New Comedy

New Comedy

Greek drama from c. 320 BC to the mid-3rd century BC that offers a mildly satiric view of contemporary Athenian society. Unlike Old Comedy, which parodies public figures and events (see Aristophanes), New Comedy features fictional average citizens in domestic life. The chorus, the representative of forces larger than life, is reduced to a small band of musicians and dancers. Plays usually involve the conventionalized situation of thwarted lovers and contain stock characters. Menander introduced the New Comedy and became its most famous exponent; Plautus and Terence translated its plays for the Roman stage. Elements of New Comedy influenced European drama down to the 18th century.

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New Comedy 

a genre of ancient Greek comedy (c. fourth and third centuries B.C.).

As a result of new social conditions that sharply curtailed the citizen’s political activities, New Comedy dealt exclusively with man’s private life. The themes of New Comedy were influenced by Euripides. In New Comedy (known to us from the works of Menander and fragments of the works of other poets) much was conventional. Stock characters included the miserly father, the youth in love, and the wily slave. Love was the principal theme. The comic element, if not entirely lacking, was of secondary importance. New Comedy exerted a very strong influence on Roman comedy, which in turn influenced European dramatists, including Shakespeare and Molière.

WORKS

The Fragments of Attic Comedy, vol. 3. Edited by J. M. Edmonds. Leiden, 1961.

REFERENCES

Tronskii, I. M. Istoriia antichnoi literatury, 3rd ed. Leningrad, 1957.
Radtsig, S. I. Istoriia drevnegrecheskoi literatury, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1959.
Norwood, G. Greek Comedy. London, 1931.
Webster, T. B. L. Study in Later Greek Comedy. Manchester, 1953.
Webster, T. B. L. Monuments Illustrating New Comedy. London, 1961.

V. G. BORUKHOVICH