Anon - Four Settings From Menander's 'Epitrepontes'

ANCIENT GREEK COMEDY

Reading 5: Greek New Comedy


TEXT: Menander, The Litigants (Epitrepontes), selections


Questions to Ponder Concerning This Text:

• How different is this play from the comedies and tragedies written a century before? Can you see any trends in the changes made in theatre and drama over the fourth century BCE?

• What technical elements (actors, scenery, props, crew, costumes) are necessary to produce this play?

• How "modern" is this play? Does it resemble contemporary theatre in any way? Staging? Characterization? Dialogue?

• How "metatheatrical" is this play (i.e. self-conscious that it is a play)? Is that a sign of sophistication or modernity in the playwright or the audience?


Introduction: Menander's comedy is "quiet comedy." It focuses on character, naturalism and plot as opposed to slapstick farce, overt theatricality and jokes. Out of a roster of broad character types—nefarious pimps, hapless virgins, swashbuckling soldiers—Menander forged a brand of comedy that centered on realistic characters which in some way resembled average people in his day. To generate humor, he put them in extraordinary and ludicrous situations, such as the reunion of twins who had been separated at birth.

However, such coincidences, the stock-in-trade of his New Comedy, were not the focus of but the excuse for his comedies which centered around the characters themselves. Finding themselves trapped in these situations, Menander's human creations show their true colors, for instance, the stern-talking but kind-hearted father who, when he discovers that his son is soon to become a father, storms about and lectures the boy but in the end backs down and lets him marry the girl he loves. The humor in Menander's comedy relies on our seeing ourselves in these characters who play out what we would surely do if we found ourselves in the same leaky boat. The message is the commonality of all people—rich or poor, man or woman, old or young—with the intention of making the viewer chuckle, not guffaw.

The Litigants concerns a young man Charisios ("Gracious") who has recently married a young woman named Pamphile ("All-Love") whom he loves very much. Charisios' troubles began a few months after the wedding when he was away on a business trip. While he was out of town, his wife gave birth to a child, only five months after their marriage! He would never have learned about this except that his faithful slave Onesimos ("Helpful") happened to see Pamphile's old serving woman abandon the baby in the woods with certain special jewels so that someday it might be able to prove its identity.

When Charisios returned, Onesimos almost immediately blurted out the whole thing to his master. But, instead of thanks for such a display of loyalty, Charisios rebuked Onesimos and the revelation of the truth precipitated a terrible family crisis. In stunned rage at his wife's apparent infidelity, Charisios promptly left Pamphile and moved in with his friend next door, a bachelor. In the firm conviction to drown his sorrows in partying and prostitutes, Charisios has adopted an I'll-show-her attitude but it is only a bluff. He still loves his wife in spite of her apparent misconduct, so much so that the escort he has hired, a young and well-known beauty named Habrotonon ("Soft-Sound"), has quickly learned that she is only wasting her time with Charisios, at least by the standards of her profession. He refuses even to lay a hand on her and instead spends all his time with her sobbing in grief for his broken marriage.

As it turns out, the situation is not as bad as it seems on the surface at least. Pamphile's baby, though no one knows it, is actually Charisios' child, because four months prior to their wedding, while he was out on a drunken lark—the sort of bachelor party bachelors are inclined to participate in—Charisios had stumbled across a young lady at an outdoor festival and, to put it more delicately than he did, forced himself on her. That young lady was Pamphile.

Because it was dark, however, neither recognized the other later. This is not as implausible as it sounds to us, in that a groom and bride in ancient Greece often did not meet each other before being married because parents normally arranged marriages without any input from the couple-to-be. But even if Charisios and Pamphile had met before their wedding, they probably would not have recognized each other.

As we join the story, the newlyweds Charisios and Pamphile are living apart—a situation neither is happy about!—their baby has been abandoned, and a divorce neither wants seems imminent.

The first passage below, the eponymous "litigation" scene of the play (in Act 2), concerns the baby which was abandoned and later rescued by two men from the country, Syros and Daos, who are now quarreling over the gold jewelry, called "trinkets," found with it. Daos has t