses the word ΕΚΚΛΗΣΙΑ (the Ecclesia or the Athenian Assembly) with an aporetic discussion: Without venturing to decide whether Εκκλησια means the British HOUSE OF COMMONS or the ASSEMBLEE NATIONALE of France, we will state the arguments drawn from the Scholium and Context in favour of each: For the former.
For the latter. From the Scholium.92
Εκκλησιαζομεν γαρ η ΤΩΝ ΙΔΙΩΝ τι ΣΩΣΑΙ ΒΟΥΛΟΜΕΝΟΙ
η ΤΩΝ ΑΛΛΟΤΡΙΩΝ ΣΦΕΤΕΡΙΣΑΣΘΑΙ
From the Context. The great Parturition of Minority on the Subject of Russian Affairs, to which Allusion is made in the next Line.
The close Connexion subsisting between the French and their KING, who occurs in the preceding Line.
The τριωβολον93 of the Scholium, considered (abstractedly from its actual Value) as Pay for parliamentary Attendance, may on Paine’s Hypothesis refer to either. We have therefore chosen the best and safest Path, and given it a middle or general Interpretation.
The commentator attempts to have his cake and eat it, allowing the allusion to equivocate between the scandal of the recently created French republican government on the one hand, and the scandalous corruption, venality and ineffectuality of the British House of Commons on the other, with particular reference to the embarrassment of Pitt in the Ochakov crisis of the previous year (for which, see above). The whimsical aspects of the translation are supported in the footnotes by an equally fanciful philology. The critical microscope is applied not only to the Greek text, as we shall see presently, but to the English translation. The following passage is drawn from footnote 15 on p. 19, where it attaches to the line making reference to Russian Affairs, which has just been cited in footnote k. The English verse in question is: J. BULL. And by Money our ARMAMENTS made mad Kate tremble.
92 The Greek quotation from the scholium which follows is from the commentary of Tzetzes: see Scholia in Aristophanem Vol. IV.1 (above, n. 91) ad 171: “For we meet in the Assembly either intending to save something belonging to us or to appropriate something from others.” 93 I.e. the payment of three obols for assembly attendance.
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Footnote 15 raises doubts about the reading “mad.” 15 Some read lewd (supposing mad to have crept in, by the Hallucination of the Transcriber, from the Repetition of the preceding Word made) as an Epithet more appropriate to this MESSALINA of the North, and, without any personal reference to Mr. W––––h,94 quote Tacitus in Confirmation of this Conjecture – “Modesta iuventa sed corpore insigni acciti ultro, noctemque intra unam proturbati; paribus LASCIVIIS ad cupidinem & fastidia.” (Ann. xi.3695) Others however, observing the few Instances of this Oscitancy, and the great Number and Variety of Figures occurring in the Original and Version, by a happier Correction read Maid κατ᾽ αντιφρασιν [i.e. “by antiphrasis”]. With less acuteness the same Critics reject both the Emendations of v. 34 in favour of prey, which they endeavour to justify by the same Figure.
Verse 34 of the English translation, to which reference is made at the end of this note, is the line “For Money, at DURHAM does B-rr-ngt-n pray.” Footnote 12 attaching to this verse reads: In this Couplet there are great Variations: Those, who agree in retaining pray, differ on the Subject of Petitions; and forgetting the “δια τουτον” [“through him” i.e. the god Wealth] of the Original [= v. 17 on p. 8], or conceiving it to be implied in the Change of Situation, for which their common Prayers are supposed to be directed to the THRONE of Grace, by a bold Emendation read, FOR DURHAM at LONDON does B-rr-ngt-n pray; FOR LONDON his Namesake at BOTANY BAY: ––– Others, without disputing their Piety, observe that the formal Act of praying is not very fashionable with either of those Classes (whom by a very illiberal Antithesis they denominate active and inactive Citizens) and therefore, in consideration of the close Residence of both at the Places to which they have been respectively transferred, for pray correct stay.
The references (as noted above) are to Shute Barrington, son of John Shute Barrington, first Viscount Barrington, whose influential family connections secured him the office of Bishop of Durham in 1791, and George Barrington, the celebrated pickpocket, who was transported to Australia in the same year. The latter did indeed stay in the Antipodes for the rest of his days. Textual criticism of this stamp is also applied to the Greek text. Here again the author draws attention to textual “variants” and offers discussion of these “readings” to broaden the politico-satirical scope of reference of Reform; a good example is the discussion of the passage on page 10 in which in the Greek Chremylus assures Ploutos that without him no one would sacrifice to the gods any longer, while in the English
94 Charles Whitworth (1752–1825), later 1st Earl Whitworth, British ambassador in St Petersburg (strictly speaking “Envoy to Russia”) 1788–1800. 95 Referring to Traulus Montanus, who became entangled with the emperor Claudius’ wife Messalina. Wrangham’s appropriation reads: “Summoned on a whim, with modest youthfulness but outstanding looks, and sent away again the same night; this, with equal capriciousness in desire as well as in disdain” (adapted from J. Jackson).
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Thomas Paine declares to John Bull that without the levy of taxes the King’s riches and power would instantly vanish. Beneath the heavily doctored Greek text of Aristophanes’ Wealth 137–48 is an extensive discussion of the occurrence of the word for an ox (βοῦς): ΧΡ. Ὁτ᾽ουδ᾽αν εἱς ΘΥΣΕΙΕΝ ανθωρπων ετι Ου ΒΟΥΝ ΑΝ [ουχι ψαιστον] – ΠΛ. Πως; ΧΡ. Ην συ μη παρων Αυτος διδως Τ᾽ΑΡΓΥΡΙΟΝ, ὡς του ΔΙΟΣ ΤΗΝ ΔΥΝΑΜΙΝ, ΗΝ ΛΥΠΗ ΤΙ, ΚΑΤΑΛΥΣΕΙΣ μονος. Ἁπαντα τωι πλουτειν γαρ εσθ ὑπηκοα (Εγωγε τοι δια ΣΜΙΚΡΟΝ ΑΡΓΥΡΙΔΙΟΝ ΔΟΥΛΟΣ γεγενημαι, δια το ΜΗ ΠΛΟΥΤΕΙΝ ΙΣΩΣ
The facing English translation reads: T. PAINE. No Off’rings would GEORGE from his Subjects receive, Unless in return He had something to give: No BULSES – J. BULL. How, Wretch? – T. PAINE. I say, certainly none; Unless you gave him Money and Power, Friend JOHN: And thus, “for Misconduct cashiered,” ’tis plain, You might send him to H-N-V-R packing again. But Riches have now alas! absolute Sway, And subjugate England: — ’Twas but t’other Day Even I for a pitiful Sum was made Prize
Where the ancient Greek says ‘not even a single person would sacrifice an ox or a barley cake’ (Ar. Pl. 137–9), the English text points out the financial dependence of George III on the taxpayers of Britain, a major theme of Paine’s The Rights of Man. The method by which the translator arrives at this imaginative rendering is explained in footnote e: This obscure Passage has given rise to a great Variety of Conjectures; a few of which, for their Ingenuity, deserve to be recorded: 1. Some Commentators, without making any Alteration in the Text, interpret it of the Advantages enjoyed by the K–g in buying Cattle, which (as they insinuate) the Sellers may figuratively be said to sacrifice to the Honour of trading with his M- - - - -y. - - - - - 2. Others read θησειεν [i.e. “set”], and suppose it to allude to the CARICATUR CARICAT URAS AS which represent him as a Farmer amongst his Oxen, referring the ψαιστον [“barley cake”] to his Morning Muffins.- - - -
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4.
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A third Class, from the Similarity of the Literae Majusculae Λ and Ν read βουλαν,96 (which Conjecture is rendered plausible by the previous Occurrence of αν) and infer thence that the Cabinet is not free from SE SEC CRET RET INFL INFLUENC UENCE E. - - - - - - The Rev. Bellenden hazards a still bolder Conjecture in favour of a more invidious Allusion: He affirms the N to be a corruption of ΛC, by which Emendation the Word becomes βουλσαν [“boulsan”]: This Reading, as least honourable to Royalty, we have assigned to Paine.
The first interpretation defending the paradosis takes “sacrifice” figuratively, illustrating the disadvantage at which cattle-dealers by appointment to His Majesty operate. The second emends thuseien to thêseien and has Chremylus making reference to the lucrative business of printing caricatures, setting George III as a farmer; this allows the annotator to smuggle in a sly reference to the King’s consuming passion for animal husbandry, from which arose his nickname “Farmer George” and which was occasionally felt to indicate that his mind was not as concentrated on government as it should be.97 The third “class of conjecture” emends boun to boulan, explaining the mistake via haplography and the similarity of lambda and nu. With boulan (which Aristophanes would certainly never have written) the idea of the Cabinet is stirred in the imagination, and the annotator in turn imagines innuendo on the theme of improper, “secret influence.” The fourth “variety of conjecture” regards the nu to be a corruption of lambda sigma, and this produces the reading boulsan, which is not Greek but furnishes a bilingual pun on the word “bulses” in the English translation, which to come full circle sounds like “bulls.” The note then continues to a statement made for special emphasis in majuscule: AND HERE, ONCE AND FOR ALL, LET IT SUFFICE TO WARN THE READER, THAT WE ENTIRELY DISCLAIM EVERY INSINUATION THROWN OUT BY THAT WRITER [i.e. Paine] AGAINST THE MONARCH AND MONARCHY OF BRITAIN.
But given that the author has chosen to publish so much material on sensitive topics, it is difficult to isolate the sincerity of the disclaimer from the rest of the text, the poisonous contents of which might be felt to infiltrate even the clearest, boldest, majuscule typeset declaration of loyalty to the King.
96 “Council”: we might expect the Doric form βωλά (e.g. Dem. 18.90) or the Aeolic βόλλα. See LSJ s.v. βουλή. 97 For the popularity of caricatures in the period, see Hunt, Defining John Bull (above, n. 9), pp. 1–22. On p. 234, Hunt offers concise discussion and some examples of the caricature of George III as a farmer. The use of the nickname “Farmer George” in satirical caricatures can be traced to the early 1770s: Hunt, pp. 231, 235, with ill. 103. Hunt, p. 236 ill. 106, reproduces a 1792 print of George and Charlotte selling skim milk to a crowd of country folk who are puzzled to discover that he is “nothing but a man.” The suggestion appears to be that George’s popularity as “farmer George” and his common touch could be taken too far. For a discussion of “Farmer George” and his agricultural interests, see S. Ayling, George the Third (London: Collins, 1972), pp. 206–8.
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The same textual critical procedure is followed in the first line of the Greek text, which is translated into English as “Now learn what Advantages, if you take fire ….” To the Greek phrase ην μενῃς (“if you wait”) is attached the lengthy footnote a, part of which appears in brackets: [Alii quos “MORBUS REGIUS urget,” de metro parum soliciti pro μενῃς legendum existimant μαινῃ –– repugnante item sensu; cuinam enim sui ipsius sectatores insanire videntur? BELLEND.] Others whom the King’s illness encourages, without proper attention to the metre, and moreover with unsatisfactory sense, suggest that “if you are mad” should be read instead of “if you wait.” But who would think anyone who follows him to be insane?
As we have seen in the discussion of βουν above, the Rev. Bellenden is something of a firebrand among the annotators of Reform. From his pen in particular flow the remarks that most frequently broach politically inflammatory topics. Here he raises the spectre of men who imagine the demise of the King, a subject around which reactionaries and anti-republicans like Edmund Burke whipped up a maelstrom of political hysteria following the execution of Louis XVI in January 1793. If Wrangham sailed too close to the wind in Reform, it would have been at passages like this that an accusing finger was pointed. Reform ends (p. 29) with a final note to the reader: The Reader who shall take the Trouble of collating this Book with the Original and of examining those Parts of the Scholia to which Reference is made, will we hope admit the Correspondence of the Principal Parts of the Scene, and rejoice with us that the Πειθομαι [“I believe you” or “I am persuaded”], with which Plutus closes the Dialogue [= Wealth 251], is defective to the complete Coincidence.
John Bull’s acquiescence is thus omitted, but at the same time the text and translation come to an abrupt halt at Wealth 246, leaving the reader with an invitation to the interpretative challenge of deciding whether Britain will be persuaded by Thomas Paine or not. As the gentleman scholar knows, in Aristophanes’ play Chremylus does indeed persuade Wealth to follow him and be cured of his ophthalmic sufferings. The reception of Wrangham’s Reform presents reception studies with a puzzling anomaly. Edith Hall, in a study of Aristophanes in English from the mid-17th to the early 20th century, has suggested that Aristophanes, a number of whose plays were not translated into English until well into the 1800s, remained the property of “men who espoused traditional, even reactionary political opinions;” was “read by few outside the male, educated élite;” and “was seen as an establishment-minded ‘rightwing’ satirist for the whole period from Fielding to Matthew Arnold.”98 While Wrang-
98 Hall, “English-Speaking Aristophanes” (above, n. 1), p. 67; for further discussion, pp. 70–9.
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ham’s Reform can scarcely have been read by many outside the male, educated elite, the circumstances of its reception show that in the hands of a more liberal-minded translator and when received by members of the British establishment, Aristophanes was not always seen to be on the side of conservatives. It is difficult to gain a clear sense of what Greek (and Latin) texts undergraduates at Cambridge in the 18th century usually read. There was no standard university reading list, and teaching was done without much coordination among colleges. The Classical Tripos was established at Cambridge only in 1822 and first examined in 1824.99 Before that, there were no standard university exams in Greek for candidates for honours, although examinations for scholarships and prizes were a different matter. An 1877 study of university education in the 18th century, which largely focuses on Cambridge, identifies widely read authors mostly on the basis of texts edited and published by Cambridge scholars in the period. Xenophon’s Anabasis and Cyropaedia were certainly widely read, as were selected speeches and passages of Demosthenes, and some plays of Sophocles and Euripides.100 Aristophanes does not feature prominently among the classical authors in whom 18thcentury Cambridge scholarship took interest. But Wealth, like Clouds, had been popular for centuries as a morality play and had long enjoyed a place in the school curriculum (as did Frogs). A new Greek and Latin edition of Wealth and Clouds for schoolboys was published in 1768.101 Wrangham himself may have studied from it in school. It is likely that he selected the Wealth above all for the intrinsic suitability of its plot to his satirical purpose and its familiarity to his readership, not for the primary purpose of having an Aristophanic model. The breadth of his reference to other classical sources is where the true scholarly ambition of his work is found. But the genesis of Reform was not entirely based on an elitist education gained in grammar schools and universities. There were numerous adaptations and appropriations of Wealth in English from 1600 to Wrangham’s day.102 Ben Jonson adapted parts of the play in the Staple of News (1625). Thomas Carew’s 1633 masque Coelum Britannicum features the characters Plutus and Penia, and Plutus appeared in the fourth of Beaumont and Fletcher’s Four plays or moral representations. Wealth was the
99 For an account of its evolution, see C. Stray, “The First Century of the Classical Tripos (1822–1922): High Culture and the Politics of Curriculum,” in: C. Stray (ed.), Classics in 19th and 20th Century Cambridge: Curriculum, Culture and Continuity, Cambridge Philological Society Suppl. 24 (Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society, 1998), pp. 1–14; “A Parochial Anomaly: The Classical Tripos 1822–1900,” in: J. Smith and C. Stray (eds.), Teaching and Learning in 19th-Century Cambridge, History of the University of Cambridge: Texts and Studies 4 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2001), pp. 31–44. 100 Wordsworth, Scholae Academicae (above, n. 39), pp. 115–17. 101 Aristophanis Plutus cum scholiis graecis selectis in usum studiosae juventutis (Eton: J. Pote, 1768). 102 On the English adaptations of Plutus in the 17th century, see Miola (pp. 492–5 elsewhere in this volume); note his remarks on the more general reception of the play in the period (pp. 480–1).
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first play of Aristophanes to appear in English translation, in Thomas Randolph’s Hey for Honesty, Down with Knavery, written in the early 1630s.103 While Randolph’s play is a very free adaptation of the Greek text, in the 160 years between Randolph and Wrangham, three much closer translations appeared: in 1659, under the title The World’s Idol by one H. H. B.;104 in 1715, as Plutus or the World’s Idol by Lewis Theobald;105 and once more in 1742, as Plutus, the God of Riches by Henry Fielding in collaboration with William Young.106 The play’s plot and themes were therefore widely accessible to a Greekless readership in more than one fairly direct translation into English. Wrangham’s decision to pen Reform as a text with critical notes and commentary reflects a double purpose. In the first place, Fielding had used his 1742 translation and commentary to promote the possibility of a political comedy in English theaters,107 curtailed by Prime Minister Robert Walpole’s Licensing Act of 1737, which gave the state wide-reaching powers to censor political criticism onstage. In choosing to translate and comment on Wealth, Wrangham had aligned himself implicitly with Fielding’s Whig affiliations. On the other hand, by editing the Greek text and writing a large part of the commentary in Latin, Wrangham distanced himself from Fielding and shielded himself from charges of rabble-rousing pamphleteering. Wealth was seen as politically dangerous in this regard: in 1715, Lewis Theobald had carefully apologized for giving “low-class characters an irreverent voice” by translating the play.108 Wrangham’s exclusion of the part of the slave Carion from his adaptation helps mute some of the radicalism that might easily have been written into Reform.109 The fact that in the period from the early 1700s to the mid-19th century Aristophanes was generally a favorite classical author for translation and appropriation among the educated, conservative elite helped the precarious balancing of Reform’s politics between reactionary conservatism and dangerous radicalism. But in the end, it seems that the combination of Wrangham’s humble origins, his liking for irreverent mischief (of which the Latin Tripos poem of 1789, describing the first bout between the boxers Daniel Mendoza and Richard
103 Randolph died in 1635. The original play is usually dated to the early 1630s. The text was subsequently revised by one F. J., probably the publisher Francis Jaques, and published in 1651. See Hall, “English-Speaking Aristophanes” (above, n. 1), p. 67, and the discussion of Miola (pp. 493–4 elsewhere in this volume). 104 H. H. B. is discussed by Miola (pp. 494–5). See, further, R. Wyles “Publication as Intervention: Aristophanes in 1659,” in Aristophanes in Performance (above, n. 1), pp. 94–105. 105 See Hall, “English-Speaking Aristophanes” (above, n. 1), p. 72. 106 Hall, “English-Speaking Aristophanes” (above, n. 1), pp. 72–4. 107 H. H. B. also used his translation as the vehicle for polemical purposes in his interpretative essay on the play. 108 Hall, “English-Speaking Aristophanes” (above, n. 1), p. 72. 109 The text makes a number of references, however, to the slave trade and the Abolition Movement; see Reform, nn. m, 26, 27.
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Humphreys, was a very public example at Cambridge), and his willingness to publish compromised irretrievably his intellectual accomplishments in classical languages—at least in the eyes of a more conservative-minded university establishment.
Modern Receptions
Bernhard Greiner
Polos und Polis: Aristophanesʼ Vögel und deren Bearbeitung durch Goethe, Karl Kraus und Peter Hacks Abstract: Three aspects of Aristophanesʼ Birds are developed that are crucial for any attempt at adaptation: (1) The avian city owes its success as an escapist alternative world to punning and wordplay, a technique supremely difficult to imitate in any idiom other than its own. (2) With regard to its plot, conception of character and use of humor, the play vacillates between a Dionysian blurring of boundaries and their more firm establishment, with which every adaptation must come to terms. (3) The comedy is rooted in a culture of radical democracy from which the political environment of the adaptation may differ significantly. Three far-reaching German-language adaptations of Aristophanesʼ play are discussed. Goetheʼs adaptation for an amateur theater at court shows initial farcical (Dionysian-anarchic) streaks that eventually vanish. Krausʼ adaptation positions itself as satire: the two emigrants are reactionaries, staining the bird world black until the gods at last intervene. Hacksʼ opera libretto correlates the voluntary exiles and the avian city with a world of egoistic individual interests, in contrast to which Heracles figures as forbearer of the “positive hero” of Socialist Realism. The black-and-white vision presented by this comedy differs fundamentally from the Dionysian character of the ancient genre.
I. For us, Birds is perhaps Aristophanesʼ masterpiece, displaying to the full his comic imagination and lyrical gifts: diese Einschätzung, mit der Nan Dunbar die Einleitung zu ihrem monumentalen Zeilenkommentar der Vögel abschließt,1 ist unter den Philologen wie den Komödienliebhabern unbestritten, überall, wo man sich für Aristophanes interessiert.2 Die Vögel geben einem dem Menschen wohl eingeborenen Evasionsbedürfnis – weg aus immer beschränkenden Lebensverhältnissen – hinreißend Bild und Stimme. Die Flucht aus der korrumpierten Demokratie Athens geht zunächst
1 Nan Dunbar (ed.), Aristophanes, Birds (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), S. 14. 2 Z.B. Hans-Joachim Newiger, „Die Vögel und ihre Stellung im Gesamtwerk des Aristophanes,“ in: Ders. (Hg.), Aristophanes und die alte Komödie (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1975), S. 266–82; weitere Literaturangaben zu Aristophanes und zu dieser Komödie s.: Bernhard Greiner, Die Komödie. Eine theatralische Sendung: Grundlagen und Interpretationen. 2. akt. u. erg. Aufl. (Tübingen, Basel: Francke, 2006), (Kapitel: „Aristophanes: Die Komödie als Selbstfeier des souveränen Demos: Ornithes/Die Vögel”, in: ebd. S. 27–42).
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zu einem Wesen, das auf der Grenze zwischen Kultur und Natur steht, zu Tereus, einst König von Daulis, der nach schrecklichen Geschehnissen zum Wiedehopf geworden ist3 und seither bei den Vögeln lebt, diesen die (griechische) Sprache beigebracht hat (vgl. Vs. 2004). Das Ziel der Athen-Flüchtlinge ist zuerst eine andere Stadt, in der Wohlleben garantiert wäre, die soll ihnen Tereus, der als Vogel viel herumgekommen ist, weisen, dann aber bleiben die Flüchtigen lieber bei den Vögeln selbst, also im Raum der Natur, die allerdings umgewandelt wird in eine neue Stadt, ja in ein neues Weltreich, in dem nun die Vögel als die ursprünglicheren Götter herrschen. So verbindet die Vogel-Stadt Tier und Gott, Natur und Idealität im Absehen, auch Abweisen (man denke an die Abfertigungsszenen) des Menschen – warum hat Kleist keine Bearbeitung der Vögel unternommen, fragt man sich unwillkürlich, wäre diese Art Vogel-Stadt doch genuiner Ort der ‚Grazie‘ in seinem Sinne.5 Dieses Wunsch-Bild der Vogel-Stadt als Einssein von Tier und Gott wird immer wieder gegenwärtig in der Sprache, die Vogelrufe nachahmt (z.B. das Lied des Tereus, mit dem er, begleitet von Flötenspiel der Nachtigall, die Vögel zur Versammlung ruft [Vs. 227–62] oder die Strophe und Gegenstrophe des Chors in der Parabase [Vs. 737–52 u. 769–84]), die also nur Laut ist, aber diesen Gesang mit denotierbaren Worten und Sätzen, also geistigem Gehalt verbindet. So bewahrheitet die Sprache das Phantasiebild, wie die Idee zur Vogel-Stadt aus der Sprache geboren und begründet wird: PEITHETAIROS Gründet gemeinsam eine Stadt! [πόλιν, Vs. 172] WIE IEDEHOPF DEHOPF Was sollen wir Vögel wohl für eine Stadt gründen? PEITHETAIROS Wahrhaftig? Was für dummes Zeug du da redest! Schau nach unten! IEDEHOPF DEHOPF Nun, ich schaue ja! WIE PEITHETAIROS Jetzt schau nach oben! WIE IEDEHOPF DEHOPF Ich schaue. PEITHETAIROS Dreh deinen Hals herum! WIE IEDEHOPF DEHOPF Beim Zeus, davon werd’ ich jetzt was haben, wenn ich mir den Hals verrenke! PEITHETAIROS Hast du was gesehen? WIE IEDEHOPF DEHOPF Die Wolken natürlich und den Himmel! [νεφέλας, οὐρανόν, Vs. 178] PEITHETAIROS Und ist der denn nicht die Sphäre der Vögel? [ὀρνίθων πόλος, Vs. 179] WIE IEDEHOPF DEHOPF Sphäre? Wieso? [πόλος; τίνα τρόπον, Vs. 180: Sphäre; was ist das für eine sprachliche Wendung?]
3 S. z.B. Ovid, Metamorphosen, VI.424–674. 4 ἐδίδαξα τὴν φωνήν. Zitate aus den Vögeln werden unter Angabe der Verszahl im Text nachgewiesen, wobei folgende Ausgabe zugrundegelegt wird: Jeffrey Henderson (ed. and trans.), Aristophanes, Birds. Lysistrata. Women at the Thesmophoria (Cambridge Mass., London: Harvard University Press, 2000). Deutsche Übersetzung nach: Aristophanes, Sämtliche Komödien. Hg. und mit Einleitungen und einem Nachwort versehen von Hans-Joachim Newiger. Neubearbeitung der Übersetzung von Ludwig Seeger (Frankfurt a.M., 1845–1848) (München: dtv, 1980). 5 In den Gesang der Vögel, so verkündet der Chor in der Gegenstrophe der Parabase, hätten die Grazien mit eingestimmt (vgl. Vs. 782).
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PEITHETAIROS Man kann auch Ort/Raum [τόρος, Vs. 180] sagen. Weil er sich aber weit ausdehnt und alles durch ihn durchgeht, nennt man ihn eben Sphäre/Himmelsachse [πόλος, Vs. 182]. Wenn ihr den erst einmal bewohnbar macht und mit Grenzen umzäumt, so wird aus dieser Sphäre [πόλου, Vs. 184] etwas werden, was man Stadt [πόλις, Vs. 184] nennen wird, so werdet ihr über die Menschen herrschen wie über Grashüpfer, die Götter aber werdet ihr aushungern, wie man die Melier ausgehungert hat. (Vs. 186)6
Peithetairos bildet Tropen, er wendet die Sprache (tina tropon: was ist das für eine sprachliche Wendung? fragt der Wiedehopf [Vs. 180] nach Peithetairosʼ Rede von einer ‚Sphäre der Vögel‘ [ornithon polos, Vs. 179]). Die abstrakte Vorstellung von ‚Ort‘ oder ‚Raum‘ (topos, Vs. 180) verbindet er mit den Qualitäten ‚Weite‘ und ‚Durchlässigkeit‘ und gelangt so zu einer konkreteren Vorstellung und mit dieser zum neuen Wort ‚polos‘ (Vs. 182) ‚Sphäre‘ oder ‚Himmelsachse‘ als des Aufenthaltsortes der Vögel (Vs. 179). Diese Sphäre durch die Vögel anzueignen und das heißt auch, gegen andere abzugrenzen, erscheint ein leichtes, so leicht, wie man durch minimale Verschiebung auf der Wortebene von polos zu polis gelangt und damit zur konkreten Vorstellung einer Stadt der Vögel. So breitet sich durch Verschränkung von Vorstellungen (topos/ polos) und geringfügiges Verschieben von Lauten in der Vorstellung von Raum resp. Sphäre die einer Vogel-Stadt aus, umgekehrt in der Vorstellung von Stadt die einer Sphäre der Vögel. Peithetairos hat eine Metapher gebildet, die Idee zur Vogel-Stadt verdankt sich der Macht poetischer Rede. So feiert sich diese, aber doch etwas anrüchig; denn ausgerechnet dem Sykophanten (d.i. einem gewerbsmäßigen Denunzianten) wird Peithetairos erklären, dass Worte Flügel geben können (vgl. Vs. 1445). Das macht der Erfinder der Vogel-Stadt im Agon dann zum Prinzip. Er beweist aus Epitheta von Vögeln wie Göttern, die er willkürlich, aber witzig und durch den Witz bei den Vögeln wie beim Zuschauer Beifall findend interpretiert, dass die Vögel die ältesten Wesen und darum die angestammten Herrscher der Welt seien, älter und königlicher als die Götter, z.B.: Die Fabel des Äsop von der Lerche, die noch vor der Erde existierte und, als ihr Vater gestorben war, keinen anderen Ort, ihn zu begraben, hatte als den eigenen Kopf (womit auf die Federhaube der Hauben- oder Schopflerche Bezug genommen wird), wird damit bewahrheitet, dass das Wort κεφαλή nicht nur Haupt bedeutet, sondern auch der Name eines großen Begräbnisfeldes in Athen war (vgl. Vs. 471–6). Die Benennung des Hahns als ‚persischer Vogel‘ (Vs. 482), abgeleitet vom Vergleich seines Kamms mit der Dreifachkrone (Tiara) der persischen Könige,
6 Möglichst wortgetreue Übersetzung. Die vorliegenden Übersetzungen versuchen in unterschiedlicher Weise, das Wortspiel ‚polos/polis‘ nachzubilden. Seeger (s. Anm. 4) spielt mit der Vertauschung von ‚Stätte‘ (der Himmel als Stätte der Vögel) und ‚Stadt‘, Schadewaldt mit der Vertauschung von ‚Bereich‘ (der Himmel als der Vögel Luftbereich) und ‚Reich‘ (Griechisches Theater. Deutsch von Wolfgang Schadewaldt [Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1964], S. 310f.), Henderson (s. Anm. 4) mit der Vertauschung von ‚site‘ und ‚city‘.
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dient zum Beweis, dass der Hahn lange vor den persischen Königen Regent im persischen Reich gewesen sei.7 Der Redeformel, Zeus schicke unter Donnern ‚geflügelte Blitze‘ (Vs. 576) wird der Hinweis entnommen, Zeus habe seine Macht von den geflügelten Wesen, also den Vögeln. Ist die Vor-Herrschaft der Vögel noch vor den Göttern so aus der Sprache (wie aus bildlichen Darstellungen der Götter verbunden mit einem Vogel oder angetan mit Flügeln) erwiesen, muss Zeus abdanken und werden auch die Menschen gezwungen, noch vor den Göttern den neuen/uralten Herrschern, den Vögeln zu opfern: Wer dem König Zeus einen Schafbock weiht – Zaunkönig (ὀρχιλός8) ist ebenfalls König, Und es ziemt sich v o r Zeus ihm den Mückenbock mit kräftigen Hoden zu schlachten! (Vs. 568–9)
Der aus witzigem Umgang mit der Sprache – ihr dort Verbindungen abzuhören, wo diese ‚an sich‘ nicht bestehen – abgeleitete Herrschaftsanspruch der Vögel gibt die Rechtfertigung für die Abgrenzung eines eigenen Bereichs der Vögel oder umgekehrt: der pure Machtakt der Vögel, Grenzen zu errichten zwischen Himmel und Erde, wird gerechtfertigt durch einen aus der Sprache abgeleiteten Herrschaftsanspruch. In welcher Richtung auch das Errichten von Vogel-Stadt und Vogel-Herrschaft gelesen werden mag, deutlich ist, dass dabei zwei gegensätzliche Prinzipien zusammengeführt werden, deren Verbindung zugleich konstitutiv ist für poetische Rede wie für die Komödie: auf der einen Seite das Prinzip der Entgrenzung in den sprachlichen Akten der Verschiebung, der Abwandlung und Transformation, des Durcheinandergehens von Vorstellungen und des witzigen Herstellens von Verbindungen und auf der anderen Seite das Prinzip des Errichtens von Grenzen, der Unterscheidung, das den Raum der Entgrenzung verfestigt und bewohnbar macht, damit aber auch auseinanderhält, was zuvor problemlos Verbindung miteinander hatte, die Menschen und die Götter. Analog bedarf poetische Rede konstitutiv des Prinzips der Unterscheidung, da
7 Mehrfach gibt es in den Vögeln Anspielungen auf persische Elemente der Vogel-Stadt: einer der auf den Ruf des Tereus eintreffenden Vögel wird als Meder (Perser) beschrieben (Vs. 277), die Mauern, die um die Vogel-Stadt errichtet werden sollen, werden mit den Mauern um die (persische) Stadt Babylon verglichen (Vs. 552), als Tyrannei werden die Herrschaft der persischen Könige (Vs. 483), des Zeus (Vs. 1605), die neue Herrschaft der Vögel (Vs. 1643) und zuletzt die des Peithetairos (Vs. 1708) bezeichnet. Im Sieg über die Perser hat sich griechisches Gemeinschaftsbewusstsein, vor allem aber die Macht Athens begründet; dieser ‚Feind‘ wird übertrumpft durch die Vögel und ihren Städtebau, denen gegenüber die Persischen Könige nur nachgeordnete Macht haben. So können sich in der Deklassierung der Perser die Vögel und die Athener (das athenische Publikum der Komödie) in ihrem Herrschaftsanspruch verbrüdern. 8 Wahrscheinlich wird hier auf eine Fabel des Äsop Bezug genommen, nach der die Vögel einst beschlossen haben, denjenigen zu ihrem König zu erheben, der am höchsten flöge; das war der Adler. Der Zaunkönig hatte sich jedoch in dessen Gefieder versteckt und als der Adler seinen Flug wieder senkte, erhob er sich über ihm mit dem Ruf ‚König bin ich!‘
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ein sprachliches Zeichen wie jedes Zeichen nur dadurch gewonnen werden kann, dass es von anderen Zeichen unterschieden wird, es das Wesen poetischer Rede zugleich jedoch ausmacht, dieses Prinzip der Unterscheidung metaphorisch und metonymisch zu unterlaufen. Ebenso ist einerseits das Herz der Komödie die Parabase, die Grenzübertretung, die das Prinzip der Unterscheidung als nicht sicher etabliert ausweist, und wird andererseits diese dionysische Komponente der Komödie erst fassbar und genießbar gemacht durch dramatische Formung, die auf dem Prinzip Unterscheidung aufruht. Im Errichten und Begründen der Vogel-Stadt durch Zusammenführen dieser beiden Prinzipien sind Die Vögel derart auch eine transzendentale Komödie der Poesie wie der Komödie selbst in dem Sinne, dass sie deren Wesen und die Bedingung ihrer Möglichkeit zur Anschauung bringen. Das Requisit, in dem die dionysische Komponente der Komödie und die der dramatischen Formung paradigmatisch zusammengeführt sind, ist die Maske, die Tiermaske des Chors, die dieser das ganze Stück hindurch, also auch in der Parabase, der illusionsdurchbrechenden Hinwendung des Chors zum Publikum, beibehält. Die Maske erlaubt Verwandlung, dionysische Entgrenzung, zugleich ist sie starr, bekräftigt sie durch Abwandlung, die für den Vogelchor anzusetzen ist, da auf diese Weise vielerlei Vogelarten vorgestellt werden können, das Prinzip der Grenzziehung. Indem der Chor in der Tiermaske spielt und spricht, lässt er nie vergessen, dass das Geschehen in der Welt der Vögel spielt. So verbürgt er die fiktive Welt des Stücks, mehr noch: das konsequente Agieren in der Vogelmaske bewahrheitet erst die Bedingung der Möglichkeit der autonomen Vogelwelt als Zwischenreich zwischen Menschen und Göttern. Ist das wieder dem Prinzip der Unterscheidung geschuldet, so hält das Agieren in der Tiermaske umgekehrt ebenso das ereignishaft-kultische Moment des Komödienspiels wach, den hier und jetzt geschaffenen Bezug zum Gott Dionysos als des Gottes der Entgrenzung, da die Tiermaske ja auch Entsprechung zur Maske als Erscheinungsform des Gottes Dionysos ist, zu dessen Ehre und vor dessen in das Theater eingeholter Statue (bei den Städtischen Dionysien) Theater gespielt wird. Das Zusammenführen der einander entgegengesetzten Prinzipien ergibt zunächst einmal Komik des Missverhältnisses: Der Raum der Unterscheidung, die Vogel-Stadt als Barriere, wird geschaffen durch den Aufbau eines Sprachraums der Nichtunterscheidung und ebenso revers: Das Ziel, ein Leben jenseits einer durch Politik zerrissenen Polis, wird erreicht auf dem Wege gewagtester, genialster Politik, die die Gründung eben einer Polis zum Gegenstand hat. Auf der Ebene der literarischen Gattung besagt dies, dass der Komödien-Raum der Übertretung geschaffen wird durch Etablieren eines Raumes der Trennung und Abgrenzung. Diese Missverhältnisse werden aber nicht dialektisch durchgearbeitet, es wird keine Einheit des Widersprüchlichen (Flucht aus der ‚Politik‘ als Entwurf einer ‚Neuen Politik‘) entfaltet. Wolkenkuckucksburg ist kein Entwurf eines Idealstaates, wie sie Platon und Aristoteles wenig später entwerfen werden, sondern ein phantastischer Einfall, der mit einem Schlag alle politischen Probleme zu lösen verspricht – allerdings nicht, indem er sie ernst nimmt, sondern indem er sie in die Schwerelosigkeit des Reiches der
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Wolken überführt, das durchsichtig ist zum Reich der Poesie wie zur Welt der Komödie. Da die Vogel-Stadt aus dem Zusammenführen entgegengesetzter Prinzipien entsteht, ohne dass diese dialektisch durchgearbeitet würden, gewinnt alles, was mit ihr zu tun hat, ambigen Charakter. Die Vogelherrschaft ist urwüchsig, wovon die Sprache Zeugnis gibt, zugleich jedoch usurpiert, da sie sich allein dem Errichten eines Zwischenreiches verdankt. Entsprechend verkörpern Besucher aus Athen, die in den beiden Epeisodienreihen in ihrer Hohlheit demaskiert und vertrieben werden, einerseits Wesenszüge der Wolken-Stadt und ihres Gründers und können doch, da sie dies immer nur einseitig leisten, mit gutem Recht abgefertigt werden. Genannt seien zwei Besucher, in denen zwei stadtbekannte Athener Intellektuelle verspottet werden. Der Mathematiker und Astronom Meton, der im Kothurnschritt (vgl. Vs. 994), d.h. im tragischen Maß auftritt, steht nicht nur für den weltfremden, von seiner Idee (dass der Himmel als Backofen vorzustellen sei) begeisterten Naturphilosophen, der der Lächerlichkeit preisgegeben wird, sondern auch – mit seinem Angebot, das Reich der Luft zu vermessen und in Bezirke aufzuteilen (vgl. Vs. 995–6) – für das Festlegen von Grenzen, dem sich die Macht der Wolkenstadt verdankt, wie dann auch seine Idee, die Stadt radial von einem Zentrum aus anzulegen, die spätere Tyrannei des Peithetairos andeutet. Der Dithyrambendichter Kinesias, den Peithetairos verspottet (vgl. Vs. 1378–9) als mit dem Klumpfuß kreisförmige Bewegungen – was der Tanzschritt des Dithyrambenchors wäre – vollziehend (eine Anspielung auf Kinesiasʼ Dithyrambendichtung, nach der, so die Kritik, ein Chor nicht tanzen könne), möchte von Peithetairos beflügelt werden, um aus den Wolken Dithyramben zu holen (vgl. Vs. 1383–90), denn diese müssten ‚fittichgeschüttelt‘ (πτεροδόνητα: durch Flügel bewegt, Vs. 1390 u. 1402) sein. Der phantastische Einfall zur Wolkenstadt leitet sich aber nicht anders her: von Sprachflügeln bewegt, aus den Wolken geholt. Auch die Reaktionen, auf die die Rolle des Peithetairos angelegt ist, bleiben unauflösbar ambig. Peithetairos hat alle Sympathien des Zuschauers, insofern er eskapistische Wünsche genial und schwerelos erfüllt. Wie er die Vögel mit absurden Argumenten von ihrer angestammten Königswürde und Herrschaft noch über die Götter überzeugt, lässt seinen Witz genießen, es zeigt sich darin aber auch der geschulte Sophist und gefährliche Redner, der zu allem zu verführen vermag und dem nichts heilig ist, wie die Athener ein Jahr zuvor den Alkibiades erlebt hatten, der in der Volksversammlung die Sizilianische Expedition durchgesetzt hatte, durch sein frevlerisches Verspotten des Eleusinischen Mysterienkultes und wahrscheinliches Mitwirken an Beschädigungen von Hermesstatuen aber in Misskredit geraten war.9 Der vom Himmel mit der Zeustochter Basileia zurückkehrende Peithetairos wird als 9 S. Vs. 146/7, eine Anspielung auf Alkibiadesʼ Abberufung von der Sizilianischen Expedition und Rückbeorderung nach Athen durch das Schnellschiff Salaminia, um ihm den Prozess zu machen, dem sich Alkibiades allerdings durch Flucht nach Sparta und Beratung nun des Feindes zu entziehen wusste.
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τύραννος (Vs. 1708) begrüßt: das kann Erfüllung des Machttraums der Vögel anzeigen, aber ebenso auch Betrug an ihnen, denen absolute Souveränität versprochen worden war und die nun unter einer umfassenden Herrschaft ihres alten Feindes, eines Menschen, stehen. Peithetairos lädt zur Identifikation ein als genialer Athener, auch als guter Bürger, der all die Schnorrer einer Polis physisch wie ideell ‚schlagkräftig‘ davonjagt; aber Peithetairos geht auch sehr weit in seiner Respektlosigkeit gegenüber den Göttern, ihrer Entmachtung und seiner Rückkehr von Zeus als eine Art neuer Gott. Verbindet man dies mit dem in der Erinnerung noch frisch gegenwärtigen Frevel des Alkibiades, erscheint Peithetairos auch fragwürdig, kaum mehr zur Identifikation einladend. Die Komödie nimmt allerdings den Triumph des Peithetairos resp. der Vögel über die Götter auch wieder zurück und lässt so der Identitfikation mit dem Helden Raum; in der Mythologie, und damit für den Zuschauer, gibt es die ZeusTochter Basileia, der Inbegriff aller herrscherlichen Fähigkeiten, nicht, weshalb Prometheus sie dem Peithetairos als den von Zeus zu fordernden Preis erst erklären muss. Basileia ist offenbar komischer Ersatz für Hera, von der sie auch ausdrücklich unterschieden wird (Vs. 1633, 1731, 1741), wie Peithetairos zu einer Art zweitem Zeus wird, aber doch nur als phantastischer König einer phantastischen Stadt, also eine Art Karnevalsprinz mit seiner Karnevalsprinzessin, wozu dann bestens passt, dass Chor und Hauptpersonen des Stücks jubelnd zum Festmahl abziehen, das wie der Chorführer sagt, im nahen Tempel des Zeus stattfinden soll, den es jedoch nahe dem Athener Dionysostheater nicht gibt. Peithetairos kehrt auch nicht, wie Prometheus dies empfohlen hat (Vs. 1535), mit dem Szepter des Zeus zurück, sondern mit dessen Blitzen (was auf dem Theater Möglichkeiten für leuchtende und donnernde Theatereffekte gab) und nicht Peithetairos, sondern Zeusʼ Blitzstrahlen ist die Hymne des Schlusschors gewidmet. Unklar ist generell der Ausgang: herrschen nun die Vögel zusammen mit den Göttern über die Menschen, wie Peithetairos dies Prometheus vorstellt (vgl. Vs. 1604–25), oder herrschen sie allein über Menschen wie Götter, und herrschen sie überhaupt oder nur Peithetairos? Ist das Leben in Wolkenkuckucksburg Wiederkehr des Zeitalters des Kronos, des Vaters des Zeus, da niemand arbeiten musste, um zu leben und alle Güter sich von selbst darboten,10 oder ist es ein Sklavenleben unter der Tyrannei des Peithetairos? Das Vogelreich ist zwischen dem der Menschen und dem der Götter situiert, besetzt damit die gewohnte Hierarchie um, nach der der Mensch zwischen Tier und Gott steht, an beidem Anteil habend: nun steht der Mensch an unterster Stelle, und Tier und Gott rücken zusammen in Herrscherposition, aber dies gelingt doch wieder nur darum, weil der menschliche Held einerseits Tier (Vogel) und andererseits (wie) Gott wird, so dass die alte Hierarchie ebenso aufgehoben wie bestätigt wird. 10 So entworfen in Hesiods Werken und Tagen (vgl. Hesiod, Theogonie. Werke und Tage. Griechisch und deutsch. Hg. u. übers. von Albert von Schirnding [München, Zürich: Artemis & Winkler], S. 90/91, Vse. 111–20), später in Platons Politikos (Platon, Sämtliche Werke, hg. von Walter F. Otto u.a., Bd. 5 [Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1959], S. 28 f [272a–c]).
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II. Es mag deutlich geworden sein, dass und wie Aristophanesʼ Komödie Die Vögel Evasionsbedürfnisse bedient, ebenso den Wunsch nach Freiheit, letzteres insbesondere in einer Befreiung der Phantasie, die zwar gebunden bleibt an die Möglichkeiten der Sprache, allerdings einer im wörtlichsten Sinne beflügelten Sprache. Weiter gibt diese Komödie umfassend der Lust der Verlachens Raum mit ihrer vielfältigen Komik des Missverhältnisses, ebenso aber der Lust des Freisetzens des Unterdrückten mit ihrem Vollzug dionysischer Entgrenzung und ihrer grundlegenden Ambiguität, ihrer Umkehrung der Verhältnisse von Verfolger und Verfolgten, ebenso von Herrschern und Beherrschten, wobei das Aufheben von Grenzen mit dem gleichzeitig bewahrten Prinzip der Grenzziehung nie ins Amorphe führt. Solche Angebote lassen erwarten, dass die Komödie viele Liebhaber finden werde, was ihre Wirkungsgeschichte auch bestätigt,11 allerdings nicht von Beginn an, da Aristophanes mit ihr bei den Dionysien 414 v. Chr. bekanntlich nur den zweiten Preis errang. Aber vielfältige Beschäftigung mit dieser Komödie in späteren Jahrhunderten machen die anfängliche Verkennung, die vielleicht der umfassenden Ambiguität der Komödie geschuldet war, mehr als wett. Greifbar wird die Wirkung, die hier nur für den deutschen Sprachraum angezeigt werden soll, zum einen in Übersetzungen. In der Epoche des Sturm und Drang wird offenbar das Interesse am frechen oder, mit Worten Goethes, am ungezogenen Liebling der Grazien“12 Aristophanes wach. Anonym erscheint 1779 in Augsburg eine Übersetzung der Vögel, die auf eine französische Übersetzung zurückgeht.13 Für die Ettersburger Liebhaberbühne, auf der Mitglieder des Weimarer Hofes und auch Goethe Theater spielten, verfertigte Goethe 1880 eine Adaption des Stücks, die allerdings mehr Bearbeitung als Übersetzung ist und auch nur bis zum Vorschlag des Peithetairos, die Wolkenstadt zu bauen, ausgearbeitet und dann im Sommer 1780 aufgeführt wurde, im Druck allerdings erst 1787 im vierten Band der Göschen-Ausgabe der Werke Goethes erschien.14 Nach Friedrich Schlegels enthusiastischem Aristophanes-Essay,15 der Aristophanesʼ Stücke zum Komödienideal schlechthin (zumindest jedoch der wenig später inaugurierten romantischen Bewegung) erhob, haben im 19. Jahrhundert für den deutschen Sprachraum bestens ausgewiesene Übersetzer immer neue Versuche unternommen, diese Komödien und nicht zuletzt die Vögel zu übersetzen:
11 Hierzu: Wilhelm Süss, Aristophanes und die Nachwelt (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1911); Jürgen Werner: „Aristophanes-Übersetzung und Aristophanes-Bearbeitung in Deutschland,“ in: Newiger: Aristophanes und die alte Komödie [s. Anm. 2], S. 459–85. 12 So die Formulierung im Epilog der Bearbeitung Goethes, s.u. 13 Aristophanes, Die Vögel. Nach der franz. Übers. des Herrn Boivin (Augsburg: Journal für Freunde der Religion und Litteratur, 1779). 14 Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Die Vögel. Nach dem Aristophanes (Leipzig: Göschen, 1787). 15 Friedrich Schlegel, „Vom ästhetischen Werte der griechischen Komödie,“ in: Kritische Friedrich Schlegel Ausgabe, Bd. I, hg. von Ernst Behler (Paderborn u.a.: Schöningh, 1979), S. 19–33.
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Christoph Martin Wieland 1805,16 Johann Heinrich Voß 1821,17 Johann Gustav Droysen 1835,18 der für Νεφελοκοκκυγία (Vs. 819) das perfekte deutsche Pendant ‚Wolkenkuckucksburg‘ fand, das seither in den deutschen Übersetzungen verwendet wird, Friedrich Rückert 186719. Mehrfach aufgelegt und überarbeitet wurde die Aristophanes-Übersetzung von Ludwig Seeger, auf die auch die hier zugrundegelegte Übersetzung zurückgeht.20 Wolfgang Schadewaldt hat die Vögel sowohl übersetzt21 als auch auf dieser Grundlage für eine Inszenierung des Stücks in Göttingen in der Spielzeit 1969/70 eine Bühnenfassung erstellt.22 Hinwendung zu Aristophanes oder dezidierte Ablehnung sind immer auch Stellungnahmen zu zwei Grundtendenzen seiner Komödien: zum einen zu deren demokratischem Ideal, die Bürger sich als Souverän feiern zu lassen, verbunden allerdings mit der Sorge, dass sich die radikale Demokratie selbst zerstören könne, zum anderen zu deren Abrechnung mit der Sophistik, dem Intellektualismus, wofür die Verspottung des Sokrates in den Wolken und die Abwertung des Euripides gegenüber Aischylos und Sophokles in den Fröschen wirkungsvoll Zeugnis geben. Auch die Vögel zeigen diese Tendenzen, allerdings weniger als sonst politisch akzentuiert. Flucht aus der Politik, von der diese Komödie handelt, vollzieht sie derart selbst zugleich konzeptionell. In den siebziger und achtziger Jahren des letzten Jahrhunderts waren Politikverdrossenheit und eskapistische Wünsche im deutschen Sprachraum wohl besonders stark, so dass Theater Interesse für Aristophanesʼ Umgang mit solchen Stimmungen erwarten konnten. Jedenfalls sind für diese Zeit eine Reihe überregional beachteter Inszenierungen der Vögel zu verzeichnen: 1969 in Nürnberg (Regie: Stavros Doufexis) und Göttingen (Regie: Günther Fleckenstein, auf der Grundlage der Bühnenfassung von Wolfgang Schadewaldt), außerordentlich erfolgreich war die Inszenierung Dieter Dorns am Berliner Schillertheater 1973, unpolitisch-ästhetisierend, den Eskapismus und die Vogelwerdung der Aussteiger zu einem bloßen Traum verharmlosend, war die Inszenierung Luca Ronconis am Wiener Burgtheater 1975, beim
16 Aristophanes, Die Vögel. Übers. v. Christoph Martin Wieland (Zürich: Neues attisches Museum 1,1 S. 19–158, 2,1 S. 107–63, 1805–10). 17 Aristophanes, Vögel. Übers. v. Johann Heinrich Voß. In: J.H.V., Werke, Bd. 2 (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1821). 18 Des Aristophanes Werke. Übers. v. Johann Gustav Droysen. Erster Theil (Der Frieden, Plutos, Die Vögel) (Leipzig: Veit, 1835). 19 Aristophanes, Die Vögel. Übers. v. Friedrich Rückert, in: Aus Friedrich Rückert’s Nachlaß, hg. von M. Rückert (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1867). 20 Aristophanes, Sämtliche Komödien. Hg. u. mit Einleitungen u. einem Nachwort versehen von HansJoachim Newiger. Neubearbeitung der Übersetzung von Ludwig Seeger (Frankfurt/M 1845–8) (München: dtv, 1976). 21 Aristophanes, Die Vögel. In: Griechisches Theater. Deutsch von Wolfgang Schadewaldt (Frankfurt/ M: Suhrkamp, 1964), S. 263–356. 22 Aristophanes, Die Vögel. Bühnenfassung. Übersetzung und Bearbeitung von Wolfgang Schadewaldt (Frankfurt/M: Insel, 1970).
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Publikum erfolgreich, bei den Theaterkritikern weniger, war die kulturkritisch orientierte Inszenierung des Stücks (einen wechselseitig feindseligen Bezug von Mensch und Natur akzentuierend) durch Hansgünther Heyme am Staatstheater Stuttgart 1980, durchaus politisch, vor allem aber poetisch, das Schwebe-Wesen nicht nur der Wolkenstadt, sondern auch der Komödie, die sie vorstellt, mitvollziehen lassend, war die Inszenierung Axel Mantheys wieder am Wiener Burgtheater 1989, mit Ulrich Wildgruber in der Hauptrolle.23 Seither scheint die Zeit für diese Komödie vorerst vorbei zu sein. Selbstverständlich kann man jede Übersetzung und jede Inszenierung des Stücks schon als Bearbeitung auffassen. Es dürfte jedoch aussagekräftiger sein, diesen Begriff für solche Auseinandersetzungen zu reservieren, die das Stück, um es für eine bestimmte Fragestellung sprechend zu machen, tiefgreifend umbilden, durch Hinzufügungen und Weglassungen, Umorganisation der Handlung, des dramatischen Aufbaus, Wahl anderer Sprachebenen und Anspielungsfelder: sei dies, um das Stück durchaus mit seiner originären Problemstellung einem vom ursprünglichen Publikum gänzlich verschiedenen Zuschauerkreis zugänglich zu machen, sei es, um mit dem Themen-, Motiv- und Figurenensemble des Stücks ganz neue Themen und Problemstellungen aufzuwerfen. Von den Bearbeitungen der Vögel in diesem engeren Sinne werden nachfolgend aus dem deutschen Sprachraum drei24 betrachtet: die schon genannte Goethes von 1780, eine Bearbeitung durch Karl Kraus aus dem Jahre 1923 und die Bearbeitung von Peter Hacks, die sowohl als Libretto für eine Oper als auch als Text für ein Schauspiel gedacht war (im Druck erschienen 1975, Uraufführung der Oper 1981). Mit dem Versuch, die Wesenszüge dieser Komödie zu bestimmen, ist auch schon ein Katalog von Fragen an Bearbeitungen des Stücks angezeigt. So wird zu klären sein, wie die Bearbeitungen mit den spezifischen Angeboten der Komödie umgehen: dem Angebot der Evasion, der Befreiung von erdenschwerer Beschränkung, Befreiung vor allem der Phantasie, nicht weniger mit dem Angebot der Lust, sei es des Verlachens im Innewerden von Missverhältnissen, sei es eines Lachens, das (unterm Zivilisationsgebot) Unterdrücktes heraufsetzt: das dionysische Element der Entgrenzung, des Aufhebens des Prinzips der Unterscheidung, der Auflösung oder doch wenigstens Umkehrung eingespielter Hierarchien. Weiter wird zu fragen sein, wie sich
23 S. hierzu das schöne Programmbuch: Aristophanes: Die Vögel. In einer Bearbeitung von Michael Eberth und Axel Manthey. Dt. von Michael Eberth. Burgtheater Wien, Programmbuch Nr. 53, 13. Dez. 1989 (Wien: Geyer + Reisser, 1989). 24 Die Bearbeitung von Josef Ruederer (Wolkenkuckucksheim: Komödie in drei Akten (München: Süddeutsche Monatshefte, 1909) fand keine Beachtung über den Tag hinaus, der Bearbeitung der Komödie zu einer Oper durch Walter Braunfels (Die Vögel: Ein lyrisch phantastisches Spiel nach Aristophanes [Wien: Universal Edition, 1920]) könnte man nur gerecht werden, wenn man der musikalischen Gestaltung zumindest gleiche Beachtung schenkte wie der literarischen. S. hierzu den Beitrag von Simone Beta in diesem Band S. 824–48.
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Bearbeitungen zu der grundlegenden Ambiguität der Komödie hinsichtlich all ihrer Orientierungen verhalten, im Besonderen dann zu der ihres Helden, weiter des Vogelreiches, seines Wesens, wie der Art seiner Errichtung. Wird diese Ambiguität überhaupt wahrgenommen? Wird sie in (z.B. satirische) Eindeutigkeit aufgelöst? Jede Bearbeitung der Vögel wird sich auch konstitutiv mit der Gründung der Wolken-Stadt im Spiel der Sprache auseinanderzusetzen haben, was in einer anderen Sprache immer sehr schwer nachzustellen ist, und ebenso mit dem Bewahrheiten der Bedingung der Möglichkeit einer autonomen Vogelwelt durch den Chor der Vögel. Auf den Chor kann aus diesem Grund bei einer Neuaneignung der Komödie kaum verzichtet werden, zugleich erlaubt ein Vogelchor durch Vielfalt von Kostümen und Nachstellungen des Fliegens Schaulust zu bedienen, gleichzeitig ist der Chor jedoch im neuzeitlichen (auch schon im römischen) Theater ein Fremdkörper. Zuletzt wird eine Bearbeitung der Vögel nicht unwesentlich auch davon geprägt sein, wie sie mit dem spezifischen demokratischen Geist dieser Komödie umgeht und mit deren Abwehr von Sophistik, Intellektualismus und Rhetorik, denen sie selbst zugleich doch nachhaltig verpflichtet ist, gerade um sie denunzieren zu können.
III. Für die Belustigung der Weimarer Hofgesellschaft, die an Sommertagen im Schloss Ettersburg teils selbst Theater spielte, zum anderen Teil die Zuschauer abgab, hat Goethe im Sommer 1780 eine Bearbeitung der Vögel25 verfasst, angeregt von der Aussicht, dass der auf Einladung des Herzogs zu Besuch in Weimar weilende Maler Adam Friedrich Oeser, sein früherer Zeichenlehrer, Bühnendekorationen für das Stück malen würde. Der mit Geschäften überhäufte mehrfache Minister Goethe öffnete sich damit dem Freiraum der Phantasie, durchaus vergleichbar dem Helden seines Stücks, wenn auch keineswegs wie Peithetairos26 in der Absicht, der Welt, die er so verlässt, vollends den Rücken zu kehren. Auf Schloss Ettersburg versammelte die
25 Das Stück (Die Vögel: Nach dem Aristophanes) ist abgedruckt in: Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Sämtliche Werke. Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche. Hg. v. Hendrik Birus u.a. (Frankfurter Ausgabe) I. Abt. Bd. 5, hg. v. Dieter Borchmeyer (Frankfurt/M: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1988). Zitate aus dem Stück werden im Text unter Angabe der Seitenzahl nach dieser Ausgabe nachgewiesen, weitere Zitate aus Goethes Schriften nach der Frankfurter Ausgabe: Sigle FA, römische Ziffer: Angabe der Abteilung, arabische Ziffern: Bandzahl und Seitenzahl. 26 Goethe übersetzt den Namen mit ‚Treufreund‘, d.h. er liest den in den Handschriften überlieferten Namen ‚Peisthetairos‘, der keinen Sinn ergibt, da kein griechischer Name vom Passivstamm eines Verbs gebildet wird, als Pistetairos, abgeleitet von πίστις, Treue. Mehr Sinn ergibt die Lesung Peithetairos oder Peisetairos mit der Ableitung von πείθειν, Überreden, was zur Namensübersetzung ‚Ratefreund‘ führt. Das entspricht Peithetairos, der ja mit seiner rhetorischen Meisterschaft die Vögel zum Bau der Wolkenstadt überredet. Droysen (s. Anm. 18) wählte in seiner Übersetzung ‚Ratefreund‘, dem folgen Karl Kraus (s.u.) und Schadewaldt (s. Anm. 22).
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Herzoginmutter Anna Amalia einen literarisch-musikalischen Zirkel, der weniger streng höfisch-zeremoniell ausgerichtet war, in dem also Adlige und Bürgerliche zusammenwirken konnten, somit wenigstens ein Hauch der demokratischen Freiheit der Aristophanischen Komödie zu verspüren war. Goethe spielte bei der Premiere des Stücks am 18.08.1780 den Peithetairos, während der Weimarer Geheime Rat Friedrich Hildebrand von Einsiedel den Euelpides (übersetzt als ‚Hoffegut‘) gab – für diese Rolle war zuerst Prinz Constantin, der Bruder des Herzogs, vorgesehen gewesen –, die Schauspielerin Corona Schröter sprach den Epilog und hatte wohl auch die hinter der Szene zu gebenden Gesangspartien übernommen. Die Musik für den Chor der Vögel komponierte der Weimarer Hofkapellmeister Ernst Wilhelm Wolf. Trotz der Freiheiten eines höfischen Liebhabertheaters unter der Patronage einer kunstsinnigen Herzogin und trotz der von den Autoren des Sturm und Drang schon heftig geführten Attacken gegen die Prinzipien der Bühnenreform Gottscheds und des herrschend gewordenen Illusionstheaters war das auf deutschen Theatern Mögliche unendlich vom radikal demokratischen, latent anarchischen, sinnlich das Derbe und Obszöne nicht scheuende Wesen des Athener Theaters der Alten Komödie entfernt. Goethe hat in späteren Jahren Aristophanes selbst als ‚Hanswurst‘ bezeichnet27 und so mit eben der komischen Figur gleichgesetzt, der das ‚gereinigte‘ Theater der Aufklärung, aber auch das der Weimarer Klassik, keinen Raum mehr geben mochte. Unter solchen Voraussetzungen war es schon provokativ, nach Aristophanes überhaupt zu greifen, wie denn auch Charlotte von Stein in einem Brief an Knebel vom 6.8.1780 zu Goethes Bearbeitung der Vögel bemerkt, Ich glaube nicht, daß er uns wird so viel zu lachen machen, als er denkt.28 Entsprechend wird dem Stück als Epilog eine Entschuldigungsadresse an das Publikum angefügt: Der erste, der den Inhalt dieses Stücks Nach seiner Weise aufʼs Theater brachte, War Aristophanes, der ungezogne Liebling der Grazien. Wenn unser Dichter, dem nichts angelegner ist, Als euch ein Stündchen Lust Und einen Augenblick Beherzigung Nach seiner Weise zu verschaffen, In ein und anderem gesündigt hat; So bittet er durch meinen Mund Euch allseits um Verzeihung. Denn wie ihr billig seid, so werdet ihr erwägen, Daß von Athen nach Ettersburg Mit einem Salto mortale
27 Tagebucheintrag vom 22.11.1831 (FA II,11,485); analog zu Kanzler von Müller am 11.6.1822 (FA II,9,260). 28 Wilhelm Bode (Hg.), Goethe in vertraulichen Briefen seiner Zeitgenossen, Bd. 1 (Berlin: Mittler, 1921), S. 271.
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Nur zu gelangen war. Auch ist er sich bewußt, Mit so viel Gutmütigkeit und Ehrbarkeit Des alten deklarierten Bösewichts Verrufene Späße Hier eingeführt zu haben, Daß er sich eures Beifalls schmeicheln darf. (252)
Wenn Goethe ein Stück des Aristophanes zur Bearbeitung wählte, so war das noch nicht durch den Aristophanes-Kult abgedeckt, den wenige Jahre später die Romantiker entwickelten. Wohl aber steht diese Orientierung im eigenen Schaffen nicht isoliert. Sie setzt die mutwilligen Farcen insbesondere der letzten Frankfurter Jahre fort, mit ihrer Hingabe an Spiellust, grobe Satire, Lust am Derben und am Unsinn (Das Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern 1773 u. 1778, Hanswursts Hochzeit 1775), ebenso ordnet sie sich dem jahrelangen Bemühen um ein deutsches Singspiel zu, das auch die Tradition der Commedia dell’arte für die deutsche Bühne wiedergewinnen sollte (Lila 1776/78, Jery und Bätely 1780, Die Fischerin 1782, Scherz List und Rache 1784).29 Goethe stellt im Epilog seines Stücks heraus, dass er um den riesigen mentalen wie politischen Abstand zu seiner Vorlage weiß. Der ‚Salto mortale‘, von dem er spricht, ist der Sprung von der Komödie als literarischer Manifestation radikaler Demokratie in Athen zur Komödie als gefälliger Unterhaltung auf dem Liebhabertheater des Weimarer Adels. Der Schlossbrand von 1774 hatte auch das Weimarer Schlosstheater vernichtet. Die Seylersche Truppe, die dort gespielt hatte, zog weg. Bis 1784 gab es in Weimar kein Berufstheater mehr. Mitglieder des Hofes und Weimarer Bürger begründeten zum Ersatz das Herzogliche Liebhabertheater. Hier trat Goethe in vielen Rollen an der Seite Corona Schröters auf, auch der Herzog spielte; die Herzoginmutter Anna Amalia komponierte zu den Singspielen, ebenso der Kammerherr von Seckendorf und der Hofkapellmeister Wolf. Gespielt wurde in einem bürgerlichen Haus in der Stadt, ab 1779 im neuen Redouten- und Komödienhaus, außerhalb Weimars auf Schloss Ettersburg und im Park von Tiefurt. Nichts scheint auf den ersten Blick unangemessener, als die Verpflanzung der demokratischen Komödienkultur des Aristophanes in die Welt eines adligen Liebhabertheaters. Und doch wahrt dies immerhin ein Moment der Alten Komödie. Das Liebhabertheater kennt nicht die starre Trennung zwischen Bühne und Publikum, die Zuschauer sind potentielle Spieler und umgekehrt, wie dies auch für die Chordarsteller und das Athener Publikum zur Zeit des Aristophanes gesagt werden kann. Das Ereignishafte des theatralischen Geschehens hier und jetzt in der gemeinsamen Wirklichkeit von Spielern und Zuschauern ist zumindest ebenso wichtig wie die im Spiel vorgestellte Welt, in der Alten Komödie hat dies ein Pendant im kultischen Horizont der Theateraufführung und deren Einbettung
29 Ausführlicher hierzu: Bernhard Greiner, Die Komödie (s. Anm. 2), Kapitel: „Die Geburt des Theaters der Klassik aus dem Geist der Komödie: Farcen – Mischspiel – komische Oper.“
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in einen Wettkampf. Goethe unterstreicht das ereignishafte Moment des theatralischen Geschehens noch, indem er die beiden Hauptfiguren als Figuren der Comédie italienne (der französischen Spielart der Commedia dellʼ arte) auftreten lässt: Treufreund (Peithetairos) als Scapin, Hoffegut (Euelpides) als Pierrot. Er ruft damit eine Theatertradition auf, der die Wirklichkeit des Spielens hier und jetzt – etwa in akrobatischen Kunststücken der komischen Figur oder in direkten Adressen der Spieler an das Publikum – ebenso wichtig ist wie die vorgestellte Welt und der, wie der Alten Komödie, nicht primär am Aufbau einer geschlossenen fiktiven Welt gelegen ist. Für den Fortgang der Bearbeitung wirkt sich dieses Betonen des theatralischen Ereignisses aber wenig aus, so dass es wesentlich zu einer Regie-Angelegenheit wird. Goethe hat nur etwa ein Drittel der Vorlage bearbeitet (bis zum Einverständnis des Chors, die Wolkenstadt zu bauen), aber so, dass dieser Teil für sich allein spielbar ist. Dass die Bearbeitung sehr frei sein wird, kündigt er Johann Heinrich Merck im Stil eines Theaterzettels an, auf dem er dem Stück den Untertitel Lustspiel nach dem Griechischen und nicht nach dem Griechischen gibt.30 Die Dialoge sind weitgehend neu, die Handlung ist nur in Grundzügen übernommen: Flucht aus der Stadt (mit der allgemeinen Begründung: wir lebten gern auf unsere Weise, und konnten selten eine Gesellschaft finden, die für uns paßte [229], was sich dann auch auf Goethes wie des Herzogs Schwierigkeiten beziehen ließ, sich in die Pflichten der Regierungsgeschäfte und die Regeln des Hoflebens hineinzufinden), Gespräch mit einem Vogel, von dem man Aufschluss über einen Ort besseren Lebens erwartet und Überzeugung des Vogelchors von ihrer angestammten Herrschaft über Götter und Menschen und der Idee, eine Stadt in der Luft zu bauen. Statt ambiger Verhältnisse in Figurenkonzeption und Zielsetzung der Handlung erlaubt sich Goethe im ersten Teil seiner Bearbeitung (bis zum Auftritt des Vogelchors) eine sehr offene Komposition: drei Handlungssequenzen, die in sich nicht miteinander verknüpft sind. Die erste Sequenz gibt eine sehr allgemein gehaltene, also stumpfe Satire auf den Literaturbetrieb. Die beiden Auswanderer, auch hier auf der Suche nach einer Stadt des Wohllebens, fragen den Schuhu, einen Großkritiker, um Rat. Dessen Diener ist ein Papagei mit Namen ‚Leser‘. So kommt ein allegorisches Spiel in Gang, um dessen Einheitlichkeit willen dann offenbar auch Treufreund und Hoffegut zu Dichtern werden mussten. Dem Lockern der Grenze zwischen Mensch und Tier, der dionysischen oder karnevalistischen Lust der Mischung des Geschiedenen wird damit alles Irritierende genommen, ebenso wird der dunkle mythische Hintergrund der Metamorphose des Tereus gekappt. Großkritiker und ihm ergebener Leser werden ein wenig lächerlich gemacht; der eine hat an allem etwas auszusetzen, der andere erklärt emphatisch, dass er gar nicht denke, sondern die Urteile des Kritikers auswendig lerne. Der Kritiker, so der Papagei, denkt den ganzen Tag über (230), da die Eule als
30 Brief an Merck vom 3.7.1780 (FA I,5,1076). Für den Druck 1787 wurde dieser Untertitel nicht übernommen.
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Nachtvogel tagsüber schläft, ist so das Denken des Kritikers als Schlafen angezeigt. Mit einer Eule als Scharnier zwischen den Handlungsteilen ‚Flucht aus der Stadt‘ und ‚Überzeugung des Vogelchors‘ vermeidet diese Bearbeitung des Aristophanes auch den Kalauer nicht, dass sie ‚Eulen nach Athen‘ trage. Wenn die beiden Auswanderer ihre Vision von Wohlleben ausgemalt haben, zieht sich der Kritiker ob ihrer unsittlichen und ein wenig auch sozialrevolutionären Wünsche (wenn Hoffegut erläutert, sie suchten eine Stadt, wo vornehme Leute die Vorteile ihres Standes mit uns geringern zu teilen bereit wären [233]) empört zurück. Die Handlung kommt damit praktisch zum Erliegen. Sie hat kein weitertreibendes Moment, da die Idee zur Wolkenstadt nicht schon diesem Ratgeber unterbreitet wird, was ja auch ineffizient wäre, da dieser ja an allem etwas auszusetzen hat. Nicht wahrgenommen ist damit auch die Möglichkeit, den phantastischen Einfall zur Wolkenstadt als aus der Sprache geboren, als Sprachwitz vorzustellen, obwohl dies gerade den Angehörigen eines Literaturbetriebs sehr entspräche. Funktionslos schließt sich der Satire auf den Literaturbetrieb ein Gesang von Lerche und Nachtigall an – hinter der Szene gegeben, d.h. Wohllaut und ihn produzierenden Körper scharf trennend, mithin dem Prinzip der Grenzsetzung statt dionysischer Entgrenzung verpflichtet – worauf ebenso unmotiviert der Auftritt der Vögel in drohender Haltung folgt. Nach der lockeren Komposition dieses Teils zeigt sich der zweite Teil, die Auseinandersetzung der Auswanderer mit den Vögeln, in einer argumentativ strengen Folge aufgebaut. Treufreund beruhigt die aufgebrachte Vogelmenge und wird ihr Herrscher durch große Reden, die drei Argumente verknüpfen. Zuerst legt er dar, dass die beiden Auswanderer keine Fremden, sondern selbst einst gefangen genommene Vögel seien. Erneut wird damit die karnevalistische Lust am Überschreiten der Grenze zwischen Mensch und Tier für die kleine Freude hingegeben, über die leichtgläubigen Vögel zu lachen. Es folgt die Begründung der Weltherrschaft der Vögel durch den Nachweis, dass sie das älteste Geschlecht seien. Verzichtet wird hier auf die Möglichkeit, haarsträubende, durch Witz aber doch eine Art Evidenz gewinnende Begründungen anzuführen, wie Aristophanesʼ Rekurs auf Äsops Erzählung von der Haubenlerche oder sein Rekurs auf noch gebräuchliche sprachliche Wendungen, in denen Vögeln königliche Attribute oder Göttern Flügel zuerkannt sind. Stattdessen wird auf Reden von Dichtern verwiesen (der genannte Periplectomenes [244] ist eine Spielart des miles gloriosus der Commedia dell’arte), womit der Redner nicht mehr an ein beim Publikum eigentlich schon vorhandenes, in der Sprache bewahrtes, in seiner Bedeutung jedoch vergessenes Wissen appelliert, die Hörer vielmehr reines Objekt seiner Einwirkung bleiben; denn die Vögel betonen, nichts gelesen zu haben (244). So bleibt die vorgestellte Welt, auch die der Sprache, einsinnig, erscheint das Wunderbare, ganz im Sinne des Literaturkritikers Johann Jakob Bodmer, den man im Schuhu gezeichnet fand31,
31 In einem Brief an Lavater vom 3.7.1780 (FA II,2,277), d.h. während der Arbeit an den Vögeln, vergleicht Goethe Bodmer mit einem Schuhu.
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auf das Wahrscheinliche heruntertransformiert. Entsprechend wird dann auch das Projekt der Wolkenstadt als mittelweltliches Reich (249) nicht als großartiger, phantastischer Einfall entworfen, gezündet in einem Sprachwitz, vielmehr vorbereitet durch die Klage der Vögel: Götter und Menschen besitzen unser Reich, und wir irren als Fremdlinge zwischen Himmel und Erde (248). Überrumpelt bei Aristophanes der phantastische Einfall, gerade indem er gänzlich unvermittelt vorgebracht wird, aber sogleich Evidenz aus geflügelter Sprache gewinnt, die Hörer, so wird bei Goethe eine feindselige Menge nach und nach durch kluges Reden gewonnen, das seine Argumente wohl zu setzen weiß. Der Redner ist dabei nicht einmal frei, er hat kein spielerisches Verhältnis zu seinen Einfällen, da er sich zuerst selbst überredet, um bei der Menge zu wirken: TREUFRE REUFREUND UND [als angeblich von Menschen gefangener Vogel] […] Aber Wir, ganz anders gesinnt, verachteten oft eine leichte Gelegenheit zur Freiheit; andere Plane wechselten wir im Busen, und saßen lauschend und getrost indes auf dem Stängelchen. HOFF OFFE EGUT GUT Die Federn fangen mir an zu wachsen, ich werde zum Vogel, wenn du so fortfährst. TREUFRE REUFREUND UND Wer lügen will, sagt man, muß sich erst selbst überreden. […] (243)
Als solch ein glänzender, zuerst sich und dann eine skeptische Menge überzeugender Redner hat sich Goethe während seiner italienischen Reise – sein Ausbruch aus beengenden Verhältnissen – mehrfach mit der Figur des Treufreunds identifiziert.32 Seine Bearbeitung des Aristophanes bleibt damit ambig, hierin immerhin einem Grundzug der Aristophanischen Vögel entsprechend. Auf der einen Seite zeigt er sich mit dem reihenden, um kausale Verknüpfung der Sequenzen wenig bekümmerten ersten Teil dem Sprunghaften, Ungeregelten, der Lust am Freisetzen von Unsinn nicht abgeneigten Aristophanischen Komödie durchaus zugänglich, wie dies ja seine Beschäftigung mit Possen und Farcen nur fortsetzte. Auf der anderen Seite aber leitet er dann die lockere, nicht sinnbeschwerte Szene in eine Kunst der Rhetorik hohen Stils über, die sich nicht mehr wie bei Aristophanes durch unsinnige, der sprachlichen Spiellust verpflichtete Herleitungen selbst ironisiert. So wird der Gehalt der Alten Komödie, die Selbstfeier des souveränen Demos, auf das Medium verschoben, zur Feier der wohldurchdachten öffentlichen Rede, die wohl auf dem Boden der Demokratie erwuchs, von diesem aber längst abgetrennt ist und nun verselbständigt genossen wird. Das reflektiert durchaus Goethes Situation in der ersten Weimarer Dekade, während der es der mit Regierungsgeschäften Überhäufte literarisch überwiegend nur noch zu Fragmenten brachte. Nicht freigelassene Phantasie und aus Metaphern-Lust geborener
32 Verona 14.9.1786 (FA I,15/1,35 u. 36), Palermo 13.4.1787 (FA I,15/1,271), Überfahrt von Sizilien 14.5.1787 (FA I,15/1,340); Zusammenstellung weiterer Äußerungen Goethes über Aristophanes: Ernst Grumach, Goethe und die Antike: Eine Sammlung. 2 Bde., Bd. 1 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1949).
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Sprachwitz verhelfen da zu rettenden Ideen, diese gehen vielmehr aus immer bedrängenden politischen Aufgaben hervor, die mit wohlgesetzter Rede gemeistert werden müssen. Die begonnene Bearbeitung eines komisch-glücklichen Fluchttraumes hat Goethe unter solchen Bedingungen nicht zu Ende geführt. Sieben Jahre später zog er jedoch den Fragment gebliebenen literarischen Entwurf in sein Leben: mit dem Aufbruch nach Italien als Ausbruch aus vielfältig einschränkenden Verhältnissen, in dessen Verlauf der ‚Flüchtling‘ sehr wohl ein Reich zwischen Himmel und Erde als das seine befestigte, sein Reich der Dichtung, in dem ihn dann alsbald auch die deutschen Leser, angeführt von ‚lesenden Vögeln‘ wie Friedrich Schlegel (denkt man an dessen Rezension des Wilhelm Meister) zum höchsten Gott erhoben.
IV. Wolkenkuckucksheim33, Karl Krausʼ Bearbeitung der Vögel, entstand in der kurzen Zeitspanne von Ende Juni bis Mitte Juli 1923 und erschien im Oktober in der Fackel, ein Jahr nach der grundlegend überarbeiteten und erheblich erweiterten zweiten Fassung der Letzen Tage der Menschheit34, womit das Stück ab der zweiten Hälfte des dritten Aktes viele Gemeinsamkeiten hat. Den Weg auf die Bühne hat das Drama nicht gefunden, auch die Widmung des Stücks an den Regisseur und zeitweiligen Mitarbeiter an der Fackel Berthold Viertel (10935) hat hier nicht geholfen. Kraus hat das Stück gerne in seinen berühmten Lesungen ‚Theater der Dichtung‘ vorgetragen, erstmals am 1. November 1923 im Mittleren Konzerthaussaal in Wien, zuletzt am 27. November 1929 in Berlin. Anlässlich der Edition dieses Dramas in seiner Kraus-Werkausgabe beklagt Heinrich Fischer, dass dieses Stück noch nie aufgeführt worden sei – woran sich bis heute nichts geändert hat – obwohl es doch eine höchst zeitgemäße Verteidigung der Republik vorstelle und er schließt mit dem Hinweis: Aus manchen Äußerungen der Fackel kann man entnehmen, wie nahe gerade dieses Werk dem Herzen des Autors stand, der eine Vorlesung von ‚Wolkenkuckucksheim‘ vor Arbeitern immer als schönste und sinngemäßeste Republikfeier empfand.36
33 Vollständiger Titel: Wolkenkukucksheim: Phantastisches Versspiel in drei Akten auf der Grundlage der ‚Vögel‘ von Aristophanes (mit Beibehaltung einiger Stellen der Chöre in der Schinck’schen Übersetzung). In: Die Fackel, Oktober 1923. 34 Die letzten Tage der Menschheit. Erste Fassung in vier Sonderheften der Fackel, Dez. 1918– Sept. 1919; zweite Fassung im Verlag Die Fackel, Wien, Leipzig 1922. 35 Zitate aus dem Drama werden nachfolgend im Text nachgewiesen, wobei folgende Ausgabe zugrundegelegt ist: Karl Kraus, Schriften, hg. von Christian Wagenknecht. Bd. 11 (Dramen) (Frankfurt/ M: Suhrkamp, 1989). 36 Karl Kraus, Werke, hg. von Heinrich Fischer. Bd. 14 (Dramen) (München: Langen Müller, 1967), S. 495.
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So scheint eine der Grundvoraussetzungen der Alten Komödie, die Zugehörigkeit zu einer demokratischen Kultur, gewahrt, wie Kraus die Zeit der Handlung auch in die Jahre unmittelbar nach dem ersten Weltkrieg versetzt, da in Österreich die Monarchie abgeschafft und eine Republik errichtet worden war, die deren sozialdemokratische Regierung gegen reaktionäre wie linksradikale Anfeindungen zu erhalten und zu befestigen suchte. Athen, aus dem man flieht, ist jetzt Wien, und die Flüchtlinge sind mit den gegebenen prekären demokratischen Verhältnissen auch nicht einverstanden, allerdings nicht nur, weil sie eine Stadt besseren Lebens suchten, sondern auch weil sie, wie sich im dritten Akt herausstellt, politische Reaktionäre sind. In den beiden ersten Akten folgt Kraus der Grundhandlung der Vorlage. Die Idee zur Wolken-Stadt bricht auch bei ihm als plötzlicher Einfall aus dem Helden hervor, aber nicht dezidiert als Sprachwitz, nur leise wird an das Sprachspiel zwischen polos und polis erinnert: Ist’s nicht euer Staat, eure luftige Statt,/die unendlich viel Platz zum bauen hat? (121) Der Wiedehopf wird von der Idee überzeugt, es folgt der Auftritt des Chors in feindlicher Haltung und seine Besänftigung. Ratefreund begründet wie bei Aristophanes den Herrschaftsanspruch der Vögel aus abstrus, aber hierin witzig gewendeten Sprachbildern. Danach maskieren die beiden Auswanderer sich als Vögel, die Stadt wird gebaut, beim Opfer wird Ratefreund von vielen fremden Besuchern gestört, die von der neuen Stadt profitieren wollen, und wie in den Episodenszenen bei Aristophanes werden sie auch hier schlagkräftig abgefertigt. Kraus übernimmt – zumindest bis zu diesem Punkt – nicht nur die Grundhandlung von Aristophanes sondern auch die wesentlichen Strukturmomente von dessen Komödie: die Gründung der Wolken-Stadt im Spiel der Sprache und die Bewahrheitung der Bedingung ihrer Möglichkeit durch das Agieren des Chors in der Tiermaske, ja ihre strukturelle Pointe hat Krausʼ Bearbeitung der Vögel darin, dass sie beide Momente zusammenführt. Denn Kraus vollzieht die sprachliche Gründung der Wolken-Stadt im dramatischen Diskurs selbst. Virtuos baut er eine eigene Metaphernwelt aus dem Umkreis der Vögel und des Fliegens auf, indem er unzählige Redewendungen aus diesem Vorstellungsbereich beibringt, die zu unserer gewohnten Alltagsrede gehören.37 So ist das autonome Reich der Vögel als ein eigener Sprachkosmos schon immer bewahrheitet und ins Recht gesetzt, wozu unterstützend Krausʼ Vervielfachung des Vogelpersonals tritt: 31 verschiedene Vogelarten sind als Figuren vertreten, wozu noch vier Vogelchöre hinzutreten (Chor der Vögel, Chor der Spatzen, Chor der Raben, Chor der Grünschnäbel). Um einige Beispiele dieses Vogel-Sprachkosmos anzuführen: Pechvögel sind wir (114), dann magst du […] dich […] zum Kuckuck scheren (115), die lockern Vögel (119), es kommt auf nichts als den großen Schnabel an, was soll der Mensch noch tun, nach dem kein Hahn mehr kräht, Hahn im Korb, der rote Hahn, die Spatzen pfeifen es vom Dach, 37 Ausführlicher gehen hierauf ein: Franz H. Mautner, „Über Karl Krausʼ Komödie Wolkenkuckucksheim. Aristophanesʼ Vögel nach 2300 Jahren,“ in: Austriaca: Festschrift für Heinz Politzer, hg. von Richard Brinkmann u.a. (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1975), S. 315–28; Hans Weigel, Karl Kraus oder Die Macht der Ohnmacht (Frankfurt/M u.a.: Molden, 1968).
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da lachen selbst die Hühner, da schwillt ihm erst der Kamm, ich möchte‘ ein Hühnchen mit ihm pflücken (alle 132) zuweilen findet selbst die blinde Henn’ ein Korn, selbst einer, der sich bläht, ist nichts, wenn jener Hahn dereinst auf gallisch kräht, heut seid ihr vogelfrei (alle 133), es geht im Flug (134), eine Kräh’ wird der andern kein Auge aushacken (137), Schmierfink (148), eine Schwalbe […], die keinen Sommer macht (154), der Vogel fresse oder sterbe (156), einen Vogel haben (158), ich sag’s euch Vögeln ohne Federlesen (160), Galgenvögel, das eigene Nest beschmutzen, dumme Gänse, es muß auch solche Käuze geben (alle 168), bald hat der Feind den Vogel abgeschossen (176), hol euch der Geier (197), Spaßvögel (200). Auch vor Kalauern scheut Kraus beim Aufbau dieser Vogelwelt aus Sprache nicht zurück: das Feld der Ehre ist fürs Ährenfeld Ersatz (175), er ist ein Spazifist und Defaitist (174), der Hahn ist nicht mein Mann, bei einem Umsturz wär’ er Wetterhahn (190), Küß die Krall! (180) usw. Die Vogel-Stadt verdankt sich nicht nur, wie bei Aristophanes, beflügelter Sprache, ihre Wirklichkeit ist bei Kraus vielmehr durch solches ständiges Vergegenwärtigen von Vogelmetaphern eine rein sprachliche und darüber hinaus eine ambitioniert poetische, da Kraus das Drama, von wenigen Stellen abgesehen, in gereimter Sprache gibt. So scheint Kraus dem Grundgedanken des Originals besonders nahe zu kommen – und doch hat sich sein Stück als gänzlich theaterfern erwiesen. Seinen Grund hat dies vor allem darin, dass der Satiriker Kraus dem Komödianten ständig ins Wort fällt, den Aufbau einer Komödienwelt immer neu vernichtend. Der Satiriker will deutlich sein, und so häuft Kraus Redensarten, die mit Vögeln zu tun haben, auch das Banalste nicht auslassend, statt sich auf weniges zu beschränken, das in der jeweiligen Situation besonders witzig wäre. Das legt sich, wie die Beispielsammlung schon vermittelt, wie Mehltau über die entworfene Welt. Kraus greift hierin auf sein in den Letzten Tagen der Menschheit virtuos gehandhabtes Verfahren des den Sprecher entlarvenden Zitats zurück, aber ohne dass die zitierten Redensarten hier die analytische Kraft hätten, den, der sie gebraucht, zu denunzieren und zu vernichten. Weiter hat der Satiriker das Bedürfnis, Positionen zu klären, zu unterscheiden, Gegensätze aufzubauen, wo der Komödienautor, wie dies paradigmatisch die Alte Komödie vorstellte, dem Vermischen der Gegensätze, dem Nicht-Einhalten von Grenzen, der Lust an Umkehrungen Raum zu geben hätte. Das beginnt schon bei der Begründung der Evasion. Peithetairos und Euelpides verlassen bei Aristophanes Athen nicht aus Missmut über die Athener Demokratie an sich, sondern über Auswüchse ihrer radikalen Praxis. Ihre Evasion zielt nicht auf eine politische Alternative, sondern befriedigt den Wunschtraum, in einer verworrenen, sich selbst blockierenden, radikalen Demokratie mit Zauberhand – durch einen grandiosen Einfall – alle Verwirrungen zu lösen und eine Stadt des Wohllebens begründen zu können. Der Satiriker Kraus muss die Evasion sofort politisch konkretisieren, also einteilen und von anderen Positionen abheben:
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RATE ATEF FREUND REUND Du wirst uns sagen; ob noch Hoffnung wäre, um fern von Krieg und Schmutz und Menschensünden ein stilles Plätzchen irgendwo zu finden. IEDEHOPF DEHOPF WIE Wenn möglich gratis und nicht zu kündigen, und wo man fern vom Getriebe kann selber sündigen? Und solcherlei soll ich euch weisen und raten? Ihr seid wohl zwei von den Aristokraten, denen nicht gefällt, was sie angerichtet und die der Adel zu sonst nichts verpflichtet. […] RATE ATEF FREUND REUND […] Wir stehn auf dem Boden der Republik Und wünschen nur fern von ihr unser Glück; […] HOFF OFFE EGUT GUT […] Nun ja, ich muß gestehn, auch ich lieb alles lieber als Athen. WIE IEDEHOPF DEHOPF Wie das? Dort wohnen die weltbekannten und allgemein beliebten Musikanten. Selbst Trübsal blasen sie dort fesch und munter und der Athener, sagt man, geht nicht unter.38 (116f.)
Die beiden Auswanderer sind mit der Wirklichkeit Wiens nach dem ersten Weltkrieg unzufrieden, mit der Abschaffung der Monarchie, dem Etablieren der Republik, mit der politischen Hinwendung zu den drängenden sozialen Fragen der Zeit: RATE ATEF FREUND REUND Sie klauben die Rosinen aus dem Teig; wir können zuschaun, jene machen Streik. Nur zuzuschaun, ist schon genug der Plagʼ und unser Unglück der Achtstundentag. Dazu, ich sagt es in der letzten Sitzung, kommt noch die Arbeitslosenunterstützung. Der Mittelstand, die Hausbesitzer, Rentner – es liegt der Steuerdruck auf uns wie Zentner. Wir können nur zu unserem Herrgott beten, er schütze uns vor Pest und vor Proleten. (118)
So macht Kraus Wolkenkuckucksheim zu einer konservativ-monarchischen Gegengründung gegen die junge österreichische Republik (was die Vögel allerdings lange
38 Anspielung auf den Schlager der Zeit: Alleweil lustig, fesch und munter, /denn der Weaner geht net unter.
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Zeit nicht durchschauen). Das erlaubt zwar, viele konservative Umtriebe der frühen Zwanziger Jahre am Beispiel der Wolken-Stadt, ihrer Gründer und Herrscher, satirisch aufzuspießen,39 der Komödie selbst mit ihrem Sitz in einer demokratischen Kultur wird damit aber der Todesstoß versetzt. Denn nun kann sich keine Lust mehr am phantastischen Einfall, am Sprachwitz, an der wunderbaren Lösung aller irdischen Verworrenheiten breit machen, Wolkenkuckucksheim muss vielmehr immer düsterer werden, zu einer Welt, in der Monarchisten, Kriegsgewinnler und andere üble Gesellen das Sagen haben. Aus der Evasion der beiden unzufriedenen Athener bei Aristophanes wird eine politische Konterrevolution, die je eher, desto besser – hier durch den erfolgreichen Krieg der Götter gegen die Usurpatoren eines Zwischenreichs zwischen Himmel und Erde – zum Verschwinden gebracht wird. Und vernichten, das will der Satiriker vor allem. Er vertraut nicht der Lust des Lachens, dem karnevalistischen Mischen von allem mit allem. Entsprechend nimmt sein Stück einen von Aristophanes und aller Komödienerwartung völlig verschiedenen Fortgang. Traditionell endet die Komödie mit der Aussicht auf Hochzeit, so auch bei Aristophanes mit dem Ausblick auf die Hochzeit des großen Helden und Gründers der Wolken-Stadt mit der fiktiven Zeus-Tochter, als einer Art Stellvertreterin Heras, wie Peithetairos zu einem witzigen Stellvertreter des Zeus geworden war. Bei Kraus dagegen wird die Szene nach der Gründung der Wolken-Stadt zu einer Apokalypse im Stile der Letzten Tage der Menschheit. Während bei Aristophanes die Götter – um ein Vogelgericht – sofort klein beigeben, antworten bei Kraus die Götter mit Krieg, was dem von den beiden Reaktionären dominierten Vogelreich keine Chance lässt. Das gibt Kraus die Möglichkeit, in der Vogel-Stadt ein satirisches Bild Wiens im Übergang von der Monarchie zur revolutionären und nachrevolutionären Nachkriegszeit zu zeichnen, mit all dem Umlügen von Niederlagen, den Phrasen der Kriegsgewinnler, dem Egoismus der Wiener Gesellschaft, die weiter dem Genussleben frönt. Zuletzt werden die beiden Auswanderer als Hochstapler und Steuerschuldner (vgl. 198) entlarvt und entmachtet. Dabei springt das Stück, um der Satire willen, von der österreichischen Nachkriegswirklichkeit in die letzten Kriegsjahre zurück (anstatt dem Zuschauer mit Lust ein ‚neues Paradies‘ vorzustellen) und von der Kriegszeit wieder nach vorn in die Zeit des Umsturzes der Monarchie, welche aber nicht lustvoll vorgeführt wird – aller behaupteten republikanischen Grundstimmung des Stücks zum Trotz – sondern als ein bürokratischer Akt, zu dem die befreundete Republik Athen in österreichischer Amtssprache auffordert. So ist selbst die Republikbejahung, auf die der Autor so vehement Anspruch erhebt (vgl. 38440), mit einem skeptischen Unterton versehen. Wolkenkuckucksheim jedenfalls verschwindet, die Lerche erhebt
39 Das legt ausführlicher dar: Gerald Stieg, „Wolkenkuckucksheim de Karl Kraus ou Aristophane au service de la Première République d’Autriche,“ in: Sabine Kremser-Dubois, Philippe Wellnitz (éd.), La satire au théâtre. Satire und Theater, Bibliothèque d’études germaniques et centre-européennes, vol. VII (Montpellier: Publications de l’Université Paul Valery Montpellier 3, 2005), S. 171–83. 40 Vorwort zur Vorlesung des Stücks am 27.11.1929 in Berlin.
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sich zu einem großen Schlussmonolog, in dem sie das Geschehen zu einem Traum erklärt. Da dies aber ein Alptraum war, mag man aus ihm nicht mehr bewahren als den Wunsch, nie mehr so zu träumen. Entsprechend abstrakt und unpoetisch gerät die Schlussrede, obwohl sie, mit dem Schluss des Sturm liebäugelnd, poetisch sein will. Die Welt, die im Bunde mit Aristophanes aus Sprachwitz und Sprachlust aufgebaut worden war, hat der Satiriker zu einer gemacht, die nur wert ist, möglichst schnell unterzugehen. Und dies Urteil vollstreckt der Satiriker gnadenlos. So ist seine Welt nach vollbrachtem Werk notwendig leer, wie denn das Stück auch mit den Worten der Lerche schließt: Beseligt weihʼ ich diesen Morgen ein. Der Mensch ist fort. Die Luft ist rein! (203)
Der Satiriker Karl Kraus will vernichten; zu Recht erspürt der sensible Leser und langjährige Karl Kraus-Hörige Elias Canetti die Mordgelüste von Karl Kraus41 – unendlich ist das von der dionysischen Lust der das Leben feiernden Komödie entfernt.
V. Peter Hacks, dessen Stücke zwischen den sechziger und den achtziger Jahren auf den Theatern der DDR, aber auch der BRD viel gespielt wurden, hat drei Komödien des Aristophanes bearbeitet, den Frieden42 (Uraufführung 1962, Druck 1963), Die Vögel43 (Druck 1975, Uraufführung als Oper 1981) und Plutos (Der Geldgott44: Druck 1992). Hacksʼ Bearbeitung des Friedens wurde in der Inszenierung von Benno Besson am Deutschen Theater in Ost-Berlin zu einem überwältigenden Erfolg. Sie stand zwölf Jahre auf dem Spielplan und wurde ca. 250 Mal gespielt.45 In den frühen siebziger Jahren arbeitete Hacks mit dem Komponisten Siegfried Matthus an mehreren Opernprojekten. 1973 entstand die Bearbeitung der Vögel als Libretto zu einer komischen Oper.46 Matthus hat die Oper aber nicht komponiert. 1975 erschien der Text im
41 Elias Canetti, „Der Neue Karl Kraus,“ in: Ders., Das Gewissen der Worte: Essays (Frankfurt/M: Fischer 1981), S. 256. 42 Peter Hacks, Der Frieden nach Aristophanes, in: Ders., Zwei Bearbeitungen (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp,1963). 43 Peter Hacks, Die Vögel: Komische Oper nach Aristophanes, in: Ders., Oper (Berlin, Weimar: Aufbau 1975, Düsseldorf: Claassen, 1976) und: Die Vögel: Nach Aristophanes, in: Ders., Stücke nach Stücken 2 (Berlin, Weimar: Aufbau 1985). 44 Peter Hacks, Der Geldgott: Komödie in drei Akten. Nach Aristophanes, in: Neue deutsche Literatur 40 (1992), H. 1, S. 14–61. 45 Angaben nach: Christoph Trilse, Das Werk des Peter Hacks (Berlin: Volk und Wissen, 1980), S. 155. 46 So berichtet dies Hacks in einem Kommentar zu seinen Vögeln: Peter Hacks, „Ein Drosseljahr. Zu Die Vögel,“ in: Neue deutsche Literatur 32 (1984), H. 11, S. 42–6.
