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Aristophanic and other Audiences1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

P. Walcot
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Extract

We have all suffered in the company of a bore who cracks jokes so obscure that they demand a laborious explanation, for, in order to raise a laugh, humour must have an immediate impact, and obscurity is seldom a hallmark of the good joke. A captive audience can be terrifyingly unresponsive, and anyone who has read an Aristophanic comedy with students soon learns for himself that a scholarly exposition may destroy any joke, irrespective of its qualities. Yesterday's joke is stale and last year's joke dead; to resurrect a joke more than two thousand years old is no easy task. In an attempt to make the ancient writer of comedy more vital, we may have recourse to a contemporary analogy: twenty years ago we might have compared the technique of Aristophanes' comedies with that of the comedy series currently successful on radio; today the medium as well as the show has changed, and we refer to the art of television humour, and this indeed is a better parallel, since television comedy depends upon visual as much as upon verbal effects. Both radio and television number their audience in hundreds of thousands, and, what is more important, their audience represents as fair a cross-section of the total population as did the audience attending the theatre in fifth-century Athens. The fact that Athenian drama was staged at festivals organized by the state proves that it was entertainment designed to please everybody and not just a select few, that is, it was designed for a ‘popular’ and not an élite audience. The colossal size of the Greek theatre (the Theatre of Dionysus at Athens accommodated some 14,000 spectators) offers further confirmation. But the modern theatre is no longer a source of mass entertainment, and even the long-running farce, however many parties up in town for the day may patronize it, hardly suggests the type of audience and atmosphere which Aristophanes and his compatriots would have known and been anxious to exploit. Some idea of this atmosphere may be gained if one thinks in terms of a frequently quoted modern parallel, the emotionally charged football match. The intimacy of the smart revue, an analogy favoured by some, makes it a poor basis for comparison. If it is the English stage and our own experience of the theatre which must provide us with our illustration, the most evocative comparison, I suggest, is one between the audience packed into the Theatre of Dionysus and the audience which jostles its way into the seats at the Christmas pantomime, for this is an audience mainly composed of children as unsophisticated and uninhibited (and as determined to squeeze every ounce of pleasure from what for them also is an annual treat) as those who witnessed the original performance of Old Comedy. The audience at the pantomime, joining in the choruses of the songs and booing the villain, can be unrestrained one moment, but sit spellbound a minute later as the spectators gape at the spectacular ‘set’ which precedes the intermission and announces the finale. The frequent address to the audience made by Aristophanes' characters argues for the same degree of audience participation, while the entry of the chorus—my personal favourite is the parodos of the Birds—would be greeted by an attentiveness in keeping with its solemnity and splendour.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , April 1971 , pp. 35 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1971

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References

page 35 note 2 For the popular as opposed to the élite audience see Harbage, Alfred, Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions (New York, 1952).Google Scholar

page 37 note 1 On the distinction between groundling and judicious spectator in Shakespearian studies see Harbage, , Shakespeare's Audience (New York, 1941), 144 ff.Google Scholar

page 37 note 2 Varia Historia ii. 13. Dover, K. J. considers the interpretation of this passage in Komoidotragemata (Amsterdam, 1967), 27–8.Google Scholar

page 38 note 1 Cf. the analysis of the first thirty lines of the Frogs by Werner, J., Philologus cxiii (1969), 10–23.Google Scholar

page 39 note 1 Hooker, G. T. W., JHS lxxx (1960), 112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 39 note 2 While an element of doubt is admitted, a connection between the Anthesteria and the arrival of Dionysus in a wheeled ship is said to be the most likely hypothesis in the second edition, revised by Gould, J. and Lewis, D. M., of SirPickard-Cambridge, Arthur's The Dramatic Festivals of Athens (Oxford, 1968), 12 ff.Google Scholar

page 40 note 1 Harbage, Shakespeare's Audience, 122–3. Cf. also the Prologues of Terence's comedies.

page 40 note 2 Var. H. ii. 13.

page 41 note 1 See Harbage, Shakespeare's Audience, 74–9. At the same time the belief that women posed the greatest threat to a man's honour and were, therefore, best advised to remain anonymously at home (cf. Thuc. ii. 45. 2) would have tended to limit their attendance at the theatre, although, it should also be noted, the proportion of women to men at Athens rose as the Peloponnesian War took its dreadful toll.

page 42 note 1 It is instructive to compare Murray, 's Aristophanes (Oxford, 1933)Google Scholar with his earlier comments on the poet in A History of Ancient Greek Literature (London, 1897)Google Scholar and then to consult Bowra, C. M., Memories 1898–1939 (London, 1966), 214–29.Google Scholar

page 42 note 2 Cf. Forrest, W. G., Phoenix xvii (1963), 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 42 note 3 Archilochus fr. 60 (Diehl).

page 44 note 1 On parody in Aristophanes see Sedgwick, W. B., Classica et Mediaevalia ix (1947), 1–9Google Scholar, and Harriott, Rosemary, BICS ix (1962), 1–8.Google Scholar

page 45 note 1 A summary of the different interpretations proposed is given by Harvey, F. D., REG lxxix (1966), 601–3.Google Scholar It is interesting to note, in view of my own explanation of the passage, that Harvey expresses surprise that many commentators take the present tense ἔχων very literally (601 n. 2).

page 46 note 1 In the preface of his translation of three Plautine comedies (London, 1694) Laurence Echard translates the first act of the Miles Gloriosus, using the word ‘table-book’ to render the Latin lobelias (verse 38); see Echard, L., Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (The Augustan Reprint Society, no. 129, Los Angeles, 1968).Google Scholar

page 46 note 2 Sedgwick, op. cit. 8 and 9.

page 46 note 3 Beobachtungen zu Aristophanes (Rome, 1962), 181 ff.Google Scholar

page 47 note 1 Halliday, F. E., Shakespeare and his Critics, revised edition, London, 1958, 33–4.Google Scholar The essay by Bridges, Robert, ‘On the Influence of the Audience’, appeared in vol. 10 (1907), 321–34Google Scholar, of the Shakespeare Head Press edition of the works of Shakespeare (Stratford-on-Avon). Cf. Bradley, A. C., Oxford Lectures on Poetry (London,2 1909), 361–93Google Scholar, especially the note on 366–7, which was added—the lecture dates from 1902— after Bradley had read Bridges on Shakespeare's audience. The reissue of Bridges's essay provoked a further reaction, this time by Wilson, J. Dover, Proceedings of the British Academy 1929, 101–25Google Scholar, who remarked, inter alia, ‘it can never be too often emphasized that Shakespeare wrote his plays not for the printing-house but for the theatre’ (102–3).Google Scholar

page 47 note 2 Cf. Harbage, , Shakespeare's Audience, 11–18.Google Scholar See also Bradbrook, M. C., The Rise of the Common Player (London, 1962), 67ff.Google Scholar and 96ff. for ‘the attack by the clergy’ and ‘general fear of assemblies’.

page 49 note 1 Harbage, , Shakespeare's Audience, 92 ff.Google Scholar

page 49 note 2 Hdt. vi. 21. 2

page 50 note 1 Harbage, , Shakespeare's Audience, 118.Google Scholar

page 50 note 2 Ibid. 135–6.

page 50 note 3 See Stevens, P. T., JHS lxxvi (1956), 87–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar