My presentation about "Greek Comedy Theater"... Hope you like it :)

1. Loulizerl C. Infante

2. • Ancient Greek comedy was one of the final
three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of
classical Greece (the others being tragedy and
the satyr play).
• Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into
three periods, Old Comedy, Middle Comedy,
and New Comedy.

3. • The most important Old Comic dramatist is Aristophanes,
whose works, with their pungent political satire and
abundance of sexual and scatological innuendo,
effectively define the genre today.
• Aristophanes lampooned the most important
personalities and institutions of his day, as can be seen,
for example, in his buffoonish portrayal
of Socrates in The Clouds, and in his racy anti-war
farce Lysistrata. It is nonetheless important to realize that
he was only one of a large number of comic poets
working in Athens in the late 5th century, his most
important contemporary rivals
being Hermippus and Eupolis.

4. • Son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaeum was
a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Also known as the
Father of Comedy[5] and the Prince of Ancient Comedy,
Aristophanes has been said to recreate the life of ancient
Athens more convincingly than any other author.His
powers of ridicule were feared and acknowledged by
influential contemporaries; Plato singled out
Aristophanes' play The Clouds as slander that
contributed to the trial and subsequent condemning to
death of Socrates. His second play, The
Babylonians (now lost), was denounced by the
demagogue Cleon as a slander against the
Athenian polis.

5. • The Acharnians
• Assemblywomen
• The Birds
• The Clouds
• The Frogs
• The Knights
• Lysistrata
• Peace
• Plutus
• Thesmophoriazusae
• The Wasps

6. • The line between old and middle comedy is not very
clearly marked, Aristophanes and others of the latest
writers of the one becoming the earliest writers of the
other. The latter was indeed merely an offshoot of the
former, but differed from it in three essential particulars: it
had no chorus, public characters were not personated on
the stage, and the objects of its ridicule were general
rather than personal, literary rather than political. The one
was caricature and lampoon, the other was criticism and
review.

7. • The period of the middle comedy extended from the
close of the Peloponnesian war to the enthralment of
Athens by Philip of Macedon; that is to say, from the
closing years of the fifth to nearly the middle of the fourth
century B.C. It was extremely prolific in plays, but not
especially so in genius.
•
• The favorite themes were the literary and social
peculiarities of the day, which, together with the
prominent systems of philosophy, were treated with light
and not ill-natured ridicule. In dealing with society,
classes rather than individuals were attacked, as
courtesans, parasites, revellers, and especially the self-
conceited cook, who, with his parade of culinary science,
was always a favorite target for the shafts of middle
comedy.

8. • From about 388 to 322 b.c.e. New Comedy evolved from
Middle Comedy when Athens’s revolt against
Macedonian rule failed, and free speech was lost to the
Athenians and their plays. New Comedies tended to
focus on the role of chance in the average citizen’s daily
fight for survival.
The play would open to find the characters’ lives had
become quite tempestuous, but by the final act,
chance would have resolved the difficulties in the
characters’ favor. Mistaken identities, disguises, and
comical errors abound in these plays.

9. • In format New Comedies were typically divided into three
or, more often, five acts. Frequently there was an
interlude between acts of a comedy, such as our modern
half-time shows. If a chorus appeared anywhere in a New
Comedy, the chorus would be strictly limited to such an
interlude.
Menander (342–292 b.c.e.), Philemon (c. 368–267
b.c.e.), and Diphilus (c. 360–290 b.c.e.) were the three
most renowned authors of comical plays in this era.. His
work Dysklos (The Grouch) was discovered on an
Egyptian papyrus found in 1959.

10. • Eubelus
• Philippides,[17] 335 BC, 301 BC
• Philemon of Soli or Syracuse (c. 362–262 BC)
• Menander (c. 342–291 BC)
• Apollodorus of Carystus (c. 300-260 BC)
• Diphilus of Sinope (c. 340-290 BC)
• Euphron[18]
• Dionysius Chalcus, after the god Archestratus
• Theophilus, contemporary with Callimedon
• Sosippus, contemporary with Diphillus
• Anaxippus, 303 BC
• Demetrius, 299 BC