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Druck, die Uraufführung der Oper – mit der Musik von Thomas Hertel – fand 1981 am Staatstheater Dresden statt. Die Oper wurde kein Erfolg, auch nicht das Theaterstück, das, von Kleinigkeiten abgesehen, nur eine Szene des Librettos durch eine vollständig neue ersetzt47: in der Oper kommen, nachdem die Wolkenstadt errichtet ist, der Dramatiker Hacks und der Komponist Matthus zur Wolkenstadt, wollen aber eigentlich zu den olympischen Göttern, um mit diesen eine Kunstfrage zu erörtern, womit selbstverständlich der Selbstreflexion des Stücks im Stück Raum gegeben ist. Sie werden von Tereus, nicht von Hoffmeier, wie Peithetairos hier heißt, abgewiesen, suchen jedoch andere Wege zu den Göttern. Im Drama trifft der Schornsteinfeger aus Grimma X.John (eine Anspielung auf den mythischen Ixion) auf dem Weg zu Hera ein, zu der er in Liebe verfallen ist; sie ist für ihn der Inbegriff einer vollkommenen Frau, eine Basileia gibt es bei Hacks nicht. Auch hier verweigert Tereus den Durchzug, verweist dabei auf das Geschick des Ixion, der Hera zu verführen gedachte, aber nur eine von Zeus nach der Gestalt Heras geformte Wolke umarmte, gleichwohl jedoch von Zeus zur Strafe für seine eheschänderische Tat auf ein feuriges Rad gebunden wurde, das ewig am Himmel entlangrollt. Der Schornsteinfeger hält dem entgegen, dass selbst Zeus nicht wissen könne, ob nicht doch die wahre Hera bei Ixion und nur die Wolkennachbildung an der Seite des Zeus gewesen sei. So eröffnet diese Szene Selbstreflexion des Stücks über seinen Umgang mit dem Mythos; die Wolke als Trugbild Heras ist natürlich ein Wink mit dem Zaunpfahl, auch die Wolkenstadt nur als Trugbild zu nehmen. Der Schornsteinfeger bleibt als selbstbewusster Proletarier bei seinem Begehren und kündigt einen neuen Versuch an, zu Hera zu gelangen. Hacks unternimmt mit seiner Bearbeitung weitreichende Eingriffe in die Vorlage. Der Oper ist gewiss geschuldet, was jedoch im Drama beibehalten wird, dass Philomele und Prokne zu wichtigen Mitspielfiguren werden (bei Aristophanes wird Prokne nur erwähnt und hört man von Philomele nur den Gesang): so sind die für eine Oper unabdingbaren weiblichen Stimmlagen gesichert. Im Gegenzug wird das männliche Personal stark reduziert: Tereus hat keinen Diener, von der Göttern tritt nur Herakles (allerdings gedoppelt) auf, alle Abfertigungsszenen sind gestrichen, Ersatz hierfür ist die jeweils einzige Hacks/Matthus- resp. X.John-Szene. Die Namen der Protagonisten sind geändert. Einen Peithetairos/Ratefreund, der das Überreden schon im Namen anzeigte, gibt es nicht, die Figur heißt jetzt Hoffmeier, womit von Euelpides die Hoffnung genommen und dies mit der Assoziation zu ‚Schlaumeier‘ verbunden ist. Hoffmeier muss auch keine besondere Überredungskunst aufbieten, er überzeugt den Chor (nicht den Tereus) sogleich von seiner Idee zur Vogel-Stadt. Aus Euelpides wird
47 Die weitgehende Identität von Libretto und Drama erstaunt um so mehr, als Hacks in einem längeren Essay über das Libretto, den er mit dem Vögel-Libretto veröffentlicht hat, dezidiert darauf abhebt, dass Drama und Libretto zwei grundlegend verschiedene Genres seien und entsprechend auch gestaltet werden müssten. Vgl.: Peter Hacks, „Versuch über das Libretto,“ in: Ders., Oper (Berlin, Weimar: Aufbau, 1975), S. 199–306, insbes. S. 299 f.
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Liebinger, der sich, seinem Namen entsprechend, in eine (unglückliche, keine Erwiderung findende) Liebe zu Philomela verwickelt. So weit die rein äußerlich auffälligen Änderungen, über deren Gehalt damit noch nichts gesagt ist. Die Bearbeitung als Oper birgt die Chance, der Alten Komödie besonders nahe zu kommen, da damit der Chor kein Fremdkörper und auch ein Wechsel von Prosa und lyrischen Szenen gegeben ist. Das Rätsel, das diese Bearbeitung der Vögel aufgibt, ist ihr Misserfolg: Was sicherte dem Frieden seinen riesigen Erfolg und was bescherte den Vögeln den Misserfolg, da doch beide vom gleichen, routinierten, seine Pointen wirkungssicher setzenden Komödienautor verfasst sind? Aristophanes hatte den Frieden in einer politischen Situation verfasst, da ein Friedensschluss zwischen Athen und Sparta (der Nikias-Friede 421, der immerhin bis 415 Bestand hatte) schon so gut wie beschlossen war. Der Frieden wurde an den Städtischen Dionysien 421 aufgeführt, auf die die Volksversammlung folgte, die den Friedensvertrag bestätigte. So waren bei der Aufführung der Komödie die Tatsache und die Bedingungen des Friedens schon bekannt. Entsprechend wird im Stück auch keine echte Auseinandersetzung über den Frieden entfaltet, Held, Mitfiguren und Chor sind von Anfang an für die Befreiung der Friedensgöttin, vielmehr wird in einem phantastischen Spiel vorgestellt, wie der Friede zustande kommt, um dann breit die Erwartungen zu entwerfen, die sich an ihn knüpfen. Der Bauer Trygaios, der den phantastischen Einfall hat, auf einem Mistkäfer zum Olymp zu fliegen, um Eirene zu befreien und dies auch glücklich umzusetzen weiß, wird als Retter nicht nur des athenischen Volkes, sondern ganz Griechenlands gepriesen Die Komödienaufführung ist der vorweggenommene Bürgerbeschluss über den Frieden, so ist die vorgestellte Handlung für Spieler und Zuschauer zugleich politische Wirklichkeit, wird die Repräsentation zurückgeholt in Präsenz. Hacks Bearbeitung des Friedens wurde ein Jahr nach dem Bau der Berliner Mauer in Ost-Berlin uraufgeführt. So konnte sie zur Metapher des Wunsches nach Versöhnung und Frieden nun eines anderen, des deutschen Volkes werden, das sich in der überaus gespannten politischen Lage anzuschicken schien, sich selbst zu zerfleischen. Dieser Friedenssehnsucht gab die neu vergegenwärtigte Komödie eine nachdrückliche Bekräftigung aus einem literarischen Werk, das – die Unterscheidung von Repräsentation und Präsenz aufhebend – ein Ziel feiert, das im Prinzip als schon erreicht gewusst ist. Zugleich hielt das Stück mit dieser Konstellation eine produktive Auflösung der Grundspannung der DDR-Wirklichkeit wie ihrer Literatur bereit: die Spannung zwischen dem, was als ‚real existierender Sozialismus‘ erfahren wird und dem ideellen Anspruch, dass mit der sozialistischen Revolution eine humane Welt geschaffen worden sei. Denn der Bauer bleibt hier ganz bei sich, bei seinen niederen sinnlichen Wünschen und erfüllt doch, indem er diese zu verwirklichen sucht, die höchsten ideellen Ziele. Er muss nicht als ‚positiver Held‘ des Sozialistischen Realismus die ganze Last der Geschichte auf sich nehmen, er zeigt vielmehr ‚Grazie‘ im Sinne Schillers: nur seiner Natur folgend, erfüllt er, was die Vernunftideen verlangen. Mit Hacksʼ Worten:
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Die Helden dienen der Geschichte, indem sie sie hassen, und die Geschichte haßt ihre Diener und macht sie zu den traurigen Figuren als die wir sie kennen. […] Der Held hat erhabene Zwecke und platte Erfolge; Trygaios hat den plattesten Zweck und den erhabensten Erfolg. Der Held geht aufs Ganze und gewinnt einen kleinen Teil; Trygaios will seinen kleinen Teil und an dem hängt das Ganze. Die Riesen erweisen sich als beschränkt, nur dieser kleine Mann ist ein Riese.48
Hacks hat die Chancen dieser Vorlage literarisch umzusetzen gewusst, worauf hier nicht weiter eingegangen werden kann.49 Aristophanesʼ Frieden kam seiner Schreibweise wohl auch darin sehr entgegen, dass dieses Stück – aufgrund der dargelegten Konstellation seiner Entstehung – nichts von der durchgehenden Ambiguität hat, die für Aristophanesʼ Vögel herauszuarbeiten war. Denn diese Ambiguität hat Hacks seiner Version der Vögel systematisch ausgetrieben. Wie Kraus zeichnet auch Hacks die beiden Flüchtlinge als zutiefst fragwürdige Gestalten, darüber hinaus werden aber auch die Vögel und damit die Vogel-Stadt negativiert. Hoffmann und Liebinger suchen eine Welt ohne Arbeit und der freien Liebe, wo der Mann überall willige Frauen findet, ohne irgendeine Bindung eingehen zu müssen (vgl. 161f.50), sie wollen der Demokratie entkommen, die sie als Diktatur des Gemeinwillens hassen, im Gegensatz zum Helden des Friedens hat ihr Beharren auf ihren eigenen Wünschen keine ohne ihr Zutun wirksam werdende ideelle Perspektive: HOFF OFFMEIER ME IE R Demokratie ist, wenn alle dürfen, was sie wollen. TERE US Das ist doch gut. HOFF OFFMEIER ME IE R Ja, und keiner darf, was er will. (159)
Nicht nur die Evasionswünsche, auch deren Verwirklichung, die Vogel-Stadt, haben keinen utopischen Gehalt. Der Held erringt hier keine Basileia, die für Herrschaft in einer geglückten Gemeinschaft steht. Und auch die Bedingung der Möglichkeit der Vogel-Stadt wird nicht, und sei dies auch ‚nur‘ aus der Sprache, erwiesen. Mit wenigen Worten werden die Vögel von der Idee der Vogel-Stadt überzeugt; diese wird dabei eigenartigerweise als horizontale, nicht als vertikale Abgrenzung eingeführt (die Vögel werden aufgefordert, nach links und nach rechts und im Kreise zu schauen und das Nichts, das sie da sehen, mit Quadern zu vermessen [vgl. 167]), obwohl die
48 Peter Hacks, „Götter, welch ein Held! Zu Der Frieden,“ in: Ders., Die Maßgaben der Kunst: Gesammelte Aufsätze (Düsseldorf: Claassen,1977), S. 342 f. 49 Ausführlich wird hierauf eingegangen in: Frank Stucke, Die Aristophanes-Bearbeitungen von Peter Hacks (Berlin: Tenea, 2002); Andrea Jäger, Der Dramatiker Peter Hacks. Vom Produktionsstück zur Klassizität (Marburg: Hitzeroth, 1986). 50 Zitate aus Hacksʼ Bearbeitung der Vögel werden im Text nachgewiesen, wobei der leichteren Zugänglichkeit wegen die Opernfassung zugrundegelegt wird, in folgender Ausgabe: Die Vögel: Komische Oper nach Aristophanes, in: Peter Hacks, Oper (München: dtv, 1980), S. 155–98.
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Stadt doch erklärtermaßen Menschen und Götter trennen soll (167). Die so windschief situierte Stadt gibt ihren Bewohnern auch keinen Halt. Der pure Anblick eines Regenschirms, ohne dass es regnete (wie in der Vorlage verbirgt sich Prometheus darunter, der hier aber keinen nützlichen Rat gibt, sondern nur die Fühler nach evtl. neuen Herrschern ausstreckt), lässt den ‚hohen Mut‘ der Vögel zusammenbrechen: CHOR Wehe, es regnet. Erbarmen, es nahet die schlechte Zeit. […] All unser Treiben Ach, auf freundliche Tage berechnet, hält nicht stand. (190)
Das gilt grundsätzlich. Zwar behauptet auch Hoffmeier, dass sein Zwischenreich der Vögel (wie dies für Aristophanesʼ Wolken-Stadt dargelegt wurde) die Sphären trenne und zugleich Ort der Vereinigung des Getrennten sei: Es trenne die Menschen und die Götter (vgl. 167), gleichwohl seien die Bewohner dieses Reiches aber zugleich Sterbliche und Göttliche (vgl. 195). Das bricht jedoch als bloße Anmaßung in der Konfrontation mit Herakles zusammen, der für wahre Vereinigung des Irdischen und Göttlichen steht. Zuerst erscheint Herakles zweigeteilt, als Gott vom Himmel sich nähernd und als Schatten, der für seinen menschlichen Anteil steht, aus dem Tartaros sich erhebend. Dem haltlosen Zwischenreich der Vögel stellt er seine Vereinigung von menschlichem und göttlichem Anteil entgegen, sich selbst als Welterduldender und Zukunftsverwandelnder ansprechend(196): Herakles, Gott, und Herakles, Schatten, gehen, durch die gegen sie ankämpfenden Flötenspielerinnen, aufeinander zu und vereinigen sich zu einer heroischen Person, welche in bedeutender und schöner Ruhe die Szene füllt. […] (196)
Hier ist er wieder da, der ‚positive Held‘ des Sozialistischen Realismus, den Hacks u.a. im Bauer Trygaios so fulminant verabschiedet hatte, dieser Held, der schon immer in Herakles seinen Ahnen gesehen hat. Er führt als ‚Welterduldender‘ die Leiden machende erfahrbare Wirklichkeit und als ‚Zukunftsverwandelnder‘ die Idee (sozialistisch) befreiter Menschheit als ‚Held der Arbeit‘ zusammen, während die Bewohner der Vogel-Stadt darauf insistieren, dass diese beiden Bereiche getrennt bleiben müssen (vgl. 167 u. 196), da nur in einer Wirklichkeit, die allen ideellen Bezug oder Anspruch aufgegeben hat, der Egoismus des Einzelnen, des ‚Schlaumeiers‘ sich breit machen kann. Die Vogel-Stadt ist in Hacksʼ Bearbeitung ohne allen utopischen Gehalt und kann daher auch kein Versprechen mit sich führen, Erfahrungswirklichkeit und Idee zusammenzubringen. Das zeigt das Stück an den Menschen, die nicht wie Hoffmeier und Liebinger der gegebenen Demokratie entflohen sind, wohl aber zu den Göttern streben – Hacks/Matthus resp. X.John – und sich um das sich spreizende Zwischenreich nicht scheren. Konfrontiert mit der echten Vereinigung beider in Herakles offenbaren die Bewohner der Vogel-Stadt unverzüglich ihre Ohnmacht und Leere. Die Regiebemerkung zur Vereinigung der beiden Heraklesgestalten fährt fort:
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Eine Kopfbewegung: Verwandlung des Vogelreiches. Die Vögel sind wieder gemeine Gegenstände der Ornithologie, welche durcheinander laufen und zirpen und sich endlich nach den Seiten hin verziehen; Hoffmeier und Liebinger wieder zwei greise Clowns, die sich, vorn an der Rampe, an einander klammern. Nach einem letzten erhabenen Aufglänzen bricht die HeraklesMusik ab; der seltene Augenblick ist vorüber. Gott und Schatten spalten sich erneut. HERAKLE ERAKLES S , GOTT OT T , und HERAKL ERAKLE E s, SCHATTEN C HATTEN Wer bewegt des Weltalls Angel, Wer bewirkt, daß es nicht bleibt, Als die Unrast, die den Mangel Zum ergänzenden Mangel treibt. Jener Nu, da wir uns hatten, Macht der Trennung Qual zum Spott. HERAKLE ERAKLES S , GOTT OT T Geh denn, Herakles, mein Schatten. HERAKLE ERAKLES S , SCHATTEN C HATTEN Geh denn, Herakles, mein Gott. (196 f.)
Vollkommenheit, so ist diese Szene wohl zu lesen, ist kein Zustand, sondern der Prozess immer weiterer Vervollkommnung, was verlangt, das Erreichte jeden Augenblick auch wieder in Frage zu stellen. Das Auseinandertreten von Erfahrungswirklichkeit und Idee befreiter, vollendeter Menschheit gibt auch Träumen falscher Utopie Nahrung, wovor das Stück mithin warnt, indem es solch eine Welt und deren Träger in ihrer Erbärmlichkeit und Ohnmacht zeigt. Aber die Entlarvung des Zwischenreiches als nichtig und haltlos ist langweilig, da diese Bewertung von Anfang an gegenwärtig ist. Das Gegenstück wiederum, die Vereinigung der beiden Herakles, ist weltlos, ohne Herleitung, bloße Setzung. Das Stück wird auch nicht spannender, wenn man es allegorisch-politisch liest, derart, dass man in den beiden fragwürdigen Gestalten, die die ‚echte‘ Demokratie fliehen, ‚Republikflüchtlinge‘ i.S. der DDR vorgestellt findet, die dann natürlich eine Welt aufbauen – den kapitalistischen Westen – in der jeder nur egoistisch seiner Lust frönt, andere für sich arbeiten lässt, eine Welt, die jedoch, so der Anspruch, nach nur einer kleinen Kopfbewegung des positiven Helden des Sozialistischen Realismus ihre vollkommene Erbärmlichkeit zeigt. Das Stück wäre in dieser Lesart rein affirmativ. Ob politisch zu lesen oder nicht: diese Bearbeitung der Vögel ist undramatisch, da die Gegenwelt von Beginn an abgewertet ist und auch nur eine Schein-Macht hat: In einem Drama haben immer zwei Leute recht, sonst wäre es keins, lässt Botho Strauß eine seiner Figuren sagen.51 Von der Ambiguität, aus der Aristophanes Komödie lebt, ist hier nichts mehr bewahrt.
51 Botho Strauß, Die Zeit und das Zimmer, in: Ders., Theaterstücke 1981–1991 (München: dtv, 1991), S. 340.
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VI. Die betrachteten Bearbeitungen reichen an die produktive Selbstwidersprüchlichkeit der Aristophanischen Vögel nicht heran, nicht an die Leuchtkraft von deren vorgestellter Phantasiewelt, nicht an ihre ausagierte Lust der Befreiung von Phantasie und Sprache und auch nicht an die Souveränität dieser Komödie, sich im Verlachen ihrer eigenen Gebilde selbst komisch nehmen zu können. Die drei Bearbeiter stellen die Komödie jeweils in ihren historischen und sozialen Kontext, was zu einem EindeutigMachen der Figuren und Positionen des Stücks führt, die ihm seine genuine Ambiguität austreibt. Goethe geht das anfänglich noch spürbare dionysisch-anarchische Moment im Fortgang verloren. Karl Kraus macht die beiden Flüchtlinge zu reinen Negativfiguren, was dann auch die Vogel-Stadt einschwärzt, bis diese von ihren Eindringlingen befreit wird. Peter Hacks gefällt sich dann in reiner Schwarz-WeißMalerei. Kann man Aristophanes Vögel also gar nicht bearbeiten, ohne zu scheitern? Würde man das bejahen, dürfte es auch keine gelungenen Inszenierungen von Aristophanesʼ Stück geben; denn auch Inszenierungen sind Bearbeitungen. So hält man als Fazit besser fest, dass sich für Aristophanesʼ Vögel offenbar der kongeniale Bearbeiter und die richtige historische Stunde noch nicht gefunden haben. Darüber müssen wir nicht verzagen, es bleibt uns unbenommen, der Schlussaufforderung des Aristophanischen Chorführers zu folgen: Schwärmet in seliger Lust.52
52 Wörtlich steht das nicht ganz da, auch Übersetzungen sind Bearbeitungen. Der Vers lautet: περιπέθεστε μάκαρα μάκαρι σὺν τύχα (1721): Umfliegt die Seligen seligen Glücks (nach der Übersetzung von Wolfgang Schadewaldt, in: Ders., Griechisches Theater, s. Anm. 6, S. 355).
Maria Luisa Chirico
Translations of Aristophanes in Italy in the 19th century Abstract: In the 19th century, there was extraordinary interest in Italy in Aristophanes, as is attested not only by scholarly studies but by the translation of his plays. Augusto Franchetti’s version has the advantage of being accompanied by Domenico Comparetti’s Introduction and notes. This paper uses the study of some unpublished letters to reconstruct the method of the “philologist” and the “artist” in the realization of this complex and important enterprise.
1. Introduction 1872 can be considered the annus mirabilis in the history of Italian classical studies. Two works published that year mark, in different ways, the end of the humanistic tradition of classical studies and the birth of philological science in Italy. In Livorno, Domenico Comparetti published Virgilio nel medio evo for the publisher Vigo, which was the first and the only Italian book of classical philology in the 19th century.1 In Turin, the Rivista di filologia e d’istruzione classica (RFIC) was published by Loescher Editore under the direction of Domenico Pezzi and Giuseppe Müller. This was the first periodical expressly dedicated to Ancient Greek and Roman studies.2
2. Comparetti and Nubi by Achille Coen The renewal of Aristophanic studies in Italy is related to both Domenico Comparetti and Rivista di Filologia. In fact, in the second year of the RFIC a long review by Domenico Comparetti appeared discussing the Aldine edition of Nubi3 by Achille
This article takes up and develops a theme treated in “Aristofane nel XIX secolo in Italia. Domenico Comparetti e Augusto Franchetti,” I quaderni di Atene e Roma 3 (2012). 1 This evaluation was expressed by Giorgio Pasquali in the Prefazione to the new edition of the work that appeared in Florence in 1937; cf. G. Pasquali, Il «Virgilio» del Comparetti nella filologia ottocentesca, in: G. Grana (ed.), I Critici, Vol. I (Milan: Mondadori, 1969), pp. 504–8, esp. 504. 2 For the significance of the Rivista in the Italian philological context, cf. S. Timpanaro, “Il primo cinquantennio della «Rivista di Filologia e di istruzione classica»,” Rivista di Filologia e d’Istruzione Classica 100 (1972), pp. 387–441, now in: Sulla linguistica dell’Ottocento, presentazione di G.C. Lepschy (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005), pp. 259–314. 3 The publisher and typographer Filippo Alberghetti in 1837 started a press in Prato called Aldina in remembrance of Aldo Manuzio. The press did not neglect religious books, but it owed its fame to two collections of Greek and Latin classics with Italian notes; cf. G. Turi, La vita culturale, in: Prato, storia di
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Coen4 published in Prato in 1871. This is a work of some interest, in which the philologist suggested the method a scholar of Aristophanes had to follow in Italy. Even if it is realized within a “school book” series extraneous to scientific interests, a publication on Aristophanes requires “una maniera d’illustrazione superiore assai all’elementare,” considering the problematic nature of the text and “le condizioni dello studioso italiano il quale non può disporre di un corredo di libri sussidiari come può farlo lo studioso di altra nazione.”5 On this basis, Comparetti considered the structure used by Coen altogether correct. It contained a long introduction, in which he took stock of the two most important points in Clouds (the double edition and the Socratic question); a reproduction of the text from the Teuffel edition, rich in “note esegetiche ed illustrative,” which were necessary to make up for the lack of texts; the rhyme scheme of the comedy; and a fresh collation of the Ravennas and Venetus manuscripts by Eugenio Ferrai, the editor of the book series at that time. The scholar’s attitude was also correct in regard to the tradition of studies the Aldine edition belonged to. Clouds is the comedy with the most editions, monographs, historical and philosophical works dedicated to it. Coen showed full knowledge of this vast literature. Comparetti raised only two objections to Coen’s edition, but they concerned basic problems: the critical exegesis of the text, which seemed poor in some passages, and “il piano dell’Introduzione,” which failed to give an overall view of the ancient work. As to the first point, Comparetti specifically discussed some controversial loci for which, even in an edition for school use, it would have been necessary “correggere alcune interpretazioni accreditate ma erronee” of the foreign publishers, Kock and Brunck.6 As to the second point, the philologist explains that “per introdurre lo studioso alla lettura delle Nubi il sig. Coen non avrebbe dovuto limitarsi ad esporre la storia di quelle due questioni, ma questa storia avrebbe dovuto incastrare in un lavoro più generale in cui si considerasse anche la ragione artistica di quella composizione.”7
una città, a c. di F. Braudel, vol. III, Il tempo dell’industria (1815–1943), a c. di G. Mori (Prato-Firenze: Le Monnier, 1988), pp. 1153–4. 4 For Achille Coen (Pisa 1844–Firenze 1921) as a professor of ancient history in Milan and then Florence, see P. Treves, “Coen, Achille,” in: DBI XXVI (Roma: Treccani, 1962), pp. 619–23; A. Olivetti, Archivio storico italiano LXXIX (1921), pp. 323–7. 5 D. Comparetti, “Aristofane, Le Nubi, con note italiane e introduzione di Achille Coen. Prato, Aldina editrice, 1871,” Rivista di Filologia e d’Istruzione Classica II (1873), pp. 72–6, esp. 73. When Pezzi resigned, Comparetti replaced him as a co-editor together with Flechia and Bertini. He kept this position for 22 years; cf. Timpanaro, “Il primo cinquantennio” (above, n. 2), pp. 279–80. 6 Cf. Comparetti, “Aristofane, Le Nubi” (above, n. 5), pp. 74–5. 7 Cf. Comparetti, “Aristofane, Le Nubi” (above, n. 5), p. 76.
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3. The project of Comparetti and Franchetti These two enunciations represent the methodological foundation of the Aristofane of Augusto Franchetti and Domenico Comparetti. Ten years later Coen’s work, Le Nuvole di Aristofane tradotte in versi italiani da Augusto Franchetti con introduzione e note di Domenico Comparetti was published in Florence by the publisher Sansoni. This first verse translation was followed by others: Le Rane (1886), Gli Uccelli (1894), I Cavalieri (1898), Pluto (1900), Le Donne a Parlamento (1901) and then, after Franchetti’s death, Donne alle Tesmoforie (1905) and Lisistrata (1911).8 Following the layout experimented with in Nuvole, these were all annotated with introduction and notes by Comparetti.9 Before discussing these works, we should ask how Franchetti met Comparetti and Aristophanes, that is to say, where their roads converged. The story begins in Pisa. On 1 December 1859, Domenico Comparetti was called from the provisional government to hold the chair of Greek Literature in the restored University of Pisa.10 In spring of the same year, Augusto Franchetti moved from Siena to Pisa. A student of the Faculty of Law, during his stay in Siena the young Franchetti took up studying again, under the guidance of Fausto Lasinio,11 the Greek he had begun as a child in Marseille.12 He wrote as follows to his parents in Siena: Vi dirò che seguo anche i corsi d’ebraico e di greco, fatti dal Lasinio. Il metodo del giovane maestro è ottimo e facile; il suo zelo è stragrande.
He added more details a few weeks later:13 La classe superiore per i più avanzati, dove si traduce Eschilo e Platone, è ora composta di due soli studenti … Dopo […] tradurremo Aristofane.
8 The Pace has not been published even if Franchetti finished its translation; cf. A. Del Vecchio, Commemorazione di Augusto Franchetti con la bibliografia dei suoi scritti (Florence: Tipografia galileiana, 1906), p. 53, 115. Franchetti did not translate The Wasps and The Acharnians. He translated a brief part of the latter on the occasion of the Levi-Cavalieri’s wedding in 1892. 9 Comparetti’s introductions have been published in the book Poesia e pensiero del mondo antico edited by G. Pugliese Carratelli, which appeared in Naples in 1944. 10 Cf. M.L. Chirico, “Comparetti a Pisa,” in: S. Cerasuolo, M.L. Chirico, T. Cirillo (eds.) Domenico Comparetti 1835–1927 (Naples: Bibliopolis, 2006), pp. 35–62. 11 The Florentine Fausto Lasinio (1831–1914) taught Greek, Hebrew and Arabic in the Faculty of Theology in Siena in 1858–1859. Immediately afterward, he obtained the chair of Indo-Germanic languages at the Istituto di Studi Superiori in Florence. From 1862, he was professor of comparative Semitic languages at the University of Pisa, where he also gave courses for the Scuola Normale. He came back in Florence in 1873 and there finished his academic career. For his biography, cf. R. Peca Conti, “Lasinio, Fausto”, in: DBI LXIII (Rome: Treccani, 2004), pp. 806–9. 12 For Franchetti’s school education, cf. “Le memorie di Rodolfo Mondolfi. Scuole e libri di scuole dei ragazzi Franchetti”, Il tempo e l’idea VIII, n. 18–19–20 (sett.–ott. 2000), pp. 152–3. 13 For these fragments of letters written at the end of 1858, cf. Del Vecchio, Commemorazione (above, n. 8), pp. 13–14.
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This was Franchetti’s first meeting with the comic poet, “col quale conviverà per lunghi anni in giocondissima compagnia.”14 He met Comparetti the following year. In Pisa, Franchetti took up studying Greek again and, according to his biographer, followed Comparetti’s lectures, “il quale analizza Demostene con portentoso apparato di critica filologica.”15 We do not know whether he continued to follow the Greek course in the following two years in Pisa, or if he attended the lectures about Aristophanes Comparetti gave in the academic year 1861–1862.16 What is certain, is that Franchetti soon began to move in Comparetti’s orbit. In 1864, the Italian translation of the History of Greece by W. Smith edited by Augusto Franchetti went to press.17 This is an interesting work for two reasons. First, it seems to keep a promise made by Comparetti in 1861 when, in a letter to the Rivista Italiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, the philologist expressed hope for the translation of foreign books as an essential means to encourage the progress of philological science in Italy: noi … siamo di opinione che a facilitare e promuovere le ricerche storico-filologiche fra noi in quel senso e quel modo come a’ dì nostri convien che si facciano, meglio sarebbe cominciare dal tradurre le opere manuali o quelle che in Germania soglionsi chiamare Hülfsbücher, quei libri cioè, ai quali si vuol continuamente ricorrere per consultarli nei vari generi di ricerche come quelle che contengono l’ultimo risultato del fin qui fatto18.
Although Smith’s work was meant mainly for school use, as the author clearly declared, it was also intended to faithfully represent the state of contemporary science on the basis of Grote’s work.19 In this sense, it could be part of the Hülfsbücher category Comparetti wanted, because it contained “l’ultimo risultato del fin qui fatto” about Greek history. Franchetti translated the History of Greece perhaps in answer to Comparetti’s invitation or perhaps simply to take up his suggestion. The work also included a Giunta di capitoli intorno alla storia delle lettere e delle arti, as it was described in the Italian title. This was a kind of concise literary history with brief anthological references. At the end of the chapter dedicated to ancient comedy and
14 This is the expression used by Franchetti himself in a dedication for the Errera-Castiglioni’s wedding (Due frammenti delle Nuvole di Aristofane, vv. 563–606 e 1321–1462 [Florence: Barbera, 1880]): cf. Del Vecchio, Commemorazione (above, n. 8), p. 43 n. 15. 15 Cf. Del Vecchio, Commemorazione (above, n. 8), p. 16. 16 Cf. Chirico, “Comparetti a Pisa” (above, n. 10), pp. 49–50 and n. 59. Franchetti stayed in Pisa until he obtained his degree in the summer of 1862: cf. Del Vecchio, Commemorazione (above, n. 8), p. 11. 17 Storia di Grecia dai tempi primitivi fino alla conquista romana con giunta di capitoli intorno alla storia delle lettere e delle arti di Guglielmo Smith. Prima traduzione italiana corredata di una Carta Geografica della Grecia antica (Florence: Barbera, 1864). 18 Lettera sent to the journal on 20 May 1861 and published in the column Carteggio, with the subtitle Letteratura: cf. Rivista Italiana di Scienze, Lettere ed arti colle Effemeridi della Pubblica Istruzione, a. II, n° 37 (3 giugno 1861), pp. 622–3, esp. 622. 19 Cf. “Prefazione dell’Autore,” pp. V–VII.
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Aristophanes were verses 247–54 of Knights. They were in English in Smith’s work,20 but in Italian in Franchetti’s translation: Oh! Dàgli al giuntator dei Cavalieri Dàgli al ladro, al furfante, al malandrino, sentina d’ogni vizio ed usuraio! Furfante, sì! Furfante da tre cotte, Furfante lo vo’ dir per tante volte Quante ogni di’ suol farla da furfante! Dagli, dagli, punzecchialo, percuotilo Sospingilo, conturbalo, confondilo, Gridagli addosso, e come noi lo sborri! Ma bada che non fugga! Ei troppo bene La via conosce per cui già fu visto Eucrate correr tra la crusca.
This was Franchetti’s first attempt at Aristophanic translation. He hastened to justify himself in a footnote: “Ci siamo provati a tradurre nuovamente il citato passo, sembrandoci che il volgarizzamento del conte Coriolano di Bagnolo (il solo che s’abbia in Italia di questa e di tutte le commedie d’Aristofane) non riproduce bastantemente la forza e la vita del testo greco, non ostante, o forse per causa della troppa letterale fedeltà.”21
4. Previous translations by Coriolano Malingri di Bagnolo and Domenico Capellina The Aristophanic translation Franchetti referred to was published in Turin in 1850. The author, a student of Boucheron, was Count Coriolano Maligri di Bagnolo, who wrote Italian plays and translated Colluthus and Apollonius of Rhodes as well.22 He began the translation with the intention of filling a void. After the feats of Monti, Pindemonte, Bellotti and Borghi, who made the works of the “cinque poetici luminari della Grecia” (Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Pindar) well-known to Italians, Aristophanes was the only such poet not translated into Italian. He was
20 As it is written in a footnote, the English translation is by J.H. Frere: cf. Storia di Grecia (above, n. 17), p. 410. 21 Cf. Storia di Grecia (above, n. 17), p. 451 n. 1. In addition, in the “Avvertenza” which closes the “Prefazione dell’Autore,” it is written in a footnote that “pei molti passi di classici greci riferiti dallo Smith, quando (sc. the translator) trovò un volgarizzamento buono o tollerabile lo trascrisse, altrimenti lo rifece come meglio seppe” (p. VIII). 22 Coriolano Malingri di Bagnolo (1790–1855), who was appointed senator of the Reign by decree of 18 December 1849 .
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“sesto fra cotanto senno, ad essi non minore” and “più curioso forse per le minute particolarità ch’egli ci rivela dell’interno delle greche famiglie.”23 Entering a stream of studies and interests which was Lombardese rather than Piedmontese,24 Coriolano di Bagnolo undertook the task of translating the 11 comedies by Aristophanes into blank hendecasyllables, leaving the rhymed verses to the lyric choruses after the example of Bellotti. He started working with Brunck’s edition (1783), then on Dindorf’s, which had been reprinted by Didot in Paris in 1838.25 He referred strictly to the latter, noting when he was not keeping to it and adding “alcune note, pochissime forse avuto riguardo alle necessarie alla perfetta intelligenza delle allusioni, degli usi meno conosciuti, e simili cose” (but in his opinion it was better “non ingrossar libri nostri colla dottrina degli altri”).26 The aim was to make Aristophanes known to the public in a form as close as possible to the Greek original, without omitting “alcun concetto, né alcuna immagine,” and taking into account “delle essenziali differenze delle due lingue” as well. The main aim was to make the presence of “scurrilità” acceptable to the modern reader. As for this, the only excuse for Aristophanes is to have been “nato e cresciuto per mezzo ad un politeismo, che non solo onorava la libidine nell’orto, ma la consecrava adorandola nell’Olimpo …” But the result did not satisfy the translator completely. Despite his efforts, Coriolano di Bagnolo admitted that he had not been able to match certain beauties and to reproduce some concepts adequately, and perhaps he had not always understood the original text properly. As we have seen, Franchetti thought that concern about not diverging from the text – characteristic of Coriolano di Bagnolo’s satisfaction about not “aver slombato” is the fact that he maintained, more or less, the number of verses in the original text27 – ”la troppo letterale fedeltà” precluded the possibility of the translator expressing in Italian “la forza e la vita del testo greco.” Oh! Batti, batti Il giuntator de’ Cavalier scompiglio, Fogna di vizii ed usuraio, e gorgo Ei di rapine, iniquo, iniquo, e dirlo Dovrò più volte ch’ogni giorno ei l’era. Il batti, il pungi, il turba e lo confondi, Qual noi l’aborri, e a lui di contro grida Ve’ ch’ei non fugga, che a lui note sono Le vie ch’Eucrate tra la crusca ha corse.
23 Cf. C. Malingri di Bagnolo, Le commedie di Aristofane (Torino: Marzorati, 1850), “Prefazione,” p. XXXIII. 24 Cf. P. Treves, Tradizione classica e rinnovamento della storiografia (Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1992), pp. 198–9. 25 Cf. di Bagnolo, “Prefazione” (above, n. 23), pp. XXXV–XXXVI. 26 Di Bagnolo, “Prefazione” (above, n. 23), pp. XXXV–XXXVI. 27 Cf. di Bagnolo, “Prefazione” (above, n. 23), p. XXXVI.
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Thus verses 247–54 from Knights in Coriolano di Bagnolo’s translation. This is “una resa fortemente libresca, aulica (quasi ‘tragica’),”28 which is essentially uniform and eventually makes the great Aristophanes unrecognizable. Since there were no other Italian translations of the comedy (Franchetti wrote: “il volgarizzamento del conte Coriolano di Bagnolo è il solo che s’abbia in Italia di di questa e di tutte le commedie d’Aristofane”), Franchetti was forced to try translating the passage himself. The scholar thus did not know that Domenico Capellina29 had also published a book with a translation of the “political” comedies in Turin in 1852 for the publisher Stamperia Reale (Gli Acarnesi, I Cavalieri, La Pace, La Lisistrata, and Le Ecclesiazuse). The following year, Capellina published the “commedie fantastiche e di satira personale” (Le Nuvole, Le Vespe, Gli Uccelli, Le Tesmoforiazuse, Il Pluto, Le Rane). Capellina is mentioned in the first broad study of Clouds, which Franchetti published in Nuova Antologia in 1880.30 In it, the previous verse translations of Terucci and Coriolano di Bagnolo, as well as Capellina’s and Mannini’s prose translations, were mentioned in an opening note by the Editor.31 The situation is unusual. A member of the Subalpine Parliament, Capellina was Piedmontese like Coriolano di Bagnolo. A poet, dramatist and professor of rhetoric and then Italian literature at the University of Turin, he was not unknown to lovers of the classics.32 He translated the works of Hesiod, Polybius and an anthology of Latin poets.33 In 1851, he published the Manuale di storia della letteratura latina. In 1854, he published Storia dell’antica Letteratura greca with
28 This is the opinion, wholly justified, that Quaglia offers about Coriolano di Bagnolo’s translation; cf. R. Quaglia, “Su alcune traduzioni italiane di Aristofane: azzeccagarbugliando tra i secoli XVI e XIX,” Maia n.s., II, LVIII (2006), pp. 349–57, esp. 354. 29 For Capellina’s biography, cf. C. Dionisotti, Notizie biografiche dei vercellesi illustri (Biella: Amosso, 1862; repr. Bologna: Forni, 1969), pp. 143–5; P. Ferrando, Commemorazione storica di D. Capellina Vercellese (Vercelli: Guidetti e Perotti, 1873); O. Bergo, “Uno sconosciuto vercellese: Domenico Capellina,” Studi Piemontesi XXII (1994), pp. 455–61. For his translation of K.O. Müller, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur, cf. L. Canfora, “Gli studi di greco in Italia nel primo Ottocento: la ricezione di K. O. Müller,” in: Le vie del classicismo 2. Classicismo e libertà (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1997), pp. 113–56, esp. 128–133. 30 A. Franchetti, “Le Nuvole, Commedia di Aristofane. Saggio di traduzione in versi italiani,” Nuova Antologia (1 novembre 1880), pp. 102–35. 31 Terucci’s translation of The Clouds was published in Florence in 1754, that of Mannini in Naples in 1873. The reference is at p. 102 n. 1. 32 Preferred to Francesco De Sanctis as a professor of Italian Literature, he died on 12 November 1860, shortly after the beginning of the lectures on Giovanni Boccaccio: cf. A. De Gubernatis, Fibra. Pagine di ricordi (Rome: Forzari e C. Tipografi del Senato, 1900), pp. 95–6. 33 La Teogonia di Esiodo recata in versi italiani da Domenico Capellina (Torino: Stamperia Reale, 1849); I lavori ed i giorni, poema. Lo scudo d’Eracle, frammento di Esiodo tradotti da Domenico Capellina (Torino: Stamperia Reale, 1851); Antologia poetica latina. Brani scelti di poeti drammatici e didattici (Torino: Paravia, 1852); Frammenti vaticani della Storia di Polibio. Traduzione (Torino: Stamperia Reale, 1856). It is impossible to find the work of Polybius that Ferrando, Commemorazione (above, n. 29), p. 26 and n. 32, discusses; cf. Bergo, Uno sconosciuto vercellese (above, n. 29), p. 438.
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Stamperia Reale. He continued the Italian translation of the English version of the Geschichte der griechischen Literatur by K.O. Müller (Utet, 1858) and dealt with Middle Comedy.34 According to Dionisotti, his Hesiodic translation “fu giudicata da critici competenti la migliore che se ne abbia in Italia.” His Greek studies won him the favor of Peyron, who wanted him as a resident member of the Academy of Science of Turin, despite his youth.35 His Greek literature was also appreciated outside Piedmont.36 In a review in the Rivista di Firenze, the Storia dell’antica Letteratura greca by Capellina was compared to the Italian translation of the Geschichte der griechischen Literatur by K.O. Müller edited by Eugenio Ferrai and Giuseppe Müller. Capellina’s work was considered “non meno pregevole (sc. than Müller’s work), avuto riguardo al suo scopo, che era d’indirizzare i giovani, quasi del tutto ignari, per una via più breve e più facile.” In its genre, it was preferred to the four books of the Corso di Letteratura Greca by Antonio Zoncada.37 Also in the Tuscan area, we can mention Giuseppe Arcangeli, a lover of classical studies and member of the Accademy of Crusca who took part in Alberghetti’s publishing project for a new Greek and Latin classical series.38 In a letter of 1855 to the abbot Tigri, Arcangeli judged Capellina “grecista fra’ primi, come lo mostrano le sue traduzioni di Aristofane e d’Esiodo, che adesso ho sotto gli occhi.”39 Capellina’s translation appeared only two years after the Aristofane of Coriolano di Bagnolo. Capellina wrote: “Io era alquanto avanzato nel mio lavoro quand’essa comparve e dirò francamente che mi sarei astenuto dal continuare in quello, se avessi nella nuova traduzione ravvisata l’applicazione di quei principii e di quel metodo che io credeva doversi tenere nel volgarizzare le commedie del poeta ateniese.”40 He tried immediately thereafter to make clear what these principles and method were. The first condition of a good translation is to preserve “il carattere e il colorito” of the original. Today, the main characteristic of comedy is “famigliare conversazione,” which (un-
34 “Considerazioni intorno alla Commedia di mezzo” di Domenico Capellina, Memorie della R. Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, s. II, t. XVIII. 35 The election occurred during the session of 14 June 1855: cf. Dionisotti, Notizie biografiche (above, n. 22), pp. 143, 144. 36 For the spread of Capellina’s works in Piedmont, cf. e.g. the opinion of Chiudemi of the comedy studies in Il Cimento II, s. II., vol. III (1853), pp. 46–7; the positive evaluation of his Aristofane in another article of the same year (pp. 421–4, esp. p. 422); the review of the Storia dell’antica Letteratura greca that appeared in the Rivista contemporanea, vol. II, a. II (1854), pp. 600–2; and, the following year, the review by Michele Coppino of the translation of Aristophanes in the same journal (cf. Rivista contemporanea, vol. III, a, II [1855], pp. 774–8). Michele Coppino was Capellina’s successor in the chair of Italian Literature in Turin. 37 Cf. Rivista di Firenze a. II, vol. IV (1858), pp. 378–80. 38 The Aldine edition of Virgil (Prato, 1847) is owed to him. 39 Cf. Poesie e prose del prof. G. Arcangeli Accademico della Crusca, vol. I (Florence: Barbera Bianchi, 1857), p. 434. 40 Cf. D. Capellina, Commedie di Aristofane, I (Torino: Stamperia Reale, 1852), “Prefazione,” p. LV.
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like in Greek or Latin) is best expressed in Italian with prose rather than in poetry. The hendecasyllable, the only dramatic verse we have, is suitable for high poetry (Capellina experimented with it with Hesiod) but unsuitable for comedy. Nor do we have a “verso comico” that could express the simplicity and liveliness of comic dialogue. The incompatibility between comedy and our poetic meter thus pushed Capellina to translate Aristophanes’ comedies into prose, apart from some sections (“i cori, gli oracoli ed alcune canzonette”)41 and Frogs.42 Moreover, “per mantenere il carattere proprio e il natural colorito,” the translator proposed respecting the text even in parts that could seem “sconce o non più concordanti con i moderni costumi.”43 Verses 247– 59 of Acharnians, then, are translated in Capellina’s version as follows: Batti, batti il furfante, quello che conturba i capitani degli squadroni, il pubblicano, l’abisso e la Carridi (!) delle rapine; il furfante, il furfante, sì, io voglio ripeterlo, poiché ogni giorno egli ripete più volte le furfantesche azioni sue. Ma Dattilo, ed inseguilo, e conturbalo, confondilo e coprilo d’esecrazione, poiché il facciamo anche noi, e standogli alle calcagna schiamazza. Guardati che non ti sfugga, poiché ei conosce la via per cui Eucrate fuggì a nascondersi entro la crusca.
This is a clear, easy to understand and faithful version that one reads willingly, as was observed in a review that appeared in Il Cimento.44 The translation was written with the intention both of making Athenian society of the second half of the 5th century known to the public through Aristophanes’ text and of offering Italians an unsurpassed example of political comedy.45 Totally uninterested in textual issues, Capellina did not even indicate the editions on which he based his translations. To return to Franchetti, if we judge by his silence, he did not know this version, which would not have been useful for him anyway. In fact, apart from the choices he came to in the translation field — from this first essay on, his versions are all in verse: “una comedia in prosa sarebbe stata per gli Ateniesi la più pazza eresia del mondo,” he wrote later,46 — in this case Franchetti, as a translator of the History of Greece by
41 Cf. Capellina, “Prefazione” (above, n. 40), pp. LVI–LVII. 42 “… da questo metodo mi sono dipartilo nel volgarizzare Le Rane, avendo voluto mettere in atto un divisamento, che si presentò come utile e bello all’animo mio, quello cioè di voltare in versi italiani una commedia di Aristofane, mutando i metri ogni volta che sono mutati nell’originale, e conservando, per dir così, la esteriore fisionomia della commedia greca… a me sembra che questa mutazione e varietà di metri sia atta più di ogni altra cosa ad evitare quella monotonia, che porta con se l’endecasillabo comico italiano, e sempre mi piacque il vederla praticata nelle opere di Calderon, di Lope e degli altri antichi poeti drammatici spagnuoli, e mi parve imitabile esempio …”. Thus Capellina in the note “Ai leggitori,” which opens the second book of the Comedies. 43 Cf. Capellina, “Prefazione” (above, n. 40), pp. LVII–LVIII. 44 Cf. Il Cimento II, s. II., vol. III (1853), p. 422. 45 Cf. Capellina, “Prefazione” (above, n. 40), pp. LII–LIII, III and LIV, LVIII–LXI. 46 Cf. A. Franchetti, Le Nuvole di Aristofane, tradotte in versi italiani con introduzione e note di D. Comparetti (Florence: Sansoni, 1881), “Prefazione,” p. IV.
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Smith, also needed to conform to the original author’s choices.47 Smith wanted to give his readers an example of Aristophanes’ “sfrenate invettive.” That is why he suggested the verse translation by J.H. Frere.48 To make a good translation of the text and “dargli, quanto più potesse, veste ed impronta italiana,” Franchetti answered the English verse version with an Italian one. Lacking the distant and, for many reasons, unacceptable49 translation of Malingri di Bagnolo and the conversational translation of Capellina (supposing per absurdum that he knew it), Franchetti had to attempt his own. He wrote a lively hendecasyllable version of verses 247–54 of Knights. Many other translation attempts follow in the next few years.50 Meanwhile the project to translate the 11 comedies of Aristophanes into Italian began to take shape.
5. “The philologist and the artist” at work On 1 November 1880, in a contribution in Nuova Antologia,51 the news that a translation of Clouds with introduction and notes by “Ch. Prof. Domenico Comparetti” would soon be published was announced. On 25 April 1881, Franchetti informed Comparetti that he had sent “la prima bozza dello stampatore” to him. He added that “il Cav. Sansoni promette di metter mano subito al lavoro e di terminarlo nel maggio,” if the problem of type and size was quickly solved.52 The work was published the same year. Comparetti’s mark on its layout is evident. The two problems the philologist raised in his review of Achille Coen’s Nubi, textual exegesis and a global vision of the ancient work, were central to his new scientific and cultural project. This was all the more so, since Comparetti himself took responsibility for it by writing introductions and notes for each comedy and making the textual choices together with the translator: 47 “Dinanzi a questa bell’opera … il traduttore stimò suo dovere di seguitare fedelmente il suo testo pur anco nell’andamento delle idee e dello stile, cercando in pari tempo di dargli, quanto più potesse, veste ed impronta italiana. Pertanto si fe’ lecito di mutare le citazioni di autori inglesi in altre tratte dalla patria letteratura, ed alcune nuove aggiungere qua e là, allorché gliene venne il destro”: Cf. “Avvertenza,” p. VIII. 48 J.H. Frere’s English translation of The Acharnians, The Knights and The Birds was published for the first time in 1840. 49 For some oversights in the translation of Count di Bagnolo, cf. O. Bergo, Domenico Capellina (Gli studi classici in Torino alla metà del XIX secolo) (Diss. Turin, 1992–1993), p. 89. 50 The attempts will involve not only Knights but also Clouds, Frogs, Plutus, Ecclesiazusae, Peace and Thesmophoriazusae, as emerges from Franchetti’s bibliography; cf. Del Vecchio, Bibliografia degli scritti di Augusto Franchetti 1861–1905, in an appendix to Commemorazione (above, n. 8), passim. 51 Cf. n. 30. 52 The letter is kept at the Fondo Comparetti guarded at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy in the University of Florence. The archive contains 32 letters and 6 postcards sent to Comparetti by Franchetti between 1879 and 1901: cf. Fondo Comparetti I. F. 34. I could find no trace of letters sent to Franchetti by Comparetti in public institutions or with Franchetti’s descendants.
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Questa traduzione fu condotta dall’Autore sul testo del von Velsen (Lipsia: Teubner, 1883) senza però attenersi servilmente a quello; ché in questa come nelle altre, rivedute tutte ed elaborate in mia compagnia, prevalendo nelle nostre discussioni la ragione critica, spesso ei si attenne alla lezione di altri testi, o anche a quella che io gli proponea come preferibile ad ogni altra.53
With these words, Comparetti exposed the working method “del filologo e dell’artista”54 in the presentation of Donne alle Tesmoforie, published a few months after Franchetti’s death. Some documents kept in the Fondo Comparetti allow us to enter the two scholars’ workshop. Through their frequent exchanges of letters, we can follow the phases of the work from close up. In particular, the group of letters that runs from 6 February to 11 October 1897 concerns the final part of the Cavalieri publication.55 In February, Franchetti sent both the von Velsen and the Kock editions to Comparetti.56 In the summer, the two scholars proofread both, working at a distance, one in Courmayeur and the other in Livorno. They confer about the problems the work involves. On 3 August, Franchetti wrote to Comparetti: Mi scusi se, in mezzo alle beghe degli esami, dimenticai di avvisarla e di chiederle il suo giudizio intorno alla sostituzione di Calcedone a Cartagine.
The translator is referring to a textual problem of some interest. At verse 1303 of Knights, following von Velsen’s work, Franchetti kept the correction Καλχηδόνα introduced by the copyist of manuscript Γ, following the ancient scholiast, instead of the transmitted reading Καρχηδόνα.57 As one can deduce from his answer, Comparetti showed that the choice made the work more rational and in a way banal, ruining the comic effect aimed at by the poet. Persuaded by Comparetti’s objections, Franchetti returned to the consensus reading and used “Cartagine” again in his translation. This is a concrete example of how the translator did not hesitate to “correggere alcune interpretazioni accreditate ma erronee” of foreign publishers under the guidance of
53 Cf. D. Comparetti, “Avvertenza”, in: Le donne alle Tesmoforie di Aristofane, tradotte in versi italiani, con introduzione e note di Domenico Comparetti (Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1905), p. V. 54 It is the expression used by Comparetti to close the above mentioned passage; cf. “Avvertenza,” p. V. 55 Cf. Fondo Comparetti I. F. 34 cc. 22–30. An interesting letter concerns the Rane composition; in it we read that Franchetti sent “a paper of variations” to Comparetti. Sadly, it has been lost. Cf. I. F. 34 cc. 10–11. 56 Cf. Fondo Comparetti I. F. 34 cc. 14–15. In the same letter, he informs Comparetti that he does not have Knights by Blaydes. For Plutus, which they are going to begin, he has the editions of Velsen and Blaydes, which he sends to Comparetti. 57 Καρχηδόνα superscriptis a secunda χ super κ et λκ super ρκ Γ. Καρχηδόνα reliqui libri. Cf. Aristophanis Equites recensuit A. von Velsen (Lipsiae, 1869), p. 109; in the Adnotatio critica we read: Καλχηδόνα etiam scholiasta legit, qui adnotavit: πόλις Θρᾴκης περὶ τὸ βυζάντιον. Cf. Fondo Comparetti I. F. 34 c. 28.
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the philologist. Franchetti also corrected Comparetti at times. In a letter of 1 September we read: Nel ripassare le altre bozze mi era fatto lecito d’introdurre una piccola variante nella sua prima nota, dove diceva che il Poeta “in tutta la comedia non nomina mai né Nicia, né Demostene, come neppure Cleone”, ho messo invece in tutta l’azione scenica e poi ho aggiunto il rinvio (v. nota al v. 976), in cui ella fa appunto la distinzione fra comedia e azione scenica.58
Comparetti’s Notes were especially of an informative character. They provided the necessary elements to understand the Aristophanic text, avoiding “superflui particolari e discussioni erudite”59 and “introducendo il lettore (quasi senza che se ne accorga) nelle cognizioni più indispensabili della vita e delle costumanze elleniche.”60 They also offered information about the textual choices that were the basis of the translation.61 On 11 October, Franchetti could finally read the Introduzione ai Cavalieri by Comparetti. The philologist worked at it during the summer spent in Courmayeur. It had been challenging work, as we can deduce from the letter of 1 September sent to Franchetti.62 The translator was enthusiastic about the result: “Nessuno, per quanto ne sappia è penetrato così addentro nel pensiero del Poeta e dell’arte sua. … La suprema ragione politica della comedia è da lei stupendamente messa in luce. … Tutto ciò Ella fa senz’ombra di pedanteria, senza nulla di professorale …”63 The introductions to the comedies were broad essays of literary criticism aimed at introducing the reader to Aristophanes’ artistic world. “Il lettore odierno che per la prima volta apre il libro di Aristofane trovasi dinanzi una forma d’arte che gli riesce intieramente nuova, per intendere la quale ha bisogno di schiarimenti e preparazioni.” These are the words Comparetti wrote in the review of Nubi by Achille Coen.64 When he introduced the Nuvole by Franchetti, in the first chapter (VIII–XXVIII), Comparetti consistently put himself in contact with the reader by illustrating the characteristics of ancient comedy, its ingenious creativity, the origin of the genre in Greece, the relationship between
58 Cf. Fondo Comparetti I. F. 34 c. 26. 59 Cf. D. Comparetti, “Introduzione” a A. Franchetti, Le Nuvole di Aristofane (above, n. 46), p. LIII. 60 Thus in the letter of 3 August 1897, Franchetti expressed his enthusiasm for «la geniale semplicità e la chiarezza» of the notes written by Comparetti for Cavalieri: cf. Fondo Comparetti I. F. 34 cc. 18–19. 61 Cf. e.g. the note to vv. 271–4 of Nuvole; in most cases, the translator takes into account Piccolomini’s and Novat’s proposals instead of the German publishers’ work. There are some discrepancies between text and notes, but they mainly concern the form of names, as E. Gerunzi underlines in the review to I Cavalieri published in 1898: cf. Atene e Roma, a. II, n° 8 (1899), pp. 80–1. 62 Cf. Fondo Comparetti I. F. 34, c. 26. In the Fondo Comparetti the manuscript of both the introduction and the notes to the Cavalieri are kept (II/FC/1, cc. 1–39). A comedy episodes summary is also there (cc. 40–8), along with the manuscripts of the introductions and notes to Le Donne a Parlamento, Pluto and Uccelli: cf. Domenico Comparetti e Girolamo Vitelli. Storia di un’amicizia e di un dissidio, a c. di R. Pintaudi, Carteggi di Filologi 1 (Messina: Dipartimento di filologia e linguistica, 2002), pp. 70–1. 63 Cf. Fondo Comparetti I. F. 34 cc. 29–30. 64 Cf. Comparetti, “Aristofane, Le Nubi” (above, n. 5), p. 76.
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theater and πόλις, and the comic language of Aristophanes. In the second chapter (XXVIII–L), he dwelt on the contents of the comic tale and went into the merits of questions having to do specifically with Clouds65 He wanted in this way to put the reader in a position to begin to study Aristophanes’ text consciously, although knowing that “anche per questo lato quei libri che potrebbero supplire altrove, mancano agli Italiani.”66 He tried to avoid leading the readers “pe’ gineprai e i labirinti delle discussioni erudite.”67 The method was explained in the introductory pages to Uccelli and was kept homogeneous in all the introductions. Rather than boring the reader by reporting the opinion of all scholars on each question, Comparetti decided to lead them to a comprehension of the comedies “senz’altri interrogare che il poeta stesso coll’arte sua propria, e la storia e le condizioni del suo paese in quel tempo e in quel momento.” Thus in his Rane, published in 1886, the philologist dealt with some central points through the reading and the commentary on the text: the new theater of Euripides and its success, the relationship of both tragedy and comedy to the cult of Dionysus, the role Aristophanes assigned the theater. In Uccelli, translated in 1898, he reconstructed in the introductory pages the atmosphere in Athens at the time: the mutilation of the Herms, the Decree of Syracosius and the censorship that fell on theater. The Introduzione ai Cavalieri, the broadest and probably the most demanding, was divided into two parts by Comparetti. The first explained the historical context in which the comedy was performed and events in Athens at the time. It lingered on the political life of the protagonists through considerations sometimes influenced by “undemocratic”68 commonplaces. In the second part, the scholar illustrated the plot of the comedy by analysing its structure and individual parts. He lingered on the time period covered by the comedy and dealt with the question of the assignment of roles among the three actors. Pluto was published in 1900.69 A very different drama from the previous ones,70
65 He pauses at length on the Socratic question (pp. XLI–XLVIII), defending Aristophanes from the accusation that his comedy influenced Socrates’ conviction in 399 BCE. He also deals with the problem of the second version in a more concise way (pp. IL–L). 66 Cf. Comparetti, “Aristofane, Le Nubi” (above, n. 5), p. 76. 67 Cf. “Introduzione” agli Uccelli, p. L. 68 Cf. S. Timpanaro, “Domenico Comparetti,” in: Aspetti e figure della cultura ottocentesca (Pisa: Nistri–Lischi, 1980), pp. 349–70, esp. 366. 69 The first unabridged translation of Plutus, after different trials and partial studies, appeared in 1898 with notes by Domenico Comparetti. This is the work which, edited by the “Dante Alighieri,” was put onstage at the Politeama theatre in Florence on 23 April of the same year; cf. Del Vecchio, Bibliografia degli scritti di Augusto Franchetti (above, n. 50), nn. 209, 228, 229, 294, 295. 70 “Tanta riserbatezza, tanta astinenza da ogni intento politico, da ogni violenza aggressiva, da ogni cruda personalità, sorprende in questa commedia; e se non vi brillassero tante qualità geniali e caratteristiche del Poeta quasi si domanderebbe se essa sia veramente di Aristofane, dell’autore dei Cavalieri, degli Uccelli, delle Nuvole, delle Rane”: cf. “Introduzione” al Pluto, p. 133. About the “Introduzioni” to Pluto, Le Donne al Parlamento, Le Donne alle Tesmoforie and Lisistrata, I mention from Comparetti, Poesia e pensiero del mondo antico (above, n. 9), pp. 128–212. Le donne al Parlamento, Gli Uccelli, Le Rane and Le donne alle Tesmoforie were reprinted by Kessinger in 2010.
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it was written by Aristophanes when he was well on in years and the genre was changing. As Comparetti remarked, the comedy was performed posthumously.71 There was no space for personal attacks in it any more. The parabasis disappeared72 and the chorus was deprived of any dramaturgical function. We are in another dimension of the comic. As Comparetti wrote, the theater is out “dalle lotte tempestose locali e momentanee prestando gli elementi suoi costitutivi ad una forma più umana, più universale, più serenamente ricreativa ed attraente per gli uomini di ogni tempo e di ogni luogo …”73 The task to which the philologist devoted himself in the introduction to this comedy was to make the reader aware of the phases and reasons for this change. In his opinion, its origin was in Athens’ new political atmosphere at the end of the 5th century. In 403 BCE, Thrasybulus overthrew the Thirty Tyrants and restored the democracy. After this, the Athenian state introduced severe measures to fight the “cause morali di tanto decadimento” and the condemnation of Socrates was a result of this atmosphere.74 The Athenian audience began to be uninterested in fighting any more; they needed serenity. As Comparetti wrote, the comic theater “dovette rassegnarsi ad esser teatro e niente altro, non più piazza, né foro, né tribuna.”75 Sensitive to the audience’s moods and tired himself, Aristophanes changed his tune. He put onstage a comedy “con caratteri e tipi che diverranno stabili quasi come maschere,”76 starting a new theatrical phase that brought Middle Comedy forth.77 To the non-political character of Plutus was linked its success in the following years on both the dramaturgical level (the comedy based on Franchetti’s work had recently been put onstage at the Politeama theatre in Florence)78 and the literary level. In this sense, Comparetti considered the 18th-century rewriting—almost a completing—of the comedy by Holberg of great interest.79 Working hand in hand with Franchetti, in 1901 the philologist published the Introduzione to Le Donne al Parlamento, with Le Donne alle Tesmoforie and Lisistrata following after Franchetti’s death.80 In Le donne a Parlamento Comparetti again used 71 Comparetti makes sure to refer to the first Plutus which, in his opinion, was a completely different work compared to the second one passed on to us; cf. “Introduzione” al Pluto, pp. 140–1. 72 It was already absent in Ecclesiazuse, as Comparetti reports to the readers. 73 Cf. “Introduzione” al Pluto, p. 138. 74 Cf. “Introduzione” al Pluto, p. 139. About this aspect, Droysen also had insisted in his “Introduzione” al Pluto o la Ricchezza: cf. Des Aristophanes Werke, übersetzt von J.G. Droysen (Berlin: von Veit, 1835–1838), trad. it. di G. Bonacina (Palermo: Sellerio, 1998), p. 102. 75 Cf. “Introduzione” a Le Donne al Parlamento, p. 156. 76 Cf. “Introduzione” al Pluto, p. 132, and “Introduzione” a Le Donne al Parlamento, pp. 151–2. 77 Comparetti explains this point well: cf. “Introduzione,” pp. 139–40. Ritter had pointed out the relationship between Plutus and Middle Comedy in his dissertation on Plutus, going so far as to assert that the comedy belonged entirely to the μέση: cf. F. Ritter, De Aristophanis Pluto (Bonnae ad Rhenum: apud Habichtium, 1828), pp. 8–15. 78 Cf. n. 69. 79 Cf. “Introduzione” al Pluto, pp. 134–5, 138. 80 Franchetti died in Florence on 22 February 1905. For his biography, cf. N. Danelon Vasoli, Franchetti, Augusto, in: DBI, vol. L (Rome: Treccani, 1998), pp. 67–70.
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the theme he had already dealt with in Pluto of the structural and content transformations of post-403 Aristophanic comedy. He also dealt with the theme of “comunismo” and strongly rejected Alessandro Chiappelli’s hypothesis, according to which Aristophanes wanted to parody Plato’s Republic in this comedy.81 Finally, he went to the heart of the text, facing up to the controversial question, especially for Ecclesiazusae, of the attribution of lines on the basis of a careful examination of the dialogue and by making use of his expertise with papyri.82 In 1903, Comparetti finished the Introduzione a Le donne alle Tesmoforie, which was published only in 1905. Even in this case, the introductory pages provided the reader with useful elements to enter into the world of comedy, which Comparetti described as a “comedia parodica,” a “favola comica felicemente inventata dal poeta per intessere le sue parodie delle composizioni euripidee.”83 The parody of Euripides’ art and its dramatic inventions and ideas was the subject of the comedy. The references in the text concerned themselves with this objective and acquired a comic sense.84 With his usual clarity, the philologist made sense of all the allusive references introduced by the poet. He lingered on themes traditionally discussed by critics (the parody of Telephus, the new tragedy of Agathon, Euripides’ misogyny). He also confronted recent questions, such as the debate opened by the Dörpfeld’s book about the assignment of space within the theatrical building.85 In the Introduzione alla Lisistrata published in 1911, he returned to that problem. The essay closed the series begun 30 years before. According to the now widely tested formulation, it introduced the reader to all the questions that concern the comedy: problems due to the historical moment in which Lysistrata was put onstage, its erotic and political-economic themes,86 the absolutely autonomous connection between the actors and the two semichoruses, the evolution in dramaturgical technique that Aristophanes shows in “questo genialissimo e magistrale lavoro,” with the chorus gaining new functions in the action while the parabasis disappears.87
81 Cf. A. Chiappelli, Le Ecclesiazuse di Aristofane e la Repubblica di Platone (Torino: Loescher, 1882). 82 Cf. “Introduzione” a Le Donne al Parlamento, p. 159. 83 Cf. “Introduzione” a Le Donne alle Tesmoforie, p. 187. 84 Cf. “Introduzione” a Le Donne alle Tesmoforie, pp. 167, 171. 85 Cf. “Introduzione” a Le Donne alle Tesmoforie, pp. 192–3. Comparetti contests the theory according to which the stage-action space and the orchestra space are identical, as W. Dörpfeld and E. Reisch maintained in Das griechische Theater: Beiträge zur Geschichte des Dionysos-Theaters in Athen und anderer griechischer Theater (Athens: Barth and von Hirst, 1896). 86 Comparetti discusses two dramas which, “separati nell’azione, diversi per campo, per natura e per forma, ma convergenti verso una sola mèta … senza mai confondersi, procedono in perfetta consonanza;” cf. “Introduzione” alla Lisistrata, p. 206. Furthermore, Comparetti talks about “due drami concordi, ma distinti, scenico e corale”. Actors and chorus never meet. Thus they could not share the same scenic space as Dörpfeld asserted, but needed two different spaces. Cf. “Introduzione” alla Lisistrata, p. 210. 87 For this inconsistency, which Comparetti shows to be only apparent, cf. “Introduzione” alla Lisistrata, pp. 207–10.
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According to the plan announced in 1905 in the Avvertenza that precedes Le Donne alle Tesmoforie, Comparetti should have published Peace after Lysistrata. The translation had been finished by Franchetti, and Comparetti had already written the Introduction and notes. As with his other works he had underway Comparetti intended immediately afterward to write the introductions and notes to Acharnians and Wasps, which Franchetti had not translated on time. That “non tanto per adattarle a qualche traduzione di queste comedie che altri abbia fatto o stia per fare, quanto per completare la esposizione delle mie idee su Aristofane e l’arte sua quali risultano dalla speciale definizione ed illustrazione espositiva da me data di ogni singola comedia.”88 In writing the Introduzioni, Comparetti therefore followed his own idea, a joint speech he would now like to bring to an end, “se mi basti la vita e il tempo che mi lasciano altri lavori in corso.”89 The introductory essays still have value in their genre today, even with the limits indicated by La Penna and Timpanaro.90 If read together, they form a complete chapter of the literary history of Greek comedy, as Pugliese Carratelli guessed when he gathered them together in a book in 1944. Despite his intentions, the philologist did not return to Aristophanes’ comedies, which gradually gave way to other researches and “altri lavori in corso”. After Franchetti’s death in 1905, the main incentive to carry out the Aristophanic work probably failed. As Comparetti recalled and we can see from their letters, the philologist and the artist had worked hand in hand perfectly, in a close collaboration, for years, one illustrating and commenting on the Greek text, the other grappling with the translation into Italian verse. The Prefazioni to the comedies inform us about the problems the translator had and the principles on which he based his work, beginning with the Prefazione alle Nuvole, which is in a way the manifesto of the whole project. As we have seen, Franchetti first tried to translate Aristophanes in 1865. He was working on the translation of the History of Greece by Smith, when he turned a passage from Knights into Italian hendecasyllables. Other translation experiments followed; these were some extracts of Aristophanes’ comedies made as gifts for friends’ weddings.91
88 Cf. Comparetti, “Avvertenza,” pp. IV–V. 89 Cf. Comparetti, “Avvertenza,” p. IV. 90 In Comparetti’s approach to Clouds, whose translation was published in 1881 for the publisher Sansoni, La Penna notes the persistence of a “classicistic” attitude that leads Comparetti to consider the ancient Attic comedy superior to what followed it; cf. A. La Penna, “La Sansoni e gli studi sulle letterature classiche in Italia,” in: Testimonianze per un centenario. Contributi a una storia della cultura italiana 1873–1973 (Florence: Sansoni, 1974), pp. 81–127, esp. 85. It should be noted that Comparetti’s opinion modified partially as years went by: cf. e.g. “Introduzione” al Pluto, pp. 137–8. As for Timpanaro, the remarks are part of a wider evaluation of the “apoliticità” which Comparetti, as a Man of the Risorgimento, developed as the years went by. It prevented him from understanding Italy’s and Europe’s problems between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, and from going beyond the antidemocratic commonplaces about the characters and the political events of Athens in the second half of the 5th century: cf. n. 68. 91 Cf. Del Vecchio, Bibliografia degli scritti di Augusto Franchetti (above, n. 50), passim.
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The books dedicated to individual comedies follow, from 1881 onward. One point immediately distinguishes Franchetti’s work from that of Coriolano di Bagnolo and Capellina. His translation from the Greek only concerns Aristophanes; there is no interest in any other poet or Latin or Greek prose writer in his work.92 Franchetti went along with Aristophanes for 40 years “in giocondissima compagnia.”93 As he wrote in a letter to Hüffer dated April 16, 1883, the comic poet was “mon compagnon habituel de tous les instants et ma meilleure consolation littéraire dans la vie.”94 Translating all of Aristophanes’ works was not easy. The task was complicated and was continually delayed by the translator’s changes of mind. He was devoured with doubts and went back on his decisions time and again.95 His translations went slowly. Once finished, they were left “molti anni in bozze di stampa, prima che si risolvesse a licenziarle.”96 In the end, Franchetti translated only nine of the eleven comedies and could not provide Italy with a modern translation of the whole Aristophanic corpus. But that was not the only thing that tied him exclusively to Aristophanes for so many years. His interests in history and politics both played an important role in his predilection for the comic poet. In this sense, the first phrases of the Prefazione alle Nuvole are revealing:97 Ogni secolo ha una maniera sua propria d’intendere e di tradurre i classici; ma può dirsi che il nostro, grazie alla manifesta sua vocazione per gli studi storici, trovisi in migliori condizioni dei precedenti, soprattutto rispetto a un poeta come Aristofane.
After a reference to the “nuova dimestichezza coi più puri esemplari dell’arte” produced by the brief Romantic period, Franchetti continues: … l’esperienza modernamente acquistata o accresciuta de rivolgimenti politici e dei governi popolari ci pongono in stato di vedere più addentro nella vita della democrazia ateniese e di afferrare più pienamente gli intendimenti del teatro aristofanesco che ne è la comica e svariata rappresentazione.
Three years before, the scholar had published for the Storia generale d’Italia, promoted by the publisher Vallardi and edited by Pasquale Villari, a book on Storia d’Italia nel 1789 that analysed the “rivolgimenti di quel memorabile decennio” from 92 Catullus is the only exception. In fact, in 1895 Franchetti translated on the occasion of the Bacci-Del Lungo’s wedding the Epitalamio di Catullo. Cf. Del Vecchio, Bibliografia degli scritti di Augusto Franchetti (above, n. 50), n° 275. 93 Cf. n. 14. 94 Del Vecchio, Commemorazione (above, n. 8), p. 43, n. 15. Sadly, the letters the Franchetti family put at Del Vecchio’s disposal (cf. Del Vecchio, Commemorazione (above, n. 8), p. 41 n. 1) have been lost. 95 Cf. Del Vecchio, Commemorazione di Augusto Franchetti (above, n. 8), p. 31 ff. A concrete example is in a letter sent to Comparetti on August 15, 1897: cf. Fondo Comparetti I. F. 34 cc. 23–6. 96 Cf. G. Biagi, “Un Ateniese di Firenze,” Il Marzocco, a. X, n° 10 (5 marzo 1905), p. 1, col. II. 97 Cf. “Prefazione” alle Nuvole, p. IV.
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1789 to 1799.98 His was thus not a general statement, nor an abstractly methodological one. As an historian experienced in “rivolgimenti”—it is worth repeating that he first translated a passage from Knights while translating the History of Greece by Smith— Franchetti could read Aristophanes’ work through all its historical and political implications and catch the analogies between the turbulent life in Athens at the end of the 5th century and Italy during his own time. He wrote in the Prefazione agli Uccelli: “… le odierne condizioni della vita politica, come danno al gran pittore satirico dei costumi ateniesi una rinnovata impronta di modernità, così ne rischiarano meglio i concetti e ne agevolano l’intelligenza.”99 In his opinion, there is a certain topicality, a closeness to present times in the Aristophanic comedy that other ancient authors miss. That is the element that tied Franchetti to Aristophanes the most. Pur le mie fatiche non saranno del tutto gettate al vento se contribuiranno, in qualche modo a ravvivare, nelle presenti condizioni letterarie, lo studio di un’arte originalissima e a far meglio conoscere a chi non abbia dimestichezza colla morta lingua dell’Ellade, un ingegno audace e potente, più vicino a noi, per certi rispetti, d’altri poeti antichi, e, mi verrebbe voglia d’aggiungere, anche di parecchi moderni.100
It would be interesting to know which linguistic and metrical instruments Franchetti used to realize his aim and if he achieved it. The first book, Le Nuvole, had a great success among scholars,101 who immediately understood the two new elements of Franchetti’s translation: the unusual attention to the Greek meter and the use of the Tuscan dialect in the Italian version.102 Mi sembra pertanto che il primo criterio per volgere in una Lingua vivente un poeta quale è il nostro debba essere di rendere, per quanto si possa, l’impressione artistica dell’opera sua; di qui la ragione del non adoprare la prosa (una comedia in prosa sarebbe stata per gli Ateniesi la più pazza eresia del mondo) e del seguitare fedelmente la ricchissima distribuzione metrica.103
Franchetti therefore turned to polymetry. He adapted the Italian verse to the quantitative rhythms as much as possible, from the quinary to the hendecasyllable, septenary, octonary, dodecasyllable. They were both tied in strophes and freely
98 Cf. Del Vecchio, Commemorazione (above, n. 8), pp. 33–4. 99 These are his words in “Prefazione” agli Uccelli, p. XI. 100 Cf. “Prefazione” alle Rane, p. XI. This concept had been expressed in the “Prefazione” alle Nuvole (“… il vecchio Aristofane pare più vicino a noi e più moderno di certi ammanierati e pedanteschi autori comici del Cinque e del Seicento”); cf. p. IV. Franchetti came back to Aristophanes’ topicality in the “Prefazione” ai Cavalieri; cf. pp. V–VI. 101 A list of the reviews can be found in a note to “Prefazione” alle Rane, p. XI. 102 We should not forget the experience Franchetti acquired while working as a reviewer and theater critic, which had an important role in his translation activity. He edited the drama review for La Nazione from 1861 and for Nuova Antologia from 1867; cf. Danelon Vasoli, Franchetti, Augusto (above, n. 80), p. 68. 103 Cf. “Prefazione” alle Nuvole, p. IV.
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arranged.104 He absolutely shunned poetic prose, which had been brought into fashion by Decadentism, and refused the idea “di rendere la poesia melica antica coi metri giustamente denominati barbari.”105 He took a step forward with Rane. He made sure the dialogue was reproduced by trying to end it with both the verse end and the hemistich of the original. He introduced other Italian verses such as the senarius and the bissenarius. From Uccelli on, he insisted on maintaining the number of the original verses.106 This choice made his work more difficult and often prevented him from having good results.107 Finally, there was the language question. Franchetti fitted himself into the current of Tuscan classical culture, which was defined in the 1870s with the three books of the Plauto by Rigutini and Grado and continued with the translators of Horace.108 The Aristophanes translator broke with tradition to give a modern form to the text. He used everyday language, our “idioma gentil sonante e puro,” to express the sermo familiaris that characterizes a large part of Aristophanic comedy,109 and all that without modifying the colorful ancient language, which Franchetti made sure was preserved by leaving, for example, the gods’ Greek names. He also almost always kept “il parlare osceno,” as it is an integral part of Aristophanic comedy.110 The critics liked the result of the experiment that kept the translator busy for a long time.111 After the publication of Nuvole, Ruggiero Bonghi wrote: “Gli Italiani hanno ricevuto dal Franchetti quello stesso beneficio che i Francesi dal Fallex; di poter leggere Aristofane con vero e immediato diletto. Egli ha scelto una lingua agevole, piana, fiorentina, viva.”112 The translations of Aristophanes caught the imagination of Ettore Romagnoli, who approached the comic poet for the first time through Franchetti’s Nuvole and Rane (“Non conoscevo ancora Aristofane; e fu una rivelazione”).113 In 1899, Franchetti in turn agreed to write the Prefazione to Gli Uccelli
104 “Prefazione” alle Nuvole, pp. IV–V. 105 See the “Prefazione” a E. Romagnoli, Versione poetica degli Uccelli di Aristofane (Florence: Sansoni, 1899), p. X. 106 Cf. “Prefazione” agli Uccelli, p. VI. 107 Cf. Del Vecchio, Commemorazione (above, n. 8), p. 32; G. Mazzoni, L’Ottocento, II (Milan: Vallardi, 1934, IV rist. corretta 1949), p. 1359. 108 Cf. La Penna, “La Sansoni e gli studi sulle letterature classiche in Italia” (above, n. 90), pp. 103–4; and “L’editoria fiorentina della seconda metà dell’Ottocento e la cultura classica in Italia,” in: I. Porciani (ed.), Editori a Firenze nel secondo Ottocento. Atti del Convegno (13–15 novembre 1981) (Florence: Olschki, 1983), pp. 127–82, esp. 165–70. 109 Cf. “Prefazione” alle Nuvole, p. V. 110 Gerunzi expressed reservations about these choices in the Recensione alla traduzione de I Cavalieri di Franchetti, coll. 80–2. 111 Cf. Fondo Comparetti I. F. 34 cc. 23–6. 112 Cf. R. Bonghi, “Le Nuvole di Aristofane, tradotte in versi italiani con introduzione e note di D. Comparetti, Firenze 1881,” La Cultura (1882), pp. 254–7, esp. 257. 113 This remark was made by Romagnoli to Del Vecchio: cf. Del Vecchio, Commemorazione (above, n. 8), p. 31.
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by Romagnoli, reporting this new translation to the public. To Franchetti, it had all the qualities a work of this kind should have. Franchetti looked to the future. The “scioltezza spontanea” of the young scholar, together with a strict method and “acume critico,” gave him hope that the series of translators of Aristophanes would not be interrupted.114
114 Cf. “Prefazione” a E. Romagnoli, Versione poetica degli Uccelli di Aristofane (above, n. 105), pp. 10–11.
Gonda Van Steen
Close Encounters of the Comic Kind: Aristophanes’ Frogs and Lysistrata in Athenian Mythological Burlesque of the 1880s Abstract: This chapter examines a peculiar modern Greek adaptation of Aristophanes’ Frogs, published anonymously in 1888. The translator took great liberties with the original text, its structure and its contents. More specifically, he (unlikely: she) slashed the entire second half of the Frogs, in which Aeschylus and Euripides engage in a poetic agon on the subject and ethos of tragedy. He substituted for this agon bawdy episodes of mythological burlesque that reveal affinities with contemporary adaptations of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and the other women’s plays. The 1888 farcical adaptation of Aristophanes’ Frogs was not an isolated case but preceded a fashionable trend in the modern Greek reception of Aristophanes that lasted through the 1930s and has traditionally been associated with the name of Polyvios Demetrakopoulos.
I. An Aristophanic Skomma When does comedy “degrade” into farce? Is this process of comedy necessarily one of reduction and “degradation,” or could it have value as a theater-historical indicator? Where do we find an example of this transformation of source texts that we still recognize in the final product, once the adaptation process is complete? To answer these questions, I turn to a little known Demotic Greek version of Aristophanes’ Frogs, which I discovered among the modern Greek holdings of the University of Cincinnati Library. The source text is the playwright’s well-known comedy of 405 BCE, which scholars have long mined for its rich veins of humor (obscenity, scatology, role
I thank Professors Wolfgang Haase and Douglas Olson for their careful work editing and enriching this paper. In 2001, I was the lucky beneficiary of a Margo Tytus Visiting Fellowship from the Department of Classics at the University of Cincinnati, which allowed me to use the Blegen Library for extended periods of time. I remain indebted to the librarians and staff members who graciously provided assistance and helped me advance my research and writing on this and other topics. All translations from modern Greek are my own, but I eagerly acknowledge the generous assistance of Anastasia Bakogianni, who helped fine-tune the translations. I have preserved the polytonic accent system of the modern Greek of the 19th century. Greek texts of Aristophanes are based on Jeffrey J. Henderson (ed.), Aristophanes, 5 vols., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998–2007); and on Nigel G. Wilson (ed.), Aristophanis fabulae, 2 vols. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). May this chapter be a token of my appreciation for Jeff Henderson’s lifelong zeal to discover the bolder side of Aristophanes.
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reversal, mistaken identity, parody, etc.). They have shown particular interest, however, in Frogs’ comic version of “literary criticism,” which is (with some risk) deduced from the play’s second half or from the famous agon between the tragic playwrights Aeschylus and Euripides. The Demotic Greek play calls itself a σκῶμμα or “gibe”—or “farce,” in the case of a gibe the length of a short play. It dates to 1888 and is thus one of the earliest published adaptations of Aristophanes in modern Greek.1 The play is only 16 printed pages long and its full title reads: Ἀριστοφάνους τοῦ πάλαι Ἀθηναίου κωμικοῦ ποιητοῦ Βάτραχοι· σκῶμμα. Βρεκεκεκὲξ κοὰξ κοὰξ Βρεκεκεκὲξ κοὰξ κοάξ, or “Frogs of the Old Athenian Poet Aristophanes: A Farce. Brekekekex koax koax Brekekekex koax koax” (in the modern Greek pronunciation, Vrekekekex).2 The booklet has a publication date of May 1888, which is printed in French on the front cover: “Mois Mai 1888.” Although the adaptation is written entirely in modern Greek, the references to a French-Greek publication process reappear in the playful indication of the author: the work claims to be written “par moi,” with no further hint of who the author might have been. The markers of an (assumed) non-Greek identity, however, may well be ironic statements on the part of a Greek writer provoked by the constant competition of French theater and literature in general.3 No firm place of publication or publisher’s name can be established. A handwritten line in the cover’s top right corner reads: “To Mr. P. Demetrakopoulos,” in the (Kathareuousa Greek) accusative case (masculine singular ending in -on) for the addressee or receiver of the publication. The modern Greek ἐνταῦθα still functions as an adverb of place, meaning “here,” that is, “in this same city,” which likely indicates a local address in Athens. Thus the dedication appears to invoke P[olyvios] Demetrakopoulos (who also went by the French-sounding pseudonym Pol [Paul] Arcas), one of Greece’s most prolific early 20th-century authors and liberal translators of Aristophanes. Demetrakopoulos was very active in the theater world of Athens and apparently strengthened the anonymous playwright’s resolve to adapt Attic comedy in a—bold to bawdy—vernacular version of the Greek language. The unknown author seems to have shared Demetrakopoulos’ fascination with fin-de-siècle French theatrical culture and in particular risqué Aristophanic spectacles that thrived along with (mainly Parisian) mythological burlesques.4
1 For a recent introduction to the complex art of Aristophanes, see James Robson, Aristophanes: An Introduction (London: Duckworth, 2009). For more background on the 18th- and 19th-century reception of Aristophanes in modern Greece, see Gonda Van Steen, Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece, Princeton Modern Greek Studies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), chapters 1–2. 2 The copy from the UC Library has sustained some water damage, but the text remains legible throughout. It can be found under call number PA3878.G8R3 1888. The acquisition date printed in the booklet (likely) by a UC librarian is September 30, 1961. This makes it probable that the booklet was one of numerous library purchases made by the famous archaeologist Carl Blegen, who taught at the University of Cincinnati. 3 Van Steen, Venom in Verse (above, n. 1), chapters 2–3 passim. 4 I use the term “mythological burlesque” with the connotations it has taken on in the field of Classics. David Walsh, for instance, refers to “mythological burlesque” to denote certain comic depictions in
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Theater historian Thodoros Chatzepantazes describes how the Parisian imports, tokens of “European decadence,” elicited the outrage of critics and moralists and at the same time drew full houses, in an age when the most prosperous Athenian urban classes were eager to be seen as denizens of the “Paris of the East.”5 The mythological parodies of Jacques Offenbach, such as the operettas Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld, 1858) and La belle Hélène (The Beautiful Helen [of Troy], 1864), in particular were controversial symbols of the new European fad.6 But whereas Offenbach and his Western European epigones turned the Olympian gods and Homeric heroes into comic protagonists, Greek authors looked for (relative) safety under the mantle of Aristophanes, who came from within the Greek tradition and had mined outrageous parody already in antiquity.7 The 1888 version of Frogs with its teasing French notations of (anonymous) author and date may even have served as a hitherto unknown source of inspiration for the indefatigable Demetrakopoulos, who subsequently took on a French pseudonym to shift the full weight of this imported Western genre onto the women’s plays of the “indigenous” Aristophanes.8 vase paintings in his Distorted Ideals in Greek Vase-Painting: The World of Mythological Burlesque (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). On the question of how the French tradition of mythological burlesque interfaced with modern Greek playwriting, see Konstantina Ritsatou, “The Love Affairs of Zeus in Modern Greek Theater of the Nineteenth Century” (in Greek), in: Ephe Vapheiade and Nikephoros Papandreou (eds.), Questions on the History of Modern Greek Theater: Studies Dedicated to Demetres Spathes (in Greek), Symvoles stis epistemes tou anthropou: Philologia (Herakleio Crete: Panepistemiakes Ekdoseis Kretes, 2007), pp. 177–91. 5 See Thodoros Chatzepantazes, Greek Comedy and Its Prototypes in the Nineteenth Century (in Greek), Symvoles stis epistemes tou anthropou: Theatro (Herakleio: Panepistemiakes Ekdoseis Kretes, 2004), pp. 116–19. 6 Greek Comedy (above, n. 5), pp. 117, 119, notes that a 1874 touring production of the former almost led to violent riots in Athens, which were spearheaded by the conservative student population. The outcry over the production was exacerbated by the French company’s scheduling of its performances during Lent (in an interesting perceived violation of both the nationalist and Christian religious sentiment of the Greek people). 7 Ritsatou, “Love Affairs” (above, n. 4), pp. 178, 191, explains how unprepared some Greek audiences were for the French-style bold caricatures of the Olympian gods and Homeric heroes. References to Greek antiquity, after all, formed solid building blocks of the 19th-century process of Greek nationbuilding. On audience behavior in the late 19th century more generally, see Ioulia Pipinia, “Reactions of the Theater Public in Athens in the Decade of 1890” (in Greek), in: Antones Glytzoures and Konstantina Georgiade (eds.), Tradition and Modernization in Modern Greek Theater from Its Beginnings through the Postwar Period: Proceedings of the Third Panhellenic Conference on Theater Studies, Rethymno, 23–26 October 2008, Dedicated to Thodoros Chatzepantazes (in Greek), Symvoles stis epistemes tou anthropou: Historia tou theatrou (Herakleio: Panepistemiakes Ekdoseis Kretes, 2010), pp. 549–59. On the general cultural climate in Athens by the end of the 19th century, see Alexes Polites, “Intellectual Life” (in Greek), in: Alike Solomou-Prokopiou and Iphigeneia Vogiatze (eds.), Athens at the End of the Nineteenth Century: The First International Olympic Games (in Greek) (Athens: Historike kai Ethnologike Hetaireia tes Hellados, 2004), pp. 249–71. 8 On Demetrakopoulos’ free adaptations of Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae (1904) and Lysistrata (1905), see Chatzepantazes, Greek Comedy (above, n. 5), pp. 199–200; Van Steen, Venom (above, n. 1),
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Unfortunately, we do not know if the modern Greek farce of 1888 was ever performed, and if so, whether female actors played any of the roles. In the early 20thcentury Greek tradition of adapting Aristophanes, which has long been credited to Demetrakopoulos and also to Georgios Soures (see below), it was common for both the casts and the audiences to consist of men only. To my knowledge, no comparable modern Greek Aristophanic farce has been preserved that predates 1900. But Section 5 (below) revisits this bizarre episode in the reception of the comic playwright and expands on its links to the fin-de-siècle French spectacle culture that favored his Lysistrata in particular.
II. A “Paraphrase” of Aristophanes From the onset, the 1888 farcical adaptation of Aristophanes’ Frogs calls itself a “paraphrase.” The first page of regular text opens with yet another title and subtitle: Βάτραχοι· σκῶμμα κατὰ παράφρασιν ἐκ τοῦ Ἀριστοφάνους, or “Frogs: A Farce by Way of a Paraphrase from Aristophanes.” Like the original play, the modern Greek adaptation can be divided into two main components: the comic katabasis or descent of Dionysus and his slave Xanthias into the Underworld, and the competition between the deceased playwrights Aeschylus and Euripides with Athenian tragedy—and a return to the living—at stake. The modern Greek play’s self-characterization as a “paraphrase from Aristophanes” thus holds true for the equivalent of the original’s first component. “Paraphrase,” however, is too generous a term for the counterpart to Aristophanes’ antagonistic standoff between Aeschylus and Euripides. The list of characters of the modern Greek adaptation reveals that the self-styled “paraphrase” will venture in an entirely new direction. The list contains the names of Dionysus, Xanthias, Heracles, Charon, Plathane, Pandoceutria (Innkeeper), Persephone, the maidservant of Persephone, Plutus, Aeacus, the chorus of women, the chorus of frogs, and a dead man. Aeschylus and Euripides are conspicuously absent. Nonetheless, the modern Greek author delivers to his reading public the familiar banter between Dionysus and Heracles on the subject of “desiring” Euripides (Scene 2, p. 2), only to leave the expectation of the tragedian’s appearance unfulfilled. The distinct breakdown of the modern author’s prefiguration of the anticipated second part of the Frogs is marked by a clear shift on pages 11–12, at the beginning of the adaptation’s tenth and final scene. This unexplained shift affects almost the entire latter third of the 1888 play, for which there is no model in either Aristophanes’ Frogs or any extant ancient comedy.
pp. 102–6. Contemporary and subsequent comic adaptations by Demetrakopoulos included Clouds (1905), Peace (1905), Birds (1905; premiered 1911), Frogs (1910; premiered 1911), and Thesmophoriazusae (known “shocking” performances in 1914).
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Structurally, the 1888 farce is divided not into epeisodia and choral parts but into scenes. The arrangement in (acts and) scenes is a recurring feature of 19th-century Greek adaptations of ancient plays, comedies and tragedies alike. By dividing their scripts into acts and scenes, Greek authors who reappropriated the texts of ancient drama conformed to European aesthetic norms of the late Baroque and neoclassical theater.9 The division into scenes of the 1888 play is determined by the entry of new characters, which makes for an extremely short opening scene (less than one page) up until the appearance of Heracles, but also for the disproportionally long final Scene 10 (pp. 11–16), which features the new components by which the modern farce diverges from its classical prototype.10 The “fashionable” arrangement in acts and scenes also led authors to cut most lyric choral passages; alternatively, the (reduced) chorus was made to contribute its lines to an overall more dialogic version of the original play. The resulting scripts were of the sort that a small company of actors could easily rehearse and perform. The chorus of frogs appears in Scene 4 of the 1888 adaptation, where it interrupts Dionysus’ attempt to row the boat of Charon, who offers a rhythmic accompaniment to the laborious strokes. The next chorus, however, does not appear until the near-finale of Scene 10: in this closing scene, a chorus of women chimes in with three times two (dialogic) lines (p. 15), but the chorus of frogs has the final word of some 15 lines (p. 16). Other structural and formal components codetermine the nature of the modern Greek “paraphrase” of Frogs: the play does not operate with ancient meters but follows an obvious scheme of end rhymes (mostly of the type a-a, b-b). This would have been
9 An 1831 Greek translation of Euripides’ Hecuba advertises its arrangement in acts as “the new European way;” see Chrysothemis Stamatopoulou-Vasilakou, The Theater in “Our East”: Constantinople—Smyrna. Eight Studies (in Greek), Drama kai dromena (Athens: Polytropon, 2006), pp. 43–4. On the formal aspects of the modern Greek neoclassical adaptations based on Western models, see Thodoros Chatzepantazes, The Greek Historical Drama: From the Nineteenth to the Twentieth Century (in Greek), Symvoles stis epistemes tou anthropou: Historia tou theatrou (Herakleio: Panepistemiakes Ekdoseis Kretes, 2006), pp. 74–8. 10 The Greek headings of the scenes announce the changes of characters, and the entire play breaks down as follows: Scene 1 (p. 1): Dionysus, Xanthias Scene 2 (pp. 1–4): Heracles and the Above Scene 3 (p. 4): Dionysus, Xanthias, Charon, Dead Man Scene 4 (pp. 4–6): Dionysus, Charon, Chorus of Frogs Scene 5 (pp. 6–7): [Dionysus, Xanthias] (heading restored on the basis of the scene’s characters, since the original does not list them) Scene 6 (pp. 7–8): Dionysus, Xanthias, then Aeacus Scene 7 (pp. 8–9): Maidservant of Persephone and the Above Scene 8 (pp. 9–10): Pandoceutria (Innkeeper), Plathane, and the Above Scene 9 (pp. 10–11): Dionysus, Xanthias, then Aeacus Scene 10 (pp. 11–16): Plutus, Persephone, Maidservant, Dionysus, Aeacus, Xanthias, Chorus of Women, Chorus of Frogs.
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impossible to sustain throughout the ancient Greek original, but its use is much facilitated by the modern Greek pronunciation (which through the process of iotacism has collapsed five different vowels and diphthongs into the same [i]-sound and also allows syllables containing omega to rhyme with those with omicron). From the perspective of humor and contents, however, the 1888 “paraphrase” preserves many of the original’s scatological and obscene jokes and inserts a few anachronisms. The scatology of Aristophanes’ opening scene of the Frogs, for example, has been readily adopted by the modern author. The 1888 farce did not yield to 19th-century demands for philological accuracy or “classical decorum.” Nor did it show any fear of censorship in its repeated mention of male and female genitalia and in the personal digs against Cleisthenes, a politician prominent during the Peloponnesian Wars whom Aristophanes repeatedly associated with effeminate or homosexual practices (p. 2).
III. Railing and Derailment But how does this modern Greek play transform itself into a farce after imitating Aristophanes’ Frogs through no less than nine relatively “faithful” scenes? A closer look at the opening of Scene 10 may offer an answer. Plutus and his wife Persephone welcome Dionysus and Xanthias as their guests and act as their generous hosts in Hades (p. 12; Plutus extends a similar invitation to Dionysus and Aeschylus, albeit only toward the finale of the original Frogs [lines 1479–80]). Before Persephone’s maidservant formalizes the invitation to the palace, however, Dionysus and Xanthias engage in an odd interchange as they recover from the torture that they have suffered in the previous scene, in which Aeacus tried to determine which of the incongruous pair was actually a god. While this question remains temporarily unresolved, Xanthias is quick to think on his feet again, whereas Dionysus starts raving about women and leaves the impression of being delirious. The following lines (pp. 11–12) form a sudden transition to the tenth and final scene but also to an altogether new subplot: ΔΙΟΝ.
ΞΑΝΘ.
Dionysus
Ὁποῖα ὄνειρα γλυκὰ ὁ νοῦς μου πλάττει τώρα ἀφ’ ὅτου ἔφυγον μακρὰν τὰ φάσματα κ’ ἡ μπόρα. Φαντάζομαι συμπλέγματα μαγευτικῶν εἰκόνων καὶ καλλιστέρνους δέσποινας ἐπόθησ’ ἀπὸ χρόνων Ἠγάπησα περιπαθῶς τὸ γυναικεῖον φύλον, καὶ δι’ αὐτὸ έθύμωσα μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων φίλων. Ἀφεντικὸ παραληρεῖς τὸ βλέπω μὰ τὸν Δία, πῶς πάσχεις δὲ φαντάζομαι ἀπὸ φρενοληψία. What sweet dreams my mind is now shaping Now that the phantoms and the storm have long left! I’m having fantasies of enchanting images in ensembles And young women with pretty bosoms I have longed for for years!
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Xanthias
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I have loved the female sex passionately, And it’s the reason I’ve been angry with my other friends. Boss, you’re raving; I can see it, by Zeus. I hope you’re not suffering from insanity.11
Plutus and Persephone are eager to receive news and hear stories from the world of the living. Both guests aver that they have little news to bring and no stories to tell, but Plutus urges them on nonetheless. Xanthias, who again proves more attuned to his hosts’ expectations, obliges; he is also still wearing Heracles’ lion skin and is therefore thought to be divine, whereas Dionysus continues to be mistaken for the slave (p. 13). Xanthias relates with verve the mythical story of Ganymedes’ abduction by Zeus, who disguised himself as an eagle to whisk away the handsome shepherd boy from Mount Ida in Phrygia. Without explicitly referring to the myth’s earliest source (the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 202–17), Xanthias’ tale in its modern Greek version places the emphasis on the homoerotic or homosexual elements of the myth (pp. 12–13): ΞΑΝΘ.
Τὴν ἀετοῦ μορφὴν λαβὼν ὁ Ζεῦς ἐπὶ τῆς Ἴδης Ἔνθα τὰς αἴγας ἔβοσκεν ὁ παῖς ὁ Γανυμίδης διὰ τοῦ ράμφους ἤγαγε, στὸν Ὄλυμπο ἐφάνη ἐκεῖ δὲ τοῦτον παρευθὺς στὴν κλίνην του προφθάνει, κ’ ἐκεῖ τὸν κρύβει παρευθὺς γιὰ πάντα νὰ τὸν ἔχει ἐπείδ’ ἡ Ἧρα μύρισε πῶς κάτι τι θὰ τρέχει. … ἐν περιλήψει τοιγαροῦν καὶ ἂν θὲς νὰ ἐννοήσῃς, τῷ λέγει, ὦ Γανύμιδες ἐλθὲ νὰ μὲ φιλήσῃς. … Καὶ ἀετὸς ἐγίνηκα καὶ σ’ ἤρπασα ἀπ’ τὴν Ἴδη γιὰ νὰ κοιμώμεθα μαζὺ φίλτατε Γανυμίδη· νὰ σὲ φιλῶ νὰ μὲ φιλᾶς μαζὺ νὰ ἀγρυπνοῦμε· νὰ σ’ ἀγαπῶ νὰ μ’ ἀγαπᾶς ὁμοῦ ν’ ἀγαπηθοῦμε· καὶ ἐν συνόψει τοιγαροῦν ἂν θὲς νὰ ἐννοήσῃς χύσε κρασὶ στὴν κύλικα καὶ ἐλθὲ νὰ μὲ φιλήσῃς. Zeus took on the shape of an eagle on Mount Ida where the boy Ganymedes was herding his goats. He took him with his beak, and he appeared on Olympus where he rushed him straight to his bed. There he also hid him straightaway, to have him forever, because Hera got wind that something might be up. …
11 The modern Greek rhyme defies conversion into English both here and in the following passages quoted from the 1888 adaptation.
