Knocking on Knemon's Door: Stagecraft and Symbolism in the Dyskolos

Ambivius Turpio would have found the Dyskolos exactly the sort of play his troupe was always commissioned with (or so he complains), a fabula laboriosa.¹ Much of the play's physical humor involves characters busily coming and going at the shrine of Pan, with many of them knocking—at their peril—on Knemon's door.² Given that these stage buildings figure so prominently in the action, it is no surprise that their important thematic role, as well as the play's distinctive use of stage space, have attracted scholarly attention. Two stimulating studies, published within a year of each other in the late 80s, elucidated the spatial symbolism of the Dyskolos in terms of binary oppositions. G. Hoffmann revealed the sociological opposition of rural poverty vs. urban wealth encoded in the two houses, arguing that their juxtaposition created an atopia, a setting at the periphery of society where these groups could effect a reunion impossible in any real place and time. Independently, N. J. Lowe identified similar "thematic polarities " (though these are based, he cautioned, on oppositions more complex than simple class divisions) and explored how these are mapped onto both visible stage space and imagined spaces off-stage. Just as the left parodos and Knemon 's house carry different meanings from the right parodos and Kallippides' house, so the private interior of Knemon's house contrasts with the public space in front of it.³ In this, Lowe convincingly demonstrated, Menander adopts the techniques of late fifth-century Attic tragedy.⁴ Both studies showed well how Menander could project the thematic tensions of the play onto visual elements of the stage. In an effort further to connect symbolism and stagecraft, this paper will explore how the playwright individualized the stage door allotted to Knemon, making it a symbol, unique to this play, of the old man. It is actually the door, not the house, that stands for Knemon when he is off-stage, frightening and provoking other characters, keeping the Girl in and her suitor out, and marking the boundary he so obsessively defends against outside world. This makes it possible for characters to enact the play's thematic conflicts as they dispute the meanings attached to the door and quarrel over its physical use. The play's famous door-knocking scenes will be shown to draw on an old tradition, the "hostile doorkeeper" routine familiar from Old Comedy. This study will conclude by attempting to situate these scenes within New Comic stagecraft conventions, arguing that they are unusual but not uncharacteristic of Menander and may have a precedent in Euripides.

Setting the Stage

It is impossible to discuss any point of Menandrean stagecraft without considering briefly the physical layout of the performance space. Most of his plays were initially produced in the stone theater attributed to Lycurgus and we may assume that they were written, at the very least, to be performable there (although they had to travel and could not be too dependent on specific facilities).⁵ For present purposes, there is no need to go into the vexed question of the skene in this theater. It must have met the minimal requirements for staging these plays: three functioning doors, with a usable performance area in front of them.⁶ Most, perhaps all, of Menander's plays involve only two houses, but the Dyskolos and the Aulularia have a shrine that requires a third stage-door.⁷ Service as a public building may have been the normal use for the larger central door that both "high" and "low" stages are believed to have had. On the question of the height of the stage, the Dyskolos is of limited help. The play only distinguishes between space near Knemon's door and space further away to which characters retreat in order to watch the door. This may take advantage of the deeper (15ft.) "low" stage, but could certainly be staged on shallower (9ft.) "high" stage.⁸ If there was, as has been suggested, a colonnade running in front of these ("low") stage doors,⁹ this...