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The Good, the Bad, and the Grouch a Comparison of Characterization in Menander and Ancient Philosophers by Matthew W. Mcdonald

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The Good, the Bad, and the Grouch a Comparison of Characterization in Menander and Ancient Philosophers by Matthew W. Mcdonald The Good, the Bad, and the Grouch A Comparison of Characterization in Menander and Ancient Philosophers By Matthew W. McDonald ἁλωτα γίνετ’ ἐπιμελείᾳ καὶ πόνῳ ἅπαντ’ “All is attainable through care and work” -Sostratos, Dyskolos 862-3 Thanks to my father and mother, Dr. William Owens, Dr. Ruth Palmer, Dean Webster, Cary Frith, and all the faculty and staff members of the Department of Classics and World Religions and of the Honors Tutorial College ii Table of Contents: Forward: My History with the Texts iv Chapter 1: Introduction The Background of Menander 1 The Study of Characterization 7 Characterization in Philosophy 16 Chapter 2: Character through Solitude and Friendship: An Analysis of the Dyskolos The Dyskolos in History and Scholarship 30 The Characters of Knemon, Kallippides, Sostratos, and Gorgias 40 Chapter 3: Character through Father and Son: An Analysis of the Samia The Samia in History and Scholarship 61 The Characters of Moschion and Demeas 69 Chapter 4: Conclusion 100 Bibliography 106 iii Forward: My History with the Texts I was first introduced to Menander in the tenth grade, when I played Sostratos in my school’s production of the Dyskolos. It is difficult to explain why exactly I became so fond of that play, I think most of my classmates found it boring; it was by no means gut-bustingly hilarious, nor was the plot particularly interesting. Yet, the characters had a certain undeniable charm; the lover was endearingly naïve; the country-boy was unexpectedly profound; the slaves were deviously clever; and the titular grumpy old man embodied the sympathetic villain. The essence of the play was in these characters. It was also while in high school that I was introduced to Plato and Aristotle. While I might not have always agreed with their discussions of ethics and virtues, I was fascinated by their arguments and the idea that these subjective topics could be explored in a logical and precise manner. One thing that I particularly found interesting was the emphasis they had on behavior and emotions in relation to morality; character also was the essence of their topics. iv Chapter 1: Introduction The Background of Menander Menander enjoyed a successful career. Not only did he produce a significant number of works during his thirty year career, having written over an estimated one hundred plays, but he received at least eight victories at dramatic festivals.1 “Menander was not only a prolific exponent of [New Comedy]…but he was also, according to ancient authors its star.”2 In addition to being popular during his own time, his plays were adapted for Roman audiences by playwrights like Plautus and Terence.3 While the mere fact that Menander was able to write places him among the elite minority, his plays were performed at public festivals before an audience of the broad Athenian populace, consisting of men from various social classes and possibly women and slaves.4 Unlike his dramatic predecessors, however, Menander was not limited to Athenian audiences. His plays were not performed only once at a festival, but went on tour in Greek and Hellenistic city-states.5 “This new professionalism 1 Sebastiana Nervegna, Menander in Antiquity, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 12-3 2 Susan Lape, Reproducing Athens, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 9 3 Ibid. 4 Eric Csapo, “Performing Comedy in the Fifth through Early Third Centuries,” in The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy, ed. Michael Fontaine and Adele C. Scafuro, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 53 5 Michael J. Walton and Peter D. Arnott, Menander and the Making of Comedy, (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), 34 1 enlarged the scope of the theatre and brought it to wider audiences.”6 Menander was the star of Greek theater when everybody was watching. Early in the modern era, Menander was not particularly esteemed in comparison to other classical authors. “It was Euripides who fought this death struggle of tragedy; the later art is known as the New Attic Comedy. In it the degenerate form of tragedy lived on as a monument of the most painful and violent death of tragedy proper,” wrote Friedrich Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy.7 When only fragments of Menander remained, scholars were quick to dismiss it as trivial literature. In comparison to the Old Comedy of Aristophanes, which was known for its quick-wit, inventive language, and controversial political commentary, scholars viewed New Comedy as a degraded genre. The jokes are subtler, the language is milder, and the topics cover mundane elements of domestic life, rather than contemporary events.8 “New Comedy may in certain respects be described as the Old tamed down, but in products of genius, tameness is not generally considered a merit,” wrote A.W. Schlegel in Lectures on Dramatic