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In sum, then, and if you care to get it, He told him, “Ganymedes, come and kiss me. … I became an eagle and I snatched you up from Mount Ida, so that we can sleep together, my dear Ganymedes: so I can kiss you and you can kiss me, and we can stay up all night together, so I can love you and you can love me, and we can be together in love. In short, then, and if you care to get it, pour wine in my cup and come and kiss me.”
Narrating the myth of a hidden love affair that confounds social and hierarchical distinctions encourages Xanthias to engage in flirtatious asides and to begin fancying Persephone, his female host. Persephone picks up on Xanthias’ infatuation with her and asks to hear more about another famous mythical case of—this time heterosexual —adultery: Aphrodite’s extramarital affair with Ares (originally told at length in Odyssey 8.266–366). The 1888 play grows increasingly sexually suggestive and this mythical story too barely cloaks the furtive interchanges between slave guest and divine host. Xanthias relates how Helios saw the adulterous couple and informed Hephaestus, Aphrodite’s husband, who ensnared the lovers and kept them bound in his bed. Hephaestus then called the other gods to come and share his outrage about the blatant act of adultery, although they in fact burst out in laughter, and the Hermes of Odyssey 8.338–42 readily admits that he too would sleep with Aphrodite, even if all the other gods were to look on. The text of the 1888 farce reads (pp. 13–14): ΞΑΝΘ.
Πρῶτος στὴν κλίνην ἔγειρεν ὁ φίλος μου ὁ Ἄρης … Τοῦτον ὁ Ἥλιος ἰδὼν τὸ λέγει τοῦ Ὑφαίστου … Κ’ ἰδὼν αὐτὸν ὁ Ὕφαιστος φυλάει καραοῦλι, καὶ τὰ αὐτιά του τέντωσε σὰν ξενικὸ μαροῦλι. Καὶ γούρλωσε τὰ μάτια του σὰν ψάρι πεινασμένο, τὸν Ἄρη βλέποντας γυμνὸ καὶ καταϋδρωμένο. κρὶκ, κρὰκ τὴν πόρτα ἄκουσε κατόπιν νὰ ἀνοίξη, καὶ τὴν καρδιά του βάστιξε μὴ πάθη ἀπὸ σφύξι. Τὴν Κύπρον δὲ προβαίνουσαν καὶ βαίνουσαν στὴν κλίνη, Ἅμ’ ὡς τοὺς εἶδε γείραντας πρὸς δὲ κ’ αὐτὸν κ’ ἐκείνη, κι’ ἐπὶ τὸ ἔργον βρίσκοντο μὲ τὸ σχοινὶ τοὺς δένει, κι’ ἐφώναζε κι’ ἄλλους θεοὺς νὰ ’δοῦνε τὶ συμβαίνει. Κ’ ἀρχίσανε τοὺς γέλωτας καὶ νὰ τοὺς κοροϊδεύουν, καὶ μπλέκανε τὰ πόδια τους ἀντὶ νὰ ξεμπερδεύουν. Τὰ κατὰ Ἄρην ταῦτα ’ναι καὶ τὰ κατ’ Ἀφροδίτην My friend Ares was the first to lie down on the bed. … Helios saw him and told Hephaestus. …
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And when Hephaestus saw him, he went to lie in wait, And he pricked up his ears like a strange head of lettuce. And he popped his eyes wide open like a starving fish, when he saw Ares naked and drenched in sweat. Crick, crack, he heard the backdoor opening, And he held his heart so as not to suffer a heart attack. Aphrodite entered and went to the bed, and when he saw them and saw her, too, leaning over to him, and when they were in the middle of the act, he tied them up with rope. Then he called the other gods too to come and see what was happening. And they burst out in laughter and began to make fun of them, and they tied up their feet instead of disentangling them. So much for the story of Ares and Aphrodite.
After this, Xanthias promises to tell the myth of Hermes and Pan, but his story of how the two found themselves at the foot of Mount Hymettus dissolves into mere allusions to Hermes’ fatherhood of Pan and the affairs both carried on (pp. 14–15). Again, the myth and its constitutive parts serve to illustrate the Olympians’ loose morals and their pursuit of amorous involvements. Xanthias uses this myth too to proposition Persephone, who responds with stealthy nudges and signs of encouragement. At last Xanthias reveals his true identity and that of Dionysus, stressing that his master’s original intent was to fetch Euripides from the Underworld and that posing as Heracles and his slave was a pretense (p. 15). The feisty Plathane then urges that both imposters be chased out of Hades as quickly as possible (p. 15). The plan to retrieve Euripides is now abandoned completely. The chorus of frogs reappears to present the play’s finale: they sing about the physical punishments they propose to inflict on the intruders Dionysus and Xanthias, who have shamelessly deluded the gods of the Underworld (p. 16). This song is reminiscent of Aeacus’ vengeful threats and also of the innkeeper’s and Plathane’s menaces in Frogs 465–78 and 571–8, respectively; it repeats some of the vivid punishments the author conjured up in the equivalent scenes earlier in the play.
IV. Aristophanes and Mythological Burlesque The modern Greek farce raises multiple questions about origins and sources. Where did this idea for a farcical Frogs play originate? Does the deliberate association with Demetrakopoulos offer any clues? This section focuses on contemporary models for the 1888 adaptation of Frogs, whereas the next and final section explains how the prolific Demetrakopoulos took similar adaptations to the broader Greek public and determined the future of Aristophanic comedy for the subsequent three decades. Much of the late 19th- and early 20th-century urban Greek spectacle culture was modeled on the French prototypes of the fashionable revue, cabaret, vaudeville and boulevard shows. In the fin-de-siècle era, Athenian theater practitioners began to adopt the Parisian revue and called it by the literal Greek equivalent name of epitheor-
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ese.12 The French revues presented farcical reworkings of ancient mythical stories, and our 1888 adaptation of Aristophanes’ Frogs was likely inspired by this tradition of mythological burlesque. A lead character in the French wave of revamping Aristophanic comedy as bold mythological spectacle was Maurice Donnay, author of a titillating adaptation of Lysistrata (1892), which captured the boulevard’s and the revue’s fascination with extramarital love and was noted in Athens as well.13 The satire of the 1888 Frogs similarly defines mythological burlesque as eroticized and sexualized play, to which it gives preference over political or social satire. Increasingly, popular Parisian “hedonist” entertainment objectified mythical or legendary women (Helen of Troy, Aphrodite, Eurydice, Galatea, Phryne and other Greek hetaerae, maenads or bacchants, among others) for the sake of male voyeuristic pleasure. Donnay’s Lysistrata, contending with the courtesan Salabaccho for the favors of a common lover, became one of them.14 The Lysistrata of Donnay’s version gained extraordinary visibility, and this popularity, which spread throughout Western Europe, caused the other Aristophanic heroines to quickly follow suit. Comic revivals of the early 20th-century urban Greek stage, however, were monopolized by men and performed for male eyes only. Male actors and theater practitioners, along with the male translator, protected and defended Aristophanic comedy as their own exclusive territory in which they could experiment with gender-bending and gender-bashing. In the spirit of male solidarity,
12 For more information on the French theatrical fashions that inspired trends throughout Europe, see Christophe Charle, Théâtres en capitales: Naissance de la sociéteé du spectacle à Paris, Berlin, Londres et Vienne, 1860–1914, Bibliothèque Albin Michel Histoire (Paris: Albin Michel, 2008). For an introduction to the Athenian epitheorese of the late 19th and early 20th century, see Thodoros Chatzepantazes and Lila Maraka (eds.), The Athenian Epitheorese (in Greek), 3 vols., Nea Hellenike Vivliotheke 34 (Athens: Hermes, 1977). See also Maria Maurogene, “The Boulevard and the Stage Interpretation of Attic Comedy” (in Greek), in: Konstantza Georgakake (ed.), Proceedings of the Second Panhellenic Conference on Theater Studies. Relations of the Modern Greek Theater with the European Theater: Processes of Reception in the History of Greek Dramaturgy from the Renaissance until Today, Athens, 18– 21 April 2002 (in Greek), Parabasis Supplement 3 (Athens: Ergo, 2004), pp. 265–73; Giannes Sideres, History of Modern Greek Theater, 1794–1944 (in Greek), vol. 2.2 (Athens: Kastaniotes, 2000), pp. 105– 15. On Demetrakopoulos’ preoccupation with the epitheorese, see Van Steen, Venom (above, n. 1), pp. 106–10. 13 Van Steen, Venom (above, n. 1), pp. 110–12. For further historical context to the prominent figure of Donnay, see Charle, Théâtres (above, n. 12), pp. 171–2; Christophe Prochasson, Paris 1900: Essai d’histoire culturelle (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1999), pp. 20, 63. On celebrity women’s performance practices of the fin-de-siècle, see Catherine Hindson, Female Performance Practice on the fin-de-siècle Popular Stages of London and Paris: Experiment and Advertisement, Women, Theatre and Performance (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2007), esp. pp. 44–57, 186–205. 14 Van Steen, Venom (above, n. 1), p. 111. Simone Beta, “The Metamorphosis of a Greek Comedy and Its Protagonist: Some Musical Versions of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata,” in: Peter Brown and Suzana Ograjenšek (eds.), Ancient Drama in Music for the Modern Stage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 248, notes that once the late 19th-century Lysistrata has abandoned the sociopolitical concerns of her Aristophanic counterpart, she turns into a “cynical individual who first assembles the machine of the sex-strike and then disregards it by sleeping with her lover.”
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they refused access to female actors and spectators with the excuse, or verdict, that women were “too (morally) vulnerable” and too easily “corrupted.”15 With its French references, then, the 1888 adaptation of Frogs appealed not only to the many Greeks in the home country who followed French fashions but also to Greek expatriates in France and to Greeks anywhere who had some French education and were familiar with the Western European boom in mythological burlesque. The British tradition of parodic or burlesque imitations of ancient drama (and in particular classical Greek tragedy), for example, flourished and shaped an English literary as well as theatrical reception.16 The 1888 version of Frogs foregrounded contemporary Western developments in theater and spectacle and distanced itself from strictly Greek ties that might have problematized the adaptation: it rejected the spoken or unspoken constraints of scholarly, philological or moralizing contexts for reading Aristophanes; readily discarded one of the most humorous and interesting examples of paratragedy from antiquity and flaunted its new mythological substitutions; and dodged the notorious Greek Language Question, which was hotly debated in and around 1888.17
15 See Van Steen, Venom (above, n. 1), chapter 3, esp. pp. 78–81, 95–7, for more on this transgressive Aristophanic spectacle culture and the links between this play on gender, gender demarcation, the broader modern Greek and international feminist debate, and the ensuing antifeminist backlash. See further Eleni Varikas, “Gender and National Identity in fin de siècle Greece,” Gender and History 5 (1993), pp. 269–83. 16 On mythical and tragic burlesques of the mid-Victorian era through 1870, see further Edith Hall, “1845 and All That: Singing Greek Tragedy on the London Stage,” in: Michael Biddiss and Maria Wyke (eds.), The Uses and Abuses of Antiquity, Smithsonian Series in Archaeological Inquiry (Bern: Peter Lang, 1999), pp. 37–55; Edith Hall and Fiona Macintosh, “The Ideology of the Classical Burlesque,” in: Hall and Macintosh (eds.), Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre 1660–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 350–90. Amanda Wrigley devotes a chapter section to “Oxford’s classical burlesques” (of the mid-19th century) in Performing Greek Drama in Oxford and on Tour with the Balliol Players (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2011), pp. 23–31. Topics of Oxford burlesques included Euripides’ Bacchae and Iphigenia in Aulis (pp. 25–6 and 26–30, respectively). Laura Monrós Gaspar, Cassandra, the Fortune-teller: Prophets, Gipsies and Victorian Burlesque, Le Rane Studi 56 (Bari, Italy: Levante, 2011) examines the tragic Cassandra as a figure of Victorian burlesque. This volume includes the full text of a representative burlesque play, Robert Reece’s Agamemnon and Cassandra or the Prophet and Loss of Troy (1868). On Shelley’s comedy Swellfoot the Tyrant, which drew on Aristophanes’ Frogs as well as Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, see Michael Erkelenz, “The Genre and Politics of Shelley’s Swellfoot the Tyrant,” The Review of English Studies NS 47, no. 188 (1996), pp. 500–20. 17 For the complex Language Question (Glossiko Zetema), see Roderick Beaton, An Introduction to Modern Greek Literature2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 296–365; Geoffrey C. Horrocks, Greek: A History of the Language and Its Speakers, Longman Linguistics Library (London: Longman, 1997), pp. 344–8. The Language Question, or the decades-long struggle to determine a national language, was perhaps the most poignant expression of the uncertainty about modern Greek identity. The 19th-century Greek intelligentsia advanced the artificially reconstructed register of the Kathareuousa over the vernacular (although there were many shades to the Demotike, including literary and other written forms), in order to address the ideological needs of the nation-building project, with its many
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The year 1888 was generally a time of literary and cultural renewal. Ioannes Psychares became the most visible proponent of Demoticism with the 1888 publication of To taxidi mou (My Journey), which attempted to lay out the scientific foundations of the Greek vernacular. The same year saw the opening on Syngrou Avenue of the Municipal Theater (Demotikon Theatron) of Athens, which remained active until 1936. This playhouse saw several Demotic premieres and repeat performances of Aristophanes’ works, including Demetrakopoulos’ 1905 Lysistrata. By promoting vernacular drama, the Demoticists of 1888 hoped to establish their linguistic theory and practice no less on stage than in lyric poetry and prose fiction, realms in which the popular tongue had long since gained considerable freedom and legitimacy.18
V. Aristophanes’ Women’s Plays in Early 20th-century Greece In the final decades of the 19th century, Greek moral, philological, archaeological and theatrical obstacles to Aristophanes’ comeback gradually eroded. As a translator and adaptor of Aristophanes, Demetrakopoulos challenged the remaining verbal, visual and sexual taboos against the ancient playwright, especially in the case of obscenity —the forbidden fruit that was nonetheless “authentically” classical. His influence cannot be overestimated. It is therefore no coincidence that the author of the 1888 Frogs affiliated himself with Demetrakopoulos by way of the handwritten dedication. Demetrakopoulos’ versions of the women’s plays of Aristophanes, in particular, such as his 1904 Ecclesiazusae, 1905 Lysistrata, and 1914 Thesmophoriazusae, were still located in but not restricted to the ancient plots and time periods. These adaptations used either verse or prose and perpetuated an arrangement in acts and scenes. They
stakes in historical continuity and pure lineage. In the largely uncharted domain of state-subsidized revival tragedy of the late 19th and early 20th century, this question boiled down to the director’s—or the institution’s—choice between delivering the text in the original ancient Greek or using a translation in Kathareuousa, by then the official idiom of the state, the bureaucracy and formal education. Both choices, however, were far from presenting viable theatrical options. The riots with which the 1903 Oresteia production was received and the clashes between conservative students and the police out to protect enthusiastic spectators, have gone down in history as a narrowly national issue, as nationalist rows symptomatic of the linguistic fanaticism that fueled the Greek Language Question. The two main objects of contestation between progressive, demoticizing translation and linguistic dogma, the Christian scriptures and pagan classical tragedy, were conjoined as victims beset by a common enemy. An academic shift to the study of broader issues of Greek national identity, of which performance, translation and language remain constitutive elements, is long overdue. See recently, however, Peter Mackridge, Language and National Identity in Greece 1766–1976 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 18 See Beaton, An Introduction to Modern Greek Literature (above, n. 17), pp. 335, 342.
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were also infused with bold Demotic jokes, obscenities, sociopolitical anachronisms and antifeminist satire. The early 20th-century modern Greek reception of Aristophanes’ women’s plays was in fact characterized not only by a thick layer of antifeminist prejudice but by the overt exclusion of women, as a transvestite exploration of sexuality and role-playing gained popularity in the bawdy adaptations of Demetrakopoulos. The transvestite shows sustained an atmosphere of antifeminist hostility and fostered male fraternization around the uninhibited, sex-based humor and spectacle of a (proclaimed) kindred male, Aristophanes. Demetrakopoulos also reduced the literary and historical dimensions of Thesmophoriazusae, for example, and thus the weight bestowed on Euripides and paratragedy.19 But I owe the reader an example of the uses to which Demetrakopoulos put Aristophanes’ Lysistrata even in a dire wartime situation. In 1915, at the onset of the First World War, Demetrakopoulos joined forces with Bambes Anninos and Georgios Tsokopoulos to present that year’s popular annual revue, the Panathenaia. They boldly called their work the International Panathenaia of 1915 and introduced versatile female characters who resembled Aristophanes’ heroine: the women of 1915 who call for worldwide peace employ Lysistrata’s old weapon of a sex strike. They ignore the war’s real drama and abuse the crisis as a pretext for teasing and taunting their men. The following bouncy song, performed by women, is also a belittling self-caricature:20
Τρέξατε στὸ Ὕπρ, στὴς Φλάντρες, στὸ Ἀρρὰς, στὰ Δαρδανέλλια τοὺς χαμένους σας τοὺς ἄντρες γαργαλίστε τους μὲ γέλοια, καὶ μὲ σκέρτσο καὶ μὲ νάζι ρίχτε ἐρωτικὴ ματιὰ νὰ τοὺς καίῃ, νὰ τοὺς βράζῃ τῆς ἀγάπης ἡ φωτιά. REFRAIN Τὰ δεχόσαστ’ ὅλ’ αὐτά; Ὅλαι· Μάλιστα, πολὺ σωστά. …
19 Polyvios T. Demetrakopoulos [Pol Arcas, pseud.] (trans.), Aristophanes’ “Thesmophoriazusae”: Translation and Adaptation (in Greek) (Athens: Ankyra, n.d.). See also Van Steen, “Trying (on) Gender: Modern Greek Productions of Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae,” American Journal of Philology 123 (2002), pp. 407–27. 20 This epitheorese was staged at the Kotopoule Theater in Athens. For further context, see Van Steen, Venom (above, n. 1), pp. 108–9. See also Maria Maurogene, “Aristophanes on the Modern Greek Stage” (in Greek) (Diss. Crete, 2007), pp. 118–26; and “The History of a Profession: The Mimes/Transvestites during the Interwar Period” (in Greek), in: Glytzoures and Georgiade (eds.), Tradition and Modernization (above, n. 7), pp. 273–83.
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Ἔξω βγάλτε τὰ λαιμά σας καὶ τὰ μπράτσα σας τ’ ἀφράτα κι’ ὅταν ἔρχωνται σιμά σας χαϊδευθῆτε σἂν τὴ γάτα· δόστε καὶ στὸν κάθε βλάκα ἀπὸ δυὸ γλυκὰ φιλιὰ καὶ ἀφῆστε τους στὴ λάκκα νὰ γαυγίζουν σἂν σκυλιά. Τρανσπαρὰν φορεματάκια κάθε μιά σας νὰ φορέσῃ καὶ λιγῶστε τὰ ματάκια καὶ λιγῶστε καὶ τὴ μέση, ἔτσι τεντωτὸς νὰ μείνῃ, ὁ κορμός σας ὁ χυτός, καὶ ἀφῆστε νὰ τοὺς ψήνῃ τεταρταῖος πυρετός. Κι’ ὅταν ’δῆτε πῶς δὲν πιάνει καὶ πῶς χάνετε τὸν κόπο, τότ’ ἀρχίστε τὸ φουστάνι νὰ σηκώνετε μὲ τρόπο· κι’ ὅταν δείξῃ μιὰ κυρία ποδαράκι παχουλὸ, θὰ τοὺς πιάσῃ μερμηρία καὶ θὰ χάσουν τὸ μυαλό.21 Run to Ypres in Flanders, to Arras, to the Dardanelles. Tempt your lost men with laughter, wit, and coquetry. Cast an erotic glance at them, so that love’s flame may scorch and devour them. REFRAIN You accept all of that? ALL: Sure! Very right… … Bare your neck, and your arms, white and soft. And when the men come near you, snuggle like a cat. Give each idiot two kisses, too, and then leave them in the pit, barking like dogs. A transparent little dress each one of you must wear. And cast languishing glances, and wiggle your hips too, Keep your shapely body stretched out like this. And let a hellish fever fry them.
21 Polyvios T. Demetrakopoulos, Bambes Anninos and Georgios Tsokopoulos, International Panathenaia of 1915. [Collection of] All the Songs (in Greek) (Athens: Mystakides et al., 1915), pp. 21–2.
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If you see that that doesn’t work, and that you’re wasting effort, then start to pull up your skirt in the right way: for when a woman reveals her fleshy legs, anguish will seize them, and they’ll lose their mind.
Demetrakopoulos has been credited with spearheading a popular antifeminist Aristophanic revival, which lasted well into the 1930s, but whose earliest beginnings can now be traced back to the 1880s and 1890s. This long-lasting trend in the modern Greek reception of Attic comedy ran contrary to contemporary academic treatment of Aristophanes, in which careful text editions provided the basis for faithful philological translations but seldom for stage performances. The 40-year-long Greek comic tradition of questioning gender and social transformation focused mainly on Lysistrata and the other women’s plays, but also included comedies such as Clouds, the latter made famous in a risqué version of 1900 written by the satirist Georgios Soures.22 But the older, standard work on the topic, the theater history of Giannes Sideres, does not mention any bawdy versions of Frogs until 1911, when Demetrakopoulos’ adaptation of the play furnished the script for a male-only production by the transvestite-producer Kyros Kyros.23 The author of the early Frogs of 1888, then, treated Aristophanes with all the irreverence the 19th-century Greek theater world brought to comedy, while continuing to respect the classical pedigree and “timeless” value of tragedy and other genres of ancient Greek literature. The modern farce severed itself from canon-formation and classicizing norms and initiated the extremely popular phase in Aristophanes’ Greek reception of the next half century. It helped determine this reception’s bizarre priorities in taste, fashion and morality that moved beyond Frogs to explore more fertile ground in the women’s plays. The farce essentially debunked the “classical” in its 19th-century definition by deconstructing its cultural and ideological underpinnings. It also challenged and subverted the authorship of both the ancient playwright and the modern one, who still did not dare to use his own name.
22 On Soures’ Clouds of 1900, see Van Steen, Venom (above, n. 1), pp. 91–102. On Soures as a playwright and satirist, see Chara Bakonikola-Georgopoulou, “Soures and the Theater” (in Greek), in: Bakonikola-Georgopoulou, Rules and Exceptions: Texts on the Modern Greek Theater (in Greek), Techne tou theamatos 8 (Athens: Hellenika Grammata, 2000), pp. 15–22; “The Theater of Soures and Its Roots” (in Greek), in: Vapheiade and Papandreou, Questions (above, n. 4), pp. 209–16; Anna Papaïoannou, “The Political Satire of Soures: Complacent Ethography or Penetrating Critique? Reference to the First Greek Parliamentary System” (in Greek), Synchrona Themata 2nd s. 9, no. 26 (1986), pp. 49–56. See also Chatzepantazes, Greek Comedy (above, n. 5), pp. 198–200. For more on Aristophanes and his influence on the 19th-century Greek satirical press, see Chatzepantazes, Greek Comedy, pp. 163–82; Van Steen, Venom (above, n. 1), pp. 52–4, 92–4. 23 For the popularity of Aristophanes in the 1910s, see Giannes Sideres, The Ancient Theater on the Modern Greek Stage, 1817–1932 (in Greek) (Athens: Ikaros, 1976), pp. 238–40, 249, 253, 256–8, 260, 278– 81. See also the brief allusions in his History of Modern Greek Theater, 1794–1944. Vol. 1, 1794–1908 (in Greek) (Athens: Kastaniotes, 1990), pp. 138, 247–50, 266–7.
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Rodgers and Hart’s The Boys from Syracuse: Shakespeare Made Plautine Abstract: The Boys from Syracuse (1938), a musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors by Richard Rodgers (music), Lorenz Hart (lyrics) and George Abbott (book), follows Shakespeare’s plot closely but is profoundly different from his play in other respects. Some of the changes Rodgers, Hart and Abbott made may have been inspired by Shakespeare’s own sources, Plautus’ Menaechmi and Amphitruo. In addition, the techniques Rodgers, Hart and Abbott used in modifying Shakespeare parallel those used by Plautus in adapting Greek New Comedy. One of these techniques was their response to place: both Plautus and the creators of The Boys from Syracuse produced humorous juxtapositions of their own time and place with the imaginary place of their plots. In The Boys from Syracuse, the Plautine response to place of Rodgers, Hart and Abbott produced humor, flattered and teased the audience, and reflected both the authors’ view of the world and the concerns of Americans in the late 1930s.
In 1938, composer Richard Rodgers, lyricist Lorenz Hart and author/producer/director George Abbott, along with other collaborators,1 produced The Boys from Syracuse, a musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, which is in turn a very free adaptation of Plautus’ Menaechmi. Introducing some of the play’s songs in The Rodgers and Hart Songbook 13 years later, Margery Darrell reflected a common view of The Boys from Syracuse: “the Bard would have had to look closely to see traces of his A Comedy of Errors, and Old Plautus, from whom Shakespeare lifted the story, would have found it an entirely new experience.”2 Although Rodgers, Hart and Abbott certainly took liberties with Shakespeare’s text, their play in fact contains conspicuous traces of The Comedy of Errors. The Boys from Syracuse closely follows the basic plot of Shakespeare’s play. A few minor characters are left out, and others are added or have expanded roles.3 Most of the
My thanks to Blake White, who introduced me to The Boys from Syracuse, and to Douglas Olson for valuable improvements to this piece. 1 Most notable among these other collaborators was choreographer George Balanchine. For a list of those involved in the original production, and for the play’s production history, see Stanley Green (ed.), Rodgers and Hammerstein Fact Book: A Record of Their Works Together and with Other Collaborators (New York: Lynn Farnol Group, 1980), pp. 188–200. 2 Richard Rodgers et al., The Rodgers and Hart Song Book (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1951), p. 195. 3 Cf. Frances Teague, Shakespeare and the American Popular Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 114–16.
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additions and expansions respond to elements in Shakespeare’s text. In The Comedy of Errors, for example, Antipholus of Syracuse refers to a tailor measuring his body (4.3.7–9);4 in The Boys from Syracuse Antipholus actually encounters a tailor and his assistant, who give him and Dromio suits meant for their Ephesian counterparts (6– 7).5 Neither Hart in the lyrics nor Abbott in the dialogue chose to use Shakespearean language, but despite a tradition that Abbott used only one verse from Shakespeare’s play,6 several lines in The Boys from Syracuse repeat words of The Comedy of Errors with little or no variation.7 Rodgers, Hart and Abbott also kept Shakespeare’s setting, Ephesus, although it has long been standard practice for creators of musicals to change the settings of their originals.8 The Boys from Syracuse includes several references to haunting and witchcraft (e.g. 7, 38), continuing a theme that pervades The Comedy of Errors.9 Darrell is more accurate when she notes the differences between The Boys from Syracuse and Menaechmi. Shakespeare, whose plot Rodgers, Hart and Abbott followed so closely, had made profound changes to Plautus’ text. Inspired at least in part by Amphitruo, he added to Plautus’ pair of twins an additional pair as their servants. Among other changes, he also moved the setting from Epidamnus to Ephesus, expanded the role of the wife considerably, added a love story between the visiting twin and the wife’s sister, and framed the story with a tale of separation, danger and reunification involving the twins’ father and mother. There are ways, however, in which The Boys from Syracuse is more Plautine than The Comedy of Errors,10 and many elements of how Rodgers, Hart and Abbott adapted Shakespeare provide striking analogies for the ways Plautus responded to his Greek originals. We can thus learn much about all three playwrights or playwriting teams, and about how dramatic adaptation works, by comparing the three plays.
4 All citations from The Comedy of Errors are drawn from R.A. Foakes (ed.), The Comedy of Errors (London: Methuen, 1962). 5 Numbers refer to the page-numbers in Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, and George Abbott, The Boys from Syracuse, Libretto (New York: Chappell, 1965). For differences between this text and that of the original production, see below. 6 E.g. Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages: An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1975), p. 191. 7 Cf. Geoffrey Block, Richard Rodgers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 98. 8 Note, for example, Swingin’ the Dream, produced the year after The Boys from Syracuse, in which an adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was set in New Orleans (Brooks Atkinson, “Swinging Shakespeare’s ‘Dream’ with Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong and Maxine Sullivan,” New York Times, Nov. 30, 1939, p. 24). 9 On magic and witchcraft in The Comedy of Errors, see Foakes, Comedy (above, n. 4), p. xxix. It is almost certainly Shakespeare’s many references to magic that inspired Abbott to add a sorcerer to the play’s characters. 10 Cf. Stark Young’s review in The New Republic: “In general … the whole production seemed to have gusto and a certain freshness along the ancient classic line … [the] production is closer to the classic than the Elizabethan tradition could have been” (quoted in Green, Fact Book [above, n. 1], p. 192).
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The Text One of the most useful analogies The Boys from Syracuse provides for students of Plautus is the history of its text. According to Rodgers’ account, after Rodgers and Hart came up with the idea of using The Comedy of Errors for a musical, they approached Abbott, and the three decided to write the play’s “book” (the dialogue minus the songs) together. Abbott, however, produced a draft that was “so sharp, witty, fast-moving and, in an odd way, so very much in keeping with the bawdy Shakespearean tradition that neither Larry [Hart] nor I wanted to change a line.”11 Changes were made to the text, however, first as Rodgers and Hart added songs,12 then during rehearsals and as the play went through trial performances in New Haven and Boston. Even after the play opened in New York on November 23, 1938, changes continued to be made; a ballet, for example, was removed one week into the run.13 A typescript of the play dated December 10, 1938, now in the New York Public Library, presumably offers an accurate record of the text of the play at that time, but it is incomplete, lacking descriptions of most of the dances, attributions in some of the songs, and the full texts of reprises.14 When the play was revived in 1963, further changes occurred, as Abbott himself reports: Twenty-five years later I was in Florida when an off-Broadway revival of The Boys from Syracuse was produced by Richard York. I was delighted to read of its outstanding success, and distressed that some of the reviewers referred to the old-fashioned jokes in the book. But I was puzzled when one of the reviewers cited one of these jokes, a corny pun: “Dozens of men are at my feet.” “Yes, I know, chiropodists.” This kind of humor is so alien to me that I knew I could never have written it; and when I got back to New York I found that the “old jokes” in the revival were new jokes inserted by Mr. York to “modernize” the script. I took out some of these gags, but because the production as a whole was so delightful, I couldn’t get very angry.15
In fact Abbott did not remove all the new jokes, and they remain in the most widely available published version of the libretto, which is based on the 1963 revival.16
11 Rodgers, Musical Stages (above, n. 6), p. 191. Cf. George Abbott, “Mister Abbott” (New York: Random House, 1963), p. 186. 12 Frederick Nolan, Lorenz Hart: A Poet on Broadway (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 253, reports that one song was added but then removed. 13 Leonard Lyons, “The New Yorker,” The Washington Post, Dec. 1, 1938, p. X22. 14 George Abbott, The Boys from Syracuse (Typescript, 1938). The typescript has three blank pages (2– 2–19 A, B and C), presumably where the ballet, removed by this date, had been described in an earlier version. The page numbering in the typescript is formatted as act-scene-page of act, so 2–2–19 is act two, scene two, the nineteenth page of act two. 15 Abbott, “Mr. Abbott” (above, n. 11), p. 187. 16 Rodgers, Hart, and Abbott, Libretto (above, n. 5). There the additional dialogue is credited to Fred Ebb (p. 60). I have compared the published edition with Abbott, Typescript (above, n. 14), and in what
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Besides adding jokes, the creators of the revival removed some dialogue and expanded a few scenes. Musically, they added an overture, a ballet and other instrumental music; these changes show up in the published version of the musical score, also based on the revival.17 The difficulty—even impossibility—of knowing precisely the “original” text of a play only 75 years old provides a sobering reminder for students of Plautus, whose texts almost certainly existed for 50 years or more as actors’ and directors’ scripts before being edited by scholars.18 The nature of the changes made in The Boys from Syracuse is also significant for a Plautinist. By far the most common are the added jokes mentioned by Abbott, the same kind of material that appears to dominate the interpolations added to Plautus’ texts. The songs survived largely unchanged,19 another parallel with Plautus, whose polymetric cantica appear to be the portions of the plays least subject to actors’ and directors’ interpolations.20 Where there are changes in the songs, they are usually matters of attribution, an area in which the texts of Plautus’ plays are notoriously unreliable.
Changes Inspired by Plautus? The Boys from Syracuse has no passages that reveal with absolute certainty knowledge of Menaechmi or Amphitruo on the part of Rodgers, Hart or Abbott, but Hart and Abbott, at least, probably knew the Plautine plays. Latin was a standard part of the curriculum of almost all American high schools in the first half of the 20th century.
follows I cite from the published version only dialogue and lyrics I have also found in the typescript, unless otherwise noted, and I cite a few passages, excluded from or different in the published version, directly from the typescript. See also Block, Richard Rodgers (above, n. 7), pp. 108–9. 17 Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, and George Abbott, The Boys from Syracuse, Vocal Score (New York: Chappell, 1965). The revival also used new orchestrations. For an interesting account of a later attempt to recreate the play’s original orchestrations (by Hans Spialek), see John J.D. Sheehan, “Lost Boys,” Opera News 61.16 (May 1997), pp. 56–7. 18 Sander M. Goldberg, Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic: Poetry and Its Reception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 62–75; C.W. Marshall, The Stagecraft and Performance of Roman Comedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 257–61. 19 A notable exception—very useful as we think about the many possible doublets in our text of Plautus—is a pair of verses in “Dear Old Syracuse.” The typescript reads, “Both the Nile and Danube are a silly bore. / I’ve a home-town river that assaults my door” (1–1–13), but the published libretto has, “I do not agree with Mr. Sparticus [sic]. / I was never meant to be a hearty cuss” (9). The origin of the alternate words is unclear. Most published versions of the song have the “Nile and Danube” verses, but Dorothy Hart (ed.), Thou Swell, Thou Witty: The Life and Lyrics of Lorenz Hart (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), p. 130, includes only the “Sparticus” verses, and in Lorenz Hart, Dorothy Hart and Robert Kimball, The Complete Lyrics of Lorenz Hart (New York: Knopf, 1986), p. 252, the “Nile and Danube” verses appear with the “Spartacus” [sic] verses as an alternate. 20 Timothy J. Moore, Music in Roman Comedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 7.
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Rodgers was an unenthusiastic student before his years at the Institute of Musical Art (later the Julliard School of Music), but he almost certainly studied Latin during his time at Townsend Harris Hall, the most prestigious public high school in New York City, and then at the academically less challenging but still very respectable DeWitt Clinton High School, and perhaps during his brief time at Columbia University as well.21 Hart attended the distinguished Columbia Grammar School, DeWitt Clinton High School and Columbia University.22 A letter to one of his teachers at Columbia Grammar School is preserved, in which he notes the difficulty of Latin,23 and a poem he wrote for the student newspaper there reveals that the school offered Greek, although Hart may have dropped it.24 Dorothy Rodgers, Richard Rodgers’ wife, reports that Hart was the best-read person she ever knew.25 Not only did George Abbott probably study Latin, but he also took the equivalent of four years of Greek in one year at the University of Rochester, and he studied drama at Harvard under the renowned George Baker. Abbott was an avid reader and cites Pericles, Aspasia and Anaxagoras during an argument he makes about religion in his autobiography.26 One passage in The Boys from Syracuse may be a deliberate reference to Menaechmi. In the play’s second song, “Dear Old Syracuse,” Antipholus of Syracuse, newly arrived in Ephesus after searching many years for his long-lost brother, sings of his nostalgia for his hometown. The songs ends, incongruously, as follows: When a search for love becomes a mania You can take the night boat to Albania! I want to go back—go back—To dear old Syracuse! (9)
These verses, like many of Hart’s lyrics, work on several levels. Many in the audience would simply laugh at the daring rhyme. Others, like Hart’s acquaintance Gary Stevens, would see a further meaning: There was a night boat to Albany that left Forty-second Street at about eight in the evening and went up to Albany, 135 miles or so up the Hudson, and returned next morning before eight a.m. It was a floating motel. Lawyers, doctors, ad-agency men, Wall Street people had staterooms on the boat and would take their models, girlfriends, mistresses, or whatever you want to call them, on their one-night stands, and their wives thought they were on a trip to Philadelphia. Larry Hart was the smartest of songwriters because he knew all about everything, and I was a miniature version of that, knowing a little bit about everything. So, when in the song … he comes up with a
21 Rodgers, Musical Stages (above, n. 6), pp. 18, 21, 34, 44. 22 Hart, Thou Swell (above, n. 19), pp. 15, 18. 23 Hart, Thou Swell (above, n. 19), p. 26. 24 The Columbia News, January 1913, p. 8. The poem, entitled, “Baseball and the Exams—A ‘Mix-up’,” includes the verses, “Yes, master of the ‘drop’ was I, / And of the ‘fadeaway’, / And Greek and Trig., poor Greek and Trig., / Seemed very far away.” I am grateful to Sara Ziff of the Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School for bringing this poem to my attention. 25 Dorothy Rodgers, A Personal Book (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 113. 26 Abbott, “Mr. Abbott” (above, n. 11), pp. 17–18, 63–8, 271.
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‘mania’ to ‘take the night boat to Albania,’ everyone in the theatre laughed at the audacity of the rhyme but didn’t get the inner reference. But I knew what he was talking about.27
For those who knew Plautus’ Menaechmi, the verses would have yet another meaning. Menaechmi is set in Epidamnus, modern Durrës, in Albania. Menaechmus, from Syracuse, goes there and ends up in the bed of the prostitute Erotium.28 In what may be additional references to Plautus, Luce twice calls Dromio “flatfoot” (17, 49). Might Abbott be cleverly alluding to the etymology of the name “Plautus”? A number of other features of The Boys from Syracuse may reflect direct Plautine influence on Hart and Abbott. One of the most conspicuous ways in which The Boys from Syracuse differs from The Comedy of Errors is the expanded role of the Courtesan. Shakespeare’s Courtesan, who remains nameless, has a very minor role. Antipholus of Ephesus says that he will dine with her when Adriana refuses to let him in his house (3.1.109–11). She later encounters Antipholus of Syracuse and demands that he either give her the chain Antipholus of Ephesus promised her or give her back the ring Antipholus of Ephesus took from her (4.3.43–77). When Antipholus of Syracuse denies knowing her, she concludes that he is mad and determines to tell his wife that he stole her ring (4.3.78–93). She enters with Adriana and the others in the final scenes (4.4.38; 5.1.33) and makes a few brief contributions to the dialogue (4.4.43, 49, 135–8; 5.1.277, 280, 391). The Courtesan of The Boys from Syracuse is also anonymous but plays a much greater role, and she is joined by a chorus of other courtesans. We see Antipholus of Ephesus with her during two scenes (20–2, 30–2, an expansion of typescript 1–5–45). In a third, the courtesans, along with others, sing a song lamenting the fate of “ladies of the evening in the morning” (33–4). The Courtesan’s scene with Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse—expanded from Shakespeare’s (51–3)— leads to another production number (53–5). Abbott’s Courtesan also speaks more in the final scene than Shakespeare’s does (56–8). This greater role is likely inspired in part by the role of the meretrix Erotium in Menaechmi. Particularly telling is the scene between the Courtesan and Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse. In both The Comedy of Errors and The Boys from Syracuse, Dromio exhorts his master to resist the courtesan’s charms. In Shakespeare, Antipholus scarcely needs such encouragement; he believes she is a witch and never waivers in his rejection of her. The equivalent scene in The Boys from Syracuse includes the following: ANTIPHOLUS: Quiet Dromio. I can look after myself. I’m old enough to say no. DROMIO: You’re old enough to say yes, too. (52)
27 Quoted in Meryle Secrest, Somewhere for Me: A Biography of Richard Rodgers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), p. 204. 28 Shakespeare, also no doubt inspired by Menaechmi, makes several references to Epidamnum (sic; e.g. 1.1.40–1; 4.1.86; 5.1.355).
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The exchange is reminiscent of the debate between Menaechmus of Syracuse and Messenio over Erotium in Menaechmi, where Menaechmus follows Erotium into her house despite Messenio’s protestations (412–41).29 The emphasis on adultery in The Boys from Syracuse may also be inspired in part by Plautus. The Comedy of Errors, unusually for Shakespeare, exhibits the unity of time demanded by neo-Aristotelian dramatic theory: the entire play takes place within one day. There is thus no question of Antipholus of Syracuse spending the night with Adriana. The two acts of The Boys from Syracuse, on the other hand, are divided by a night, which Antipholus of Syracuse spends in Adriana’s house. The change may be motivated in part by the source of Shakespeare’s two Dromios, Plautus’ Amphitruo. Amphitruo begins after Jupiter, disguised as Amphitruo, has spent a night with Amphitruo’s wife Alcumena; and in that play both sets of Doppelgänger—Jupiter as Amphitruo and Mercury as his slave Sosia—exist to bring about and cover up the adultery. In The Boys from Syracuse, the adultery is ostensibly transferred to the slaves: Dromio of Syracuse spends a decidedly unchaste night with Luce (46, 59), but Antipholus of Syracuse tells Luciana that he stayed up all night thinking of her (39), and the following exchange occurs near the play’s end: ANTIPHOLUS of EPHESUS: Well, then, if it may be considered a fairly pertinent question, what happened after dinner? ADRIANA: Nothing, my dear love, nothing. LUCIANA: We stayed together and talked all night long. He said he had a sick headache. (59)
One wonders, though, how innocent Antipholus and Adriana’s night was. Both characters have strong motivation for lying about what happened upstairs. Luciana, aware of this, creates a false alibi for Antipholus of Syracuse. Further suspicion is produced by the unusual contentment of Adriana when she first enters after spending the night with her brother-in-law (34); one is reminded of Alcumena’s words about the pleasure she experienced with her “husband,” Jupiter in disguise (Am. 633–6). Dromio of Syracuse takes it for granted that his master’s night with Adriana involves more than sleep; as Adriana leads Antipholus home, Dromio says, “He’s gonna hate himself in the morning” (Typescript 1–3–28), and when he brings his master the money Antipholus of Ephesus sent him for, he quips, “You had the key. You certainly must have done some fast work last night” (51).
29 Unless otherwise noted, quotations and citations from Plautus are from Friedrich Leo (ed.), Plauti Comoediae (Berlin: Weidmann, 1895–1896).
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Plautine Techniques of Adaptation in The Boys from Syracuse Looking at wider techniques, one finds several ways in which Rodgers’, Hart’s and Abbott’s response to Shakespeare has a Plautine flair, whether or not those techniques reflect specific inspiration from Plautus. First, what is sentimental in Shakespeare tends to become comic in The Boys from Syracuse. With very few exceptions, Menaechmi is farcical from start to finish. As we have seen, Shakespeare’s most significant additions to the Plautine play, besides the two Dromios, move the play away from farce: a sentimental and suspenseful frame derived from romance, a greater role for the long-suffering wife, and a love story between Antipholus of Syracuse and the wife’s sister. Rodgers, Hart and Abbott kept all these elements but presented them in a way that contributed to rather than countered the light and farcical tone of the production. Shakespeare began his play with Egeon, father of the Antipholus twins, about to be executed because he is a Syracusan caught in Ephesus. In a long and plaintive speech to the Duke, Egeon explains how he, his wife, his twin sons and their twin servants were separated in a shipwreck; how the son who stayed with him, when grown, went in search of his brother; and how he has now in turn gone to find his son (1.1.31–139). The entire narrative remains in The Boys from Syracuse, but Rodgers, Hart and Abbott convert it from sentimental romance to farce. Egeon (now Aegeon) and the Duke are not heard, but they pantomime to the accompaniment of a bass clarinet (Duke) and an E-flat clarinet (Aegeon).30 A police sergeant reports their words in song to a crowd, who sing: CROWD: Hurrah! Hurroo! There’ll be an execution. It serves him right, The law makes retribution. There’s going to be a killing. Hurrah! Hurroo! FIRST CITIZEN: It serves him right. Hurrah! Hurroo! What did he do? SERGEANT: He came from Syracuse!31
30 Abbott, Typescript (above, n. 14), p. 1–1–2. In the revival, Aegeon and the Duke did their own singing (2–3). Cf. Jack Gould, “Rodgers and Hart Do the Words and Music,” New York Times Dec. 4, 1938, p. X5; Block, Richard Rodgers (above, n. 7), pp. 99–101; Teague, Shakespeare (above, n. 3), p. 116. On Shakespeare’s addition of Egeon and its effect, see Walton (p. 1044 elsewhere in this volume ). 31 Abbott, Typescript (above, n. 14), pp. 1–1–2 through 1–1–3. The attribution of these verses is somewhat different in the published libretto (1–2).
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Conspicuous in Shakespeare’s version is the Duke’s sympathy for Egeon’s plight; as he permits Egeon to try to find money to ransom himself, he makes clear how much he would like to spare him (1.1.140–54). Similar, much briefer expressions of sympathy in The Boys from Syracuse not only are overwhelmed by the general farce of the play’s opening scenes but lead to a metatheatrical joke: DUKE: Therefore, Merchant, I’ll give you grace of one more day to raise the sum. Your case is unusual and I’m sorry for you, but the sentence cannot be recalled. Jailor, take him into custody. ANGELO: It’s a sad case, but the law’s the law. CORPORAL (Over shoulder to girls): It’s a fish story if I ever heard one. My God, if we saw that on the stage, we’d laugh it off the boards.32
The handling of Aegeon by Rodgers, Hart and Abbott is thus similar to how Plautus handles the exposition of Menaechmi. The background to that play, in which Menaechmus of Epidamnus is snatched from his father, who dies of grief shortly thereafter (29–36), has the potential to move the audience to pity. Plautus, however, has the story told by a garrulous and self-important prologue speaker, who peppers his tale with jokes (1–76). Farce likewise overwhelms sentiment in the play’s final scenes. In the last scene of The Comedy of Errors, the Abbess (Emilia, Egeon’s long-lost wife) enters, an august personage (5.1.38). She reprimands Adriana for her shrewish nagging of Antipholus (5.1.55–86), promises to heal Antipholus (5.1.102–8), and reveals Antipholus of Syracuse with the lofty, “Most mighty Duke, behold a man much wrong’d” (5.1.330). Finally, she invites everyone into the abbey with another fine speech (5.1.393–406). In The Boys from Syracuse, the Abbess is a seeress. A “cat fight” between Adriana and the Courtesan replaces most of her words about Adriana’s jealousy (56). The rest of her admonishment is considerably more “chatty” than Shakespeare’s equivalent scene: SEERESS: You should have reprimanded him. ADRIANA: Oh, lady, I did. I never let up on him. In bed, he couldn’t sleep for me scolding him. At table, I hardly let him eat for crying about his morals.33 SEERESS: What a wonderful system. ADRIANA: Is it? SEERESS: For your rivals. (56–7)
32 Abbott, Typescript (above, n. 14), p. 1–1–10. The published libretto has slightly different wording and attribution (7). The Corporal’s words allude to Fabian’s line at Shakespeare, Twelfth Night 3.4.121– 2: “If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.” 33 Adriana’s description of her actions contradicts the way we have seen her act earlier in the play, where she says, “I’m jealous, but I won’t let him know it. I know what I’ll do. I’ll roam the streets until I find him and when I do, I’ll coo him home as sweetly as any dove” (15). She does almost no reprimanding of Antipholus in The Boys from Syracuse.
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When the Seeress repeats Shakespeare’s Abbess’ words about jealousy (“The venom clamor of a jealous woman poisons more deadly than a mad dog’s tooth”, 57 = The Comedy of Errors 5.1.69–70), Dromio of Syracuse pops out of the temple and shouts, “Shakespeare!,” undermining any serious effect her words might have. While in Shakespeare Adriana admits that the Abbess is right, adding poignancy to her character, in The Boys from Syracuse the discourse is interrupted by the return of the Duke immediately after Dromio of Syracuse’s “Shakespeare!” The Seeress later has the same “Most mighty Duke—behold a man much wronged” (58), but most of the rest of her part is elided in the final swift movement to recognition and reunification, itself a parody of the multiple marriages that end so many Shakespearean comedies: SEERESS: There is one thing more. What of the mother of the two Antipholus twins who floated on the raft with them? Speak, Aegeon, and say if thou had’st a wife called Emilia. (Aegeon steps down—she lifts her veil) Aegeon! AEGEON (crossing to her): Emilia! LUCE (Rushing from downstage right center to downstage center— arms out): Dromio! (she embraces both of them, facing up, their heads over each of her shoulders) ADRIANA and LUCIANA: Antipholus! (Adriana embraces Antipholus of Ephesus—Luciana Antipholus of Syracuse) COPS: Baby! (Embrace courtesans and Girls) GIRLS: Boys! (Hands in air—face center …) BOYS: Girls! (Hands in air—face center …) MUSIC CUE—reprise “This Can’t Be Love”34
Rodgers, Hart and Abbott also used Plautine techniques as they adapted Shakespeare’s Adriana. The unnamed wife of Plautus’ Menaechmus of Epidamnus is not a completely unsympathetic character; her argument that Menaechmus is unjustly transferring her property to the prostitute Erotium would find well-disposed ears in a Roman audience.35 Primarily, however, she is a stock shrew who would inspire little regret when she is auctioned off at play’s end along with the rest of Menaechmus’ property (1160). Adriana, the wife of Shakespeare’s Antipholus of Ephesus, receives much more attention. We see her heartfelt debate with her sister about how to respond to Antipholus’ infidelities (2.1.1–43, 87–116),36 her earnest rebuke of her husband (2.2.110–46), her genuine concern for Antipholus when she thinks that he is mad (4.4.44–104; 5.1.39–48), and her remorse when she realizes that she has been too harsh (5.1.90). All these aspects except the last are present in The Boys from Syracuse’s Adriana, who is far from the shrew of Menaechmi; but she is presented throughout with a lighter touch than Shakespeare’s Adriana. Although she sings the touching “Falling in Love with Love” about the disappointments of marriage (13–14), she jokes 34 Abbott, Typescript (above, n. 14), p. 2–5–39. The published text is slightly different here (60). 35 Amanda Neil Krauss, “Untaming the Shrew: Marriage, Morality and Plautine Comedy” (Diss. Texas, 2004), pp. 164–9. 36 The debate may have been inspired by Plautus, Casina 189–211.
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about her situation, showing a wry acceptance of her lot quite different from the emotional outbursts of Shakespeare’s Adriana (e.g. 13, 35, 45). Shakespeare’s Luciana, a character with no precedent in Menaechmi, argues eloquently and at length against Adriana’s jealousy (2.1.1–43, 86–116; 4.2.23–4) and Antipholus of Syracuse’s protestations of love (3.2.1–70), shares her sister’s concern about Antipholus’ madness (4.4.106, 127, 142), and defends Adriana against the Abbess’ accusations (5.1.87–8). In The Boys from Syracuse, her opposition to Adriana’s jealousy is reduced to just a few lines and includes her own joke along with Adriana’s (13, 15). Her opposition to Antipholus of Syracuse’s words of love is very brief (24) and leads swiftly to the lively song “This Can’t be Love,” in which Luciana and Antipholus claim that they cannot be in love with one another because they feel so well. Closely aligned with the play’s light comic tone is the language of Hart’s lyrics. Like much of Plautus’ language, Hart’s words tend to call attention to themselves, making it more difficult to take their content seriously. Note, for example, the conclusion of the Sergeant’s version of Aegeon’s speech to the Duke: I have searched the isles of Greece From my home to far off Samos. Didn’t know your local laws— I am just an ignoramus. I am sinless! I am twinless! I am wifeless! I’ll be lifeless! I Am Glad To Die!37
Any potential pity for Aegeon is lost in delight at the daring rhymes. We might compare Messenio’s description of the punishment of slaves in Menaechmi: recordetur id, qui nihili sunt, quid eis preti detur ab suis eris, ignavis, improbis viris: verbera, compedes, molae, lassitudo, fames, frigus durum; haec pretia sunt ignaviae. id ego male malum metuo. (972–7)38
37 Abbott, Typescript (above n. 14), p. 1–1–5 (the published libretto reads “I am lifeless,” 3). 38 Text from Cesare Questa, T. Macci Plauti Cantica (Urbino: QuattroVenti, 1995). On the self-consciousness of Plautus’ language, see Ford (p. 575 elsewhere in this volume).
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Those who are worthless should remember what reward is given by their masters to those lazy, bad men: blows, shackles, mills, fatigue, hunger, harsh cold. Those are the rewards of worthlessness. That’s what I’m really afraid of.
The elaborate polymetrics, the long list, the alliteration and assonance, and the general playfulness of the language discourage any feeling for the punished slaves. The lyrics are sung to music, of course, and here again we find an important analogy between Rodgers, Hart and Abbott and Plautus. Although many Shakespearean plays contain songs, there are none in The Comedy of Errors. Rodgers, Hart and Abbott added 14 songs to Shakespeare’s plot. Rodgers’ music contributes to the lightness of tone throughout the play. The song about Aegeon’s plight, for example, is a cheerful march. Likewise the plays of New Comedy had few musical passages beyond the interludes that separated the acts, but Plautus added both extensive sung portions and metrically elaborate passages: about 68% of Menaechmi is written to be sung to the accompaniment of the tibia (i.e. it is in meters other than iambic senarii), and six passages, making up about 12% of the play, are in polymetrics.39 Another feature Rodgers, Hart and Abbott share with Plautus is the expansion of slaves’ roles. Shakespeare himself expanded—even created—slave roles when he turned Menaechmi into The Comedy of Errors. His two Dromios spend considerably more time onstage than do Messenio and the other slave characters of Menaechmi. Everything Shakespeare’s Dromios do, however, is closely aligned with their masters, and they spend almost no time onstage without free characters also present. Rodgers, Hart and Abbott dramatically expanded the role of Dromio of Ephesus’ wife (Luce) and created an entire subplot around her and the two Dromios that included considerable stage time, four songs and a ballet.40 In doing so, they followed the lead of Plautus, whose Messenio sings on his own one of Menaechmi’s most elaborate lyric sections (966–89), and whose slaves such as Pseudolus and Chrysalus dominate their respective plays with parts that are almost certainly considerably expanded from the Greek originals.41 One of the play’s dances, a fantasy, even included the “slave over master” motif that is a signature aspect of Plautus’ plays:
39 Moore, Music (above, n. 20), pp. 395, 397. 40 For the distribution of songs among characters in The Boys from Syracuse, see Block, Richard Rodgers (above, n. 7), p. 104. 41 Reviewers of both the 1938 and the 1963 productions of The Boys from Syracuse almost all noted the performances of the actors playing Luce and the two Dromios. Variety claimed that the Dromios were “the outstanding highlight of the whole production” (quoted in David Ewen, Richard Rodgers [New York: Henry Holt, 1957], p. 164). On Plautus’ expansion of slave roles, see Eduard Fraenkel, Plautine Elements in Plautus, trans. by Tomas Drevikovsky and Frances Muecke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007; translation of Plautinisches im Plautus [Berlin: Weidmann, 1922]), pp. 159–72; cf. Lefèvre (pp. 231–3 elsewhere in this volume).
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Sorcerer re-enters Right with his cloak spread out. He walks in front of Antipholus S. and with a wave of the cloak Antipholus S. disappears and in his place we find a midget dressed as Antipholus S. Dromio S. is now the giant master. He gives the midget a helmet and wooden donkey. He himself puts on a helmet and mounts a wooden hobby-horse and flourishes a telescopic spear. (Typescript 2–2–19)
Much good thinking has been done about reasons for the attention Plautus lavishes upon his slaves, including subconscious responses to the slave-like position of sons in Rome’s patriarchal society, attempts to please slaves and other members of the lower classes in the audience, and anxiety about slaves and the possibility of slave revolts.42 Though we should by no means dismiss these possibilities, a look at Rodgers’, Hart’s and Abbott’s motivation in making the slaves so important may shed light on Plautus’ slave characters as well. According to Rodgers’ account, when he and Hart decided to use a Shakespeare play as the basis of a musical, they chose The Comedy of Errors because Lorenz Hart’s brother, the comic actor Teddy Hart, bore a remarkable resemblance to another comic, Jimmy Savo.43 Rodgers, Hart and Abbott wrote the extensive slave parts with Teddy Hart and Savo in mind, and probably also with an eye on Wynn Murray, who had performed previously in Rodgers and Hart’s Babes in Arms and would play the part of Luce. Considerations involving performers may also have played a role in Plautine adaptations.
Place and Time in Plautus and The Boys from Syracuse Another way Rodgers, Hart and Abbott responded to Shakespeare in a very Plautine manner was their use of setting. The Ephesian setting of The Comedy of Errors was by no means unimportant to Shakespeare, who used the city’s association with Saint Paul and the Temple of Artemis to good effect.44 There is little if any sense, however, that Shakespeare’s Ephesus is culturally distinct from his own England. The first words of The Boys from Syracuse, on the other hand, are, “This is a drama of Ancient Greece;” the authors waste no time in emphasizing that their plot occurs in a time and place distinct from 1938 New York (1). In this, they echo the prologue speaker of Menaechmi, who indulges in a long series of jokes about the setting of the play:
42 See especially Holt Parker, “Crucially Funny or Tranio on the Couch: The Servus Callidus and Jokes About Torture,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 119 (1989), pp. 233–46; Amy Richlin (trans.), Rome and the Myterious Orient: Three Plays by Plautus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 21–2. 43 Rodgers, Musical Stages (above, n. 6), p. 191. 44 Foakes, Comedy (above, n. 4), pp. xxix–xxxii. On place in The Comedy of Errors, see Walton (p. 1047 elsewhere in this volume).
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nunc in Epidamnum pedibus redeundum est mihi, ut hanc rem vobis examussim disputem. si quis quid vestrum Epidamnum curari sibi velit, audacter imperato et dicito, sed ita ut det unde curari id possit sibi. nam nisi qui argentum dederit, nugas egerit; qui dederit, magis maiores nugas egerit. verum illuc redeo unde abii, atque uno asto in loco … haec urbs Epidamnus est dum haec agitur fabula: quando alia agetur aliud fiet oppidum; sicut familiae quoque solent mutarier: modo hic habitat45 leno, modo adulescens, modo senex, pauper, mendicus, rex, parasitus, hariolus … (49–56, 72–6). Now I must return with my feet to Epidamnus, so that I can describe this matter to you thoroughly. If any of you wants something taken care of in Epidamnus, let him speak right up and tell me what he wants, so long as he gives me the resources with which it can be taken care of for him. For if anyone does not give money, he’s wasting his time; anyone who does give money is wasting even more. But now I am going back where I came from, and yet I am standing in one place… This city is Epidamnus while this play is being performed: when another play is on it will be another town; just as the households also tend to change: now a pimp lives here, now a young man, now an old one, a pauper, a beggar, a rich man, a parasite, a soothsayer…
In both Menaechmi and The Boys from Syracuse, this emphatic establishment of otherness is followed by reminders throughout of the world in which the play is performed: late 3rd- or early 2nd-century BCE Rome and 1938 New York, respectively. In employing this very Plautine response to place, Rodgers, Hart and Abbott achieve several effects, some similar to what Plautus accomplishes, some quite different. The most conspicuous effect of what Plautus and Rodgers, Hart and Abbott do with place is humor. Plautus and the authors of The Boys from Syracuse are fond of what I call the “juxtaposition joke,” in which an emphatic reference to the imaginary locale—Greece—is juxtaposed with a reference to the locale of the performance— Rome for Plautus, contemporary America for Rodgers, Hart and Abbott.46 The use of Shakespeare allows Rodgers, Hart and Abbott to include yet another imaginary locale in their jokes. Anachronistic “sends ups” of the ancient world had become common in American popular entertainment by 1938,47 and much of the response to place in The Boys from Syracuse is in this tradition. Abbott’s Courtesan, for example, has the following conversation with her secretary:
45 Here I follow the text of W.M. Lindsay (ed.), T. Macci Plauti Comoediae (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1904–5). 46 On Plautus’ “juxtaposition jokes,” see Timothy J. Moore, The Theater of Plautus: Playing to the Audience (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), pp. 55–6. 47 Bosley Crowther, “‘The Boys From Syracuse’ a Musical Spoof of Ancient Greece and Things, at the Paramount,” New York Times Aug. 1, 1940, p. 25.
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COURTESAN: Fatima—what appointments have I this evening? SECRETARY: Oh, there are some Rotarians in town. COURTESAN: Oh, I know. Those dull Senators from Rome. On a cruise. (20)48
The richest source of such fun is Hart’s lyrics. Taking Antipholus of Ephesus off to jail, the policemen sing “Come with Me,” a rousing parody of the “men among men” songs of earlier operetta. Listing the advantages of jail, they join a classical allusion to an especially audacious rhyme: You can commit your little sins And relatives won’t yell “fie!” You needn’t take that annual trip To the oracle at Delphi. (43)
The Shakespearean allusions have the same humorous effect, as when Antipholus of Syracuse and Luciana sing their respective verses of “This Can’t Be Love”: ANTIPHOLUS: In Verona my late cousin Romeo Was three times as stupid as my Dromio For he fell in love and then he died of it, Poor half-wit… LUCIANA: Though your cousin loved my cousin Juliet, Loved her with a passion much more truly yet, Some poor playwright wrote their drama just for fun. It won’t run. (24–5)
Both Plautus and the makers of The Boys from Syracuse also produce other effects with their use of place. Plautus uses it primarily to reinforce the metatheatrical fun of his plays and to underline specific satiric messages, as when in Menaechmi Menaechmus of Epidamnus returns from the forum and complains about a very Roman-sounding client (571–95).49 Incongruous juxtapositions of time and place in The Boys from Syracuse, besides inspiring laughter, flatter and tease the audience and reinforce a message about the universality of the human condition. The learnedness of Abbott’s and, especially, Hart’s allusions to the ancient world join other references in flattering audience members who “get it.” Not surprisingly, The Boys from Syracuse abounds in allusions to Shakespeare. Some, like the references to Romeo and Juliet that begin “This Can’t Be Love,” are obvious, but others would bring self-satisfaction to those who recognized them. Adriana’s “I’ll coo him home sweetly as any dove,” for example, cited above in note 33, would bring extra 48 The same joke occurs in Abbott, Typescript (above, n. 14), p. 1–3–29. A significant majority of the anachronistic “one-liners” in the dialogue of the published libretto were added for the 1963 revival and are not in the 1938 typescript. 49 Moore, Theater (above, n. 46), pp. 56–66 and passim.
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fun to those who remembered Bottom’s promise to present a meek lion in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “I will aggravate my voice so that I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove” (1.2.83–5).50 Shakespeare is only part of the wide world to which the play’s dialogue and songs allude. The allusions begin with the title; it was well known that the Shubert brothers, who owned the Alvin Theatre where The Boys from Syracuse was first performed, as well as many other theatres throughout the country, were from Syracuse, New York.51 Other allusions would appeal more to cognoscenti. Describing policemen arresting prostitutes in “Ladies of the Evening,” for example, the chorus sings, “A policeman’s lot is the ladies of the ev’ning in the morning,” alluding to Gilbert and Sullivan’s “A Policeman’s Lot is Not a Happy One” (The Pirates of Penzance). Many of the play’s classical allusions would produce the same kind of satisfaction for those who got the references, including those with memories of high school Latin classes. Luce and the chorus sing the last production number, “Oh, Diogenes!,” after the Courtesan reports that Antipholus took her ring.52 Luce asks Diogenes to find an honest man for her, in the process mentioning many elements of the philosopher’s story: his life in a tub, his search for an honest man, the stick he leaned on, and his lantern (53–5). The indirect allusions to Plautus cited above would have appealed to those with still deeper knowledge of the ancient world. If Hart and Abbott flatter the audience for their learning, they also tease them, for the anachronisms participate in one of the favorite pastimes of 1920’s and 1930’s musical comedy: fun at the expense of high culture.53 The most conspicuous such teasing comes with the Shakespearean allusions. We have seen Dromio’s mockserious “Shakespeare!” after the Seeress quotes a verse from The Comedy of Errors. That line, almost at the end of the play, joins an earlier reference to Shakespeare to frame the play with mockery of pretensions surrounding the Bard. As noted, the play’s first words are an announcement that it takes place in ancient Greece. Immediately following are the words, “If it’s good enough for Shakespeare, it’s good enough for us” (1).
50 Cf. Teague, Shakespeare (above, n. 3), p. 115. Compare the Corporal’s allusion to Twelfth Night (above, n. 32). 51 Nolan, Lorenz Hart (above, n. 12), p. 252. Note the ironic announcement of the title in the New York Times a few weeks before the first performance: “After an appropriate period of cogitation it has been duly decided that the George Abbott musical version of Shakespeare’s ‘Comedy of Errors’ will be called ‘The Boys from Syracuse.’ It is mere coincidence, presumably, that the Messrs. Shubert hail from the metropolis bisected by the Erie Canal.” (“News of the Stage,” July 26, 1938, p. 22). According to Hart, Thou Swell (above, n. 19), p. 130, the play’s creators asked the public for suggestions for a title before settling on “The Boys from Syracuse.” 52 Abbott, Typescript (above, n. 14), p. 2–4–30. The Courtesan sings the song in the 1963 revival (53). 53 Cf. Hart’s earlier send-up of Shakespeare, “Shakespeares of 1922,” which he wrote with Morrie Ryskind (Block, Richard Rodgers [above, n. 7], pp. 93–4).
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Several of Abbott’s and Hart’s classical allusions have a similar effect, referring jokingly to the cultural panache of classical learning. The opening words about ancient Greece and Shakespeare, for example, were delivered in the 1938 production by two tap dancers, one wearing a tragic mask, the other a comic mask, standard symbols of “highfalutin” classically derived culture.54 Among the laments of the sexstarved Luce is the following: I wear my nicest negligee And find him reading Plato. Nothing is new with a man. What can you do with a man? (12)
“Come with Me” includes in its praises of life in jail the following: You’re never bored by politics. You’re privileged to miss a row. Of tragedies by Sophocles And diatribes by Cicero. (43)
The use of place by Rodgers, Hart and Abbott also has wider significance. Although the humor of the play’s anachronisms relies on the audience’s awareness that the ancient and modern worlds are not the same, the same anachronisms draw attention to the common humanity of all people, whether ancient, Shakespearean or modern.55 Note an earlier section of “Dear Old Syracuse”: You can keep your Athens, You can keep your Rome, I’m a home-town fellow And I pine for home. I want to go back—go back— To dear old Syracuse! Though I’ve worn out sandals And my funds are low There’s a light that’s burning in the patio. I want to go back—go back— To dear old Syracuse! It is no metropolis, It has no big Acropolis, And yet there is a quorum Of cuties in the forum.
54 Abbott, Typescript (above, n. 14), Act One, Introduction. In the 1963 version, the two Dromios delivered these verses (1). 55 Cf. William G. Hyland’s description of Hart’s lyrics in The Boys from Syracuse as “witty but melancholy comments on the human condition” (Richard Rodgers [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998], p. 120).
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Though the boys wear tunics that are out of style, They will always greet me with a friendly smile. I want to go back—go back— To dear old Syracuse! (8–9)
Antipholus, the Shakespearean character wandering from the forum to the acropolis in his sandals and tunic, is no different from any modern inhabitant of a small city who finds himself in a metropolis like New York.56 Indeed, for one of the play’s authors this song would have had special significance: Rodgers and Hart, both raised in Harlem, were decidedly New Yorkers, but Abbott spent the first 22 years of his life in upstate New York and Wyoming. In his autobiography, he reports feeling like an unsophisticated outsider at several points in his youth and being mocked as a “hick” even after he achieved great success in the city.57 One of the elements of human life most commented on in the play is marriage. Here too, temporal and geographical incongruities contribute to the universality of the message. Luce’s song about her husband’s failures (“What Can You Do with a Man?”) begins: Listen to your lady who speaks. This affair has run its course. I’ll reside in Athens six weeks While I get me a divorce. (11)
She refers to the common practice before divorce became legal in most states, whereby women seeking divorces would live in Nevada long enough to gain residency. Athens as Reno makes a great anachronistic joke, but it also reminds the audience that marital strife is hardly unique to their own age. Even one of Abbott’s silliest anachronisms helps universalize the challenges of marriage. Adriana says of her earlier, happier days with Antipholus, “There are some that say it was a sword’s point wedding, but that isn’t the fact” (13).58 These chronological and geographical confusions contribute to a refusal to acknowledge distinctions between people that runs throughout the play. The plot, with its mistaken identities, already lends itself to such refusal. The music further dis-
56 Walter Kerr, reviewing the 1963 revival, called this song “an impishly transplanted parody of all those hometown songs that used to keep people steadily moving into the big cities” (Thirty Plays Hath November: Pain and Pleasure in the Contemporary Theater [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969], p. 193). 57 Abbott, “Mr. Abbott” (above, n. 11), pp. 52, 64, 169. 58 While Shakespeare’s Adriana, feeling abandoned, laments her own specific situation (2.1.1–43, 87– 116), Adriana of The Boy’s from Syracuse generalizes, singing “Falling in Love with Love” about how wives are doomed to disappointment (13–14). Luce and Dromio of Syracuse’s “He and She” is also about marriage in general (36–8).
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courages distinctions. Rodgers was known for his ability to recreate an authenticsounding “feel” to match the setting of his plays. Although his most famous accomplishments in this area came later in his career—the pseudo-oriental music of The King and I, for example, or the nuns’ singing in The Sound of Music—he had already demonstrated this skill in the oriental-sounding music of Chee-Chee and, to a lesser extent, in Dearest Enemy (set in the 18th century) and the medieval A Connecticut Yankee.59 None of the music of The Boys from Syracuse, however, gives the slightest hint of being anything but music that might be played or sung in America in the 1930s.60 Equally damaging to distinctions is the language of both Hart and Abbott. Abbott’s language is emphatically colloquial: although, as we have seen, the claim that he took only one line from Shakespeare is an exaggeration, almost all the dialogue is rewritten in 1930s American slang.61 Likewise Hart’s lyrics are throughout decidedly vernacular.62 Nothing in The Boys of Syracuse is anything like the halfmedieval, half-modern lyrics of A Connecticut Yankee’s “Thou Swell, Thou Witty.” The refusal of Rodgers, Hart and Abbott to make distinctions based on time and place ties in nicely with another distinction blurred throughout the play, that between prostitution and marriage. We have noted the expanded role of the Courtesan. In fact, The Boys from Syracuse displays an obsession with prostitutes and prostitution. “Dear Old Syracuse” sets the tone. Hart’s verses about Albania, with their reference to illicit sexual rendezvous, are preceded by a more blatant reference to prostitution: When a man is lonely it is good to know There’s a red light burning in the patio. (9)
These lyrics are a flagrant inversion of the sentiments about home and family one would expect in such a “hometown” song. The obsession and the inversion continue in the following scenes. Characters twice pun on “madam” (a polite address) and “madame” (brothel keeper, 17,19) in lines referring to the matron Adriana. Late in the first act, in a bizarre scene with no precedent in Plautus or Shakespeare, Antipholus of Ephesus, enjoying himself in the
59 Dearest Enemy: Ewen, Richard Rodgers (above, n. 41), p. 100; A Connecticut Yankee: Samuel Marx and Jan Clayton, Rodgers and Hart: Bewitched, Bothered, and Bedeviled. An Anecdotal Account (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1976), p. 113; Chee-Chee, The King and I, and The Sound of Music: Rodgers, Musical Stages (above, n. 6), pp. 118, 273–4, 301. 60 Note the words of a Time article on the play from September 26, 1938: “The score runs the whole anachronistic gamut from waltzes to hotcha” (quoted in Geoffrey Block [ed.], The Richard Rodgers Reader [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002], p. 49). 61 Cf. Block, Richard Rodgers (above, n. 7), p. 98. 62 Cf. Philip Furia, The Poets of Tin Pan Alley: A History of America’s Great Lyricists (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 121.
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Courtesan’s establishment, tells her about his wife’s love for him (and, by implication, his own love for her, 21). This leads to one of the play’s love ballads, “The Shortest Day of the Year,” which Antipholus says his wife sings to him.63 The blurring of distinctions between wives and prostitutes reaches its climax in act two, in the play’s biggest “show stopper,” “Sing for Your Supper.”64 Luciana romanticizes to Luce and Adriana about life after she is married: LUCIANA: My love isn’t going to be like that. We’ll be just content to sit together for hours … and we’ll talk about all the beautiful music and all the beautiful things in the world. LUCE: You mean to say you wouldn’t at any time get around to a kiss or two? LUCIANA: Of course we would … but beautiful kisses. ADRIANA: I’ll tell you something right now, girls. Think of it any way you like, it’ll turn out to be different. But if you’re smart, you’ll try to please them. (46)
The three women then sing together “Sing for Your Supper,” admonishing one another to act like the canary, “a courtesan with wings,” who sings for her supper and therefore gets breakfast, because “trilling makes a fellow willing.” They repeat the song’s chorus several times, adding close harmony and ornamentation. One might forget in the midst of their delightful singing how shocking the song is. These three matrons or soon-to-be matrons are presenting marriage as a kind of prostitution. The song’s dance, which included a courtesan, would contribute to the irony.65 Equally striking is the fact that these three women sang together at all. According to Hugh Martin, who arranged the number, Wynn Murray (Luce) had “a deep chesty voice.” She did not know how to read music and had not sung harmony before; it took great persuasion on the part of Martin to get her to do the number.66 The brassy volume Murray produced was legendary; she had gained fame two years before in Rodgers and Hart’s Babes in Arms with a song called “Johnny One Note,” about a tenor who drowned out all sounds for miles as he belted out a single note. Her other songs in The Boys from Syracuse are loud comic numbers.67 The two other singers were sopranos but with distinctive sounds. Muriel Angelus (Adriana) had only recently come to New York from her native Britain to perform in The Boys from Syracuse. George Abbott,
63 According to Irene G. Dash, Shakespeare and the American Musical (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), pp. 34–5, citing “Chasing the Boys from Syracuse,” in Popular Balanchine Dossiers, compiled by Camille Hardy in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, in the original production this scene also featured a ballet in which a dancer playing Antipholus of Ephesus performed with representatives of Adriana and the Courtesan. 64 For the impression this song created, see Alice Hughes, “A Woman’s New York,” The Washington Post Dec. 17, 1938, p. X13. The overture added for the 1963 revival begins with “Sing for Your Supper.” 65 Green, Fact Book (above, n. 1), p. 190. 66 Secrest, Somewhere (above, n. 27), pp. 202–3. 67 In the recording of “Sing for Your Supper” in the 1963 revival, Karen Morrow, another singer with a big brassy voice who played Luce, drowns out the actresses playing Adriana and Luciana for part of the song (The Boys from Syracuse [CD: Capitol Records, 1963]).
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directing, gave up on trying to get her to adopt an American accent to make her sound like the other performers.68 Her earlier number, “Falling in Love With Love,” approached the operatic. Marcy Westcott (Luciana) was an American soprano whose previous song, “This Can’t Be Love,” lay between “Falling in Love with Love” and Luce’s comic numbers in its tone. The very fact that these three unlikely voices sang tight harmony contributed to the breakdown of expected barriers the song accomplishes. The emphasis on prostitutes is to some extent simply part of the bawdiness that pervades the play. As Teague points out, one of the creators’ motivations in basing a musical on Shakespeare may have been an excuse to produce a musical more sexually provocative than most of its day, a feature pointed out by many reviewers.69 It is tempting, in fact, to see all the play’s battered distinctions as merely elements included to increase the audience’s pleasure, a goal Rodgers and Abbott both explicitly professed.70 The fact that musicals of the 1930s were designed primarily to produce pleasure by no means deprives those works of social significance, however, just as Plautus’ plays display Roman ideology even though they were created to amuse rather than educate.71 The emphatic lack of distinction that pervades The Boys from Syracuse reflects both the worldview of Rodgers, Hart and Abbott and the concerns of their time. We have little direct evidence for the political views of Lorenz Hart. He was allegedly a pacifist,72 and Richard Rodgers claimed that Hart shared his own views in supporting Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal.73 Rodgers had high praise for Roosevelt,74 was an early and vocal opponent of fascism,75 and later changed his support from Eisenhower to Stevenson when Eisenhower refused to speak out against McCarthy.76 He and his wife were known for hosting parties with guest lists that crossed the usual barriers of social class.77 Both Rodgers and Hart were Jewish, and
68 Marx and Clayton, Rodgers and Hart (above, n. 59), p. 219. 69 Teague, Shakespeare (above, n. 3), pp. 113, 116–19. Note especially Brooks Atkinson, “George Abbott’s ‘The Boys from Syracuse’ Opens with Music and Lyrics by Rodgers and Hart and Clowning by Jimmy Savo,” New York Times Nov. 24, 1938, p. 36: “the mistaken identity results in ribald complications that suffuse this column with rosy blushes of shame.” 70 Cf. Gilbert Millstein, “Mr. Abbott: One-Man Theatre,” New York Times Oct. 3, 1954, p. SM59; Ben Brantley, “Delightedly Unleashing Nostalgia’s Endorphins,” New York Times May 3, 1997, p. 15. 71 See Geoffrey Block, Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical from Show Boat to Sondheim2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 11; Misha Berson, “The Way We Were,” American Theatre 17:2 (Feb. 2000), pp. 24–7. 72 Marx and Clayton, Rodgers and Hart (above, n. 59), p. 33. 73 Rodgers, Musical Stages (above, n. 6), p. 184. Hart praised Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (Gary Marmorstein, A Ship Without a Sail: The Life of Lorenz Hart [New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012], p. 331). 74 Rodgers, Musical Stages (above, n. 6), p. 158. 75 Rodgers, Personal (above, n. 25), p. 188. 76 Rodgers, Musical Stages (above, n. 6), p. 257. 77 Rodgers, Personal (above, n. 25), p. 124.
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Rodgers was emphatically assimilationist.78 Hart was also a gay man. Rodgers and Hart’s earlier Babes in Arms includes an anti-racist message,79 as do Rodgers’ later South Pacific and No Strings.80 Abbott was neither Jewish nor gay, but he speaks out strongly against homophobia and anti-Semitism in his autobiography.81 He also favored greater sexual freedom and expressed sympathy for prostitutes, although he had a personal aversion to prostitution.82 He generally voted Republican, but he too would turn to Stevenson in 1952 out of disappointment with Eisenhower.83 Although it is unlikely that Rodgers, Hart or Abbott intended a specific polemical message when they broke down so many barriers in The Boys from Syracuse, the play’s strong sense that humans are alike in spite of divisions caused by time, place and status is consistent with the mid-20th-century liberal humanistic views of its creators. The play’s blurring of distinctions would have had special significance in 1938. A musical like The Boys from Syracuse may have been escapist entertainment, but it was hard at that point to escape for long from events unfolding in Europe. Rodgers notes in his autobiography that already two years before The Boys from Syracuse, he and many others in America were concerned about the rise of Hitler.84 A friend noted that Hart was acutely aware of all that was going on in Europe.85 A year before The Boys from Syracuse, Rodgers and Hart’s I’d Rather Be Right, a satirical spoof of Franklin Roosevelt, included a long speech by the President in which he contrasted the freedom of the United States with conditions in other nations.86 Muriel Angelus, coming from Britain for her role in The Boys from Syracuse, arrived in New York on the same boat as actress Lillian Gish, who remarked to the New York Times that all anyone could talk about in Europe was the threat of war.87 Given this background, the mindless, bloodthirsty crowd in The Boys from Syracuse’s opening number, demanding “Give him the axe” in response to an arbi-
78 Secrest, Somewhere (above, n. 27), p. 25. On anti-Semitism experienced by Rodgers and his family, see Rodgers, Personal (above, n. 25), pp. 24–31, 97, 137. On the effects of his background on Hart, cf. Marmorstein, Ship (above, n. 73), p. 435 and passim. 79 Block, Richard Rodgers (above, n. 7), pp. 92–3. 80 Rodgers, Musical Stages (above, n. 6), pp. 261–2, 307–8. 81 Abbott, “Mr. Abbott” (above, n. 11), pp. 70–2, 200–1. 82 Abbott, “Mr. Abbott” (above, n. 11), pp. 20–2, 185, 191–2. 83 Abbott, “Mr. Abbott” (above, n. 11), p. 241. 84 Rodgers, Musical Stages (above, n. 6), p. 178. 85 Quoted in Hart, Thou Swell (above, n. 19), p. 75. 86 George S. Kaufman, Moss Hart and Lorenz Hart, I’d Rather Be Right: A Musical Revue (New York: Random House, 1937), p. 121. 87 “Lillian Gish Returns: Actress Found Europe Talking Only of War,” New York Times Sept. 22, 1938, p. 27.
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trary law directed against foreigners, becomes not only farcical but chilling.88 Nor is it without significance that the play’s first anachronism is in the quoted words of the Duke: Our rigid laws of Ephesus most rightfully refuse A visa to any citizen of uncivilized Syracuse. (2)
Also chilling are the following exchanges early in the play, both unparalleled in The Comedy of Errors: ANTIPHOLUS of EPHESUS: What’s all the crowd, Dromio? DROMIO of EPHESUS: Oh, they’re just killing a fellow. Some merchant from Syracuse has been trading here. ANT. He deserves it, doesn’t he? If any of us go over to Syracuse they’ll hang us fast enough. (4)
and ANTIPHOLUS of SYRACUSE [referring to the man about to be executed, unaware that he is his father]: Maybe a fellow countryman of mine that I ought to help. DROMIO of SYRACUSE: Listen, Boss. We don’t know that guy in there. All we know is that there’s a tall man with a big axe about to chop his head off. That’s not the kind of stuff that would interest us, Boss. (6)
Against this frightening lack of humanity is the humanism that runs throughout the play, indifferent to barriers chronological or geographical. This humanism—and the fun that comes with it—is timeless, but it was peculiarly timely in the years leading up to World War II.
Conclusion Rodgers, Hart and Abbott, then, were in many ways loyal to their Shakespearean source when they turned The Comedy of Errors into The Boys from Syracuse. Where they parted from Shakespeare, they tended to follow the lead of Shakespeare’s own primary source, Plautus. In a few places, they may have responded directly to Menaechmi and Amphitruo in making changes. More often they did to Shakespeare the same kinds of things Plautus did to his Greek originals, increasing the play’s farcical aspects, adding music and self-conscious language, and juxtaposing the setting of the action with their own cultural milieu. Like Plautus, they produced much
88 Cf. Dash, Shakespeare (above, n. 63), pp. 11, 19–21. According to Dash (p. 11, citing “Chasing the Boys from Syracuse,” in Popular Balanchine Dossiers, compiled by Camille Hardy in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts), in the 1938 production the Sergeant in this scene was “dressed mockingly like a Nazi storm trooper—his arms widespread, his waist belted, and wearing a helmet.”
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laughter through their use of geography and chronology. In addition, their Plautine response to time and place produced effects in keeping with their own backgrounds and ideology and the historical moment at which The Boys from Syracuse was first performed. Plautus would indeed have found the play “an entirely new experience,” but in that experience he would have recognized many of his own tricks.
Kevin J. Wetmore
She (Don’t) Gotta Have It: African-American Reception of Lysistrata Abstract: Little adaptation of Aristophanes can be found in African-American theater, which has much more fully embraced Greek tragedy. But several productions of Lysistrata have been mounted in the past century that blend the Aristophanic narrative with African-American humor tropes. Always present in the adaptations are contemporary attitudes toward African-American sexuality and African-American politics. Given that African-American humor is subversive and double-coded, productions of Lysistrata are received and understood differently by black and white audience members in the first half of the 20th century and occasionally in more recent productions. Under consideration here are Lysistratas from 1936, 1946, 1999 and 2007, each reflecting the time in which it was produced.
Aristophanes’ first appearance in African-American culture is both illustrative and ignoble. Donald Bogle, whose seminal Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films remains the definitive history of the portrayal of African-Americans in cinema, argues that the screen mammy (defined as a stereotype of an older black woman, heavyset and domestic) made her debut in 1914 in the silent short Coontown Suffragettes, a blackface adaptation of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata filmed using white actors in Florida. The film presented “a group of bossy mammy washerwomen who organize a militant movement to keep their good-for-nothing husbands at home.”1 The first representation of African-Americans and Aristophanes was thus a silent comedy with white actors in blackface, performing a contemporary version of Lysistrata for the entertainment of white audiences, relying on exaggeration and popular stereotypes. The film suggests a parodic approach to both Aristophanes and African-American identity and politics: the women are not resisting a destructive war, but are simply trying to keep their straying, lazy husbands at home. The use of the word “suffragettes” in the title, six years before women were given the right to vote and at a time when the women’s movement was at its height, also suggests that the washerwomen’s fight is a political one, but on not nearly as serious a level as that of white women seeking the vote. It has the added effect of parodying the suffrage movement by constructing it as women seeking to control their men. Greek tragedy is well represented in African-American theater, both in adaptation and production of translations. Black Oedipus, Medea, Antigone, Prometheus and
1 Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films4 (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011), p. 9.
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Clytemnestra have all been represented on American stages in the past century in multiple productions.2 Much less seen are African-American adaptations and productions of ancient Greek comedy. It is easy to see why this might be so, for there are fewer adaptations of Aristophanes in other cultures as well. Western drama privileges tragedy over comedy; Aristophanes’ work often employs topical references, making it more challenging to adapt than allegedly universal tragedies; and so forth. I nonetheless propose to examine four African-American productions of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata in order to understand receptions of his comedies in the African-American community, and for that matter in mainstream (read: white) society. Lysistrata is the only Aristophanic comedy I have found adapted into African-American contexts; there are seemingly no Black Birds, Peace, Acharnians, Knights or Thesmophoriazusae.3 I also consider Lysistrata as a comedy transformed when transculturated through African-American humor. The productions in question are the 1936 Seattle Federal Theater Project production, the 1946 Broadway production, and more contemporary performances by the Classical Theatre of Harlem of 1999 and the AfricanAmerican Shakespeare Company of San Francisco of 2007. First, however, I consider the subversive nature of African-American humor as it is used to adapt Lysistrata to an African-American context. Lastly, we shall see how the presumptive ethnicity of the audience changes the reception of African-American Lysistratas. African-American comedy developed out of the experience of the Transatlantic slave trade and subsequent oppression during the Reconstruction, Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras. As Mel Watkins, after William Schechter, observes, black slaves could criticize themselves openly without fear of reprisal, but humor aimed at whites had to be subtle and ambiguous (although not to other slaves).4 As a result, “public expression” (read: in front of whites) is distinguished from a “more authentic unfolding within the black community,” with mixed-race audiences producing further complications.5 In other words, the white audience is given one kind of humor and the black audience another. Often, Watkins posits, the result is a “reversed joke,” in which what appears to be humor at the expense of the black characters is in fact rooted in white assumptions about black people, resulting in a double-coded joke, with whites laughing at one thing and blacks at another within the same joke.6 The danger (for the black performer, at
2 See K. Wetmore, Jr. Black Dionysus: Greek Tragedy and African American Theatre (Jefferson: McFarland, 2003), esp. Chapters 2, 3 and 4; B. Goff and M. Simpson (eds.), Crossroads in the Black Aegean: Oedipus, Antigone and Dramas of the African Diaspora (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 3 I confess surprise that there has been no hip-hop adaptation of Frogs, as it lends itself to the concept: a competition between “old school” and “new school” artists to determine who might better help the polis carried out as a rap competition would most likely play well with contemporary audiences. 4 Mel Watkins, On the Real Side: A History of African-American Comedy from Slavery to Chris Rock2 (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1999), p. 32. 5 Watkins, On the Real Side (above, n. 4), p. 13. 6 Watkins, On the Real Side (above, n. 4), p. 33.
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least) is that the white audience may recognize that an element of the humor is directed at but inaccessible to them. As a result, the first of the four productions considered here evinces white disdain coupled with curiosity and fear, while also demonstrating what Watkins calls “the perils of black laughter in an integrated setting.”7 Lysistrata is easily Aristophanes’ most popular play in the modern era and certainly the most comprehensible to the contemporary theater-goer. The play’s preoccupation with sex as a source of power and humor resonates with modern audiences, which recognize such themes from subsequent dramas (not to mention our own lives). The play therefore lends itself not only to adaptation but specifically to African-American adaptation, which is also concerned with sexual power, the ability of the disenfranchised (women in ancient Athens, women of color in contemporary America) to use what power they have to affect the political process, and to subversive humor as Watkins defines it. The first example also evinces the perils of black laughter in a white-dominated cultural milieu. During the Great Depression, the government of the United States sponsored numerous theaters throughout the nation through the Federal Theater Project (FTP). A subdivision of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the FTP employed artists to create subsidized, low-cost theater for popular audiences. Several cities also had FTP “Negro Units,” whose purpose was to create theater by, for and about AfricanAmericans that was also accessible to white audiences, the most famous such production being Orson Wells’s Voodoo Macbeth. In 1936, the Seattle Negro Repertory Company attempted to produce an all-black Lysistrata. Adapted by Theodore “Ted” Browne, the play was set not in ancient Athens but in the fictitious African “Kingdom of Ebonia.”8 Although the proposed run sold out, the show was cancelled after its opening night. The show opened on 17 September in the Moore Theatre, which had 1100 seats. The WPA announced on the afternoon of the 18th that the production was closing and that all tickets would be refunded.9 The reasons, official and unofficial, for that closure demonstrate the reception of African-American performances of Lysistrata in pre-war America by both white and black audiences. The FTP was already under suspicion by elected officials and the public. In New York in 1935, the FTP began the “Living Newspaper” Project, in which actors performed onstage stories from the newspapers. The first was entitled Ethiopia and concerned Mussolini’s invasion of that nation; it was compiled by a research staff of formerly unemployed journalists, written by playwrights and put into rehearsal by a cast of professional actors.10 The federal government cancelled the production
7 Watkins, On the Real Side (above, n. 4), p. 17. 8 Ron West, “Others, Adults, Censored: The Federal Theatre Project’s Black Lysistrata Cancellation,” Theatre Survey 37.2 (1996), pp. 93–113. 9 West, “Others, Adults, Censored” (above, n. 8), p. 96. 10 Stuart Cosgrove, The Living Newspaper: History, Production, and Form (Hull: University of Hull Press, 1982).
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before it could be performed in front of an audience and issued an order prohibiting the depiction of real heads of state onstage. The play was seen as provocative, given the political sensitivity of the Ethiopian situation. A year later, Seattle’s FTP began work on Lysistrata. The production was the fourth by Seattle’s Negro Unit and its first classical adaptation. Evamarie Johnson posits a desire to stage a classical play because of the success of Wells’s Voodoo Macbeth in Harlem.11 Although, as noted above, the play was identified as set in “Ebonia” in a program note (which asked audience members to “imagine that Greece existed as Ebonia in Africa and was populated by warring Negro tribes”), the audience perceived the setting as a version of Ethiopia, since “audiences would be familiar with the country because of the publicity given disturbances there.”12 The text was certainly an adaptation, as Browne added choral songs taken from African-American folk songs and accompanied by drumming.13 Costumes mixed Greek and African features. The cast was all African-American, and Lysistrata was played by local actress Alberta Walker. While the setting was changed and additional cultural elements added to make the production seem more “African,” the central action of the plot and the characters remained the same: Lysistrata organizes a sex strike to stop the war. Audiences were encouraged to find humor in the scene between the women greeting one other, the teasing of Cinesias by Myrrhine, and the obvious discomfort of the men. The sexual element of Lysistrata was given by FTP state supervisor Don Abel as the reason for the immediate closure of the production, despite universally positive reviews in the local papers the next day: the show was “indecent and bawdy,” and women in revealing African clothing sexually arousing the male characters was inappropriate for a federally-sponsored theater project. In particular, Abel expressed concern that advertisements in the newspapers might inadvertently expose white children to black sexuality. Ron West demonstrates conclusively that Seattle had a culture of burlesque, adult drama and other mature fare that was openly advertised in local newspapers, and thus that fears of the “indecency” of Lysistrata were most likely the result of racist anxiety about the Other, the eroticization of black women, and the depiction of empowered black women threatening a conservative white leadership. West argues that the cancellation shows “the Negro Unit’s vulnerability to white projection, wish fulfillment and the persistent tendency of white audiences and collaborators to interpret a black stage figure as exotic, erotic, or both.”14 The actors in the production
11 Evamarie Alexandria Johnson, A Production History of the Seattle Federal Theatre Project Negro Repertory Company, 1935–1936 (Diss. Washington, 1981), p. 68. 12 Johnson, Production History (above, n. 11), p. 67. 13 Theodore Browne, Lysistrata (1936). Research Center for the Federal Theatre Project, George Mason University, Fairfax Va. 14 West, “Others, Adults, Censored” (above, n. 8), p. 110.
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concur, believing that racism, political pressure from local Republican politicians opposed to the WPA, and local theater owners not wanting competition from a black production that had already sold out its run combined to pressure Abel to end the show immediately.15 The adaptation of the classic raised no objections. Indeed, in the wake of Voodoo Macbeth, Negro units were encouraged to adapt classical Western plays to African diasporan settings. Playwright John Howard Lawsen noted that Aristophanes was held up as a model of a “great artist” who “had historically utilized the significant ideas of their times to dramatize social injustice.”16 The progressives who created the WPA, FTP and Negro units envisioned using classical plays to advance a progressive agenda. The challenge, however, was to stage Lysistrata in such a way that its sexual content did not offend local sensibilities. As West noted, the exoticized, eroticized black female body was perceived as threatening and dangerous when coupled with the political message of empowerment of women through their sexuality. In Black Venus: Sexualized Savages, Primal Fears and Primitive Narratives in French, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting argues that a white audience viewing the sexualized black female body is able “to maintain a position of moral, sexual and racial superiority,” while sexuality is simultaneously a form of black power over which whites have little control.17 Furthermore, the black female body is perceived (and presented) as “an object of sexual pleasure” for white males.18 Sharley-Whiting argues that narratives about black sexuality posit that white men lust against their will after black women, who are perceived as dangerous, erotic sexual beings, allowing the women to be blamed for inspiring the lust. Further complicating matters is the issue of comedy: Lysistrata also uses humor at the expense of males and male leaders in particular. As noted above, the African-American humor tradition plays on white perceptions of blacks, while subverting those perceptions and making white ignorance the butt of the joke. Lysistrata the character uses men’s beliefs about black women to increase their lust and then denies them access to black female bodies so as to get what she wants. A Lysistrata that sexualizes black female bodies in order to laugh at white males is thus problematic for white audiences. The Aristophanic classic’s potential to “dramatize social justice” was subverted by the anxiety produced by the exoticized, eroticized black female bodies onstage. Black audiences found a black Lysistrata subversive and funny; white audiences found the play subversive and dangerous. After a single performance, it too was therefore canceled, also putting an
15 Johnson, Production History (above, n. 11), p. 30. 16 E. Quita Craig, Black Drama of the Federal Theatre Era (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980), p. 75. 17 T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Black Venus: Sexualized Savages, Primal Fears and Primitive Narratives in French (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), p. 7. 18 Sharpley-Whiting, Black Venus (above, n. 17), p. 10.
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end to the reception of the play, perceived as too dangerous and indecent for Seattle in 1936. The 1946 production on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre, produced by James Light, who also directed, and Max J. Jelin, ran for only four performances on 17, 18 and 19 October 1946.19 The production, which featured a young Sidney Poitier as “Probulos”, starred Etta Moten Barnett (1901–2004), best known at that point for the 1942 revival of Porgy and Bess. The cultural context of this Lysistrata and the casting of Barnett framed the reception of the production. The 1946 Lysistrata utilized a text created for a white-cast Broadway run in 1930 (which ran for 252 performances) adapted by Gilbert Seldes, who also wrote a swing version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, called Swingin’ the Dream.20 The version for the all-black cast did not differ significantly from the all-white version of 16 years before, which means that it was not adapted to an African-American milieu and did not use elements of African-American culture to tranculturate the Athenian comedy. While the publicity for the show emphasized that it was a “Black Lysistrata,” it was not the text that made it so, but solely the ethnicity of the cast. Unlike Seattle ten years earlier, New York in 1946 was marked and shaped by the Second World War, in which thousands of African-American servicemen had fought bravely in Europe and the Pacific. Out of this experience the civil rights movement of the 1950s would grow. The United States had just endured a lengthy war, in which thousands of American men had been drafted, fought and died or returned home wounded. While patriotism demanded support for the war during the course of the hostilities, in the wake of its devastation, a play about rejecting war as a means of life would not necessarily have been unpopular. What made this Lysistrata remarkable, was that it was a play about African-American women encouraging African-American men not to fight. In casting Etta Moten Barnett as the eponymous Lysistrata, the producers shaped the reception of the play even further. Barnett was already perceived by audiences as a strong black woman who rejected stereotypical roles in favor of playing other strong black women on stage and screen. As a young woman, she got on a train in Chicago to go to New York to become a Broadway star. Jeann Marie Laskas states, “She was too naïve to be intimidated by an entertainment industry that was not ready for a black woman in a starring role.”21 As a result, she broke with tradition, in which black women played maids, servants, slaves and nannies. Barnett played leads—wealthy widows, educated women and women who gave orders rather than taking them—and her Lysistrata was framed by these characters. In 1939, she became the first AfricanAmerican to sing at the White House. She took over Bess in Porgy and Bess in 1942,
19 All production information from the Internet Broadway Database, Accessed 9 March 2013. < http:// www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=1468>. 20 For more on this earlier Lysistrata on Broadway, see Marina Kotzamani’s essay in this volume. 21 Jeanne Marie Laskas, We Remember: Women Born at the Turn of the Century Tell the Stories of Their Lives in Words and Pictures (New York: William Morrow, 1999), p. 109.
