Political Comedy in Aristophanes

MALCOLM HEATH (UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS)

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ABSTRACT: This paper argues that Aristophanic comedy, although it takes contemporary political life as its point of departure, is not political in the sense of aiming to influence politics outside the theatre. Brief discussions of Clouds, Knights, Lysistrata and Acharnians are used to cast initial doubt on interpretations that attribute serious intent to Aristophanes. It is then argued that Aristophanes’ treatment of the poet’s role as adviser, abuse of the audience and of individuals, the themes of rich and poor and the power of the dêmos, support this conclusion. In general, the assumptions of Aristophanes’ comedy are too closely attuned to those of the majority of his audience to warrant inferences about Aristophanes’ own political attitudes. This conclusion throws light on the democracy’s exercise of control over the theatre. An appendix argues that the main unifying element in Aristophanic comedy is not theme, but plot, and that Aristophanes took more care over coherence of plot-structure than is sometimes recognised.
1. Introduction
<7> ‘This is a threadbare subject’: so in 1938 Gomme introduced his influential paper on Aristophanes and politics, and the subject has been exposed to a good deal of wear and tear since he wrote those words.1 A sense of tedium could be forgiven; but tempted though we may feel simply to abandon the whole issue and to seek new questions to discuss, the problem of political intent in Aristophanic comedy remains obstinately difficult to evade. Gomme, indeed, although he thought that some relatively easy deductions could be made about Aristophanes’ political outlook,2 argued at rather greater length that such deductions were of purely biographical interest, contributing nothing to our appreciation of the plays as plays.

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