THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY.
By F. M. CORNFORD,
Fellow and Lecturer of Trinity College, Cambridge; Author of “From Religion to Philosophy,” “Thucydides Mythistoricus,” etc.
One Volume. Demy 8vo. 8s. 6d. net.
This book tries to show that the peculiar structure and features of Aristophanic Comedy can be explained by an hypothesis like that by which Professor Gilbert Murray explains the form of Greek Tragedy. A detailed examination of the extant plays brings to light, under all their variety, a plot-formula composed of a regular sequence of incidents: Agon, Sacrifice, Feast, Marriage, Kômos. The theory is that this canonical sequence presents the stereotyped action of a folk-drama (like the English Mummer’s Play), which itself preserves the outline of a well-known seasonal ritual. This ritual turns out to be substantially identical with that which, according to Professor Murray, lies behind Tragedy. The stock masks in the Old Comedy are shown to be the essential characters in the supposed folk-drama. On this view, various features of Aristophanic Comedy, such as the Agon and Parabasis, about which widely different views are now held, can be satisfactorily explained. It follows also that Aristophanic Comedy is not a patchwork of heterogeneous elements, but a coherent whole, and in all probability a native growth of Attic soil. Athenian Comedy and Tragedy have a common source in ritual of the same fundamental type. The causes of their differentiation—a problem of great interest in the history of drama—are treated in the last chapter.
The book is intended, not only for classical scholars, but for all readers interested in the origin and growth of the drama. Greek has been confined to the footnotes, and a synopsis of the plots of Aristophanes’ plays has been added, to enable the ordinary reader to follow the argument.