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when Anne Browne left the show, although she had been Gershwin’s first choice for the part in 1935. Bess was written for a soprano, and Barnett was contralto.22 When Browne left the show, however, Barnett was ready to perform the role in her own range, and she played the part for nine months to great critical and popular success, generating more financial success for the show than the previous productions had. As a result, Bess became Barnett’s signature role. Although the opera has been controversial, especially among African-American artists and audiences, for its stereotypical and racist portrayal of African-American lives, white audiences have seen in Bess a woman trapped by circumstances who attempts to empower herself and rise up against the men who would control her. This is the frame through which we might view Barnett’s Lysistrata. If Depressionera Seattle was worried about sexually active black women, postwar New York offered an intelligent, politically active black woman in Barnett’s Lysistrata. Lysistrata-asBess is trapped not by poverty but by the Peloponnesian War, and she refuses to be controlled by the men in her life or other authority figures. She is a strong black woman who is laughed with, not at. After Lysistrata, Barnett and her husband Claude went to Africa in 1947. Before they left, Etta Barnett was well aware of African independence movements and the link between African independence and the African-American civil rights movement.23 Laskas identifies the journey as a manifestation of “African-American pride.” In the mind of the audiences who had seen the production, the reception of an African-American Lysistrata was rooted in the power of an African-American woman, not the exoticization or eroticization of her body, as in Seattle. The next major productions of Lysistrata in an African-American context occurred only after half a century had passed. In 1999, the Classical Theatre of Harlem (CTH) staged a version of the play, followed in 2007 by the African-American Shakespeare Company of San Francisco (AASC). In the decades between the Broadway and the Harlem productions, African-America and theater had both changed considerably. In the wake of the Civil Rights movement, the Black Power Movement, the riots of the 1960s and 1992, and the rise of popular music and African-American popular culture, recent African-American productions of Lysistrata reflect a radically different world than those from the first half of the century. In addition, they come from a far more extensive theatrical tradition and have been received in a very different manner by a very different audience. Most notably, the rise of African-American culture and humor beginning in the 1960s and into the 21st century, and the full integration of this tradition into (and perhaps even domination of) mainstream culture, means that reverse jokes and double-coding humor are sometimes more easily perceived, appre-
22 Laskas, We Remember (above, n. 20), p. 110. 23 Timuel D. Black, Jr., Bridges of Memory (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2003), pp. 113– 14.
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ciated and found funny by white audiences. But not always. Even if a joke is perceived and understood by white audiences, that does not mean that it stops being made. Instead, it can and will be emphasized for all audiences. Founded in 1999, the Classical Theatre of Harlem is a not-for-profit company dedicated to performing “classics” in Harlem, bringing works of world literature to new, young audiences in New York City. The company’s website states, “CTH combines non-traditional casting, original adaptations, music and dance in ways that render works from the classical canon as fresh, innovative, and essentially a new experience of world classics;” playwrights produced have included Anton Chekhov, Samuel Beckett, Euripides, Jean Genet, Langston Hughes, Adrienne Kennedy, William Shakespeare, Derek Walcott and August Wilson.24 Although the Medea and Trojan Women of Euripides have been staged in the past decade, for its opening season CTH chose Shakespeare’s Macbeth (possibly a nod to the Orson Wells production, which also was performed in Harlem) and Lysistrata. The pairing of a Shakespearean tragedy and a Greek comedy demonstrated the range and interests of the CTH, while also offering popular, recognizable plays that could be expected to attract audiences. The performance of European classics by African-American casts has been objected to by some African-American artists. Most famously, August Wilson in 1996 called for an end to the practice in his speech (subsequently published) The Ground on which I Stand, in which he argued, “Any play conceived for white actors as an investigation of the human condition through the specifics of white culture is to deny us our own humanity, our own history, and the need to make our own investigations from the cultural ground on which we stand as black Americans.”25 Wilson rejects both universalism and Euro-American cultural dominance, but his critics accuse him of being equally limiting to African-American artists, denying them access to texts they might be able to interrogate from an African-American perspective. The CTH Lysistrata is an example of Watkins’ African-American humor subverting the “specifics of white culture” while also celebrating the power of sexuality. What was “indecent” in 1936 was “entertaining” in 1999. In a nod to original Greek practice, the men wore oversized phalloi, in this case red plastic inflatable ones that grew larger as the play progressed, the amount of engorgement showing the degree of the male characters’ discomfort and arousal. Rather than African clothing, as in Seattle, CTH employed contemporary clothing: form-fitting lyrca, sheer fabrics, leather and spikes. The culture presented onstage was already highly sexualized. In addition, the production used music and dance, including Caribbean drumming and South African boot dancing, to emphasize the sexuality of the characters. The production also used “white music” subversively; classical music with erotic themes served 24 Information from Classical Theatre of Harlem website. Accessed 29 April 2011. . 25 August Wilson, The Ground on which I Stand (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2001), p. 31.
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to undercut the more orgiastic African Diaspora music. Ravel’s Bolero and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet were juxtaposed with choreographed seductions to African rhythms. In other words, European musical expressions of sexuality were presented as unarousing to the point of being boring in contrast with vibrant, fun and exuberant African-American sexuality. The play also offered two archetypes of African-American women. Lysistrata was presented as regal, a queen to whom others must listen but who must also work overtime to keep her subordinates in line. The other female characters are “vain and silly sluts,” according to one review, “corralled by the regal Lysistrata into thrusting out but withholding their ample charms.”26 The target of the humor this time is both male and female. The men are “clownish clods” who can be manipulated into serving as steeds, and whose ever-inflating phalloi reduce them to literal slaves of their penises. The women have power over them, but just barely, as only Lysistrata is able to manage their libidos and prevent them from coupling with the opposite sex. In short, the production was a subversive sex comedy in which both genders were the targets of the satire, but European cultural celebrations of lust were treated as objects of derision. Similarly, Rhodessa Jones directed an adaptation of Lysistrata for the AfricanAmerican Shakespeare Company eight years later. Like the CTH, the AASC is a “theatre company dedicated to performing ‘Classical European’ plays with an African American perspective.”27 Jones is best known as the founder of the Medea Project: Theatre for Incarcerated Women, which teaches theater skills to women in prison so as to empower them and encourage them to see models for themselves in classical dramas (hence the name “Medea Project”).28 The key difference between the CTH and AASC Lysistratas was that the CTH production was presented in peace-time and the AASC production was performed during war. The former accordingly focused on the sex-comedy nature of the play, whereas the latter drew direct connections between Aristophanes’ desire to put a stop to the war between Athens and Sparta and contemporary conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The play was entitled Lysistrata: Stop in the Name of Love (or Until the War is Over, Nobody Gets Over), and Jones added a prologue and an epilogue performed with shadow puppets to draw connections between the Peloponnesian War and the military conflicts of the United States in the 21st century. In doing so, she politicized the play in order to transform the Aristophanic concerns into her own. The women cry “No justice, no peace,” a well-known chant in African-American culture that began at protests in the wake of the acquittal of the police officers who beat Rodney King, and
26 Francine Russo, “Horny Greeks Make Peace,” Village Voice (2 November 1999), p. 67. 27 Information from African-American Shakespeare Company website. Accessed 29 April 2011.
28 Rena Fraden, Imagining Medea: Rhodessa Jones and Theatre for Incarcerated Woman (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
She (Don’t) Gotta Have It: African-American Reception of Lysistrata
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which is echoed anytime violence against African-Americans occurs.29 The slogan implies that a community where there is no justice will never have peace, firmly linking the play to contemporary African-American struggles for social, political and literal justice. Yet, as San Francisco Chronicle theater critic Robert Hurwitt observed, “in this context, surely she means ‘piece.’”30 It is in the linguistic play between “peace” (the end of war) and “piece” (meaning sex, as in the colloquial “piece of ass”) that the African-American humor is manifested and both celebrates and undercuts the sexual power of African-American women to affect political and military culture. Hurwitt also observed that for a production of Lysistrata, the sexuality was much more rooted in double entendres like the one noted above than in overt sexuality. This can be explained in part by the family-friendly mission of AASC, which encourages young audiences, and in part because, unlike the CTH production, the AASC Lysistrata focused not on African-American sexuality but on America’s wars. As such, the adaptation makes contemporary references: “Our warships are in the Persian Gulf and our taxes are going to Halliburton,” for example. Jones argues that she follows in the footsteps of the Aristophanic original: “Lysistrata is a cry for peace by women driven to change the world using the ultimate weapon!”31 Whereas the costumes of the CTH production emphasized the actor’s bodies and their sexuality, the AASC focused on African-American cultural emblems. As the subtitle suggests, the female characters dressed as the Supremes (who sang “Stop in the Name of Love”), while the lone male actor who played all the male parts wore a variety of costumes, dominated by military uniforms. The costumes were sexy but not salacious, focusing on the women’s ability to use their seductiveness and their power as artists. The AASC Lysistrata was a celebration of the power of women (and AfricanAmerican artists) to engage in dialogue to attempt to stop violence. This final attribute was given additional meaning in the San Francisco production. Jones herself played the goddess Peace (not a character in the original, but invented and added to the script by Jones) who, in a closing speech, links the violence in Iraq with violence in the Bay area, particularly black-on-black crime. It is not enough, the play suggests, to oppose the violence done by the military to “the enemy;” we must also recognize and resist the violence within our own communities. This message would not have been possible or have carried any meaning in Seattle in 1936, but in San Francisco in 2007 it perhaps overwhelmed the anti-war message of
29 Rodney King was beaten with excessive force by Los Angeles police officers in a videotaped traffic stop on 3 March 1991. When the officers were acquitted by the jury in nearby, affluent Simi Valley on 29 April 1992, the so-called “Rodney King Riots” or “Los Angeles Riots” began, ravaging Los Angeles for two days until National Guard troops controlled the situation. 30 Robert Hurwitt, “Anti-war fun with Hendrix, Molly Ivin and puppets,” San Francisco Chronicle (22 March 2007), p. E4. 31 Quoted in Ken Bullock, “The Theatre: African-American Shakespeare Co.’s ‘Lysistrata’,” Berkeley Daily Planet (27 March 2007), p. 6.
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Aristophanes, or at least expanded the definition of war to include violence on the home front. Four versions of Lysistrata have thus been presented by African-American companies in 71 years. All played to integrated audiences, all employed African-American humor tropes and all were received in different ways, both by blacks and whites in their own times and by subsequent audiences. In Seattle in 1936, a production that eroticized the African-American women in its cast was perceived by African-American audiences as humorous and by white audiences as dangerous, and was closed after a single performance. A very brief Broadway production in 1946 was read by audiences as showing a strong black woman leading her people against war. A 1999 production in Harlem celebrated black sexuality, even as it subversively poked fun at European cultural celebrations of love. And a 2007 San Francisco production during wartime opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even as it linked those conflicts to violence in the Bay area and condemned both equally. Aristophanes may not be much present in African-American classical culture, but when Lysistrata is staged, it engages and embodies African-American subversive humor and double-codes for black and white audiences. The play remains a powerful artistic and political statement, reflecting the culture that adapts it.
Peter v. Möllendorff
„Es ist, um aus der Rüstung zu fahren!“: Erich Kästners Adaption der Acharner des Aristophanes Abstract: In his two-act play Die Acharner, frei nach Aristophanes (1951), the German author Erich Kästner attempts an adaptation of the ancient prototype to promote his own antimilitarist attitude. The surprisingly pointed formal use of the original character names and setting notwithstanding, Kästner fails to confer on his mini-drama the Aristophanic appeal, its wit and contemporary relevance. The magical wine of peace as fantastic motif is omitted, as are all cultic and obscene elements, which are almost obligatory for Old Comedy. All this is irrelevant to Kästner’s banal message of the supremacy of peace. The ambivalent characterisation of the ancient protagonist Dicaeopolis likewise runs counter to the modern play’s intent, and Kästner accordingly dispenses with it. The appearance on stage of a soldier from World War II, effecting an unmotivated turn toward pessimism, gives the play its final un-Aristophanic touch. This results in the eventual failure of Dicaeopolis’ peace efforts and also, due to the antagonist’s ultimate victory, of Kästner’s dramaturgical endeavor.
Der Schriftsteller Erich Kästner (1899–1974) genießt auch eine Generation nach seinem Tod noch internationalen Ruf. Verantwortlich dürften hierfür einerseits seine Lyrik, mehr aber noch seine berühmten Kinderbücher sein. Romane wie Emil und die Detektive, Pünktchen und Anton, Das fliegende Klassenzimmer u. a. wurden in viele Sprachen übersetzt, mehrfach verfilmt und zählen heute als Klassiker der Kinderliteratur. Außerhalb Deutschlands ist weniger bekannt, daß ein ganz überwiegender Teil von Kästners literarischem Schaffen dem kulturellen und politischen Tagesgeschehen der Vor- und der Nachkriegszeit galt.1 Es sind vor allem diese Texte – neben seinem satirischen Roman Fabian, der 1931 erschien und schon anderthalb Jahre danach in neun Sprachen übersetzt wurde2 – die dafür sorgten, daß bei der nationalsozialistischen Bücherverbrennung in Berlin am 10. Mai 1933 auch seine Schriften, als unmoralisch diffamiert, ein Raub der Flammen wurden und er bis zum Ende der Diktatur
1 Insbesondere publizierte Kästner häufig in der sozialdemokratisch orientierten Neuen Leipziger Zeitung und in der von Kurt Tucholsky, später von Carl von Ossietzky, herausgegebenen Wochenzeitschrift Die Weltbühne, in der vor Hitlers Machtübernahme eine ganze Reihe faschismuskritischer Texte – Gedichte und Satiren – aus seiner Feder erschienen. 2 Fabian erschien beinahe zeitgleich in England, Frankreich, Ungarn, den Niederlanden, den USA, der Sowjetunion, Polen, Italien und der Tschechoslowakei; vgl. hierzu Helga Bemmann, Erich Kästner. Leben und Werk (Berlin: Ullstein, 1994), S. 186–7.
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ein Schreibverbot erhielt, dem er gleichwohl nicht durch das Exil auswich. Kästner gehört zu den wenigen großen deutschen Schriftstellern, die Deutschland in der Zeit des nationalsozialistischen Regimes nicht verließen.3 Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg schrieb Kästner viel für das politische Kabarett, vor allem für Die kleine Freiheit in Berlin, das von Trude Kolman neu gegründet worden war. Schon für eines der ersten Programme im Sommer 1951 verfaßte Kästner ein Dramolett in zwei Akten, das er Die Acharner (frei nach Aristophanes) betitelte4 und in dem er seine lebenslang vertretene Ablehnung von Krieg und Militarismus erneut propagierte.5 Der erste Akt spielt vorm Prytaneion (dem Haus der Ratsmitglieder) und beginnt mit einem längeren Monolog des Dikaiopolis, in dem er sich – auf den Bericht der Ratsherren wartend – über den langen Krieg beschwert. In der folgenden Auseinandersetzung mit dem Prytanen Kleon und mit Lamachos versucht Amphitheos, für den Frieden zu plädieren. Als er abgeführt werden soll, entsendet ihn Dikaiopolis, sekundiert von seiner Frau, nach Sparta zum Abschluß eines Privatfriedens6: (Dik.) Sag ihnen, ich wüßte nicht, wieso deine Freunde meine Feinde wären. Und sollten auch sie’s nicht wissen, umso besser. Dann unterschreib in meinem Namen den Vertrag! Sie und Dikaiopolis, der Athener, führten nicht länger Krieg miteinander, soll drinstehn! (Frau) Und send uns, kommt’s zustande, einen Boten! Am Ende können wir schon das Erntefest in Frieden feiern! In unserm Frieden!7 Es schließt sich ein von einem Herold gesprochener, parabasenartiger Zwischentext an, der dramaturgische und historische Fragen behandelt: (Herold) Der zweite und letzte Akt spielt einige Zeit später und nicht mehr in der Hauptstadt, sondern vor dem Gut des Dikaiopolis. Diesen Sprung über Zeit und Raum soll ich mit ein paar Worten überbrücken. Nun gut. Und worüber könnte ich reden? … [es folgen Erklärungen zum Titel ‘Acharner’, zum Peloponnesischen Krieg, schließlich zum Fehlen eines Chores] Und nun soll ich nur noch im Namen der Direktion um Entschuldigung bitten, daß die zwei Halbchöre der racheschnaubenden Acharner
3 Zu den – nicht völlig klaren – Gründen vgl. Franz Josef Görtz, Hans Sarkowicz, Erich Kästner. Eine Biographie (München: Piper, 1998), S. 168–81. 4 Es fehlt in der Anthologie von Thomas Anz, Erich Kästner. Trojanische Esel. Theater, Hörspiel, Film (München: Hanser, 1998). 5 Kästner trat auch nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg als Verfechter von Antimilitarismus und staatlicher Freiheit auf. Er wandte sich entschieden gegen konservative Versuche, über die Erfahrung von Krieg und nationalsozialistischen Verbrechen hinweg zum Alltag überzugehen; so nahm er in den 50er Jahren an den Ostermärschen teil und protestierte gegen den Vietnamkrieg, ebenso gegen Einschränkungen der Pressefreiheit. In den Jahren vor seinem Tod 1974 hatte er, von stark nachlassender Gesundheit und Problemen seiner privaten Lebensumstände geplagt, nach eigenem Bekunden resigniert; nach 1964 publizierte er kaum noch, an den gesellschaftlichen Umbrüchen des Jahres 1968 hat er nicht mehr aktiv teilgehabt. 6 Dieses und alle folgenden Zitate nach dem (von Kästner noch selbst betreuten) Abdruck in: Erich Kästner, Gesammelte Schriften für Erwachsene, Bd. 7: Vermischte Beiträge II (Zürich: Atrium Verlag, 1969), S. 269–81. 7 Die Acharner, S. 273.
„Es ist, um aus der Rüstung zu fahren!“: Erich Kästners Acharner
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auf der Bühne überhaupt nicht erscheinen. Die Bühne ist für solche Zwecke zu klein. Und der Verlust ist nicht allzu groß. Denn was Parteien, die zum Krieg aufhetzen und die Vernünftigen steinigen wollen, im Chor oder in Halbchören schreiend erklären, wissen Sie ja so ungefähr …8 Der zweite Akt inszeniert die Friedensidylle vorm Gut des Dikaiopolis. Gleich zu Beginn treten Lamachos und sein Herold, vom Kampf ermattet und verwundet, auf, um mitansehen zu müssen, wie Dikaiopolis sein Leben genießt und gemeinsam mit Amphitheos auf einer großen Landkarte einträgt, welche Poleis sich unterdessen ebenfalls dem Frieden angeschlossen haben und dies Dikaiopolis brieflich mitteilen.9 Sie berichten von ihrem Kampf mit Brasidas, der mit dessen Tod endete. Nun sind sie arbeitslos. Das Drama schließt gleichwohl mit einer pessimistischen Note: Zu einer Art Epilog tritt ein Soldat in der Uniform des Zweiten Weltkriegs auf,10 dessen schiere Existenz, aber auch dessen kurzes Statement klar macht, daß die Friedenssehnsucht am Ende immer doch vergeblich ist: (Soldat) Da haben wir’s. Die Dichter fordern den Frieden. Die Menschen wollen ihn. Die Prytanen quatschen über ihn. Schindluder treiben sie mit dem edlen Wort. „Frieden!“ schreit’s aus allen Kanzleien. Sie behandeln das Wort, als sei’s eine Margarinereklame. Sie heben an diesem Wunschwort der Welt ihr Bein wie die Hunde.11 Das Stück schließt mit einem instrumental begleiteten Schlußlied der Darsteller12: Schneidet das Korn, und hütet die Herde, indes der Planet um die Sonne rollt! Keltert den Wein, und striegelt die Pferde! Schön sein, schön sein könnte die Erde, wenn ihr nur wolltet, wenn ihr nur wollt! Reicht euch die Hände, seid eine Gemeinde! Frieden, Frieden hieße der Sieg. Glaubt nicht, ihr hättet Millionen Feinde. Euer einziger Feind heißt – Krieg! Frieden, Frieden, helft, daß er werde! Tut, was euch freut, und nicht das, was ihr sollt. Schneidet das Korn, und hütet die Herde!
8 Die Acharner, S. 274–5. Hierbei übersieht Kästner um der Pointe willen allerdings, daß bei Aristophanes einer der beiden Halbchöre ja auf der Seite des Dikaiopolis steht. 9 Die Acharner, S. 278–9. 10 Aus der Regieanweisung – EIN SOLDAT in Overall, mit Gasmaske, Maschinenpistole usw. kommt auf die Bühne – kann man m. E. entnehmen, daß die Uniform nicht auf eine spezifische Nationalität hinweisen (auch nicht auf das nationalsozialistische Deutschland), sondern allgemein den Typus des Weltkriegssoldaten andeuten sollte. 11 Die Acharner, S. 280. 12 Die Acharner, S. 281. Das Versmaß des Liedes ist (mit einer kleinen, vorschlagartigen Abweichung zu Beginn von V. 2) als (meist im Wechsel katalektischer und akatalektischer) daktylischer Tetrameter angelegt, gibt sich also einen antikisierenden Duktus.
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Keltert den Wein, und striegelt die Pferde! Schön sein, schön sein könnte die Erde, wenn ihr nur wolltet, wenn ihr nur wollt!
Tatsächlich wird also das Fehlen eines Chores im eigentlichen Sinne aufgewogen durch eine Adaption chorischer Formen, der Parabase und der Exodos. Dabei enthält der Zwischentext mit seinen metadramatischen Ausführungen zum Zeit- und Raumsprung und zum Fehlen des Chores einerseits, andererseits zum zeitgenössischen historischen Hintergrund wesentliche Elemente Aristophanischer Parabasen; der Hinweis auf den räumlichen Sprung von der Stadt aufs Land und zeitlich von vor dem Friedensschluß in die Zeit, als sich die Auswirkungen des Friedens schon deutlich manifestieren, stellt darüber hinaus eine unmißverständliche Anspielung auf die Acharner des Aristophanes dar: denn auch dort wandelte sich die Bühne innerhalb von zwei Versen (Ach. V. 201–2) von der Repräsentation einer Polis-Szenerie zu derjenigen einer Kultfeier auf dem Land, von den Lenäen (an denen im Jahr 425 v.Chr. die Acharner aufgeführt wurden) zu den Ländlichen Dionysien13. Allerdings geschah dieser abrupte Orts- und Zeitwechsel mithilfe eines Schluckes vom magischen Friedenswein, ein phantastisches Motiv, das Kästner aus dem Grund ersatzlos gestrichen hat, daß bei ihm Dikaiopolis’ und Amphitheos’ Tat Schule macht und Nachfolger findet, während bei Aristophanes der Frieden ausschließlich auf Dikaiopolis beschränkt bleibt, der von seinem Wein nahezu niemandem abgeben will. Eine weitere formale Übernahme aus Aristophanes stellt die (gegenüber dem Original) stark verdichtete14 Eingangsszene mit der öffentlichen Auseinandersetzung zwischen betrügerischen offiziellen Vertretern der Polis und dem Bürger Dikaiopolis dar; wie bei Aristophanes beginnt das Stück mit einem langen Monolog des Protagonisten, in dem es in erster Linie um die Unerträglichkeit des Krieges geht. Über dessen Dauer heißt es hier (S. 270) ebenso wie etwas später (S. 272), er währe schon zehn Jahre. Daß diese Angabe nicht stimmt – der Peloponnesische Krieg war bei der Aufführung der Acharner ‘erst’ seit rund sechs Jahren im Gange – verwundert zunächst, da Dikaiopolis ja entsprechende Kenntnisse beim Publikum explizit voraussetzt: (zum Publikum) Sie, meine Herrschaften, leben zweitausendfünfhundert Jahre später als ich und haben in der Schule gelernt, wie lange dieser Peloponnesische Krieg noch dauern und wie er enden wird. (abwehrende Geste) Nein, ich will es nicht wissen! Ich kann mir’s ohnedies denken. Athen oder Sparta, einer muß ihn verlieren! Und der andre wird sich eine Zeit lang einbilden, er habe ihn gewonnen! (S. 270) Eine präzise Angabe der Kriegsdauer hätte aber pedantisch wirken können, womöglich als plumpe Anspielung auf die Dauer des Zweiten Weltkriegs, die nicht gewollt gewesen sein kann, da es Kästner ja 13 Vgl. Peter von Möllendorff, Aristophanes (Hildesheim: Olms, 2002), S. 181–2. 14 Verdichtung wird vor allem dadurch erreicht, daß Lamachos – anders als bei Aristophanes, wo er erst auf die Hilferufe des noch nicht überzeugten Halbchores A ab V. 572 auf der Bühne erscheint – hier von Anfang als Exponent des Magistrats auftritt.
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um Frieden für die Zukunft ging; ob darüber hinaus eine Anspielung auf die zehn Jahre des Trojanischen Krieges und somit ein Rückgriff auf humanistisches Basiswissen von Kästners Zuschauern der 50er Jahre vorliegt, muß offen bleiben.15 Parallel gestaltet ist auch der finale Auftritt des im Scharmützel verwundeten Lamachos, der obendrein den Spott des Protagonisten ertragen muß; analog inszeniert ist schließlich die räumliche Abtrennung des privaten Marktes, wie die Regieanweisung zum zweiten Akt deutlich macht: hier ist das Landgut des Dikaiopolis abgetrennt durch „Ein Schild am Zaun: ‘Vorsicht, Friede!’“16 Hingegen fehlt nicht nur, wie oben gesagt, das phantastische Motiv des Friedensweines, sondern es fehlen auch alle kultischen Motive – etwa ein Pendant zur Phallospompé oder zur Feier der Anthesterien in den Acharnern – sowie die episodischen Szenen und, zu guter Letzt, auch die Aristophanische Verkleidungsszene, in der Dikaiopolis sich die notwendigen Requisiten für seine Verteidigungsrede bei Euripides ausleiht. Daß im Rahmen eines Kabarettstückes für die Umsetzung kultischer Handlungen keine Notwendigkeit bestand – zumal sie aus Kästners Sicht zur Friedensthematik nichts beitrugen – leuchtet unmittelbar ein; dazu später aber mehr. Die beiden anderen motivischen Reduktionen hingegen dürften dem Zweck dienen, den Protagonisten – im Gegensatz zu seinem schwer einzuschätzenden und noch schwerer zu bewertenden griechischen Vorgänger – moralisch unangreifbar und unhinterfragbar zu machen. Denn daß Aristophanes’ Dikaiopolis eigens eine fremde Maske anlegt, um sein (durch den Vergleich mit dem Vaterlandsverräter Telephos anrüchiges) Anliegen zu vertreten, betont den rhetorischen Charakter seiner Darlegungen in der berühmten Hackblock-Rede: Es geht darum, daß man geschickt und draufgängerisch genug sein muß, um seine Ziele durchzusetzen; daß dann die eigene Wertigkeit dieser Ziele demgegenüber eine gewisse Beliebigkeit gewinnt, mag Kästner sehr wohl erkannt haben und, da für ihn, sicher anders als für Aristophanes, der Wert von Frieden unhinterfragbar war, entsprechend auf dieses, aus seiner Sicht nicht wünschenswerte Motiv verzichtet haben. In vergleichbarer Weise wäre auch die Einfügung episodischer Szenen zur Exemplifizierung des Erreichten nicht ungefährlich gewesen. Bei Aristophanes dient sie eigentlich immer auch der ironischen Hinterfragung der Tat des Protagonisten.17 Auf der anderen Seite hätte der Verzicht auf solche Hinterfragungen zur Folge gehabt, daß das Durchspielen des immer Gleichen,
15 Mit der zitierten Publikumsanrede imitiert Kästner im Übrigen natürlich eine typische Aristophanische Technik und greift gleich im Folgenden noch einmal direkt auf Aristophanes zurück, wenn er seinen Dikaiopolis Knoblauch kauen läßt: „Sehr gesund! Verlängert das Leben! Falls einem nicht irgendein harmloser Soldat aus Megara oder Mytilene ein Stück zugespitztes Eisen durch den Bauch stößt. Dagegen hilft kein Knoblauch.“ (S. 270) Dies ist ohne Zweifel eine Reminiszenz an Ach. V. 155– 68, wo Dikaiopolis von den ‘Odomanten’ sein Knoblauch gestohlen wird. 16 Die Acharner, S. 275. 17 Man denke hier etwa daran, wie im Verlauf der episodischen Szenen der Acharner zunehmend auch Dikaiopolis’ Selbstsüchtigkeit ins Visier gerät.
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die immer neue Bestätigung der Segnungen des Friedens, für die Zuschauer schnell langweilig geworden wäre. Zudem hätte man, jedenfalls aus moderner Sicht, in solchen Szenen auch größeren diskursiven Widerstand erwartet: Dikaiopolis hätte sich, wie sein Vorgänger dem Chor gegenüber, für sein Handeln rechtfertigen müssen. Die Diskussion dessen, was Dikaiopolis tut, ist bei Kästner jedoch auf wenige Zeilen reduziert: (Lamachos) Der Mann ist verrückt. (Prytane) Ein Friedensvertrag zwischen Privatpersonen ist völkerrechtlich unmöglich. Man wird ihn auslachen. (Dik.) Warten wir’s ab.18 Die Notwendigkeit und der Wert von Frieden können für Kästner nicht Gegenstand von Diskussion, wie auch immer demokratisch legitimierter Meinungsbildung und von Mehrheitsentscheidung sein. Er verzichtet daher auf alle Motive, die den Zuschauer in eine solche Richtung der Reflexion führen könnten. Es dürfte bereits deutlich geworden sein, was Stärken und was Schwächen von Kästners Adaption der Aristophanischen Acharner sind. Als Stärke wird man, oder wird jedenfalls der Philologe, Kästners sehr bewußten Umgang mit seinem Vorbild ansehen. Keinesfalls hat er die erste erhaltene Komödie der europäischen Literaturgeschichte nur als Materialvorlage verwendet. Vielmehr lag ihm offensichtlich daran, auch formal möglichst viele Züge der attischen Komödie aufzugreifen. Diese Nähe zum Original dokumentiert sich nicht zuletzt in der Beibehaltung der Figurennamen,19 wobei beachtlich ist, daß Kästner hier einerseits nichts erklärt – damit gehen die Pointen, die Aristophanes aus ‘Dikaiopolis’, ‘Amphitheos’, ‘Lamachos’ zu ziehen weiß, ersatzlos verloren – andererseits aber auch Aktualisierungspotentiale verschenkt. Zugleich setzt Kästner voraus, daß sein Publikum mit einem ‘Prytanen’ etwas anzufangen weiß; und eine historische Orientierung offenbart schließlich auch der kurze Paratext, den Kästner seinem Drama für die Gesamtausgabe vorangestellt hat:20 ‘Die Acharner’, die erste der elf erhaltenen Komödien des Aristophanes, wurde im Jahre 425 vor Christus, also während des langen Krieges und obwohl sie gegen den Krieg gerichtet ist, öffentlich aufgeführt. Aristophanes, der den Feldherrn Lamachos gespielt haben soll, gewann den Wettbewerb. Die hier von Kästner vermittelten Informationen sind allerdings recht heterogen: Zutreffend sind die Angaben zur Gesamtzahl der erhaltenen Stücke, zum Aufführungsdatum und zu Aristophanes’ Sieg, die Herkunft und die Zielrichtung der anekdotischen Behauptung, Aristophanes habe die Rolle des Lamachos übernommen, ist hingegen unklar. Daß die Komödien agonal aufgeführt wurden, erfährt der Leser en passant und der kultische Kontext des dionysischen Festes wird ausgeblendet zugunsten der anachronistischen Konstruktion einer Auf-
18 Die Acharner, S. 273–4. 19 Während Dikaiopolis’ Frau – deren Einführung dramaturgisch irrelevant bleibt und möglicherweise der Zusammensetzung des Ensembles der Kleinen Freiheit geschuldet ist – namenlos bleibt, wird die Sklavin, die im zweiten Akt bei der Dokumentation der friedenswilligen Poleis behilflich ist, Aspasia genannt. Diese Namenswahl könnte ein Rückgriff auf die Erwähnung von Perikles’ Gattin in Ach. V. 527 sein. 20 Dieser Text stammt nach brieflicher Auskunft des Verlages von Kästner selbst.
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führungssituation, in der die öffentliche Darbietung eines sich gegen den Krieg wendenden Dramas als potentielles Skandalon interpretiert wird. Kästner setzt offensichtlich einen Zuschauer, später einen Leser, voraus, der solche Informationen entweder partiell schon besitzt oder sie doch als hilfreich für das Werkverständnis ansieht, ja womöglich einen Rezipienten, der das humoristische Potential der Eigennamen aus eigener Kompetenz zu würdigen weiß. Das Zielpublikum wäre dann, wie schon oben erwogen, das gebildete Bürgertum gewesen, das Kästner nicht zu Unrecht als Trägerschicht einer konservativen und also promilitärischen Ideologie ausmachte.21 Diese formale Nähe zur Archaia wollte er aber mit seinem abgewandelten Darstellungsziel vereinbaren.22 Deshalb verzichtete er gerade auf das, was den Wesenskern der Alten Komödie ausmacht, nämlich die agonale Durchsetzung und Verteidigung des μέγα βούλευμα des Protagonisten. Und daraus wiederum resultiert auch die größte Schwäche seines Textes, die zugleich die größte Distanz zu seinem Vorbild markiert, nämlich ein weitgehendes Fehlen einer aktualistischen sozialen Kontextualisierung, einer innenpolitischen Situierung – was doch in Aristophanes’ Acharnern ein gleichrangiges Thema ist – und schließlich ganz allgemein ein Fehlen von Witz. Dieses Defizit von Kästners Acharnern, die entsprechend bereits bei ihrer Aufführung in der Kleinen Freiheit kein Erfolg waren, konstatierte schon die zeitgenössische Kritik. So schrieb Gunter Groll in der SZ vom 22.6.1951: den Acharnern fehle „weder Mut noch Moral. Was die Moral betrifft, so hat er sogar ein wenig zu viel davon. Doch es fehlt der Witz. Die Grazie. Die Überlegenheit. Die gute Sache (die Sache des Friedens – es gibt keine bessere) geht, weil’s ihm so verzweifelt ernst ist, mit ihm durch, und wo Souveränität des Humors, wo Überzeugungskraft des Witzes herrschen müßte, wird angestrengt belehrt.“23 Kästner gestand selbst in einem Brief an Helga Veith vom 25.6.1951 ein, daß sein kleines Drama daneben gegangen sei.24 Nun war Kästners Anliegen im Jahr 1951 keineswegs anachronistisch. Die NATO war gerade einmal zwei Jahre zuvor gegründet worden, die Bundesrepublik Deutschland wurde durch die Pariser Verträge von 1955, also nur knapp vier Jahre später, in dieses antisowjetische Verteidigungsbündnis einbezogen, worauf die Ostblockstaaten noch im gleichen Jahr mit der Konstitution des Warschauer Paktes reagierten. Gerade 21 S.o. zur historisch unrichtigen Angabe der Kriegsdauer mit zehn Jahren. 22 Daß dieser Zugriff auf der Kenntnis des Originals basiert, ist eher fraglich. Kästner besuchte, nachdem er für 1919 zum Besuch der Prima am Dresdner König-Georg-Gymnasium zugelassen worden war, dort ein Jahr lang den Griechisch-Unterricht, den er in der Abiturprüfung mit „gut“ abschloß (neben Englisch eine seiner beiden ‘schlechteren’ Noten: in allen übrigen Prüfungen erhielt er „vorzüglich“); vgl. Erich Kästner. Eine Biographie (Anm. 3) S. 33. Für eine Original-Lektüre des Aristophanes wird das nicht ausgereicht haben, obgleich der Komödiendichter in dieser Zeit noch Teil der Schullektüre war. 23 Zitiert nach Sven Hanuschek, Keiner blickt dir hinter das Gesicht. Das Leben Erich Kästners (München: Hanser, 1999), S. 373. 24 Diese Briefe sind unpubliziert; vgl. aber Keiner blickt dir hinter das Gesicht (Anm. 23), S. 373.
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in Deutschland, das seit 1949 in BRD und DDR geteilt war, und insbesondere in Berlin, das dem Viermächtestatus unterlag, waren die Spannungen zwischen westlichem und östlichem Block stark zu spüren. Die Bundesrepublik trat 1952 nach heftigen inneren Diskussionen der Europäischen Verteidigungsgemeinschaft bei, die Bundeswehr wurde 1955 gegründet. Anlaß genug also, die Frage nach der Dauerhaftigkeit von Frieden und nach alternativen Wegen der Kriegsvermeidung zu stellen.25 Hierfür konnte die Aristophanische Komödie an sich durchaus ein probates Mittel sein. Denn in der Tat wurde Aristophanes zwar im Deutschen Reich während des Nationalsozialismus nicht aufgeführt, dafür aber – und zwar durchaus in der Absicht, propagandistisch gegen den Krieg zu arbeiten – umso häufiger in der benachbarten und neutralen Schweiz. Hier wurden 1934 die Lysistrate, 1936 die Frösche, 1938 die Acharner und 1945 der Friede auf die Bühne gebracht, aber auch Tragödien mit einem Kriegsbezug, so 1939 die Elektra des Sophokles, 1942 die Orestie, 1944 die Antigone. Die Acharner wurden in den 50er Jahren in Griechenland von Karolos Koun aufgeführt und avancierten, wie seine anderen Aristophanes-Inszenierungen, zu wahren Politika; in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland kamen sie erst in den späten 60ern wieder in die Theater.26 Aber das waren eben Neuinszenierungen der originalen Stücke, die weiterhin vom Aristophanischen Witz lebten. Kästner hingegen transformiert Aristophanes, weil er sein Publikum überzeugen will, sich für den Frieden einzusetzen. Eindrucksvoll ist in dieser Hinsicht die Verharmlosung von Obszönität, bekanntlich eines der herausragenden Charakteristika der Archaia. Sie ist kaum mit etwaiger Prüderie Kästners zu erklären; sein in erotischen Dingen sehr offener und detaillierter Fabian wurde von den Nationalsozialisten als Pornographie verdammt.27 Aber sie ließ sich nicht auf das argumentative Ziel – die Bedeutsamkeit der Schaffung von Frieden – fokussieren. Und so unterlegte Kästner, neben der Plazierung einer kleinen stammtischartigen Zote in Dikaiopolis’ Eingangsmonolog,28 dem ansonsten aktionsarmen zweiten Akt eine vergleichsweise biedere Nebenhandlung, in der Dikaiopolis seiner Sklavin auf das Hinterteil haut, sie beim zweiten Mal aber zur Belustigung des Publikums mit seiner Frau verwechselt.29
25 Zu Kästners Angst vor einem dritten Weltkrieg, der im Schlußchor seinen Ausdruck findet, vgl. Erich Kästner. Leben und Werk (Anm. 2), S. 323–5. 26 Vgl. Hellmut Flashar, Inszenierung der Antike. Das griechische Drama auf der Bühne der Neuzeit2 (München: Beck, 2009), S. 163. 27 Ob hier hingegen ein Zusammenhang mit den 1950 vorgelegten, 1953 in Kraft getretenen gesetzlichen Bestimmungen zum Schutz der Jugend besteht, die in mancher Hinsicht dem Weimarer Schundund-Schmutz-Gesetz ähnelten, läßt sich nicht klären. Gegen beide Gesetze, oder besser: gegen die in ihnen vertretenen Auffassungen von dem, was unsittlich und jugendgefährdend ist, hatte Kästner vehement protestiert; vgl. Erich Kästner. Leben und Werk (Anm. 2), S. 322–3. 28 Überall fehlt der Mann! Im Stall, im Feld, im Haus und, na ja, wir verstehen uns! (zwinkert) (S. 270 u.). 29 Die Acharner, S. 276–7; Dikaiopolis’ Verhalten gegenüber der Sklavin mag ein schwacher Abglanz der erotischen Phantasien seines Aristophanischen Vorgängers sein, der sich in seinem Phales-Lied
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Jene Fokussierung auf die Friedensthematik bricht sich schließlich Bahn in dem finalen Auftritt des Soldaten der Zukunft, der mit dem Genre der Komödie geradezu zu brechen scheint: (Dik.) Schau dich um, und nimm Vernunft an. Der Peloponnesische Krieg ist zu Ende. Durch den Willen der einzelnen. Wenn uns die späteren Geschlechter nacheifern, war es der letzte Krieg! (Frau) Das walten die Götter! Lamachos und Herold schauen einander an und lachen ganz leise und höhnisch: Hihi! Dann gehen sie ab. Beklommene Pause. Ein Soldat in Overall, mit Gasmaske, Maschinenpistole usw. kommt auf die Bühne….: Da haben wir’s. Die Dichter fordern den Frieden. Die Menschen wollen ihn. Und die Prytanen quatschen über ihn. Schindluder treiben sie mit dem edlen Wort. ‘Frieden!’ schreit’s aus allen Kanzleien. Sie behandeln das Wort, als sei’s eine Margarinereklame. Sie heben an diesem Wunschwort der Welt ihr Bein wie die Hunde. (Frau) So war unser Traum und der des Aristophanes ein bloßer Traum? (Dik.) Schau ihn doch an, bewaffnet bis an die Zähne! (Soldat) Glaubt ihr, ich will? Ich muß! – Je größre Sternwarten man baut, umso kleiner wird der Mensch. Nächstens wird er ein Supermikroskop erfinden müssen, wenn er sich noch erkennen will! (Amphitheos) Aber … will er sich denn erkennen? Musik. [Es folgt das Auszugslied]30
An sich ist natürlich ein pessimistisches Ende nicht unaristophanisch, denkt man an den Ausgang der Wolken und der Vögel. Es fällt aber doch auf, wie plötzlich, innerhalb einer einzigen Replik, bei Kästner der Schwenk ins Pessimistische kommt, der nicht nur gänzlich gegen die exodale Triumphstimmung der griechischen Vorlage geht, sondern zudem – und dies ist nun tatsächlich unaristophanisch – mit einem heimlichen Triumph des Antagonisten verbunden ist. Zugleich wirkt der Soldat in seiner Situationsenthobenheit nachgerade wie eine finale, allegorische Figur, wie wir sie auch aus einigen Komödien des Aristophanes kennen.31 Sie pflegen jedoch gerade den Triumph des Protagonisten zu symbolisieren, während hier seine Niederlage inszeniert wird. Denn es ist ihm zwar durch seine Courage gelungen, für die Gegenwart Frieden zu schaffen, aber seine (ohnehin ja illusionäre) Hoffnung auf Dauerhaftigkeit wird resignativ abgetan. Gleichwohl ergibt sich hieraus aber eine Frage an die griechische Vorlage, nämlich ob auch Aristophanes die Möglichkeit der Perpetuierung von Frieden in Erwägung gezogen hatte. Eine Antwort hierauf muß zweigeteilt sein. Zum einen ist festzuhalten, daß Aristophanes solche Überlegungen nicht explizit anstellt. Zum anderen scheint es mir aber denkbar, die Problematik der Dauerhaftigkeit mit Aristophanes’ Insistieren auf der Einbettung seiner Handlung in kultische Zusammenhänge – Lenäen, Ländliche Dionysien, Phallos-Prozession, Anthesterien(Ach. V. 263–79) die Vergewaltigung einer beim Stehlen ertappten thrakischen Sklavin ausmalt (Ach. V. 271–5). 30 Die Acharner, S. 280–1. 31 Pax (Eirene), Aves (Basileia), Lysistrata (Diallage).
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fest – in Zusammenhang zu bringen. Denn es steht ja außer Zweifel, daß der Krieg die Durchführung von Ritualen behindert und belastet – wie in den Acharnern gut zu sehen: Dikaiopolis hätte ohne seinen Friedensschluß die Διονύσια κατ᾽ ἀγρούς nicht feiern können – während der Friede sie fördert. Zugleich stellen Rituale bestimmte Handlungen und Zustände auf Dauer, indem sie sie in immer gleicher Weise, zu einem feststehenden, erwartbaren Zeitpunkt und zeitlich unbegrenzt oft wiederholen. Indem Aristophanes Dikaiopolis’ Privatfrieden in eine Vielzahl kultischer Begehungen einschreibt und Dikaiopolis selbst im Kannenfest der Anthesterien schließlich sogar zum Sieger im Wett-Trinken kürt – wodurch das phantastische Motiv, den Frieden durch einen Schluck magischen Friedensweines zu gewinnen, quasi kultisch legitimiert wird – verleiht er ihm eine (fiktive) Dauerhaftigkeit, die, vermittelt durch die Realität des Kults, ein gewisses Maß an Plausibilität erhält. Tatsächlich ist damit Kästners Stück aufs Ganze gesehen weniger ‘realistisch’ als Aristophanes’ Komödie in all ihrer Offenheit, szenischen Additivität und Phantastik. Kästners Absicht liegt nicht wie bei Aristophanes in der Erschaffung eines Raums für die offene politische Reflexion, sondern in der Verkündung einer Botschaft, zudem einer (wichtigen, aber letztlich banalen) Botschaft – daß nichts wichtiger ist als Friede – der die Komplexität und thematische Vielfalt, schließlich der Witz und die groteske Übersteigerung des Originals zum Opfer gebracht werden. Die Figuren und ihre Absichten werden weder hinterfragt noch differenziert – es gibt nur Kriegsgegner und Kriegsbefürworter – und bleiben daher blaß. Diesen Defiziten, die dazu beigetragen haben, daß Kästners Acharnern kein kabarettistisches Weiterleben zuteil wurde, steht gegenüber ein überraschend reflektierter, an formaler Bewahrung oder doch adäquater Umformung interessierter Umgang mit der griechischen Vorlage. Eine philologisch arbeitende Nachdichtung der alten Komödie: eine unerwartete Facette in Kästners Œuvre.
Marina Kotzamani
Lysistrata on Broadway Abstract: Bel Geddes’ Lysistrata has a singular place in the history of Aristophanic performance in the United States, as the most important theatrical interpretation of Attic comedy. The production introduced the playwright to the American public and stirred up interest into the 1960s, in producing the play in his manner. Bel Geddes employed Nemirovich-Danchenko’s Russian interpretation of Lysistrata (1923) as a model, shaping it into an original, distinctly American version. Ideologically, Bel Geddes’ interpretation projected a capitalist worldview, countering the Russian production’s celebration of communism. Aesthetically, Bel Geddes produced a synthesis of avant-garde and pop elements, creatively following in the direction of his Russian model. He drew on the performance styles of the thriving American popular theater, to interpret Aristophanic farce in terms of slapstick and burlesque. Lysistrata was transformed into a commercial popular spectacle, reflecting central stereotypes of American mass culture, but also with sophisticated avant-garde features.
No theater history of Aristophanic production in the United States can afford to ignore Lysistrata (1929), directed by Norman Bel Geddes. This was an extremely successful production commercially as well as artistically, and its impact in the U.S. lasted until the early 1960s. The American version was an adaptation of the original by Gilbert Seldes, the apologist for the Lively Arts in the 1920s. Seldes explained that the project was “an attempt to create Lysistrata in the terms of the American theatre, as Aristophanes might have done if he were alive today.”1 This intention came across clearly, prompting a reviewer to comment: “the only reason Lysistrata did not receive the Pulitzer prize was because its author was dead and resident of another country.”2 In addition to literary merit, the production had other strong artistic credentials. Its director, Norman Bel Geddes, was an acclaimed avant-garde artist, already recognized in the 1920s “as … a genius in the maddest, most extravagant, most creative sense.”3 It also boasted a stellar cast. How much more could one wish for? Popular magazines of 1930 and 1931 frequently included photographs and caricatures of the principals, recognizing Lysistrata as “one of the most successful shows on Broadway.” “Aristo-
1 Gilbert Seldes, “Preface,” in: Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. A New Version. (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1930), p. x. 2 H.T.P., “Aristophanes, Newly-Staged in ‘American’,” unidentified clipping, file on Lysistrata, Museum of the City of New York, New York. 3 John Mason Brown, “Norman Bel Geddes as a Virtuoso Scenic Artist,” unidentified clipping, file on Norman Bel Geddes, Museum of the City of New York, New York.
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phanes,” a caption read, “Puts ‘em in the Aisles.”4 At the same time, the production enjoyed the esteem of high-brow culture. Brooks Atkinson concluded in The New York Times: “Lysistrata is technically and textually one of the most interesting ventures the American stage has made for several years.”5 While there had been strong interest in Europe in producing Aristophanes in the early 20th century, performance of Attic comedy in the United States was rare and confined to amateur and student ventures.6 In the early 1920s, a few years before the premiere of Bel Geddes’ Lysistrata, the American public enthusiastically received the Moscow Art Theater’s (MAT) interpretation of the play, which was directed by Nemirovich-Danchenko for MAT’s Musical Studio.This production, much acclaimed in the U.S. as well as in Russia, employed humor to project socio-political concerns: it celebrated the Soviet revolution. Aesthetically, the production skillfully combined avant-garde constructivist elements with acting styles inspired by popular entertainment. It presented a synthesis of high and pop culture characteristic of revolutionary art in Russia at the time. The Russian Lysistrata’s revolutionary politics had been intentionally distorted in the U.S., where the production was publicized and received by critics as feminist.7 Still, its revolutionary politics acted as a powerful model for Bel Geddes’ American production team, who shaped their work in relation to the Russian version. In what follows, I show that Nemirovich-Danchenko’s Lysistrata had a powerful impact on the American interpretation ideologically as well as aesthetically.8 Oddly enough, although the theater industry had been centered predominantly in New York since the mid-1920s, the American production of Aristophanes originated in Philadelphia and was produced by the Philadelphia Theater Association. Bel Geddes had little directorial experience when he ventured on Lysistrata. In the course of his theatrical career he directed only about seven productions and is now principally known as a designer rather than a director. But he strongly advocated a unified conception of production in the tradition of A. Appia and E.G. Craig, in which the
4 Caption to cartoon of Bel Geddes’ Lysistrata production, “Aristophanes Puts ‘em In The Aisles,” unidentified clipping, file on Lysistrata, Museum of the City of New York, New York. The collection includes a large number of cartoons and photographs of this production from unidentified magazines. 5 Brooks Atkinson, “Direct from Athens,” The New York Times (1 June 1930). 6 See Marina Kotzamani, “Lysistrata, Playgirl of the Western World: Aristophanes on the Early Modern Stage” (Diss. CUNY, 1997), pp. 255–8; Susan Carol Day, “Aristophanes’ Plays in the United States: a Production History in the Context of Sociopolitical Revelations” (Diss. Tufts, 2001), pp. 13–50, 140–76. 7 See Kotzamani, “Lysistrata, Playgirl” (above, n. 6); and “Lysistrata Joins the Soviet Revolution: Aristophanes as Engaged Theatre” in: John Dillon and S.E. Wilmer, Rebel Women. Staging Ancient Greek Drama Today (London: Methuen, 2005), pp. 78–111. For a biographical reference to Olga Baclanova, who interpreted Lysistrata in Nemirovich-Danchenko’s production, see Martin Winkler, p. 905 in the present volume. 8 Bel Geddes’ Lysistrata is also significant as the last of a series of five major interrelated interpretations of the play, one of which is the Nemirovich-Danchenko production.All major versions prior to Bel Geddes’ emerged in Europe. See Kotzamani, “Lysistrata, Playgirl” (above, n. 6).
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distinction between designer and director is not clear-cut. He wrote: “An artist in setting out to stage a play looks at it in a new way. He sees it as a whole, a unit, a design and he tries to hold this unity.”9 Lysistrata nicely exemplifies Bel Geddes’ unified conception of staging, as he was involved with every aspect of the production, from adapting the play, to directing, to designing the sets and costumes. Following his customary working method, Bel Geddes first devised a scenario of the action, indicating all major movements and groupings, which was employed in preparation of the set design. The scenic outline of the scenario preceded and was also used as a basis for developing the script. The task of writing the dialogue was assigned to Gilbert Seldes, who was intimately familiar with the play, having translated D. Smolin’s Russian adaptation of Lysistrata into English. Seldes, a drama critic and book reviewer, was principally known in the late 1920s for The Seven Lively Arts (1924), a study defending the artistic merit of popular entertainment and acknowledging the sensibility of popular taste.10 Bel Geddes’ decision to collaborate with him was based primarily on this credit. “As literature’s pioneer expounder of the seven lively arts,” he writes, “he struck me as the likely person to make a distinctly modern version of the play.”11 Seldes explains the aims of the production team in adapting Lysistrata in an article published in Theatre Guild Magazine.12 While respecting the essential qualities of the original, the new version of Lysistrata would be distinctly American, expressing the values and culture of its time. Drawing on his intimacy with the thriving popular entertainment of the 1920s, Seldes interpreted ancient comedy in terms of farce and burlesque, pointing out the existence of revue-like features in the original, such as choral voices, music and dance. He explains, “Ancient comedy was closer to rough burlesque than polite tea table conversation,” and he illustrates his working method with examples. Thus “the obvious choice” for the retinue of the Proboulos were “the equivalents of the Keystone cops.”A more challenging task was adapting the lengthy choruses, which are unexciting for a modern audience. In this case, Seldes had recourse to the work on popular musical comedy of William Gilbert, of the Gilbert and Sullivan team, who was masterful at writing perfectly rhythmic couplets that also sound conversational.
9 Cited in George Bogush, “Unity in the New Stagecraft: A Study of Productions Designed and Directed by Norman Bel Geddes” (Diss. Michigan, 1989), pp. iii–iv. Bel Geddes’ multifaceted design interests, extending from theater to household appliances have recently attracted scholarly attention. See C.D. Innes, Designing Modern America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); D. Albrecht, Norman Bel Geddes Designs America (New York: Abrams, 2012). 10 Gilbert Seldes, The Seven Lively Arts (New York: A.S. Barnes, 1924). On Seldes, see Michael Kammen, The Lively Arts. Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 11 Bogusch, “Unity” (above, n. 8), p. 171. 12 Gilbert Seldes, “Adapting Lysistrata.” Theater Guild Magazine (October 1930), pp. 60–2.
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Popular entertainment thus supplied a viable modern context for the ancient comedy. But Seldes also emphasizes that under its farcical surface, Lysistrata is a comedy of ideas. “It is as farce then—but farce with a sound and credible intellectual basis that Lysistrata has to be taken,” he explains.13 He accordingly attempted to give a sense of the reality of war, again resorting to modern analogies. He points out, for example, that the women’s meeting was “a sort of Stockholm conference, as audacious for Aristophanes as it was during the Great War.”14 With sound common sense, he assumes that the ancient Athenian audience would be booing and hissing at the mere appearance of Lampito onstage, making it unnecessary for Aristophanes to elaborate on the hostility between the women from rival city-states. Seldes attempted to flesh out the conflict by devising quarrels between the women and making them more resistant to Lysistrata’s plan. He finds this choice “psychologically correct.” As this example indicates, he resorted to realism to convey the play’s ideas about war and the urgency of peace. Moreover, he occasionally struck a serious note to indicate that he took these ideas in earnest, referring to the “desperation which really underlies this terrible comedy of international warfare.” According to Seldes, then, the adaptation aimed at supplying both entertainment and food for thought. In the text, the serious tone is diametrically opposed to the farcical spirit, imposing on the original a contrived, stilted schism between characters. Most characters in the American adaptation are farcically riveted on money or sex, selfishly pursuing their own ends. The play’s moralizing ideas about war, on the other hand, are uniquely expressed by Lysistrata and the old women, who display a highly developed social awareness, apparently irreconcilable with comedy. Indeed, these characters are completely straight, generally lacking any sense of humor. The old women, for example, superimpose on the original solemn thoughts about the tragedy of combat utterly uncharacteristic of Aristophanes, such as “Old age is a sorrow. Old age is a sickness for which there is no comfort, no cure or physician … We have no more hope. We can live in despair … No man is left—none but the old and the crippled and the lame. Still the war goes on.”15 In contrast to their elderly consorts, the young women consent to Lysistrata’s scheme unwillingly. Seldes employed all the traditional male stereotypes about women to construct his young female characters. They are coquettish, lack solidarity and are content to echo their husbands’ opinions on socio-political issues. Athenian statesmen are for them “men of great minds. They think of everything.”16 No wonder the young women find it terribly difficult to take the oath and keep it. Greatly
13 Seldes, “Preface,” in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (above, n. 1), p. x. 14 Seldes, “Adapting Lysistrata,” (above, n. 12), p. 36. 15 Aristophanes, Lysistrata, adapted by Gilbert Seldes, in: Burns Mantle and John Gassner (eds.), A Treasury of the Theatre (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1935), pp. 1475–6, 1495. 16 Aristophanes, Lysistrata, adapted by Seldes, in Mantle and Gassner (eds.), Treasury (above, n. 15), p. 1478.
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expanding the playing time of the original, Seldes elaborated on the women’s quarrelling and bargaining over the sex-strike, which frustrates them enormously. During the pronouncement of the oath, two representatives break down in hysterics, unable to continue, before a third finally succeeds. Indeed, the young women are poor fighters and barely participate in the battle with the old men or the debate with the Proboulos. The focus of this adaptation, however, is the temptation of the Kinesias episode, at which the young women are masterful. The scene is expanded by adding three more couples to the original. This allows for an increase in farcical by-play on the theme of sexual hunger, which owes more to French bedroom farce than to Aristophanes. Indeed, all grossness, including the phallic symbolism, has been removed and implications of adultery have been added. Kalonika disappears with her lover offstage and comes back later in a disheveled state, having presumably succumbed to temptation, as is also indicated by her apologetic tone to Lysistrata. Young women thus add spice to the comedy by trying and frequently failing “to be good.”Although a young married woman herself, Lysistrata is exceptional. The American version magnifies and idealizes her role as a leader. Throughout the play, she gives orders for other women to obey, so that the women’s action, instrumental to the development of the plot, is not communal. The heroine is all-devouring and even assimilates material from the choral passages to score points against the President. Lysistrata is essentially in charge of two female armies, a faithful and a mutinous one, and interest naturally falls not on them but on her, the mastermind of the enterprise. All other women, young and old, are ignorant. “Zeus send down your thunderbolts. Annihilate this wanton race,” says Lysistrata, “magnificently,” sounding like a frustrated Moses.17 Indeed, choruses, which are more numerous in the Seldes version than in the original, are armies who fight upon instruction without questioning or caring why.18 They are not composed of citizens, and their primary function is to demonstrate the power of leaders: the more numerous the chorus, the more powerful the leader. Lysistrata proves an extraordinary leader, overshadowing the President and even her husband, Lycon, who appears briefly at the end of the play as the leader of the young men. Both male leaders and especially the President are farcically depicted. Lysistrata is clearly idealized in the American version. She is an Athena-like character, sprung from a male head, who cunningly supports the male-centered status quo. The adaptation presents Athens as a capitalist society, and the heroine appropriately proves to have a fine head for business. The Acropolis in this version is not emblematic of a democratic institution but is solely identified as the treasury. The people have no integral relation to the citadel, including the men, who, as noted earlier, 17 Aristophanes, Lysistrata, adapted by Seldes, in Mantle and Gassner (eds.), Treasury (above, n. 15), p. 1483. 18 Four choruses of young and old men and women have been added to the original, and there is also a chorus of senators. This totals five choruses on stage, all under the command of distinct leaders.
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simply follow orders in defending it. This seat of power is associated solely with a rich oligarchy. Athens is ruled by seven senators, who are bankers. They are all corrupt war profiteers, who have made money by draining the treasury. In the debate with the President, Lysistrata argues that the enormous preparations every winter to face the Spartans had yielded poor results and that the cost in human lives was inestimable. She decided to intervene when she “found the business going badly.”19 Lysistrata’s recruiting strategy reveals a good manager. She recognizes that the mutinous young women, the flower of the army, must be constantly watched, and she employs the older women for this task at no cost, since they have no value on the sex market. Their leader asks Lysistrata if they can take the place of the young women, and she replies that they are too old. Their inability to compete makes them entirely supportive of the scheme. Capturing the Acropolis at the beginning of the play is almost referred to as a job. Lysistrata urges: “I beg you, finish your work in the citadel.”20 Indeed, the heroine’s relation to women conforms entirely to a pyramid structure, with the heroine issuing orders at the top for her inferiors to obey. The people constitute the work force. The peace negotiations also have distinctly businesslike overtones. Explicitly referring to the laws of the marketplace, Lysistrata informs the men: “The price you must pay is a great one. We women have learned to set a high value on what we have to give you.” Lykon replies: “It’s high but we will reach it.”21 In conclusion, women have become aware of their marketability. A highlight of this version is that young matrons and especially Kalonika are eager to learn how to deal with men from the Corinthians, who are here all professional courtesans. As for Lysistrata, she will presumably have a bright future at the top in business and politics. The Seldes adaptation is distinctly American in its capitalist ideological orientation. The Russian adaptation is immediately relevant to the American version in its diametric opposition to the capitalist perspective presented in the later work. In the Russian interpretation, Lysistrata’s contribution to the women’s war is deliberately undermined. She merely represents the will of the people, acting more as the leader of the chorus than as a strong, independently minded character. Nemirovich-Danchenko’s version focuses on the choral battles, projecting an epic rendering in which the masses are the protagonist. This contrasts sharply with the American version, which overemphasizes the role of the heroine and reduces the choral contribution, transforming the original into a modern character play. I argue later that the inverted
19 Aristophanes, Lysistrata, adapted by Seldes, in Mantle and Gassner, (eds.), Treasury (above, n. 15), p. 1493. 20 Aristophanes, Lysistrata, adapted by Seldes, in Mantle and Gassner (eds.), Treasury (above, n. 15), p. 1477. 21 Aristophanes, Lysistrata, adapted by Seldes, in Mantle and Gassner (eds.), Treasury (above, n. 15), p. 1509.
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perspective of the American interpretation in relation to the Russian is also evident in the scenic conception. The staging of Lysistrata featured an impressive representation of the Acropolis. Bel Geddes created a monumental architectural construction of uneven steps and platforms extending six rows into the auditorium. There was no front curtain, and scene divisions were indicated by lighting. The ascent to the Acropolis began under tawny hangings on one side of the auditorium and culminated at two enormous Cyclopean towers with a metal double gate between, soaring up to two-thirds the height of the stage. The steps zigzagged upward, forming sloping landings. Their sides were frequently sheer planes, giving the impression of loosely piled, rough blocks falling away steeply. Critics aptly characterized the construction as sculptural. Indeed, the set gives the impression of an enormous sculptured space in which verticality prevails. Although stylized and abstract, the work is reminiscent of the actual ascent to the Acropolis. At the same time, the minimalist design of the citadel has direct associations with modernist architecture. The high vertical towers in particular look distinctly like New York skyscrapers.22 The austerity of Bel Geddes’ construction was perhaps alleviated through the use of colorful lighting. Varying hues of red prevailed, combined with browns, grays and yellows. The stairs were deep red, while the cyclorama had a subdued golden glow, shaded by lighting to warmer tints.23 The sloping platforms almost determined the setting of scenes on a vertical in which the direction of movement appears to have been predominantly upward or downward. Throughout the performance, the women occupied a fixed space in and immediately before the citadel, while the men’s action was directed toward gaining possession of this point. Thus in the battle with the old men, the men moved up-hill, approaching the women, who were visible on the platform before the gate. As the stage directions specify, throughout the battle the women occupied the higher level.24 From this advantageous position, they spoke looking down and repelled the men by throwing water from jars. The peace negotiations were similarly conducted on a vertical. Lysistrata and the women were again at the top of the hill, while the men were on the platform immediately below. At each conciliatory word, the women approached and embraced the men, while at each resumption of the bargaining they slipped away up-hill.25
22 These observations are based on photographs of the set, included in the archival material on Bel Geddes’ Lysistrata at the Museum of the City of New York. 23 See Stark Young, “The Philadelphia Lysistrata,” The New Republic, (14 May, 1930), pp. 352–3; H.T.P., “Aristophanes” (above, n. 2). 24 Aristophanes, Lysistrata, adapted by Seldes, in Mantle and Gassner (eds.), Treasury (above, n. 15), p. 1488. 25 Aristophanes, Lysistrata, adapted by Seldes, in Mantle and Gassner (eds.), Treasury (above, n. 15), p. 1509.
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In Bel Geddes’ vertical staging, the highest platform at the top becomes the focal point of the action. The steepness of this landing, as well as the heavy locked gate and the menacing height of the towers, emphasize inaccessibility. The great distance from the foot of the hill to the citadel also conveys a vivid sense of the difficulty of reaching the summit. The construction reinforces the hierarchical model of power emphasized in this adaptation, in which the leader is constantly at the summit. As a leader, Lysistrata is intimately associated with the space at the top. In contrast to all other characters in the play, possibly excepting the senators, she is never seen ascending the entire length of the vertical from the bottom of the stairs in the auditorium. She appears to be a natural-born leader. At the opening of the play, she is “discovered” at the top of the hill, while the old women are laboriously working their way up.26 Indeed, stage directions referring to Lysistrata painstakingly indicate her position at the summit during all the major confrontations.27 In contrast to Lysistrata, her comrades are not naturally suited to being at the top. Their placement at the summit serves to display not power but sex appeal, aptly presenting them as objects of desire. Bel Geddes’ spatial conception of Lysistrata has important analogies to I. Rabinovich’s set for the Soviet version of the play. Both models are stylized, minimalist designs that are nevertheless representational. The steep stairs of the American ascent and the airy Russian columns both subtly evoke the ancient world of the original. At the same time, both sets ambitiously strive to represent an entire cosmos. In the Russian model, this was achieved by means of rotation, which permitted the visualization of any and every place. In the American setting, the highest platform afforded a limitless, cosmic view of the vastness below. The two conceptions of the world are diametrically opposed, and each masterfully represents the dominant ideology of its culture. The communist interpretation employed a transparent, flexible and particularly inviting structure to project the Acropolis as a civil institution intimately associated with the people. Characteristically, the citadel had no door, and although the construction had various levels, these were employed non-hierarchically. The rotating semi-circles emphasized the possibility of change, which was in control of the characters within the structure. The direction of movement was circular, tending toward a future in the process of definition. In the Russian version, the world has no predetermined, set shape and can be shaped into exciting new forms expressing popular need and aspiration. Bel Geddes countered with a rigid, inflexible structure emphasizing permanence. The enormous Cyclopean towers of the Acropolis and the heavy gate annul the possibility of change. Moreover, the inaccessibility of the structure signifies that the
26 Aristophanes, Lysistrata, adapted by Seldes, in Mantle and Gassner (eds.), Treasury (above, n. 15), p. 1475. 27 See for example Aristophanes, Lysistrata, adapted by Seldes, in Mantle and Gassner (eds.), Treasury (above, n. 15), pp. 1475 and 1480 (women’s meeting and oath scene), 1488 (onset of choral battle), 1491 (President’s appearance), 1509 (peace negotiations).
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Acropolis is only open to an elite caste that can make the steep ascent to the top. In the American version, the Acropolis has no pretensions to being a civil institution. It is simply the treasury, the seat of wealth and power, accessible only to leaders. Verticality in the American version also projects a hierarchical ordering of power. Whereas the circularity of the Russian setting is friendly to women, the phallic towers and the arrow-shaped ascent directly evoke the male capitalist world, alien and threatening to the stereotyped females of this version. Only exceptional women who display a distinctly male charisma, like Lysistrata, can be admitted. This is a conservative depiction of the world as given and final. The highest platform simply offers a view of what already exists, and nothing new can be discovered. There is no question of changing this structure, only of learning to function on its terms. Compared to the masterful conception of the setting, the costumes in the American production seem lacking in creativity and ingenuity. Nevertheless, they were consistent with the play’s interpretation. The exaggerated magnificence of the senators contrasted sharply with the drab, pathetic appearance of the powerless elderly choruses. Senators wore richly patterned chitons emphasizing opulence, while the elderly choruses wore loose, layered fabrics of dull colors, creating the effect of ragged clothing.28 Bel Geddes devoted the most attention to the costumes of the young men and women, who are really the stars in his interpretation of the play. The women, including Lysistrata, were dressed in sexy, transparent drapery that exposed the female figure. These mostly reflected contemporary styles of the interwar era, but were also reminiscent of antiquity. Lysistrata was distinguished from the rest of the women only by a helmet clearly evoking her association with Athena. The feminine, flowing materials of the women’s dresses contrasted sharply with the rigid verticality of the set, emphasizing their alienation from the male space they occupied. Young men were dressed in antique-style martial costumes that appeared masculine. The inflexibility of their metal armature, designed in clear, sharp lines, established their intimate connection to the space. The production had a large cast of about 90 actors, singers and dancers.29 Bel Geddes obviously regarded spectacle as important in Lysistrata. He focused on constructing beautiful pictures and giving amplitude to scenes. Robert Benchley wrote admiringly in The New Yorker: “there are at least a dozen moments which take your breath away or bring tears to your eyes.”30 He singles out as particularly impressive the oath scene with the entire female cast on stage waiting, while two Athenian women slowly came up over the brow of the hill, bearing an enormous votive bowl for
28 The material on costumes is largely based on the study of photographs of Bel Geddes’ Lysistrata production from the relevant archive of the Museum of the City of New York. 29 Information about casting and role distribution is based on Lysistrata’s program for the New York Forty-Fourth Street Theatre production, included in the file on Lysistrata, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, New York. 30 Robert Benchley, “With Love from the Greeks,” The New Yorker (10 May 1930).
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the sacrament. A Bacchanalia dance in the finale, performed by 16 professionals of the Humphrey-Weidman School of Dance, was also spectacularly grand, worthy of Broadway. Dancers exuberantly filled the entire huge stage, fully exploiting the zigzagging planes of the set. “Fokine himself might hardly have designed it more vigorously, variously, sensuously,” wrote one critic, “in rhythms reiterated or broken in lines thickening and thinning, curving and straightening, against the background of the watching throng.”31 Lysistrata in fact introduced modern dance to Broadway, in an imaginative choreography by Charles Weidman and Doris Humphrey set to music by Leo Ornstein.32 Critics generally felt reservations about Bel Geddes’ enthusiasm for spectacle in Lysistrata. The sheer abundance of crowds onstage threatened clarity of form. Stark Young commented, “A longer moment is needed in which there is less commotion and multiplicity. Such an economy would rest and enliven the total effect of the evening; … it would afford a relief or contrast against which the extraordinary vitality in action and design would appear more distinctly.”33 John Mason Brown made an unfavorable comparison to the Russian production, noting that the horseplay of the old men lacked the comic invention Nemirovich-Danchenko brought to the same scenes.34 The director was probably misguided in relying on the example of the Russian interpretation in his exploration of the theatrical potential of the choral battle. In the earlier model, however, the old men are an integral part of the action, whereas in the American conception they have an essentially decorative function; the focus is on the principal characters, not the groups. This orientation is clearer in the second act, which was received with overwhelming enthusiasm. As was aptly noted, “The second act of more personal incident better entertains an American audience of May 1930.”35 The concentration of the sexual war on couples was perceived as more modern and entertaining. Indeed, the temptation of Kinesias was characterized as “the crowning episode” of the production.36 Like the Russian cast, American actors interpreted the ancient comedy farcically, using forms drawn from popular entertainment, especially slapstick and burlesque. The production, wrote Brooks Atkinson, “laid the humors thick,” but the comic excess was generally relished.37 The critic of Day vividly conveys the spirit of the perfor-
31 H.T.P., “Aristophanes” (above, n. 2). 32 See Mary Henderson, Theatre in America (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1986). See also Lynn Garafola, Jose Limon: An Unfinished Memoir (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2001); Anna Kisselgoff, “Lysistrata in Limon’s Eyes,” New York Times (12 August 1968). 33 Stark Young, “The Philadelphia” (above, n. 23), pp. 352–3. 34 John Mason Brown, “Lysistrata as Philadelphia is Now Seeing it,” New York Evening Post (10 May 1930). 35 H.T.P., “Aristophanes” (above, n. 2). 36 Brooks Atkinson, “Lysistrata Here With Broad Humor,” The New York Times (6 June 1930). 37 Brooks Atkinson, “Aristophanes Play Is Sprightly Acted,” The New York Times (29 April 1930).
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mance: “It is the fun that comes out, the tremendous horseplay and energy and salt … the falling and the slapping and the mattresses and the heroic roughhouse—all done so freshly and gayly and cleanly.”38 Indeed, the masterful performances of the young principals imposed a fast, engaging rhythm, sweeping away any boredom produced by the choral sections. Ernest Truex, who played Kinesias, parodied wildly and incessantly. He roared, pleaded and like “a pony stallion … whinnied and gyrated in spasms of passion.”39 The New York Times characterized him as a capital actor, who revealed Lysistrata to be a crafted, highly actable play.40 Indeed, his performance persuasively presented Attic comedy as slapstick. In Screenland, Truex was said to incarnate “the soul of Aristophanic slapstick hot-dog comedy.”41 Interestingly, the reviewer, drawing inspiration from Truex’s performance, also comments that Lysistrata should be played almost to a Mack Sennett tempo. Screenland’s yardstick led to criticism of the English actress Violet Kemble Cooper, who initially played Lysistrata on Broadway, as “too classic” in the role. “She doesn’t whip the comedy out of it,” snapped the critic, using an eloquent metaphor.42 Similarly, Richard Lockridge in The Sun, although appreciative of Cooper’s Greek appearance, criticized her for bringing “more dignity” to the role than it required and concluded, “Aristophanes sought and attained the guffaw, not the smile.”43 By contrast, the actresses playing the young women were abundantly praised for their comic flair and liveliness. Hope Emerson as Lampito was “a thunderous virago,” whose style came into sharp antithesis to the “girlish mischief” of her attractive friends. Miriam Hopkins as Kalonika especially delighted critics with her kitten-like sexuality and piping playfulness.44 The production’s bawdy spirit and Lysistrata’s sexual theme raised concern about the show’s morality. Fearful of censorship, the producers included a brief note in the program explaining that the roaring mirth was healthy despite its broadness. The play was “inoffensive” and completely free of licentiousness. Sheltering behind the classic stature of Aristophanes, they pointed out in conclusion: “If the greatest comic spirit of the greatest age civilization has ever known is offensive, one may suspect the fault is
38 Robert Littell, “Lysistrata,” Day (6 June 1930). 39 Percy Hammond, “Lysistrata Brings Athens to Times Square,” Herald Tribune (6 June 1930). 40 Brooks Atkinson, “Lysistrata” (above, n. 36). 41 “Lysistrata,” unidentified issue of Screenland, p. 90, from the file on Lysistrata, Museum of the City of New York, New York. 42 “Lysistrata,” unidentified issue of Screenland, p. 90, from the file on Lysistrata, Museum of the City of New York, New York. 43 Richard Lockridge, “Greece, via Philadelphia,” Sun (6 June 1930). 44 See Brooks Atkinson, “Lysistrata” (above, n. 36); Brooks Atkinson, “Aristophanes” (above, n. 37); H.T.P., “Aristophanes” (above, n. 2); Richard Lockridge, “Greece,” Sun (above, n. 43).
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not so much his as ours.”45 This bold proleptic attack on prospective moral protest did not settle the issue. Apprehension felt about the censor may explain the delay in producing the play in the professional theater in the U.S.in relation to Europe, where major—and interrelated—interpretations of Lysistrata had emerged prior to the mid1920s. William Carlos Williams recounts in the foreword to his autobiography, “Once, in great excitement, we took the train for Philadelphia late in the day to be present at a performance of Lysistrata before it could be censored.”46 Indeed, Philadelphia’s censorship board did cut a few lines from the play and threatened to ask for more changes, depending on the reaction of theatergoers.47 Apparently no further action was taken. Later, the imminence of the Broadway premiere again stirred up fear of censorship. The New York press gallantly came to the production’s defense, discouraging interference. Reporters were generally careful to explain that the play, although shocking, was actually clean and inoffensive. The delicateness of the subject is easily discernible in the elusive or apologetic references to Lysistrata in the press. Burns Mantle in The Daily News writes: “It will shock many, but actually offend few … Though the purpose is earnest and the plan rational, the writing of the play descends frequently to the level of the cheaper burlesques, with such scenes as defy printed description or free discussion in any home of what used to be known as decent moral standards.”48 Similarly, Edward Hope apologizes that he cannot give a complete synopsis of the play, as he is writing for a “family newspaper.” Still, he ardently defends the production: “This country is ready for—and needs—such a hearty laugh as the present Lysistrata provides … The play seems to us to strike equally effectively at prudery and prurience … We promise anyone who attempts censorship our wholehearted and vocal ill will.”49 The Broadway premiere was vetted by the censor, who found nothing objectionable in the production. Lysistrata thus came through censorship virtually unscarred. The play was nonetheless perceived as a shocking spectacle. The licentiousness of the production turned the critics’ attention not only toward what went on onstage but toward the audience as well. The critic of The New Yorker reports approvingly that the Philadelphia audience was civilized. There was no tittering or nudging during the performance,
45 Program of Bel Geddes’ Lysistrata production at the Forty-Fourth Street Theatre, file on Lysistrata, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, New York. For discussion of threats to censor Bel Geddes’ Lysistrata, see also Kammen, Lively Arts (above, n. 10), p. 164; Kotzamani, “Lysistrata” (above, n. 6), pp. 296–9; Susan Carol Day, “Aristophanes’ Plays” (above, n. 6), pp. 51–98. The only occasion on which Seldes’ Lysistrata adaptation was actually censored was in a 1932 local production in Los Angeles, where the authorities arrested the 53-member cast and shut down the production as indecent. 46 William Carlos Williams, Selected Essays (New York: New Directions, 1954), p. 313. 47 “Censors Trim Lysistrata,” The New York Times, (30 April 1930). 48 Burns Mantle, “Here Is Good Athenian Dirt,” Daily News, (7 June 1930). 49 Edward Hope, “The Lantern,” New York Tribune (15 May 1930).
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only “loud, clear and entirely healthy laughter.”50 Percy Hammond, who reviewed the Broadway production for The Herald Tribune, had puritanical reservations about the audience’s enthusiastic response to the spectacle, which, he notes, is unusual for a classic: “Not often does an audience react so vehemently to the masterpieces as did this one last night. Cries of ‘Bravo!’ were to be heard frequently in applause of some of the comedy’s more unrestrained freedoms … [The] public … one fears, was attuned to naughtiness rather than art.”51 By contrast, Richard Lockridge in The Sun welcomed extroversion in Lysistrata and wished it were more liberated. He detected “an atmosphere of hushed reverence” in the first act stemming from a misguided respectfulness toward Lysistrata as a classic. In the second act, the audience overcame its selfconsciousness, achieving a level of participation appropriate to the play’s liveliness. Lockridge perceptively points out, “What Lysistrata needs, even more than most plays, is an audience which will enter without reservation into the intended spirit and help the actors enjoy themselves.”52 The production’s popularity with the larger public clearly shows that Lysistrata was primarily enjoyed rather than revered as a classic. It premiered on 28 April in Philadelphia and was originally scheduled for a three-week run, which was extended to six. Sensing good business, the Schuberts transferred the production to Broadway in the summer. Lysistrata opened on 5 June at the Forty-Fourth Street Theatre and had 256 performances. By the end of its eighth month, it passed the season’s greatest hits, Green Pastures and Garrick Gaieties, to take the lead as most in demand in ticket brokers’ lists.53 The Broadway production closed before ticket demand slackened due to a financial problem of some sort. A second company opened at the Majestic Theatre in Chicago and toured the eastern states, while a third premiered at the Morosco Theatre in Los Angeles and toured the western part of the country. Bel Geddes’ production is also noteworthy for its lasting impact on Aristophanic production in the United States. It initiated a long series of professional and amateur stagings of Lysistrata, most of which employed the Gilbert Seldes adaptation. There was at least one production of his work per year throughout the United States in the 1930s and through most of the 1940s and 1950s and into the early 1960s. The Seldes adaptation thus had an impressive longevity of over 30 years. As late as 1959, Brooks Atkinson, on the occasion of a Lysistrata staging, still considered Seldes’ work relevant and fresh, commenting that it “makes the most of [the play’s] ribaldry.”54 In the same year, a professional company used an alternative version of the play—the Dudley Fitts translation—for its production at the Phoenix Theatre in New York.55 The
50 51 52 53 54 55
Robert Benchley, “With Love from the Greeks” (above, n. 30). Percy Hammond, “Lysistrata” (above, n. 39). Richard Lockridge, “Greece” (above, n. 43). See Bogusch, “Unity” (above, n. 8), pp. 202–3. Brooks Atkinson, “Theatre: Old and New,” New York Times (3 June 1959). Aristophanes, Lysistrata, adapted by Dudley Fitts (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1954).
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translation was praised as “crisp” in The New York Times, but the production was judged a dismal failure. The critic nostalgically goes back to the unsurpassed landmarks, the 1925 MAT venture and Bel Geddes’ interpretation with its “magnificent setting and glamorous cast.”56 It is worth noting that until the early 1960s, the existence of the Seldes and Bel Geddes version led to a virtual monopoly of Lysistrata on the American stage; there was no significant interest in producing any other play by Aristophanes.57 Post-1930 productions of Lysistrata in the Seldes adaptation imitated Bel Geddes’ successful staging features, more easily so since the text is replete with stage directions. Influence is evident in the design of the set and the women’s costumes, as well as in the conception of the comic scenes.58 Three noteworthy attempts at producing Lysistratas diverging from this prototype were unsuccessful. In 1936, the Federal Theatre sponsored a production of the play by a black theatrical company in Seattle, Washington. The adaptation was prepared by the black playwright Theodore Brown and was subtitled “an African version.” The action was transferred to Ebonia in Africa, populated by warring tribes. The program lists exotic characters such as a witch queen and a lion tamer. Unfortunately, the black Lysistrata was closed down by the WPA on the second day of performance. Another production of Lysistrata, in Seldes’ adaptation, opened on Broadway in 1946 with an all-black cast and closed down after four performances.59 The third venture is associated with the Theatre Guild. In 1948, the Guild announced the opening of Lysistrata ’48 in Westport, Connecticut, in the Seldes version. Modern dress would be employed in this production, which would emphasize the parallels between the Peloponnesian War and the civil war in contemporary Greece, which was then in full blast. According to the press release, production had been scheduled to open on 28 June, but there is no further information about it, indicating that, if it was produced at all, Lysistrata ‘48 was unsuccessful. A more successful venture was an interpretation of Lysistrata into a musical entitled “The Happiest Girl in the World.” The musical appears to have ideological affinities to Bel Geddes’ Lysistrata, in emphasizing profit-making, capitalist aspects of waging war.60
56 Brooks Atkinson, “Phoenix Lysistrata,”New York Times (6 December, 1959). 57 The first notable production of another play, Birds, was in 1964 by Herbert Blau at the Actor’s Workshop in San Francisco, using William Arrowsmith’s translation. 58 See Kotzamani, “Lysistrata” (above, n. 6), pp. 301–2. 59 The 1936 Federal Theater production of Lysistrata opened at the Moore Theatre in Seattle on 17 September. The 1946 production of the play was directed by James Light and opened on 17 October at the Belasco Theater in New York. For these two black interpretations of Lysistrata in the theater see Ron West, “Others, Adults, Censored: The Federal Theatre Project’s Black Lysistrata Cancellation,” Theatre Survey 37 (1996), pp. 93–113; Susan Carol Day, “Aristophanes’ Plays” (above, n. 6), pp. 99–139; Kevin Wetmore, pp. 786–96 in the present volume. 60 Information on the Theater Guild’s plans to produce Lysistrata is derived from a press release of the company, file on Lysistrata, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, New York. For The Happiest Girl in the World, see Simone Beta, “The Metamorphosis of a Greek Comedy and its Protago-
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Bel Geddes’ Lysistrata was not only the first major production of Attic comedy in America, but also the most influential. The impact of the production is intimately related to the transformation of the original into a popular contemporary spectacle. Indeed, Lysistrata exhibits all the main features of the American popular arts in the 1920s, as discussed paradigmatically in Seldes’ The Seven Lively Arts. The term “lively” captures the essential feature of popular entertainment, its spirited vitality. As Seldes explains, “the essence of the minor arts is high levity … It is a question of exaltation, of carrying a given theme to a ‘high’ point.”61 His discussion of musical comedy could just as well apply to the bold utopian conceptions of Aristophanes. Again, Seldes insists that the secret of the successful musical comedy is high spirits, elaborating: “there must be some courage, some defiance of nature and sound sense, a feeling for fantasy … It is for this freedom of the spirit … that these shows are cherished.”62 Wide appeal is another principal feature of the lively arts, which interestingly imposes restrictions on freedom of the spirit. The emphasis on popular taste virtually invites censorship, which also threatened Lysistrata. Indeed, “the lively arts are inhibited by the necessity to provide ‘nice clean fun for the whole family,’—a regrettable, but inevitable penalty of their universal appeal.”63 Seldes’ personal taste was actually closer to the robust Aristophanic spirit than his adaptation reveals. He confesses that he would prefer popular spectacles to be more gross and licentious, inviting cheerful roaring at dirty jokes. The lively arts are also characterized by immediacy. Popular entertainment is easy to enjoy and thoroughly digestible, leaving the audience happy and untroubled. Education or culture is not a prerequisite to appreciating it. Also connected to immediacy is an emphasis on distinctly American features. Seldes singles out the “sparkle and snap” of the popular arts, “their inner life which corresponds to the brighter and better side of American life, their impertinence and good cheer, and above all the strong creative current which in them has found a native, not borrowed form for itself.”64 Bel Geddes’Lysistrata was clearly shaped into a distinctly American product. As for ideology, the concentration on leaders, the interpretation of choruses as masses in need of direction, the vertical axis of the setting and its hierarchical implications, the presentation of the Acropolis as an oligarchic powerhouse, the male-centered ethic and aesthetic of the production, all transparently evoked the capitalist worldview. American audiences were shown their own socio-political model. It is unsurprising
nist: Some Musical Versions of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata” in: P. Brown and S. Ograjensek (eds.), Ancient Drama in Music for the Modern Stage (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 240– 57; Beta, pp. 824–48 in the present volume. 61 Seldes, Seven Lively Arts (above, n. 10), p. 294. 62 Seldes, Seven Lively Arts (above, n. 10), p. 162. 63 Seldes, Seven Lively Arts (above, n. 10), p. 300. 64 Seldes, Seven Lively Arts (above, n. 10), p. 10.
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that critics ignored the production’s ideological interpretation of the original; it was so evidently American that it was taken for granted. The American Lysistrata also reflects the theatrical creation of its time in combining popular and high artistic features. A characteristic trend of the 1920s is the emergence of a fertile communication between the popular arts and the avant-garde, which were both flourishing.65 This interaction contributed to the popular theater’s greater sophistication. The new stagecraft movement matured in these years with the groundbreaking work of its leading scenic designers Robert Edmond Jones, Kenneth Macgowan and Bel Geddes. These artists were working simultaneously on avantgarde and commercial projects such as musical comedies and revues. In addition to the standard popular fare, Broadway commissions came to include ambitious artistic productions such as Max Reinhardt’s Miracle, designed by Bel Geddes, which catered to avant-garde as well as commercial theatrical audiences. Besides opening up to greater innovation in scenic design in this period, Broadway also began to welcome the production of more interesting plays, both modern and classic. Talented dramatists were prolific in the 1920s. The most important was Eugene O’Neil, who by the end of the decade was considered the pre-eminent American dramatist, enjoying wide popular appeal as well as the esteem of the avant-garde. Offerings of high-quality modern plays on Broadway even extended to experimental foreign authors such as Karel Capek and Luigi Pirandello. The classics also received unprecedented attention on Broadway in this period. Perhaps the most notable venture was the collaboration of R.E. Jones, A. Hopkins and the Barrymores, which resulted in the production of several landmark Shakespearean productions.66 The filtering of avant-garde elements into the commercial theater was also invigorated by the Broadway visits of distinguished European artists such as Max Reinhardt, the Moscow Art Theatre’s dramatic and musical companies and Karel Capek. Producing Lysistrata was thus a timely choice for the American theater in the 1920s. As a classic, it enjoyed the esteem of high culture. At the same time, farce offered the alluring possibility of reaching popular audiences. Lysistrata’s hybrid combination of popular and avant-garde features targeted both audiences. Bel Geddes’ decision to supply a modernist platform for the performance wonderfully enhanced the theatricality and exuberance of the popular acting styles employed. The synthesis of avant-garde and pop was so effective that critics were not estranged by Lysistrata’s hybrid features. There was perhaps a difference of emphasis, however, depending on whether the publication was highbrow or popular. Popular publications dwell more on the virtues of the farcical acting styles and generally offer little
65 See Ethan Mordden, The American Theatre (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); Ronald Wainscott, The Emergence of the Modern American Theater 1914–1929 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997); G.M. Bordman, The Oxford Companion to American Theater (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 66 Notably, they collaborated in producing Richard III (1920), Macbeth (1921) and Hamlet (1922).
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enlightening commentary on the set; the balance is reversed in the highbrow press.67 Estrangement does occasionally show through in an amusing way. Although generally appreciative of Truex, for example, Brooks Atkinson in The New York Times characterizes his acting style as “diminutive farce.” Percy Hammond in The Herald Tribune is clearly embarrassed by the performer’s uninhibited rowdiness, blurring “I thought he was comic but not amusing.”68 To sum up, Bel Geddes’ Lysistrata has a singular place in the history of Aristophanic performance in the United States, as the most important theatrical interpretation of Attic comedy. The production introduced the playwright to the American public and stirred up interest into the 1960s, in producing the play in Bel Geddes’ manner. The director employed Nemirovich-Danchenko’s Russian interpretation of Lysistrata (1923) as a model, shaping it into an original, distinctly American version. Ideologically, Bel Geddes’ interpretation projected a capitalist worldview, countering the Russian production’s celebration of communism. Aesthetically, Bel Geddes achieved a creative synthesis of avant-garde and pop elements, creatively following in the direction of the Russian model. He drew on the performance styles of the thriving American popular theater to interpret Aristophanic farce in terms of slapstick and burlesque. Lysistrata was transformed into a commercial popular spectacle, reflecting central stereotypes of American mass culture. But this was a popular spectacle with high aspirations, since the production also exhibited sophisticated avant-garde features. Audiences and critics were delighted and flocked to see the play. A major new dramatic talent had been discovered: Aristophanes.
67 See, for example, the popular press publications: Richard Lockridge, “Greece” (above, n. 43); Burns Mantle, “Here” (above, n. 48); “Lysistrata,” unidentified issue of Screenland, p. 90, file on Lysistrata, Museum of the City of New York, New York. An interesting discussion of the set is included in Brooks Atkinson’s “Lysistrata” (above, n. 36) and “Aristophanes” (above, n. 37); Robert Benchley, “With Love” (above, n. 30); Stark Young, “The Philadelphia” (above, n. 23). 68 Brooks Atkinson, “Aristophanes ” (above, n. 37); Percy Hammond, “Lysistrata” (above, n. 39).
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“Attend, O Muse, Our Holy Dances and Come to Rejoice in Our Songs”: The Reception of Aristophanes in the Modern Musical Theater Abstract: Music played an important role in performances of Greek Old Comedy. What is the best way to perform an ancient play so that music, far from being an unnecessary supplement, can give its fundamental contribution to the success of the show? The answer is: opera (or one of its by-products: operettes and musicals). Through inspection of individual examples of these musical forms (Braunfels’ Die Vögel, Lecocq’s Plutus and Sondheim’s Frogs) and analysis of different examples in the case of a single play (Lysistrata), this paper shows the many differents ways musicians, together with their librettists, have worked to make an ancient text both charming and comprehensible to a modern audience.
Should Aristophanes enter a theater today to attend a modern performance of his Frogs, for example, it would be difficult for him to recognize his own comedy, for many reasons. First, of course, because of the language; Ancient Greek is no longer spoken anywhere, even during the summer shows at the beautiful theater of Epidaurus. Second, because of the numerous substantial changes directors introduce to update the plays, by removing the frequent allusions to 5th-century BCE Athens. Third, because of how an ancient Greek comedy is usually staged today. In our theaters, actors act—that is to say, they speak, declaim, rant—and that is basically all; in general, they do not sing or dance. But when Aristophanes worked on the staging of his comedies in the hectic days before the beginning of the City Dionysia or the Lenaea, he knew that the audience expected a show full of songs and dances. Music and choreography, in other words, played an important role in performances in those times. In our times, however, when a Greek comedy (or tragedy) is performed in front of a modern audience, the music is inconspicuous: often nothing more than a soundtrack on a small scale, a few notes at the beginning, some in between and some at the end. This reduction in the role of music in the performance of an ancient comedy obviously alters the show, by giving absolute preference to the words and text. Although the latter were extremely significant, they were not the core of the drama for a Greek playwright. But there have been (and still are) ways to perform an ancient Greek comedy in which music, far from being an unnecessary supplement, makes a fundamental contribution to the success of the show. These ways—operas and their by-products (operettes, musical, and the likes), together with performances from which words are
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entirely absent (ballets)—are the subject of this paper. In order to give a comprehensive (but selective) survey of a topic that might easily be the subject of a book, the essay is structured as follows. First, I inspect a single example of each musical form; second, I deal with different examples in the case of a single play. In this way, I hope to show the many differents ways musicians and their librettists have worked on an ancient text that had to be made charming and comprehensible to an audience that might not even know who the Greeks were. Let us begin with the dramatic musical form that tallies best with Greek plays: opera. As the only musical genre in which all the text is sung, opera is a perfect equivalent of a Greek tragedy or comedy; even the sharing of cantica and deverbia (to borrow terms used to describe the solo and dialogue parts of Plautus’ comedies, marked by different meters and therefore different music) seems to match the similar sharing of arie and recitativi that is a peculiar feature of all operas until the mid-19th century. This, at least, was the goal of the Camerata dei Bardi, whose intense theoretical reflection led to the staging of Jacopo Peri’s Euridice, the first melodrama (a “sung drama”), in 1600. The result of this attempt, however, the so-called recitar cantando, was more a melodic declamation than a real song—and therefore barely comparable to the harmonic and melodic variety of a Greek stasimon (“choral song”). A thorough discussion of the development of musical drama in the 17th century from Monteverdi on, the difficult relationship between text (the Greek and Latin originals and their operatic versions) and music, and the various solutions adopted by composers and librettists, would be interesting but out of place here. These subjects have been thoroughly studied in recent decades,1 but since they mostly concern operatic versions of classical tragedies, discussing them would not help answer a question that is more important for my purposes: is opera a pattern suitable for the musical transposition of a classical comedy? In other words, can an Aristophanic comedy be put to music without losing its main features? An answer can be given via analysis of one of the first operas based on a comedy of Aristophanes: Die Vögel by Walter Braunfels. On 30 November 1920, at the National Theater of Munich, Bruno Walter conducted the first performance of Die Vögel (“The Birds”), a lyrisch-phantastisch Spiel in zwei Akten. Braunfels had begun the libretto in 1913; in 1915, he had to stop work because of the war. He completed the opera after the defeat of his country. The two acts are quite different from one another: the first closely follows the plot of the Aristophanic comedy, while the second diverges a great deal from the original. It is possible to infer that the terrible experiences of the war, together with the consequences Germany had to endure after surrender (which played a significant part in the growing success of
1 See e.g. M. Napolitano, “Greek Tragedy and Opera: Notes on a Marriage Manqué,” in: P. Brown and S. Ograjenšek (eds.), Ancient Drama in Music for the Modern Stage (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 31–46.
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Hitler’s politics and the rise of Nazism), made Braunfels change his initial plan and radically modify the end of his opera. This supposition is strengthened by the fact that in 1917, while still serving at the front, the musician converted to Catholicism—and, as we shall see, the second act of his Birds has Christian overtones. But it is better not to anticipate and to proceed instead in an orderly manner.2 At the beginning of the Aristophanic comedy, we meet the protagonists, Peisetaerus (Ratefreund in German, Loyal Friend in English) and Euelpides (Hoffegut, Good Hope), who are tired of living in Athens and are looking for a better city. When they meet the Hoopoe (previously a man, Tereus), Peisetaerus has a brilliant and typical Aristophanic idea, something very smart but difficult to achieve: to build a bird-city midway between gods and men. The Hoopoe summons all the birds; after their first negative reaction (they do not like men, because men hunt, kill and eat them), the birds accept the suggestion. At this point in a Greek comedy, after the clever idea of the “comic hero” (as Cedric Whitman called the protagonist of an Aristophanic play) has been approved by the chorus, there is usually a peculiar section, the parabasis, that marks a strong pause between the launching of the idea and its accomplishment. There is also a break at this point in Braunfels’ opera between the two acts: after having followed the original plot quite closely, the first act of Die Vögel ends with the excitement of the birds’ chorus at the work they are about to begin.3 But with the beginning of the second act, Braunfels’ version becomes more and more different from Aristophanes‘. Before we see how, it might be interesting to ask why—or, better, to try to understand why Braunfels chose Birds as a subject for an opera. Aristophanes staged his comedy in 414 BCE, at a time when his city, engaged in a terrible war against the Spartans since 431 BCE, was waiting to find out the outcome of the military expedition sent to Sicily. Eager to forget the present troubles of his country, the poet took refuge in utopia, symbolized by Cloudcuckooland, the “city of the clouds and the cuckoos.” In 1913, Braunfels’ homeland was in a similar situation: since Germany was on the verge of war, the musician probably dreamt of composing a comedy that, like its Greek antecedent, looked to a more positive future. Aristophanes’ Birds has a happy ending: after having driven out of Cloudcuckooland a number of obnoxious people who want to exploit the personal advantages of the
2 On this opera, see W. Braunfels, Gli Uccelli (da Aristofane), Introduzione, traduzione e note di Eleonora Cavallini (Bologna: Nautilus, 2003), with the German libretto and Italian translation. Die Vögel was performed 50 times in the same venue, with other performances in Berlin, Vienna and Cologne; the first post-war stagings took place in Germany as well (Karlsruhe 1971 and Bremen 1991). 3 The last words are Loyal Friend’s incitement to work (“Ans Werk, ans Werk!”). The main difference from the Greek original is the insertion of a Prologue: before the entrance of Loyal Friend and Good Hope, the Nightingale (who does not speak in Aristophanes’ play) sings a charming melancholic aria, in which she introduces herself to the public. Another significant discrepancy is the short presentation of another character, the Eagle, who at the end of the act warns its fellow birds about the risks of Peisetaerus’ proposal. (The meaning of the insertion is made clear in the second act).
