The Eleven Comedies, vol 1 | Page 2

for its
grotesque masks and elaborate 'spectacle' addressed the eye as strongly
as the author's keenest witticisms did the ear of his audience."[1]
Rollicking, reckless, uproarious fun is the key-note; though a more
serious intention is always latent underneath. Aristophanes was a
strong--sometimes an unscrupulous--partisan; he was an
uncompromising Conservative of the old school, an ardent admirer of
the vanishing aristocratic régime, an anti-Imperialist--'Imperialism' was
a democratic craze at Athens--and never lost an opportunity of
throwing scorn on Cleon the demagogue, his political bête noïre and
personal enemy, Cleon's henchmen of the popular faction, and the War
party generally. Gravity, solemnity, seriousness, are conspicuous by
their absence; even that 'restraint' which is the salient characteristic of

Greek expression in literature no less than in Art, is largely relaxed in
the rough-and-tumble, informal, miscellaneous modern phantasmagoria
of these diverting extravaganzas.
At the same time we must not be misled by the word 'Comedy' to bring
Aristophanes' work into comparison with what we call Comedy now.
This is quite another thing--confined to a representation of incidents of
private, generally polite life, and made up of the intrigues and
entanglements of social and domestic situations. Such a Comedy the
Greeks did produce, but at a date fifty or sixty years subsequent to
Aristophanes' day, and recognized by themselves as belonging to an
entirely different genre. Hence the distinction drawn between 'The Old
Comedy,' of which Cratinus and his younger contemporaries, Eupolis
and Aristophanes, were the leading representatives, and which was at
high-water mark just before and during the course of the great struggle
of the Peloponnesian War, and 'The New Comedy,' a comedy of
manners, the two chief exponents of which were Philemon and
Menander, writing after Athens had fallen under the Macedonian yoke,
and politics were excluded altogether from the stage. Menander's plays
in turn were the originals of those produced by Plautus and Terence at
Rome, whose existing Comedies afford some faint idea of what the lost
masterpieces of their Greek predecessor must have been. Unlike the
'Old,' the 'New Comedy' had no Chorus and no 'Parabasis.'
This remarkable and distinctive feature, by-the-bye, of the Old Comedy,
the 'Parabasis' to wit, calls for a word of explanation. It was a direct
address on the Author's part to the audience, delivered in verse of a
special metre, generally towards the close of the representation, by the
leader of the Chorus, but expressing the personal opinions and
predilections of the poet, and embodying any remarks upon current
topics and any urgent piece of advice which he was particularly anxious
to insist on. Often it was made the vehicle for special appeal to the
sympathetic consideration of the spectators for the play and its merits.
These 'parabases,' so characteristic of the Aristophanic comedy, are
conceived in the brightest and wittiest vein, and abound in topical
allusions and personal hits that must have constituted them perhaps the
most telling part of the whole performance.

Aristophanes deals with all questions; for him the domain of the Comic
Poet has no limits, his mission is as wide as human nature. It is to
Athens he addresses himself, to the city as a whole; his criticism
embraces morals no less than politics, poetry no less than philosophy;
he does not hesitate to assail the rites and dogmas of Paganism;
whatever affords subject for laughter or vituperation lies within his
province; there he is in his element, scourge in hand, his heart ablaze
with indignation, pitiless, and utterly careless of all social distinctions.
In Politics Aristophanes belongs to the party of the Aristocracy. He
could not do otherwise, seeing that the democratic principle was then
triumphant; Comedy is never laudatory, it lives upon criticism, it must
bite to the quick to win a hearing; its strength, its vital force is
contradiction. Thus the abuses of democracy and demagogy were the
most favourable element possible for the development of Aristophanes'
genius, just because his merciless satire finds more abundant
subject-matter there than under any other form of civil constitution.
Then are we actually to believe that the necessity of his profession as a
comic poet alone drove him into the faction of the malcontents? This
would surely be to wilfully mistake the dignity of character and
consistency of conviction which are to be found underlying all his
productions. Throughout his long career as a dramatist his predilections
always remain the same, as likewise his antipathies, and in many
respects the party he champions so ardently had claims to be regarded
as representing the best interests of the state. It is but just therefore to
proclaim Aristophanes as having deserved well of his country, and to
admit the genuine courage he displayed in attacking before the people
the people's own favourites, assailing in word those who held the sword.
To mock at the