Literature and Art.9 Until the 1950’s, the works of Menander were known through fragments of lines, quotes from ancient sources, and Roman adaptations. However, after more substantial remnants of his plays were found, critical opinion changed. A more comprehensive assessment of these plays shows that they often involve the same story 6 Walton and Arnott, Menander and the Making of Comedy, 35 7 Quoted by Sander M. Goldberg, The Making of Menander’s Comedy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), v 8 Walton and Arnott, Menander and the Making of Comedy, 2-7 9 Quoted by Goldberg, The Making of Menander’s Comedy, v 2 of a young man who overcomes obstacles to get the girl he loves.10 While this formulaic plot leaves little room for diversity in terms of plot and character, modern scholars have found value investigating how Menander either repeats specific dramatic conventions or how he varies them. Ian Ruffell makes a point at noting that Menander regularly adapts the stock characters of Middle Comedy into his own works, but individualizes them according to his own style.11 Likewise, Netta Zagagi remarks that valuing artistic merit based on originality is a modern tendency and that this quality was never particularly valued by ancient audiences, “on the contrary, variations on a given theme were far more likely to stimulate the imagination.”12 The reliance and repetition of tropes certainly was not lost on the ancient audience either. Plutarch preserves an ancient anecdote in which a friend asks Menander, “The Dionysian Festival is near, have you written your comedy?” To which Menander reportedly replied, “By the gods, I have written the comedy; for the plot is in order; but I just need to fit the lines to it.” (Plut. Mor. 347e). The use of stock characters, in particular, is recognized to be an important component of Menander’s plays.13 In essence a stock character is a dramatic stereotype; characters of the same age, class, and occupation, thus, find themselves in similar circumstances and behave in similar ways. The very presentation of stock characters suggests familiarity to the audience. It is well known from vase paintings 10 Lape, Reproducing Athens, 9-10 11 Ian Ruffell, “Character types,” in The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy, ed. Martin Revermann, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 153 12 Netta Zagagi, The Comedy of Menander, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995), 15 13 R.L. Hunter, The New Comedy of Greece & Rome, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 59 3 and the writings of Julius Pollux that actors wore masks while performing Greek comedy. Each mask was designed to be used with a specific type of character. So while each character looked unique within the context of the play, he would resemble all other characters of the same stock type.14 Stock characters would also be discernable by the way they spoke; for instance, the cook calls himself the “cuisinier” and makes puns about chopping.15 Stock characters are central in the discussion of repetition and variation of dramatic conventions, because the presence of a stock character anticipates certain dramatic expectations, which the playwright can either follow or alter. The scholarship about stock types in Menander enhances the discussion of the author’s characterization in terms of dramatic theory, but keeps the conversation entirely within the context of his plays. Several scholars have expanded this discussion through reference to Aristotle’s works on ethics and rhetoric. David Konstan has discussed how Glykera’s pardon of Polemon fails to satisfy Aristotle’s definition of forgiveness. As Konstan argues, Polemon’s apology to Glykera does not address his moral flaw nor does he demonstrate a change in character. In turn, Glykera does not return to Polemon because of this apology. Rather, the reconciliation of the couple is due to the revelation that Glykera, who had been serving as a courtesan, is actually a citizen. Glykera the courtesan, was not under the legal and social restrictions that bound citizen women; Glykera, the citizen woman, has no 14 Csapo, “Performing Comedy,” 60 15 E.W. Handley, “The Conventions of the Comic Stage and Their Exploitation by Menander,” in Oxford Readings in Menander, Plautus, and Terence, ed. Erich Segal, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 30 4 choice but to accept Polemon. Given her new social status she would be rejected by society for having had extramarital affairs. Konstan argues that this resolution is unsatisfactory from an Aristotelian point of view and suggests Menander’s indifference to repairing the relationship of the two characters in a manner pertinent to their disagreement.16 Susan Lape similarly remarks that Polemon’s apology to Glykera is not a proper apology in the Aristotelian sense. She adds, however, that, “the quasi- Aristotelian characterization of his action serves the dramatic purpose of allowing him to escape the full, opprobrious connotations of his behavior.”17 She concludes that the presentation of Polemon’s misdeed as a mistake covers for Glykera’s lack of a formal pardon.18 R.L.
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