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new city (a priest, two poets, an oracle-monger, an inspector, a decree-seller and an informer), unmasked a spy (Iris, the rainbow, Zeus’ messenger) and rejected the embassy led by Poseidon (Zeus’ brother), Peisetaerus becomes king by marrying Basileia (“Sovereignty”). Did Braunfels envisage a similar merry conclusion for his work? When he began to write the libretto and compose the music, before the beginning of WWI, he probably did. But when he resumed his job, either during the war or immediately after its conclusion, it must have been difficult for him to follow Aristophanes’ tracks as he had in the first act. Not only does the second act develop much differently from the Greek original, in fact, but it ends in the opposite way. After a traditional love duet between the Nightingale and Good Hope, a wedding celebrates the building of the new town. But the bridegroom is not Loyal Friend and the bride is not a queen. Instead, the newly-weds are Mr. Pigeon (Herr Täuberich) and Mrs. Dove (Frau Taubezart), and the celebration is broken off by the arrival of another character. The newcomer is Prometheus, the Titan who taught mankind the use of fire and was therefore punished by Zeus: in Aristophanes, Prometheus is a comic character who only gives Peisetaerus a bit of advice but, since he is afraid that the watchful eye of Zeus may see what he is doing, stays hidden under a parasol. In Braunfels, Prometheus tells Loyal Friend and the birds the risks they are running, shows them the bloody marks of the chains that kept him bound to the rocks of Caucasus, and warns them about Zeus’ revenge. The birds declare that they are ready to face the danger of war—but when the king of the gods sends a violent tempest that destroys the nest of Pigeon and Dove, everyone surrenders. The birds praise Zeus’ might and glory, and Loyal Friend and Good Hope decide to return to their home town. But before leaving the stage and the ruins of Cloudcuckooland, Good Hope says goodbye to the Nightingale: “Now I must go, I must follow the road that leads to the world of the men who do not understand me. When I was listening to your song, I was very happy, because you were saying sweet things I have never known. Where are these things now? Are they dead, closed, untouchable in my heart? No, they are still alive, and even if I cannot catch them, they exist, because I have experienced them, even if they are over. Let us go, then—but I have been alive.” After the storm that destroyed his dreams, Good Hope (a significant name) sees a light. Was this the light of faith (the faith in the new religion Braunfels embraced during the war)? Or was it the light of peace, the tongue of flame that, as every European hoped, would light the future of Europe? We do not know. But what we do unfortunately know, is that the peace treaties signed after the war were one of the many causes that, 20 years later, led to the outbreak of WWII. When the Nazi army invaded Poland, however, Braunfels’ destiny had already changed: after the success of Die Vögel and the positive reception of his other opera (Don Gil von den grünen Hosen), he was invited to direct the newly constituted Cologne Academy of Music. But since Braunfels was half-Jewish, with the beginning of the Third Reich in 1933 he had to leave the Academy. The Nazis also forbade the performance of his music, which was labelled Entartete Musik (“degenerate music”), like the works of other German and Austrian composers such as Berg,
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Hindemith, Korngold, Schönberg, Schreker and Weill. Only after the end of the war could Braunfels return to public life, but his inspiration had dried up and, since the musical panorama had changed completely, he died in 1954 in Cologne without having composed anything significant.4 After the increasing success of Wagner’s Wort-Ton-Drama, the fusion between words and music, with the consequent elimination (or at least significant reduction) of the difference between arie and recitativi, the style of operatic music helped to make modern operas more similar, in this respect, to Greek theater. Moreover, the growing prevalence of a less artificial style of singing allowed the audience to better understand the libretto and follow both the development of the story and the meaning of the dialogues more easely—a significant change from the earliest attempts at melodrama, from the vocal feats of the castrati to the exploits of belcanto tenors and sopranos in the most celebrated Romantic Italian operas. But even when Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi were dominating the stages of the grand European theaters, other music shows in smaller venues enjoyed some success—because of the music, but probably also because the spectators could understand what was going on, since some parts of the shows were spoken rather than sung and therefore had a better chance of entertaining. Many names were used to designate this form of musical theater (Singspiel in German, opéra-comique in French, operetta in Italian, zarzuela in Spanish), but its structure is basically the same: a number of musical pieces divided by spoken dialogue. Usually considered a minor musical genre, it was also employed by famous musicians such as Mozart, who composed The Abduction from the Seraglio (a Singspiel) one year after Idomeneo (a real opera) and ended up his amazing career with The Magic Flute (another charming Sinsgpiel). Although mostly used for comic subjects, there are nonetheless a few celebrated tragic examples, such as Bizet’s Carmen. The operetta had its climax in the second half of the 19th century, mostly in France, with the works of Jacques Offenbach; some of his chefs-d’oeuvre were inspired by the classical world (Orphée aux enfers and La belle Hélène, 1858 and 1864), although none is derived from Aristophanes.5 But the libretto of an operette of one of his most distinguished followers, Alexandre Charles Lecocq, is an abridgement of the last Aristophanic comedy: Plutus (“Wealth”). 4 Braunfels’ is not the only modern opera based on Aristophanes’ Birds. At least one other example deserves to be mentioned: L‘opéra des oiseaux, composed by Antoine Duhamel on a libretto written by Duhamel himself together with Costas Ferris and Serge Ouankine, first staged in 1971 by the Opéra de Lyon. Duhamel is more famous for having composed movie soundtracks for celebrated French directors such as Jean-Luc Godard (Pierrot le fou) and François Truffaut (Stolen kisses, Mississippi mermaid, Bed and board). 5 In 1860, Offenbach set to music an operatic version of the most famous Greek novel, Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe; on this and other musical versions of Longus’ novel, see S. Beta, “Le dieu Pan fait pan pan pan de son pied de chèvre: Daphnis and Chloé on the stage at the end of the nineteenth century,”,” in: M.P. Futre Pinheiro and S.J. Harrison, Fictional Traces: Receptions of the Ancient Novel (Groningen: Barkhuis and Groningen University Library, 2011), vol. 2, pp. 157–67.
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In 1873, the Parisian Théâtre du Vaudeville saw the première of a comedy in two acts whose subject was taken from Aristophanes’ Plutus. The authors were journalists with a passion for the theater, Albert Millaud and Gaston Jolivet; the success of the play gave the first the chance to start a profitable co-operation with Offenbach, who put Millaud’s librettos of Madame l‘Archiduc and La Créole to music. A few years later, Millaud and Jolivet returned to their text, shortened and rewrote it, and gave it to a musician who, after having become a famous composer of opéra-comiques due to the success of La fille de Madame Angot and other operettas (Giroflé-Girofla, Le petit duc, Le jour et la nuit), at age 54 wanted to dedicate himself to a more ambitious project. The result was Plutus, an opéra-comique in three acts performed for the first time at the Théâtre de l‘Opéra-comique on 31 March 1886. What is the relationship between the two Plutuses? Was the French Plutus close to the Greek one? After the first act, any spectator familiar with Greek and Latin literature probably had the impression that he had entered the wrong theater, because the opera recalled Plautus more than Aristophanes. What else could such a spectator think of a play that, after a harvesters’ chorus, displayed a pair of young country lovers (Xinthias and Myrrha) who were not allowed to get married because Myrrha’s father thought that Xinthias was too poor for his daughter? What did such a trivial love-story (opposed by a greedy paterfamilias) have to do with Aristophanes? Nor was the beginning of the second act more Aristophanic: a servus callidus (“cunning slave”) tormented by hunger is another characteristic feature of a Plautine comoedia. But at least the slave’s name (Carion) was not only Aristophanic but also the name of the slave in Plutus. Hunger is not the main problem the French Carion must face, however; he must decide whether to yield to the unceasing courtship a rich widow is paying him. Her name (Praxagora) is Aristophanic as well—but it comes from another comedy, Assemblywomen, whose plot has nothing to do with Plutus. When Myrrha tells Xinthias that her father wants her to marry a rich Athenian citizen (Xénon), we have a perfect operatic situation: four lovers and two marriages, which give life to a well-balanced quartetto. Although their position is completely different, Xinthias and Carion are in the same situation and cannot comply with their own wishes: the first cannot marry the girl he loves, the second must marry a woman he does not love. Money is to blame for this: if Xinthias were rich, he could marry Myrrha; if Carion were not poor, he would not be forced to marry Praxagora. A duet about the importance of money in human life closes the Plautine section of the play. At this point, in the middle of the second act, Aristophanes arrives: Carion tells Xinthias that his father Chrémyle has gone to the temple at Delphi because Apollo told him he would become rich.6 Chrémyle returns and tells his son that he must wait for a man to walk in front of his house—and, after he has uttered these words, a old blind man arrives, looking for hospitality. When Chrémyle ushers him into his home, the
6 Chrémyle (in Greek, Chremylos) is Carion’s master in Aristophanes’ Plutus.
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old man reveals that he is Plutus, the god of wealth; he has been blinded by Zeus because he told him he intended to help only honest people. At this point, Chrémyle decides to go to the famous physician Aesculapius, who will surely be able to heal Plutus and give him back his sight. Here, in the second part of the act, we can recognize the plot of the original comedy—or at least its prologue, the section that goes from the beginning to the first choral intermezzo. The last part of the act also follows the Greek play. There we first have a dialogue between Chremylos and his friend Blepsidemus, and then the arrival of Penia (“Poverty”), who tries to persuade Chremylos to leave Plutus blind because the need for money is a powerful stimulus to human creativity (a fairly long scene, the real heart of the comedy, with a complex structure that reminds one of the debates in Aristophanes’ early plays). Here the arrival of Blepsidème and his poor friends is soon followed by the entrance of Pauvreté. As in the original, in the French operette as well her attempt fails: at the end of the act, Poverty leaves the stage while everyone sings hymns to their future wealth. In the third act, Aristophanes becomes Plautus again. In the Greek original, after Plutus’ recovery via an incubatory rite in the temple of Asclepius and the customary portrayal of the consequences of the new situation, the comedy quickly (indeed, hastily) ends with the consecration of the god. In Lecocq’s version, the happy end is reached after some obstacles: thanks to Plutus, Xinthias becomes rich and Xénon poor; Myrrha’s father gives his consent to his daughter’s marriage, but then it is Chrémyle who objects and accuses Myrrha of wanting Xinthias’ money; when Chrémyle realizes that, by doing so, he is only hurting his son, he withdraws his prohibition—but at this point Myrrha refuses to marry Xinthias, because she is afraid that he may think that she wants to be his wife only for his money. The coup de théâtre that brings a positive resolution to the plot is probably the only original idea in the play: Chrémyle decides to give up his riches and send Plutus away with a blindfold; Xinthias and Myrrha are eventually able to celebrate their marriage, together with Praxagora and Xénon; and Carion remains the shrewd, single Carion but has the last lines of the play: “Ye Greeks, what do you think of this problem? What is gold? A superstition? Is it good? Is it bad? Since I have asked this question to myself, I hereby suggest, without pretentiousness, speaking softly, that gold does not make people happy but it gives at least a small contribution to their happiness!”7
7 “Grecs, que pensez-vous du problème? / Qu’est-ce que l’or? … Un préjugé? … / Est-ce le bien? … Le mal suprême? / Moi, je me suis interrogé, / et tout bas ici j’insinue / sans me poser en sermonneur, / tout bas j’insinue, / que l’or ne fait pas le bonheur… / Mais qu’en somme il y contribue”.
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If with his Plutus Lecocq aimed to change his status as a musician, moving from composing simple operettes to loftier operas, the outcome dashed his hopes: the show was a flop and was withdrawn after only eight performances; Lecocq returned to his previous genre, composing many other operettes (Ali-Baba, Ninette, etc.), with a less frantic pace, until his death in 1918. Since the music is brilliant, however, the blame likely falls on the libretto, which is neither fish, flesh nor fowl; the attempt to make the most Plautine of Aristophanes’ comedies a standard Plautine play has considerably toned down the comic plot of the original.8 Driven by the reputation of the works of Offenbach and his French colleagues, the success of the operetta spread over Europe; between the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, Vienna witnessed the first performances of the operettes of Franz von Suppé, Johann Strauss Jr. and Franz Lehár. In the same years, in the English-speaking world, another musical genre was enjoying growing popularity: born, according to the tradition, at Niblo’s Garden Theater in New York City in 1866 with the show The Black Crook, musical comedy gradually took the place of the operetta, whose life ended when the so-called Belle Époque was swept away by the outbreak of WWI. Since it reserves considerable room for dance numbers, the musical was more akin to Greek plays than operetta, in which dance had an incidental part. We should not be surprised, then, if among the subjects of American musicals are stories derived from ancient comedies, mostly by Plautus (Out of this world, a musical of Cole Porter first performed in 1950, is an adaptation of Plautus’ Amphitryon), but also of Aristophanes. Sondheim’s Frogs is a good example of a modern version of an ancient play, because the authors of this musical comedy drew from the Greek original the title, the basic sketch of the story, a few names and several scenes (as Lecocq’s librettists did), but also had the courage to alter significant moments of Aristophanes’ play, provided the changes allowed their show to be faithful to the spirit of the ancient comedy. Since the climax of Aristophanes’ Frogs is the lenghty comparison of two tragic poets of the 5th century BCE, mostly based on technical issues such as language, style, rhetoric and metrics, Burt Shevelove (the author of the script) and Stephen Sondheim (the author of the music and the lyrics), who had already worked together in 1962 when they adapted three Plautine comedies (Pseudolus, Miles gloriosus and Mostellaria) into the successful musical A funny thing happened on the way to the forum, first had to find an answer to the difficult question, “How is it possible to stage such a comedy in the 20th century CE?” It would have been difficult to find a popular audience capable of getting all the jokes regarding the features of Aeschylus’ and Euripides’ poetry— and Shevelove and Sondheim knew this well. Shevelove (who, as the head of the Yale Dramatic Association, in 1941 directed a version of the comedy and was therefore well aware how hard it was to get over the obstacle of the two tragic poets) accordingly had
8 On this opera, see Louis Schneider, Hervé Charles Lecocq (Paris: Perrin, 1924), pp. 224–6.
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a brilliant idea: he replaced Aeschylus with William Shakespeare and Euripides with George Bernard Shaw. The show was performed for the first time in 1974 at the Exhibition Pool in the Payne Whitney Gymnasium. 30 years later, the Broadway actor Nathan Lane revised Shevelove’s script and asked a Broadway choreographer, Susan Stroman, to direct the show; it premiered in New York City on 22 July 2004. There are many differences between the two productions: Lane gave his version a two-act structure and Sondheim wrote seven new songs, mostly performed by individual characters or duos, whereas the 1974 script included many choral songs. Since Mary-Kay Gamel has thoroughly studied the distinct features of the two librettos, there is no need for me to go over them again,9 and I will merely underline the most relevant aspects of both transpositions. Although in different measure, the modern authors kept the basic elements of the plot (the journey to Hades and the contest of the poets), the major characters (Dionysus and his slave Xanthias), the minor ones (Heracles and Charon, both endowed in the 2004 version with songs, “Dress big” and “All aboard”), the main chorus of initiates (who sing a “Hymn to Dionysus”) and of course the secondary chorus of frogs, whose intervention, placed by Lane in a pivotal position at the end of the first act, is probably the most effective and successful musical number of the show. Some characteristic sections of classical comedies, such as the prologue and the parabasis, are preserved in a highly original manner: at the beginning of the play, two actors in Greek costumes sip martinis and instruct the audience on the ancient rules of behavior in the theater; before the beginning of the contest, while Dionysus tells Hades, the god of the Underworld, the goal of his trip (to rescue Shaw), the chorus—as in the ancient parabasis, in which the chorus members stepped out of their characters and addressed the spectators directly—warns the audience that, although serious matters are being dealt with onstage, there is no reason to get worried (“Well, words are merely chatter, / and easy to say. / It doesn’t really matter, / it’s only a play”). These classical features go side by side with constant references to current events, not only the new characters of Shakespeare and Shaw but hints at the American political situation. This is particularly true of the 2004 version. Shevelove eliminated the political references in Aristophanes’ original, but made no direct allusions to the 1974 context (Nixon’s resignation after the Watergate scandal and the final after-effects of the Vietnam War). Nathan Lane, however, has always said that he decided to work with Frogs after the destruction of the Twin Towers, and he therefore introduced direct and indirect political remarks into his script. From this point of view, “Lane’s additions—looser plot, increased jokes, direct political comments, metatheatricality used for political effects—move Shevelove’s drama in a more
9 Mary-Kay Gamel, “Sondheim floats Frogs,” in: Edith Hall and Amanda Wrigley, Aristophanes in Performance 421 BC–AD 2007: Peace, Birds, and Frogs (London: Legenda, 2007), pp. 209–30. On Sondheim’s musical, see also Graham Ley, pp. 1064–80 elsewhere in this volume.
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pointed, more political, more Aristophanic directions. Lane’s revisions also bring the Shevelove script closer to conventional musical comedy, but this does not have to be seen as a concession to audiences’ ignorance. Aristophanes too drew on his audience’s familiarity with the conventions of comedy, such as the ‘usual jokes’ at the beginning, the alternation of speech and song, the agōn, and so forth. The combination of musical numbers in the 2004 version more closely resembles the Aristophanic mix of low comedy and high seriounsness, and the new, more conventional songs draw attention to the strangeness of the choral songs.”10 These three examples illustrate the different ways in which a comedy by Aristophanes can be converted into a modern show in which music plays an important part. The plot of the Greek play may simply be the cue for an opera that, apart from looking like the original and sharing its title and a few characters, develops in a different way. Lecocq’s Plutus is not the only example. In 1817, Eugène Scribe, one of the most famous French playwrights and the author of librettos for many successful operas (Auber’s Fra Diavolo, Meyerbeer’s The Huguenots and Verdi’s Les vêpres siciliennes), together with Antoine-François Varner, wrote Les comices d’Athènes, ou Les femmes orateurs, a comédie vaudeville allegedly introduced as a translation of Assemblywomen. Scribe’s play is actually a remake: only the title (actually its secondary title) is Aristophanic; the name of the heroine is not Praxagora, but Theone, the wife of Philotime, an Athenian senator.11 If in the 19th century a French musician had decided to compose an opera on a subject taken from that comedy and had used Scribe’s vaudeville as the source of his libretto, we would now be able to analyze a work not much different from Lecocq’s. When a modern author decides to keep the original spirit of the Greek comedy and, in a way, do his best to revive it by giving it a new life after more than 2000 years, he may introduce changes in its structure (and, as we have seen, such changes may even be relevant), but the model he is looking at during his reworking should always be clearly visible behind the new construction: the altered final of Die Vögel is Braunfels’ personal reaction to the difficult circumstances, both specific and general, he was experiencing during the composition of his work, but it does not reflect the inner spirit of the original (the quest for a peaceful, serene place in which to forget the troubles caused by hard times); the unexpected presence of William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw in The Frogs is a necessity provoked by the distance between 5th-century BCE Greece and 20th-century CE America, but it fits smoothly into the original without spoiling it. A fair amount of change is nonetheless inescapable, mostly due to the burden imposed by the ancient Athenian milieu. When this weight is too heavy, adaptation is almost impossible, because it would imply erasing the basic structure of the comedy.
10 Gamel, Sondheim (above, n. 9), p. 222. 11 There is a Proxagora (sic!), but she is merely one of the Athenian women who make up the chorus (together with Sostrata, Thélésille, Cymodocée and Milto).
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This is the main reason some Aristophanic plays have not been exploited musically. How could a modern audience follow a performance of Women at the Thesmophoria without being instructed on Euripides’ career and being familiar with a number of his plays? A Tom Stoppard might be able to write a play in which the place of the Greek tragic poet is taken by Shakespeare, as Shevelove did for the Euripides of The Frogs. But since in the latter the contest of the tragic poets is only one part of the story, while in Women at the Thesmophoria the satire of Euripidean production and the parade of his characters are the story, the outcome would probably be a different play with a different title.12 The same can be said of other Aristophanic comedies such as Acharnians and Knights, whose plots cannot be separated from the political history of Athens during the early years of the Peloponnesian war. Even though the plays (especially Knights) have aroused strong interest because of their critical approach to the demagogic excesses of some politicians and politics, there have been no musical versions of either.13 But political embeddedness did not force celebrated composers to ignore such plays. In fact, there is another genre of music composition for the theater with which I have not yet dealt: incidental music, the wordless accompaniment that underlines specific moments of a play. A renowned musician (and a Greek one, at that), for example, composed the incidental music for a performance of the demagogue comedy Knights: in 1979, the Theatro Technis of Karolos Koun company, directed by Giorgos Lazanis, produced the play with the incidental music of Mikis Theodorakis. Some Aristophanic plays have naturally exerted more inspiration than others. The list of musicians who have written incidental music for Birds is long. It begins with Ernest Chausson, who in 1889 composed interludes for flute and harp for a production of the play performed at Le Petit Théâtre des Marionnettes de la Galerie Vivienne in Paris. The list continues with the American composer John Knowles Paine, who wrote music for tenor, male chorus and orchestra for a performance in 1900; it includes Georges Auric, who composed the incidental music for a Cambridge performance directed by Terence Gray in 1928;14 it is distinguished by the name of Leonard Bern-
12 In fact, the version first produced in May 2000 at the University of California – Santa Cruz (The Julie Thesmo Show) is very different from the original. On this performance, see the remarks of Mary-Kay Gamel, who adapted, co-directed and produced it, in “From Thesmophoriazousai to The Julie Thesmo Show: adaptation, performance, reception,” American Journal of Philology 123 (2002), pp. 465–99. 13 Edith Hall, “Introduction,” in Hall and Wrigley, Aristophanes (above, n. 9), p. 16, writes that Wieland, the earliest German translator of Acharnians and Knights, “saw the recent experiences in France (i.e. the bloody consequences of the French revolution) as the ultimate key to understanding Aristophanes” and “felt that his own critique of the demagogic excesses on the Parisian political scene had been almost miraculously foreshadowed by Aristophanes‘ Knights and Acharnians.” The only exception I know of is the musical The Acharnians composed by the Greek musician Dionysios Savvopoulos between 1976 and 1977; on its success, see Gail Holst, Theodorakis: Myth & Politics in Modern Greek Music (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1980), pp. 5, 217–18. 14 In 1927, Auric composed Les Oiseaux, a comédie musicale in three acts; the libretto was by Bernard Zimmer d’après Aristophane. Auric was part of the group of six French composers (the so-called Les
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stein, who, when still was a university student, was asked by the Harvard Classical Club to compose a score for a 1939 production;15 and it ends—but the list is by no means complete—with the music written by the Area, an Italian progressive rock, jazz fusion, electronic, experimental group formed in 1972 by Demetrio Stratos, for a performance of the Uccelli directed by Memé Perlini at the beginning of the 1980s.16 For other comedies, the modern music contribution is only a set of incidental music. The most famous example is the score composed at the beginning of the 20th century by Ralph Vaughan Williams for the Henry John Edwards’ translation of Wasps performed for the first time in the New Theater of Cambridge in 1909. Very few people have heard all 18 pieces composed by the English musician for that performance;17 more famous and more often performed in concert halls is the Aristophanic suite in five movements that premiered at the Queen’s Hall in London three years later. The first movement, the brilliant Overture, is the most famous; the last (Ballet and Final Tableau) squares with the dancing exodus of the original, while the third (March Past of the Kitchen Utensils) is a witty transposition of one of the cleverest scene in Aristophanes, the convocation of the kitchen witnesses (a cup, pestle, fireplace and pot) and the deposition of the cheese-grater at the trial of the dog Laches in Wasps. Another example for a different comedy is the incidental music composed by one of the most famous living musicians, Hans Werner Henze, for a performance of Peace at the Kammerspiele of Munich in 1964. This comedy has not only inspired other six); another ‘member’ of the group, Darius Milhaud, besides composing many pieces inspired by classical works (Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Les malheurs d‘Orphée, Médée, and the three opéra-minute L‘enlèvement d‘Europe, L‘abandone d‘Ariane, Le délivrance de Thésée), wrote the incidental music for a Parisian performance of Plutus in 1938, adapted by Simone Jollivet and directed by Charles Dullin. In 1932, just a month before Hitler was appointed Chancellor of the Weimar Republic, Dullin staged the first modern French production of Peace (cf. Malika Bastin-Hammou, “Aristophanes’ Peace on the Twentieth-Century French Stage: From Political Statement to Artistic Failure,” in: Hall and Wrigley, Aristophanes (above, n. 9), p. 247–54); the incidental music was composed by Marcel Delannoy. 15 In this score (written for a wind quartet plus string quartet, harp and percussions), “Bernstein first experimented with the new harmonies and strange rhythms that he had encountered listening at Harvard to the Hornbostel collection of recordings of Asian, African, and other non-European music” (Hall, Introduction [above, n. 9], p. 24). Hall also mentions other incidental music composed for other modern Birds’ performances (Manos Hadzidakis and Dudley Moore); on Hadzidakis, see Holt, Theodorakis (above, n. 13), pp. 215–16. 16 On the many scores of incidental music composed by C. Hubert H. Parry for Aristophanic performances at the University of Cambridge, see Amanda Wrigley, “Aristophanes revitalized! Music and Spectacle on the Academic Stage,” in Hall and Wrigley, Aristophanes (above, n. 9), pp. 136–54. At n. 13, Wrigley remarks that “the Bridal March for Birds even became a popular piece for weddings through the 20th century.” 17 The pieces are: Ouverture, Introduction (Nocturne), Melodrama and Chorus, The Wasps’ Serenade, Chorus (twice), Melodrama and Chorus (twice), Entr’acte and Introduction, Melodrama and Chorus, March-Past of the Witnesses, Parabasis (in six parts: Moderato, Largamente, Allegro moderato, Molto vivace, Allegro scherzando, Andantino), Entr’acte, Introduction, Melodrama, Chorus, Melodrama, Chorus and Dance.
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composers but also given life to different forms of theatrical performances, starting with the Hymn to Peace from the Eirene of Aristophanes, a cantata for solo soprano, contralto, baritone and orchestra composed in 1886 by the Reverend Vyvyan Wallis Popham, followed by the anti-opera La Paix published by the Rumanian composer Aurel Stroe in 1974, and ending with “the boisterous fiddles in the Klezmer barn dance and the Greek wedding song in the Thiasos Theatre Company’s 2001 production” and “the eclectic blend of pop, R&B, and electrified Beethoven that enlivened the powerful HeartBEAT, an adaptation of Peace by the Mosaic Youth Theatre in Detroit (2002).”18 As Seidensticker and Bastin-Hammou have demonstrated, Peace was very popular in the second half of the 20th century because of its anti-war spirit, both in the East and the West. On 14 October 1962, two years before being performed in Munich with Henze’s music (and just one year after the construction of the Berlin Wall), Aristophanes’ comedy had its première in Berlin, on the stage of the Deutsches Theater, the most famous theatrical venue in the eastern half of the city; Peter Hack’s adaptation, directed by Benno Besson, was not only applauded for 45 minutes but was highly praised by the critics.19 In the same decade, Peace was staged in France four times: Jean Vilar (Paris 1961), Michel Fontayne together with Antoine Vitez (Marseille 1962), Tibor Egervari and Hubert Gignoux (Strasbourg 1962), when the French army was engaged in Algeria, and Marcel Maréchal in Lyon in 1969, in relation to the Vietnam War.20 But, even more than Peace, Lysistrata has become all over the world a symbol of the folly of war. In the 1960s and the 1970s, moreover, the years of the sexual revolution, the play became the standard of the equality of the sexes. No wonder that in the 20th century Lysistrata has been the most performed of the 11 Aristophanic comedies, and not only in more or less theatrical, classical prose versions, but also in all possible musical forms, those we scrutinized above (operas, operettes, musical comedies and incidental music) and others not yet considered (ballets)21. Some of the artistic genres in the first group (operas, operettas and musicals) share with the performances of ancient theater the significant features of acting and
18 See Hall, Introduction (above, n. 9), p. 24 (with photos). 19 On the significant features of this milestone show, see Bernd Seidensticker, “‘Aristophanes is back!’. Peter Hacks’s Adaptation of Peace,” in: Hall and Wrigley, Aristophanes (above, n. 9), pp. 194– 208; the incidental music of the Berlin première was composed by Andre Asriel. 20 See Bastin-Hammou, Aristophanes’ Peace (above, n. 14), p. 248 ss. In 1991, Maréchal decided to stage Peace again (in Marseille this time, at the Théâtre de la Criée) during the Gulf War. 21 The second part of this essay resumes and reconsiders under a different perspective arguments I have dealt with in the following articles: “Aristofane a Vienna: Le congiurate di Franz Schubert,” Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 67.1 (2001), pp. 143–59; “Aristofane a Berlino: la Lysistrata di Paul Lincke,” Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 72.3 (2002), pp. 141–62; “Aristofane e il musical. Le molte facce della Lisistrata,” Dioniso 4 (2005), pp. 184–95; “The Metamorphosis of a Greek Comedy and its Protagonist: Some Musical Versions of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata,” in: Brown & Ograjenšek, Ancient Drama (above, n. 1), pp. 240–57.
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singing. But Greek tragedies and comedies included dance as well: the orchestra, the ‘dancing place,’ was a significant part of the scenic space, the semicircle in which the chorus (whence the verb choreuo, ‘dance’) made its turns and counter-turns. We should therefore not be surprised if musicians decided to compose modern ballets inspired by Aristophanes, nor should we wonder at the fact that they chose Lysistrata as the subject of their works, because its simple plot let them create a full show without using words (or at least too many words). This is what the German musician Boris Blacher did in 1950, when he composed the ballet Lysistrata, his first major dodecaphonic composition.22 Together with Gerda von Einem, he picked 11 significant scenes from the Greek play: the women’s situation; Lysistrata’s proposal (the sexstrike) and the oath; the men’s reaction; the war dance of the men and the battle of the sexes; the confrontation between men and women; the sensual dance of Cinesias; the women’s reaction; the love dance between Cinesias and his wife Myrrhina (who runs away after having excited her husband); the men’s bitter reaction; the arrival of the Spartans, together with the dance of the peace and the plea to the women; the happy ending. Moreover, to let the audience easily understand the stage action, he asked Gerda to assemble some parts of the Aristophanic text that were spoken by a chorus before each scene. This combination of words and dance strongly recalls pantomime, the mix of declamation and dance introduced in Rome by the dancers Bathyllus and Pylades. By the time of the Roman emperors, pantomime had replaced classical theater in the hearts of Greek and Roman audiences.23 Through this clever device so similar to ancient mimetic performances, Blacher let his public enjoy the music played by the orchestra and appraise the gestures of the dancers without overlooking the development of the story. Blacher’s work is not the first example of a ballet inspired by Lysistrata. The first three examples date from the 1930s, as if in the years of (relative) peace between the two World Wars such an anti-war topic had a strong appeal for both choreographers and musicians who wanted to dedicate themselves to ballet composition. One of the most celebrated dancers of the 20th century, the English choreographer Antony Tudor, created in 1932 the ballet Lysistrata or the Strike of Wives; it was danced in London in 1935 by a very young Margot Fonteyn.24 In 1933, the Hungarian musician László Lajtha, a younger contemporary of Béla Bartók, composed the music for the ballet
22 Boris Blacher, Lysistrata, Ballett in drei Bildern nach Aristophanes (Berlin und Wiesbaden: Bote & Bock, 1951). 23 The history and the main features of ancient pantomime are the subject of The dance, a dialogue attributed to Lucian (see Luciano, La danza, foreword and commentary by Simone Beta, translation and afterword by Marina Nordera [Venice: Marsilio, 1992]). On pantomime, see also Ismene LadaRichards, Silent Eloquence: Lucian and Pantomime Dancing (London: Duckworth, 2007); Edith Hall and Rosie Wyles, New Directions in Ancient Pantomime (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 24 The music was not original; it consisted of tunes taken from piano pieces by Serge Prokofiev.
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Lysistrata. In the scenario, Lysistrata calls on the women to offer a sacrifice to Aphrodite and advises them to refuse their husbands their rights as long as they insist on making war; the happy ending of this danced version comes when the Athenian and Spartan soldiers realize that their elder statesmen sent them to war, and they decide to make peace.25 The work of the American musician Mark Brunswick evolved from a suite for mezzo-soprano and female chorus composed in 1929 into a proper ballet in 1936, while the composer was living in Europe. But 1936 can hardly be called a year of peace, if one recalls that Hitler had become Germany’s Chancellor just three years before. In that same 1936, Nazi Germany celebrated its first media success, the Olympic games in Berlin; besides the sport competitions, Germany’s capital also hosted numerous theatrical performances, among them the first success of Richard Mohaupt, the ballet Die Gaunerstreiche der Courasche (“Courasche’s naughty tricks”). This was a great success, but Mohaupt could not quite enjoy it, because like many other German composers (we have already mentioned Braunfels), he was forced to leave the country in 1939 for racial reasons (his wife being Jewish). He settled in New York, where he composed in 1941 the “dance comedy” Lysistrata, later converted into a series of choreographic episodes.26 The growing political appeal of this comedy is a peculiar feature of most of the performances of Lysistrata in the second half of the 20th century—we should not forget that Blacher’s work was first performed in 1951 in the Städtische Oper of Berlin, a city that had been first destroyed and then divided into two parts as a result of the war against the Nazis. But in the 18th century, Aristophanes’ comedy gained the attention of intellectuals for other reasons. When Pierre Marivaux composed La nouvelle colonie ou La ligue des femmes (“The New Colony or The Women’s League”), first performed in 1729 in Paris, at the Théâtre Italien—not a real opera, but a comedy with a few musical parts, enclosed a divertissement set to music by Jean-Joseph Mouret—his interest was more in social issues. In fact, his original version, the first in which the sex-strike is the supporting framework of the entire comedy, insists on the conflict between the men and the women, who have run away from the enemies who invaded their country, and have taken refuge in an island. Since the men do not want to accept the help of their women in writing the new laws that will regulate life in the colony, two of them, Arthénice, a widow of noble origins, and Madame Sorbin, the wife of a craftsman (the Aristophanic heroine is split into two different characters), lead the other
25 The ballet was performed only four years later, in 1937, at the Budapest Opera. An orchestral suite consisting of four pieces (“Prélude et hymne,” “Marche burlesque,” “Valse lente,” “Can-can”) was published in 1933 by the Parisian editor Alphonse Leduc and performed for the first time in 1936 in Budapest. 26 The five episodes (“The wives on strike,” “Dance mondaine,” “Conspiracy of the husbands,” “Rondo of the girls” and “Dance of the huntress”) were composed in 1946, edited in 1951 and then revised in 1955 after Mohaupt’s return to Europe. The final work was first performed in Karlsruhe under the title Der Weiberstreik von Athen (“The Athenian Women’s Strike”) in 1957.
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women to swear that they prefer to resign themselves to the end of the human race than yield to their partners. But their plan is unsuccessful: by taking advantage of the class difference between the two women, the men’s leader, the philosopher Hermocrate, makes them quarrel for petty reasons, inducing them to cancel the strike and resign themselves to the superiority of men. This fiasco shows that, despite the achievements of the Age of Enlightenment, the relationship between men and women (actually the subordinate position of women compared to men) was not an argument French society considered significant.27 Only in the second half of the 20th century does such an issue becomes important again, often in connection with the political one. This can easily be seen in some musicals, from the Italian “commedia musicale” Un trapezio per Lisistrata (“A Trapezium for Lysistrata”), first performed in Rome in 1958, to the musical Beaus and Eros or Goddesses in wartime (known also under the title Goddess wheel) that premiered in Cambridge Mass. almost half a century later, in 2002. The first example, written at the beginning of the Cold War, when the political relations between the Western and Eastern blocks looked much like the tension that had led to the Peloponnesian War, owes its title to the four main characters: Samio the Athenian general, Dimitrione the Spartan general, Lisistrata and her husband Euro (a patent personification of the role played by Western Europe in the conflict between the two superpowers). The story is set in an up-to-date Greece in which the clash between the two ancient towns looks like that between the US and the USSR; although clearly visible and constantly significant, the political implications are balanced by social ones, seen in the continuous conflict between Samio and his wife Bettide, between Dimitrione and his wife Tatianide, and of course between Euro and Lisistrata, whose ceaseless, flirtatious bickering is a peculiar feature of the musical.28 Also in the second example, composed in a completely different political context (the aftermath of 9/11), the contrast between war and peace is the guiding thread of the musical. The authors, Matty Selman (lyrics) and Galt MacDermot (music), emphasize considerations Aristophanes skimmed over, such as the trouble caused by the alliance between Athenian and Spartan women, as in the song “Social relationship with the enemy,” in which Lysistrata argues in reply to the shocked reaction of her friends that a peace treaty between enemy women can induce enemy men to follow their example. But they also draw attention to the different attitudes of women and men toward sex: the answer to male arrogance, as
27 Marivaux withdrew the comedy and did not even have it printed. We have only the short summary published by a literary revue (the Mercure); Mouret’s divertissement consisted of seven pieces (entrée, cantatille, prélude, menuet, parodie, gavotte and vaudeville), which were danced and sung. 21 years later, Marivaux wrote La colonie (“The Colony”), a one-act comedy in prose. The text of this new version was published by the Mercure, but Marivaux did not include it in the 1758 edition of his plays; it was not published until Fournier’s 1878 edition. 28 The authors of the text were Pietro Garinei and Sandro Giovannini, the “founding fathers” of the Italian musical comedy; the music was composed by Gorni Kramer.
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shown in the song the Athenian army chants when coming back to town for a truce (“Soldier’s vaudeville”), is the musical’s title-track, in which Lysistrata explains what love means to her and why she has decided to take such a difficult route to let love (and peace) prevail over hate (and war). Although most modern musical versions of the Aristophanic comedy insist on this double tune (war vs. peace and men vs. women), a stronger accent on the first theme can be seen in the works composed in the tensest years of the Cold War. In the foreword to his Lysistrata, first performed in 1960, Gherase Dendrino, the director of the State Theater of the Operetta of Bucharest, after having stated that the satirical comedy of Aristophanes was one of the most significant literary works inspired by pacifism, writes that since he was a sharp critic of his society, the ancient poet pointed his cutting satire at the warmongering demagogues who used war as an instrument for getting richer and richer.29 The ideological features of this Romanian Lysistrata also include a sharp attack on religion. Although helped by the gods of Olympus, the demagogue Cleon, Lysistrata’s enemy, cannot avoid defeat: this is not only evidence of the atheistic feelings supported by the Soviet regime but also a political metaphor, since in the aforementioned foreword gods are described as the satiric symbol of the powerful persons of capitalistic financial policy. A similar vision—but from the other side of the barricade—can be seen in the American musical The Happiest Girl in the World, performed for the first time at the Shubert Theater of New Haven in 1961.30 Here the negative figure is the Chief of State, the typical politician warmonger, whose deceptive maneuvres are frustrated by the Athenian general Cinesias and his wife Lysistrata (“the happiest girl in the world”). In this version too, the gods play a major role. To hinder the tricks of Pluto, the god of wealth, who is responsible for the outbreak of the war, Diana inspires Lysistrata with the idea that women must refuse men their sexual favors until they agree to make peace. When the men come back to Athens after a temporary truce, Lysistrata nearly forgets her own vow, but thanks to a sharp reminder from Diana, she manages to resist. The wily Pluto disguises himself as a shepherd and tries to break up the strike, but his move is unsuccessful. When the Athenians make up with their women, Diana returns to Mount Olympus, Pluto hides himself in his underworld kingdom, and the Chief of State is forced to see the triumph of Lysistrata. The pacifist theme could also be exploited in connection with other wars: when the US government decided to take direct action in the Vietnam War, a group of students at Wayne State University led by Robert Fink composed Lysistrata & the war, an anti-war opera written in 1963 and updated in 1967; a public performance scheduled for 28 May 1968 was first postponed and then eventually cancelled because its
29 Gherase Dendrino, Lysistrata, operetǎ în 2 acte şi 6 tablouri (Bucharest: Ed. Muzicalǎ, 1963). 30 The script was by Fred Saidy and Henry Myers, the lyrics were provided by ‘Yip’ Harburg, and the music was borrowed from the most famous of Offenbach’s operettas.
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political connotations were considered unacceptable.31 But there was no need to alter the original plot and insert allusions to contemporary personalities (as Fink did when he introduced a character named Richard Stillouse Noxious) to make the audience reflect on the ruinous effects of war. Among the many Lysistratas performed in those tumultuous years, some faithfully follow the Aristophanic play, such as the operatic versions by Paul Kont, performed in 1961 at the Landesbühne Sachsen of Dresden, then a part of the German Democratic Republic, and by Henry Leland Clarke, composed between 1968 and 1972.32 Although eccentric in its approach to the main subject of the original Greek play, the libretto of another Lysistrata from those years shows deep respect for the Aristophanic comedy. Quite different from the versions discussed so far, because the dominant role is played by the choir, and therefore more similar to an oratorio, the ‘concert comic opera in one act’ composed by Emil Petrovics, a Hungarian musician born in Nagybecskerek (today Zrenjanin in Serbia), stands out as a unique, successful experiment.33 Given in a concert performance broadcast by Hungarian radio in 1962 and staged for the first time in 1971 by the Budapest National Opera, Petrovics’ Lysistrate is divided into three parts. The first (“Since there is the war, women have to endure its troubles”) begins with an invocation by the Athenian people to the goddess of Peace and ends with the fight for control of the Acropolis; the second (“In the citadel”) is set in the Acropolis and deals with the troubles endured by the women in keeping their promise;34 the third and last (“Reconciliation”), after dealing with the troubles endured by the men because of the women’s behavior, ends with the entrance of Lysistrata and peace between the sexes. Composed in a country that only six years earlier had experienced the violence of the Soviet army, performed in a social context where any political discussion was prohibited, and staged during the days of the so-called Brezhnev doctrine (firmly enforced after the end of the Prague Spring in 1968), this charming little opera shows how the power of music, through shrewd, allusive recourse to similar situations in the distant past, can respond to hard times and difficult situations. Such respectful revisitations of the spirit of the Greek original are nonetheless rare exceptions, as far as Lysistrata is concerned, even if most recent versions have tried
31 As in The Happiest Girl in the World, the music was not original, since the pieces were composed in the style of Mozart. 32 The libretto of Kont’s Lysistrata, based on the famous German translation by Ludwig Seegers, was written by the composer himself; in 1975 and 1976, Kont composed another opera after Aristophanes (Plutos). The libretto of Clarke’s Lysistrata was by Janet Stevenson; the opera was not performed until 1984 (Marlboro, Vermont). 33 The libretto was by the composer himself, with excerpts taken from other Aristophanic plays (Peace and Women at the Thesmophoria). 34 The section “Ditty about the female sex” is one of the passages borrowed from other comedies (from the parabasis of Women at the Thesmophoria).
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not to betray Aristophanes’ intentions. This is the case, for example, with the Lysistrata composed by Mikis Theodorakis as a contribution to the cultural offerings in honor of the Olympic games in Athens and first performed at the Megaron Theater in 2002, where the limited changes inserted into the libretto by the composer, such as the presence of a “poet” (an alter ego of Theodorakis himself), did not affect the development of the story.35 But the long story of the versions of the Aristophanic comedy shows, as seen above, that changes in plot and structure were always more the rule than the exception. And if the end of the process up to this point can be identified with the Lysistrata, or the Nude Goddess composed by Mark Adamo and first performed at the Houston Grand Opera in 2005, in which the heroine is first a normal married woman (Lysia) in love with her husband who, because of her cunning suggestion, is given the name of “Lysistrata” by the other women and then becomes the character we know so well,36 the beginning is surely one of the many Singspiele composed by Franz Schubert with the aim at becoming a star of the musical scene of Vienna but never performed during his short lifetime: Die Verschworenen (“The Conspirators”).37 Ignaz Franz Castelli, the author of the libretto (whose title was then changed by the poet himself into the more innocent Der häusliche Krieg (“The Domestic Warfare”) so as not to worry the censors of the Austro-Hungarian empire, who did not look favorably on explicit references to ‘conspiracy’), placed the action in the Age of the Crusades. In his version, Countess Ludmilla, the Lysistrata character, is the wife of Count Heribert von Lüdenstein, who is away from his castle fighting the Moors. After holding a ‘council of war,’ the Countess persuades her friends to conspire against their men by refusing affectionate exchanges. But Udolin, the Count’s page, attends the meeting disguised as a woman; when the Count returns, Udolin acquaints him with the conspiracy. The men’s reaction is clever indeed: the Count behaves coldly and pretends that, in the midst of a terrible battle, he swore to abjure his wife until the women would accompany them to war and fight by their side. When the Countess hears of the alleged oath, she decides to give up the conspiracy and prepares to go off to war; the Count then reveals his plot, and the men make a lasting peace with their women. The feature that makes this version different from the original is obvious: the women hit the mark they aimed at (the end of the war), but their plan, although clever, is counterbalanced by a cleverer one planned by their men, who prove themselves much less stupid than their Greek predecessors. But there are at least two other
35 The allusions to contemporary events (such as a female chorus wearing a chador) had been introduced by the director Giorgos Michailidis, certainly with the composer’s approval. 36 The end of the war between Athens and Sparta, as well as the termination of strife between men and women, is eventually reached with the help of Ares and Aphrodite, the gods of war and love, lovers themselves. Adamo’s opera has been reviewed by Ralph Hexter, “Big women: Mark Adamo’s Lysistrata, or the Nude Goddess,” American Journal of Philology 128 (2007), pp. 119–24. 37 The first stage–performance of the Sinsgspiel was at the Stadttheather of Frankfurt on Main in 1862.
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interesting innovations. The first is the insertion of an episode from another comedy: Castelli had likely read Women at the Thesmophoria as well, because Udolin in disguise at the women’s meeting is clearly reminiscent of the presence of Euripides’ Relative at the Athenian festival. The second change is the placement of the action in another historical period, the sham Middle Ages, almost as remote from the Hapsburg Empire as the original setting. Such a temporal displacement has been applied in both directions in two very different modern adaptations of the play. In 1971, an Italian Bmovie (“Quando gli uomini armarono la clava … e con le donne fecero din-don”) whose nature is clear from its title (translated as “When men carried clubs and women played ding-dong”) offered a ludicrous Stone-Age version of the Aristophanic comedy, in which Listra, the sexy protagonist, used the powerful weapon of the sex-strike to force two tribes, the “Cavernicoli” (cave dwellers) and the “Acquamanni” (lake dwellers), to make peace. A far more serious attempt in the other direction was Lysistrata, 2411 A.D., a musical by Dale Calandra first performed in 1985 at the Center Theater in Chicago, in which the protagonist was a survivor of an atomic holocaust, who in the end succeeded in forcing the other belligerent survivors, the inhabitants of the ‘brain’ and the ‘brawn’ provinces, to make a lasting peace.38 But let us return to the main novelty introduced by Castelli: the women’s defeat and the men’s victory. The operetta composed by the ‘German Offenbach’ Paul Lincke, who himself conducted the premiere of his Lysistrata at the Apollo-Theater in Berlin in 1902, ends in a similar way. Here the librettist Heinrich Bolten-Bäckers has Lysistrata (the wife of Themistocles, the leader of the Athenian army, portrayed as a perfect “boastful soldier”) fall in love with Leonidas, a Spartan prisoner brought back to Athens by Themistocles. Charmed by the scent of a wonderful spring night, surrounded by the flicker of discreet glow-worms (portrayed in the terzetto called the ‘Glühwürmchen-Idyll,’ the most famous part of the operetta), she betrays both her husband and her oath, although in the end her liaison with an enemy is seen as a practical demonstration that Athens and Sparta can live together without fighting constantly.39 In this version, the fate of the flawless Aristophanic heroine is even worse: if in Castelli’s libretto her only fault was being less wily than her husband, in BoltenBäckers’ she is a cynical Athenian woman who plans the sex-strike and sleeps with her Spartan lover. The same shameful behavior is attributed by the French playwright Maurice Donnay to the protagonist of his Lysistrata, produced (in three different versions) in 1892, 1896 and 1919. Donnay’s heroine is married to an insignificant Athenian named Lycon, but she also has a lover (Agathos, leader of the Athenian army). Moreover, she knows from the beginning that she will not keep the oath she has imposed on her friends: Lysistrata turns her husband out of the house to show the 38 The libretto of the musical (written and conceived by Dale Calandra, music and lyrics by Donald Coates) has been published by The Fireside Theatre (Garden City, New York) in 1990. 39 The 1902 Lysistrata was in two acts. Later on, Lincke revised it and wrote a three-act version, performed for the first time in 1934, only four months after the ‘night of the long knives.’
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other women she is determined to keep her promise, but later opens the doors of Artemis’ temple and hides inside with her lover. During their night of love, Lysistrata and Agathos overturn the statue of the goddess and break it; the next morning, before leaving the temple, they put in its place the statue of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. When the women open the door of the temple and discover that Aphrodite has taken the place of Artemis, Lysistrata’s clever explanation (this means that love must take the place of chastity—that is, the women should give up their promise) is welcomed with universal satisfaction.40 The music that accompanied Donnay’s play in 1892 was provided by Amedée Dutacq, a pupil of César Franck. For the occasion, he composed a set of 16 pieces in a style reminiscent of the young Debussy. Most of the pieces are instrumental, such as the prelude, the sensuous ‘danse orientale’ and the three entr’actes; some are choral (among them a hymn to Diana, a ‘marche religieuse’ that precedes the oath and a ‘marche athénienne’).41 Although he won the second “Grand Prix de Rome” in musical composition in 1876, Dutacq is relatively unknown. But other, far more famous musicians have written incidental music for this Aristophanic comedy. Engelbert Humperdinck composed the incidental music for a Lysistrata based on an adaptation by Leo Greiner and preceded by a prologue written by Hugo von Hoffmannsthal; the comedy was directed by the celebrated Austrian director Max Reinhardt and was performed in the Kammerspiele of Berlin in 1908.42 The Russian composer Reinhold Glière wrote the incidental music for a Russian performance at the Moscow Art Theater in 1923, produced by Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. Glière provided marches, chorales, hymns and bacchanals, using the ancient Doric and Phrygian modes. At the beginning of the 1930s Leo Ornstein, an American composer born in Ukraine, turned the incidental music he had composed for the Lysistrata directed by Norman Bel Geddes (the first modern American production of an Attic comedy, staged in 1930 at the 44th Street Theater) into the Lysistrata-Suite, performed for the first time in 1933.43
40 For a detailed analysis of the three different versions of Donnay’s Lysistrata, see the first chapter (‘Lysistrata joins the boulevard’) of Marina A. Kotzamani, Lysistrata, Playgirl of the Western World: Aristophanes on the Early Modern Stage (Diss. Princeton 1997). Donnay was probably acquainted with another French version of the Aristophanic comedy, written by François-Benoit Hoffman in 1802; on this play, see Charalampos Orfanos, “Revolutionary Aristophanes?,” in: Hall and Wrigley, Aristophanes (above, n. 9), pp. 106–16. 41 Dutacq’s voice and piano score was published in 1893 by Choudens, the famous French publisher who also published Bizet’s Carmen and Gounod’s Faust. 42 In the 1880s, Humperdinck composed the incidental music for another Aristophanic comedy (Frogs). His published music for Lysistrata consists of three musical numbers for wind instruments, horns, harp and percussion, to be played in the second act: ‘Festzug’ [Procession], ‘Schlußchor’ [Final chorus], and ‘Schlußtanz’ [Final dance]. 43 On Reinhardt’s, Nemirovich-Danchenko’s and Geddes’ Lysistratas, see Kotzanami, Lysistrata (above, n. 39), chapters II–IV; on Nemirovich-Danchenko’s production, see also M. Kotzanami, “Lysis-
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The significant changes imported into the original plot by Castelli (a husband for Lysistrata—we should not forget that the Aristophanes character seems to be single), Bolten-Bäckers (an Athenian husband and a Spartan lover) and Donnay (an Athenian husband and an Athenian lover) show that there is no limit to the alterations a Greek drama can undergo. Indeed, Lysistrata has suffered even greater modifications. In 1885, the French town of Lorient saw the first performance of an opéra-comique loosely based on Aristophanes’ play. The plot of this Lysistrata is extremely complicated; the most relevant features of the Greek original (the oath, the conquest of the Acropolis and the inescapable happy ending) are mixed in a trivial way with the commonplace marks of second-class theater, such as characters in disguises and unexpected recognitions. Etienne Lettry, the writer of the libretto, seems to know Plautus’ comedies well, exactly as Millaud and Jolivet did. But he lacked the technique and competence of the brilliant and learned Parisian intellectuals, nor could Eugène Féautrier, a relatively obscure musician, compose a work like Lecocq’s operettes.44 Another type of change is apparent in Wild Wild Women, an English musical created in 1981 for the Orange Tree Theater in Richmond, in which the main theme (the sex-strike) is combined with ideas borrowed from other equally famous dramas. The authors, the librettist Michael Richmond and the composer Nola York, took the Aristophanic subject, added the more famous subject of a deadly rivalry between two families (Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet) and set it in the Far West, in the imaginary town of Aggroville in which the McLairds and the Clantons are constantly killing one another. The Lysistrata of this version is Alice Tibbs, the manager of the Peaceable Haven Saloon; she is the one who urges all the women of the little town to take a solemn vow. Despite attempts to break the women, Alice succeeds in forcing the men of the two hostile families to holster their Colts.45 This brief review of the luxurious Nachleben of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata leads to a peculiar and interesting consideration. Unlike other Aristophanic plays, Lysistrata
trata Joins the Soviet Revolution: Aristophanes as Engaged Theatre” in: John Dillon and S.E. Wilmer (eds.), Rebel Women. Staging Ancient Greek Drama Today (London: Methuen, 2005), pp. 78–111; on Geddes’ production, see Kotzamani, pp. 951–70 in this volume. Other incidental music was composed by Glen Haydon (1930), Sten Broman (1933), Wolfgang Fortner (1946) and Wilfrid Howard Mellers (a play in music, for soprano, baritone and speaking chorus, first performed in 1948). 44 The music of this opéra-comique is lost. Féautrier’s only popular piece is La paimpolaise, a ‘song of the Icelandic fishermen’ published in 1896, two years before his death. (This is a chanson still popular in France; it was used in 2006 by the director Claude Leconte in the soundtrack of his movie My best friend.) 45 This peculiar Western setting is not a novelty, however: in The Second Greatest Sex, a 1955 movie by George Marshall, the action is set in a Kansas town in which the men fight over possession of a safe filled with important records; the heroine (Liza, a name that clearly recalls Aristophanes’ Lysistrata) organizes the marital strike after her husband has left her alone on their wedding night. On this and many other movies inspired by Aristophanes, see Winkler, pp. 1096–1162 in this volume.
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enjoyed no particular success during the classical period. Its plot is never mentioned by any Greek or Latin author; the text is seldom quoted; there are only four papyrus scraps (for a meagre total of 75 lines); and it was not among the plays studied and commented on by the Byzantine scholar Demetrius Triclinius. The play was even published later than most of the others: the first modern edition, printed by Aldo Manuzio in 1498, did not include Women at the Thesmophoria and Lysistrata, which were not edited until 1516, when the Florentine editor Giunta published them. Moreover, in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, while many other plays were constantly edited, commented, translated into Latin and modern languages, and even staged, Lysistrata continued to be ignored, mostly because of its indecent plot, as it is apparent from the fact that the Jesuite scholar Pierre Brumoy, in his 1730 edition of the masterpieces of Greek theater, dedicated only eight pages to the comedy, blaming its author because “he has depreciated the characteristic freedom of every comic poet by cramming into his plays such dreadful vulgarities and abominable descriptions that will induce all the readers whose mind is modest and noble to feel for him loathing and execration.”46 But the increasing success of this play from the beginning of the 19th century on is surprisingly counterbalanced by the progressive disappearance of other Aristophanic comedies. Although famous, well written, and not particularly difficult to stage, the other plays never induced musicians and writers to dedicate their creative energy to them. Many readers will have already noticed that, among the Aristophanic plays mentioned so far, one is missing—and not an insignificant one. Although Clouds was famous even in antiquity (it was mentioned by a number of Greek and Latin authors and was part of the so-called “Byzantine triad” along with Wealth and Frogs, and was therefore regularly studied in Byzantine schools), and although it was repeatedly published and translated into Latin and modern languages since Melanchton’s 1528 commented edition, the play has never been set to music.47 There is only one partial
46 According to Brumoy, Aristophanes had “dégradé sa liberté comique, par une licence affreuse & par des peintures abominables, qui le rendront toujours l’horreur & l’esecration de tout Lecteur qui aura un peu de modestie & de noblesse dans les sentimens” (Pierre Brumoy, Le théâtre des Grecs, vol. 3 [Paris: Rollin Pere, Jean-Baptiste Coignard, Rollin Fils, 1730]). 47 Philipp Melanchthon, Aristophanis comici facetissimi, Nubes ac Plutus comediae, Haguenau 1528; Nicodemus Frischlin, Aristophanes veteris comoediae princeps … repurgatus, Frankfurt 1586 (a Latin translation of Wealth, Clouds, Frogs, Knights and Acharnians); Anne Le Fèvre Dacier, Le Plutus et les Nuées d’Aristophane (Paris: Denys Thierry et Claude Barbin, 1684), the first French translation; The Clouds: a comedy written by Aristophanes … now first intirely translated [by James White] (London: T. Payne, 1756). Together with the other ten plays, Lysistrata was first translated into Latin by Andreas Divus and into Italian by the brothers Rositini, who published a complete translation of the comedies in 1538 (Andreas Divus, Aristophanis … Comoediae undecim e Graeco in Latinum ad verbum translatae, Giacomo Pocatela apud D. Jacob a Burgofrancho, Venetiis) and 1545 (Le comedie del facetissimo Aristofane, tradutte di greco in lingua commune d’Italia, per Bartolomio & Pietro Rositini de Prat’ Alboino, in Venegia, apresso Vicenzo Vaugris, al segno d’Erasmo). On Divus’ translation, see S. Beta,
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exception to this statement: Socrates, the most famous character in the play, is present in certain operas. But these works share nothing with the Aristophanic comedy: in the “dramma buffo” Socrate immaginario composed by Giovanni Paisiello in 1775 on a libretto of Ferdinando Galiani and Giovanni Battista Lorenzi, the protagonist is the rich nobleman Don Tammaro Promontorio da Modugno, convinced that he is a reincarnation of the Greek philosopher. Nor does the plot of Aristophanes’ Clouds have anything to do with the most famous libretto dedicated to the Athenian thinker, written by Nicolò Minato and set to music by many celebrated composers, such as Antonio Draghi (Prague, 1680), Georg Philipp Telemann (Hamburg, 1721), Antonio Caldara and Georg Rutter II (Vienna, 1731), and Francisco António d’Almeida (Lisbon, 1733). La pazienza di Socrate con due mogli (“Socrates’ patience with two wives”) takes place in Athens and tells the story of Socrates who, having been forced by Athenian law to marry two women (Xanthippe and Amitta), must endure the continuous altercation between them.48 But even if Aristophanes as a comic author is entirely absent from this play (there is no Strepsiades trying to learn the rhetorical techniques of the Sophists, nor any portrait of the differences between the old and the new education), he is a part of the play as a singing character. In the libretto adapted by Johann Ulrich König for Telemann’s Der geduldige Socrates, first performed with great success at the Theater am Gänsemarkt, Aristophanes is a “satirischer Poet und Feind des Sokrates” (“a satiric poet, foe to Socrates”), who has words with Socrates’ disciples throughout the play. Telemann even provided him with an aria. At the end of the second act, the tenor Aristophanes writes and sings the following lines: Let’s fight! Let’s fight! Give me the pen! And I want to use black ink! An insulting, thorny poem against anybody who tries to contradict me must flow from my quill. If I am mocked, there is no honour for me. What could be worse? I wish I could expiate the pleasure I am going feel if my poem succeeds in annoying him!49
“La prima traduzione latina della Lisistrata. Luci e ombre della versione di Andrea Divo,” Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 100.1 (2012), pp. 95–114; on Divus’ and Frischlin’s translations, see Nassichuk, pp. 493–515 elsewhere in this volume. 48 On these operas, see K. Döring, “Sokrates auf der Opernbühne,” Antike und Abendland 47 (2001), pp. 198–213. In the last part of his article, Döring deals with a modern opera as well (Pallas Athens weint, composed by Ernst Krenek in 1955). 49 “Zum Streit, zum Streit! / Die Feder her, nun will ich Black, Black, Black vergiessen. / Es soll ein stachlich Schimpfgedicht / auf jeden, der mir widerspricht, / aus meinem Kiele fliessen; / gereicht es mir gleich nicht zu Ehr’ /, belacht man mich? Was ist es mehr? / Kann ich die Lust nur büssen, / dass es ihn wird verdriessen.” In his review of a Berlin performance of Telemann’s opera (Staatsoper, Unter
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This is not a particularly significant piece of music; it is a standard revenge aria, whose beauty cannot be compared with Der Hölle Rache (from Mozart’s The Magic Flute) or Sì vendetta, tremenda vendetta (from Verdi’s Rigoletto). But the importance and the meaning of Aristophanes in the world of opera (and music in general) cannot be confined to this short, unique piece. I hope to have shown in these pages that Aristophanes has left a lasting mark in the world of music; if his weight in the history of the musical theater cannot be compared with that of tragic playwrights such as Euripides, Shakespeare or Schiller, his influence is by no means inferior to that of his ancient and modern comic colleagues such as Plautus and Molière.
den Linden, 29 September 2007), after having said that “the venomous Aristophanes” was “a character who seems a clear forerunner of Wagner’s Beckmesser,” A.J. Goldmann praises the tenor Alexey Kudrya for having sung the aria “with suitable pomp and frustration” and for having performed it “with obvious relish as he angrily stabbed himself with quills” (Operanews, December 2007, vol. 72, n. 6).
Amanda Wrigley
Aristophanes at the BBC, 1940s–1960s Abstract: This essay investigates the performance life and history of Aristophanes’ plays on BBC Radio in the 1940s and 1950s, alongside a BBC Television production of Lysistrata in the 1960s, paying attention to both their production contexts and the way audiences engaged with them. It not only explores the various approaches that have been taken in response to the challenge of rendering a highly visual comic form— Aristophanic drama—in purely aural and imaginative terms for production on the notoriously ‘blind’ medium of radio, but also charts how works from the unfamiliar and sometimes obscure genre of ancient comedy were made intelligible and understandable for the mass, non-specialist audience. The symbiotic relationship drawn out between these mass media productions of Aristophanes’ plays and the spheres of education, publishing and the stage highlights important points of creative engagement between classicists and writers on the one hand, and creative professionals in radio and television on the other, focusing especially on the contributions of Gilbert Murray, Louis MacNeice and Patric Dickinson.
Introduction The comic humor in Aristophanic drama lies in both the text—the words and verse forms—of the plays and the concomitant use by actors of gesture, movement, props and stage machinery. As with much comedy to the present day, it therefore relies on a highly visual performance for a large part of its effect.1 This essay, however, largely investigates the performance life and history of Aristophanic plays in the notoriously ‘blind’ medium of radio—to be more specific, on BBC Radio in the 1940s and 1950s; it also considers a 1960s BBC Television production of Lysistrata (of which no recording exists, making it visually deficient in a different way).2 I thus explore the various
1 See Amanda Wrigley, “Aristophanes Revitalized! Music and Spectacle on the Academic Stage,” in: Edith Hall, Amanda Wrigley (eds.), Aristophanes in Performance, 421 BC–AD 2007: Peace, Birds, and Frogs (Oxford: Legenda, 2007), pp. 136–54, for the importance of “stage business” in a 1892 Oxford production of Frogs. 2 Radio’s so-called “blindness” refers to the absence of a visual or physical dimension. Radio drama’s long and strong relationship with the stage meant that for a long time the critical focus was often on what was being lost in the process of transmitting stage plays via radio: in 1949, for example, a radio critic wrote that “radio drama has always drawn what strength it can from its own most crippling limitation, blindness” (Philip Hope-Wallace, “The Unities in Radio Drama,” The BBC Quarterly 4.1 (1949), p. 22). Others have considered this characteristic difference from the stage a remarkable opportunity: the best radio drama is thought to achieve “a profound expressivity, not despite limitations in scale, but because of them,” with the absence of the visual and physical dimension freeing the
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approaches that have been taken in response to the challenge of rendering a highly visual comic form in purely aural and imaginative terms, and of making intelligible and understandable to a mass audience works from the unfamiliar and sometimes obscure genre of ancient comedy. I also chart the symbiotic relationship between these audiovisual mass media and the spheres of education, publishing and the stage, highlighting important points of contact between classicists and writers on the one hand, and creative professionals in radio and television on the other. I also attempt to throw light on some of the tensions involved in rendering certain aspects of Aristophanic drama in the mass medium of radio, such as the question of propriety in such a public sphere. I begin with a discussion of how the long life of Gilbert Murray’s translations of Greek drama on the stage was extended by more than a decade on the air, focusing especially on the life of his Aristophanic translations on radio in the 1940s. My second section analyses perhaps the most significant Aristophanic radio play ever broadcast by the BBC, Louis MacNeice’s 1946 Enemy of Cant, a creative and imaginative approach to the presentation of the comedies for the medium. The Aristophanic translations and radio adaptations commissioned by the BBC from Patric Dickinson in the 1950s are the subject of the third section, which looks in particular at his Lysistrata, which was produced on radio in 1957 and on television in 1964. The frequency with which Aristophanes (and, indeed, other writers considered “canonical”) was performed on radio had much to do with the principles on which the BBC was founded and, in particular, the drive of its first Director-General John Reith (in post from 1922 to 1938) to grant wide, public, common access to the full range of what was perceived to be the nation’s cultural wealth.3 The number of Greek plays broadcast on radio and the size of the audiences—which sometimes ran into millions, with even the less popular broadcasts being heard by tens or hundreds of thousands— mean that these mass media engagements are of great significance for an understanding of the reception of ancient Greece in 20th-century Britain. English translations, adaptations and creative reworkings of ancient Greek plays and other texts were accessible more widely and to far larger and more diverse audiences than has generally been recognized. During the war, radio had become a great cultural force and the focus of attention of any thinking man or woman. It had not merely become the national theatre, offering under [Val] Gielgud’s
writer and the production team’s creativity as well as the listener’s imagination in exciting ways (Elissa S. Guralnick, Sight Unseen: Beckett, Pinter, Stoppard, and Other Contemporary Dramatists on Radio (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1996), p. x). How successfully this applies to radio adaptations of stage plays does, however, depend very much on how the text is adapted for and realized on air. 3 The cultural broadcasting policies of the BBC, deriving from the Royal Charter, were concerned to “inform, educate, and entertain” the mass audience (Asa Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Vol. 4: Sound and Vision (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979; rev. edn. 1995), pp. 69–71).
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direction a repertoire which included plays not commonly performed even in university theatres.4
The audience for radio grew substantially during the Second World War owing to the ability of the medium to function as a reliable channel for bringing both news and entertainment directly into the home. Interest in arts and culture also increased in wartime: the audience for radio plays, for example, had doubled by 1945.5 The broadcasting historian Kate Whitehead notes that, although “one could … regard this demand as a temporary reaction to cultural deprivation rather than a genuine blossoming of interest in the arts per se,” social changes such as those effected by the 1944 Education Act, which raised the bar on educational standards across the board, may also have been active in changing the educational profile and cultural tastes of the nation.6 The BBC responded to this enlarged and interested audience with an expanded and revived broadcasting service. In 1944, the latest Director-General, William Haley, may have had such social factors in mind when he announced that the future model of the BBC along three radio networks would make Britain “the best informed democracy in the world.”7 On the outbreak of war, the pre-war National and Regional Programmes were collapsed into the Home Service, a channel for spoken-word programmes (news, talks and drama) that was retained in the post-war years. The Forces Programme, established in 1940 to entertain the fighting forces, was transformed in 1945 into the new Light Programme.8 In 1946, the entirely new Third Programme began broadcasting; its stated aim was to broadcast opera, musical concerts, drama and talks of an unashamedly “highbrow” nature to an audience “already aware of artistic experience and [who] will include persons of taste and intelligence, and of education; it is, therefore, selective not casual, and both attentive and critical … The Programme need not cultivate any other audience.”9 The post-war division of broadcasting implies a segmentation of the audience by cultural “brow”—with “lowbrow” fare offered by the Light, and “middlebrow” and “highbrow” material by the Home and Third, respectively. Audience research conducted by the BBC, however, demonstrated that theories of segmentation by “brow” were not representative of actual listening patterns: “we found that, far from confining their listening to the Third Programme, most of those who valued it and listened to
4 Ian Rodger, Radio Drama (London: Macmillan, 1982), p. 69. 5 Asa Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Vol. 3: The War of Words, 1939–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970; rev. edn. 1995), p. 46. 6 Kate Whitehead, The Third Programme: A Literary History (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), pp. 10–11. 7 War of Words (above, n. 5), pp. 717–18, 723; Third Programme (above, n. 6), p. 15. 8 War of Words (above, n. 5), pp. 46–7, 139–40. 9 Internal memorandum, 16 January 1946 (BBC WAC R34/602). On 30 September 1967—when the popular music network, Radio 1, came on air—the Light and the Home were renamed Radio 2 and Radio 4, respectively, and the Third became Radio 3 (the labels they still have today).
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it frequently, nevertheless spent more time in listening to the other services, the Home Service and the Light Programme. While there may have been people who fitted the highbrow-lowbrow stereotypes, there was in fact widespread catholicity in listening.”10 From the birth of broadcasting as domestic entertainment in the 1920s to the end of the 1960s, there were over 100 theatre productions of Aristophanes’ plays in Britain. The great majority of these were staged in academic institutions (for example, the Universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh and Oxford; several public and grammar schools, including Dulwich College and Lancing College; and, notably, a production of Frogs at the Sheffield Educational Settlement in 1945).11 A number were performed in Greek, although several used translations by Gilbert Murray, Benjamin Bickley Rogers or Dudley Fitts.12 The limited number of productions outside educational establishments include musical versions of Birds (1928) and Lysistrata (1931) staged by Terence Gray’s Cambridge Festival Theatre, Frogs at the People’s Theatre in Newcastle (1937), the 1938 production of Lysistrata and its 1947 adaptation Operation Olive Branch by Theatre Workshop, and the 1957 Lysistrata produced by Minos Volonakis at the Oxford Playhouse.13 It is worth reflecting on the relatively small number of people who would have seen these productions in light of the size of the audiences for Aristophanes on radio, which are likely to have been counted in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, in the post-war period. The BBC was well placed to engage with other cultural and educational spheres and to bring these activities within the reach of a wide public. It was not, however, merely a channel for the broadcast of cultural activity elsewhere, nor did the chain of cultural “influence” run in a single direction. Indeed, the relationship of radio, especially, with the spheres of education, publishing and the stage may more accurately be described as symbiotic. The success of new translations of Greek drama on the stage led directly to radio producers signing them up for production on the air.
10 Robert Silvey, Who’s Listening? The Story of BBC Audience Research (London: Allen & Unwin, 1974), p. 125. 11 For detail, see the APGRD Database (www.apgrd.ox.ac.uk/database). On the modern performance of Aristophanes, see Aristophanes in Performance (above, n. 1); Gonda Van Steen, Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); and various essays in this volume. 12 For a bibliographical survey of published translations of Aristophanes from the 15th century up to 1920, see Vasiliki Giannopoulou, “Aristophanes in Translation before 1920,” in Aristophanes in Performance (above, n. 1), pp. 309–42. 13 On the Theatre Workshop productions, see Claire Warden, “Politics, War, and Adaptation: Ewan MacColl’s Operation Olive Branch, 1947,” in: Amanda Wrigley (ed.), Translation, Performance, and Reception of Greek Drama, 1900–1960: International Dialogues, a special double issue of Comparative Drama 44.4 (Winter 2010)—45.1 (Spring 2011). On the Meadow Players’Lysistrata, see Amanda Wrigley, Performing Greek Drama in Oxford and on Tour with the Balliol Players (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2011), pp. 126–7.
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BBC producers for radio and television also commissioned translations from scholars which often found their way into print, as did new dramatic works drawing on ancient Greek texts by creative writers such as Louis MacNeice and Edward Sackville-West.14 Classical scholars such as Gilbert Murray offered not only translations for radio performance (sometimes pre-publication) but also talks on classical subjects that amounted to accessible “radio lectures” for the public. There is evidence that on many occasions radio productions directly inspired amateur stage productions—especially in schools and colleges—and in some cases stimulated the teaching of Greek literature in translation in the “non-classical” classroom. There is also evidence for some listeners being stimulated by broadcasts to take their personal reading further, and listeners regularly appealed to the BBC for more background information on programmes concerning Greek drama. “Cultural education” was not beyond the aspirations of policy makers at the BBC and, in employing the services of leading academics in the field, it ensured that radio functioned as a channel for the dissemination of the academic translations and ideas arising from current scholarship to those within the massive audience who wished to partake. It is thus manifest from the archival evidence not only that the BBC was central to British cultural life in the period under discussion, but that it actively engaged and indeed had a symbiotic relationship with other educational and cultural spheres beyond radio.
I. The long life of Gilbert Murray’s translations in radio performance A notable example of collaboration between the worlds of radio, scholarship and the amateur academic stage occurred in April 1947, when listeners to a radio production of Aristophanes’ Frogs in Gilbert Murray’s translation had the opportunity immediately afterward to hear the Cambridge academic J.T. Sheppard (1881–1968) introduce scenes from the same play given in ancient Greek by members of the University who had staged Frogs as the Cambridge Greek Play earlier in the year.15 These adjacent programmes were broadcast from 6pm on 27 April 1947 on the BBC Third Programme, the network that—as noted above—had been established a few months earlier for broadcasts of an unashamedly “highbrow” nature for an intended audience “already
14 For example, on Sackville-West’s The Rescue, a retelling for radio of Odysseus’ return to Ithaca, see Amanda Wrigley, “A Wartime Radio Odyssey: Edward Sackville-West and Benjamin Britten’s The Rescue (1943),” The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media 8.2 (2010), pp. 81–103. 15 See Pat Easterling, “The Early Years of the Cambridge Greek Play: 1882–1912,” in: Christopher Stray (ed.), Classics in 19th and 20th Century Cambridge: Curriculum, Culture and Community (Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society, 1999), pp. 27–47.
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aware of artistic experience.” What is interesting is that the English-language production of Frogs actually premièred a few months earlier, in February 1947, in the World Theatre series on the Home Service where, rather than being followed by scenes performed in ancient Greek, the production was prefaced by an introduction and synopsis of the action by Gilbert Murray himself. It is with this intended Home Service audience in mind that we must read the anxieties about putting Aristophanes on air discussed below. Val Gielgud, Head of Drama at the BBC, had approached Murray in April 1946 about writing a “special version” of his 1902 rhyming verse-translation of Frogs for radio production.16 From the start, the focus of their correspondence was on making the play both comprehensible and funny for the mass radio audience. “The problem,” as Gielgud wrote to Murray, “is one of making the humour intelligible to an audience for the most part lamentably lacking in classical background. … I have little doubt that you would be able to make certain adjustments and possible additions to the script which would be of the greatest possible value.”17 Gielgud was not the only one concerned about “translating” Aristophanes to the air: “You know my doubts whether our audience will appreciate the finer points, or even the broader points of Aeschylus + Euripides, but you persuade me that this difficulty can be overcome by special presentation. I’m sure that we need to make a quite special effort to help listeners with Aristophanes.”18 Murray attempted to rise to this challenge: I have been engaged for some days in trying to make the Frogs intelligible to the plain man. … I have tried, (1) to cut out topical allusions, though of course they are (or were) part of the fun, (2) to deal with some of the visual points, e.g. to write a slightly different opening showing who Dionysus is and that he is disguised as Hercules, with lion-skin and club. Also a line here and there to explain the entrance of new persons.19
A few months later, Murray wrote: I send you herewith a text of the Frogs roughly cut down to about the required length and modernised here and there so as to be intelligible to an average audience; e.g. putting Bacchus for Dionysus and Jove for Zeus and things like coupons for obols or oil-flasks. The beginning is
16 Published alongside his translations of Euripides’ Bacchae and Hippolytus: Gilbert Murray, The Hippolytus and Bacchæ of Euripides, Together with the Frogs of Aristophanes, Translated into English Rhyming Verse (London: Allen, 1902). 17 Letter from Val Gielgud to Gilbert Murray, 3 April 1946 (BBC WAC Gilbert Murray Copyright file 1, 1939–1962). 18 Handwritten note from Lindsay Wellington [Head of Home Service] to Val Gielgud, 29 March 1946, at the foot of a typescript memo from the latter dated 12 March (BBC WAC Gilbert Murray Scriptwriter file, 1936–1966). 19 Letter from Gilbert Murray to Val Gielgud, 25 April 1946 (BBC WAC Gilbert Murray Scriptwriter file, 1936–1966).
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unfortunately all visual, depending on the absurd appearance of Dionysus dressed as Heracles. I have therefore written a page to take the place of the first two or three pages of text.20
On hearing the broadcast, however, Murray was extremely disheartened: The difficulties of doing a Greek Comedy on the radio were greater than I realised. I listened in the company of a quite intelligent though not very nimble-witted lady, and found that she could hardly understand a word of it. It was a blow, but so it was. I think for one thing that a comedy depends more on sight than a tragedy (Greek). There are more speakers, more movement &c. It was often hard to tell who was speaking. Then, though I tried to get rid of some of the topical allusions, I did not quite realise how many were left. I wonder if it would be better to have a Commentator such as they have for the Trollope novels. It also struck me that a comedy in a theatre depends a great deal on the ‘laughs’ of the audience. A joke received in silence is very depressing.21
Here Murray is, perhaps unwittingly, gesturing toward some of the inherent difficulties in the Drama Department’s traditional approach to presenting stage plays on the air in the 1940s. The level of adaptation permitted by the culturally conservative Gielgud—who produced Frogs—was minimal. What Murray perfectly realised on listening to this—what appears to be his first translation of Aristophanes to be produced on the air—is that they required specific kinds of adaptation to make them work well. Gielgud was frequently scornful about listeners (often ruder than Murray was, above, of his listening companion) and often blamed problems arising from the nature of the medium or a particular production on listeners’ imaginative abilities and practical energy to engage, rather than dare traverse the boundaries of his cultural traditionalism and let plays be freely adapted so they worked better on air. He responded to Murray as follows: I am sorry that your companion should have been so apparently flummoxed, but I think a good deal depends on whether she happened to be a fairly regular listener to plays broadcast or not. The audience inured to the convention of the broadcasting of plays, with all the limitations that that convention implies, has grown so astonishingly during recent years that I feel that the obscurities may have been, in practice, more apparent than real as far as the majority of listeners was concerned.22
Despite after his initial unhappiness, Murray received a great deal of unsolicited correspondence expressing appreciation and praise. Following the Third Programme
20 Letter from Gilbert Murray to Val Gielgud, 13 September 1946 (BBC WAC Gilbert Murray Scriptwriter file, 1936–1966). 21 Letter from Gilbert Murray to Val Gielgud, 5 February 1947 (BBC WAC Gilbert Murray Scriptwriter file, 1936–1966). 22 Letter from Val Gielgud to Gilbert Murray, 7 February 1947 (BBC WAC Gilbert Murray Scriptwriter file, 1936–1966).
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broadcast in April, he wrote again to Gielgud that “some children living near here listened in and I hear they were delighted, and they say they understood most of it.”23 A dominant note in the press criticism, which echoes the initial concerns of Murray and Gielgud, is what individual members of the audience at large may have made of it. For example, W.E. Williams, writing in The Observer, ponders: [W]hile there is much in The Frogs which the modern listener can apply to the foibles and mannerisms of our own time, there is also much which baffles him unless he enjoys a close knowledge of the local and topical objects of Aristophanes’ satire. Yet I daresay that most listeners, despite their occasional bewilderment, persevered with the programme, because enough clues and allusions kept arising in the nick of time.24
Williams concludes by saying that “A paraphrase by Louis MacNeice might have brought The Frogs nearer home to us, for the Gilbert Murray translation, despite its fluency and resourcefulness, is sometimes a little too formal to convey the pungency of Aristophanes.” The reference here is to Louis MacNeice’s Enemy of Cant, a “panorama of Aristophanic comedy” produced on BBC Radio the previous year (and the subject of the next section). Philip Hope-Wallace, writing in The Listener, makes a similar point, noting that the “Swinburnian surge and swing” of Murray’s verse, although still effectively “period” in a tragedy, is of no advantage at all in satirical comedy.25 Yet some listeners were clearly persuaded of the modernity of Murray’s radio adaptation, even in response to a new production of his Frogs in 1951 when, he feared, his rendering of “oil-pots” as “coupons” was out-of-date:26 “What a wonderful evening’s entertainment that was! How amusing in all the best ways—how clever, how witty, how rhythmic, how riotously funny in places, how interesting & how beautiful in others—& above all how up to date (right up to the moment), & how YOUNG it all was—in short, how symbolic of its second begetter!”27 Murray’s Frogs may have been the first Aristophanes on British radio,28 but it is not the first recorded broadcast of Greek comedy on air. That honor rests with a 1942
23 Gilbert Murray to Val Gielgud, 29 April 1947 (BBC WAC Gilbert Murray Scriptwriter file, 1936–1966). 24 W.E. Williams, “Radio: Voice from Athens,” The Observer, 9 February 1947, p. 2. 25 Philip Hope-Wallace, “Broadcast Drama: Much-Croaking-in-the-Cistern,” The Listener, 6 February 1947, p. 259. 26 Letter from Gilbert Murray to Val Gielgud, 4 December 1951 (BBC WAC Gilbert Murray Scriptwriter file, 1936–1966). 27 Postcard from one K.M.C. of 4 Park Town to Gilbert Murray, 4 December 1951 (BBC WAC Gilbert Murray Scriptwriter file, 1936–1966). 28 Around 50 lines of Frogs in W.J. Hickie’s translation appeared in Hellas, a half-hour programme to mark the occasion of Greek Independence Day on 25 March 1941. Hellas, written and produced by Denis Johnston, included extracts from Homer, Pausanias, Shelley, Wilde and Byron, and was broadcast on the Home and Overseas Services as well as used by the Ministry of Information’s Transcription Scheme (memo from Miss E.M. Haynes to Denis Johnston, 25 March 1941, BBC WAC R19/457).
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production of Murray’s unpublished translation and reconstruction of Menander’s Perikeiromene, under the title The Rape of the Locks. At this point, the production history of Greek plays on BBC Radio stretched back for almost two decades, and it is therefore possible that Greek comedy had been broadcast in some form before the early 1940s.29 This 1942 Menandrian production may nonetheless be considered representative of any earlier productions of Greek comedy, in that it used a translation by Murray, who had been the favored translator of Greek tragic productions on radio from the 1920s to the 1940s. It was doubtless the rapid and sustained popularity of Murray’s texts on amateur and professional stages (and also—a closely related point—in print) in the two decades before the establishment of the BBC in 1922 that made him a natural choice in the early days of broadcasting, when drama producers looked to the stage and the literary canon for dramatic material. The first quarter of the 20th century had seen at least 50 productions of Murray’s translations on the British stage, with at least the same number staged in the rest of the century.30 What is interesting—and perhaps testimony to both the BBC’s project to broadcast the nation’s cultural wealth and the enduring popularity of Murray’s translations on the page and the stage—is that his translations continued to be popular choices for production on radio long after they fell out of favor on the professional stage at least.31 Murray was also a prolific contributor of radio talks on classical and political subjects, such that by 1942 he was a household name not only among readers and theatre-goers but also among the vast and various listening publics.32 The 50-minute radio première of Murray’s The Rape of the Locks in 1942 was broadcast at the late hour of 10.30pm on Saturday 28 February 1942. Little evidence survives for the production processes, but the Listener Research Report reveals a typical mixture of response to Greek comedy on the radio. Perhaps predictably 29 The records in the BBC Written Archives Centre and the British Library Sound Archive are incomplete; the 1942 production of The Rape of the Locks is the simply the earliest in that very incomplete record. 30 These figures, taken from the APGRD Database (above, n. 11), should be considered a conservative starting point: his translations were particularly favored by the smaller repertory companies, colleges and schools whose production histories still require a considerable amount of archival investigation. He was also extremely popular in the USA during the 1920s. On some of the higher profile London productions, see Edith Hall and Fiona Macintosh, Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre, 1660–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), esp. chapter 17. On amateur productions in Oxford and touring productions by repertory companies, see Performing Greek Drama in Oxford (above, n. 13). On Murray’s work for the BBC generally, see Mick Morris, “ ‘That Living Voice’: Gilbert Murray at the BBC,” in: Christopher Stray (ed.), Gilbert Murray Reassessed: Hellenism, Theatre, and International Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 293–317, and—with caution regarding detail and dating— Duncan Wilson, Gilbert Murray OM, 1866–1957 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987). 31 They remained popular on amateur stages for considerably longer: see the APGRD Database (above, n. 11) and Performing Greek Drama in Oxford (above, n. 13). 32 See “ ‘That Living Voice’ ” (above, n. 30).
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for a broadcast of a modern reconstruction of an incomplete Menandrian play, the audience was already favorably disposed to the dramatic output of ancient Greece: 60% of the 136 listeners who responded to the post-production questionnaire had some familiarity with Greek plays, and 80% stated that they would welcome more on the radio. 20% found it hard going, with the names being unfamiliar and the entrances and exits confusing. A housewife wrote: “My difficulty in this play was to really get acquainted with the players. Their names were so difficult to remember and seemed out of tune with the rather modern dialogue.” This sort of complaint suggests the bind the Drama Department often found itself in: it concerned itself with broadcasting the “classics” of the dramatic canon, but sometimes the scripts did not make the necessary leap of translation from the stage to the purely aural medium. Many liked it, of course: “I had looked forward to this broadcast as an antiquarian, and enjoyed it much more than I expected to,” said an Examiner; but an Accountant wondered, “Is antiquity sufficient passport to production? … [A]s a prototype or museum piece I think the broadcast worth while but only just.”33
II. Louis MacNeice’s Enemy of Cant (1946) At the time when Murray’s translations were still frequently produced for broadcast by the Drama Department, Louis MacNeice’s feature programme Enemy of Cant: A Panorama of Aristophanic Comedy demonstrated how radio could make the ancient world imaginatively accessible to a large, diverse audience in a more vibrant and striking way than traditional Drama Department productions. From 1941, the poet and writer Louis MacNeice wrote and produced some of the most interesting and animated radio dramatic adaptations of classical literature broadcast by the BBC since its inception. War-work had brought him, and many other writers, to the BBC to lend their talents to the creation of propagandist, or “morale-boosting,” feature programmes.34 MacNeice’s talent for exploring the medium’s potential for creative work soon became apparent, and he continued working for the BBC for 20 years, writing at least 160 scripts, a number of which drew on Greek and Roman texts.35
33 BBC WAC LR/722, 12 March 1942. 34 See further Richard Danson Brown, Louis MacNeice and the Poetry of the 1930s (Tavistock, Devon: Northcote, 2009), p. 91. 35 This figure is taken from Christopher Holme, “The Radio Drama of Louis MacNeice,” in: John Drakakis (ed.), British Radio Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 46. Many of these scripts remain unpublished; 11 of MacNeice’s scripts drawing on Greek and Roman literature and history are newly published, with introductions, in Wrigley and Harrison (eds.), Louis MacNeice: The Classical Radio Plays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
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The Belfast-born MacNeice considered that his privileged education at Marlborough College, Wiltshire and Merton College, Oxford (from which he graduated with a double first in Literae Humaniores, the four-year Classics degree course) had involved too much “niggling over textual commentary,” and he disliked the precedence given to language over literature, as well as the connection he saw between the subject and the English class system.36 Stallworthy, his biographer, reports that he was not, as a consequence, the most inspirational of Classics lecturers during his time at Birmingham (1930–1936) and Bedford College for Women (1936–1939), quoting Mrs F. Wilkinson, senior lecturer in Classics at Bedford College: “His colleagues … had the impression that he did not find ‘either the classics in themselves, or the teaching of them, particularly absorbing.’ They were half right: he did not enjoy teaching the ancient texts, but never ceased to enjoy reading them.”37 His education, however, had left MacNeice with a love for ancient literature and a rich mine on which he drew in his creative writing. Presented with the opportunity to refashion ancient texts and subjects for the most modern of mass media, he instinctively understood how best to bring them alive for an audience unschooled in Classics. MacNeice’s training in the Features Department offered him the practical techniques and inventive freedom to realize in terms of radio performance his own imaginative experience of the ancient world.38 MacNeice began to write “morale-boosting” features for the BBC in 1941. Stallworthy describes the purpose of this war-work as “memorably reinforcing aspects of the truth” rather than “propagating lies,”39 but it is clear that the BBC Features Department had a “covert propaganda brief from the government.”40 MacNeice’s many features include The March of the 10,000 (1941), The Glory that is Greece (1941), The Golden Ass and the “elegant and idyllic” Cupid and Psyche (1944), and Enter Caesar (1946). In October 1946, MacNeice’s translation of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (written for the 1936 Group Theatre production in London) was the first new production of a Greek drama broadcast on the Third, one month after its establishment.41
36 Brian Arkins, “Athens No Longer Dies: Greek and Roman Themes in MacNeice,” Classics Ireland 7 (2000), p. 16; Jon Stallworthy, Louis MacNeice (London: Faber, 1995), pp. 114–15. 37 Louis MacNeice (above, n. 36), p. 206. For further discussion, see “Athens No Longer Dies” (above, n. 36), pp. 10–12. 38 MacNeice found the Department a stimulating and supportive place to work: see Third Programme (above, n. 6), pp. 70–1. 39 Louis MacNeice (above, n. 36), p. 292. See also Third Programme (above, n. 6), p. 110. 40 D.M. Davin, “MacNeice, (Frederick) Louis (1907–1963),” rev. by Jon Stallworthy, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, published online by Oxford University Press at http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/34808 (accessed 28 November 2007). On the role of the BBC during wartime, see War of Words (above, n. 5). 41 Broadcasting began on this new wavelength on 29 September 1946. On the following evening, Henry Reed’s “Antigone” was read out in a program of new poetry (Reed was a poet, translator and writer of satirical features for radio whom MacNeice had taught Classics at Birmingham in the early
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Three months later, the same network broadcast his Aristophanic feast, Enemy of Cant. Works originally written for the page or the stage were, without exception it seems, produced for radio by the BBC Drama Department (operatic and other musical works being produced, of course, by the Music Department). Another class of dramatic or quasi-dramatic work, however, which drew freely and creatively on established literary and theatrical texts, was produced by the Features Department. Features may be described as documentaries, or information programmes, which use techniques such as dramatization, poetry, music and sound effects;42 it has been argued that the writer or producer (often the same person) of radio features rather than the producer of radio drama was more free to explore and push the boundaries of radio dramatic form and technique in this period, since he or she was free from the Drama Department’s obligation to produce radio versions of existing stageplays.43 Enemy of Cant offers fresh translations of scenes from most of Aristophanes’ plays situated within the “real-life” situation of the playwright as he—over the years— converses about current affairs with his contemporaries.44 The “fictional” interludes here function effectively to provide background and context for the Aristophanic scenes presented. MacNeice’s translations of these dramatic extracts were considered by one critic “examples of translation at its best, translation in the widest sense of the word. Here was Ancient Athens in terms of our own day, in terms of our own sense of humour moreover.”45 The extracts were arranged in the chronological order of their first production, except for Birds, which is alluded to at the appropriate chronological point but which, as an “escape fantasy,” MacNeice considered more appropriate for the end of the production, with its “nice fly-away final scene” being “the wishfulfilment of a war-weary generation.”46 What makes this pot-pourri work is that the scenes from the different plays are interspersed with conversations between Aristophanes and characters such as his mistress Sepia, the theatrical producer Callistratus, a mask-maker, his slave Thratta,
1930s); two weeks later, a repeat of a 1945 “World Theatre” production of Hippolytus was broadcast, and at the end of October MacNeice’s Agamemnon (which received further productions in 1950 and 1953: for discussion, see Amanda Wrigley, “Aeschylus’ Agamemnon on BBC Radio, 1946–1976,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 12.2 (Fall 2006), pp. 216–44). 42 Features are extensively discussed in Third Programme (above, n. 6), pp. 109–34. 43 But see “Radio Drama of Louis MacNeice” (above, n. 35), pp. 40, 46, and Third Programme (above, n. 6), pp. 109–11, on the lack of a clear distinction between some features and the radio play format. 44 All the plays except Ecclesiazusae, Wealth and Thesmophoriazusae. 45 Philip Hope-Wallace, “Classical Capers,” The Listener, 12 December 1946, p. 859. 46 Memoranda from Louis MacNeice to the Director of Features, 21 May 1946 and 12 July 1946 (BBC WAC R19/307). MacNeice was aware that this made for an “enormously long” script and he requested permission to over-run the allocated transmission time if needed (memorandum from Louis MacNeice to Leslie Stokes, 27 November 1946 (ibid.)).
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fellow-playwright Cratinus, and his son Araros. The life and times of Aristophanes the man (historical detail dressed up with fictional context) is therefore—simply but brilliantly—served up as the framework for understanding the plays. By contrast with the Drama Department’s practice of having a short talk before a production of an ancient play, to provide mythological and historical context and explain ancient dramatic conventions, in this feature programme MacNeice deftly makes the social and political culture and context integral to the piece rather than standing apart from it, situating the plays within the playwright’s lifetime, and thus Aristophanic comedy within the sociopolitical concerns of the poet’s own day. Indeed, as MacNeice wrote in the Radio Times, “All Aristophanes’s best work was produced during this struggle [with Sparta] and it reflects consistently a clear perception of the futilities of war and a bitter opposition to the militaristic demagogues, of whom the most notorious was Cleon.”47 The long war between democratic Athens and oligarchic Sparta had an all-too-obvious parallel at the time of broadcast in 1946; indeed, George Owen, playing a Spartan, delivers the line “Athenians, these are the terms of your surrender. Sign here please” with a hint of a German accent. The resonances of the comedies with recent military history in Britain and contemporary post-war privations are strong, giving the production a firm footing in the imagination of the listening public. But there were other “contemporary analogies” that MacNeice found in Aristophanes which had first aroused his interest in putting the comic playwright on radio, namely “the burlesques of power politicians, the New Thought, literary cliques, and managerial women.”48 MacNeice’s friend and fellow poet Dylan Thomas was cast in the role of Aristophanes and also Dicaeopolis in the extract from Acharnians.49 Thomas had considerable skill for the job. After his death, MacNeice wrote: “as a producer I realized that he was a god-send to radio. His famous “organ-voice” was already well known in straightforward readings of verse, but the same voice, combined with his sense of character, could be used for all sorts of strange purposes. I cast him (and was never disappointed) in a variety of dramatic parts.”50 The Listener Research Report de-
47 Louis MacNeice (1946), “A Greek Satirist who is Still Topical,” Radio Times, 29 November 1946, p. 5. 48 Memorandum from Louis MacNeice to the Director of Features, 21 May 1946 (BBC WAC R19/307). 49 Thomas did a great deal of work for radio at this time, as an actor, reader of poetry and script writer: see Radio Drama (above, n. 4), pp. 72–3. His Under Milk Wood, originally written for radio, is considered by Peter Lewis (and many other critics) to be “easily the most celebrated full-length play for radio, or ‘play for voices’ as [he] designated it, that the BBC has produced in more than fifty years of broadcasting, and it is for many people the outstanding example of the genre, an unsurpassed and virtually unsurpassable achievement” (“The Radio Road to Llareggub,” in: John Drakakis (ed.), British Radio Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 72. 50 Louis MacNeice, “I Remember Dylan Thomas,” Ingot (Steel Co. of Wales; December 1954), p. 196. The radio producer Douglas Cleverdon confirms that Thomas was an exuberant deliverer of lines who was able to get across the “subtlest shades of intonation,” pulling “the full value out of every word”
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scribed his performance in Enemy of Cant as “outstanding,”51 and the recording accessible in the British Library confirms that he had a skilful and commanding radio presence.52 It is worth remembering that although the script and the overall direction were by MacNeice, the production was a team effort. MacNeice’s correspondence with the composer Antony Hopkins shows that the composer was given free rein to put his imagination to work on this production: “I am anxious that the essential bits of meaning should come over but apart from that please do what you like with these pieces, apportioning lines as you prefer among your different singers and working in any nice polyphonic convolutions that occur to you.”53 As so he did: “it seemed perfectly right when, to underline a parody of some bombast, Anthony [sic] Hopkins … should make a comic reference to Tchaikovsky,” considered the reviewer in The Listener.54 Hopkins also received high praise in The Observer: “There were moments in Enemy of Cant when he seemed to take over a mood or a situation which had baffled the ingenuity of MacNeice, and there were other occasions when he invented noises off so cunning as to send (I hope) the BBC sound-effects boys back to school to learn the ABC of aural-association.”55 The BBC Listener Research Report for this programme was based on 86 returned questionnaires. It notes that the general reaction was very favorable, with the acting, music, production, use of dialect and script generally received very positively. The Appreciation Index was calculated at 64, substantially higher than for MacNeice’s The Dark Tower and Enter Caesar, both broadcast earlier in 1946, which received scores of 55 and 46, respectively.56 A small proportion of these listeners “admitted no knowledge of the background and found it all rather confusing and incomprehensible;” although the Report acknowledged that some had considered MacNeice’s script rather “arty,” “a bit of wimsy wamsy put on by the Senior Common Room,” it also stated that “by far the greater part of comment was, however, extremely enthusiastic, listeners greatly appreciating the way in which the script of the original had been caught in the modern idiom, the people, the period and the humour had been brought to life, and the extracts from the plays wedded with the general context into a coherent whole.” To illustrate this positive summary of the reception
(“Voice of Dylan Thomas,” Radio 3, 19 August 1971; accessible in the British Library, reference T327R; this radio programs includes an extract from Enemy of Cant). 51 BBC WAC LR/6842, 23 December 1946. 52 This is a recording of the 4 December 1946 broadcast (BBC Recorded Programmes Permanent Library Master Tape T28123, British Library). 53 Letter from Louis MacNeice to Antony Hopkins, 19 November 1946 (BBC WAC R19/307). This letter encloses MacNeice’s drafts of five lyric passages which are worth looking at for the musical angle. 54 “Classical Capers” (above, p. 45). 55 W.E. Williams, “French into English,” The Observer, 8 December 1946, p. 2. 56 LR/6842, 23 December 1946 (BBC WAC R19/307).
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of Enemy of Cant in the questionnaires, the Report prints quotations from five listeners:57 As a free translation of Aristophanes the programme succeeded in combining the words of the dramatist and modern topical wit. … MacNeice has made [Aristophanes’ jokes] come alive again. (Student) The really clever way Mr MacNeice strung together the various comedies into one scintillating whole … the amusing sophistication and biting satire of Aristophanes which his adaptation never lost. (Medical Practitioner) You certainly succeeded in putting Aristophanes over as a person (not a classic!) (Civil Servant) Amazingly ‘up-to-date’ and yet one felt one was hearing the real thing, and not a modern translation. (School Secretary) This was really something, pulling down gods—swimming against the tide—using words that said what they meant and not glib mouthings. This is indeed my idea of satire, give us more, much more. Put this on the Home Programme at an early hour and let’s have a great tearing of hair all round! (Fitter)
MacNeice’s original idea for this programme had been “to have a crack at the teaching of classics (and possibly teaching methods in general) in this country. I propose a series of unfortunate teachers ranging from hack school master[s] grinding little boys who have little Greek, to old-fashioned Oxford dons of the textual criticism cult. These, having made Aristophanes in their different ways, as boring as possible, would be cut off by the irruption of bits of him sprung into life.”58 Although MacNeice did not follow this train of thought in his production (as can be seen below, the don who could not stop coughing from the dust in his lecture-room was struck out of the script), this privately expressed critique of traditional methods of teaching ancient texts may incline us to believe that he might have enjoyed reading the letters he received from a teacher at Malvern Girls’ College. From “an Old Girl working at the BBC,” this teacher had obtained the unpublished script “to illustrate a class on Greek drama that I give to a large body of girls here who have never done Greek + have stopped Latin,” and she later reported to him that
57 The possibility of partiality in the interpretation and quotation of listener feedback needs to be borne in mind; but with regard to these extremely positive quotations printed in the Report on Enemy of Cant, it should be noted that Reports would usually print negative comments as well, which suggests that, at least among the respondents, Enemy of Cant was generally well received. 58 Memorandum from Louis MacNeice to Director of Features, 21 May 1946 (BBC WAC R19/307).
