Cratinus and the Art of Comedy (review)

Emmanuela Bakola's work Cratinus and the Art of Comedy is an invaluable resource for every theatre historian discomfited by the need to base assumptions about the playwriting style and staging techniques of fifth-century Athenian comedy solely upon the works of Aristophanes, the era's only comic playwright for whom we have complete play texts. Bakola's book joins a growing body of scholarship that explores the extant fragments by artists like Eupolis and Cratinus, Aristophanes' comic play-writing contemporaries and rivals. Bakola's work is written primarily for fellow classicists, in that she assumes a reading audience well-versed in both classical Greek literature and language. However, theatre historians will glean much insight from Cratinus and the Art of Comedy concerning the breadth and depth of non-Aristophanic comedy.

Considered to be one of the finest comic playwrights of old comedy, Cratinus preceded Aristophanes on the ancient stage. Thus, Bakola argues, Aristophanes' old comic style should be understood to have emerged, at least in part, out of certain comic precedents established by Cratinus, such as his engagement with contemporary topics, development of comic playwriting structure, and use of theatricality for comic effect. Exploring the complex creativity of Cratinus through an examination of his fragmentary texts, Bakola demonstrates the vibrant place he holds within the evolution of old comedy. Acknowledging that much previous scholarship on fragmentary comic playwrights has depended upon the works of Aristophanes as the only available comparative framework, Bakola pointedly lays claim to an analytical approach that is not "Aristophanocentric." Her study, by contrast, strives to establish a new framework that allows for a more nuanced, open engagement of Cratinus's art, one not solely dependent on the standards of his rival and successor, but that uses Aristophanes "in a disciplined manner" (8). Bakola does not approach Cratinus's work chronologically, nor does she discuss every available fragment of every work or narratively reconstruct any of his plays; rather, she explores his work "thematically." Each chapter of her book examines a different creative facet of Cratinus's process, such as his exploration of ancient tragedy and comedy's use of satyr motifs, discussing key plays from different points of inquiry across multiple chapters.

One of the recurring themes of Bakola's study is Cratinus's intertextual and cross-generic engagement with other literary artists and genres, as demonstrated in chapter 1, "Poetic Persona and Poetic Voice," in which she discusses how he takes up the nondramatic literary forms of epic and poetry. In chapter 2, "Cratinus and the Satyr Play," she examines how the themes and structures of his plays—particularly Dionysalexandros—echo those of satyr plays. This particular discussion is especially valuable to theatre scholars in that not only does it offer a fascinating analysis of Cratinus's cross-generic technique (that is, comedy infused with satyr-play elements), but it also fosters a greater appreciation of the genre of the satyr play.

For the theatre scholar, chapter 3, "Cratinus and Tragedy," offers some of Bakola's most thought-provoking analyses. Acknowledging that old comedy's fascination with tragedy is not a new idea (Aristophanes' engagement with Euripides being well established), Bakola argues that Cratinus's use of tragedy is more nuanced. His "interaction with tragedy was a less dominant feature of his poetics," as he relied on a "far broader spectrum of literary intertexts" (178), often engaging multiple tragedies and comedies at one time in a single play. Comparing and contrasting the intertextual relationship between Aristophanic comedy and Euripidean tragedy and that between Cratinus's comedy and Aeschylean tragedy, Bakola notes that both comic playwrights self-consciously engaged the works of the popular tragedians of their particular generation, concluding that there was a palpable alliance of old comedy with the staged tragedy of its era. Of particular note in this chapter is her discussion of the recurring motif of the suppliant in the comic and tragic works of numerous playwrights and her close analysis of the debt Cratinus's Drapetides owes to Aeschylus's Hiketides (The Suppliants...