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it was received with great relish by a class of non-classical senior girls here—almost seventy of them who could scarcely believe that it was a version of what they are pleased to call a dead language.59
MacNeice therefore succeeded, at least in this well documented case, in his aim “to introduce Aristophanes to a public which can perfectly well appreciate him once he is divorced from pedantry.”60 This example seems to encapsulate radio’s potential to engage its audience in both practical and imaginative ways: not only did the teacher get “immense pleasure out of it,” but she was encouraged by what still might be perceived to be an implicit “crack at the teaching of classics” to introduce—it seems with great success—this vibrant reworking of Aristophanic texts to the girls she taught.
III. Patric Dickinson adapts Aristophanes The poet Patric Dickinson (1914–1994) joined the BBC around the same time as MacNeice and stayed on the staff until 1948, during which time he transformed the broadcasting of verse in his position as Poetry Editor for the Third61 and wrote many acclaimed programmes that drew on the ancient world—for example, Theseus and the Minotaur (1945) and The Wall of Troy (1946). Thereafter he continued to do much freelance work for radio, with a preference from the early 1950s for translating Greek and Roman comic playwrights for the air. In 1952 he wrote “I am very keen on translating Greek + Roman comedy—everyone seems to go on + on doing the tragedies + nobody cares for the comedies!”62 His enthusiasm paid off: despite early opposition, his persistence in suggesting translations of comic playwrights meant that in the 1950s he became the leading translator of Aristophanes for BBC Radio, broadcast more frequently than the popular translations of the American Dudley Fitts (1903–1968). The Controller of the Third Programme from 1948 to 1952, Harman Grisewood (1908–1997), did not share this enthusiasm for putting Aristophanes on air. In response to Dickinson’s suggestion in 1952 that he might translate Wasps for production with Vaughan Williams’ music (composed for the 1909 Cambridge Greek Play), Grisewood wrote a lengthy letter expressing his concerns: he believed that the only way to render Aristophanes in another language was to produce a crib, because any attempt to convey the comic force of the plays in modern terms would produce an adaptation that, although it might be funny, was no longer Aristophanic:
59 Letters from Mary Warry to Louis MacNeice, 3 March 1948 and 29 June 1948 (ibid.). 60 Memorandum from Louis MacNeice to Director of Features, 18 July 1946 (ibid.). 61 On this post, and the fate of poetry on the Third subsequently, see Third Programme (above, n. 6), pp. 152–7. 62 Letter from Patric Dickinson to Val Gielgud, 14 May [1952] (BBC WAC Patric Dickinson Scriptwriter file 1a).
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This sort of thing can be appreciated in the study but I cannot see how it is effective in performance except by what I would call illicit devices so that you are constructing comedy upon a broadly Aristophanic base but you are not constructing Aristophanic comedy … It simply isn’t Greek at all. It is just some kind of comic monster that can be made to perform tricks but they are not Hellenic ones.63
Grisewood therefore scotched the idea of Wasps but—fortunately for Dickinson— shortly vacated the post of Controller. Within a year or two, Dickinson’s renewed suggestions for tackling Aristophanes received a warmer welcome. In 1954, the Third Programme expressed interest in his idea of translating Acharnians, although by now there was an acceptance and agreement that it will “be more a question of making a ‘version’ rather than a simple translation” in order to make the comedy work on air.64 Raymond Raikes was responsible for the “radio adaptation and production” of Acharnians, as well as Peace and Lysistrata, which were to follow. Raikes specialized in creating Drama Department productions for broadcast on the Third. Dramatic sense was of the utmost importance to him. Raikes had studied Classics at Uppingham School and the University of Oxford (where he also studied English), but he was no academic purist and indeed was renowned for liberal cutting and rewriting of texts to make them as accessible as possible, including at least 20 Greek and Roman plays produced over his 30-year career. It may well have been Raikes’ suggestion that Acharnians open with a sizeable prologue-like speech by Aristophanes (played by Russell Napier) before the Announcer introduces the play. The technique draws on the model provided by Enemy of Cant, although it lacks the lightness and clarity of MacNeice’s style. Aristophanes speaks directly to the listener, explaining the military context of his comedies with modern terminology (“satellite” states), suggesting a parallel between Cleon and Hitler (“preaching a doctrine of mass terror—he had nearly succeeded in persuading Athens to put to death the whole adult male population of Mytilene”) and outlining the festival context of the ancient comedies. Aristophanes concludes with a glance back at the Second World War and a parting shot about the UK’s lack of a national theater:65 Well, with that I’ll leave you to listen to my “war-time” Comedy written for an overcrowded city, full of evacuees and political informers, restless with war fever … but I have to laugh when I think what your war-time Censor might have done if he’d been confronted with a “pacifist” play like this, putting the Enemy’s point of view … Would it have reached your national theatre (if you had one!) as it reached ours—and won first prize? … (Laughs)
The Announcer then takes over, introducing the play, the lead actor and the translator, and locating it in ancient time and space, before the play proper opens with 63 Letter from Harman Grisewood to “H. D.”, 16 April 1952 (ibid.). 64 Letter from Donald McWhinnie to Patric Dickinson, 29 November 1954 (ibid.). 65 Plans for what would become the National Theatre were in place from the end of the 1940s, and the foundation stone had been laid in 1951. It finally opened in 1963.
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Dicaeopolis, played by Charles Leno in “the tones of one of the blither Cockney ’bus conductors”.66 The critical reception of Dickinson’s translation of Acharnians was extremely positive. J.C. Trewin in The Listener thought that he “kept the spirit of Aristophanes and presented colloquially the satire, the mischief, the inner urgency of it all …. The zest, the happy malice, the fierce stinging of The Acharnians duly stung and quivered.”67 The critic in The Times noted that “Dickinson does not follow Mr Ezra Pound, who offered Sophocles in slang, or even Mr Dudley Fitts, who has a racy way with Aristophanes. But he certainly belongs to what another translator, Hookham Frere, called the class of spirited translators rather than the more academic faithful translators. He does not emasculate the bawdy, though he neatly avoids some four-letter words.”68 “The Greeks liked their Phallic jokes straight,” Dickinson notes, “we do not.”69 “I can’t tell you what a joy it’s been to do. For ten years I’ve wanted to do this play,” wrote Dickinson to Donald McWhinnie around April 1955 (BBC WAC Scriptwriter file 2a 1955). His patience was rewarded, for in July 1955 he was commissioned to produce further Aristophanic translations for broadcast on the Third—namely, Peace and Lysistrata.70 Having got wind of this, Oxford University Press approached Dickinson with the idea of publishing all three in a volume entitled Aristophanes against War.71 This appeared in 1957, alongside well-received productions of Peace and Lysistrata on the Third. The Times considered the volume “a sporting effort and one well worth making. But the loss of the full effect of the chorus and the inevitable bowdlerizing take much of the wind out of the great sails.”72 The Listener was generally more positive: “the dialogue keeps the snap and sparkle of the original, and the choral interludes in long sprawling lines are surprisingly successful. The dialect scenes are alive and entertaining, and the exuberant language, atrocious puns and the speed and attack of the swiftly changing episodes are most skilfully reproduced and maintained.”73 The Listener’s review of the 1957 production of Lysistrata seems to get across the bind the BBC found itself in when broadcasting a terrifically bawdy—but ancient Greek, and therefore canonical and “respectable”—play: Mr Dickinson is desperately determined not to sound half-hearted in his semi-seemly paraphrase of Aristophanes’ jests about the upright men of war. He, and his producer Raymond Raikes, were so intent on insisting that the poet’s purpose was serious that they made Miss [Googie] Withers
66 J.C. Trewin, “Drama: Glory that was Greece,” The Listener, 18 August 1955, p. 271. 67 “Drama: Glory that was Greece” (above, n. 66). 68 Anon., “Private Treaty: The Acharnians broadcast,” The Times, 8 August 1955, p. 10. 69 Quoted in Anon., “In the Classical Manner,” The Times, 7 November 1957, p. 13. 70 Letter from Barbara Bray to Patric Dickinson (BBC WAC Patric Dickinson Copyright file 1b). 71 Letter from Patric Dickinson to Val Gielgud, 8 August 1956 (BBC WAC Patric Dickinson Scriptwriter file 2b). 72 “In the Classical Manner” (above, n. 69). 73 Anon., “Aristophanes against War,” The Listener, 28 November 1957, p. 893.
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start off as though the play was not a comedy at all. It soon got going, all the same, though there was at times the truly awe-inspiring sound of respectable British matrons conscientiously resolved to be heartily outspoken or die in the attempt, but definitely not amused.74
The solution to the problem of maintaining a level of propriety within the widely accessible medium of radio thus seems to have been to have the actors deliver a condensed adaptation of Aristophanic humor, but in a serious, matronly tone. Observe the Aristophanic sexual innuendo in the radio script for the opening scene of the play: Kalonike Lysistrata Kalonike Lysistrata Kalonike Lysistrata
Kalonike
But, Lysistrata, what? Why’ve you called us? What’s up? Something big. A stiff proposition? Stiff as it could be. Then why on earth isn’t everybody here? Oh, it’s not that—they’d come quick enough for that! No; it’s an idea. Something I’ve thought of in bed— Alone … awake in the night, tossing and turning. It must be a teaser to keep you tossing and turning.75
As with Acharnians, the radio production of Lysistrata was prefaced by a speech by the character of Aristophanes, which again attempted to do a little of what MacNeice’s Enemy of Cant did so fluently. “After six years of war, in the Comedy called The Acharnians … Then, after ten years of war, a Comedy called The Peace … war dragged on for another 20 years ….” This prologue does, however, go on to offer a striking and interesting interpretative context for the play: “This period of despondency in Athens produced a spate of sexual licence and pleasure-seeking in the city, the sort of lust that in wartime so often accompanies the shedding of so much blood … But might not this very fever of licentiousness be made an instrument to save Athens from disaster, and to reconcile her with her enemy (yes, her great and noble enemy) Sparta?” The sexual content of the play, then, is set up as a mere temporary reaction to military and political disaster, rather than an exuberant perspective on natural bodily functions and sexual habits and tastes. Seven years later, Dickinson’s Lysistrata was produced for television. Lysistrata; or Women on Strike (the full title) was directed by Prudence FitzGerald for broadcast in 1964 as part of the BBC’s “Festival” series. The critic in The Listener testified to having enjoyed the production more than any in the “Festival” series for some time “partly because it was shorter and more economical (only fifty-five minutes) and partly because we all really enjoy an occasional dirty joke … the dirty jokes were on this
74 Roy Walker, “Drama: Venus v. Mars,” The Listener, 5 December 1957, p. 957. 75 Pp. 2–3 of the script for the 1957 radio production of Lysistrata (BBC WAC).
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occasion put over very coolly and unblushingly by most of the cast.”76 Dickinson’s translation had been cut substantially and adapted for television by Marc Brandel so that it “did not offend the sensitive mass audience.”77 Still, some viewers let the BBC know in no uncertain terms that they found aspects of it “disgusting and coarse.”78 One incensed viewer (who nevertheless seemed to have forced himself to watch to the very end) wrote a sternly worded letter to the Director of the Television Service, complaining in particular about Lysistrata but also more broadly about “The preoccupation with sex and infidelity which permeates the BBC.”79 Lysistrata was clearly not, for some, the only bit of sauciness on television in the early 1960s. This was the beginning, of course, of the era of Mary Whitehouse’s “Clean Up TV Campaign,” the manifesto of which made a direct appeal to British women in January 1964. One has to wonder what she made of this televised Lysistrata! Although some of the more explicit references in Aristophanes were cut, it is notable how much was left in, which forces the question of how these sexual and other references in the script were portrayed on screen, where little can be left to the imagination. Following what is sometimes referred to as the “striptease” scene with his wife, for example, Kinesias is left in a painfully aroused state on which the chorus comment as follows: Leader Chorus One Chorus Two Chorus Three Chorus Four Chorus Five
Poor old cock! You’re in a bad way! You’re distressed— We’re sorry for you. The pangs of unemployment. Are more than a body can bear.80
When the Spartan Herald arrives in a similar state, the innuendo continues: Leader (admiringly) Chorus One Second Man Spartan Third Man Fourth Man Spartan Fifth Man
Look at him. A big one, isn’t he? Where did you spring from? From Sparta. I see you’re having the same trouble down your way. No! He’s just stiff from the journey. I’ve got an urgent message to deliver to your senators. It’s urgent all right.
76 John Russell Taylor, “Television Drama: Farce with a Message,” The Listener, 23 January 1964, p. 167. 77 Anon., “Televised Aristophanes with a Nuclear Slant,” The Times, 16 January 1964, p. 15. 78 BBC WAC Audience Research Report. 79 Letter from Mr H.B. Stanton to “The Director of Television Service,” 16 January 1964 (BBC WAC T5/ 2160/1). 80 P. 60 of the script for the 1964 television production of Lysistrata (BBC WAC).
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But it isn’t a senator you need. It’s a matter of public importance. Looks more like a private problem to me.
And so it goes on. The production made visual reference to ancient Greece with costumes, for example, consisting of robes, cloaks and sandals, and the introduction of sacrificial goats. The set also included strong Grecian references, with great columns suggestive of the buildings on the Athenian Acropolis. Did the producer stick with Aristophanic convention and portray the male actors with larger-than-life phalli, in accord with the “fidelity” to ancient convention in the costume and set design? There were limits to nudity permitted on television, and one suspects that the painfully erect phalli continually referred to in Aristophanes’ play were instead left to the viewer’s imagination in the televised Lysistrata, introducing a glaringly obvious and awkward tension between what was heard and what was seen. In the 1957 production of Dickinson’s text on BBC Radio, it was perhaps the absence of the visual dimension that made the comic force of the play work particularly well in the audience’s imagination. Consider what the following review of a scene from the 1957 production suggests about what was effectively left to the imagination on radio and what may well (pace Mr Stanton’s perception of the BBC’s “preoccupation with sex”) have received a more modest portrayal on the screen: the actor playing Myrrhine, it is said, “really seemed to be having the time of her life in the strip-tease scene, which was therefore easily the funniest.”81 Lysistrata must be adapted quite substantially if it is to work energetically toward a feminist or pacifist agenda—for the women simply want an end to the current war so that they can return to the peace-time status quo—but there was no modernization, so to speak, of the political dimensions of the play. Strikingly, however, the television production opens with a film clip of a mushroom cloud superimposed over an image of the Athenian Acropolis—a powerful visual translation of the anti-(Peloponnesian) war theme of Lysistrata to the modern-day threat and fear of nuclear war. This is a potentially vigorous start to a politically engaged production, but there is no clue in the camera script that this was built on in any way. The suggestive connection between ancient and modern pleased some critics but not all. The Times judged that “The insertion of atomic fall-out on the opening shots of Greece helped to suggest the relevance of Aristophanes’ theme today,” but John Russell Taylor, writing in The Listener, found “the device of starting with an atomic explosion … decidedly cheap.”82 Some viewers, noted the BBC Audience Research Report, found the opening “very baffling and almost decided to switch-off on this account.”83
81 “Drama: Venus v. Mars” (above, n. 74). 82 “Televised Aristophanes with a Nuclear Slant” (above, n. 77); “Television Drama” (above, n. 76). 83 BBC WAC VR/64/39.
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The Audience Research Report for the 1964 television production notes that the audience was 12% (of the adult population, presumably—so, around five million) and that the “reaction index” among the 220 viewers from the sample of the Viewing Panel who completed a questionnaire was 54 (the average for “Festival” plays being 53). The Viewing Panel were evenly divided between those who “very much enjoyed themselves watching it” and others who had little good to say. A clergyman, for example, “liked the play immensely,” and other enthusiasts found it “a vastly entertaining affair, full of cheek, fun (at the expense of men, various housewives noted gleefully) and an unblushing broadness of expression that made ‘great stuff for adults’.” On the other hand, for half the audience “it was no joke but everything that was disgusting and coarse, thoroughly embarrassing to watch in mixed or family company and, said certain older members of the sample[,] likely to have a harmful effect on young minds.”
Conclusion The audience response to the 1964 Lysistrata illustrates the dictum that you cannot please all the people all of the time, especially when working in mass media. Audiences are so large and varied in terms of their educational experience and cultural expectations that a wide spectrum of response is visible in most research reports commissioned by the BBC. Such sources provide rich evidence for general social and cultural barometers regarding propriety and humor, as do the translations themselves. Also evident in the translations in this period is the increasing shift to greater adaptation for the radio and television media—both in terms of ensuring that the audience can appreciate the play without a classical education and in terms of cuts and changes that make the play comprehensible without the visual element (for radio productions). The examples discussed above throw light on the significant relationship of broadcasting media with other spheres of educational and cultural activity, such that broadcasting can be seen to work in productive symbiosis with them. Gilbert Murray’s popularity on the stage made him the foremost translator of Greek plays for radio. The Cambridge Greek Play of 1947 had a partial radio performance. Louis MacNeice’s Enemy of Cant stimulated amateur performances and was taught in the classroom. Patric Dickinson’s translations were commissioned by the BBC and then published by Oxford University Press as Aristophanes against War (1957), after which he was stimulated to publish translations of all Aristophanes’ plays—some more of which were broadcast, and many of which were staged by amateurs—in 1970. Listeners and viewers were interested, bored, enraged and felt themselves to have been educated by these productions, a rich spectrum of engagements which testifies to the significance of mass media within the reception of Aristophanes in 20th-century Britain.
Graham Ley
Cultural Politics and Aesthetic Debate in Two Modern Versions of Aristophanes’ Frogs Abstract: This essay takes two very different modern versions of Aristophanes’ Frogs into consideration, one in the United States and the other in the UK, looking closely at the context in and for which each was conceived. I give an account of the genesis and the complex and intriguing history of Burt Shevelove’s adaptation, songs for which were provided by Stephen Sondheim, tracing its evolution from the early days of the Yale Dramat until its latest revival by Nathan Lane under direction from Susan Stroman. I place alongside this account an assessment of my own adaptation of Frogs, which took the tectonic shift between modernism and postmodernism in theater as its context, and offer a number of observations on the impact and potential of a relatively unexploited Aristophanic comedy under adaptation.
In recent years, it has become acceptable in the discipline of classics to use the term “reception studies” to cover what was once considered “the classical tradition,” a shift that can be puzzling to those in the discipline of theater or performance studies. In the latter context, the term “reception” has for some time specifically referred to how an audience responds to performance.1 Most students of theater will know roughly what is indicated by the term “reception theory,” and will easily understand it as part of the broader embrace of performance theory. Some well-known aesthetic or performance theories contain reception theory alongside other kinds in the same treatise or set of propositions. In fact, it is useful to understand Aristotle’s Poetics as in large part a dramaturgical theory brought alive by a remarkable medical-ritual theory of reception (katharsis).2 Thus while in theater studies reception continues to mean the activity undertaken by the audience, in classics the same term should now also be taken to mean the initiative undertaken by writers or “producers” of artistic work in their response to ancient artefacts, whether literary or not. This can lead to confusion, especially if reception theory in theater studies is properly located in another broad and prevalent context, that of reception or reader-response theory in literary studies or in studies of the visual arts. What prompts or influences a creator is undoubtedly distinct from how someone reacts to what is created, even if ideas about both are often speculative
1 The seminal work was by Susan Bennett, Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception (London: Routledge, 1990). 2 It is perhaps the most influential theory for its word-length in the whole of aesthetics, although the core formulation of rasa in Sanskrit poetics is also very brief and has similarly proved remarkably enduring.
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rather than strictly evidenced. In the classical tradition, there are countless recorded examples of influence on creators as individuals or teams unmatched by interest from spectators or readers. Indeed, it is arguable that the afterlife of the classical world has often been imposed upon vernacular audiences rather than actively willed by them.3 These considerations are general, but they also relate specifically to the subject of this essay, which is two very different modern renditions of Aristophanes’ Frogs. I would contend that there is no great vernacular demand in the modern Englishspeaking theater for renditions of Aristophanes. Similarly, in the classical tradition in Europe, Aristophanes is honored and admired, but he has no place comparable to that occupied by Terence or even Plautus. Even now, he is not seen as an essential of the modern stage, although the marked impact of Roman drama on Renaissance Europe has been balanced by the admiration extended in the 20th century to Greek tragedy. As a significant part of that acknowledgement, one of the major theaters of the contemporary era, the Olivier at the National Theatre in London, was shaped at least in part to reflect the ancient Greek theater. But there are relatively few landmark productions or adaptations of Aristophanic comedies compared to those of Greek tragedies, outside the vitality of the modern Greek companies and festivals and the extraordinary initiative and imagination of the director Karolos Koun in particular.4 Productions differ from adaptations. We can see that readily enough from the activity around Greek tragedy, where (to take the British context) a radical vision of Trojan Women by the renowned director Katie Mitchell is distinct from reworkings such as Martin Crimp’s Cruel and Tender, a contemporary version of Sophocles’ Trachiniae. One of the questions raised by the two renditions of Frogs discussed here is, broadly speaking, whether it is better to produce or adapt Aristophanes, a question that stems from a potential gap between the impulses of creators and of audiences. In their separate ways, these two versions demonstrate a considerable interest in making Aristophanes “live,” much as Greek tragedy is now “live” in the contemporary theater. Can anything be concluded from them about that possibility? The first version is best known in its final form as Sondheim’s Frogs, and its history is that of a curious series of initiatives that embeds itself quietly in the evolution of the modern theater in the USA. The second version has no public profile, being an adaptation of Frogs that I made myself to test various hypotheses and to examine the questions outlined above.
3 Many examples of this are brought together with great diligence in Edith Hall and Fiona Macintosh (eds.), Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre, 1660–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 4 This is a broad-brush statement, and has exceptions to it in the detailed picture. In Italy, for example, Aristophanes has been shown some favor in the modern period since he has been felt to be “more radical than the ‘polite’ Menander and the Latin authors” Treu (p. 1166 in this volume). But until the 1960s, interest in Aristophanes in the United States was largely confined to Lysistrata: see Wetmore (p. 923 in this volume) and Katzamani (p. 966 in this volume).
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A genealogy of American Frogs What I have colloquially called “Sondheim’s Frogs” is best known from a New York production in 2004, which starred Nathan Lane and was in fact very much the product of his enthusiasm and commitment.5 But the show has a long and curious history reflecting an intricate series of professional contacts and relationships that stretch back to Yale and its Dramatic Association just after the First World War.6 The “Dramat” was founded in 1900, after a long period of resolute opposition to theatricals among the Yale fathers, and its diet in those early years consisted of Shakespeare, some 18th-century English drama, and the moderns, including Ibsen, Pinero, Wilde and Shaw. Two flamboyant members of the second decade were Cole Porter and his friend Monty Woolley, who played Lady Bracknell in Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest in 1908. The record reveals that Woolley became coach to the Dramat in 1913, producing Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida in 1916, and on his return to Yale in 1922 after service in the war adding productions of Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra and Shakespeare’s King Lear before Aristophanes’ Frogs, produced in 1924. Attractive as the idea might be to us now in retrospect, he did not invite his friend Cole Porter to write songs and lyrics.7 One of Woolley’s successors as coach—a term that seems to an outsider to align theatricals tactfully with supposedly more virile sports—was Burt Shevelove, who was active at Yale in a hinge moment of the American 20th century, between 1940 and 1942. According to a review in the New York Times, Shevelove invited Monty Woolley back to have “general supervision” of his production of Frogs, in honor of Woolley’s earlier production.8 But the distinguishing feature of this staging was that it was performed in the Yale Olympic pool in the Payne Whitney gymnasium, with the Yale swimming team no doubt “coached” into their role as the chorus, swimming around Charon and Dionysus in a boat that crossed the pool.9 The Times photograph attached to the review reveals this aspect, along with the giant water lilies attached to the
5 The Frogs opened on 22 July 2004 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in the Lincoln Center, and closed after 92 performances on 10 October 2004. 6 I trace this history to a generation further back than the fascinating account by Mary-Kay Gamel, “Sondheim Floats Frogs,” in: Edith Hall and Amanda Wrigley (eds.), Aristophanes in Performance 421 BC–AD 2007: Peace, Birds and Frogs (Oxford: Legenda, 2007), pp. 209–30; see also the summary by Beta (pp. 979–81 in this volume). 7 A helpful summary history of the “Dramat” is compiled by Gerasimos Tsourapas on the website of the Yale Dramatic Association at http://www.dramat.org/shows/arc_hx.html 8 Lewis Nichols, “Yale Actors and Swimming Team Play ‘The Frogs’ in College Pool,” New York Times, 14 November 1941. 9 Thurston Twigg-Smith, one of them, recalls that this was a chorus of 25 swimmers. His short memoir, “The Big Splash: 1941,” forms part of a special issue of the Lincoln Center Theater Review 38 (Summer 2004), devoted to Nathan Lane’s revival of Sondheim’s and Shevelove’s The Frogs at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in the Center (above, n. 5).
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poolside by designer Elmer Nagy. The review notes that the adaptation was by student John Ward Leggett, commenting of it that “Mr Leggett in his derivative has done practically everything but say that Yale is playing Princeton on Saturday.” That may well be, but what he did substantially was to substitute Shakespeare and Shaw for Aeschylus and Euripides, no doubt in full consultation with both Woolley and Shevelove, which as the Times observes was something of a Stygian fantasy, since Shaw was still alive in November 1941. The production was doubtless imaginative, flamboyant, colorful and suitably daft, with the overt quality of a high-school jape about it, although the jape was highly esoteric. There is also, in a way, a considerable pathos to it, since in just over three weeks time the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.10 Those familiar with Sondheim’s professional biography will know that the two great launches of his career were his first essay at the lyrics for a major show, West Side Story in 1957, and his first major Broadway combination of lyrics and music, in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which opened on 8 May 1962. The latter show was to a book by Burt Shevelove, who was drawing on plays by Plautus, something he had done in his last days at Yale after The Frogs with When in Rome in 1942, which had got him the sack for showing too little sensitivity to the gravity of the times. Few composers can have started careers with such resounding successes as Sondheim did, but Funny Thing also—in this bizarre chain of events—prompted an invitation to Shevelove by Robert Brustein, then head of the Yale Drama School, to return to Yale to do The Frogs again. So on 20 May 1974, the Yale swimming pool was once again transformed, but with its acoustics now sorely tested, since Shevelove had asked Sondheim to write some songs and had brought in Larry Blyden, who played Hysterium in the 1972 revival of Funny Thing, to take the role of Dionysus. For this production there was a chorus of 22 singers as Initiates, male and female, that famously included Meryl Streep and Sigourney Weaver; an amphibian and male chorus of Frogs, numbering 21; and eight dancers, six of whom were women, in addition to the orchestra; but according to the composer, they had never all rehearsed together before the opening night.11 The singing chorus sat on bleachers at the side of the pool for the most part, leaving room for the dancers, and there is general agreement that the acoustics proved dreadful.12 The review from the New York Times by Mel Gussow is enthusiastic, but offers little impression of the mise en scene, which is frustrating since we have most of the logistics, to which we can add the information that 1600 of the steeply-banked seats were reserved for the audience. The production
10 Gamel, “Sondheim Floats Frogs” (above, n. 6), briefly mentions Shevelove’s 1941 production before moving on to the Shevelove/Sondheim production of 1974. 11 “There was never a dress rehearsal. That is to say, we never had all the forces together: the chorus, orchestra, actors and swimming team. The first time they were all together was in front of an audience.” Stephen Sondheim in conversation with the editor, John Guare, in: “Savoring a Moment: A Conversation with Stephen Sondheim,” Lincoln Center Theater Review 38 (Summer 2004). 12 Christopher Durang, “A View from the Chorus: 1974,” and Sondheim (above, n. 11).
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was mostly “staged on a narrow edge of the pool,” which itself remained for the most part “an idle shimmering forestage.”13 Fortunately, the script is published, a matter to which I return in the following sub-section. Significantly, there was no transfer, and perhaps none was intended. But various intricate connections combined to bring the production further into the public eye 30 years later. The immediate prompt was a concert at the Library of Congress in Washington on 22 May 2000 to celebrate Sondheim’s seventieth birthday, in which songs and brief excerpts from the 1974 production featured Nathan Lane, who became inspired by them. Lane himself had done a production of Funny Thing in 1976 and again in a 1996 revival, and he went on to star in 2001 in the original musical production of The Producers, which was directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman. Lane took two major artistic decisions: the first was to ask Sondheim to write more songs, and the second was to expand and change Shevelove’s book. In the 1974 production, most of the songs were choral, but for the resultant production at Lincoln Center in 2004 there were solo turns, written and composed by Sondheim but prompted by Lane. The songs from this later production were recorded with some of the attached book, although not enough to give a clear impression.14 The 2004 production was directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman. There was no pool, but production values were lavish, and bunjee-jumping gave the frogs their lift-off.
Politics and art In his 1974 version of The Frogs at Yale, Burt Shevelove opted to track the original comedy by Aristophanes closely, and in choosing to encourage choral songs from Sondheim he kept to that brief.15 This was in principle a very different endeavor from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, in which the numbers brought preposterous Roman intrigue into comfortable alignment with Broadway musical entertainment. The signature song for that show was “Comedy Tonight,” for which Sondheim could find in the lyrics a ready pairing in “Tragedy tomorrow,” and to which he could add for good measure the reassurance that “Weighty affairs will just have to wait” (p. 18), as purposeful a use of a punning internal rhyme as showbiz could wish to find. In contrast, Sondheim opened The Frogs with a far less brash musical prologue, “Invocation and Instructions to the Audience,” which had been discarded from Funny Thing and whose title alone suggest a difficult night ahead for the spectators. Here Dionysus and Xanthias, on behalf of the production, confirm that
13 Mel Gussow, “Stage: ‘Frogs’ in a Pool,” New York Times, 23 May 1974. 14 “The Frogs: Original Broadway Cast Recording” (PS Classics: PS-525, 2005). 15 Burt Shevelove, Larry Gelbart and Stephen Sondheim, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Burt Shevelove and Stephen Sondheim, The Frogs (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1985). References in my text are to page-numbers in this publication.
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there will be “Bachanales and social comment” (p. 142), anticipating that the show may get “rhetorical” and “satirical” and that the jokes will be “obscure” (p. 144), and offering a warning that the “serious” part is in the second half (p. 144). In fact, the opening song anticipates both discomfort and impatience with the content of the show, with more than a hint that the audience may prove to be like the gods who “sit up there stern in judgment” and “look down on all actors” (p. 141). Despite a privileged, non-commercial setting, the play is thought to be a risk, which is interesting, because in asking the audience to take that risk either Shevelove or Sondheim (or perhaps, but not necessarily, both) must have had an idea what the benefit or gain ultimately might be to that audience. In writing of tracking the original, I was referring to the dramatic sequence of events. Shevelove smartly informs us, “The time is the present. The place is ancient Greece. The action is continuous” (p. 140), and the sequence of actions is taken from the ancient comedy. Dionysus remains Dionysus; he has a slave called Xanthias; they go down to Hades and meet Pluto; and in the course of that journey they repeat most of the incidents of Aristophanes’ plot, which are in effect a series of meetings with known characters, Heracles, Charon, and later Aeacus and Pluto himself. The dual choruses of the original are accommodated, the first inevitably as Frogs, but with Aristophanes’ initiates of Eleusis changed not unreasonably to Dionysians, since the original chorus of (dead) initiates placed a special emphasis on Dionysus in their ritual observances. There is surprisingly little information about why Dionysus wishes to bring Shaw back to the world above: we hear that “everything’s in terrible shape” (p. 151), including the theater, but there are otherwise almost no topical allusions. When the Frogs are encountered in the pool, a mildly subversive note is struck, which may however have been obscured by the spectacle itself—a production note to the published script assures us that the play “is intended to be a spectacle” (p. 139)—or indeed by the lousy acoustics of the Yale pool. Sondheim laces their keynote refrain of “Brek-kek-kek” with repeated insistence on the part of the Frogs that they are anything but radical or intellectual; the words “easy-going” and “simple” are the most repeated, and the message is that this floppy, sloppy tribe believes in leaving things alone, since they have seen it all before (pp. 158–63).16 The Frogs thus exemplify resistance, as any ancient Greek might have originally expected from the trial, labor and risk a descent into Hades and the afterlife would present to an intruder, no matter how heroic. Any theater-going Athenian might also have expected resistance to the leading comic figure’s purpose from the comic chorus, at least in the first part of the play, since this was part of the dynamic of 5th-century comic performance. In this version, the chorus of Frogs in the water is—in terms of continuity—subordinate to the singing chorus of Dionysians, and at the start the
16 In the words of Gamel, “Sondheim Floats Frogs” (above, n. 6), p. 216, Sondheim from the start makes his Frogs “spell out a philosophy of complacency and conservatism.”
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Dionysians are bland and welcoming to Dionysus, since he is the god of wine, to which they sing extended praises. But after a bumpy arrival, and just before Dionysus gets to meet Bernard Shaw offstage, the Dionysians offer the audience their version of the parabasis of Aristophanes’ play. This is a big musical number, to which Sondheim gave the title “It’s Only a Play,” and one can sense there an almost explicit contrast with “Comedy Tonight,” the iconic number from Funny Thing. A parabasis in ancient Greek comedy should see the chorus left alone in the playing space and coming forward to engage with the audience directly. In a modern version, the parabasis is a challenge to embrace a kind of stringent topicality, or at least to poke fun or come near the knuckle with a number of contemporary allusions. Shevelove and Sondheim have the chorus leader, whom they call the Hierophantes (leader of the rites) in deference to the latent idea of initiates, alternate his spoken address to the audience with choral song from the Dionysians. By this means, they set up a remarkable contrast between the explanation the Hierophantes offers of Dionysus’ motives, which is mildly critical of the passivity of the audience, and the comforting, balmy mood-music of the Dionysians. So while the Hierophantes informs the audience that Dionysus believes that they lack passion, sees their “outrage turning into disapproval” (p. 181), and even claims that Heracles is “bright enough to see that things are in terrible shape” (p. 182), the chorus sings to them to relax and not worry, since “What can one person do?” (p. 181) and “Things fix themselves” (p. 182). In this, the Dionysians clearly echo the Frogs from earlier in the play, although one might suspect that where the Frogs are middle-America and unashamedly philistine, the Dionysians may be representative of cultured spinelessness. The final verse leaves this rather open, with the idea that a play is only words or “natter / Which somebody wrote” (p. 183), and perhaps the Dionysians here are imbued with the essence of a cynical commercial producer or backer, unimpressed by the idea of commitment.17 That “serious” second part of the play about which we were warned in the invocation gives Shaw the lead, just as Aristophanes had allowed the more “modern” Euripides to lead off. In the presentation of their work that occupies most of the rest of the play, Shaw provides the critique of Shakespeare, while Shakespeare-the-character is confined to a few, brief objections; he does not respond to most criticism. The contest itself is prefaced by a dialogue between Dionysus and Shaw, in which both preview how Shaw will confront the modern audience, whom he sums up pejoratively in a long series of doublets such as “They are not moral; they are only conventional,” “Not public-spirited, only patriotic,” and “Not disciplined, only cowed” (p. 187). Dionysus is a bit daunted by this admittedly predictable outburst, and hopes that
17 This kind of satire of the production system was still in the air after the film of Mel Brooks’ The Producers, issued in 1968. Gamel, “Sondheim Floats Frogs” (above, n. 6), p. 218, puts the contrast between the activism of the Hierophantes and the passivity of the Dionysians on a philosophical level: “we might choose to see reality as ‘evanescent and not worth getting excited about’, or alternatively condemn passivity as ‘deadly’.”
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Shaw will say what he has to say “brilliantly and painlessly,” inclining momentarily as the “producer” he is to the stance of the Dionysians; he is only reassured by being told that the truth is “the funniest joke in the world” (p. 188). What we hear in the preliminaries to the formal contest is a series of favorite Shakespearean extracts, to which Shaw objects but not with anything to which one might latch on to, not even (it must be said) with a consistent joke. For Shaw, we gather, Shakespeare is “melodramatic” and “intellectually vulgar.” In Aristophanes’ Frogs, the tragic contestants Aeschylus and Euripides lead the polemical satire of one other’s verse composition; for a substantial part of the contest, this is done by constructing and imposing parody or outright mockery. In the contest here, Dionysus asks for quotations on five topics—woman, man, the life force, love, and life and death—and receives them, more than one for each, concluding with a song, Sondheim’s setting of the song from Cymbeline, “Fear no more the heat o’ th’ sun.”18 Fittingly in a musical, this clinches the contest in favor of Shakespeare, and the justification is the need for a poet, which Shaw is not. The play offers two explanations for this idea of the poet, one in the book and one in the final number from the Dionysians, called “The Sound of Poets.” In the book, Dionysus asserts that a “great big poet” will be able to “lift them out of their seats,” and any further detail of this strategy is fudged by pointing to several Greek gods who will then play their part: the followers of Demeter “will do something about the land,” those of Poseidon “about the sea,” and Apollo will work wonders with the sun (p. 207). What Mary-Kay Gamel rightly censures as “vague remarks” are capped by the sentiments of the concluding number,19 which encourages Dionysus with the return of Shakespeare to (p. 209) Bring a sense of purpose Bring the taste of words Bring the sound of wit Bring the feel of passion Bring the glow of thought To the darkening earth.
The connection with the victory of Shakespeare, the poet, is confusing, since some of these are plainly qualities that earlier in the play Shaw had been thought to embody.
18 As Gamel, “Sondheim Floats Frogs” (above, n. 6), p. 214, observes, “Shevelove makes the contest less funny by using actual quotations from the playwrights”. The published script notes that “The words of William Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw have been selected from their works by Jo DurdenSmith” (p. 138). 19 Gamel, “Sondheim Floats Frogs” (above, n. 6), p. 214, who underlines the failure here to engage with any contemporary political issues.
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What Is in a Revival? Sondheim makes it clear that creating songs for Shevelove’s revival of The Frogs was a personal and professional favor, one that came after a particularly awkward period of misunderstanding attached to the out-of-town productions of Funny Thing.20 That Shevelove himself should be back in favor in Yale in the early 1970s is hardly surprising in the wake of the success of the Broadway launch of that same show. That songs from The Frogs should be included in a celebration for Sondheim held at the Library of Congress in 2000—the year Sondheim was 70—is not in itself remarkable. But the most interesting questions would be why Nathan Lane felt that The Frogs needed a revival, and what he and the director of that revival, Susan Stroman, thought that this play and its production had to offer to audiences in the new millennium. Answering those questions is made more awkward by the lack of a published book of Nathan Lane’s expanded version of Shevelove’s adaptation, and by the fact that the recording has only snatches of the book alongside the numbers, as does its accompanying script-booklet.21 We know that Lane chose to ask Sondheim to add solo numbers, since the numbers in Sondheim’s score for the 1974 production were mostly choral. Of these added numbers, the most overtly sensitive, called “Ariadne,” seems largely intended to give depth and pathos to our appreciation of Dionysus (paradoxically, for a god) as a person, while the most camp is “Dress Big,” a glorious exploitation of the “soft guy in tough clothing” scene between Heracles and Dionysus before the awesome descent into hell. But neither reveals much of a specific motive for the revival. Instead, we have some incidental comments from both Lane and Stroman taken from the time of the production, which give some orientation. From an interview, we know that Lane was influenced by his reflections on the Sondheim concert of 2000 in the aftermath of 9/11, and was touched by the idea that “the arts can make a difference.” He was also convinced that there was a distinction between his developed version and the current situation, on the one hand, and Shevelove’s original, on the other, which was “more about saving the theater, as opposed to the world.” The interview continued: But this version now, it is changed from saving the theater to saving the world through the arts. I’d like to believe that it is possible … in small doses, we can have an effect. And change people’s minds.
Lane was sure that the Frogs and their complacency could connect with acquiescence in the war with Iraq:
20 Sondheim (above, n. 11). 21 Details of the recording given above, n. 13. Gamel, “Sondheim Floats Frogs” (above, n. 6), in her account of the revival was able to call on a loaned working-copy of the script (p. 229 n. 49): see her summary of the new structure at pp. 219–20.
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Just listen to what they have to say, and everything’s actually better than you think it is. Why would you start to question things? Why? I thought, with all of that, this piece could be relevant to what we’re living through. Especially when suddenly, if people were questioning why we were going to war in Iraq, they were branded as unpatriotic.22
There is some coherent belief and intention here, although the strategies by which the audience might be engaged are not explained.23 Lane comments that he left Shaw and Shakespeare in place, although Sondheim did question at the time whether Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee, for example, might be possible alternatives. So what was for Shevelove primarily a piece about a disillusionment with theater, according to Lane could also function in an expanded version as a more politically charged, albeit entertaining intervention. Lane plainly had many discussions with Stroman about the play and the changes he and Sondheim were making to it, as well as about the production values they should bring to it. In an interview, Stroman was clearly aligned with Lane on the sense of a connection to a post-9/11 era: The play begins with a catastrophe happening on Earth. And when Nathan first brought this to me, it was only a year after September 11th.
Stroman emphasized grief—“the entire city of New York was grieving”—and saw that as the link: Dionysos, the god of drama and the god of wine, goes down to Hades to bring back someone who could soothe the population.
But perhaps the most interesting slant Stroman offered was that her poet of choice was very much alive: What’s also wonderful about the idea that Dionysos goes back to Hades to find a speaker to satisfy the people who are grieving is that we also have the composer-lyricist who is known for his words. Sondheim is known for his lyrics, and he is unmatched in his formation of phrase and his rhyme and his gathering of words in such a way that makes people think. The idea that Sondheim would come together with an Aristophanes play is extraordinary. It was meant to be.
So, for Stroman, Aristophanes’ Frogs suited Sondheim, since the idea that art can make a change, that has been in his work forever. We can see it in all his other projects, and here he can use the voice of Dionysos, the god of drama, to make that statement.24
22 This and the preceding quotations are taken from Nathan Lane in an interview with the editor, John Guare, in “A Leap of Fate,” The Lincoln Center Theater Review 38 (Summer 2004). 23 Gamel, “Sondheim Floats Frogs” (above, n. 6), pp. 220–1, makes a reasonable case for interpreting some passages in Lane’s unpublished script as allusions to the contemporary political situation, although she hesitates between the idea that most are “indirect, yet clear” (p. 220) and the conclusion that there are “direct political comments” (p. 222). 24 This and the preceding quotations are taken from Susan Stroman in an interview with Deborah Artman, in “A Picasso Twist,” The Lincoln Center Theater Review 38 (Summer 2004).
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One might see this as a director’s vision, looking past the explicit dramaturgy and plot—in which Shakespeare and Shaw are the alternative “voices” on offer—to the effect of the production as a whole on the audience, notably as a musical in which the composer’s voice will be paramount. Yet it is still a paradoxical stance, even if both Shakespeare in retrospect and Sondheim in the present might combine to offer comfort to communal grief. What does not emerge from these interviews is any strong impression of the meaning of “art making a difference” or “a change,” an idea shared by Lane and Stroman, or of Lane”s “saving the world through the arts.” These are patently by their nature general, loose statements. But on what issue or topics precisely might this production “change people’s minds”? Assuaging grief seems a possible objective for a sensitively judged musical, but the political context and connections present in the minds of Lane and Stroman find no expression in the production.25 What does seem certain, is that Lane and Stroman share with Sondheim a distaste for the perceived quietism of the American citizenry, an anti-intellectual attitude that will fail to exercise critical judgment. In that respect, Sondheim may have brought a more broadly “political” dimension to Shevelove’s desire to assert strong values for the American theater, to what Lane identifies as Shevelove’s sense that the theater needed “saving,” presumably from itself. So all these active views can come together in Sondheim’s bold manoeuvre in the chorus of Frogs and the later number “Parabasis: It’s Only a Play.” In the chorus of Frogs, the mentally inert wallowing-in-slime and the lax invitations to “leave the world alone” set up an alarming musical counterpoint in the juxtaposition of fragments from the Eton boating song with snatches from “Ol’ Man River,” and this unnerving quality is developed later in “Parabasis.” In that number, the light-hearted audience-address adopted in the opening “Invocation and Instructions to the Audience” metamorphoses to a more insidious metatheatricality that is musically almost “narcotic,” a term Stephen Banfield in a regrettably short notice of both song and play applied to it.26 As Mark Horowitz commented of the number, “its form makes it seem as though the thought were already in the listener’s head. It is musical brainwashing, and its ideas are pernicious.”27 But all these numbers were there from 1974 onward. So perhaps the main, subliminal link created by these two productions is between the eras in which they occurred: two unnerving, provocative periods of questionable military involvement and an accompanying sense of American vulnerability.
25 Gamel, “Sondheim Floats Frogs” (above, n. 6), p. 223, insists that the appearance of the Manhattan skyline upstage at the end of the production suggested that “Dionysos and Shakespeare were coming back to save New York and, by extension, the United States.” Yet she believes, in principle, that “Stroman’s production was entirely too civil with the audience” (p. 224). 26 Stephen Banfield, Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), p. 53. 27 Mark Horowitz, “The Slippery Art of the Score,” Lincoln Center Theater Review 38 (Summer 2004); Horowitz is Senior Music Specialist at the Library of Congress.
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Filthy Frogs and a British context My own version of Aristophanes’ Frogs also had its genesis firmly in an academic context, and it gained a rehearsed reading in a drama department; but it has no production history and is graced by no brilliant composer. It was, however, what in the discipline of theater studies is called “research through practice.”28 As I explained in my introduction, Aristophanes remained a puzzle to me, and I have been interested in testing hypotheses for the contemporary performance of his work. I would contend that often, when a playwright is not represented in the repertoire, each of his plays poses a separate problem of assimilation until a critical moment is reached when all (or most, at least) are emancipated together. From my perspective, as a Greek specialist rooted in theater studies, Frogs had always offered the potential for adaptation, notably to the modern or modernist era. What turned me to that task toward the end of the millennium was the darker shade added by the onset of postmodernism to the fading of the modern canon of theater practitioners. Nothing could have marked this more strongly than the death in January 1999 of Jerzy Grotowski, the radical Polish theater director who was himself a bridge between the modern and the postmodern eras, an icon of the 1960s generation in theater-making and pedagogy. In theater and performance studies, the “modern canon” was not a matter of Ibsen and Shaw and was not strictly dramaturgical; it included influential theoretical practitioners such as Stanislavski, Meyerhold, Brecht, Artaud, Copeau and even the occasional British figure, such as Peter Brook.29 Belief in a modern canon has been characterized by a confidence in innovation, almost a positivist approach to theater-making, that “the theater” will get somehow “better” with reforms and initiatives. Postmodernism in the loosest sense has brought two things to affect that state of mind: it has failed to create figures around whom such confidence can gather, but it has created an undeniable sense of terminus for the modern impetus in theater. Oddly enough, until relatively recently Ibsen was still part of a modern continuum that stretched to Beckett and beyond. That would now rarely be thought to be the case. This accelerating demise of a belief-structure struck me as an ideal moment for a Frogs, which I wrote in the summer of 2000, during which two of the outstanding British actors of the older generation, John Gielgud and Alec Guinness, died. I had
28 This is a term embraced by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which funds research in the University sector in the UK. It refers to theater practice directed toward specific research aims, those that could not be pursued or investigated theoretically, without studio work. 29 An indicative book here, for those less familiar with theater studies and the modern, is Edward Braun, The Director and the Stage (London: Methuen, 1982), which collects one possible core of a modern canon. See also my own thoughts on what it means (or meant) to be canonically modern and theatrical: “Theatrical Modernism: A Problematic,” in: Astradur Eysteinsson and Vivian Liska (eds.), Modernism (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007), pp. 531–44.
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never had much doubt about the two protagonists, since Brecht would substitute for Euripides and Artaud for Aeschylus. There was always a facile distinction haunting modern theater studies between the supposedly “rationalist” interpretation of theater’s role presented by Brecht and the irrational or supposedly “essentialist” role sketched by Artaud.30 What postmodernism and the millennium gave me was the sense of a conviction about the closing of an era, and other decisions were relatively easy. The chorus of Ar-Toadians would chant mystically in favor of their hero and be resistant to any attempt to resurrect Brecht. The strict gatekeeper/doorkeeper to the past would be Stanislavski, whose “method” of actor-training has remained the linch-pin of mainstream modern approaches to the interpretation of texts by actors and directors. A different kind of transition would be provided by Grotowski as the ferryman Charon, and the hard side of a visit to the underworld (Heracles) would be represented by Irvine Welsh, the author of the heroin-fuelled Trainspotting, a novel that had been made into a successful playscript and film. For all these figures, I used words drawn from their published works, giving a relatively extended parody of the Brechtian short plays He Who Says Yes and He Who Says No. Dionysus was plainly a theater-lover, possibly linked to the Arts Council, the fount of government subsidy in British theater, and I was determined that his assistant be a young woman who would diverge from his view of theater. She would share his desperation at the dissolution of certainty, even if she could find vocal and disparaging objections to the attitudes held by the predominant masculinity of theatrical modernism. For her, there had been a brief moment of light in the growing darkness with the career of Sarah Kane, an explosive playwright of what was termed “in-yer-face theatre,” who committed suicide in 1999, a month after Grotowski’s death.31 I was less sure about the chorus of initiates from Aristophanes, although it was clear that these would readily become theater aficionados of some kind. My eventual choice was for journalist theater critics, who would be prone to all the standard prejudices about them, namely that they are apparently liberal people with a conservative backbone, who have a history of being badly wrong about innovation in the medium they profess to love. In the end, they also came to embrace one of my leading research questions, how far a contemporary audience could take Aristophanes’
30 I take it that Brecht will be more or less familiar or can be tracked down easily enough. For a short critical assessment of Artaud, see the chapter on him in Jane Milling and Graham Ley, Modern Theories of Performance (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2001), pp. 87–115. 31 This is a definition of British theater-writing in the 1990s that has been questioned, but it has certain validity in an unrestrained approach to audience-impact, either through shocking language or violent or repugnant actions. The core critical text was written by the theatre critic Aleks Sierz, In-YerFace Theatre: British Drama Today (London: Faber, 2001). Sarah Kane’s plays include Blasted, Phaidra’s Loves and 4:48 Psychosis.
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rough-handling of sexualities for laughs or comic fantasy.32 This question stretched beyond Frogs, which is not remarkable for these characteristics, and it was evident that the easiest laugh and the least offence would be caused by reference to male masturbation, since this is a standard insult (“wanker”) in vernacular Britain in any case, and since Aristophanes loves to play with making the metaphorical literal. So anyone in Filthy Frogs might be accused of this, and I extended to the critics the additional insult of being pederasts; given how much they are abused on occasion by theater practitioners, this was not astounding and was the kind of slur Aristophanes might have used. But I was not at all confident that the jokes about consenting, adult homosexuality recurrent in Aristophanes would be viable in a modern version. In relation to modern production, there are larger questions about the masculinity and sexual politics of Aristophanes in general, aspects that will not automatically appeal to a contemporary audience. In this respect, while some of his comedies present figures of women in power or at least in temporary control, in others there is a relentless accent on male experience and initiative. In my own version, I would have been unhappy without a strong female companion for Dionysus, whose own journey was as important to her as his was to him (or to her), and whose response to the characters was just as important in the actions and the evolution of the plot. It does not need special pleading to believe that such a figure is as essential to the drama felt by the audience in the postmodern setting of this version as the genial stereotype of Dionysus, and Xanthia (as she was called) was undoubtedly a route-in for many in the audience. Selections from the script are available to be read on-line.33 In the event, my audience for the single play-reading was from the drama department, from which the readers were also taken. This assembly contained older people for whom modernism was an article of faith and the core of their pedagogy, as well as younger overseas graduates for whom—whether they were from the USA, Korea or Thailand—Stanislavski and the modern canon formed the mainstream of their drama education, if not precisely part of a belief system. Other younger colleagues and students were informed but less committed and might indeed find the play a suitable moment to interrogate their own “modern” loyalties, which were likely to be mixed. No questionnaire or feedback-session has ever been able to confirm statistically secure results from research conducted through practice, but the activity may have considerable validity nonetheless. Individuals will indicate inadequacies or dissatisfaction and will push forward their leading thoughts sufficiently to indicate which parts of the wooden shed you have just erected can be pushed over, or which have
32 In Henderson-esque terms, the question would be whether the Muse is as Maculate as she used to be; this kind of thinking about modern audiences and Aristophanes informs the essay by Scharffenberger elsewhere in this volume. 33 At the following web-address, click on the “Extracts from Filthy Frogs” PDF at the foot of the page – http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/drama/staff/ley/practice/
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their bolts put in the wrong way round. In other words, sheer incompetence in practice as research may result in useless confusion. But if a practical project is formed and released at a moderately advanced stage of research, the awkward and failing aspects will stand out constructively as conclusions from what is successful. In this case, shock was undoubtedly registered in some audience members at the disrespect for modernism, and some shock at the accompanying admixture of high art with intermittent obscenity; both were positive results in my view, since they were effects I wanted. The “awkward” aspect was a predictable objection about elitist theater. Our theater practitioners are astoundingly obsessed with the fantasy of an audience that has never been to a theater but will come flocking in from its favored television programs if only the right repertoire is programmed. Any suggestion that the theater audience is largely composed of people who favor theater itself as an experience and may be inclined to enjoy their own knowledge of it, is heresy. This is a curious paradox, since allusions to film or television (rather than to theater itself) are regarded as bankable even within live theater, whether or not they truly are. It is obvious that as long as such terms of belief prevail, Frogs cannot truly flourish in an adapted modern version even if the auditorium is full of people who understand almost all the allusions.
Some remaining issues Some of the larger questions I have raised here cannot be answered within the confines of this essay, since they rest with dramaturgs, directors and producers to resolve in given instances of inclination or actual enterprise, with writers and performers. In fact, it may be wiser to call some of them “issues” rather than questions, since practitioners and audiences may more often “have issues” with various aspects of Aristophanes than questions about his work. Plainly the act of adaptation can at any time remove problems of this sort from a dramatic work, especially a translated play, and turn it toward the existing tastes of its target audience, or what its audience wishes to believe of itself. That kind of adaptation is an act of assimilation, which brings with it not much more than an impression of variety in the repertoire and perhaps a more sinister conviction that the culture to which one belongs is strong enough to subsume the products of other cultures without itself being troubled. The alternative is a more radical choice, risking a potential confrontation with difference, perhaps even embracing the sophisticated possibility of a semi-conscious delight in an audience that will be measuring the extent of similarity and difference between “us and them.” The theater makes choices of that kind all the time, and it sometimes takes critics or even scholars to remind us on which side of the line a production has come down; in theater, of course, appearances can be deceptive. There is perhaps just a bit more to say on Shaw and Shakespeare in the United States. That both playwrights should have exercised a strong claim from the begin-
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ning on the intellectuals of the Yale “Dramat” is unsurprising. That kind of debate is a recognisable instance of “the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns” and would have been current in educated circles until after the Second World War. But Scott McMillan rightly draws our attention to a clash of these titans in the world of the Broadway musical the decade after this. His interest lies in the years 1956–1957, when Bernstein and Sondheim were turning Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet into a musical, while theatregoers were waiting all night along 51st Street for a chance to buy standing-room tickets for the next performance of My Fair Lady.34
His specific argument at this point of his study is part of a far more complex whole, but it contrasts an old-fashioned, conservative model for the musical, one straining to find excuses for ensemble numbers, with the fluid predominance of the dancing and singing ensemble in West Side Story. In McMillan’s thinking, by challenging the resolved, authoritarian view of “community” traditionally espoused by musicals, West Side Story represents a turning point in the history and development of the musical. It would be easy to be more explicit than McMillan chooses to be about class; the adaptation of Shaw’s Pygmalion that is My Fair Lady contrasts about as sharply as it might in that respect with the ethnic vision of Shakespeare advanced by Bernstein and Sondheim. The battle between Shaw and Shakespeare, in the context of the American musical, does align Shakespeare with Sondheim, as Susan Stroman intuitively felt. But it could do so effectively only by introducing a reference to the role of adaptation in American musical theater. That contemporary theme could have been realized to greater effect in a more complex composition pitched closer to the heart of American theater, offering more radical parodies of musicals and their makers in both book and lyrics.35 Such possibilities underline the potential value of Aristophanes to our theaters—that he would push us, if we are willing and able, to think through to versions that challenge some of our core perceptions.
34 Scott McMillan, The Musical as Drama (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 91. 35 Oddly enough, musicals do not occur to Gamel, “Sondheim Floats Frogs” (above, n. 6), p. 225, in her list of suggestions for changes in the contesting playwrights for a contemporary adaptation of Frogs, or in the chosen media (she mentions TV, country-western singers or filmmakers).
David Konstan
Ionesco’s New and Old Comedy Abstract: It is often assumed that a deep gulf divides ancient comedy, whether Old or New, from the modern theater of the absurd. I argue, however, that Ionesco’s Amédée or How to Get Rid of It may be read as a take-off on the New Comic paradigm, in particular Plautus’ Aulularia (by way of Molière’s Miser), at the same time drawing inspiration from Old Comedy’s fantasy resolutions, above all Aristophanes’ Birds.
Twenty years ago, Paul Cartledge published a small book entitled Aristophanes and His Theatre of the Absurd, in which he hinted at analogies between the extravagant plots of Old Comedy and the bizarre situations in what has come to be called the theater of the absurd, associated in particular with the work of Samuel Beckett.1 The term “theater of the absurd” was coined by Martin Esslin (1962) with reference to Albert Camus’ sense of the meaninglessness and futility that characterize human life; these are exemplified in particular in Camus’ brief essay The Myth of Sisyphus and his novel The Stranger (both published in 1942).2 Esslin singled out as representatives of the style Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov and Harold Pinter, although not all of them accepted the label. Ionesco in particular—the subject of this essay—distanced himself from the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre3 and rather admired the so-called ’Pataphysics inaugurated by Alfred Jarry (the initial apostrophe, Jarry insisted, is part of the word), and saw himself as closer perhaps to the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. His comedies celebrate a kind of joie de vivre that interrupts the tedium of everyday life and distinguishes them from the unalleviated dreariness of Beckett’s dramas.4 It is as though the bourgeois scene of ancient
For Jeff Henderson, whose scholarship and company have always been seasoned by a refined sense of the absurd. My title alludes to Kenneth Reckford’s impish study, Aristophanes’ Old-and-New Comedy: Six Essays in Perspective (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987). 1 Paul Cartledge, Aristophanes and His Theatre of the Absurd (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1990). For possible similarities between Aristophanes and Samuel Beckett, cf. Stephen Halliwell (trans.), Aristophanes: Birds, Lysistrata, Assembly-Women, Wealth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. lxiv– lxv. 2 Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd (Garden City: Doubleday, 1961). 3 See Eugène Ionesco, Notes and Counter Notes: Writings on the Theatre, trans. Donald Watson (New York: Grove Press, 1964); orig. Notes et contre-notes, 1962. 4 Here I differ from Erich Segal, who in The Death of Comedy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001) lumped Ionesco together with Beckett as examples of the decline of comedy from its original impulse, represented by Aristophanes’ celebration of festive sexuality and rejuvenation, to the desiccated modernist fashion of existential despair and resignation. See my review of Segal, “Who Killed Humor?,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 9 (2003), pp. 407–12.
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New Comedy were extended to the point of unendurable monotony, with all the romance and hope of erôs exhausted and burnt out, and then invaded by the wild, untrammeled liberty of Aristophanes, where everything is possible, including flying through the air. I propose to illustrate the apparent affinity between Ionesco and Old Comedy, and the way it functions in his plays as a response to the New Comic paradigm, by way of an analysis of Ionesco’s first full-length play, Amédée or How to Get Rid of It (Amédée, ou Comment s’en débarrasser), originally performed in 1954.5 But I must register a caveat here about the sense in which I understand “reception” in this context. I shall not attempt to illustrate a direct dependence of Ionesco’s play on ancient Greek or Latin comedy. I imagine that he was familiar with it, as any educated European was in his time, not to mention his interest as a professional dramatist; but I do not know whether he had it actively in mind when he composed Amédée. He need not have done so for ancient comedy to have influenced the form of his own drama, since Old and New Comedy were part and parcel of the theatrical tradition. My purpose is rather to indicate how an awareness of the paradigms that inform ancient comedy may help shed light on the structure and meaning of a modern play that bears, however indirectly, a debt to them. The setting for Ionesco’s Amédée is the interior of an apartment for almost the entire play except for the finale, which shifts outdoors. In this, it departs from the conventions of ancient drama (apart from mime), in which the scene is invariably outside the home, in a public space. Although indoor scenes came in with medieval and especially Renaissance theater, they can be exploited to different effects. In dramas that take place entirely indoors, like television situation comedies especially in their first three or four decades (roughly 1950–1990), the interior setting may suggest a private place, where life is partially protected from the outer world. (One thinks of the cozy atmosphere that reigns in a show like Cheers or Archie Bunker’s Place, both set in taverns.) But being cooped up may also give rise to claustrophobia, and the ostensibly safe boundaries of the home can seem like an airless prison, barring or defending its inhabitants from communication with society at large. Taken to extremes, this is the model for Sartre’s No Exit (Huis Clos, 1944), in which Hell consists of being confined with others in an endless round of carping and mutual vilification, from which the characters cannot bring themselves to leave even when the doors are open. (Luis Buñuel’s film The Exterminating Angel [El ángel exterminador] has a similar premise.) An indoor setting, then, may serve to capture the quality of alienation of modern life, in which people are more and more isolated and anonymous, and their contacts with one another reduced to almost mechanical interactions, mediated by instruments such as the telephone and, more recently, the
5 For an English translation, see Eugène Ionesco, Three Plays, trans. Donald Watson (New York: Grove Press, 1958).
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internet. This is the purpose such a setting fulfills in Amédée, in which the couple, Amédée Buccinioni and his wife Madeleine, have encysted themselves in their apartment and all but succeeded in eliminating intercourse with the outer world. The basic situation is familiar enough: the expectations that Amédée and Madeleine once had for their marriage, when they were still in love, have long since evaporated, and they are reduced to continual, pointless bickering, somewhat like George and Martha in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which opened on Broadway in 1962, eight years after Ionesco’s play. The dialogue in Amédée is less violent, however, and more like inveterate and almost formulaic nagging, with a certain lack of consequentiality or logic, in the manner of Beckett. Amédée is a playwright with writer’s block who has written no more than a line in years, giving his wife reason to complain. Madeleine, in turn, works from home as a telephone operator and is responsible for the household’s earnings; this is a dull job but demanding in a repetitive way, and she understandably resents her situation. Amédée’s sympathy is wasted on her and in any case sounds more like whining than genuine concern. Amédée could pass, then, for a more or less mimetic representation of a cheerless, frustrated marriage, in which the pair feel trapped with and by each other but lack the energy or independence to escape. But there is a wrinkle, which tilts the play toward the absurd, Ionesco style. For the last 15 years, the couple have harbored in their house, in the bedroom alongside the salon visible on stage, a corpse, which is a major reason for their self-imposed seclusion. Not just that, but the corpse has recently begun to grow, and as the action progresses, its feet break through the door and are seen extending across the room, until they threaten to fill the entire space and drive the couple out of their home and refuge. On top of all this, mushrooms begin to grow inside the house, first in the room where the corpse is stretched out on a bed, and then in the salon where Amédée sits futilely at his desk and Madeleine operates the switchboard. The drama thus unfolds just as the couple are being driven to seek a way out of their predicament and put an end to their confinement. The corpse itself, the motive for their secrecy and withdrawal, is the agency that forces them to come to terms with their situation and overcome it. On the surface, this scenario may seem at several removes from the typical paradigm of ancient New Comedy, which centered on erotic attraction and culminated in a wedding, or at all events (if the affair was with a courtesan) in the union of the enamored protagonist—always a young man—and the object of his desire. Indeed, for Northrop Frye, wedlock has been the natural conclusion of comedy throughout the ages.6 Modern playwrights, writing in what Frye called the low mimetic mode, have given us anti-heroes rather than heroes: characters who suffer helplessly, caught in 6 Northrop Frye, The Anatomy of Criticism, ed. Robert D. Denhams (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), p. 158 (orig. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957): “The cognitio in comedy, in which the characters find out who their relatives are, and who is left of the opposite sex not a relative, and hence available for marriage, is one of the features of comedy that have never changed much.”
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situations from which they cannot escape, like Willy Loman (“Low-Man”) in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. The plot of Amédée is thus not based on erotic desire and its fulfillment, but opens, as we have seen, long after desire has been extinguished; it has a kind of morning-after feeling, when the party has ended and nothing remains but the dull reality of ordinary life compounded of poverty, listlessness and an utter loss of hope. There is nevertheless a possible model in the ancient genre for the structure of Amédée: Plautus’ Aulularia, which in turn bears a strong resemblance to Menander’s Dyscolus, although Ionesco could not have known about the latter when he wrote his play. Plautus’ comedy centers on a miser who is so fanatically attached to the pot of gold he discovered in his hearth that he cuts off all relations with his fellow citizens to keep his hoard secret, in fear that someone may steal it. As a consequence of his obsession, he is unwilling even to provide his daughter with a dowry, so his household is isolated from the two principal types of transaction that constituted the basis of Roman citizenship and bound households together in a community: commercial and connubial exchange. As it happens, the miser’s gold is stolen, and into the bargain his daughter has been raped and bears a child in the course of the play. He is thus doubly humbled, and when the man who violated the girl confesses to the deed and furthermore restores the treasure to the old skinflint, the latter consents to give his daughter in wedlock along with at least a portion of the gold as a dowry. (This is reasonably certain, though the last act of Aulularia is mutilated.) The miser is thus reintegrated into the community from which he had, as it were, exiled himself in his mania, and its fabric is restored. The plot form of Aulularia was destined to have a considerable influence, both on comedy, where the prime example is Molière’s L’Avare, and on tragic melodrama, as for example Marlowe’s Jew of Malta and Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (which have their own legacy in Théophile Gauthier’s La Juive de Constantine). But with changing times, new wines were poured into the vessel of the miser-plot. As I have argued elsewhere, Molière’s play features a miser of a totally different complexion: not a hoarder like his Plautine ancestor, but a usurer who puts his money constantly to work by lending it out at exorbitant interest.7 He too must be humbled, but the effect will be to reassert the legitimate use of wealth against the threat of an emerging mercantile and financial system that threatened to undermine the old order and its values. Ionesco’s comedy represents yet another inflection of the pattern: here the characters who retreat from society do so not out of greed but out of a nameless dread or sense of guilt, represented by the body in their bedroom: they are certain that they are responsible for the man’s death, although they cannot remember just what happened or precisely how he was killed. This is the modernist element: characters gripped by an abstract guilt or anxiety, the cause of which they themselves cannot
7 See David Konstan, Greek Comedy and Ideology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 153– 64.
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identify even though it is present as a physical object, dead but increasing in size (and at one point emitting music and light). The play revolves around a secret, something the characters must discover about themselves, like Oedipus in Sophocles’ tragedy. (Indeed, the plague in that work has much the same function as the mysteriously growing corpse in Ionesco’s play.) Although Oedipus the King has been compared to comedy—a foundling discovers his parents and marries, although in this case the story turns out terribly wrong—nothing in New Comedy approximates the brooding, haunted sensibility of Ionesco’s protagonists.8 On one level, the generalized guilt that afflicts Amédée and Madeleine, which takes the form of a secret they hide although they no longer know why, corresponds to the abstract character of social relations in general as represented in the play. Madeleine is not really isolated from the world; she is rather at the center of a web of communication extending up to the president of France himself. As a telephone operator, she is the nodal point of a grand network, the lines of which reach out to all society. The problem is that she is merely a transmitter, without a self; she receives and passes along calls and messages but does not initiate them. She has nothing to say. Human beings are connected, as it were, by wires rather than by old-fashioned, personal relations, such as the post. When a postman does bring a letter, which Amédée and Madeleine refuse to accept, they excuse themselves for not offering the carrier a glass of wine, and he replies that this is a country custom: no one in the city invites the postman in any more. The isolation of the couple is in this respect a function of the modern world as such, in which people are at the service of mechanical transactions rather than the other way around. One might say that, in place of the fetishism of gold that characterized Plautus’ miser, the modern recluse is the victim of a system-wide alienation, in which everyone is starved of genuine contact. There is thus no room for rescue from outside: Amédée and Madeleine are stuck in their house —except for the pressure from within, in the form of the strangely growing corpse and the mushrooms. Somehow the dead—or fungi that feed on dead matter—are taking their revenge, pushing to the surface; matters buried in the unconscious are pressing to be acknowledged. When there is at last no other remedy, the listless Amédée works up the energy and will to drag the corpse out through the window, in order to dispose of it in the river. He is thus obliged to take initiative, venture outside, attempt something novel and ambitious. Although he tries to sneak about on his mission, he passes by a brothel that caters to American soldiers, who are posted in postwar France. (Recall that the date is 1954.) There is some amusing banter between the prostitutes and clientele of the brothel, some neighbors who are looking out their windows, and Amédée himself, but the finale is wholly unexpected. To facilitate moving the now enormously elon-
8 For Oedipus the King as a tragic twist on a comic plot, see Richmond Lattimore, The Poetry of Greek Tragedy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1958), pp. 81–102.
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gated corpse, Amédée wraps it around himself, and suddenly it begins to serve as a giant kite, wafting him up in the air, floating above the rest. The dead thing has not only yielded to life, it has generated a kind of transcendence of the mundane, an ability to fly. Amédée is at last fully liberated, as he soars above the crowd, apologetically ignoring Madeleine’s pleas that he return to earth. The previously stymied playwright has entered the empyrean of the imagination. The theme of flying, of the poet’s freedom from ordinary hassles, including henpecking, conventional wives, is common to several of Ionesco’s plays (one of them entitled A Stroll in the Air). It is an Aristophanic moment, as in Birds, where characters escape the humdrum entanglements of lawsuits to join the birds and acquire wings themselves, in the end demanding that Zeus himself surrender sovereignty to the new avian order. Despite Amédée’s fecklessness, a trait he shares with the young lovers of New Comedy, he manages to take action in the end and is transformed into a comic champion, who takes to the skies and is rejuvenated. Move over Menander, enter Aristophanes: if New Comedy has reached a dead end, with the plot shifted to the aftermath of romance and marriage, it is here rescued by a device specific to Old Comedy, the hero who magically finds liberation, if not for all society, as Aristophanes’ heroes often do (apart, perhaps, from Dicaeopolis in Acharnians), then at least for himself; and in an atomized society, the liberation of the individual is a model for that of everyone. But there is perhaps a hint of collective redemption as well in Amédée. That Amédée finally leaves his apartment and with the help of the very corpse that so troubled his conscience is able to free himself of the constraints of quotidian life, is all well and good. But why does it work? What was the nature of the secret guilt that hamstrung the poor couple, and which can now be shed like old skin? Nothing in the play tells us precisely, but I believe that there is a latent clue which, to my knowledge, has not been noticed by critics. It has to do with the date at which the corpse turned up in the home of the Buccinionis, several times specified as 15 years earlier than the time of the dramatic action. We recall, once again, that the play was first produced in Paris in 1954, when American soldiers were still to be seen in the streets and cavorting drunkenly with whores. What happened 15 years earlier—that is, in 1939 or, reckoning inclusively (in the manner of the Romance languages), in 1940— that might have so perturbed the consciences of Amédée and Madeleine, and which they fail to recognize after all this time? I suggest that it was the German invasion of France and the capitulation of the French to the Nazis, which led directly to the Vichy regime, established in July 1940. This, I believe, is the body in the bed, or skeleton in the closet, that haunts the couple and has dissolved all bonds of trust and attachment with their fellows. Ionesco’s opposition to Fascism and anti-Semitism is well known; he himself described Rhinoceros (1959) as “an anti-Nazi play,” and it was understood this way by the German audiences before whom it was produced, and who received it enthusiastically. It is no great stretch to see the same sensibility at work in Amédée.
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But if Amédée really is, at one level, not simply an investigation of an indefinable existential malaise but a study in social memory and repression, the liberation that takes place at the end and is viewed by Americans and French alike, has an immediate political reference. Despite the apparently vague and insubstantial nature of the couple’s disquiet, therefore, Ionesco’s comedy is topical after all and in this respect as well is a descendant of the theater of Aristophanes.
Martin M. Winkler
Aristophanes in the Cinema; or, The Metamorphoses of Lysistrata Abstract: This chapter examines the history of Aristophanic comedy in the cinema from 1910 to 2011 by illustrating the variety of American and European adaptations of and thematic connections with Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. Films range from more or less sophisticated comedies (Triumph der Liebe, The Second Greatest Sex, A Miami Tail) to serious examinations of social themes (Die Sendung der Lysistrata), exploitation (Lysistrata, 1968), feminism (The Girls) and sexual politics (Lisístrata). Samuel Fuller’s definition of the cinema in Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou serves as a link between the theory of comedy and the practice of film (including, to a smaller degree, television). GODEF ODEFRIDO RIDO HENDERS ENDERSONIO ONIO BOST OSTONIENSI ONIE NSI ARISTOP HANIS FFABVL ABVLAR ARVM VM SALISQVE SAL IS QVE ATT TTICI IC I FAVTORI HOC OPVSCVLVM OPVSCVL VM DICAVIT MARTINVS ART INVS SATIRICVS PHILOCINEMATOGRAPHICVS
1. Comedy and Theory: No Funny Business “I do not intend to enter the swamp of abstract debate on the nature of comedy and the comic, for that is a quicksand out of which many never climb.” With this sensible if metaphorically mixed declaration, Gerald Mast, one of the most perceptive American critics of literature and film, began The Comic Mind, his fundamental work on film comedy.1 Comedy, even more than satire, is a genre so large and varied as to be resistant to theory. Nevertheless, in the first of his book’s five sections, entitled
1 Gerald Mast, The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), p. 3. Ground-breaking works on comedy that are also not fully comprehensive from a philosophical perspective include: Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, trans. Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell (London: Macmillan, 1913; often reprinted; originally published in French in 1911); and from a literary-archetypal perspective, Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957; rpt. 1971), esp. pp. 43–52, 163–86. Cf. now Eric Weitz, The Cambridge Introduction to Comedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), which opens with an indirect tribute to cinema as today’s chief comic medium. Albert Bermel, Farce: A History from Aristophanes to Woody Allen (1982; rpt. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990), is still useful. I am indebted to Simone Beta, Alejandro Valverde García, Maria Cecília de Miranda Nogueira Coelho, Marina Kotzamani and Mary McHugh for several points of detail; and to Wolfgang Haase, the originator of this project, for allowing me to develop my topic in appropriate detail and granting me greater Aristophanaughty leeway (parrhêsia) than might be customary in an academic publication.
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“Assumptions, Definitions, and Categories,” Mast bravely enters the swamp or quicksand of theory. In his opening chapter (“Comic Structures”), he identifies eight basic plots, beginning with ancient Greece. The first is “the familiar plot of New Comedy” and its Roman continuation in Plautus and Terence, in which “the young lovers finally wed despite the obstacles (either within themselves or external) to their union.” The next three plots are “distillations of elements that were combined in Aristophanic Old Comedy.” One is “intentional parody or burlesque,” like Aristophanes’ parody of Euripides. Another one presents a “reductio ad absurdum,” in which a “simple human mistake or social question is magnified, reducing the action to chaos and the social question to absurdity,” with or without obvious didacticism: Aristophanes used it by taking a proposition (if you want peace, if you want a utopian community, if you want to speculate abstractly) and then reducing the proposition to nonsense—thereby implying some more sensible alternative.
Then there is “an investigation of the workings of a particular society, comparing the responses of one social group or class with those of another, contrasting people’s different responses to the same stimuli and similar responses to different stimuli.”2 This and much more is outlined with good sense and illustrated by numerous examples. Still, it all remains rather dry, if not as dry as things were to become 12 years later in Comedy/Cinema/Theory, a collection of scholarly essays. The editor’s “Introduction” has a quotation from Aristophanes (Assemblywomen 1155–6) for its first epigraph and refers to Aristophanes several times.3 A contribution in the book by William Paul on Charles Chaplin’s City Lights (1931) bears the title, exciting to academics but yawn-inducing to all others, “Charles Chaplin and the Annals of Anality” and analizes rather than analyzes the film by taking Aristophanes’ verbal vulgarity as its theoretical starting point.4 The first insight about Aristophanes is this: “Three of his eleven extant plays use names of animals for their titles (Wasps; Birds; Frogs) and appropriately so because the plays are filled with a sense of animality.”5 “Thoughtful cogitators!” we may be tempted to exclaim with Aristophanes’ Strepsiades about the providers of such perspicacity. “Lord Zeus, what subtlety of mind!”6 Subtle cogitators will deduce that Aristophanes’ other plays must be filled with a parallel sense of 2 The quotations are from Mast, Comic Mind (above, n. 1), pp. 4–6. 3 Andrew Horton, “Introduction,” in: Andrew Horton (ed.), Comedy/Cinema/Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 1–21; Aristophanes is quoted or mentioned on pp. 1, 10–11, 16–17. Andrew Horton, Laughing Out Loud: Writing the Comedy-Centered Screenplay (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), refers to Aristophanes throughout. 4 William Paul, “Charles Chaplin and the Annals of Anality,” in: Horton, Comedy/Cinema/Theory (above, n. 3), pp. 109–30. 5 Paul, “Charles Chaplin” (above, n. 4), p. 114. 6 Aristophanes, Clouds 101 (merimnophrontistai), 153. The translations are by Jeffrey Henderson, Aristophanes, vol. 2: Clouds, Wasps, Peace (Loeb Classical Library 488; Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 21, 27.
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ecclesiality, thesmophoriality, Acharniality and a few other -alities. The anal scholar then turns to Aristophanes’ obscenity and adduces two quotations from the first edition of Jeffrey Henderson’s now classic work The Maculate Muse.7 He—the analist, not Henderson—reaches the following accurate conclusion before turning to specific scenes in Chaplin’s film: As with Aristophanes, the vulgarity is often acknowledged in order to be dismissed. Chaplin is most often praised for his abilities as a mime, his pathos, his subtlety of expression, his humanism, and … his satire. As far as I know, no one has ever thought to praise him for the anality of his humor.8
There must be a reason for this lack of praise. Even if Prof. Paul does not appall us, we may be better off if we turn away from such-like analyses to the opening song of a modern stage play and film based on ancient models. With vivid immediacy and Aristophanic wit and verve, the lyrics tell us all we need to know about the nature and business of comedy: Something familiar, Something peculiar, Something for everyone: A comedy tonight! Something appealing, Something appalling, Something for everyone: A comedy tonight! Nothing with kings, nothing with crowns; Bring on the lovers, liars, and clowns! Old situations, New complications, Nothing portentous or polite. Tragedy tomorrow, Comedy tonight! Something convulsive, Something repulsive, Something for everyone: A comedy tonight!
7 Jeffrey Henderson, The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); the first edition appeared in 1975. James Robson, Humour, Obscenity and Aristophanes (Tübingen: Narr, 2006) is a recent if less thorough examination of the subject; amusingly in this context, the name of this highly respectable scholarly publishing house means “Fool” or “Jester.” 8 Paul, “Charles Chaplin” (above, n. 4), pp. 114–15; quotation on p. 115.
Aristophanes in the Cinema; or, The Metamorphoses of Lysistrata
Something aesthetic, Something frenetic, Something for everyone: A comedy tonight! Nothing with gods, nothing with fate; Weighty affairs will just have to wait! Nothing that’s formal, Nothing that’s normal, No recitations to recite; Open up the curtain: Comedy tonight! Something erratic, Something dramatic, Something for everyone: A comedy tonight! Frenzy and frolic, Strictly symbolic, Something for everyone: A comedy tonight! Something familiar, Something peculiar, Something for everybody: Comedy tonight! Something that’s gaudy, Something that’s bawdy— Something for everybawdy! Comedy tonight! Nothing that’s grim. Nothing that’s Greek. She plays Medea later this week. Stunning surprises, Cunning disguises, Hundreds of actors out of sight! Pantaloons and tunics, Courtesans and eunuchs, Funerals and chases, Baritones and basses, Panderers, Philanderers,
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Cupidity, Timidity, Mistakes, Fakes, Rhymes, Crimes, Tumblers, Grumblers, Bumblers, Fumblers! No royal curse, No Trojan Horse, And there’s a happy ending, of course! Goodness and badness, Man in his madness, This time it all turns out all right: Tragedy tomorrow, Comedy tonight!
This song allows even the clueless to understand what comedy is all about. The lines quoted are Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics for Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart’s book of the Broadway musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.9 This is a loose adaptation of plot elements taken from the Roman playwright Plautus. It won Tony Awards in 1963 and was filmed by Richard Lester in 1966. The film version is especially effective, for Lester reinforces the words by cleverly filling the screen with his visual trademarks, slapstick and sight gags, in particular extreme close-ups in distorting wide-angle shots. The slapstick, in the word’s literal sense, had likely been in use as comic prop on the ancient stage. Lester also used extremely rapid cutting to punch up what we see while we are listening to Sondheim’s exuberant lyrics. The clever slave Pseudolus, supported by an off-screen chorus, introduces us to the plot and to the essence of comedy by directly addressing the viewers. This amounts to a brief if misplaced Aristophanic parabasis, the elaborate ode in the middle of a play in which the chorus chants to the audience. In defense of the parabatic opening of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, we might remember that decades ago several leading classical scholars, including such big swords as Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and Eduard Fraenkel, speculated that the parabasis belonged at the beginning of Aristophanes’ plays.10
9 Information on the play and film now in Stephen Sondheim, Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954–1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes (New York: Knopf, 2010), pp. 79–109; this song’s lyrics on p. 83. 10 There is no evidence, however, to support this view, which has been thoroughly rejected. On the parabasis, cf. Thomas K. Hubbard, The Mask of Comedy: Aristophanes and the Intertextual Parabasis (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991). Cicero, On Duties 1.29.104, makes it clear that Plautus can
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Inspired by Sondheim and Lester, let us leave the anti-Aristophanic Thinkery of theory, the prison house of comedy and a useless Cloudcuckooland or Nephelokokkygia. Instead, let us proceed with our topic—Aristophanes’ presence in the cinema—in the manner in which comic and satiric artists and even the personified Better Argument and Worse Argument in Aristophanes’ Clouds proceed: by force of example. Not only will such procedure demonstrate Aristophanes’ importance for the screen, but it is also meant to have a seductive effect on readers: to make them want to find additional instances on their own. Gabriel Pascal’s classy 1941 adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara, to which Shaw himself contributed the scenario and dialogue, provides a handy guide to such an undertaking. A quotation from Frogs that was not in Shaw’s stage version is heard early in the film. A letter by Shaw addressing the viewer as “Friend” had appeared immediately after the credits. In it Shaw reassures us that the story, although “a PARABLE” in which we may all recognize ourselves, is nothing to be afraid of; to the contrary: “you will not be bored by it. … If you do not enjoy every word of it, we shall both be equally disappointed. Well, friend: have I ever disappointed you?” Of course not. Shaw echoes Apuleius’ exhortation to his readers: Lector, intende: laetaberis! (“Reader, pay attention, and you will have a good time!”)11 So we may take a Shavian perspective on our topic: Cineaste, pay attention, and you will have a good time finding Aristophanes here, there and everywhere! To put our motto in Apuleian terminology: Spectator, intende: laetaberis Aristophanem passim inveniens! (Parabatic aside from author to reader: If you, friend, do not enjoy every word of this chapter, or at least most words, we shall both be equally disappointed. But has Aristophanes ever disappointed us? Of course not.) For film history, the most important of Aristophanes’ plays is Lysistrata, so most of this chapter will deal with its adaptations to the silver screen, modernized and more or less loose (in only one sense of the word) as these are.12 A brief consideration of films that exhibit the spirit of Aristophanic comedy will round off our survey. To preserve my focus on the cinema, I exclude television or video versions of Lysistrata, the latter often school productions, with one notable exception.
justifiably be adduced in connection with Aristophanes; cf. George E. Duckworth, The Nature of Roman Comedy: A Study in Popular Entertainment2 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), pp. 379, 394, quoting earlier scholarship. 11 Apuleius, The Golden Ass 1.1.6; my translation. 12 Jeffrey Henderson, “Lysistrate: The Play and Its Themes,” Yale Classical Studies 26 (1980), pp. 153– 218, provides a detailed introduction to the play. For modern textual editions, with commentary or translation, see Jeffrey Henderson (ed.), Aristophanes: Lysistrata (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987); and Aristophanes, vol. 3: Birds, Lysistrata, Women at the Thesmophoria (Loeb Classical Library 179; Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000).
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2. Battleground of Emotions In 1965, American writer-director Samuel Fuller left Hollywood because of increasing difficulties with the studio system, then in the process of breaking up. Two enterprising Frenchmen hoping to become producers had lured Fuller to France, promising to finance a film to be called Flowers of Evil, an adaptation not of Baudelaire but of Lysistrata. Judging the treatment he had been given “very bad,” Fuller wrote an original screenplay, a “semi-science fiction” that was “zany” enough, he thought, to fit Aristophanes’ original.13 The film was about a secret society of beautiful women of all nations—the Flowers of Evil—who use violence, science and sex in a plot to stop all wars. The opening scene involves a ballerina pirouetting from the stage to the street as she flees a homicidal all-female motorcycle gang; the final scene is set in outer space with the leading lady abandoned, revolving endlessly into the darkness. “I thought that was a hell of an ending.”14
A critic concludes: “Flowers of Evil reflects Fuller’s delight in turning genre conventions on their ear, as it takes the James Bond international spy genre … and turns its sexy temptresses into peacenik protagonists.”15 Financing never materialized, however, and the project was abandoned. By this time, the New Wave had become dominant in French cinema and was a strong intellectual force in the country’s culture at large. Several New Wave filmmakers had started out as critics and reviewers, writing primarily for the journal Cahiers du cinéma. They particularly extolled the artistry of American directors who had been either looked down upon by the establishment in their own country or at best been taken for granted. Fuller was one of these. While in France, he was invited by his Cahiers du cinéma champion Jean-Luc Godard, by now a major if controversial director, to appear in Godard’s Pierrot le fou and play himself. Fuller agreed. In an early scene, the main character observes to Fuller, who spoke no French, via an interpreter that he has always wanted to know what exactly the cinema is. Fuller’s reply, unscripted and unprompted by Godard, was: “The film is like a battleground— there’s love, hate, action, violence, death—in one word, emotions.”16 13 Fuller is quoted from Lee Server, Sam Fuller: Film Is a Battleground: A Critical Study, with Interviews, a Filmography and a Bibliography (Jefferson: McFarland, 1994), p. 144. See further Richard Brody, Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard (2008; rpt. New York: Picador, 2009), pp. 245–6. 14 Quoted from Server, Sam Fuller (above, n. 13), p. 144; the last sentence is Fuller’s. Cf. Fuller’s brief recollection in Samuel Fuller with Christa Lang Fuller and Jerome Henry Rudes, A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking (New York: Knopf, 2002), pp. 429–30. 15 Lisa Dombrowski, The Films of Samuel Fuller: If You Die, I’ll Kill You! (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2008), p. 175. 16 On this, see Server, Sam Fuller (above, n. 13), p. 49; Brody, Everything Is Cinema (above, n. 13), pp. 245–6; and Fuller’s own words in Fuller, Lang Fuller and Rudes, A Third Face (above, n. 14), pp. 431–2.
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Fuller’s spontaneous and now famous definition of cinema well fits his own body of work, but it also describes most narrative cinema and, for that matter, any narrative art form. But was it only a clever aperçu? Or was Fuller, in France for a specific purpose, thinking of his own film? The interpreter renders “le cinéma” in the question put to Fuller as “this movie,” and Fuller replies accordingly: “The film.” Fuller’s answer fits the specific framework of Lysistrata. Action (i.e. war), violence, death: these are the surroundings in which Lysistrata proposes her plan and the situation in which and for which Aristophanes wrote the play. Love is its central concern. Hate is its corollary—women’s hatred of a devastating war. These feelings come together in an explosive mix in a play unlikely ever to have left an audience cold. In one word: emotions. But there is more. One of the most striking ancient portraits of poets, orators, philosophers and other intellectuals is a bronze head commonly identified as representing Aristophanes.17 It is from the Villa of the Papyri near Herculaneum and is now on display in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples. The head is a copy of that of a seated bronze statue, now lost, which dates to around 180 BCE. The face exhibits a mix of emotions that Fuller could have related to: “power of movement,” “features meaningful but difficult to penetrate,” and especially “fire, intoxication, affliction, and edge of verbal expression.” “The head is turned, in a sudden lateral movement, as if it were a spy’s … the mouth slightly opened as if for the thrust of a clever utterance.” It reveals an “ingenious and pointed perception of character as man’s destiny.”18 In other words: a battleground of emotions. More than 40 marble copies of the head survive in addition to this bronze one; some are on display in Naples. Modern copies in marble—in reality, most likely in plaster made to look like marble—also appear in films. Raoul Walsh’s The World in His Arms (1952) is a rollicking adventure-romance-comedy. The plot is historical hokum that eventually leads to the Alaska Purchase of 1867. At its climax, the hero’s beloved is about to be married off to the sadistic villain but is rescued at the last moment by her sweetheart and his friends. The ensuing melee works both as an action set-piece and as a not-too-serious general fracas. And who is witnessing it all, with a rather bemused detachment on his face? None other than Aristophanes! But what is he doing 17 For this and additional information, including two full-page black-and-white photographs, see Karl Schefold, Die Bildnisse der antiken Dichter, Redner und Denker2 (Basel: Schwab, 1997), pp. 266–9 (with ills. 149–50), 521–2 (review of scholarship). Schefold is fully justified in waxing rhapsodic in his appreciation and interpretation of this unforgettable work. He also makes clear that its identification as Aristophanes’ head suits this bronze better than any other ancient character proposed by scholars (Seneca, Hesiod). 18 I translate Schefold, Die Bildnisse der antiken Dichter, Redner und Denker (above, n. 17), pp. 266 (“Kraft der Bewegung;” “mit seinen bedeutenden, schwer zu durchdringenden Zügen;” “Feuer, Rausch, Leid und Schärfe des Wortes;” “Der Kopf ist in plötzlicher Wendung spähend zur Seite gewandt, der Mund … leicht geöffnet für ein geistreich zustossendes Wort”), 268 (“geniale, zugespitze Erfassung des Charakters als Schicksal des Menschen”).
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there? No one in the film has mentioned him, and no one as much as casts a passing glance at or takes the slightest notice of the head. The camera ignores it as well, for there is neither a close-up nor anything else to emphasize its presence. Aristophanes is simply there, a decorative piece among many other classy furnishings. And that seems to be the point. If Fuller was right to define cinema as emotional battleground in the context of his own Lysistrata project, then Walsh’s set decorator was intuitively right to put Aristophanes in the thick of such a Hollywood battleground. In retrospect, the presence of Aristophanes indicates the common ground between his boisterous comedy on the one hand and plot-driven cinema on the other. The very inattention the marble head receives shows the ignorance of this affinity among filmmakers, viewers and critics, but it also tells us that we need not make a big deal about it: to those who recognize the marble piece, the point is self-evident.19 The hero of The World in His Arms is played by handsome Hollywood star Gregory Peck, who was to have another encounter with Aristophanes in Mirage (1965), a modern thriller directed by Edward Dmytryk and adapted from a novel by Howard Fast. Caught in a bewildering concatenation of strange incidents, a solid Manhattan businessman thinks he has lost his mind and memory, meets an alluring but mysterious brunette, and becomes entangled in a labyrinthine intrigue that threatens his life. At one point he visits a self-styled “consulting psychiatrist, not an analyst,” who is also a self-declared “genius.” The good doctor admits to having once collaborated with “a Freudian” on a “foolish book” called The Dark Side of the Mind. The headshrink has the same head of Aristophanes displayed on a stand between his bookshelf and the door to his office, and its fate is the same as in The World in His Arms: to be ignored. Presumably it is there only to give patients a reassuring message: Yes, your shrink has a classical education, but no need to worry about Oedipal complexities. No dark side of the mind here! By contrast, Aristophanes’ head fared somewhat better in one of Hollywood’s classic sophisticated comedies, George Cukor’s The Philadelphia Story (1940), based on the Broadway hit by Philip Barry. Various post- and premarital romantic entanglements are played out among the high-society set of the City of
19 Aristophanes appears as a character on screen in adaptations of Plato’s Symposium: in Marco Ferreri’s French television film Le banquet (1989), with Irene Papas as Diotima, and, sort of, in Michael Wurth’s American The Symposium (2003), in which modern characters take on the roles of the participants; Aristophanes’ part is taken by a woman. Edvin Tiemroth’s En sjael efter døden (“A Soul After Death”), a 1963 Danish television film, includes Aristophanes. Coky Giedroyc’s Aristophanes: The Gods Are Laughing (1995), is a fictional biography of the poet as founder of political satire and considers his continuing influence on the modern stage. It unsurprisingly contains an anti-war message. This Aristophanes regrets his satire of Socrates in the Clouds, believing that it contributed to Socrates’ trial and condemnation (cf. Plato, Apology 19c). Rosalie Crutchley, the Poppaea of Mervyn LeRoy’s Quo Vadis (1951), is here Aristophanes’ mother. Aristophanes’ speech in the Symposium is translated into an animated cartoon-and-song (“The Origin of Love”) in John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), adapted from an Off-Broadway musical whose sexual and political bizarreries and antiauthoritarianism Aristophanes might have appreciated.
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Brotherly Love, except that things are not all that brotherly or loving. At one point the unforgettably named C.K. Dexter Haven, played by suave-as-ever Cary Grant, plots with a low-class reporter, played by James Stewart, against a vulgar media mogul who is also a blackmailer. The setting, Haven’s cottage, has Aristophanes for part of its décor. The reporter absent-mindedly pets him in passing. (This must have been the reason Stewart received an Academy Award for his performance!) Aristophanes’ bust is in any case firmly associated with the cinema, as may be seen in a LIFE magazine photograph from 1962 that was taken in the Louvre. Greek actress Melina Mercouri, beloved star of Never on Sunday (1960), Phaedra (1962) and A Dream of Passion (1978), all directed by Jules Dassin, her husband since 1966, is laughing uproariously in front of our Aristophanes. Ironically, the caption only identifies the head as an “ancient Greek bust.”20 O tempora, o ignorantia! But we need not despair as long as we remember that even Fred Astaire was a friend of Aristophanes, at least as far as the screenwriters of Charles Walters’ Easter Parade (1948) made him out to be. In this glossy and classy M-G-M musical, set before World War I and co-starring Judy Garland, Fred plays a famous dancer who has just learned that his partner is ready for a career without him. He goes to a bar to drown his sorrows. Fortunately, Mike the sympathetic bartender, who has seen it all, is there to advise him about women, blondes and brunettes alike: “I can boil down trouble into two classifications.” Which are these? The answer is easy: “Women and their mothers.” How does Mike know? That answer is also easy: he has never been married. “Meet my friend Mike,” the dancer then tells a friend, “he’s a disciple of Aristophanes.” As Fuller’s abandoned project exemplifies, Aristophanes in general and Lysistrata in particular are naturals for the cinema, even if the verbal fireworks and explicit sexual humor of the original could not be reproduced on screen in anything like an unadulterated fashion, at least until recently. Now, in the era of South Park, the Farrelly Brothers and Judd Apatow, to mention only a few instances, matters are different, as we will see. Even so, Aristophanes’ comedy-satire of a Greek wives’ sex strike has made it to the screen several times.
3. Lysistrata on the Silent Screen The charming title of the play’s first film adaptation, made by Louis Feuillade in France in 1910 as a one-reeler, is revealing: Lysistrata ou La grève des baisers (literally:
20 See http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?q=mercouri+source:life&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dmer couri%2Bsource:life%26tbnh%3D153%26tbnw%3D84%26hl%3Den%26sig%3D1066505875122557752 03%26biw%3D1244%26bih%3D790%26tbs%3Dsimg:CAESEgmAZBBySX8kKyEvwBFk1Jt7AQ%26tbm %3Disch&imgurl=56518f0458cd5733. In the caption to another photo taken on the same occasion, Demosthenes does not have to suffer the indignity of such anonymity.
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“Lysistrata or The Strike of Kisses”). Apparently this was meant as a film good citizens could watch without being unduly scandalized. The subtitle seems to derive from French playwright Maurice Donnay’s version of Lysistrata, directed by Paul Porel at the Grand Théâtre in Paris in 1892.21 Feuillade was the right man to introduce Aristophanes to the new medium of film. When he died in 1925 at age 53, he was one of the most prolific and versatile writer-directors in cinema history. Between 1906 and 1924, he directed well over 600 films in all genres and had become artistic director of the Gaumont studio the year after he began making films. Feuillade made numerous short comedies about the adventures of Bébé, Bout-de-zan and other sassy urchins. He also introduced the anagrammatically named Irma Vep as the screen’s first vamp, dressed in a black cat suit, in his six-and-a-half-hour thriller serial Les vampires (1915); the titular vampires are not nocturnal bloodsuckers but a secret crime organization masterminded by the lady mentioned. In several of his early films, Feuillade turned to noble subjects from Greek and Roman history, literature and myth. The year he adapted Lysistrata, he wrote studio president Léon Gaumont: “It is with the largescale historical films spanning all times and all countries that we will best be able to compete with the Americans in their own country.” Acting on this strategy, Feuillade introduced what he called le film esthétique: “historical re-enactments, mythological fantasies, tragedies. … the esthetic film promises to be more visually dynamic than the theater.” His film of Aristophanes is one example. Since Feuillade championed aestheticism, it is doubtful that he would have enjoyed the next, American, appearance of Lysistrata. Coontown Suffragettes, a short film made on location in Florida around 1914, is a crude comedy about racial stereotypes in which a black woman does not know her place. The film, which featured Hattie McDaniel, is presumed lost, a circumstance that not even Aristophanes might lament. Under the heading “The Mammy,” the term for one of the stereotypes in which female black characters regularly appeared on screen, a historian describes the film as follows: Mammy is distinguished … by her … fierce independence. She is usually big, fat, and cantankerous. … The comedy … dealt with a group of bossy mammy washerwomen who organize a militant movement to keep their good-for-nothing husbands at home. Aristophanes would no doubt have risen from his grave with righteous indignation. But the militancy of the washerwomen served as a primer for the mammy roles Hattie MacDaniel [sic] was to perfect in the 1930s.22
21 Cf. Léopold Lacour, “Maurice Donnay,” La revue de Paris 10.1–2 (1903), pp. 379–400. The phrase la grève des baisers appears there on p. 380. 22 Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films4 (New York: Continuum, 2001), p. 9. Hattie McDaniel is best known for her portrayal of Mammy in Victor Fleming’s Gone With the Wind (1939), a part for which she was the first black performer to be nominated for and win an Academy Award. Cf. the comments on Coontown Suffragettes by Kevin J. Wetmore earlier in this volume.
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This film was in strong contrast to the near-contemporary Et huskors (1914 or 1915), whose informal English title is “Enough of It” and which had both Lysistrata and Lysten styret (“Lust-Driven”—a pun on “Lysistrata”) as alternate titles. Directed in Denmark by Holger-Madsen (sic: he had added a hyphen to his name a few years before) from a script by Harriet Bloch, the film tells a story about contemporary upperclass society. Earlier, Bloch had written the short comedy Love or Money (1912; also known as Outwitted), in which a wealthy single mother, ardently pursued by three suitors, concocts a plan with a female friend to test the men’s intentions. In the process, the women enjoy themselves immensely at the men’s expense. An actress who unfortunately never made it to the screen in Lysistrata, although she had been a memorable Lysistrata on the Russian stage in 1923, is Olga Baclanova (originally Baklanova). She toured the United States with the Moscow Art Theatre in 1925–1926.23 When she decided to stay, Paramount promoted her by drawing attention to her past stardom, for example in a 1929 publicity photo of her as rather a sternlooking Lysistrata. After she appeared prominently in a few silent films, Baclanova’s Russian accent cut short her American career upon the introduction of sound. Still, she remains memorable as Cleopatra—no, not the ancient queen but the unscrupulous villainess and blond mantrap in Todd Browning’s cult shocker Freaks (1932).24
4. Triumphs of Love In the sound era, the first Lysistrata appeared shortly after the end of World War II in Austria. Triumph der Liebe (“Triumph of Love,” 1947; called Lysistrata in the U.S.), was made by prolific and versatile, if not especially distinguished director Alfred Stöger. The screenplay added a number of contemporary overtones to the film’s ancient settings and costumes. It featured a cast as popular as it was distinguished and even put Aristophanes and Diogenes on screen. Aristophanes was played by German stage actor, director and impresario Erich Ziegel, who had launched the careers of a number of famous actors, among them Gustav Gründgens and Fritz Kortner, the latter of whom we will encounter again. Josef Meinrad was Cinesias; 23 On this production and its American context see Marina Kotzamani, “Lysistrata on Broadway,” in the present volume. 24 I mention in passing the 1930 Our Gang short Shivering Shakespeare, in which the kids are forced to act (if that is the word) in a wild and silly abbreviation of Quo Vadis? entitled “The Gladiator’s Dilemma,” as written and directed by one Mrs. Funston Evergreen Kennedy, whose Aristophanic name is perhaps the best thing about the film. (She is called Kennedy because her husband is played by stalwart comic actor Edgar Kennedy.) A playbill informs the internal and external audiences that the authorial lady is indebted, among others, to Shakespeare, Aristophanes, Bacon, Cervantes and American humorist Irvin S. Cobb, all distinguished evergreens, as it were, albeit to varying degrees of, well, funstonness. Such high-class debts do not protect the good Mrs. from getting lots of pies in the face at the film’s predictable climax.
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handsome leading man O.W. Fischer played a non-Aristophanic Agathos (“Good Guy”). Comedian Paul Kemp, who played Sosias and Mercury in Rudolf Schünzel’s 1935 musical comedy Amphitryon (Happiness from the Clouds)—i.e. Plautus via Molière and Heinrich von Kleist—is here one Damon. Still other non-Aristophanic names occur. The film’s star is Judith Holzmeister, an actress with a special interest in ancient drama who was at home more in the theater than in the film studio. Holzmeister had opposed the Nazi regime, known a number of resistance fighters personally and helped hide a Jewish woman. This and her physical beauty and commanding presence made her an ideal Lysistrata. When the film premiered in New York City, Bosley Crowther, the influential film critic of The New York Times, was impressed by her but not by the film (and certainly not by her name): With all due allowance for the difficulties under which an Austrian company must have worked in making a motion-picture version of “Lysistrata” in Vienna right after the war, it must be admitted that its effort … is a heavy and tedious rendition of the comedy of Aristophanes. The settings and costumes are surprisingly the most commendable features of the show—saving, perhaps, the classic beauty of Judith Helzmeister [sic] in the title role. As the bold Athenian lady who persuades the members of her sex to boycott their husbands’ advances in order to put a stop to war, Miss Helzmeister makes it thoroughly obvious why the gentlemen found it impossible to resist. And she also acts with nice decorum in a much abbreviated role. But an incompleted endeavor to turn this ancient comedy into a comic operetta is evidenced painfully. And the general direction and editing are stiff and amateurish to a fault. Very poor English subtitles and apparent censor cuts in many scenes render this film a doubtful item for American audiences.25
Thus spake, ex cathedra Novi Eburaci, the powerful proboulos kinêmatographikos to the demes of America, and probably kept quite a number of people from watching the film. Today it deserves a fresh look and a new evaluation, not least because of its leading lady. The French-Italian Destinées or Destini di donne (1953) deserves a fresh look as well, not least because of its leading ladies. The film was released in the U.S. as Daughters of Destiny and in the U.K. as Love, Soldiers and Women. Its Dutch title is telling as well: De grootheid der vrouw (“Greatness of Woman”). The figure of Destiny introduces and comments on three unrelated tales about women’s experiences with war. The first is about Jeanne d’Arc, played by Michèle Morgan. In a modern story an American widow, played by elegant Claudette Colbert, travels to Italy, where her husband had fought in World War II, and discovers his affair with an Italian farm girl (Eleonora Rossi Drago), who has borne him a child. The final segment, 30 minutes long, is “Lysistrata,” directed by Christian-Jaque and starring a vivacious Martine Carol, the film’s main attraction. Unlike Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, this one is married to Athenian general Callias, played by handsome Raf Vallone, who was often seen in
25 Quoted from http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9A05E0DF1438EE3BBC4152DFB0668 383659EDE (June 19, 1948).
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costume dramas. Callias, however, is more interested in war than in his sexy spouse.26 A film historian comments: Christian-Jaque made this episode, freely inspired by Aristophanes, with … star Martine Carol, then vamp number one of French cinema … dressed to reveal her anatomy. Anna Magnani and Silvana Mangano had at first wanted this part, but the more popular French actress landed it. Since the prudish censorship of the 1950s forbade the off-color language Aristophanes had his characters utter, [screenwriter] Henri Jeanson … sprinkled his dialogues and sarcastic repartees with all-too-contemporary allusions. He made fun of the backwoods language and the electioneering lies of politicians and of [Marshal] Pétain during the Fourth Republic (“we will win because we are the stronger,” “we are not withdrawing, we are moving back”). To Lysistrata’s question at the end about what a general can do well in times of peace, [the answer is given] candidly: “Politics, we’ll see!” [This episode was a] sketch spiced with rather nice eroticism (in fact, the chastest of Martine Carol’s films), made at Cinecittà.27
Martine Carol was the most popular sex symbol in French cinema before Brigitte Bardot. She had just appeared in René Clair’s charming romantic comedy Beauties of the Night (1952) and as the title character of Lucrezia Borgia (1953) and was to play the titular seductresses of Madame du Barry (1954) and Nana (1955), all three directed by Christian-Jaque, whom she married in 1954. She achieved her cinematic apotheosis as the title character of Max Ophüls’ Lola Montès (1955).
5. Pistols ‘n’ Petticoats; or, Lysi Rides Again A different sex symbol should have kept the first full-scale American updating of Aristophanes from disappearing in the mists of film history. George Marshall’s The Second Greatest Sex (1955) is a musical-comedy Western in color and CinemaScope. The AFI [American Film Institute] Catalog summarizes its plot as follows: In 1880, Osawkie, Kansas, is engaged in a feud with neighbor towns Mandaroon and Jones City over which town should be the county seat, a position marked by the possession of the safe containing local citizens’ records. While the men fight in the hills, the women of Osawkie mourn their long absence [in the film’s opening number, “What Good Is a Woman Without a Man?”]. The announcement that the men are returning with the safe causes the women to celebrate, but they
26 On the episode, see further Adriane da Silva Duarte, “O Destino de Lisístrata: Uma Adaptação para o Cinema da Comédia de Aristófanes,” Archai: As Origens do Pensamento Ocidental 7 (2011), pp. 123–9. The author, a translator of Aristophanes, adduces the Brazilian film Carnaval Atlântida (1952), directed by José Carlos Burle, for its Aristophanic overtones. In this film, producer Cecílio B. de Milho wants to make an epic about Helen of Troy and hires Xenofontes, a professor of Greek history, as a consultant, but the rather Chaplinesque results are a musical. Da Silva Duarte briefly mentions some other films as well. 27 Quoted, in my translation, from Hervé Dumont, L’antiquité au cinéma: Vérités, légendes et manipulations (Paris: Nouveau Monde éditions; Lausanne: Cinémathèque suisse, 2009), p. 230.
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grow doubly angry when their husbands and boyfriends show up too exhausted for a proper homecoming. The next day Matt Davis helps build the town courthouse and commiserates with Sheriff Joe McClure about why Joe’s daughter Liza will not set a date to marry him. As Joe explains that Liza feels that Matt is more interested in the town than in her, the stagecoach bearing the satin for Liza’s wedding gown arrives. The townswomen, including spinster [and self-described “old-maid schoolteacher”] Cassie Slater, rough Cousin Emmy, and coquette Birdie Snyder, tease Liza, who spurns Matt’s attentions until he charms her into kissing him. She almost agrees to set the date, but when Matt is distracted by a commotion at the courthouse, she leaves in a huff. Meanwhile traveling salesman and ladies’ man Roscoe Dobbs arrives, causing Cassie to faint after he kisses her. At night Matt serenades Liza outside her house, and the whole family is pleased to witness her run into his arms, although Joe struggles to explain to his curious teenaged son Newt why love and sex cause so many problems. The wedding follows soon after, and the highlight of the reception occurs when Cassie drinks spiked punch and tries to lasso Roscoe. [She succeeds quite easily, at least in a literal sense.] Later Matt carries Liza over the threshold, but, as soon as she readies for bed, he learns that the Mandaroons have stolen the safe back and infuriates her by racing to town to form a posse. Osawkie’s men immediately take off again to Mandaroon, only to find that the Jones City men now have the safe. They join the fracas underway in Jones City, but are waylaid by a bout of mumps that has taken over the town. Three weeks later the men are still recovering and send a note to the women explaining that they now must return to Mandaroon. Upon reading the note, the women gather in town to discuss how they can settle the feud. Meanwhile the men appropriate the safe but quickly come to an impassible river. There Matt sends Newt with another message, and, when Liza reads that the men still are not returning, she seizes on Cassie’s recollection of the Greek women of Aristophanes’ play Lysistrata, who went “on strike” against their husbands to end a war. By the time the men come home, the women have barricaded themselves in an abandoned fort, and although the men storm the fort, the women remain resolute. After drinking at the saloon all night, the men want to give in, but Matt convinces them that to do so would be to give up all control over their wives. Just then Newt arrives to announce that the water level in the river has fallen, exposing the safe, and the men rush out to defend it. At the river a fight among the three rival towns commences but ends when the safe falls into a bed of quicksand and is lost forever. Osawkie’s men travel straight to the fort, but there Liza informs them that a truce must be signed between the cities before they will unlock the gate, and just then the other towns’ men arrive, looking for their women. When their wives are revealed to be in the fort, too, the leaders of the three towns agree [to Liza’s suggestion] to found a new, neutral site as the shared county seat, and the ladies open the gate. By the time the joyous crowd disperses, Birdie and Reverend Maxwell are holding hands while Roscoe and Cassie plan to marry, and Newt, after receiving his first kiss, finally understands what the big deal is all about.28
Reading this, we finally understand that clear plot summary is not a big deal for all film scholars. (My parenthetic additions try to help out a bit, as do a few corrections of spelling errors and adjustments of punctuation.) Still, the new story’s absurdity is just right as a disguise of the marital agôn between Aristophanes’ men and women, which is far too explicit to make it onto the Puritan screen of the 1950s unchanged. Marshall, versatile veteran of many genres but especially at home in Westerns and comedies, had previously directed Destry Rides Again (1939), a milestone of comedy Westerns. It
28 Quoted from http://www.afi.com/members/catalog/DetailView.aspx?s=&Movie=51646.
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featured the most famous catfight in film history, between Marlene Dietrich and Una Merkel over a young James Stewart. After the stylish Western-and-musical spoof Red Garters (1954), Marshall was a good choice for this new Lysistrata. Attractive as it is in color and widescreen, with vigorous dancing and plenty of feminine eye candy, the film is overall too sweet and unsophisticated to be Aristophanic in spirit. Nor could it have been in 1950s America. Even the war is made harmless: no one carries a gun, no shot is fired, and warfare, if that is the right word, is restricted to fisticuffs. Verbally, too, the film is tame. The only daring word uttered is “sex,” first coming out of the mouth of teenage Newt, who mistakes it for a plural. “What are sex?” he asks his embarrassed father. But the word is not too dangerous, since the film’s title had prepared viewers, although there it has a different meaning. The moments in the film that directly deal with Aristophanes are both instructive for our topic and amusing. They contain the film’s witty highlight, the song “Lysistrata.” (Much of the verbal humor in the rest of the film is sophomoric.) The Aristophanic background comes to the fore when Cousin Emmy, played by popular 1940s and 1950s hillbilly singer Cynthia May Carver (aka Cousin Emmy), expresses her disdain for men: “They’ve been gone off to war for thousands of years, and ain’t nothin’ women can do to stop ‘em.” But Cassie the schoolteacher demurs: “There was—once, in ancient Greece, or rather a play about ancient Greece, by Aristophanes.” The following dialogue ensues: Cousin Emmy: You can be proud of your book learnin’, Miss Slater, but it won’t bring the men home. Men love a good scrape, almost as much as they love a good woman. Or a bad one. Liza: Just how did the women of Greece stop their men, Cassie? Cassie: It’s only a play: Lysistrata. It didn’t really happen. Liza’s mother: Lysistrata? I remember reading that in high school. Cassie: Oh, you did? Mother: Wasn’t that the one that—Newt, put your fingers in your ears. Newt: Oh, I know; you’re gonna talk about— Mother: NEWT!
In order to work as humor, this exchange presupposes audience familiarity with the plot of Lysistrata. And indeed no explanation of the play is given. We only see and hear the women huddling together, chattering indistinctly and giggling. One good lady’s short high-pitched scream of surprise-delight-shock informs us that the facts of marital life have been imparted to those who did not know Aristophanes; then the scene fades out. That girls in the mid-19th century are said to have read Lysistrata in high school is an intentional anachronism. (Cassie is right to be surprised.) When Liza later asks Cassie how the Greek women kept their men from going to war, Cassie only tells her that they went on a strike but does not reveal what kind of strike this was. Even so, this provides Liza with the spark she needs. But nothing is spelled out either to her or to the theater audience, which included minors. Liza calls the women to assembly in the saloon and proposes the strike. Katy, one of the prettiest, comments: “Liza’s right. If the men can’t win this county war and
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won’t make peace, then it’s up to us, just as it was to the women in Athens.” Here, too, the dialogue plays on some audience awareness of classical literature because only Greece and not Athens had been named before. The women’s big song number follows. Liza is now fully in the picture about the past: Liza: I can give you all the data on the gal named Lysistrata, so you know what a riot she began. When the menfolk kept a-fightin’, Lysistrata saw the light ‘n’ so she sat right down and figured herself a most ingenious plan. All [vigorously, as every following time]: Lysistrata, Lysistrata! Liza: —sat right down and figured herself a plan. Cassie: It was so ingenious— All: Lysistrata, Lysistrata! Liza: She was young and lusty but was slowly getting rusty, ‘cause for years she had a-waited for the man that she had mated to return to her before she got too old. All she got from him were promises, and what good are those promises? Katy: They ain’t gonna keep your feet warm— Birdie: And they ain’t gonna keep your bed warm— Cassie [in correct English]: And they aren’t going to keep just anyone warm at all. All: Oh no, not warm at all. Oh no, not warm at all. [To Cassie:] Oh, tell us what she did.
The women’s request to know what happened in antiquity somewhat contradicts the earlier scene in which apparently either Cassie or Liza’s mother had already told them what Lysistrata had done. But the current scene works better this way, for now the repressed spinster can let the pussycat out of the bag, sort of. She does so in a way to which no one in the audience could object: Cassie: Well, she told her friend Lampito,
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if they gave their men the veto, that like as not they soon would call a truce. So they captured the Acropolis and turned that whole metropolis right upside down, inside out, and every which way but loose. All: Lysistrata, Lysistrata! Cassie: —turned that whole metropolis upside down. All: It was so ingenious! Lysistrata, Lysistrata! Liza: It was mighty darin’, but she had those women swearin’ that there’d be no bill-‘n’-cooing— Birdie [alarmed]: No more pitch-‘n’-wooing? Liza: —till the menfolk said their fightin’ days were through. It was quite an ultimatum— Katy: Did that ultimatum got ‘um? Liza: Yes; in twenty-one years they came back home and raised a family. All: They raised a family. They raised a family. Oh why, oh why can’t we? Katy: Do we follow Lysistrata? All: Oh yes, oh yes, we gotta. Two older and rather ample women: ‘Cause in twenty-one years we’ll be too thin and frail.
21 years? Since the Peloponnesian War began in 431 BCE and Lysistrata was performed in 411, Liza’s chronology is pretty accurate. But it presupposes the historicity of something that, as Cassie had already told everybody, never happened. How were contemporary viewers to understand this? Or did it not matter? After all, The Second Greatest Sex was not meant for ancient historians or for dour Aristarchuses, petty Beckmessers and other dry-as-dust denizens of Thinkeries. And therein lies part of its charm.
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Cousin Emmy, taking a dim view of men and women alike, interrupts: Well, in all my life I never did see sich downright plain stupidity, snifflin’ and a-wailin’ for a pack of ornery males.
Cousin Emmy is herself a bit on the ornery side. But no matter. The women remain undaunted: All: Lysistrata, Lysistrata! Katy: Do we swear to follow her all the way? All [raising their right hands]: Yes, oh yes, we swear it. Lysistrata, Lysistrata! Liza: You know what you’ve sworn to do, so now I’m only warnin’ you: you’ve made a solemn promise! Katy: Are we stickin’ to that promise? All: Oh yes, oh yes, till our men come home for good. Liza: Well, girls, I’m mighty proud of you; we’re doin’ what we’ve been forced to do. All: We ain’t gonna let ‘em hug us, we ain’t gonna let ‘em kiss us, we’re just gonna let ‘em miss us, never fear. They’ll miss us, never fear. They’ll miss us, never fear. The two older women: We wish that they were here! All [filing out]: Lysistrata, Lysistrata! If it worked for her, it’ll work for us if we stick together. Lysistrata, Lysistrata! Hope it works for us!
The text as quoted gives no more than a faint impression of this clever three-minute number. Marshall rightly keeps it visually unremarkable, with a static camera and minimal, unobtrusive editing in order to concentrate completely on the lyrics. The music is simple and repetitive, but the tempos are snappy and the rhythm jazzy. All this is just right for the turning point of the plot. The song’s data on the gal named Lysistrata deserve renewed appreciation.
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“Liza McClure” is an appropriate name for our heroine, played by alluring allAmerican Jeanne Crain. “Birdie Snyder” is equally fitting for the character who sports the most outstanding physical attributes. Was “Birdie” chosen for its common slang meaning, especially in regard to the great birds in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata? Birdie was played by buxom blonde Mamie Van Doren, Universal’s answer to Twentieth Century-Fox’s Marilyn Monroe. (“Mamie” is a nickname taken from Mrs. Eisenhower.) Birdie is “cosseted and corseted from neck to ankle in ‘period’ costumes flatteringly and eye-poppingly designed” for her. “Mamie,” a wise scholar has observed, “is, once again, in dumb blonde mode, although she has a number of good lines.”29 Like these: Looking at Liza’s wedding dress, Birdie innocently confesses: “Oh, if I had a white satin wedding dress, I’d never take it off. Well, hardly ever.” When she later learns that the men have raised a pair of bloomers as their flag of truce, Birdie confesses: “I wondered what had happened to them.” But she is not entirely uneducated. Liza rejoices in the success of the women’s strategy—“It worked for the women of Greece, why wouldn’t it work for the women of Kansas?”—and Birdie is reassured: “For a while I was losing my faith in history.” But why dwell on Birdie the broad-chested bimbo? Not because most male viewers in the theater will have watched this Birdie closely, just as they were meant to, but because she is a near reincarnation of Aristophanes’ Lampito, as the following lines from Lysistrata indicate. When the Spartan Lampito first appears on stage, Lysistrata comments on her beauty: “What rosy cheeks, what firmness of physique!” Calonice, however, comes straight to the points: “And what a fine set of tits you’ve got!” Lampito’s reaction (“Hey, you’re feeling me up like a beast for sacrifice!”) leaves no doubt as to the exact manner in which Calonice pays tribute to the firmness of Lampito’s physique.30 In his commentary on the play Henderson observes: “The beauty of Spartan women was legendary” and “the (conventionally) small-breasted Attic wives express their admiration of their buxom colleague.”31 Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose: male attitudes to women’s curvaceously curving curvatures have not changed much in the course of time between Lampito in Athens and Birdie the bosomy broad in Hollywood.32 In the well-rounded personality of Mamie Van Doren,
29 Quotations are from Barry Lowe, Atomic Blonde: The Films of Mamie Van Doren (Jefferson: McFarland, 2008), p. 85. Lowe, pp. 82–90, provides credits, a brief summary, comments and visual evidence of Miss Mamie’s sex appeal. 30 Ar. Lys. 80, 83–4. The quotations are from the translation of Henderson, Aristophanes, vol. 3: Birds, Lysistrata, Women at the Thesmophoria (above, n. 12), p. 279. It behooves me to report that this very moment is boldly recreated on screen in the Greek comedy I gynaikokratia, on which see below, n. 64. 31 Henderson, Lysistrata (above, n. 12), p. 77, on Lys. 79 (with quotation of Od. 13.412) and 83, with additional comment on to khrêma as Calonice’s “emotional reaction to something strange, extraordinary, sizeable or numerous of its kind” in this line. Cf. Douglas E. Gerber, “The Female Breast in Greek Erotic Literature,” Arethusa 11 (1978), pp. 203–12. 32 Paul Cartledge, Aristophanes and His Theatre of the Absurd (London: Bristol Classical Press, 1990), p. 39, called Diallagê, the personification of Athenian and Spartan reconciliation, “the literal ancient
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The Second Greatest Sex can boast a fine set of assets. Size does matter, so thanks for the Mamieries! Readers whom all this strikes—correctly, of course—as vulgar may wish to remember that neither Hollywood nor Aristophanes ever had the slightest intention to appeal only to sophisticates. The pectoral obsession of American males—O mammaries, o mores!—is best expressed in the cinema by the oeuvre of Russ Meyer, both worshipped and exploited in the person of Jane Russell in The Outlaw (1943) and spectacularly satirized in Frank Tashlin’s The Girl Can’t Help It (1956) with the help of pneumatic blonde Jayne Mansfield.33 An early female feminist film critic even coined the term “Mammary Woman” to describe the phenomenal phenomenon.34 With its tone of astonished resignation, the German release title of The Second Greatest Sex may have put the case best: Das gibt es nur in Kansas (“Only in Kansas”). As always in history, the men are worried about who is wearing the pants and who the panties or bloomers. Liza’s husband explains why: “If we give in to them now, the war won’t be the only thing that’s finished around here. We’ll be finished as far as any claim to self-respecting manhood is concerned, and any time they snap their fingers we’re going to have to jump and like it.” Altogether, then, we can assent to a contemporary reviewer’s verdict: “What Aristophanes started 2,400 odd years ago with Lysistrata, Universal has now finished in grand style in its The Second Greatest Sex.”35
equivalent of a modern ‘sex-goddess’ like Marilyn Monroe.” Is it too much to speculate that the name Lampito may contain a naughty pun on lampas (“torch, light, lamp”) even if there is no etymological connection? Probably it is, but the point is worth bringing up, if not to scholars then to cinephiles. In Raoul Walsh’s They Drive by Night (1940), a film noir set in the milieu of truckers, a driver observes about a new truck-stop waitress: “Classy chassis.” Further banter follows between her and the men, but she has the last line: “You couldn’t even pay for the headlights.” That the waitress is played by sassy Ann Sheridan, Hollywood’s Oomph Girl, only heightens the innuendo. 33 The comments on Jayne’s pectoral abundance by two of her directors are, well, revealing. Andrew Marton, concerning It Happened in Athens (1962): “she was immense. I mean her bosom was just—you wouldn’t believe it in a caricature … We tried to minimize them, but how can you minimize a mountain?” Quoted from Joanne D’Antonio, Andrew Marton (Metuchen: Directors Guild of America / Scarecrow Press, 1991), p. 357. Tashlin, on American men: “The immaturity of the American Male—this breast fetish … Imagine a statue with breasts like Mansfield’s. Imagine that in marble. We … make an idol of a woman because she’s deformed in the breasts. There’s nothin’ more hysterical to me than bigbreasted women—like walking leaning towers.” Quoted from Ian and Elisabeth Cameron, Dames (New York: Praeger, 1969), p. 76; cf. the authors’ observations, with illustrations, on pp. 75–81. The Outlaw, produced and partly directed by the eccentric Howard Hughes, was entangled in censorship battles for years. “‘What are the two great reasons for Jane Russell’s rise to stardom?’ asked one of the slogans for The Outlaw in February 1946, answering the question with a picture of the lady with her reasons highlighted.” Quoted from Ian and Elisabeth Cameron, p. 113. Hughes even designed a cantilevered brassiere to show off his star’s global qualities, but apparently she never wore it. 34 Marjorie Rosen, Popcorn Venus: Women, Movies, and the American Dream (New York: Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan, 1973), p. 281, in a chapter titled “Mammary Madness” (pp. 267–82, 385 [notes]). 35 Variety (5 October 1955); quoted from Lowe, Atomic Blonde (above, n. 29), p. 90.
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But which is the second greatest sex? Women, as we might expect in patriarchal America? Not this time. The song following “Lysistrata” makes it all clear. Liza’s father, the henpecked sheriff, tells it as it is to the other men after the women’s strike has begun to show its effect: “We’re just the second greatest sex, the unimportant sex, to women.” Sheriffs are authority figures in serious Westerns, but rarely in comedy Westerns. The fact that this easily cowed sheriff is played by old-time vaudevillian Bert Lahr, best known to filmgoers as the Cowardly Lion in Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz (1939), adds an amusing detail. In 1966 Lahr would appear as Peisetaerus in a successful stage version of Birds.
6. Mission Accomplished? Fritz Kortner, one of West Germany’s most distinguished stage and screen actors and theater directors, made his debut as a television director with Die Sendung der Lysistrata (1961) from his own script.36 The title contains a wordplay: it means primarily “The Mission of Lysistrata” but also “The Broadcast of Lysistrata.” Produced in Hamburg by Norddeutscher Rundfunk, one of the public German television stations, and shot on 35mm film stock, the film also received a theatrical release. Kortner is best known to cinephiles from G.W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box (1929), an adaptation of two plays by Frank Wedekind: Erdgeist (“Earth Spirit”) and Die Büchse der Pandora. Kortner played the upper-class newspaper publisher who ruins himself for and is eventually killed by Lulu, the modern Pandora with whom he is sexually obsessed. The part of Lulu is the cinematic apotheosis of American actress Louise Brooks, who personified the independent-minded woman of the Jazz Age in her personal life and in her films, at least as far as producers or directors allowed her. Kortner, who was Jewish (his birth name was Fritz Nathan Kohn), had been attacked and vilified in the Nazi press on several occasions.37 In 1933 he emigrated with his family to England, and in 1937 to America. He returned to West Germany in 1947. Kortner’s Lysistrata film tells parallel modern and ancient stories. As he put it: “The road from 400 B.C. to 1960 A.D. is a brief dolly shot.”38 A promotional brochure provides this plot summary:
36 Hans-Michael Bock, “Fritz Kortner,” in: Hans-Michael Bock and Tim Bergfelder (eds.), The Concise Cinegraph: Encyclopaedia of German Cinema (New York: Berghahn, 2009), pp. 256–7, on Kortner: “One of the giants of Weimar and post-World War II German speaking theatre as an actor and director” (p. 256). 37 In his memoirs, Kortner mentions several instances: Fritz Kortner, Aller Tage Abend (1959; rpt. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1969), pp. 245–6, 261–6, 272. 38 “Der Weg von 400 vor Christus bis 1960 nach Christus ist eine kurze Kamerafahrt.” This and the following summary are taken from Illustrierte Film-Bühne no. 05602.
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In der Wohnung des Physikers Dr. Salbach haben sich einige Interessenten zusammengefunden, um sich an einer Fernseh-Inszenierung der Aristophanes-Komödie “Lysistrata” zu erbauen oder zu erregen. Unter ihnen sind zwei Darstellerinnen des Stückes: Frau Salbach—Lysistrata-Verkörperin und Gattin des Gastgebers, der einen Ruf als Atomwissenschaftler nach den USA erhalten hat und an diesem Abend zu zweifeln beginnt, ob er annehmen soll—und die kapriziöse Uschi Hellwig, Frau eines ebenfalls anwesenden Anwalts und Darstellerin der Myrrhine. Ferner der Physiker Dr. Kienast und seine Frau. Kienast ist ein politischer Opportunist, der schon immer mit fanatischer Sturheit auf der Seite des Stärkeren stand, jedenfalls auf der Seite dessen, den er für den Stärkeren hielt. Hochexplosiver Zündstoff in dieser Gesellschaft ist der soeben entlassene Journalist Ellinger, unfreundlich, aggressiv und verbittert. Das Spiel beginnt. Über den Bildschirm läuft “Lysistrata” von Aristophanes. Die schöne Athenerin Lysistrata will dem männermordenden Gemetzel, dem schier endlosen peloponnesischen Bruderkrieg, endlich ein Ende machen. Sie ruft die Frauen Athens und eine Abgesandte des befehdeten Sparta vor der Akropolis zusammen, um ihren Plan zu entwickeln, wie man mit weiblichen Mitteln dem Kriege ein Ende bereiten könne. Sie überredet die zunächst empörten Frauen, sich ihren Männern so lange zu verweigern, bis sie sich zu ehrlichen Friedensverhandlungen bereit erklären. Der Ehestreik hat—im Stück—Erfolg. Vor dem Bildschirm spielt sich inzwischen ein “Krieg” mit scharfen intellektuellen Waffen ab. Es geht um Probleme unserer Zeit. Eine Einigung wird nicht erzielt. Several interested parties have gathered at the home of Dr. Salbach, a physicist, to enjoy, or to get irritated by, a television production of Aristophanes’ comedy Lysistrata. Two actresses who perform in the play are present among them: Mrs. Salbach, who plays Lysistrata, is the wife of the host. He has received an academic job offer as nuclear scientist in the U.S.A., but this evening he is beginning to doubt whether to accept or not. The other is capricious Uschi Hellwig, wife of an attorney, also present, and the play’s Myrrhine. Furthermore Dr. Kienast, another physicist, and his wife. Kienast is a political opportunist who, with fanatical obstinacy, has always taken the stronger side or at least what he took to be the stronger side. The spark for a highly explosive ignition within this company is provided by Ellinger, a journalist recently fired, gruff, aggressive, and embittered. The play begins. Lysistrata by Aristophanes is on the screen. Lysistrata, the beautiful Athenian woman, is determined to end, once and for all, the man-killing slaughter, the nearly endless Peloponnesian war of brother against brother. She assembles the women of Athens and a female ambassador of Sparta, the enemy, before the Acropolis to develop her plan to end the war by feminine ways and means. She persuades the women, who at first are outraged, to refuse themselves to their husbands until these declare their readiness for honest peace negotiations. The marital strike is successful—in the play. Meanwhile, in front of the television screen, a “war” fought with sharpened intellectual weapons is in full swing. At issue are problems of our own time. No agreement is reached.
This summary only hints at the main issue Kortner addressed in the modern story: pacifism vs. rearmament, a hot topic in 1950s Germany, and, beyond this, nuclear armament. The chemist’s wife, the Lysistrata in the Greek play, is terrified of a nuclear apocalypse: “To destroy more and more, that’s what’s at stake.” She tells her husband about his research: “Whatever you manipulate, fertilizer or fuel or whatever, it turns into bombs.” Whereas Salbach eventually declines the American offer, Kienast, who is ignorant about Aristophanes’ play, considers all talk about pacifism “un-German” and “anti-American intrigues.” Kortner also referred to the Holocaust and added the
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possibility of continuing German anti-Semitism, providing even more fuel for discussion. Ellinger, whom Kortner may have modeled on himself, is clearly Jewish. Someone observes to him: “Your face tells everything.” Kortner’s film is virtually unknown today, although at the time it caused a scandal throughout the Federal Republic of Germany and led to extensive discussion in the media—as the film’s summary had as good as predicted. At that time, Germany had only public television channels. Program oversight was in the hands of regional administration within the Bundesländer, the individual German states; their common programming was broadcast nationwide. Several states at first refused to broadcast Kortner’s film after an internal preview, but they relented when he agreed to make cuts. Still, the arch-conservative Free State of Bavaria and four others with conservative governments prevented the film from being broadcast in their jurisdictions. In response, the producer opened it in cinema theaters in these states on the evening of its television broadcast.39 The German film industry’s voluntary self-censorship board (Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle), which determines the minimum age for admission to all films and can refuse approval of a commercially more attractive lower age unless cuts are made, allowed the film to be released without cuts to viewers 18 and older. Kortner’s text was published as a book—by a Bavarian publisher at that.40 Kortner himself was the subject of a long article on the film and his career in the left-leaning newsweekly Der Spiegel and was featured on its cover.41 It is worth recalling some of the reactions to Kortner’s film that were published in Der Spiegel; in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a leading centrist daily; in Der Stern, a general news, culture and gossip glossy and self-styled muckraking weekly; and in Hör Zu, the country’s largest radio and television weekly, published by a huge and influential right-wing conglomerate.42 The main point of criticism was that the film dealt too openly with sexuality. Although its producer protested his best intentions (“I would never produce anything that would make me feel embarrassed in front
39 “Lysistrata: Südlich der Gürtellinie,” Der Spiegel 4 (1961), pp. 57–9. The television broadcast was on a Tuesday (January 17, 1961) at 10:15 p.m., not exactly a prime slot. At that time, the programming run by the different public stations in common had already ended for the day. 40 Fritz Kortner, Die Sendung der Lysistrata (Munich: Kindler, 1961). 41 “Kortner: Na sowas,” Der Spiegel 5 (1961), pp. 50–61. “Na sowas” (colloquial German for, roughly, “Well, I declare!”) are the film’s final two words. The article’s author, generally critical of Kortner, calls the film “boring” and states that Kortner here availed himself of an opportunity to make himself ridiculous. 42 I summarize and quote from the account provided by Christian Pundt, “Konflikte um die Selbstbeschreibung der Gesellschaft: Der Diskurs über Privatheit im Fernsehen,” in: Ralph Weiß and Jo Gröbel (eds.), Privatheit im öffentlichen Raum: Medienhandeln zwischen Individualisierung und Entgrenzung (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 2002), pp. 262–5 (section entitled “Die paternalistische Entscheidung über die Moral: Die Sendung der Lysistrata”). Quotations without specific source references are from Pundt. All translations of the German sources adduced here and below and from the film’s dialogue (above) are my own.
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of my children”), the director of one public television station confessed: “I would not want to watch this television film together with my wife. Nor with my 19-year-old son.” Another one said: “I cannot broadcast ‘Lysistrata’; it would violate the [federal] broadcasting law. I consider the film to be aesthetically below the limit, morally offensive and politically one-sided.”43 Dr. Clemens Münster, who as boss of German television in Bavaria had caused the whole scandal about the film, remained firm in his opposition: Münster did not find the Kortner product simply bad (“A term I consciously avoided”) and not immoral, either; no, with all the obstinacy he could muster he found it violated the viewers’ moral sensibility.44
More to the point, Münster objected to Kortner’s portrayal of those in favor of nuclear armament “in a manner that is simply unfair.”45 But things got even worse. Unintentionally revealing his own discomfort and his insecure grasp of the entire matter, a columnist for Der Stern wondered about the wives’ non-compliance with what at that time was commonly referred to as their marital duties: How can people who recommend the refusal of such fundamental private rights in order to enforce political points of view refuse superintendents of public broadcasting the right to reject an affair with Mr. Kortner on behalf of their political points of view? [Got that?] Measured against the wives’ love strike, the pre-emption of Kortner’s “Lysistrata” [on television] is truly a humane and downright harmless weapon of destruction.
What was he thinking? To judge by his style, probably not much. A convoluted sentence structure and vagueness of expression hide a tortured logic that would not be out of place in the Thinkery of Aristophanes’ Clouds. But the critic’s imagery —“affair” and “weapon of destruction” (in the original, Vernichtungswaffe)—is something else altogether. Humane destruction? Censorship as a kind of V-2? Could this be an instance of what psychoanalysts call the return of the repressed? Less offensive if still feeble, although now in forced-humor mode, is what a columnist in Hör Zu could muster:
43 “Lysistrata: Ehestreik gegen Atomtod,” Der Spiegel 51 (1960), pp. 83–4; quotations on p. 84. 44 Quoted from Telemann, “Münster aus Stein,” Der Spiegel 5 (1961), p. 52 (sidebar). The title puns on the common meaning of Münster (“Cathedral”). Bavaria was (and is) a bulwark of Catholicism. The pseudonymous Telemann, on whom more below, reports that Münster had once hoped to adapt Lysistrata himself but abandoned the plan as impossible. On Telemann’s views of Kortner’s film, which he considered an unqualified artistic failure, and on his defense of its broadcast and his sarcasm concerning the public-television bosses, see also Telemann, “Verpulvert,” Der Spiegel 51 (1960), p. 84 (sidebar). 45 “Lysistrata: Ehestreik” (above, n. 43), p. 84; also quoted in “Lysistrata: Südlich” (above, n. 39), p. 58.
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So immoral, so public-enemy-like, so pernicious as one might have expected it really wasn’t after all; but unfortunately the artistic mastering of the task Kortner had set himself was imperfect. So rest in peace, Lysistrata!
The case for the defense seems to have been made only half-heartedly. Die Welt, another widely read right-wing daily, concluded, also wearily, as if tired by something well infra dig, that “things more dégoutant [had] been shown on television than women denying themselves to their men in order that these end their wars.” Evidently, patriarchal blinkers were still firmly in place. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, however, rose to make the case for Kortner if not for Aristophanes: The filmic image does not contain any erotic derailments. If the television stations that originally wanted to refrain from broadcasting [the film] thought they could not offer their public certain instances of lasciviousness, then this reservation must have been based on Aristophanes’ original text that, translated into German, the television broadcast largely utilizes.
More than half a century later, much of this is either depressing or hilarious, depending on one’s disposition. But there is more. Der Spiegel had on its staff a satirical television reviewer who wrote under the pseudonym “Telemann.” As classical-music lovers know, Telemann is a regular German name, but here it is meant as a pun: “TV Man.” Under his professional name Martin Morlock, also a pseudonym, Telemann was a writer, journalist, contributor to satirical journals and Germany’s most popular cabaret troupes, and the author of television serials. His Glossen (“scoffing columns”) became popular nationwide.46 Telemann turned to the Kortner scandal on two occasions, satirizing and attacking primarily Kortner and Münster. Telemann set himself up as the ultimate artistic arbiter of the film, referring to himself in the third person and confessing in a tone of world-weary satiety: “Both times [watching it in a theater and at home], before his eyelids became heavy, he could feel no stirring of the senses that would not have occurred during a ball given by the nobility.”47 The arbiter also distinguished ancient Greek vocabulary of measurement (in translation) from contemporary German: “one should examine what difference it makes whether our maturing youths in the theater or in the living room are trying to figure out what actually an ‘eight-inch comforter’ might be.” The phrase, not all that mysterious even to those used only to metrical measuring, was cut by Kortner himself before the broadcast.48 Telemann ended his first Lysistrata column with a witty broadside against Münster and Bavaria, exposing the Philistinism that had been on plentiful display all
46 They are now collected in Christina Bartz and Jens Ruchatz (eds.), Mit Telemann durch die deutsche Fernsehgeschichte: Kommentare und Glossen des Fernsehkritikers Martin Morlock (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2006). 47 Telemann, “Münster” (above, n. 44). 48 Telemann, “Verpulvert” (above, n. 44). The expression is Aristophanes’ (Lys. 109); Kortner transferred it from Lysistrata to Myrrhine.
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around. He adopted Bavarian dialect and the persona of one Jozef [sic] Filser, a satirical creation of the late popular Bavarian author and satirist Ludwig Thoma. Filser is a bigot who reveals his parochialism in his utterances. Telemann presented his Filser redivivus as a reactionary member of the Bavarian parliament who—guess why—went to see the film in a Munich theater. This Filser draws attention to the callipygian asset of Kortner’s most beautiful actress: “Romy Schneider wagged her hind quarters a few times so you’d be led to think that she’s right horny. But, the Devil take it, there warn’t nuttin’ to see.”49 Friends of Aristophanes will want to know that Kortner changed the play’s original ending. As peace negotiations between Athens and Sparta are under way, the Proboulos sees an opportunity to attack the Spartans unawares. He also intends to “liquidate” Lysistrata, which causes Ellinger in the modern story to interject: “One victim … ridiculous. We were used to quite different numbers.” The Proboulos, foiled, then pretends to go along with Lysistrata’s plan and even offers to put up a statue to her in Athens, but only in order to get his hands on the money stored on the Acropolis, which the women still occupy. Lysistrata, however, sees through his slimy scheme. Kortner’s casting for the Proboulos may have given many viewers a jolt. Actor Willy Reichert had been popular for decades on the stage as a regional (Suabian) comic and successfully continued his career in the 1950s and 1960s on radio and television and in some light-hearted comedy films as a jovial type and eventually as a cuddly grandfather figure. At the end, Kortner’s Lysistrata appears on her marital bed and caresses its linen, which she apostrophizes in a chant as witness and even sufferer of nightly activities and as “flag of life,” now to be hoisted.50 This may have struck viewers and commentators as rather bizarre, even kitschy. But it is just possible that Kortner was influenced by some lines in Euripides’ Alcestis, a tragedy about a devoted wife who voluntarily dies for her husband. A servant woman reports how the weeping Alcestis took her last farewell from her marriage bed by repeatedly kissing it and by addressing it as the place where she had given up her maidenhead for the sake of the man for whom she is now giving up her life.51
49 This is worth quoting in its inimitable original, whose spelling expresses the broad Bavarian backwoods brogue: “Die Romy Schneider hat ein bar Mahl mit dem Hinterkwardier gewakelt, damit man meinte, daß sie recht lüstern ist. Aber g’sehn hast ums Verrecken nix” (Telemann, “Münster” [above, n. 44]). Not so! Christian Pundt, “Spot an, Lust aus: Wie der Sex ins Fernsehen kam und darin verschwand,” in: Jörg Metelmann (ed.), Porno-Pop: Sex in der Oberflächenwelt (Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 2005), p. 167, reports that Schneider’s low-cut dress momentarily exposed a nipple. 50 Here are her words in (nearly untranslatable) German: “Bettuch, hautnächster Zeuge und verschwiegener Dulder unseres nächtlichen Tuns, du Fahne des Lebens, sei gehißt!” Described and quoted from “Kortner” (above, n. 41), p. 61. 51 Eur. Alc. 175–88. Alcestis also imagines her husband in the same bed with a new wife.
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Kortner’s film has a first-rate cast, among whom Romy Schneider, a blond Myrrhine, is the internationally best-known member. Schneider had become famous in the 1950s in a series of popular costume romances as the young Bavarian princess Sissi, the future empress Elizabeth of Austria, and was eager to shed her image as a saccharine cutie. Her career was at this point in a slump, but it took off again in 1962. In writer-director Luchino Visconti’s “Il lavoro,” a segment of the episodic film Boccaccio ’70, Schneider played an aristocrat’s wife who demands payment for conjugal sex when she finds out that her husband pays callgirls for the same sort of thing. Schneider later acted in a number of erotic and controversial French films, including Jacques Deray’s The Swimming Pool (1969) and Andrzej Zulawski’s That Most Important Thing: Love (1975). Barbara Rütting, Kortner’s dark-haired Lysistrata, was known for appearing in a number of then-racy thrillers and potboilers. After giving up her acting career, she became involved in politics on behalf of human and animal rights and the environment, and was briefly arrested in 1984 when protesting American missiles in Germany. In 2003 and 2008, she was elected to the Bavarian Parliament (Landtag) for the Green Party (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) and, being the oldest member, opened its sessions as its Alterspräsidentin. Now in her eighties and retired from politics, she is still engaged in peace and related activities. This erstwhile Lysistrata reminds us of Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen, for she became a Lysistratê ekklêsiazousa and head of her own ekklêsia, if only briefly and in a nominal capacity. Aristophanes’ Lysistrata successfully accomplished her mission. So did Kortner’s. So, perhaps, did the modern equivalent of his Lysistrata, the scientist’s wife. Still, the modern story of Kortner’s film does not have the happy ending contemporary viewers may have expected. But then, during neither Aristophanes’ nor Kortner’s time were conflicts or wars ever stopped by art. Although Kortner later characterized it as “not successful,” his Lysistrata film deserves a new assessment.52 It seems to have influenced the 1962 Spanish production Escuela de seductoras (“School of Seductresses”), directed by León Klimovsky.53
52 Fritz Kortner, Letzten Endes: Fragmente (Munich: Kindler, 1971), p. 137: “einen vorwiegend pazifistischen, wenn auch nicht gelungenen Fernsehfilm.” This book, the continuation of Aller Tage Abend, was published posthumously and edited by Kortner’s widow. 53 Several other adaptations followed. They include Carl Mesterton’s Lysistrate (1963) for Finnish television; a 1964 Lysistrata directed by Prudence Fitzgerald for the BBC-TV series Festival; Dimitris Spentzos’s short Lysistrati 67 (1967); the French Lysistrata (1973), directed for television by Georges Folgoas from a stage production directed by Robert Manuel; the Belgian Lysistrata (1976) directed by Ludo Mich and with a cast performing naked to emphasize Aristophanes’ anarchic attitude (and presumably in imitation of Kenneth Tynan’s Oh! Calcutta!); Vito Molinari’s Italian television film Mai di sabato, signora Lisistrata (“Never on Saturday, Mrs. Lysistrata,” 1979), a version of the musical comedy Un trapezio per Lisistrata (“A Trapezoid for Lysistrata,” 1958), set during the Cold War and with a title that perhaps pays tribute to Never on Sunday; Inger Åby’s Swedish-television Lysistrate (1982), with Lena Nyman in the title role; Dimitris Tzelas’s video I Lysistrati ap’ to Thiseio (“Lysistrata from the
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About eight years later, Kortner found an unexpected ally, although it is unlikely that he ever became aware of this ally’s existence. A spirited, dedicated and smart filmmaker took up Lysistrata’s banner and defended her against entrenched male sexism in politics and society. For the first time in film history, this was a woman. Her film about Lysistrata was not as scandalous as Kortner’s, but it too met with initial incomprehension. Unlike Kortner, this filmmaker found a measure of cultural and artistic vindication.
7. A(ristophanes) to Z(etterling): Lysistrata the Feminist Contemporary social, political and cultural concerns fed directly into Aristophanes’ work.54 In the case of Lysistrata, Henderson’s commentary demonstrates this on many a page. But if Aristophanes was politically concerned, and if he put unforgettable women on the Acropolis and in the assembly, was he also a proto-feminist? Modern feminists tend to think so, and some classical scholars have attempted to make a case for this view, if not without awareness of the differences between then and now. In the preface to her book on what she calls Aristophanes’ “woman plays” (Lysistrata, Thesmophoriazusae, Ecclesiazusae), one of them writes: all [these plays] appear to speak quite eloquently to contemporary concerns about women’s rights and interests, the value of women’s work, and the relationships between women and war, women and literary representation, and women and politics. … if we strive to understand these works more accurately, then both the cultural distance and the cultural proximity of late fifthcentury Athens to late twentieth-century America will become clearer. … I try to retrieve what … the plays meant within that culture … [and] the value of these plays for a late twentieth-century reader, specifically a female reader, and suggest ways of evaluating their current and future cultural relevance.55
This sounds laudable, if a bit idealistic. More realistic, at least about Aristophanes’ most famous woman play, are the following comments by Henderson: The remarkable feature of Lysistrata’s success is the degree to which it depends on fantasy and wishful thinking. … Since these are comic characters in a comic situation, they offer the
Theseion,” 1986); the Russian Komediya o Lisistrate (“Comedy About Lysistrata,” 1989), directed by Valeri Rubinchik; and the French-Hungarian La grève de l’amour (“Love Strike,” 1991), directed by Nino Monti as a segment (25 mins.) of the “Série rose” of late-night erotica and featuring one Euripides. The partial echo of the title of Feuillade’s film seems wholly accidental. (Cinephiles at least hope so.) 54 Keith Sidwell, Aristophanes the Democrat: The Politics of Satirical Comedy During the Peloponnesian War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), is only one recent scholarly example. 55 Lauren K. Taaffe, Aristophanes and Women (London: Routledge, 1993), p. x; the expression “woman plays” appears on p. 9.
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spectators only comic choices. Whether or not Ar. [Aristophanes] held the same views in life as his sympathetic characters hold onstage, we may be certain that he would not have argued his views as a citizen with anything like the methods employed by his characters. … It was the comic poet who gave communal expression to the social currents running beneath the surface of public discourse. … Lysistrata reminds the spectators of the blessings of peace and denounces the evils of the present war (not all war: 1133-4) in terms with which none of the spectators would quarrel. … None [of the women] questions her ordinary role or seeks in any way to change it. On the contrary, the women want only to return to their normal lives.
About Lysistrata herself Henderson concludes: “she is not merely a representative of her own sex but also an advocate of traditional values for all Greeks male and female.”56 Nevertheless, modern feminists have on occasion claimed Lysistrata as a sort of patron saint who exemplifies women’s opposition to male dominance and can provide inspiration to her sisters.57 Her feminist apotheosis had come with The Girls (Flickorna, 1968), a Swedish film directed by actress-turned-director Mai Zetterling and co-written by her and her husband, British novelist David Hughes.58 Zetterling described her interest in Lysistrata in a memoir. Without being completely wrong, she reveals more about the modern understanding of the play than about the culture in which it was produced: Aristophanes’ Lysistrata … had created such a furor when it had first been played in Greece. Here were all the ingredients that I was so fond of: humour, sensuality, even downright bawdiness. Yet it was at the same time a critical look at the stage of things in society. It was most certainly antiwar and its heroines were strong, thoughtful and plucky. … The film was to be set in Sweden. On tour with the play Lysistrata, three actresses, whose own lives are in a mess, begin to realise that the play is a tragedy after all, and become totally involved with the light-hearted way in which Aristophanes treats serious matters—so much so that their own destinies are affected.59
The actresses who tour a wintry Sweden in the film are played by three internationally famous Swedish actresses: Bibi Andersson (“Liz Lindstrand”), Harriet Andersson and Gunnel Lindblom. The women’s interactions with the men in her lives, husbands or
56 Henderson, Lysistrata (above, n. 12), pp. xix, xxx–xxxii, xxxvii. 57 A visual record may be found in Lysistrata: Female Leadership and Democracy, a documentary film produced by Macmillan Films; its companion piece is a production of Lysistrata: Beyond Sex. As the company informs us: “To help us tell our story, we’ve researched an all-star lineup of Greek scholars including … Jeffrey Henderson (the author of the only compiled translation of Aristophanes’ woman’s plays).” Quoted from http://www.macmillanfilms.com/LysistrataStaging.asp. No dates or director information are provided. It does not detract from Henderson’s all-star status to mention that he is not the only compiled translator of Aristophanes. 58 Jane Sloan, “Making the Scene Together: Mai Zetterling’s Flikorna/The Girls (1968) and Aristophanes’ Lysistrata,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 25 (2008), pp. 97–106, attempts a brief assessment of the film and lists some further references. The misspelling Flikorna occurs throughout. 59 Mai Zetterling, All Those Tomorrows (London: Cape, 1985), pp. 195–6.
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lovers, and with male-dominated society are influenced by their experiences with the play. “We can’t get involved in politics. Our duty is to look after our home and husband and children and husband,” one of them said early on; the repetition of “husband” is telling. Their social, marital and political self-awareness is raised, but can the three overcome all-pervasive traditional prejudices? Or will they relapse into the structures and strictures they have lived under all along, once the run of their play is over? After one performance, Liz vainly attempts to engage the audience, and not only the women, in a discussion; her words express the feminist position concerning Aristophanes’ play: Can we change ourselves? That’s why Aristophanes wrote this play. To get things moving, to make people care … to stop us sitting around, believing we can do nothing. There are things we can do. Above all, he wants us to stop thinking that we’re so marvelous. You’re sitting here now, completely satisfied with yourselves. What you’ve just seen was a trifle. A comedy, nothing to take seriously. A real classic, scholarly and nice, but nothing you give a thought [to]. … Don’t you see? We have to talk. … People have to be able to talk. Don’t you understand that it’s we who make the world what it is?
Liz meets a silence uncomfortable for both sides. The actor who plays the Proboulos— a fascinating character study of a man who is decent enough on the whole but blind to all the stereotypes of and prejudices against women that a male-dominated society has ever held—attempts to defuse the awkward situation with humor: “What? Another revolt among the women?” He leads Liz, now in tears, off the stage. Her words might as well be Zetterling’s own in regard to her film. The Girls is Zetterling’s call for understanding between men and women and among people in general. But will anyone heed it? Kortner’s pessimistic perspective on Lysistrata is here taken up again by a female filmmaker, but it goes further: more serious, more realistic. The situation just described found a real-life parallel, but with a reversal. Zetterling remembers: When The Girls opened in Stockholm in 1968, it was a resounding flop. Swedish audiences seemed unable to grasp the ironical nature of the film, and at the time, we could hardly take comfort from the fact that when it was shown again, some six years later, audiences all over the world were to shout and applaud throughout.
Zetterling goes on to quote from a Paris newspaper article about the film, written by Simone de Beauvoir: All the images have multiple dimensions, the theatrical scenes reflect real life … Ironic and comic, this film moves us by the beauty of its landscapes, its poetry and above all its subtle tenderness.
According to Zetterling, de Beauvoir was “so impressed that she asked me to make a film of her novel [sic] The Second Sex.”60 Zetterling concludes:
60 The quotations are from Zetterling, All Those Tomorrows (above, n. 59), p. 204.
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It was a joy to be appreciated after all the rejections I had had and it was also important to meet other women who were trying to direct films. … I had always liked women with guts but I didn’t like to see them behave like steam-rollers, without the slightest trace of humour.61
De Beauvoir was enthusiastic about Zetterling, The Girls and the film they were planning together. She described the project in a contemporary interview: I have a really big project, making a film based on The Second Sex with a Swedish director named Mai Zetterling, who’s done some excellent feminist films. She did a film called “The Girls.” You haven’t seen it? Well, it’s really beautiful. So, we’re going … to try to look at different aspects of the condition of woman. I’m really interested in it. We’re going to collaborate on it and I’m really looking forward to it, since film, if it’s done well, has a very strong impact on people. It can make women aware of a lot of things, more than books can, and it can easily reach workers’ wives, wives of employees, since everybody has TV nowadays. It’s a way of speaking to all women; one can do this more effectively through film and television than one can do in a book that they’re not going to read. Reaching them through books is a bit too difficult. I’ll be busy with this through the coming year, maybe even two years because it will take a long time to make, since The Second Sex covers the entire condition of women.62
In a manner of speaking, The Second Sex is to meet The Second Greatest Sex via The Girls. But de Beauvoir and Zetterling never made their film, which was too ambitious to become reality. If they had pulled off this Herculean labor, the result might well have been something unique in the history of cinema, in the history of feminism and indirectly in the reception history of Aristophanes. In the scene of The Girls described above, Liz does not behave like a steamroller. Quite the contrary. Still, she shows no trace of humor. Shortly after, she is asked about her impromptu call for discussion and action during a press conference: “Do you really believe in Lysistrata’s method?” She replies: “It’s one way. I don’t know if it’s the right one.” She then imagines herself doing a striptease before the assembled journalists and before her husband and his two mistresses. She takes off her bra and flings it into her husband’s face. The other women in the cast strip to their underwear. Zetterling suddenly cuts to a broad farcical male-against-female brawl in the play: “Get them, girls!” The twofold abruptness—from modern reality to modern fantasy and to ancient stage fantasy—speaks volumes. In the battle between the sexes, women’s victory is assured, but not in reality. “Actors are always quoting lines, confusing theater and reality,” one of the modern husbands later observes—before his wife imagines first him as a buffoon, then both of them in a contemporary Taming of the Shrew moment: he spanks her in public, and she enjoys it.
61 Zetterling, All Those Tomorrows (above, n. 59), p. 218. 62 I quote de Beauvoir from Susan J. Brison, “Beauvoir and Feminism: Interview and Reflections,” in: Claudia Card (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 197. The interview took place in 1976.
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Liz soon imagines her own funeral, in which the Proboulos-actor functions as a political demagogue and delivers a rousing sexist speech on this “joyful occasion.” To thunderous applause, he tells the assembled men that now, with her dead, they can do anything, even start wars: “You may kill, betray, cheat, exploit, and destroy! As much as you want!” (A case of Get them, boys!) In turn, Liz has a surrealist vision in which the three women address their listeners from City Hall, the equivalent of the Athenian women occupying the Acropolis in Aristophanes. One speaks through a bank of microphones from the balcony—no, not to the citizens but to a square filled with cars, their horns sounding in comment or protest. No drivers or passengers are visible. The second woman speaks through a megaphone on the building’s steps, but only to a group of schoolgirls. Liz herself speaks quietly to a small number of middleaged women, but this gives way to a general squabble, in which she is attacked. Things looked different in the play. Zetterling shows that women can win in ancient and modern fantasy but that reality is different. In the course of the film, we watch a number of scenes from Lysistrata performed; the final one is the happy ending. The tour is now over, too, and the actresses are interviewed on television while the principal male actors, the Proboulos and a young Cinesias, react to their words being broadcast. This balances an early scene in which the actresses were interviewed while still in rehearsal and the same men commented as they do now. But what have the men learned? The older one observes: “A man has a right to a life of his own. It’s different for women.” The younger one retorts: “They’ll grow up one day, too.” The other replies: “They haven’t since Aristophanes’ day. So why now?” At an elegant reception held in the cast’s honor, the older actor compliments Liz on her interview: “You were fantastic on TV, darling.” She returns: “I’m always fantastic.” Her husband adds: “You should see her in bed—or in the kitchen.” This exchange prompts the final trip of Liz’s imagination, on which the film ends. The images on the screen start as a realistic-looking fantasy (I use the paradoxical expression purposely) but then are progressively distorted until everything has become unrecognizable: not a happy ending. The second greatest sex is still the first. But my description may give readers who have not seen the film a false impression. The Girls is certainly committed and serious but also witty and funny. Although virtually no male cuts a wholly decent figure, the females come in for their share of criticism and satire as well. With its high contrast, the film’s exceptional black-and-white photography makes for a suitably somber atmosphere in which, again and again, reality and imagination are juxtaposed and the former turns seamlessly into the latter. Quotations from Aristophanes’ play, laid over images of modern reality, diminish our sense of security aurally; some striking wide-angle shots distort our perspective visually. Together they make for an unsettling effect and a feeling of uncertainty, insecurity or even alienation on the viewer’s part. Zetterling’s staging of the scene between Myrrhine and Cinesias in the play is a particularly clever example. She incorporates the modern husband and a modern setting into the original. Ancient
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costumes, modern dress and modern surroundings are predominantly rendered in an exaggerated, even blinding clinical white, with some black accents interspersed here and there. “That’s why Aristophanes wrote this play”—scholars tell us differently. Aristophanes was not a social reformer, not a feminist, and certainly not a precursor of Carry Nation. But no matter: Zetterling’s perspective is powerful and moving enough to make even the Athenian playwright agree, providing he could understand 20thcentury mentalities. In content and style and with its remarkable cast, The Girls is much indebted to the cinema of writer-director Ingmar Bergman, with whom Zetterling, her three principal actresses and some of the men in the cast, primarily Gunnar Björnstrand as the Proboulos actor and Erland Josephson as Liz Lindstrand’s husband, had all been closely associated. Bibi Andersson had appeared in Bergman’s Now About These Women (1964; All These Women in the U.S.) and, most memorably, in Persona (1966). Harriet Andersson became internationally famous in Bergman’s Summer with Monika (1953; Monika, the Story of a Bad Girl in the U.S.); the following year she was in his comedy A Lesson in Love and followed up with the part of a saucy maid in his erotic comedy Smiles of a Summer Night (1955). She too was in Now About These Women. Gunnel Lindblom gave extraordinary performances in The Virgin Spring (1960) and The Silence (1963). Bergman’s entire body of work deals with love, marriage and malefemale relations, often as intense psychodrama but sometimes as comedy. A Lesson in Love, Smiles of a Summer Night, The Devil’s Eye (1960) and Now About These Women are famous instances of the latter. Best known internationally among the former are Cries and Whispers (1972) and Scenes from a Marriage (1973), originally a five-hour television film. Zetterling had first been associated with Bergman on Alf Sjöberg’s Torment (1944; Frenzy in the U.K.), which Bergman had written, and first acted for him in Night is My Future (1948). She then appeared in international productions, especially in England and the U.S. Her writing-directing debut came in 1962 with The War Game, a short film co-written with David Hughes. In Zetterling’s words: The theme was to be one that I kept repeating in all my movies in one way or another, sometimes as a sub-plot: war, or rather anti-war. The work was also to be a condemnation of the stupidity which can lead to war. Two boys, playing on a building site, become more and more engrossed in their game, until things begin to get nasty.63
The year after Zetterling’s death in 1994, the three actresses from The Girls met at her house and reminisced about their film and their profession. The meeting was pre-
63 Zetterling, All Those Tomorrows (above, n. 59), pp. 181–2.
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served in Christina Olofson’s documentary Lines from the Heart (1996). In retrospect, their reactions to The Girls are mixed. Here are some of their comments: I saw it as an ironic picture of the actress and the housewife. It didn’t apply to me. I didn’t like my character to have such an old man. Why did she choose an old married man and to have children [rather, one child] by him, too? And I played the one who was always late and apologizing.
On their director: She tried to combine extremes. It didn’t really work. I admire her for being so strong. Was Mai political, or was she just an artist? She probably wore people down and forced them to say yes. She saw the reality.—I think she was wrong.
The penultimate quotation turns Zetterling into a kind of Lysistrata. But a woman who wanted to be an artistic rather than commercial filmmaker had no choice but to wear down her predominantly male opposition. The actresses are aware of this. In 1995, the women who in The Girls played women who were experiencing male power and playing women revolting against males still reveal a sense of frustration with balancing or combining work and family. At the end of Olofson’s documentary, we see Gunnel Lindblom in rehearsal for a stage production of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis and watch her, as Clytemnestra, pleading with her unyielding husband for the life of their daughter. Bibi Andersson, Zetterling’s Liz and Lysistrata, became a political activist after visiting war-torn Sarajevo; she has grown highly critical of politicians, whom she compares to bad actors. Perhaps unintentionally, Olofson echoes the parallelism of fiction and reality in Zetterling’s film: one of the actresses sees the reality and acts on it, the other enacts it on stage. Mai was both political and an artist. Even if she tried to combine extremes, The Girls did really work.
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8. Lysistrata Defies Greek Dictators and Helps Bring About Gay (But Not Lez) Lib Aristophanes died around 386 BCE. More than 2300 years later, his work was granted the ultimate proof that he had done exactly right by his Muse: “Right-wing governments from the 1950s through the 1970s felt [his] presence with such discomfort that they banned his comedies” in Greece.64 But the military dictatorship that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974 allowed one Aristophanic film to be made with official support. This is Lysistrata (Lysistrati, 1972), directed by Giorgos Zervoulakis and starring the husband-and-wife team of Jenny Karezi (or Kareze) as Lysistrata and Kostas Kazakos as Cinesias. Both were popular performers but also enemies of the junta; in 1973, they were imprisoned for several days because of a stage play they produced together. Kazakos became best-known internationally for his tragic Agamemnon in Michael Cacoyannis’s Iphigenia (1977). Their Lysistrata is a high-spirited if occasionally labored musical-comedy-farce filmed in modern Athens.65 Costumes, inventively silly for the men and daringly sexy for the women, and hearty overacting indicate the overall level of sophistication (low). Verbal humor, of course, is prominent. Lysistrata exhorts her women: “Let us raise the eternal flag of the Cretan-Mycenaean-Athenian super-civilization! Let us tear the paper tiger of male imperialism!” But there is a clear political purpose as well. As a scholar observes: Kareze and Kazakos subordinated the forms and themes of Aristophanes’ play to their modern historical and ideological conception. They incorporated … even parodies of contemporary political opposition. … Kareze … cast herself as a militant heroine of the Greek War of Independence [1821–1830], yet toyed with Western-style feminism and with controversial American music and flags. Against the main backdrop of the hippie and pop culture of the late sixties and early seventies, her women constantly intimidated the pathetic older men who represented the junta leadership. Explicit sex scenes expanding the movie beyond Aristophanes’ text flouted the regime’s … self-assigned mission to “save” Greece.66
64 Gonda A.H. Van Steen, Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 4. An exception (of sorts), however, was I gynaikokratia (“The Rule of Women,” 1973), a comedy-farce directed and co-written by Errikos Thalassinos. In this film, a modern battle of the sexes parallels the story of Lysistrata. Scenes from the play appear in flashbacks. The ancient settings are appropriately inauthentic; the women’s costumes are skimpy, loose and revealing, especially when a convenient breeze lifts a skirt or two. Moments of male and female callipygia also appear. When the women swear an oath to go on their strike, their arm-and-hand gestures come close to and in some cases are identical with the modern Fascist Salute. 65 On the film, see also Alejandro Valverde García, “‘Lisístrata’ (1972) de Yorgos Dservulakos, una denuncia política con humor, sexo y budsuki,” Estudios neogriegos 13 (2010), pp. 189–201. 66 Van Steen, Venom (above, n. 64), p. 206.
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The film’s most explicit scene is that in which Cinesias implores his wife Myrrhine to relieve his pent-up energies.67 But its funniest is the one in which the women respond to Lysistrata’s exhortation quoted above. From behind an entrance draped with the Stars and Stripes and to the tune of the U.S. Marines’ official hymn (“From the Halls of Montezuma / To the Shores of Tripoli”), a phalanx of women advance, not quite in lockstep, on the men ogling them. Marching in place and lifting their long skirts in close-up, the ladies, with come-hither smiles, expose their panties, decorated with peace symbols, to the panting paper tigers. Two especially bold belly dancers go further and lasciviously writhe in close-up to faux-oriental music. The cowardly lions high-tail it out of there while being pelted from above with vegetables, cucumbers prominently among them. The peace panties of Lysistrata were so amazing that they featured prominently in a newspaper cartoon advertising the film. A word-balloon reads Molôn labai, a misspelled version of Leonidas’ famous molôn labe (“Come and get it”) as a defiant sexual come-on spoken by one of the women lifting her skirt: “The deliberate spelling mistakes … must have offended the establishment all the more for subverting heroic words of antiquity.”68 The visual gag is more daring than a later American equivalent. In Mel Brooks’s History of the World, Part I (1981), Roman soldiers enter the private quarters of Empress Nympho—a spoof of Poppaea Sabina— who is in the company of several buxom Vestals. “All right, virgins! Put on your No Entry signs,” commands the empress. The Vestals, played by Playboy playmates and wearing immaculately white if loosely flowing dresses—Let joys be unconfined!— protect their virtue with strategically placed signs. In 1934, American composer and lyricist Cole Porter—elegant, dapper, witty and homosexual—had a Broadway hit with his musical comedy Anything Goes, whose book was written by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse. (It was filmed in 1936 by Lewis Milestone and, in name only, by Robert Lewis in 1956.) The title song’s first refrain goes like this: In olden days a glimpse of stocking Was looked on as something shocking. But now, God knows, Anything goes. Good authors, too, who once knew better words Now only use four-letter words Writing prose. Anything goes. If driving fast cars you like, If low bars you like,
67 After Ar. Lys. 865–979. The scene does justice to Cinesias and his name, which Cartledge, Aristophanes (above, n. 32), p. 39, aptly renders as “Roger Screw-ton of Bang-cock.” Cinephiles may instead think of Rock Hardson or Rod le Rock. 68 Van Steen, Venom (above, n. 64), p. 207, with a reproduction of the cartoon.
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If old hymns you like, If bare limbs you like, If Mae West you like, Or me undressed you like, Why, nobody will oppose. When ev’ry night the set that’s smart is inTruding in nudist parties in Studios, Anything goes.
Small wonder that, in the words of the song’s opening, “the Puritans got a shock / When they landed on Plymouth Rock” and that today “Plymouth Rock would land on them.” In Aristophanes’ day, the Athenian Puritans, as we could call them avant la lettre, may have been just as shocked by all the sexual humor and gender-bending that went on. Since all parts were played by men, the implications for a farce like Lysistrata boggle, as they say, the mind.69 On the classical Greek stage, anything goes. After the sexual revolution in the modern world, anything goes farther than Porter may have imagined. Shocking the Puritans—that is what comedy and satire are all about. But if anything goes, everything can go mainstream. Ralf König, a gay German comic-book author, is a case in point. König began publishing in underground and gay magazines and originally appealed only to homosexuals. Today he has fans among gays and straights alike. König has become a bestselling artist published by well-known houses, and some of his comic books have been filmed.70 Although he seems to be an equal-opportunity offender, König is not lacking in seriousness. He is especially concerned about questions of sexual freedom in the age of AIDS. In 2006, he took part in public debates concerning freedom of the press in connection with Danish cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad. In 2008, he tackled religion in his books Prototyp (on Adam, Eve and God) and Archetyp (both “Archetype” and “Ark Type,” i.e. Noah). König had once seen a school production of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata: “I thought that Aristophanes had forgotten the gays and the lesbians, and I got the idea that this would make for a great comic. … It was the first time that I took up someone else’s idea in order simply to dust it off a little and to turn it into my own version.”71 His Lysistrata
69 Henderson, Lysistrata (above, n. 12), p. xliv: “Female nakedness is represented by tights to which breasts and genitalia were attached.” Cf. Henderson, pp. 195–6, on Lys. 1106–27. 70 Der bewegte Mann (1994; literally: “Man, Moved;” in English Maybe … Maybe Not or Pretty Baby), directed by Sönke Wortmann; Kondom des Grauens (1996; literally, “Condom of Horror;” in English Killer Condom), directed by Martin Walz; Wie die Karnickel (2002; Like Rabbits), directed by Sven Unterwaldt, Jr. 71 This and the following quotations from König and Bellmunt are my translations of parts of interviews with them included on the Kinowelt DVD of the film. Quotations from the film’s dialogue below are translated from the German-dubbed version, which König approved, unless otherwise indicated.
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(1987) was a hit as a comic book and was filmed in Spain as Lisístrata (2002) by Francesc Bellmunt. König did not believe that Aristophanes had any political or social changes in mind but wrote “just a comedy” despite its serious background. For that reason König sees “no point in adducing any political modern parallels,” although the play “has a lot to say about relations between the sexes.” By contrast, Bellmunt seemed more concerned with bringing out such parallels in his film, which he wrote and co-produced: “I remember the effect that Ralf’s comic had on me when, in 2001, the U.S. spread a worldwide atmosphere of war, and realized that it [the comic] had a clear anti-war message. These ideas survived more than 2,000 years.” Bellmunt wanted to make “an antiwar comedy in ancient dress, and that’s what Lisístrata turned out to be.” In preparation, Bellmunt read Aristophanes and several works of scholarship on him and his time. He observes: “König has modernized Aristophanes’ message perfectly. I would not, in principle, say that he treated the original text of Lysistrata ironically. He respects its humor and adds a modern perspective without losing the central thought.” Lisístrata is a free-wheeling version of Aristophanes, made as a full-fledged costume drama. It combines its Greek setting with obvious importations from Roman culture, familiar from numerous historical films. Lysistrata is played by Maribel Verdú, best known internationally from Fernando Trueba’s Belle époque (1992) and Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también (2001). The year is 411 BCE, but the war is said to have been going on for 30, not 20 (or 21), years. Lysistrata and Lampito organize the wives’ revolt even though both are lesbians. Their motto is “The power is with us— Women’s Power!” For emphasis, the women cup their breasts with both hands when they utter this cry. Lysistrata, Lampito and the others take over the Acropolis with its war chest, and the Spartan wives soon follow their example. The soldiers on both sides begin to suffer mightily from sexual frustration. (It shows—protuberantly.) They become so incapable of fighting that Hepatitos, the middle-aged transvestite leader of the effeminate Athenian gays, offers generals Inkognitos (who is secretly gay), Thermos and Acapello (Camarero in Spanish), and all others a new alternative to deliver the dire straights from their pent-up tensions. The Proboulos—named Ajax in the Spanish but Oropax in the German version—imposes mandatory homosexual relief. The strategy works for a while, and the war begins to peter out. But now the wives become frustrated in their plan for peace because the Athenian and Spartan males have begun to fall in love with one another and, as one specific case demonstrates, cannot rise to their marital occasions. (“His noodle was at best al dente,” complains a newly married wife.) So Ajax-Oropax and the Spartan leader Klinex (pronounce this the German way) make a peace treaty. At the end, the acceptance of love between man and woman and between man and man is about to be established. Hepatitos and Lysistrata together deserve credit for peace and equality of the sexes. He tells her: “For us [gays] the matter of peace was at least as important as for you [women].” Women’s lib and gay lib go hand in hand, so to speak. This is in pointed contrast to Aristophanes’ play, in which “extramarital outlets for husbands that in comedy and in a
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slave-owning society are normally available must be ignored in order to motivate the sexual tension on which the strike plot turns.”72 Most of the film’s humor is farcical and only intermittently sophisticated. Fake beards abound. The ancient bronze statuette of the ithyphallic dancing satyr that is on ubiquitous postcards on sale to timidly naughty tourists all over Greece is here a fullblown statue that decorates the entrance of Club Adonis, a gay disco. Anything comes and goes!73 We also meet the Spartan envoy Domestos, representative of the Radical Gay Front Spartacus, and a terminally infantile Oedipus who hates his father: “All the time he stands between me and my mommy. I could kill him!” Hepatitos, who exhibits a pronounced mothering streak, takes him under his wings while Oedipus’ mother is on her sex strike. Oedipus’ authoritarian father comes on to Hepatitos, and for the time being they live together as a happy family, sort of.74 Bellmunt adhered closely to the comic, his source, but his ending is somewhat different from König’s. While Athenians and Spartans are happy, Lysistrata and Lampito prepare to leave the Acropolis. Before the giant statue of Athena in the Parthenon, they decide not to return home and begin to question the wisdom of the gods, who have absolute power over humans. Why do they not bring about peace on earth? Lysistrata reminds Lampito that Zeus, “the father of all the gods,” is “himself a guy.” So men will always oppress women: “That is our fate,” Lysistrata continues. But: “We women have the power to change the course of fate.” Now, however, Zeus himself intervenes. In storm and lightning the women hear a male voice above them, laughing contemptuously. In the German version it proclaims: Right, Lysistrata—and what a guy good old Zeus is! You have really wonderful ideas. Do you want me to climb down from my Olympus and show you and your little girlfriend? After that you’ll certainly won’t be lesbians any more.
The voice recedes amid more laughter. In the Spanish version, Zeus refers to himself as “the most masculine [macho] god in the universe.” In both, he more than implies a sexual threat. The ending thus sounds an almost incongruously serious note. An alternate text given to Zeus is a bit more upbeat and might have amused Aristophanes, although it does not remove all the gloom. Zeus tells Lysistrata: “Oh yes, Lysistrata. I am a guy.” Then he informs her that all the goddesses have occupied Olympus and
72 Quoted from Henderson, Lysistrata (above, n. 12), p. xxxiii. König was aware of this. 73 Allain Rochel’s 2008 theatrical farce Sissystrata is set in West Hollywood’s gay community in the year 2013: “a politically incorrect fantasy in which West Hollywood musclemen are called in to help the Iraq war effort, leaving their sissy boyfriends home to whine, bicker and complain—fabulously.” The quotation is from Tom Provenzano, “Sissystrata,” a capsule review in the L.A. Weekly (August 28, 2008); at http://www.laweekly.com/2008–08–28/calendar/sissystrata. 74 I survey the varieties of Oedipal experience in the cinema in Martin M. Winkler, Cinema and Classical Texts: Apollo’s New Light (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 122–53 (chapter entitled “The Complexities of Oedipus”).
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will no longer admit the males until they bring about peace on earth: “That’s what we get from your ideas!” Zeus still threatens to come down and show the women what’s what, thus ending lesbianism once and for all, but a soothing and effeminate Hermes prevents this. Bellmunt’s change to König’s ending follows. The two women have given up on Athenian and Spartan society, but they are not cowed by Zeus and regain their spirits. Where to go? “I know a small solitary island,” Lysistrata informs Lampito in the German version. Classically trained viewers can easily supply the island’s name. In the Spanish version Lysistrata utters it: “We’ll still have the island of Lesbos.” For these two and presumably all other lesbians, the only escape from male power is retreat to a Women Only paradise. Bellmunt has commented: The ending of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata is very “positive” and König’s ending terribly realistic. The true reality causes Lysistrata’s plans to fail. Even Zeus, the father of the gods, is a chauvinist macho bastard! I respect this ending, but injected a little bit of Casablanca into Lysistrata’s text. Still the ending appears to be very harsh and leads us to believe that there is no way out from patriarchy.
The Prototype prevails. Neither König nor Bellmunt is likely to have known of an earlier Lysistrata who exhibited lesbian tendencies. (Ignorance sometimes is bliss.) In 1968, a 65-minute pornographic Lysistrata, directed by one Jon Matt and produced by a company calling itself ModFilm, presented American viewers with this story: Hippie model Lysistrata, raped or rejected by the men in Manhattan, has become a man-hater. She forms an all-women sex club, the members of which read Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and vow their hatred. Their plan is to tease men beyond endurance and frustrate all their attempts at sexual satisfaction. The women satisfy themselves by engaging in autoeroticism and oral intercourse. Pamela comes under Lysistrata’s spell and rejects her boyfriend, Fred. For revenge, Fred spies on the secret rites in which Lysistrata demands slavish sex worship. Lysistrata becomes jealous at an orgy, and she stabs each of her disciples. Aware of Lysistrata’s crime, Fred blackmails her with torture, but before the whip can be administered, she stabs herself to death.75
A poster for the film juxtaposes Aubrey Beardsley’s drawing of Lysistrata to some nude or near-nude actresses engaged in various acts of osculation that I may not specify here. The same poster proclaims the production to be “A MOD FILM CLASSIC ” that is “STRICTLY FOR ADULTS ONLY !” Its main tag boldly states: “3,000 YEAR OLD SEX CLASSIC GOES MOD!” The last word is printed extra-large and in the same screaming red as the film’s title. If that is not enough to arouse passing males’ curiosity, there is more: “A legend of erotic love! SEXCITING!” And: “SEE! sex-happy chicks!” And:
75 Quoted from http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/739251/Lysistrata/full-synopsis.html.
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“SEE! men frustrated beyond belief!” SEE this Lysistrata then? Better not. Alas, few classics are safe from sexcessive sexploitation.
9. Lysistrata Meets Gangsta Rap and Takes On Weapons of Mass Destruction Bellmunt’s film contrasts with the exclusively heterosexual American update A Miami Tail, made in 2003 by black director Melvin James and set in the world of black and Latino teenagers and young adults. Rapper Trina plays Alicia Strada, Lysistrata’s sista. Trina, of mixed black and Latina heritage, is controversial for her profane and sexually explicit lyrics. Her first hit was “Da Baddest Bitch.” Other characters’ names are modern except for Nike (after Calonice) and the gang lord Black Zeus (as in “I think Black Zeus is gonna have to come down from Mount-motherfucking-Olympus and strike his Spic ass down with this,” i.e. a gun). The modern equivalent of the Peloponnesian War is gang violence in Miami’s Liberty City, a neighborhood with a history of drug wars where the film was made and where Trina was living. After a potentially deadly encounter with Black Zeus, Alicia initiates the sex strike at a ladies’ hair salon: “We’re fools for our men. … We give them so much of ourselves. And for what? So they can abuse us and betray our trust? … I’m talking about the world we leave for our children, or should I say: this mess?” Reactions range from surprise to rejection to ridicule: “Oh, girl, lighten up. This one has a neardeath experience, and all of a sudden she’s Al Sharpton!” After further discussion, Alicia explains: “We gotta save our men from themselves. … there’s only one way to stop the drugs, violence, and destruction: through total and complete abstinence from sex.” The others eventually agree, and she declares: “Tomorrow, ladies, we hit ’em where it hurts.” An advertising line for the film had already explained to prospective viewers what is at stake: “No peace in the streets means no piece between the sheets.” Posters proclaimed: “In this battle of the sexes, these girls won’t lay down!” The trailer concluded: “Until they lay down their guns, this gang ain’t banging.” Brooms and supplies in hand, the women march to the public playground-andpark, clean it up, put up some tents, and lock themselves in: a clever update of the occupation of the Acropolis in Aristophanes. When the men appear and tell the women to open the gate, the following dialogue between Alicia and Black Zeus takes place: Alicia: We’re flipping the switch on your ass. Black Zeus: Is you stupid? Alicia: Yes, for letting you turn this neighborhood into a hellhole. But not any more … This the deal: We will no longer lay down and be your concubines, your bitches, hos, and tricks. Black Zeus: My concu—what?
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Alicia: Con-cu-bines … No peace means no piece! No coochie, no chocha, no cookie, no nookie, no mas until you and your dawgs lay down the guns once and for all. Black Zeus: You must be out your motherfucking mind. Alicia [pushing him in the chest]: Try me.
The black women’s example catches on and the Latinas join them. They all put their men on “pussy probation.” Booty calls; but girls rule, boys drool. A black Reverend ruefully confesses to the other males when asked to help them out of this crisis: “I’m just a man of the cloth. And with my wife gone, I’m a man of the Kleenex, towel, Handi-Wipe, whatever I can put my hands on.” Although the dialogue is spicy (and funny) throughout, the film is visually surprisingly tame. Director James shows no full nudity, although the girls and women look titillating (and assillating: in tight, low pants, showing their thongs). But his strategy works, for it enhances the women’s erotic allure and explains their power over their macho men. A peace agreement follows. Alicia proclaims the happy ending: “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my extreme pleasure to announce: y’all can have sex again.” General rejoicing over this tail peace ensues. Piece, brothers! A Miami Tail presents a refreshing contemporary take on an ancient tale and, 35 years later, makes for a witty counterpart to Zetterling’s earnest approach.76 The year in which the Miami Lysistrata kicked ass also made evident that Aristophanes’ Lysistrata was speaking to contemporary concerns more than ever, and not only in the U.S. The Bush Administration was waging wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and exploited an invented threat from weapons of mass destruction to persuade the world that the invasion of Iraq was legitimate.77 A possible third war, an invasion of Iran, loomed on the horizon. In protest, readings and professional, semi-professional and amateur productions of Lysistrata and of Euripides’ Trojan Women, a tragedy about the horrors of war and the suffering of the innocent (women and children), proliferated. Most remarkable was the Lysistrata Project, a worldwide event that took place on one specific day. It became the subject of Operation Lysistrata (2006), a documentary film directed by Michael Patrick Kelly that won several international awards. The production company provides the following information: In January 2003, Kathryn Blume and Sharron Bower, two actresses from New York City, thought to organize readings of the ancient Greek play by Aristophanes, Lysistrata, as a protest of the
76 A parallel case occurred in real life in 2006. Several wives went on a “strike of crossed legs” in Pereira, Colombia, a city with a devastating history of gang violence and murder. Comparable strikes for various political goals have also been reported. For a more recent example, see Karen Smith, “Sex Strike Brings Peace to Filipino Village” (CNN report; September 19, 2011); at http://www.cnn.com/ 2011/WORLD/asiapcf/09/19/philippines.sex.strike/. 77 Documentation of this and related matters is abundant. A good starting point is Frank Rich, The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth in Bush’s America (New York: Penguin Press, 2006).
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imminent preemptive war on Iraq. Originally conceived as a local event, over the course of several weeks word of the Project quickly gained momentum and became a worldwide happening for peace. On March 3, 2003, nearly 1,100 simultaneous productions of Lysistrata were performed in 59 countries around the globe. Operation Lysistrata illuminates the way in which two women transformed their individual aspirations for peace into a movement which allowed the global community to share in their vision, using grassroots activism, conflict resolution, community building, and the role of art in a functioning democracy. The organized readings of the ancient Greek play, all performed on March 3, 2003, was [sic] extraordinarily successful. Celebrities as well as small theatre companies world-wide turned out in force for this unique event. Tapes of readings poured in from England, Iceland, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Italy, Montreal, Nova Scotia, the U.S.A. From a Kurdish Refugee Camp in Northern Greece to Havana, Cuba, to Moscow, Idaho, all to document this once-in-a-lifetime and truly amazing experience.78
No classical author has ever reached as global an audience as Aristophanes did on 0303-03. Zetterling would have been pleased.
12. To kinêma Aristophanikon “How far it is possible deliberately to imitate Aristophanes in writing a comedy for the general public, either in the theatre or in the cinema,” famous classicist Kenneth Dover once mused, “is a difficult question.” But he pointed to Jacques Feyder’s La kermesse héroïque (Carnival in Flanders, 1935) as a work that “in our own time” exhibits “the Aristophanic spirit.” He explains: Feyder’s film portrays an occasion on which a town in the Low Countries, in the early seventeenth century, is faced with the disagreeable prospect of a Spanish army staying the night. The town council being torn between helpless panic and a desire to close the gates and put up a heroic resistance, the burgomaster’s wife organizes the women of the town, pretends to the Spaniards that her husband has just died, and sees to the entertainment of the army in such style that rape is unnecessary and drunkenness does not issue in resentful violence. The townswomen will keep the good-looking Spaniards in a secret and cherished corner of memory for a long time to come. Now, what gives this film its Aristophanic character is not simply the seizure of initiative by the women, nor even their uncomplicated sexuality, but the fact that the peril which the town council so vividly imagines, the spearing of babies on pikes, the roasting alive of old men, are [sic], at that time and place, part of the real world with which people have to come to terms; which does not prevent them from enjoying themselves and maintaining their preferred style of life in the intervals between perils.79
At a time when classical scholars were expressing contempt of “the movies” as a matter of course, this notice of a classic film by a Fellow of the British Academy (and 78 This description appears on the film’s website (http://aquapiofilms.com/lys01.html) and is quoted with a few minor corrections of punctuation, etc. The web page contains a link to images about the Project as well. 79 Kenneth Dover, Aristophanic Comedy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), pp. 238–9.
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later Sir Kenneth) was exceptional. Things have changed. A detailed scholarly approach to a modern film comedy, writer-director Colin Higgins’s 9 to 5 (or Nine to Five, 1980), shows how convincing a thorough analysis of the persistence of classical archetypes in modern culture can be.80 9 to 5 fully exhibits the spirit of Aristophanes. Its four main characters, American office workers suffering under a sexist male boss, resemble Lysistrata, Myrrhine, Calonice and Lampito, the last of these a doublebarreled stand-out in the buxom person of Dolly Parton. To ancient Athenians, Spartans were to some extent hicks from the sticks, and this American Lampito’s Texas accent stands out among all the urban, if not necessarily urbane, big-city types. Higgins’s film demonstrates how Aristophanic plotting can reappear in modern comedy and how specific features of Lysistrata can be translated into a new medium. 9 to 5 may not be a milestone in the history of film comedy, but study of it is certainly a milestone in the history of film interpretation based on principles of classical philology.81 Any attempt at a comprehensive or systematic survey of the Aristophanic spirit in the cinema is to carry owls to Athens, but some outstanding examples deserve honorable (and one dishonorable) mention. Concerning female-to-male gender-benders, the palm of victory goes to sophisticated Renate Müller as the titular crossdressing heroine of Reinhold Schünzel’s Viktor und Viktoria (Germany, 1933), remade under the same title by Karl Anton in 1957, as First a Girl (U.K., 1935) by Victor Saville, and as Victor Victoria (U.S., 1982) by Blake Edwards. The male-to-female (and back to male) victory belongs to Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (U.S., 1959), with Jack Lemmon as Jerry (“I’m a girl!”), Daphne (“I’m a boy!”) and Jerry again (“I’m a man!”), and with an immortal closing line. Richard Lester’s The Ritz (1976) and some of the early films of John Waters (Pink Flamingos, 1972; Female Trouble, 1974) and Pedro Almodóvar (Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom, 1980; Labyrinth of Passion, 1982; What Have I Done to Deserve This? 1984) are still outrageous. Comedy and satire of mindless male militarism appears in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (U.K., 1964) and Robert Altman’s MASH (U.S., 1970); the former ends in a nuclear apocalypse. Gluttony on the Heraclean scale, combined with sex and death, is the subject of Marco Ferreri’s La grande bouffe (Blow-Out or The Big
80 James R. Baron, “Tricksters and Typists: 9 to 5 as Aristophanic Comedy,” in: Martin M. Winkler (ed.), Classical Myth and Culture in the Cinema (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 172–92. Alejandro Valverde García, “Elementos aristofánicos in The Day the Fish Came Out: La ciudad del futuro e el fin del mundo según Michael Cacoyannis,” in: Francisco Salvador Ventura (ed.), Cine y ciudades (Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Intramar Ediciones, 2011), 241–54, sees Aristophanic analogies in this anti-imperialist and environmental comedy from 1967. Natalia Palomar, “Uccellacci e uccellini: Un doble giro coral más allá de Aristófanes,” Dionysus ex machina 2 (2011), pp. 537–63, examines the Birds in connection with Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966). 81 I have argued for what I call “classical film philology” in Winkler, Cinema (above, n. 74), pp. 20– 69.
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Feast; France, 1973). The absurdity of the death industry is on view in Tony Richardson’s The Loved One (U.S., 1965), adapted from Evelyn Waugh’s novel and marketed as “The motion picture with something to offend everyone.” That may no longer be true, so one could now try Peter Medak’s The Ruling Class (1972). In a category by themselves are films by Luis Buñuel, cinema’s great surrealist (L’age d’or [France, 1930], in collaboration with Salvador Dalí; The Discreet Charme of the Bourgeoisie [France, 1970]; The Phantom of Liberty [France, 1972]; That Obscure Object of Desire [France, 1974]) and the absurd grotesqueries of Lina Wertmüller, Federico Fellini’s former assistant. The Seduction of Mimi (1972; Mimi is a male) and Seven Beauties (1975) pose little men vis-à-vis physically imposing (to put it mildly) women and feature situations that must be seen to be believed (or disbelieved). My Friends (1975) and My Friends Part 2 (1982), episodic Italian comedies directed by Mario Monicelli, are funny send-ups of male friendship, the impossibility of middle-aged men ever growing up, and their puerile behavior in general and toward women in particular. Once you have watched Monicelli’s whirlwinds of hilarious inventiveness, you will be unlikely ever again to stick your head out of your compartment window when your train is about to depart, and you will never leave your camera unguarded in an apparently cozy Italian trattoria for even one moment. (You have been warned!) The failure of modern American masculinity before potential mates and in the face of an eccentric mother is satirized in Carl Reiner’s Where’s Poppa? (1970); Reiner later became more successful by playing it safer. During Hollywood’s golden age, the battle of the sexes reached its greatest height in Twentieth Century (1934), Bringing Up Baby (1940; this Baby is not a baby), and His Girl Friday (1940), Howard Hawks’ sophisticated comedies, marked by rapid-fire dialogue in which sexy, sharp-witted, strong-willed and independent-minded women are equal to or better than their men. Not a sane character is anywhere to be found in Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Big Lebowski (1998), a pitch-black comedy with a clueless slob for its non-hero. This lone relic from the Age of Aquarius (“the Dude abides”) becomes entangled in a labyrinthine plot of hilarious, farcical and nihilistic absurdity. Verbally it is the opposite of Hawks’s films and their sparkling dialogue, for here the Maculate Muse of Aristophanic humor triumphs. She does so again in the raunchy teenage sex comedies that became popular around that time. As representative I mention only Greg Mottola’s Superbad (2007), about the hormone-fueled attempts by three potty-mouthed meganerds to get first soused and then laid. The film is irreverent of authority, very sexist, very tasteless—the Maculate Muse collects a Grand Prize—and very funny. Those for whom all this is too much can always turn to the crowning glory of comedy that is Leo McCarey’s Duck Soup (1933). This maddest of all Marx Brothers farces is bent on a freewheeling slaughter of sacred American cows like patriotism and history, power and militarism, and matronly and nubile womanhood. In the cinema, anything goes! Since we began with a comic text by Stephen Sondheim, let us close in the same way. West Side Story, the modernized musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet by Arthur Laurents (book), Leonard Bernstein (music) and Sondheim (lyrics),
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opened on Broadway in 1957 and was filmed by directors Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, the show’s choreographer, in 1961. With its romantic-tragic plot, West Side Story could hardly be expected to have anything Aristophanic about it, but one song reminds us that Aristophanes is to be reckoned with even when, as here, he was probably on no one’s mind. “Gee, Officer Krupke” contains funny stage business (omitted from consideration here), verbal fireworks and gleeful satire of authority. Some members of the Jets, one of the two youth gangs who are the story’s hot-headed Montagues and Capulets, are mocking an absent police officer with whom they have had several run-ins: Action: Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke, You gotta understand, It’s just our bringin’ upke That got us out of hand. Our mothers all are junkies, Our fathers all are drunks, Golly, Moses, natcherly we’re punks! Action and Quartet: Gee, Officer Krupke, we’re very upset; We never had the love that every child oughta get. We ain’t no delinquents, We’re misunderstood, Deep down inside us there is good! Action: There is good! All: There is good, there is good, There is untapped good, Like inside, the worst of us is good. [They now act short scenes before an imaginary judge, psychiatrist and social worker.] Action: Dear kindly judge, Your Honor, My parents treat me rough, With all their marijuana, They won’t give me a puff. They didn’t wanna have me, But somehow I was had. Leapin’ lizards, that’s why I’m so bad! Diesel [as judge]: Officer Krupke, you’re really a square; This boy don’t need a judge, he needs a analyst’s care! It’s just his neurosis that oughta be curbed. He’s psychologically disturbed! Action: I’m disturbed! All: We’re disturbed, we’re disturbed,
Aristophanes in the Cinema; or, The Metamorphoses of Lysistrata
We’re the most disturbed, Like we’re psychologically disturbed. Diesel [as judge, pronouncing]: In the opinion of this court, this child is depraved on account he ain’t had a normal home. Action: Hey, I’m depraved on account I’m deprived! Diesel [as judge]: So take him to a head shrinker. Action [to psychiatrist]: My father is a bastard, My ma’s an S.O.B. My grandpa’s always plastered, My grandma pushes tea. My sister wears a mustache, My brother wears a dress. Goodness gracious, that’s why I’m a mess! A-rab [as psychiatrist]: Yes! Officer Krupke, you’re really a slob; This boy don’t need a doctor, just a good honest job. Society’s played him a terrible trick, Und sociologically he’s sick! Action: I am sick! All: We are sick, we are sick, We are sick, sick, sick; Like we’re sociologically sick! A-rab [as psychiatrist, pronouncing]: In my opinion this child don’t need to have his head shrunk at all. Juvenile delinquency is purely a social disease! Action: Hey, I got a social disease! A-rab [as psychiatrist]: So take him to a social worker! Action [to social worker]: Dear kindly social worker, They say, go earn a buck; Like be a soda jerker, Which means like be a schmuck. It’s not I’m anti-social, I’m only anti-work. Gloryosky, that’s why I’m a jerk! Baby John [as female social worker]: Eek! Officer Krupke, you’ve done it again. This boy don’t need a job, he needs a year in the pen. It ain’t just a question of misunderstood; Deep down inside him, he’s no good!
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Action: I’m no good! All: We’re no good, we’re no good, We’re no earthly good, Like the best of us is no damn good! Diesel [as judge]: The trouble is he’s crazy! A-rab [as psychiatrist]: The trouble is he drinks! Baby John [as social worker]: The trouble is he’s lazy! Diesel [as judge]: The trouble is he stinks! A-rab [as psychiatrist]: The trouble is he’s growing! Baby John [as social worker]: The trouble is he’s grown! All: Krupke, we got troubles of our own! Gee, Officer Krupke, We’re down on our knees, ’Cause no one wants a fella with a social disease. Gee, Officer Krupke, What are we to do? Gee, Officer Krupke, Krup you!82
The Jets, “relying on superior dexterity in argument, and intellectuality, and maximminting ingenuity,” have learnt the lesson of dialectical argumentation well enough to qualify as graduates of Socrates’ Thinkery in Aristophanes’ Clouds.83 The song’s last two words are as witty as much of the dirty wordplay in Aristophanes and as daring a near-obscenity as the cultural and social climate of the Eisenhower era allowed.
13. Coda: Tale End In a chapter of The Comic Mind entitled “The Case for Comedy,” Gerald Mast appropriately summarized our topic:
82 Variants of these lyrics in Sondheim, Finishing the Hat (above, n. 9), pp. 50–2. 83 Ar. Clouds 950–2 (on the Better Argument and the Worse Argument); quoted from Henderson, Aristophanes, vol. 2 (above, n. 6), p. 139.
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From the beginning, comedy has been bent on destruction—of objects, egos, social assumptions, society’s leaders, and the goals of society itself. Aristophanes was a perfectionist of destruction. Similarly, the greatest comic artists in film—[Mack] Sennett, [Charles] Chaplin, [Buster] Keaton, [Ernst] Lubitsch, [Jean] Renoir, the Marx Brothers, [W.C.] Fields, [Jacques] Tati, [Preston] Sturges— are pure destroyers. They wreck the idol that society and men have built to, for, and of themselves, and they fail to build anything in its place.84
A few decades later, we can considerably expand Mast’s list. Comedy tonight? Yes, but even better: Comedy forever! Aristophanes is alive and well on the screen. His unexpected appearances in The Philadelphia Story, The World in His Arms and Mirage make the point, for they tell us that his spirit hovers over more of the cinema than we might suspect. And whatever her European or American guise or disguise, his gal named Lysistrata is always fantastic.85 Many classical scholars are still sadly unfamiliar with this pleasing fact. A recent introduction to Aristophanes, for instance, is innocent of words like cinema, film or movie even in its final chapter, which is titled “Aristophanes in the Modern World.”86 O cogitatorium, o mores! But no matter; popular culture ensures Aristophanes’ survival just fine. 2011 was an especially notable year. Yet another Lysistrata film (rated R) was released but little seen; its tag line proclaimed it “A delightful tale of men and women behaving … badly!” And: “The battle of the sexes has never been this much FUN!” The Lysistrata on the film’s poster wears a fanciful pseudo-Grecian dress; a NO ACCESS sign is strategically placed once again. The independent Lysistrata Unleashed: The Love and Peace Film (its subtitle varies) appears to be in development in and around Santa Cruz, California, under the direction of one Phoenix Dr Now (sic; aka Thaddeus P. Now), a “visionary artist, musician, magician, show producer, designer,” as the film’s Internet site proclaims him or, more likely, as he proclaims himself. This film is said to be simultaneously indebted, of all things, to Marcel Camus’ classic Black Orpheus (1959) and Charles Dickens. Its most obvious debt, to Zetterling’s film, goes unacknowledged.87
84 Mast, The Comic Mind (above, n. 1), p. 338. 85 Those who are not easily shocked, shocked can find a combination of Lysistrata, Messalina and Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra at http://ancientsites.com/member/Terentius/Messalina/2634. Proceed at your own intellectual risk! 86 James Robson, Aristophanes: An Introduction (London: Duckworth, 2009). On Aristophanic overtones in American television (e.g. The Simpsons), see J. Peter Euben, Platonic Noise (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), pp. 64–84, 182–7 (notes). The title of Euben’s book alludes to Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise (1985). 87 The film’s general URL is http://www.lysistrataunleashed.com, which contains the following capsule description: “We are making a movie about the ancient and modern message of peace, about the power of women to solve difficult social issues, and about the arts as a crucial inspirational factor in culture. Our vehicle is an ancient Greek comedy, Lysistrata. Our medium is the cutting-edge lifestyle and creativity of Santa Cruz, CA.” Various other pages can be accessed from the one mentioned here. A rather flamboyant synopsis, given at http://www.lysistrataunleashed.com/about.html, makes one suspect that this project is the last gasp of the Age of Aquarius.
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Altogether, there is no danger that Aristophanes’ amazing Acropolitan will fall out of favor. Has Lysistrata ever disappointed? Of course not. As Samuel Fuller could have put it, in Lysistrata Aristophanes showed us the battlefield of love’s emotions. And thereby hangs a tale. And many a tail.
Martina Treu
Who’s Afraid of Aristophanes? The Troubled Life of Ancient Comedy in 20th-Century Italy Abstract: Ancient comedy as a whole is less well-known to Italian audiences than tragedy, even if comic texts are translated and read by scholars and students. Aristophanes is the ancient comic author most frequently adapted and performed in modern Italy; Menander and Latin authors are seldom performed or adapted by professionals. This paper focuses on the major Italian productions of the last century, mostly of Aristophanes, with selected examples in chronological order, pointing out distinctive features of the reception of ancient comedy in the country. In particular, some recent case studies allow us to explore the complex relationship between Aristophanes and the Italian theater: his satire is often watered down or disturbed by religious interference and political censorship, but when the comic potential is expressed in full, the adaptations and performances can be outstanding.
1. “An Author for the Stage” In modern Italy, Greek and Latin comedies are still generally less known to audiences than tragedies, even if the comic texts are translated and read by scholars and students.1 Plautus and Terence were very popular in the past—there is evidence of performances since the 16th century—but are rarely performed today. As for Menander, his comedies have been staged by professionals only since the 1980s and very seldom, mostly in schools and universities (with a few exceptions mentioned below). The average Italian theater-goer can more easily become acquainted with Aristophanes, who is by far the comic author most frequently adapted and performed in Italy, in ancient sites as well as in cities, in out-of-town theaters and in unconventional places. In the last 15 years, the words “Ancient Comedy on the Italian Stage” have gained a new, real sense to wider audiences, along with the name “Aristophanes.” Was Aristophanes so popular in the past? His comedies have been published in Italy since the end of 15th century and were translated into Latin and Italian soon after that.2 But it took almost five centuries before Aristophanes was actually considered—
1 I wish to thank Umberto Albini†, Alessandro Argnani, Sotera Fornaro, Wolfgang Haase, Marco Martinelli, Giovanni and Guido Nahmias, Mario Negri, Mario Perrotta, Carlo Ferdinando Russo, Tiziano and Anna Treu. I am deeply grateful to Douglas Olson for his editing and suggestions, and to Jeffrey Henderson, whose works have been inspiring me since I began studying the Aristophanic Chorus and Psogos. 2 For a general history of Italian theater in English, see Joseph Farrell, Paolo Puppa (eds.), A History of Italian theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). For an international survey of Aristo-
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by Italian scholars, performers and audiences—“an Author for the Stage,” as Carlo Ferdinando Russo called him in the title of his 1962 book.3 With the exception of some pioneer scholars, ancient dramas have been read for centuries more as pure texts than as scripts.4 On one hand, therefore, the dramatic nature and “theatricality” of plays was underestimated or overlooked, even when comedies were actually adapted and performed. On the other hand, the limited scholarly interest in performance, and the delayed development of reception studies, had disastrous consequences for documentation, especially of the earliest productions. In the past, many theaters had no archives, and they seldom kept, preserved or catalogued their materials. This lack of attention—and of documentation—is particularly evident for comedy, which has been seen as a minor genre since Aristotle’s Poetics (chapters 4 and 5). Until recent times, this dismissive attitude dominated Italian schools and universities and influenced the birth and development of the practice of performance. It also helped produce a basically conservative audience more concerned with tragedy than with comedy; this situation encouraged previous generations of Italian playwrights and directors to neglect comedy, to lean toward traditional—not to say “philological”—performances, to water down the harsh humor and the satire, to stress the socalled “fantasy” of comedy, and to avoid as much as possible hints of actual society or politics. These trends and habits have prevailed for decades, while attempts at
phanes, see Edith Hall, Amanda Wrigley (eds.), Aristophanes in Performance 421 BC– AD 2007: Peace, Birds and Frogs (Oxford: Legenda, 2007), and in particular Edith Hall, “Introduction: Aristophanic Laughter across the Centuries,” pp. 1–29 (with reference to Italy and performances of Wealth and Clouds in the 16th century on p. 9), and Vasiliki Giannopoulou, “Aristophanes in translation before 1920,” pp. 309–42, with a list of translations. Here I refer only to the most important editions: the ‘Aldine’ (nine comedies, not including Thesmophoriazusai and Lysistrata) published in Venice by Aldo Manuzio in 1498, and the first complete edition (eleven plays), published in Florence, 1515. In the 16th century, Aristophanes was translated into Latin (by Andrea Divus, Venice, 1538) and Italian (by Rositini, Venice, 1545), and was also adapted (for example, in 1504 Niccolò Machiavelli wrote Le maschere—now lost—based on Clouds). On Divus, see Nassichuck (pp. 427–46); on Machiavelli, see Radif (pp. 347–409). Until the 17th century, the most widely published comedies were Plutus and Clouds, followed by Birds and Frogs and, after the French Revolution, Acharnians, Knights, Wasps and Peace. 3 Carlo Ferdinando Russo, Aristofane autore di teatro (Firenze, Sansoni, 1962; revised and expanded English edition: Aristophanes. An Author for the stage, London, Routlege, 1994). Russo was not interested in modern performances of Greek drama, but he is a pioneer for his technical analysis of Aristophanes’ comedies in the early 1960s. 4 Since the 1960s, modern scholarship and foreign influences have slowly changed this attitude and brought more attention to performative aspects: a ‘theatrical approach’ to Greek dramas was shared by Alexis Solomos and Oliver Taplin, and in Italy by Russo, Albini, Del Corno and Lanza. Besides theater reviews, however, very few papers have been published in Italy on modern performances of Greek drama and of comedy in particular. For Latin comedy, see Niall W. Slater, Plautus in performance: the theater of the mind (Amsterdam, Harwood Academic, 2000). R. Beacham and J.M. Walton, Introduction to the series of Greek and Roman Theater Archive, pp. IX, XIII, stress how the attention of scholars to the theatrical aspects of classical dramas has grown recently and especially in the last 15 years.
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major changes in texts to insert references to modern times—adaptation or “actualization”—have been discouraged in the name of the “respect” supposedly due ancient texts. This approach to classical performances—I call it the “Italian way”—is particularly relevant to Aristophanes, whose comedies are notoriously rich not only in puns and double entrendres—most referring to sex and excrement and other “unpleasant” matters—but in topical references, personal names and allusions to the social and political reality and people of ancient Athens. These features are a problem for modern spectators, who know less of those glorious days and would understand and enjoy the puns and jokes better if they were translated into contemporary reality. In performances in other countries, modern names are sometimes used for this purpose when possible—or from time to time modern celebrities are inserted as a form of updating—or the original names are replaced by their equivalent functions, roles, jobs or categories to identify the targets of satire.5 Similar forms of “actualization” have been rare in Italy. Until recently, translation rather than adaptation was encouraged in major productions, and satire has often been either neglected or prevented by censorship. Sexual and excremental humor, mockery and abuse, criticism of contemporary society and politics in general have been a great obstacle to the performance of Aristophanes. For a long time, he has been felt to be more radical than the “polite” Menander and the Latin authors, whose comedies treat love affairs and family quarrels but never actively call into question or subvert the political and social status quo. But the same Aristophanes who once seemed “dangerous” now attracts directors and playwrights more than Menander and Latin authors, who never shocked Italian spectators much, but who also neither gained national relevance nor got a wide audience. Their comedies have been staged as pure entertainment —as a minor genre compared to tragedy, but have never received adequate attention from critics. Only Aristophanes, among comic authors, was judged worthy of such consideration and became a subject for experimental theater. Any history of the reception of ancient comedy in 20th- and 21st-century Italy should therefore focus primarily on Aristophanes, as did Filippo Amoroso, the author of the main survey of Aristophanic productions in Italy from the beginning of the 20th century to 1994. (When Amoroso delivered his paper, just before Acharnians was staged at Syracuse, he wished that this production could be a turning point for the Italian reception of Aristophanes; and indeed it was, for many reasons.)6 I shall refer
5 For the targets, techniques and instruments of satire, see Martina Treu, Undici Cori Comici (Genova: DARFICLET, 1999). 6 For the 1994 Acharnians, see below. For previous Aristophanic productions, see Filippo Amoroso, “Les répresentations d’Aristophane en Italie au XX siècle,” in: Aristophane, la langue, la scène, la cité (Bari, Levante, 1997), pp. 549–73, and the databases of the websites indafondazione.org, apgrd.ox.ac. uk and crimta.unipv.it (section ‘database / banca dati’). See also Martina Treu, “Poetry and Politics. Advice and Abuse. The Aristophanic Chorus on the Italian Stage” in: Aristophanes in Performance (above, n. 2), pp. 255–66; Il teatro antico nel Novecento (Rome: Carocci, 2009); and “La commedia
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sporadically to the productions examined in his paper and point out the most prominent features those productions share with recent ones. Second, I will focus on the latest and richest phase of reception, from the mid-1990s to the present, through selected examples in chronological order. As my case studies show, the relationship between Aristophanes and Italian theater has often been troubled by religious and political interference or censorship. Yet when the playwrights and directors were truly inspired and free to play with ancient texts, and supported by their producers and companies, their adaptations and performances have been outstanding.
2. The early years We should begin by recalling that for more than four centuries, not Greek plays but the Latin ones inspired the adaptations and “comedies of errors” staged in noble courts and colleges, and often based on love affairs, family plots, tricks of clever servants and so forth. After the Renaissance, the history of Italian comedy basically followed such models through the so-called “Commedia dell’Arte,” although with innovations by authors such as Carlo Goldoni.7 These texts and practices, well known to actors, directors and audiences, also influenced the way of performing comedies by Latin authors and Menander: most productions, especially in official theater, preferred the conservative “Italian way” rather than seeking new solutions the audience might appreciate less. As for Aristophanes, in the past his distance from the predominant models prevented performances of many plays (except for Plutus and Clouds, which appeared suitable to entertain and educate Italian audiences; they were therefore preferred to the aggressive mockery of the earlier comedies or the sexual humor of the “Women’s Comedies”). In recent times, however, as I demonstrate below, the peculiar features of Aristophanes’ comedies have favored a more independent approach. The crucial year for classical reception in Italy—and our starting point—was 1913: a private association of well-educated men, enthusiasts for ancient culture, gathered around Count Gargallo in Syracuse (Sicily) and created a committee for the performance of Classical Dramas, which later became a National Institute of Ancient Drama (the former INDA, Istituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico, today the INDA Foundation). Since 1914, classical productions have been taking place at regular
antica sulla scena moderna,” in: Antonio Aloni, Ferruccio Bertini, Martina Treu (eds.), Il Lessico della classicità nella letteratura europea, Vol. I, La Letteratura drammatica. Tomo II. La commedia (Rome: Treccani, 2009), pp. 945–60. 7 Commedia dell’arte (‘Comedy of Art’) is a form of popular comedy developed in Italy from 16th–18th centuries, based on masked stock characters (some of whom, such as Pulcinella or Arlecchino, live on in folk tales and carnival masks). See Richard Andrews, Scripts and Scenarios. The performance of comedy in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). See also Schironi (p. 447–78 elsewhere in this volume).
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intervals—nowadays once a year—first at the Greek theater of Syracuse and later on in other ancient sites in Sicily and Southern Italy as well.8 The history of the INDA is a good example of the “official” reception of ancient theater in the last century: every choice—a particular drama, a company, a director, a set designer or an actor—was influenced by social and political factors, as I have argued in the past.9 In the list of classical dramas produced by the INDA, moreover, there are recurrent features and a clear hierarchy of theatrical spaces. First, the political authorities and the cultural establishment place Greek tragedy on top of their symbolic chart. This genre has been hosted most often in the “flagship” site, the Greek theater of Syracuse, where Menander was never admitted and Aristophanes intruded only four times in the 20th century: Clouds in 1927, Frogs in 1976, Clouds in 1988, and Acharnians in 1994. Only in the past decade has Aristophanes become a more “regular” guest there, with Thesmophoriazusae (La festa delle donne, 2001), Frogs (Rane, 2002), Wasps (Vespe, 2003), Lysistrata (Lisistrata, 2010), Clouds (Nuvole, 2011), Birds (Uccelli, 2012), and Ecclesiazusae (Le donne al parlamento, 2013).10 It is not just the long dominance of tragedy in official theater that is significant, but the choice of comedies staged in Syracuse and elsewhere. Some—Clouds for example— were clearly preferred to others, for many reasons: generally they lean more to fantasy than reality; they may count on famous characters, such as Socrates, or have less personal abuse of minor contemporary personalities, today unknown; they usually have colorful choruses, such as Birds (which, with Clouds, is the most frequently staged in 20th-century Italy, followed on our “top hits chart” by Frogs). Other comedies were seldom or never performed until recently because their humor is unpleasant, sexual or excremental, or more “topical” than “universal” (see Aristotle’s Poetics, ch. 5); or the satire may be difficult to deal with or even dangerous because of its political content. Allegorical plots, too, seem to be judged difficult for an Italian audience.11
8 The INDA archive has a large amount of photographs, scripts, maquettes and documents, partly catalogued and visible on the website indafondazione.org: recently a new section, ‘archivio musicale’—musical archive—was added, with a downloadable list of musical scores and original materials by composers that can be consulted at Syracuse. As for theater productions, only those hosted at Syracuse are listed on the website, and only in Italian (‘Fondazione’ /‘Profilo’), while the Italian section ‘Dioniso’ reports only the indexes of the review published by INDA from 1921 to 2007. 9 The state and the municipality of Syracuse choose the artistic director and have representatives on the committee, and the mayor of Syracuse is also president of INDA. See Martina Treu, “Aristofane imbalsamato,” Diario della settimana VII, 35/36 (2002), pp. 88–92. 10 Latin tragedies and comedies were mostly staged in other archaeological sites (see below), with the exception of some minor productions in Syracuse: a Rudens (1976) in the Roman amphitheater and an Amphitruo (2001) in the Greek theater (a summer production, after the festival of classical dramas, with directors and actors mostly working in TV). For the Aristophanic performances, see Amoroso, “Les répresentations” (above, n. 6), and my papers cited above (nn. 6, 9). 11 For such a reason, most likely, Peace was not as frequently staged in Italy during wars as it was in other countries such as France. See Malika Bastin-Hammou, “Aristophanes’ Peace on the Twentieth-
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The most interesting case in this regard is Knights. According to documents in the INDA archive, the play was originally meant to be staged in 1924, but was replaced by Seven against Thebes and Antigone. Why did those tragedies win the contest over the comedy? Both imply civil war and thus appear ominous today, considering the actual war that divided Italy later; at the time, however, they supposedly looked more suitable to the official occasion with a special “guest star”: the Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, who later became dictator with the Latin name “Duce”.12 As a striking term of comparison, it is worth mentioning a Czech adaptation of Birds by Jiří Frejka and Václav Lacina, first staged in Prague on 21 June 1934: in the text and onstage, there was clear satirical intent and the targets of mockery were chosen from national and international celebrities; in particular, the actor Ladislav Pešek (who played Peisethairos) took Mussolini as a model, while the chorus hailed him “Vůdče, Vůdče,” which sounded exactly like “Duce, Duce!”13 Such an adaptation, I believe, could not be written and staged in Italy in those years or even later, not only because of fear of the public reaction and censorship, but because of the mainstream attitude toward ancient comedy, the “Italian way” referenced above. One can only imagine, therefore, how Mussolini might have reacted in Syracuse to a performance of Knights that actualized the mockery of Demos /People and the sharp criticism of his power. And even if the ancient names of Aristophanes’ victims were not replaced by new ones or translated into equivalent functions, we can suppose that the audience would easily have identified the actual ministers with Demos’ servants, and the Duce himself with the Paphlagon /Cleon: a thunder-voiced, boastful villain who seems so close to Mussolini and other Italian leaders up to present times. But no one will ever know for sure: Knights never appeared in Syracuse or in any other official production.14 The first comedy staged at the Greek theater was Clouds in 1927, along with Medea and Cyclops by Euripides and an adaptation of Sophocles’ satyr drama The Trackers by the scholar Ettore Romagnoli (who was at the time the artistic director of the INDA and who translated most of the comedies and tragedies it produced). In those very years, a symbolic pact was signed between the Fascist regime
Century French Stage: From Political Statement to Artistic Failure,” in: Aristophanes in Performance (above, n. 2), pp. 247–54. 12 See Martina Treu, “Satira futurista e satiri siciliani,” Quaderni di Storia 63 (2006), pp. 345–70. 13 See Alena Wildowá Tosi, “Aristofane e l’avanguardia ceca,” in: Il lessico della classicità (above, n. 6), pp. 929–43. 14 As for Knights, the first adaptation I know of, I Cavalieri da Aristofane, directed by Mario Gonzales (Milan, 1980), was set in a grotesque circus company with no reference to reality nor any hint of mockery of actual persons or political satire. Only in 2010 did the Italian actor and director Mario Perrotta (who in 1994 directed a Lysistrata, and in 2001 wrote and directed an adaptation from various comedies, Utòpolis cabaret. Il sogno di Aristofane) write and direct an original text based on Knights and other comedies (I cavalieri—Aristofane cabaret), which in 2011 was granted the most important theater award by Italian critics (see marioperrotta.com). Even if none of the characters have actual names or nicknames, it is self-evident in the show that social and political satire is at stake.
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and classical studies: the INDA—along with the Istituto di Studi Romani, most universities and other institutions—played a major role in creating cultural consensus around Mussolini, a strong ideological background for his propaganda and his military claims, especially when he tried to build a New Roman Empire.15 This cultural strategy included greater attention to Latin authors and new productions of their texts —basically Seneca and Plautus, occasionally Terence—in ancient Roman theaters. Menaechmi and Aulularia were the first comedies staged in Ostia Antica (Rome), Gubbio and Fiesole (Florence) in 1937. The same sites hosted Amphitruo (1954), Pseudolus (1955) and Casina (1956). The different use of Greek and Roman sites by the INDA was originally a political and ideological choice. But it survived the Fascist regime, which started it, and was retained as a sort of habit from the 1950s to the 1990s: Syracuse was the official locus of Greek tragedy, with the exceptions cited above. For decades, Roman theaters hosted Latin dramas by preference, but also Greek comedies, adaptations from Theocritus and satyr dramas, conveniently staged in different theaters or archaeological sites such as Paestum (Naples).
3. Post-war Italy The 1950s and 1960s were a second turning point in classical reception in Italy: new independent companies of young actors and directors were born all over the country, and they began to stage ancient texts, including Aristophanes’ plays and less often other comedies. Even the official theater, although conservative, had to confront the considerable changes Italian society was undergoing: the classical festivals continued, in Syracuse and other theaters, and Greek tragedy overshadowed comedy, as always, but hints of political satire or actualization slowly began to be hidden in adaptations and performances. Contemporary matters such as the “economic boom”, cold war politics and the sexual revolution could no longer be excluded from theaters, despite powerful opposition from the establishment. A good example is a religious “scandal” that took place in 1957 in the Roman amphitheater of a minor town in Southern Italy, Benevento. The casus belli was Le donne a parlamento (Ecclesiazusae) directed by Luigi Squarzina (the same director who ten years later shocked Italy with a “hippy version” of Euripides’ Bacchae in
15 No wonder that, after the 1924 Antigone at Syracuse, this Sophoclean drama apparently had no political performances or adaptations in Italy, at least none comparable to those by Espriu, Sérgio, Anouilh and Brecht (in Spain, Portugal, France and Germany) between 1930 and 1944: see Martina Treu, Never too late. Antigone in a German Second World War Cemetery on the Italian Apennines, in: Helene Foley, Erin Mee (eds.), Antigone on the Contemporary World Stage, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 307–23. The official monopoly on theater probably prevented radicals and opponents from writing their own ‘partisan’ Antigones. For similar reasons, most likely, no known adaptations of Aristophanic comedies were staged during those years.
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March 1968, two months before Richard Schechner’s Dionysus in 69). When the comic performance was announced in Benevento, rumors about the plot of the play and its allegedly modern version worried the local Church and the activist Christian movement Azione Cattolica. They advised the Archbishop regarding the potential bad influence of this dangerous mix of themes—communism, feminism and sex!—and he read the original play (not the script that was meant to be staged by the INDA, from which the heaviest jokes and puns had been cut, in order to pass censorship). The Church did its best to prevent the participation of believers, including threatening to excommunicate spectators. This turned out to be a perfect publicity campaign: it attracted large numbers of spectators, fed the local press and caused minor incidents (such as water poured on and insults to the audience). It is worth noting that the next ancient play staged in the same theater—Menaechmi by Plautus—caused no such reaction. This suggests that the Latin author still had a better reputation than Aristophanes, thanks perhaps to the heritage of Fascism and a long tradition of “harmless” performances that sometimes took Latin comedies as an occasion for social satire but not for an examination of contemporary politics, as in Aristophanes. Similar conclusions emerge from comparison of two famous musicals of the same years written by the most successful Italian musical authors of all time, Garinei and Giovannini. First they produced Giove in doppiopetto (1954), based on Amphitruo, which is by far the most popular Latin comedy in reception.16 Zeus’ adulterous night with Amphitruo’s wife Alcmena yields many puns and jokes. Needless to say, the comedy had considerable appeal at the time in a country where Christian parties ruled, “honor” was still a central matter in marriage, and divorce became legal only about 20 years later. Even if the leading actress Delia Scala herself had marital troubles in private life, a bit of scandal was accepted and the musical was a huge success. The status quo—in ancient Rome as in those years—was not menaced. The “comedy of errors”, once again, did not subvert the appearance of society and marriage; thanks to the tricks of master and servant, the reputation of the wife is preserved and her husband’s honor is safe. Four years later, Garinei and Giovannini wrote a new musical: Un trapezio per Lisistrata (1958), based on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, was again focused on a married couple—Lysistrata and her husband, significantly called “Euro”—and rich in sexual humor. Aristophanes more than Plautus allowed for a mixture of private affairs and contemporary politics.17 The plot contained clear references to the struggle between political parties in modern Italy, but it also reflected a wider situation: peace was
16 See Ferruccio Bertini, Sosia e il doppio nel teatro moderno (Genoa: Il Melangolo, 2010), for adaptations of Amphitruo in Italy and abroad; and “La commedia latina di età classica e la sua fortuna,” in: Il lessico della classicità (above, n. 6), pp. 585–669, for other adaptations of ancient Latin comedies in Europe. On Amphitruo, see also García-Hernández, López Gregoris, González-Vázquez (pp. 606–20 elsewhere in this volume). 17 See Simone Beta, “Aristofane e il musical. Le molte facce della Lisistrata,” Dioniso 4 (2005), pp. 184–95, and p. 839 elsewhere in this volume; Winkler (p. 921 n. 53 elsewhere in this volume).
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really at stake in the Cold War balance, especially for Europe, which was caught in the middle between the US and the USSR. The cleverness of the authors and the genre of musical helped prevent censorship, and the music too was a huge success; one of the choral songs, Donna by Quartetto Cetra, soon became a hit in the charts. Other versions of the play, with famous actors and singers, were produced in the 1970s. These examples might be better appreciated when set in an international context: in precisely the year of the Italian Lysistrata, 1958, the same play was the first ancient comedy ever performed in Israel, directed by Minos Volonakis, a pupil of the great Greek director Karolos Koun.18 Koun himself, in the 1950s and 1960s, staged his own adaptations of Aristophanes in Athens and had to face increasing opposition and censorship after 1959, when his performance of Birds caused a scandal. After the rise of the military regime (1967–1974), he was forced into exile and worked abroad for years.19 In the same years, the late 1950s, another change took place in the reception of ancient comedy: Menander’s texts were discovered and published—Dyskolos was the first to appear, in 1959—although it took a few years before they began to be translated into Italian and performed by professionals, mostly in ancient sites and for selected audiences. Besides such occasions, a peculiar case for the study and performance of New Comedy in Italy is connected with an archaeological treasure: on the small island of Lipari, near Sicily, Luigi Bernabò Brea discovered and studied a number of clay masks and statues, which bear many similarities to theatrical models and especially the stock-characters of New Comedy.20 After the discovery, human-size copies of the masks were made and used for comic productions in Segesta and other theaters, although the interest of these performances is purely documentary and technical; they included Menander’s Samia / La donna di Samo directed by Prosperi (Tindari and Selinunte, 1979; Segesta, 1981) and Plautus’ Curculio (Palazzolo Acreide and Merida, 1991) and Truculentus (Segesta, 1993), both directed by Sammartano.21
18 See Nurit Yaari, “Aristophanes between Israelis and Palestinians,” in: Lorna Hardwick, Christopher Stray (eds.), A Companion to Classical Receptions (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), p. 289. See also Yaari (p. 965–8 elsewhere in this volume). 19 See Gonda Van Steen, Venom in Verse (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Martina Treu, Cosmopolitico. Il teatro greco sulla scena italiana contemporanea (Milan: Arcipelago, 2005), pp. 98–100. 20 See the English version of the website luigibernabobrea.it for details and publications, esp. Luigi Bernabò Brea, Maschere e personaggi del teatro greco nelle terracotte liparesi (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2001). 21 In the last two productions, the star Marcello Bartoli (see below) and three other actors played all the parts by changing masks, even onstage, to make clear the hidden connections between the characters: see Roberta Trombino, Truculentus, Dioniso LXIII, II (1993), pp. 313–16. Another experiment with masks, cast on ancient models in 3D with digital technology, was produced by the University of Glasgow; see Richard Williams, Chris Vervain, “Masks for Menander: Imaging and Imagining Greek Comedy,” Digital Creativity 10.3 (1999), pp. 180–2. The masks were used in L’Arbitrato (Epitrépontes) in Syracuse (2003) and Dyscolos. Menandro in maschera in Milan (2004), directed and played by Adriano
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In the same theaters in the meantime, however, the number and quality of Aristophanes’ comedies overwhelmed his competitors: Amoroso’s paper reports two 1964 productions of Birds—directed by Di Martino at Ostia and Stilo at Tindari, respectively—a Peace at Segesta and a Thesmophoriazusae at Ostia in 1967, and in 1968 a Birds directed by Cobelli and a Clouds directed by Guicciardini, again inspired by the Italian Commedia dell’Arte. These productions offer new evidence for theatrical aspects that have since become increasingly important.
4. Actors, techniques, languages The first common feature of the productions cited above that requires further attention, is the musical component: it brought success to the plays by Garinei and Giovannini in the 1950s (see above) and became more and more important in later years. Some directors and composers were inspired by musical forms of the past, while others called in famous groups of the time to play and sing live onstage.22 Other elements that must be taken into account are the training and skills of actors and choruses in acting, moving and singing, and in particular the influence of Commedia dell’Arte on actors who played in ancient comedies, especially with masks. Some of these actors have in recent years developed considerable skill in using every part of their bodies except their faces, and can substitute gestures and bodily expressions for facial expressions (or any other sign of a “psychological” acting technique). This yields wonderful results when a well-trained actor plays in ancient dramas by any author, with or without masks. (In the latter case, the face too can help, but it does not substitute for the body.)23 One of the best examples is the actor Marcello Bartoli, who successfully played in many INDA productions, including the Acharnians at the Greek theater of Syracuse (1994).24 Before the show began, Bartoli was already lying in the orchestra among corpses, while the audience heard the noise of helicopters and weapons, to evoke
Iurissevich (Venezialnscena) under the supervision of Dr. Elisabetta Matelli (Catholic University of Milan). 22 According to Amoroso, “Les représentations” (above, n. 6), pp. 554–65, for example, the opera buffa inspired Le donne di Aristofane (‘The Women of Aristophanes,’ an adaptation from the three ‘comedies of women,’ directed by Prosperi in 1969 at Segesta), while the rock group Area, as a chorus, played live in the Birds directed by Perlini (1980). 23 In addition to ancient comedies, I have seen the effects of such a skill in tragic performances as well: Edipostanco (2010) is an interesting short version of Oedipus’ story in which all the characters are played by a single masked actor, Marco Grossi, with the technique of Commedia dell’Arte. 24 Marcello Bartoli was trained by the famous ‘Arlecchino’ Ferruccio Soleri (Piccolo Teatro di Milano) and took part in many productions of Ruzante and classical dramas, including Plautus’ Curculio and Truculentus (see above), Euripides’ Cyclops, Menander’s Dyskolos and Aristophanes’ Acharnians (1994): see compagniaditeatroifratellini.it.
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the war: he wore no make-up on his face, and was dressed in a neutral shirt, simple brown trousers and black shoes. From the beginning, his Dicaeopolis was literally the center of the performance. He maintained a fast rhythm in the play, in perfect harmony with every member of the cast: the musicians (who played live onstage), the intellectual Euripides, the boastful soldier Lamachus, the parade of different characters from the prologue to the final scene. Many of the characters wore colorful, bizarre and grotesque costumes (a gigantic phallus was often in evidence, but was always creative and funny), and some had monstrous or animal features. In the opening scene at the Assembly, for instance, the Prytanies formed a noisy chorus of strange birds with long beeks like magpies, dressed in black suits. After their exit, Amphitheos met Dicaeopolis, and they then both exited; suddenly the chorus of Acharnians ran onto the empty stage, with frantic music and incredible energy. The 24 chorus-members wore long black coats and black make-up on their faces (since they were charcoal-men), and in every choral song, from the parodos to the final feast, they sang and danced and made rhythmic noises with their sticks and rattles. Throughout the performance, they played an active role first as antagonists, then as partners of the leading character. This production exemplifies some momentous matters, including the importance of live music, the consequences of choices regarding chorus members and actors, their costumes and make-up, and their training and acting style. A strange paradox in this regard seems to characterize the reception of ancient comedy in Italy. Most schools of drama use masks and practice with ancient texts; according to many directors (Luca Ronconi, for example, who staged some comedies), Aristophanes’ plays should be part of any theatrical training, because their frequent changes in rhythm and style are a good exercise. Every actor should also learn to act with a mask and in a chorus. The chorus in particular is not only a distinctive feature of ancient drama but implies true harmony and empathy between its members, not just a synchronism of gestures, movements, songs and voices. The chorus may thus be perfect initial training for an actor and a good way to approach any performance; yet, as the chorus disappeared from the orchestra, most playwrights and directors, actors and spectators ceased to be acquainted with it. For such reasons, in modern performances the chorus can be a challenge, or more often a problem in artistic and economic terms: it requires a large amount of work not just for actors but for directors, music composers and musicians, choreographers, costume designers and others. Elsewhere I have shown how and why, because of this, few Italian productions could count on a successful choral performance with songs and dances, even if the individual actors were good.25
25 See Treu, Undici Cori Comici (above, n. 5), and “Poetry and politics” (above, n. 6), for the Aristophanic chorus and its role in Italian performances. See Treu, “Coro per voce sola, La coralità antica sulla scena contemporanea,” Dioniso 6 (2007), pp. 286–311, for a more general survey of choral productions.
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It is also interesting that many choruses in major productions are formed by pupils of drama schools, not only because they cost less than professional actors, but because they learn comic and tragic texts and often choose them for their exams; they often use masks in their education and are usually well-trained. Yet very few Italian actors use the techniques learned at school, especially masks; to express themselves, they count on their faces rather than the entire body. As for voices, most actors seem unable to play without microphones in wide spaces and open-air theaters. All this causes problems in many productions of ancient dramas, especially outdoor productions, even when famous Italian actors play leading roles. In this regard, it is interesting that most theater and TV stars choose tragedy rather than comedy, although this is in part another sign of the powerful hierarchy between the two ancient genres that still prevails in official Italian theater. Playing a tragic character like Oedipus or Medea can be a distinguished step in the career of an actor or actress. In the case of comedy, Italian stars may aspire to alternate theater with TV sketches or cinema, but they rarely want to play a role in Aristophanes’ plays. A partial exception are Latin comedies and especially some leading roles—such as the Slave or Servant—that seem to attract interest: the Roman actor Enrico Montesano, a movie and TV star, played Sosias in a TV version of Amphitruo directed by Vittorio Sindoni (Anfitrione, 1975), and Maurizio Micheli, another actor best known for his TV roles, was the guest star of a summer production of the same comedy, presented exceptionally at the Greek theater of Syracuse after the regular season (Anfitrione, 2001). The most interesting case, however, is a musical adaptation of Plautus’ Miles Gloriosus: Il Vantone (2009), directed by another Roman actor, Roberto Valerio, who played Palestrio and created a cabaret rich in quotations from popular songs and musicals of the past. The text itself was originally an old adaptation of the comedy, written in 1963 by Pier Paolo Pasolini. At that time, the late poet, playwright, novelist and director had just produced a “scandal” with his free translation of Aeschylus’ Oresteia (Greek Theater of Syracuse, 1960) and was about to write plays and direct movies based on classical dramas. The adaptation from Plautus, unique in Pasolini’s career, has a feature that deserves particular attention in the history of Italian theater: the use of the Roman dialect, which the author borrowed from his actors and also used in his novels and movies. His choice soon became a habit for others: in recent years, the Roman dialect has become the most popular “language” of Italian comedy, and it is still the most frequently used in theater, TV and cinema. (Other “languages” of theater have ruled in the past: the Venetian dialect, celebrated by Carlo Goldoni, and the Neapolitan one, which was shared by many playwrights, such as Eduardo de Filippo, and movie actors like Totò.) In a way, the use of Roman dialect in modern performances of Latin comedies may be seen as a complex paradox. Latin authors placed their plots not in Rome but elsewhere, yet they clearly depict Roman society in disguise. Moreover, as noted earlier, the cultural strategy of the Fascist regime for years identified ancient and modern Rome. It is thus somehow natural for audiences and actors to choose the
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Roman dialect—or at least a strong accent—in modern performances of Latin comedies as well as in other cases. (The Roman soldiers of Julius Caesar in the Italian version of the French comic books Asterix, by Goscinni and Uderzo, for example, speak a funny mix of Latin and Roman dialect.) Equally interesting is the mix of languages and dialects in some modern performances of Aristophanes’ comedies, in which translators use different dialects for the non-Athenian characters (who in the original text speak local varieties of Greek or other languages). A good example is again the Acharnians translated by Giusto Monaco and directed by Egisto Marcucci (Syracuse, 1994): here a fake but comprehensible Persian language was used for Pseudartabas in the prologue (Ach. 100–22); later, after the parabasis, the Roman dialect was the distinctive feature of the Megarian (Ach. 729–835). This choice was due to the actor who played the character, the “guest star’ Ninetto Davoli: he is from Rome and was a friend of Pasolini, and acted in many of his movies in Roman dialect. His personal story thus shaped and determined his cameo performance. (The second foreign character, the Theban merchant, was not so well characterized in the scene that followed at Ach. 860– 958.) Similar choices are common in Italian performances of Lysistrata, in which the Spartan characters speak various dialects according to the choice of the translator: Maria Paola Funaioli, for example, chose the Tuscan dialect in her 2009 translation, while Ettore Romagnoli preferred the Roman in his 1933 translation, put onstage at the Greek theater of Syracuse in 2010.26 The director Tonino Conte added the dialect from his hometown, Genoa, to the poet Edoardo Sanguineti’s adaptation of Thesmophoriazusae, which was already rich in archaic and new words, and in both high and low language (La festa delle donne, Genoa, 1979; Greek theater of Syracuse, 2001).27 The choice of dialect may also be tied to actors, especially when they are the stars of the show. Some lend their own dialect to the comic character they play, regardless of the original language; others decide with the directors whether to use their accent, according to their training and identity, culture and personality. Two famous Roman actors, for example, lent their accent and dialect to Aristophanic characters: Aldo Fabrizi/Trygeus in the first Peace directed by Arnoldo Foà (Segesta, 1967), and Massimo Popolizio, who played Dionysus—on alternate nights—in Bacchae and Frogs (Syracuse, 2002) directed by Luca Ronconi (see below). In this case, the Roman dialect was a distinctive feature of the comic Dionysus and part of his characterization, very different from the tragic god of Euripides’ tragedy.
26 See Aristofane, Lisistrata, translated by Maria Paola Funaioli (Siena: Barbera, 2009). For a linguistic study of dialects in texts and productions of Acharnians and Lysistrata, see Mario Negri, Martina Treu, “Attualizzazione del gioco linguistico,” in: Il Lessico della classicità (above, n. 5), pp. 961–91. For the 2010 productions, see indafondazione.org and Martina Treu, “Largo ai giovani?,” Stratagemmi. Prospettive teatrali 14 (2010), pp. 97–116. 27 Edoardo Sanguineti, Teatro antico. Traduzioni e ricordi (Milano: Rizzoli, 2006), pp. 183–223.
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The comic experience was so important for Popolizio that some years later he commissioned a new version of Aristophanes’ Plutus (2008) from the Roman playwrights Ricci and Forte: Pluto o della ricchezza was written entirely in Roman dialect and played by the local company of Teatro di Tor Bella Monaca (a suburb of Rome) directed by Popolizio himself.28 It is not by chance that the text, set and costume design of this Plutus brought the comedy back to the late 1950s: these are precisely the years of the economic boom, when Italy was entering a golden age and when most spectators first encountered ancient comedy. Since then, the debate about wealth and poverty has led Plutus up the charts of the most popular Aristophanic comedies.
5. Recent years In the past 15 years, many changes have taken place in Italy regarding Aristophanes, who has slowly begun to be considered a true “Author for the Stage” by scholars and spectators in Italian schools and universities. He has also received better care and more attention in the “official theater” and among young, independent companies. Many of the latter find in his comedies good material for their artistic needs: they use his words, characters and plots with different purposes, for instance to call into question current society, to denounce moral errors and political failures, to ask for equal rights and to express a hunger for peace and freedom. For these reasons, since 1994 Aristophanic plays and adaptations have been staged all over Italy, even in small towns and villages, and in non-theatrical places such as hospitals, harbors and factories. Some comedies have enjoyed special attention for their particular themes, visionary plots and impressive characters. Recent adaptations of Birds (one of the most popular comedies ever) were successfully written and directed by Marco Martinelli (Uccelli, 1994), Gabriele Vacis (Uccelli, 1996), Tonino Conte (Gli Uccelli e altre utopie, 2000), Federico Tiezzi (Uccelli, 2006) and Roberta Torre (Uccelli, 2012). Each production focused on different aspects of the original play—the chorus, the tyranny of men over birds, the rules of the new town, the final feast—but they mostly captured the fascination of “Cloudcuckooland” (in sharp contrast with the real world) with lively music, fantasy sets and colorful costumes. The adaptation by Tonino Conte in particular was staged on a dam in the big harbor of Genoa; it had splendid costumes and an impressive stage machinery designed by the late artist Emanuele Luzzati, and the main plot of Birds was enriched by scenes from other Aristophanic comedies. A similar mix of texts, or pastiche, was used in previous adaptations by other Italian directors: Utopia by Luca Ronconi
28 See Maddalena. Giovannelli, “Ploutos o della ricchezza. Aristofane alla periferia di Roma,” Stratagemmi. Prospettive teatrali 9 (2009), pp. 133–60.
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(1972–1975), Viva la Pace by Aldo Trionfo (1988) and All’Inferno! Affresco da Aristofane by Marco Martinelli (1996).29 The same years, from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, are a turning point in Syracuse as well, as Amoroso noted in the paper cited above. To understand this, we may briefly compare the three productions that took place at the Greek theater before Acharnians (1994): Clouds directed by Romagnoli (1927) and Sammartano (1988), and Frogs directed by Guicciardini (1976). The surviving documentation shows that the 1927 production of Clouds featured solemn, geometrical movements more suited to tragedy than comedy. For the 1988 production, the choreographer Lucia Latour focused on the chorus: the dancers and singers formed an unusually harmonious ensemble, wearing white costumes—wide and light, fluffy and airy as balloons— covering their faces with heavy make-up (black eye-liner and red lipstick) and lending a fast rhythm to the entire production.30 The actors were stars, from Paolo Bonacelli (Strepsiades) to Giustino Durano (Best Speech). In the 1976 Frogs as well, Tino Buazzelli / Dionysus was an absolute protagonist as a “King of Carnival;” around him —center of all movement—the members of the company played and danced in the ancient orchestra which turned into a pond and a market place at the same time. After the 1994 Acharnians, Aristophanes came back to Syracuse with Thesmophoriazusae (directed by Conte, 2001), Frogs (by Ronconi, 2002), Wasps (by Giordano, 2003) and finally Lysistrata (by Bronzino, 2010). The second and third of these productions deserve closer analysis for their opposed political implications: in the 2002 Frogs, the leftist director Luca Ronconi put at the back of the scene three large portraits of the right-wing political leaders of the government—painted in the style of Francis Bacon but very recognizable—in order to connect the Aristophanic plot to the present day (as Ronconi said to the press).31 The right-wing politicians of Syracuse accused the director of using comedy for personal satire and of trying to influence the votes of the audience, and they forced him to remove the portraits. But the empty frames remained onstage as a warning, and the chorus leader pointed them out in the parabasis, when he talked about bad citizens and corrupt politicians (Ra. 718–33). One year later, in 2003, the right-wing-oriented INDA committee apparently wanted to pay back the offense. They chose an Aristophanic comedy that attacks judges—Wasps —just when the Italian Prime Minister, leader of the conservative party, was on trial; the performance was patently intended to influence public opinion. This might have happened, had the director, Giordano, had a clear purpose and let the political
29 For the first two productions, see Amoroso, Les représentations (above, n. 6), pp. 552–6. For Trionfo’s production, see Franco Quadri (ed.), Il teatro di Trionfo (Milan: Ubulibri, 2002). For Martinelli’s plays, see my essays cited above, esp. “Poetry and Politics” (above, n. 6). 30 See Angela Barbagallo, Agata Ruscica (eds.), Lucia Latour. Una coreografa al teatro greco (Syracuse: Ombra editrice, 1990). 31 See Treu, Aristofane imbalsamato (above, n. 9); Francesca Schironi, “A Poet without ‘Gravity’: Aristophanes on the Italian stage,” in: Aristophanes in performance (above, n. 2), pp. 267–75.
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content emerge, for example by using modern names when the old ones (Philocleon, Bdelicleon) could not be easily understood, or by making better sense of allegories such as the dogs’ trials (whose implications were incomprehensible). In the end, however, the satire was weak, and the audience missed the point and did not laugh much. As a result, the next year Aristophanes did not return to the Greek theater—to avoid risk on both sides—and a “minor” location was chosen for a low-budget performance with no political implications: an adaptation of Ecclesiazusae, written and directed by Luciano Colavero (Donne in assemblea, 2004), was staged in the Maniace Castle on the island of Ortigia (Syracuse). In the final scene, added to the original text, the power goes not only to women but to their maids and caregivers, former immigrants who will now rule Italy. The same comedy, Women in Assembly, has recently attracted the attention of other playwrights and directors; the fight for equal rights and better gender politics are still a matter of concern in Italy, according for example to the adaptation by Renata Ciaravino staged by Serena Sinigaglia with very young actors and actresses (Donne in parlamento, 2007).32 Two other women—Nicoletta Robello and M. Teresa Berardelli—staged an energetic Donne a Parlamento (Parma, Teatro Due, 2010), with young actresses led by the talented Federica Fracassi (Praxagoras); recently, the brilliant Vincenzo Pirrotta adapted and directed a superb choral version with Anna Bonaiuto as Praxagoras and himself as Blepyros (Le donne al Parlamento, Syracuse, 2013). Women are also central to the Aristophanic play performed most frequently in recent years. Since March 2003, when the Lysistrata Project produced an international response against the Iraq war, many performances of Lysistrata have taken place in Italy. One was staged in 2004, for example, at the ancient theaters of Taormina and Tindari, in the festival called Teatro dei due mari; another debuted in summer 2010 at the Greek theater of Syracuse and went on tour in Sicily, Greece and central Italy.33 The anti-war theme, of course, is shared by other Aristophanic comedies: Peace in particular is popular not only in war-time but in places where violence and conflict rule. Theater can famously be a response to social problems in jails, impoverished ghettos or dangerous environments with a large amount of crime, drugs and violent death, such as Scampia (a suburb of Naples now best known for the book and movie Gomorra by Roberto Saviano). Since 2005, this unwelcoming place has hosted a public project called “Arrevuoto” (“Upside-down” in the Neapolitan dialect), sponsored by Teatro Mercadante (Naples) and RavennaTeatro. The project, still in progress, was directed for the first three years by Marco Martinelli, the author and director of Teatro delle Albe, Ravenna (the town where—not coincidentally—an important manuscript of Aristophanes comedies, the Codex Ravennas, is preserved). Martinelli 32 See atirteatro.it and the clever analysis of Maddalena Giovannelli, “La sfida del comico. Riflessioni per una messa in scena di Aristofane,” Stratagemmi. Prospettive teatrali 2 (2007), pp. 49–100. 33 See respectively Salvatore Nicosia, Lisìstrata di Aristofane (Palermo: D’Agostino, 2004), and above, n. 26.
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has already worked on Aristophanes’ texts before (see above) and in “difficult” environments. In 2005, he began reading Peace with 70 children from different high schools in Scampia and Naples, and with their teachers; for an entire year, they used the ancient text as a “Trojan horse” to talk about their life, their problems and their needs. In their adaptation, Pace! (2006), they tried to imagine a better world, in which they can free the Goddess Peace from her cave and bring her back to Scampia.34 Martinelli has also written and directed other adaptations of Aristophanes. One in particular, based on Plutus, was significantly called All’Inferno! Affresco da Aristofane (“To Hell! A fresco from Aristophanes,” 1996). Here the original characters, master and slave, were changed into Senegalese immigrants who came to Italy looking for jobs (as the two actors actually did, when they came from Senegal to Ravenna). In the play, they work in a dangerous Underworld—which recalls the slums and ghettos of our own times—and they find the god of Wealth but also meet other strange people (mostly characters from Clouds and Knights). When they finally win the match over Poverty, they discover that victory has a dark side, in today’s reality as in the original text. In the years that followed, one of those actors, Mandiaye N’Diaye, continued working with the Albe company in Ravenna, but he also returned to his hometown, Diol Kadd, where he founded a community theater and wrote and produced shows. In his Senegalese version of Plutus, called Il gioco della ricchezza e della povertà (“The Game of Wealth and Poverty,” 2008), the local Gods Nawet and Noor substitute for Ploutos (Wealth) and Penía (Poverty), respectively. After they fight, the latter (God Noor) leaves the village, defeated; but he predicts bad luck for his rival: Wealth/ Nawet, in fact, ultimately finds himself robbed, beaten and mistreated by his believers.35 These two adaptations of Plutus are funny, vital and energetic, but they also communicate a profound sense of fear, sadness and anguish. Both capture the restless, uncomfortable, melancholic or “black humor”—the “dark side of Aristophanes”—that was probably a response to the hard times the poet and his audience suffered: today this is, in my opinion, one of the inner secrets of Aristophanes’ success. Something similar was noted in 1994 by Amoroso in regard to earlier productions of the comedies: at the end of his paper, he spoke of a “tragic Aristophanes” and “uneasy melancholy.”36 These very features attract directors and playwrights, especially young 34 See Maurizio Braucci, Roberta Carlotto (eds.), Arrevuoto. Scampia-Napoli (Naples: L’ancora, 2009). For the other shows in Scampia, see Maddalena Giovannelli, Marco Martinelli, Scegliendo Arrevuoto– Molière plebeo, Stratagemmi. Prospettive teatrali 6 (2008), pp. 147–58. See also teatrostabilenapoli.it/ progetti and puntacorsara.it. 35 See Treu, Cosmopolitico (above, n. 19), pp. 296, 298–9; “Poetry and Politics” (above, n. 6), pp. 262– 3 (for the first adaptation); “Aristophanes and the Suburbs of the World. The Game of Wealth and Poverty,” New Voices in Classical Reception Studies 4 (2009), at www2.open.ac.uk/classicalreceptions and diolkadd.org (for the second production). 36 These are the final sentences of Amoroso, “Les représentations” (above, n. 6), p. 566: “De tout ce que je viens d’explorer émerge un Aristophane tragique. Même des productions aux intentions les plus futiles sort une pointe de mélancolie inquiète. Je suis convaincu que les Acharniens d’Aristophane du
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ones, in the current “hard times,” and lead them to stage the comedies or adapt the texts; many say or write that they like Aristophanes mostly when they catch traces of fear, anxiety, anger or the like in his laughter. Individual productions may stress these elements of the plays via details of acting, costumes, scenes or music. Some directors also add a grotesque or even desperate touch taken from their own reality. Some subvert or alter the sense of the play, or “spoil the feast” of the final scene; this is the case, for example, with the adaptations of Plutus cited above, as well as with the recent Clouds (Nuvole, 2009) translated by the young dramatist Letizia Russo and directed by Antonio Latella. Here a group of skeletons suspended in air by wires—like puppets in various attitudes— slowly come down from the top of the stage during the parabasis (which is recited by a single actor); they stand for the clouds, over the head of actors, for the second half of the show. In a final scene added to the text, moreover, the actors are disguised as the apes of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, as if to say that violence marks the beginning of mankind, the years of Aristophanes and our own times.37 If “heavy” interpretations of this sort dominate national-level performances of Aristophanes today, “lighter” versions or adaptations are still staged in small venues and theaters in central and southern Italy (Tusculum, Ostia, Taormina, Tindari, Segesta). These sites have in recent years hosted minor productions that normally have a weak connection to the original text and are often enriched by music and dance, sexual puns and burlesque elements. These are usually low-cost productions, one season only, seldom repeated in major theaters or in winter. (Some summer seasons have recently tried to become regular festivals, such as Teatro dei due mari and Magna Graecia Teatro Festival.) But ancient comedies are still staged less frequently than tragedies and are often felt to be pure entertainment or tourist attractions rather than true artistic events. More interesting productions take place in small, suburban, unconventional sites. The tiny Greek theater of Akrai (now Palazzolo Acreide, in the hills behind Syracuse), for example, has for the past 20 years hosted the most important Youth Festival of Classical Drama (Festival dei Giovani): every year many selected school productions, all linked to classics, are staged and watched by students from all over Italy. Other towns in northern Italy host regular performances or even festivals of classical dramas, staged by students, amateurs and non-professional actors: in Lovere, Aquileia and Padua, hundreds of high school students gather every year to put on and watch ancient plays and adaptations. Other case studies worthy of attention are the
prochain festival de Syracuse pourront ouvrir une nouvelle voie, car le rire dont les personnages d’Aristophane sont ivres, d’apres Schlegel, n’a pas encore trouvé sa place sur la scène italienne.” I agree with him and believe that his wish was finally fulfilled by the most recent productions, from the 1994 Acharnians discussed above to those analyzed in this paper. 37 See Martina Treu, Maddalena Giovannelli, Andrea Capra, “Aristofane senza filtro. Le Nuvole di Latella-Russo,” Stratagemmi. Prospettive teatrali 13 (2010), pp. 249–62.
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classical productions of the so-called “Non-School,” a unique, non-hierarchical theater workshop founded many years ago by Martinelli (discussed above) and his company, Teatro delle Albe. From the beginning, Aristophanes has been one of the leading authors, ancestors or “totems” who inspired the artistic experience of Teatro delle Albe, especially with children. 22 years ago, they began working with one school, then with more and more students in Ravenna and all over Italy (including Scampia). Today the pupils who participated in the first shows have in turn become “guides” for other children. Altogether, the group has staged many productions of Aristophanes’ comedies, including Lysistrata (Ravenna, 2009) and Plutus (Milan, 2009), directed by the young and talented Alessandro Argnani.38 The Teatro delle Albe Lysistrata was based on a workshop with university students, mostly women, who adapted the text to their own feelings and needs. In their performance, they sang and danced and cried out their hunger for peace, but also their anger against men, lovers, fathers and teachers. (Male power is still predominant in Italy and equal opportunities are not yet available in most places, including universities.) At the same time in Kenya, the Gender10 Association promoted a women’s sex strike against civil war, and the Ravenna actresses kept that in mind: the impact of the performance was also amplified by the unusual set, the Auditorium of Palazzo dei Congressi, with an audience of university teachers and students. As for the Teatro delle Albe Plutus, it was produced by the Olinda Association and set in the former psychiatric hospital “Paolo Pini,” in the industrial suburbs of Milan. From this difficult context came children of different ages who took part in Argnani’s workshop, and who together enriched the text with references to their daily lives. Some have psychological problems, like the silent girl who was absent-mindedly on stage the entire time, simply sitting there, sometimes blowing soap bubbles, without saying a word. Her very presence, her magnetic glance and enigmatic smile, gave a touch of magic poetry to the performance, while the other children were talking and shouting, running, moving and dancing all over the stage, fighting for the favors of Ploutos (Wealth). In the end, the silent girl turned out to be Penía (Poverty); her exit left mankind alone and the audience enchanted. Such examples show that young, independent companies can produce vital, touching, clever performances, fresh and open-minded. The Albe group and their pupils really love Aristophanes: they give him energy, patience, care and attention. And he always pays them back.
38 See respectively teatrodellealbe.com/eng/ (section ‘Non school’) and olinda.org.
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Aristophanes in Israel: Comedy, Theatricality, Politics Abstract: For the last 65 years, Israelis and Palestinians have lived in the tragic reality of war: two peoples living in the same land that both call “home,” sharing fragments of everyday existence yet diverging in religion, history and interpretation of historical events. In this article, I present five Israeli theater productions based on three of Aristophanes’ comedies: Acharnians, Peace and Lysistrata. Analyzing these performances within Israel’s socio-political context enables me to examine how the dialogue that Israeli playwrights, directors, stage designers and actors carry on with Aristophanes enabled them to take an active part in ongoing political debates.
Aristophanes used the war-peace dichotomy raised by the long and painful Peloponnesian Wars as the backdrop for three of his comedies: Acharnians, Peace and Lysistrata.1 These plays share one important component—a dramatic situation in which an “alluring fantasy”2 enables the playwright to reflect on the socio-political reality of war. For the last 65 years, Israelis and Palestinians have lived in the tragic reality of war: two peoples living in the same land that both call “home,” sharing fragments of everyday existence yet diverging in religion, history and interpretation of historical events.3 The perception of this situation as a zero-sum game, in which one people’s gain is the other’s loss, has inflamed hostility and engendered a drawn-out cycle of violence. It is unsurprising, then, that of Aristophanes’ eleven surviving plays only these three comedies of peace have been repeatedly performed on the Israeli stage. It is also unsurprising that Lysistrata is the most popular of the three, and the first Aristophanic comedy to be performed in Hebrew, at the Habima National Theatre, a decade after establishment of the State of Israel. In this article, I discuss five Israeli theater productions of these peace plays: Lysistrata, performed by the Habima Theatre in 1958; Peace, performed in 1968 by the Actors’ Stage Ensemble at the Cameri Theatre; Yaakov Shabtai’s The Chosen, an
1 The research represented here was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant no. 0608114112). 2 Stephen Halliwell (ed. and trans.), Aristophanes, Birds, Lysistrata, Assembly-Women, Wealth (Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 83. 3 This article was written in September 2010, at a time when many Israelis were looking once more to Washington to restart the peace talks. Those talks failed, as so many had before. As I revised this final version in March 2013, President Barak Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry were flying between Jerusalem and Ramallah in another effort to revive the talks. The opening scene of Aristophanes’ Acharnians thus appeared to be still alive and kicking.
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adaptation of Aristophanes’ Acharnians, performed by the Haifa Municipal Theatre in 1975; Anat Gov’s Lysistrata 2000, a feminist adaptation performed by the Cameri Theatre in 2001; and Ilan Hazor’s Fighting for Home, inspired by Acharnians, Knights and Lysistrata, performed by Jerusalem’s Khan Theatre in 2001. Discussion of these performances allows me to demonstrate how wrestling with Aristophanes’ dramatic and performative techniques provided a mechanism through which Israeli playwrights, directors, stage designers and actors, while honing their dramatic techniques could take an active part in the political debates over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Lysistrata at the Habima National Theatre, 1958 Following the successful reception of his London production of Lysistrata, the Greek director Minos Volonakis was invited by the Habima National Theatre to direct the comedy on the Tel Aviv stage.4 Expectations were high; the Israeli theater prepared itself for an important theatrical event, similar in scope to the much-appreciated performance of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex directed by Tyron Guthrie at Habima in 1947.5 The first performance of Lysistrata took place on 17 December 1958. Volonakis’ creative team included his stage designer Nicholas Georgiadis and several young Israeli artists: Nissim Aloni, who translated Dudley Fitts’ English version of the play into Hebrew;6 Gary Bertini, who composed the music; and Ruth Harris, who created the choreography. The cast included members of Habima’s older generation (who appeared primarily in the Chorus of Old Men) together with younger actors, graduates of the Habima Actor’s Studio. Although he based his production on Fitts’ English translation, Volonakis took quite a few liberties in modifying that version to support his own reading of the play. “Fitts’ version is too American. He exaggerates the comparison between the Peloponnesian Wars and the American Civil War. His Athenians speak with a Yankee accent and his Spartans with a deep southern drawl. True, the women’s lines retain their humorous nature, but they do so in cocktail party style. While this may be a wonderful choice, it destroys the sun-soaked atmosphere in which this comedy takes place. I 4 Volonakis in fact directed the play twice in England. The first production was performed by the Meadow Players and the Oxford Playhouse Company; it opened on 12 March 1957 at the Oxford Playhouse on Beaumont Street in Oxford (APGRD database, production ID 4186). The second production opened on 26 December 1958 at the Royal Court Theatre in London, with actors from the English State Company. The performance was so well received by the British audience that it was moved to the Duke of York Theatre on 18 February 1958 (APGRD database production ID 435). 5 G. Itur, “Young Greek director at Habima—Minos Volonakis,”Cinema World (19 December 1958); Asher Nahor, “The dream of peace achieved by—women,” Yediot Achronot (19 December 1958) (Hebrew). All translations from the Hebrew are my own, unless otherwise indicated. 6 Dudley Fitts, Aristophanes: Four Comedies (New York and London: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1957).
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have quite a different understanding of the structure of the text. While the plot in the Fitts’ version takes place in four different locations in Athens, I prepared only one set; he deleted lines that are absolutely necessary in my view, and included characters who I think are unnecessary; and so forth.”7 Aloni, in his translation of Volonakis’ version, introduced a parallel set of textual changes by taking Hebrew sentence structure into consideration.8 He introduced the quick, driving rhythm of Israeli speech and mixed poetic language with colloquialisms, word games, twists and sounds, an approach that later characterized his own dramatic oeuvre. Critics loved the translation and praised it as one of the most marvelous of the production’s features. The stage setting designed by Nicholas Georgiadis was spectacular, aesthetic and very colorful.9 Its tripartite structure was two stories high: The central component consisted of broad steps leading up to a colonnaded exedra on both stories. Differently shaped structures stood on either side. The wall on stage right included stairs leading to the second story, while an asymmetrical version of this structure, including alcoves and openings, appeared on stage left.10 The two-story construction, with its numerous entries and exits, enabled the director and choreographer to create multiple patterns of movement allowing actors to be positioned on different levels of the stage simultaneously. During the scene of the siege of the Acropolis, for example, the chorus of Women stood on the second story of the central structure, while the chorus of Old Men stood along the steps on stage left. These differences in height and the diagonal line virtually stretched between the choruses highlighted the dominance of women in every corner of the city. Against this stylized set, Aristophanic characters appeared on stage as “real people,” dressed in colorful attire, acting with Mediterranean energy and vigor, singing and dancing Greek melodies familiar to the Israeli ear. Greek folklore, once added to the classical text, painted the socio-political context brought before the Israeli spectators in contemporary colors. The visual and aural richness resonated in the enthusiastic reviews of the performance. Theater critic Leah Porat wrote: “On a bright, colorful stage, bathed with the Mediterranean sun, accompanied by song and dance set at just the right tempo and dynamic cadence, the familiar plot is brought to us. The director stresses the sensual
7 Aaron Amir, “Habima’s Lysistrata” (interview with Minos Volonakis), Keshet 2: 133–5 (1959) (Hebrew). 8 Nissim Aloni (Tel Aviv 1926–Tel Aviv 1996) a leading Israeli playwright, theater director, translator and essayist. 9 Photos from the productions in London and Tel Aviv make it clear that the same stage design was employed in both productions. For the English production, see Theatre World Annual 9 (1957–58); for the Habima production, see Keshet (1959) 2:135 and The Israeli Documentation Center for the Performing Arts, Folder 2.1.1. 10 Modernity was brought to the scenery by rupturing the classic symmetry between sections of the stage.
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nature of the drama throughout most of the performance—sensual not just with regard to the plot, but also in terms of form—in color, costume, movement, and musical arrangements.”11 Asher Nahor added: “It has been quite some time since we’ve seen such exemplary work by a director in a Habima production. Given his strong involvement in the acting, movement, sounds, and color, it was not surprising to learn that Volonakis was responsible for the brilliant stage setting and even the music, composed by Gary Bertini. The greatest accomplishment of all was the choreography for the two choruses—male and female—[appearing] as two dynamic bodies competing in song and movement.”12 The premier of Lysistrata was an event of national importance. Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, government ministers and many public officials attended. According to newspaper reports, Ben Gurion, from his seat in the middle of the front row, followed the text in the ancient Greek and laughed heartedly throughout the performance. Following the performance, he met the actors and director and thanked them. His inscription in the theater’s guest book read: “Although her origins are in Greece, Lysistrata carries on the dream of Israel’s prophets. This is the partnership between Jerusalem and Athens, a vision that will be realized. David Ben Gurion.”13 Not all critics agreed with Ben Gurion. Nachman Ben-Ami claimed that the political dimension was sacrificed in favor of light, popular entertainment: “The lesson of Aristophanes was forgotten, along with matters of war and peace. All that remained was an intrigue of love and passion, dressed up as a potpourri of ancient Greek ‘sources’ and unrestraint vulgar cabaret.”14 Moreover, heated debates over the performance erupted in the Knesset (Israel’s Parliament). Reported by the press, these debates left no doubt that the balance between matters of War and of Sex had been violated in Volonakis mise-en-scène, with politicians relating to the performance primarily in terms of the latter. For example, Haaretz reported on a speech delivered by Knesset Member Suayev (General Zionist Party), who proposed a symbolic reduction of one Israeli lira from the 100,000 lira allocated to Habima following a government decision to award it the status of “national theatre;” “I must say that I have never seen such a pornographic performance in my life … if Habima’s actors view this performance as a model for their future performances, they should be made aware that they do not have the right to request state support.”15 Strong reactions from spectators also appeared in the press. Rachel Cohen from Ramat Gan wrote: “I was so embarrassed to watch Lysistrata and to see actors and actresses whose only interest seemed to be expressing sexual desire in a vulgar
11 L. Porat, “Lysistrata. Habima,” LaMerchav (26 December 1958) (Hebrew). 12 A. Nahor, “Lysistrata at Habima: Too much salt and pepper,” Yediot Achronot (22 December 1958) (Hebrew). 13 Y. Ben Porat, “Ben Gurion and Lysistrata’s vision”,” Yediot Achronot (27 January 1958) (Hebrew). 14 Nachman Ben Ami, “Aristo(Pro)fanation,” Al Hamishmar (16 January 1959) (Hebrew). 15 Haaretz (27 January 1959); Lysistrata in the Knesset. Yediot Achranot (27 January 1959) (Hebrew).
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manner. Is this the Habima Theatre known to us for its high artistic and cultural standards?”16 A similar sense of discomfort permeated some reviews, primarily regarding the seduction scene between Myrrhine and Kinesias: “Nachum Buchman portrayed Kinesias’s great desire for his wife, Myrrhine, in a realistic but vulgar manner, reinforced by an uncompromising text, which seemed to embarrass the audience,” wrote theater critic Asher Naor.17 Lysistrata was staged about a decade after the end of Israel’s War of Independence and establishment of the State (1948), and nearly nine months after the conclusion of the Sinai Campaign (29 November 1956–8 March 1957). But Volonakis was uninterested in the local political environment. His reading of the play was rooted in a different cultural and political agenda. Following the path of his teacher, the famous Greek director and teacher Carolos Koun, Volonakis had one goal—to remove Lysistrata from its international position as “a masterpiece of Western culture” and return it to his sun-drenched homeland, with characters representing his own people, contemporary Greeks.18 This approach left its imprint on all aspects of the performance: the sex strike became a celebration of Greek love, peace and freedom, a model for all mankind. Proof of this theme’s intended universality is the fact that very little distinguished the play’s staging in England from the production in Israel. Yet Volonakis’ theatrical approach was apparently unappreciated in both countries. London’s theater critics accused Volonakis of stylistic hybridity and too great an infusion of Mediterranean folklore.19 Tel Aviv’s critics claimed that his interpretation was simply an attempt to reach a broader audience by modernizing the Aristophanic comedy and stressing its entertainment value; they accused the Israeli actors of failing “to deliver” the text properly or to sing and dance as if they had immersed their souls in Greek culture.20 These reactions point to multiple questions arising from the “translation” of plays from one culture to another. Also involved are differences between translation and adaptation, and between a written play and its staged performance. At the same time, with the benefit of hindsight, we can say that Volonakis’ production significantly altered how Israeli directors and actors read Aristophanes. “Trademarks” of Volonakis’ production are reflected in the four productions discussed below. But all four include an ingredient that Volonaki’s production lacked: references to Israel’s sociopolitical and cultural context.
16 Rachel Cohen, “Letters to the Editor,”Ha’aretz (4 February 1959) (Hebrew). 17 Asher Nahor, Yediot Achranot (22 December 1958); similar statements were made by Haim Gamzu, “Lysistrata at Habima,” Ha’aretz (26 December 1958) (Hebrew). 18 J.M. Walton, Living Greek Theatre: A Handbook of Classical Performance and Modern Production (New York: Greewood Press: 1987); Gonda A.H. Van Steen, Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. xiv. 19 Volonakis cited the London reviews in an interview published in Keshet. See above, note 7. 20 Leah Porat, “Habima’s Lysistrata,” Maariv (26 December 1958) (Hebrew).
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Peace, the Actors’ Stage Ensemble, Cameri Theatre, 1968 The first production of Peace in Israel took place at the Cameri Theatre on 9 May 1968, during a particularly turbulent period in Israel’s history. Almost a year had passed since the end of the Six Day War (10 June 1967), and only six months separated the performance from passage of the historic UN Security Council Resolution 242 (20 November 1967).21 In addition, the sporadic clashes taking place between Egypt and Israel throughout 1968 were escalating, to soon become a full-fledged war, the War of Attrition (9 March 1969–7 August 1970). Political events during the year following the June 1967 victory would later be understood as the onset of a deep rupture, one that continues to impact Israeli society to this very day.22 While the euphoria of victory blinded most, a few did comprehend the associated dangers and risks. The following examples help make sense of the period’s complexity. Luba Eliav, a unique figure in the Israeli political scene, tendered his resignation as Deputy Minister of Commerce and Manufacturing (1966–1967) to allow him time to study the Palestinian problem: “For good or bad, our future will be determined in the West Bank and Gaza, and I know nothing about them. I am neither an Arabist nor a Middle East scholar. So far, my contacts with Arabs have only been through a rifle sight … what I want to do now is to tour the Territories, to study and to start understanding the topic and the problems.”23 Eliav visited refugee camps and met with Palestinian leaders early in 1968. On the basis of his investigations, he suggested negotiations to resolve the refugee problem. Neither Prime Minister Levi Eshkol nor Golda Meir, head of Mapai, the party in power, were receptive to his proposals.24 An example from the opposite side of the political map was the founding of the right-wing “Greater Israel Movement” (July 1967) by public figures and intellectuals who called for establishing settlements and incorporating all the territories captured in the June war. Initially, the Movement was independent of any party; it included members from Labor and the Revisionist movements, together with well-known authors and poets.25 The Movement’s first manifesto, signed by over 50 people, stated: 21 Based on an article from the UN Charter, Resolution 242 stipulates the need to achieve a just and everlasting peace in the Middle East. It provided foundations for diplomatic activity for a decade after the war and continues, together with other decisions, to guide UN actions. The resolution was accepted almost immediately by Egypt and Jordan. Israel accepted the resolution in December 1967, whereas Syria accepted it only in 1970, after the rise to power of President Afaz al Assad. 22 Tom Segev, 1967 Israel, the war, and the year that transformed the Middle East, trans. Jessica Cohen (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006). 23 M. Mualam and D. Even, “Luba Eliav dies at the age of 88,” Haaretz (30 May 2010) (Hebrew). 24 Mualam and Even (above, n. 23). 25 Natan Alterman, Aharon Amir, Haim Guri, Rachel Yanait Ben Zvi, Moshe Shamir, Yaakov Orland, Yitzhak Shalev and Uri Tzvi Greenberg—to name just a few of the most prominent writers and poets.
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“The military victory in the Six Day War enabled the People and the State to enter a new and fateful era. Greater Israel now lies in the hands of the Jewish people. Just as we do not have permission to relinquish the State of Israel, so it is incumbent upon us to hold onto what we have received—the Land of Israel.” The war’s immediate outcome—occupation of Arab territory—thus opened a schism in Israel’s Jewish society around the question: “Should we give back the Occupied Territories?”26 At the extreme end of the liberal spectrum, the “Matzpen Movement” increased its activities in Israel and abroad. Established in 1962 by former members of the Israeli Communist Party (Maki), the group called for a socialist revolution to oppose Zionism in parallel to recognizing the national rights of the Palestinian people. Matzpen members demonstrated against Israel’s control of the Occupied Territories at every opportunity. They distributed pamphlets and newspapers on university campuses, in factories and public institutions, and gained a reputation for holding radical demonstrations.27 Last but not least, it is important to mention the activities of Abie Nathan (1927– 2008), a former Israeli Air Force pilot turned peace activist, and his historic—and quite fantastic at the time—flight to Egypt on 28 February 1966, about a year before the 1967 war. Flying in his own plane, “Peace One,” Nathan aimed to meet with Gamal Abdul Nasser, the Egyptian head of state, and present him with a petition calling for peace.28 At the time, Nathan’s flight seemed no less spectacular and absurd than Trygaeus’ flight on a dung beetle in the original Peace. Peace was thus performed amid this turmoil, as it became clearer that peace in the Middle East was moving further away with each day of talks, negotiations, discussions and demonstrations. Arieh Sachs, a professor of English literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a theater director, translated, adapted and directed the comedy. The creative team included Ada Hameirit, who designed the masks, accessories and costumes; Benzion Munitz, who designed the lighting and acted in the performance; and Galia Gat, who created the choreography. The cast included young
26 Ruth Bondi, “Each person and his own Greater Land of Israel,” Davar (15 September 1968); Y. Tabenkin, “The necessity of war and obligation to act,” Davar (29 December 1968) (Hebrew). 27 E. Sprinzak, Budding forms of delegitimization in Israel 1967–1972 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1973); N. Yuval-Davis, Matzpen: The Socialist organization in Israel (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1977); Matzpen, 30 years of Matzpen (Tel Aviv: The Israeli Socialist Organization Press – Matzpen, 1993); S. Knetzler, Being a leftist in Israel: Intelligentsia as a cover for alienation (Tel Aviv: Otpaz, 1984) (all in Hebrew). 28 Nathan was arrested upon his arrival in Port Said. His request to meet with the Egyptian President was rejected and he was returned to Israel. Opinions were divided about his flight. Many viewed it as a cheap publicity stunt, but others praised him for his initiative. Ben Gurion’s comment—“This was an event of ethical and diplomatic importance that should be respected and not mocked”—is cited in Nathan’s biography, published on the website http://www.abie-natham.com. Web, 11 April 2013. This was the first of many actions taken by Nathan to promote peace and provide humanitarian assistance. These activities led to international recognition; he was awarded the Medal of Peace by Pope Pius VI and the 1997 Nuremberg International Human Rights Award.
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graduates of acting schools in New York and London, along with local young Israelis such as Tuvia Tzafir, who had just completed his military service in the Nahal Performing Group.29 In Sachs’ Hebrew version of Peace, the Aristophanic text, translated from an English version, serves “as a libretto, a skeleton” for the contemporary Hebrew version.30 “We tried to retain the central events, the principal dialogues, and the general feeling of the original text,” he explained in the program notes. “The changes made here and there were undertaken for two reasons: First, like all artists, Aristophanes wrote first and foremost for his compatriots and contemporaries, and much of his humor would not be understood today because customs have changed and the people mocked have been forgotten. Second, while Aristophanes wrote for a large number of actors, singers, and musicians, our own concept and budget led us to prepare a smaller production, one limited to eight actors.”31 Sachs’ personae dramatis included: Trygaeus, two slaves, a stage technician, Hermes, Zeus, the War Gods A and B, Hierocles the prophet, an arms merchant, a fake artist, Peace and the Chorus. Composed of four actors who employed 12 double-sided masks (comic and tragic), the Chorus burst onstage to aid Trygaeus after the War Gods decapitate Peace, cut off her arms and legs, and throw her body parts into a pit. In the first part of their song, they lament Peace while wearing the tragic side of their masks. In the second part, after Trygaeus promises that Peace will reappear, the Chorus reverses the masks to the comic side and sings of hope, with verses based on the Biblical Song of Songs, all the while performing a grotesque dance. One device adopted in the performance to express humor, foolishness and complete impertinence was the mixing of standard and colloquial Hebrew, laced with Arabic, Yiddish and American English. Also used was a combination of different textual styles: citations from the Bible, traditional Jewish aphorisms and children’s songs sung during religious holidays. This mélange was capped by meta-theatrical humor that revealed the illusions woven into the city’s politics, which echoed Aristophanes’ disclosure of the theatrical strategies of tragedy. Yet this Peace was first and foremost a direct reaction to Israel’s socio-political reality. Sachs spoke fearlessly through Trygaeus, attacking a number of sacred cows. For example, the text referred to the poets who had organized in support of the
29 The Nahal’s (lit. Pioneer Fighting Youth) Performing Group (Lahakat HaNahal) was established in 1950 at the behest of the Israel Defense Forces’ Chief Education Officer, Ze’ev Havatzellet. In the tradition of military entertainment groups that served in the British Army’s Jewish Brigade in WWII and in the War of Independence, the group’s goal was to entertain soldiers serving throughout the country and in the battle field. The group led an exhausting schedule until 1978, made a tremendous contribution to the development of the Hebrew songbook, and served as an “professional acting and singing workshop” for the best of the country’s young entertainers. 30 Sachs did not leave any record of the English version he chose to translate and adapt. 31 Peace, program notes.
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“Greater Israel Movement” as “flying poets” in search of “inspiration amidst a sea of clouds.” Sachs portrayed Rabbi Shlomo Goren, the IDF’s Chief Rabbi and a proponent of the Greater Israel concept, as hiding under the robes of the false prophet Hierocles. Thus, when Trygaeus declares that “his [Hierocles’] voice reminds me of a shofar” (a ceremonial ram’s horn), Sachs is referencing the ceremony that took place following the IDF’s capture of the Temple Mount during the Six Day War.32 The left-right schism in Israeli society was emphasized throughout the performance. When Trygaeus and the Chorus attempt to pull Peace out of the pit, the hero says: “What a cock-up! Some pull to the right and others to the left. How is it possible to make peace like this?” With Athenians representing Israelis and Spartans the Arabs, Sachs mimics the slogans repeated in endless rounds of peace talks: “First round—the Athenians call for Peace and the Spartans reply—‘We will throw you into the sea.’ Second round—the Spartans are silent, while the Athenians refuse to rehabilitate the Laconian refugees. Third round—so on and so forth.” The set designed for Peace was fixed and conventional, consisting of a circular structure with four steps built at center-stage that represented the seats in the theater as well as in the Citizen’s Assembly. In addition, giant masks of Dionysus with gaping mouths stood to either side of this circular structure; these served as the entry and exit points for the actors and the Chorus. The performance was highly theatrical, however, with Sachs blending acting styles including Commedia dell’Arte, marionettes, Chinese theater, circus, slapstick from silent films, as well as the opera. In addition, the costumes were taken from various periods and styles; the stage accessories employed during the confrontation scene between the War Gods were World War I gas masks and World War II German army insignia. Although revelry was the name of the game, critics and spectators knew they were taking part in a political event. “Greater Athens became a tragicomic curse,” wrote the critic Ze’ev Rav Nof.33 “I prefer this version of Peace—an overtly political play,” wrote Boneh, “because it takes an unequivocal stance regarding a burning problem.”34 Others accused Sachs of subverting art to ideological goals. Boaz Evron wrote: “By aiming at the ‘Greater Israel Movement,’ he had ensured that the performance would not be viewed according to clear classical and aesthetic criteria.”35 Ben-Ami Feingold claimed that Sachs demonstrated a mistaken understanding of the Aristophanic message and that his mistake was first and foremost artistic in nature.36
32 Mordechai Gur, The Battle for Jerusalem (Tel-Aviv: Steimatzky, 1974), pp. 364–80. 33 Zeev Rav-Nof, “La Paix d’Aristophane,” L’Information d’Israël (10 May 1968) (French). 34 Boneh, “The Peace by actors’ stage Ensemble, comedy by Aristophanes,” Epsilon 7 (1968) (Hebrew). 35 Boaz Evron, “Aristophanes?—[He’s] not important, it should be a happy occasion,” Yediot Achronot (22 May 1968) (Hebrew). 36 Ben-Ami Feingold, “Aristophanes and the Greater Israel Movement,” Yediot Achronot (7 June 1968) (Hebrew).
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A public scandal similar to the one aroused by Volonakis’ 1958 Lysistrata erupted after the first performance. A letter addressed to the liberal newspaper Haaretz stated: “From the moment the actors appeared on stage and proceeded to spew forth a flood of crudity and obscenity, we entered a state of shock that continued until the end of the performance.”37 “Naked Peace,” the headline of the review appearing in the Orthodox newspaper HaTzofeh (associated with the right-wing National Religious Party), led to an editorial that called for Israel’s Film and Drama Board to use its legal mandate to prohibit the play’s performance. When the Board met to review the case and decided not to intervene, the paper issued a new call to disband the Board for failing to fulfill its public responsibilities.38
The Chosen, Haifa Municipal Theatre, 1976 The Chosen was produced against the background of the Yom Kippur War (6–24 October 1973), establishment of the “Gush Emunim Movement” (25 February 1974) and initiation of settlement activity in Judea and Samaria (Sebastia, the first settlement, was established on 25 July 1974). The play, written by Yaakov Shabtai, was a radical adaptation of Aristophanes’ Acharnians.39 Directed by Oded Kotler, the performance premiered at the Haifa Municipal Theatre on May 22, 1976.40 The political and cultural atmosphere in Israel in the mid-1970s helps explain the choices made in plot, characters and general tone of the production. Shabtai used Acharnians to stage a political protest, a painful, violent cry against the fruitless peace negotiations. He defined his project in the program notes as follows: “The Chosen is not an historic ‘Greek’ play, an allegory, or a puzzle made up of symbols and insinuations in the likeness of a Greek mask or in the form of names, statements, and situations. The similarities revealed here and there in the expressions and situations are none other than comparisons that can be made between the plot and our daily lives. Thus, you need not be naïve; the play performed for you this evening was written in 1976 AD in Israel.”41 Dramaturgically, the play was a collage inspired, according to Shabtai, by the plays of Brecht and Levin,42 and by the films of Rene Clair.43 The impressive stage
37 “Is this theater?”, Letters to the Editor, Haaretz (22 May 1968) (Hebrew). 38 A.D., “Peace in the nude,” HaTzofeh (19 May 1968) (Hebrew). 39 “Following Aristophanes” [lit. trans.] was written on the script. 40 Ben Pinkhas [a pseudonym for Oded Kotler]–set design; Berta Kvartz—costume design; Yehiel Orgal—lighting. 41 The Chosen, program notes. 42 Hanoch Levin (Tel Aviv 1943–Tel Aviv 1999), a prominent Israeli playwright, theater director, poet and novelist. 43 Michael Ohad, “The private peace of a common man,” Haaretz (21 May 1976) (Hebrew).
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image, with the Chosen fighting for a better place under the sun, was taken directly from the film Miracle in Milano.44 Among the comic situations presented in Acharnians, Shabtai chose to focus on the actions of the embittered and angry Dicaeopolis, who fights Athens’ elected politicians, demagogues and merchants, figures pressing for peace talks while profiting from the war. Shabtai thought it important to present Dicaeopolis as a common citizen, a petty merchant who tries to survive but is also a self-centered manipulator who, apart from his loud critique, is no different from many of those he criticizes. Michael Ohad described the opening scene in his preview: “The play opens and closes to the melody of the song ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’, played by a bouzouki band. A sole figure dressed in a toga stands in an empty amphitheatre—Uri Zohar in the role of Dicaeopolis. Zohar is thin, angry, and so very funny in his toga, looking as if it was sewn from a sack of potatoes, freezing from the cold, scratching himself, rummaging in his pockets, now holding up an onion that he caresses and smells, while contemplating whether he should bite into it or not, before beginning his accusatory speech.”45 Shabtai’s decisions regarding Dicaeopolis led to changes in the plot and characters. He expanded Dicaeopolis’ family: his wife Aspasia is constantly at his side, and his daughter Galateia is pregnant by an Athenian who has since gone off to war. While involved in his peacemaking efforts, Dicaeopolis tries to find Galateia a husband before her condition becomes obvious. The introduction of a brother-in-law, Hyperbolous, a merchant who sells oars to the navy and a member of the Chosen, positions Dicaeopolis among the “favored” citizens. On the Haifa Theater’s stage, the Athenian Chosen replaced the Aristophanic chorus. No longer Acharnian farmers who, like Dicaeopolis, had suffered from the hostilities, the Chorus in Shabtai’s version was composed of elected public officials and merchants who had grown fat and wealthy on the war. Each had a name (Lamachos, Trygaeus, Cleon, Hyperboulus, etc.) and an individual role, as well as a clear desire to keep the war going. The Chorus hounded Dicaeopolis with conventional declarations against peace. Their language was taken from contemporary political discourse, repeated in newspapers, heard in government debates and printed as slogans on placards raised during protest rallies.
44 Ohad, “Private peace” (above, n. 43). 45 Ohad, “Private peace” (above, n. 43). It is important to note that some of the Greeks in the ShabtaiKotler version of the play wore a type of Roman toga. Dicaeopolis was dressed in earth colors, while The Chosen of Athens wore cheerful yellow, green and purple. With the appearance of pepla films, an Italian genre also known as “Sword and Sandal,” between 1958 and 1965, and the success of Hollywood films such as Spartacus and the Ten Commandments, the Roman toga became established as “authentic” Greek (or classical period) clothing. As in this production, we find the toga appearing along with the peplum and the chiton as costumes in performances based on ancient Greek texts. See Martin M. Winkler, Troy from Homer’s Iliad to Hollywood Epic (Malden Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2007).
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A crucial moment occurs when the Chosen surround Dicaeopolis and threaten to kill him if he does not revoke his personal peace treaty. Facing death, Dicaeopolis agrees to abandon the treaty, but the Chosen do not pardon him. As Trygaeus’ sword strikes Dicaeopolis with a deadly blow, the playwright intervenes, as did Brecht at the end of The Three Penny Opera. The scene is frozen and Shabtai offers a different version of the play’s conclusion, with Dicaeopolis addressing the audience: “Ladies and Gentlemen, this is it! Since at this moment there are sensitive people among you who cannot stand the sight of blood, of people being killed, of death—scenes that certainly are not part of our everyday lives—we will conclude in a more cheerful and pleasant manner so that you can go home, sleep comfortably, and believe in good.” Then, just as the execution is about to continue, heavens open and a torrential rain pours down, causing the Chosen to flee. Dicaeopolis arises, stretches himself and looks around with satisfaction: “Oh, Zeus, for once rain arrived at the right time!”46 Throughout the play, Shabtai remains focused on the confrontation between the left and the right, between the doves and the hawks as they appeared on Israel’s political stage after the 1973 war.47 Harsh statements are exchanged by Cleon and Dicaeopolis. Cleon, the leading hawk among the Chosen, accuses Dicaeopolis of betrayal and calls for national unity: “A citizen who thinks in opposition to everyone else is also capable of speaking and acting against everyone else, and whosoever speaks and acts against everyone else is like a rotten apple that spoils all the apples in the barrel! We must destroy him, in the name of Zeus, without mercy!” Dicaeopolis, though, speaks on behalf of the individual and expresses the feelings of soldiers and common citizens: Cleon:
A country that abandons its principles in order to survive will die eventually—and totally!—because it will have lost its reason for living! Dicaeopolis: I am not speaking about a country, but about Dicaeopolis. Cleon: If the country dies, Dicaeopolis will die. Dicaeopolis: No one has the right to relinquish Dicaeopolis’s only life for the sake of land or anything else. Cleon: We have an obligation to amputate the infected limb before it infects the entire body.48
Just how much these sentences echoed contemporary political discourse is reflected in the reactions of theater critics. Michael Ohad depicted the comparison with these
46 The play’s text was never published. I am quoting from the rehearsal text. The Israeli Documentation Center for the Performing Arts, Folder 1.1.28. 47 Israel’s political culture is characterized, among other things, by confrontations between “hawks” and “doves.” “Hawks” have strong reservations about territorial compromise and support the use of military force to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Doves” support territorial compromise and oppose the use of military force as a means of conflict resolution. 48 The Chosen, p. 34.
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words: “The Athenian wars are described as Jerusalem’s wars, although the flying messenger of the gods does not wear Henry Kissinger-like glasses and the false prophet Cleon foregoes the verbal pirouettes of Menachem Begin.”49 But, Emil Feurstein, HaTzofeh‘s theater critic, was more aggressive: “What does it mean when a citizen of a country at war wants to ‘make a private peace’ with the enemy? Stated succinctly, we call that ‘being a traitor’. We were dismayed to see that the young people who filled the auditorium seemed, to the best that one can determine from personal impressions, to take the side of the farmer who wanted ‘a private peace’. All the country’s leaders are portrayed in a negative light; only the farmer is a positive character. And, since this character is played by Uri Zohar, an actor with so much talent and such a strong stage presence, his appeal can only grow. As a result, the audience sides with the traitor.”50 Feurstein was right; casting did serve as an excellent starting point for connecting the ancient Greek comedy with Israeli spectators. At the time, Zohar, a well-known entertainer, actor and film director, had become a symbol of Tel Aviv’s modern life; he represented Israeli openness, directness, cynicism and iconoclastic humor in his lifestyle as well as his films.51 In many respects, The Chosen was a one-man show, with an outstanding supporting cast helping to convey the message of peace. All critics agreed that The Chosen was a local Israeli performance rather than another attempt to produce a “classical” play that would again prove the inability of Israeli actors to confront problems of stylized acting and pronunciation: “The Israeli sabra (Israelborn) is permitted to speak sabarit (colloquial Hebrew),” wrote Michael Ohad.52
Lysistrata 2000, the Cameri Theatre, 2001 Lysistrata 2000 opened at the Cameri Theatre on 19 January 2001. Anat Gov, the playwright, stated that her version of Lysistrata was “according to Aristophanes,” which she had read in Aaron Shabtai’s Hebrew translation.53 Edna Maziah directed the play with the collaboration of other well-known Israeli theater artists: Orna Smorgonsky and Dror Herenson, set and costume design; Niv Sadeh, lighting; Alon Oleartchik, music and lyrics; Ilan Maman, choreography; and Revital Ariel, marionettes.
49 Michael Ohad, Haaretz (21 May 1976) (Hebrew). 50 Emil Fuerstein, “The Chosen in the Haifa Theater,” HaTzofeh (26 June 1976). 51 Uri Zohar refused to receive the prestigious Israel Prize in 1976, claiming that there were persons who had contributed more than he had to Israeli culture. Zohar left the entertainment world in the late 1970s to become a practicing ultra-Orthodox Jew and is today an ultra-Orthodox educator. 52 Michael Ohad, Haaretz (21 May 1976) (Hebrew). 53 Anat Gov (Tiberias 1953–Ramat HaSharon 2012) an Israeli feminist playwright, script writer and political activist.
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A number of unique characteristics qualify this production for inclusion in the present survey.54 First and foremost, Lysistrata 2000 is the first left-wing feminist adaptation of Aristophanes to be staged in Israel. This was due to the playwright and director, whose views on gender, society and politics were well-known in Israel through their writing and political activity.55 Second, the stance adopted in the play’s adaptation and production was driven by the fact that they were mothers aspiring to stop their sons from mandatory induction and participation in Israeli wars. To support their approach, the production’s program notes included articles written by feminist poets and feminist academics that examined the place of women in Jewish culture and in Israel’s socio-political reality. The plot of Lysistrata 2000 is structured in three layers, each of which presents different spheres of media activity: TV Studio, Theatre and City Streets. This structure creates a play within a play within a play. The performance begins with a TV newscast. It specifies the time—20 years since the war between Athens and Sparta began, which corresponds to the 20 years since the beginning of the first Lebanon War (1981). This broadcast defines the military situation—heavy battles and large numbers of killed and wounded soldiers—reports that the commander of the Athenian army is considering reducing the induction age to 14, and previews the staging of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata by an underground women’s theater group. In Lysistrata 2000, the women’s protest begins in the theater. The wife of Sparta’s military commander sneaks into the dressing room of the Athenian actress playing Lysistrata to compliment her on her acting. The women discover that they have something in common: both are looking for ways to prevent their sons’ induction. They consequently decide to translate Aristophanes’ idea into real-life action. The women’s strike thus moves from the theater stage to the city’s streets. Various theatrical levels, starting with the division of the stage space into two distinct areas, allow the struggle between the genders to transpire in different settings: “The stage is divided into halves, one for men and the other for women, with a narrow but symbolic gap, a few centimeters wide, separating them. Passing from one side to the other requires leaving the stage and entering from the other side; only the Chorus can move freely from side to side.”56 This spatial division is reinforced by the visual dimension, especially the costumes. All the women are dressed in black gowns,
54 Between 1958 and 2001, Lysistrata was performed in Israel several times in different formats and production venues: the 1969 Cameri Theatre production, in which the director, Oded Kotler, used Aloni’s Hebrew 1958 version; a 1998 amateur production in English that included Arabs, Jews and British actors, directed by Sue-Amy Jennings from England, at the American Zionist House; in 2002, the Hekabe/Lysistrata project performed by students from the Tel Aviv University Theatre Department. 55 Strange as it may seem at the beginning of the 21st century, the majority of theater directors and artistic directors in Israel are men. 56 Anat Gov, Lysistrata 2000 (Tel Aviv: HaKibbutz HaMeuchad, 2001), p. 1.
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while the men appear in military uniforms decorated in a childish, theatrical style, with metallic robes fashioned like armor and fancy helmets. Gov’s plot reflects that of Aristophanes, with short scenes following one another as the characters move between subplots: Lysistrata, the main actress in the women’s underground production, is also the wife of the Athenian commander’s adjutant, Zayinides the Great. Her strike co-leader, Spartacusit, is the wife of Spartacus the Great, commander of Sparta’s army.57 Among the women participating in the revolt is Madam Madamus, manager of an Athenian brothel, who informs the women about their husbands’ sexual escapades. The role of the Chorus is filled by the male and female TV presenters, Oedipus and Eliki, who exchange reports in rapid succession about the events that take place in the two camps. The Greek gods Zeus, Hera and Athena appear onstage in a short scene. When Hera and Athena decide to join the striking women, Zeus seeks help from the god of the Jews, only to discover to his surprise that this god is a woman (who does not appear but whose voice is heard). Lysistrata 2000 was not a great theatrical success. The critics wrote that the performance communicated only a small portion of Aristophanes’ message. The consensus was that the playwright and the director had chosen a facile, superficial route in their adaptation of the original and had failed to adequately convey their opposition to present war. The critics also claimed that while bubbling with gender and political humor, the play and production lacked focus and suffered from an exaggerated image of the modern woman, pitted against men who remained primitive in their enthusiasm for battles, hunting, pursuit and conquest. But even if the play failed in dramaturgical and performance terms, its importance comes from the fact that it presented the growing involvement of women in organized groups protesting Israel’s occupation of Gaza, Judea and Samaria to large audiences. One of these groups, “Women in Black,” had begun its activities in Jerusalem in January 1988, a month after the outbreak of the first Intifada (Arabic lit. “shaking off,” meaning “uprising”). The group’s founders called for establishment of a permanent protest vigil, to be held every Friday at Jerusalem’s “French Square”: “The format of this protest was simple: A small group of women gathered once a week at the same hour, in the same place—a central square where there is a great deal of traffic. Participants held black banners on which was written—‘End the Occupation.’ The idea spread quickly to other locations in Israel. Within a few months protest vigils sprung up throughout the country.”58 Like Lysistrata and her theater group, “Women in Black” was not received with approval by all segments of the population. Many considered these women traitors and responded to
57 The names Zayinides and Spartacusit include colloquial words for male and female genitals, respectively. 58 Home page of the movement in Israel – www.coalitionofwomen.org, Web, April 11, 2013; www. womenin black/en/vigil, Web, April 11, 2013.
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them with anger, mockery and scorn.59 “Women in Black” nonetheless inspired the formation of women’s peace groups in Israel and abroad throughout the 1990s. Organizations such as “Four Mothers,”60 “Women and Mothers for Peace” and “The Coalition of Women for Peace and Justice” soon raised their voices demanding change in the public agenda. Ariella Shadmi, one of the founders of “Women in Black,” wrote: “The Coalition reflects … the feminist vision for a truly new order in Israel and the Middle East and thus calls for an end to the era of generals—the time for women has arrived.”61 It is thus unsurprising that Gov chose Aristophanes’ Lysistrata as a medium for sharing this view with a wider audience. For those who saw the performance of Lysistrata 2000, it was clear that its satiric arrows were aimed at the Israeli generals who, like those on stage, were deciding issues of life and death, peace and war, while ignoring the ongoing protests of women.
Fighting for Home, the Khan Theatre of Jerusalem, 2002 In September 2002, Jerusalem’s Khan Theatre performed Fighting for Home, a “satire based on Aristophanes,”62 adapted by the playwright Ilan Hatzor. Michael Gurevitch directed the performance with actors from the Khan Ensemble and a well-known creative team.63 The comedy’s events take place in 2012 Jerusalem. After years of fighting, the country is struck by unemployment, poverty and hunger. In the first
59 Following the death of Dr. Ana Colombo, a veteran leader of “Women in Black,” Uri Dromi wrote: “She immigrated to Israel because she believed that Zionism is a humanitarian response to fascism. But, when she stood every Friday in Jerusalem’s Paris Square, together with a small number of her friends in ‘Women in Black’, holding a sign stating—‘End the Occupation’, passersby shouted out to her—‘Too bad Hitler did not finish his work with you’.” Uri Dromi, “Dr. Ana Colombo, ‘Women in Black’ veteran, 1909–2010,” Haaretz (9 February 2010) (Hebrew). 60 The Four Mothers Movement was established on 4 February 1997, following a tragedy, the collision of two helicopters carrying troops to the Security Zone in southern Lebanon, in which all 74 soldiers were killed. Named after the four Biblical matriarchs—Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah—the Movement was founded by four mothers whose sons were serving in southern Lebanon. The goal of the movement was to protest continuation of Israel’s military presence in southern Lebanon. The movement received strong public support and remained active until the IDF’s withdrawal on 24 May 2000, Web, 11 April 2013