Greek and Roman Comedy: Translations and Interpretations of Four Representative Plays

Dance, Old Man, Dance! The Torture of Knemon in Menander's Dyskolos

1. For Greek and Roman assessments of Menander’s talent, see testimonia 32–61 (A. Körte, Menander quae supersunt [Leipzig, 1951]). 2. P. Green, Alexander to Actium: The Hellenistic Age (London, 1990), 71–79, provides a critical assessment of Menander’s talent. For an account of ancient and modern views of Menandrian comedy, see E. W. Handley, The Dyskolos of Menander (Cambridge, 1965), 12–17. DANCE, OLD MAN, DANCE! THE TORTURE OF KNEMON IN MENANDER’S DYSKOLOS IN 1959 the sands of Egypt surrendered a papyrus book that contained large portions of three plays by Menander, whose works had been lost since late antiquity. This find produced great excitement among scholars of ancient literature because it provided the first substantial sample of Greek New Comedy, which had been known only through scattered fragments and the Latin adaptations of Roman comic playwrights. The praise that Menander had garnered in the later Hellenistic and early Roman periods heightened the anticipation that preceded the publication of the papyrus.1 Most scholars were certain that this find would at long last confirm the judgment of Aristophanes of Byzantium, a renowned Hellenistic philologist and head of the library of ancient Alexandria: that among Greek poets, Menander took second place only to Homer (testimonium 61c Körte). When the plays were finally published, many proclaimed them works of genius. Some, however, were gravely disappointed. One critic even went so far as to call them “second-rate hackwork.”2 The greatest dispute has focused on Dyskolos, the only one of Menander’s plays that has survived in its entirety (only a few lines have been lost). Even though this play earned Menander first prize from the Athenians in 316 b.c., it has brought criticism from some modern scholars primarily because of its seemingly unneces02A -T1535-P2 2/20/01 5:34 PM Page 96 Dance, Old Man, Dance! 97 3. N. J. Lowe, “Tragic Space and Comic Timing in Menander’s Dyskolos,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 34 (1987): 129. 4. E.g., K. Reckford, “The Dyskolos of Menander,” Studies in Philology 58 (1961): 19. 5. B. van Groningen, “The Delineation of Character in Menander’s Dyscolus,” Recherches de papyrologie 1 (1961) 111; W. G. Arnott, Menander, Plautus, Terence (Greece and Rome: New Surveys in the Classics 9; Oxford, 1975), 20; and S. Goldberg, The Making of Menander’s Comedy (Berkeley, 1980), 86. sary farcical ending. While each reader must reach his own conclusion about the literary merits of the play as a whole, a better understanding of its ending may remove some of the tarnish from Menander’s reputation. N. J. Lowe expresses the puzzlement that many readers feel about the ending of Dyskolos: “[it] suffers from a puzzling finale in which the plot has to be awkwardly cranked back into life after what appears a perfectly satisfactory resolution in the fourth act. Cnemon has delivered the definitive recantation speech that is so much a pattern in Menander, and the lovers have permission to marry with all financial obstacles removed. Why this apparent anticlimax, at a point when the play is apparently over? What, in fact, is the purpose of the final scenes?”3 Many scholars dismiss the humiliation of Knemon as little more than Menander’s attempt to pander to the lowest common denominator in his audience by loading the final scene with base humor. Others point to New Comedy’s tendency to devote the ending of the play to the reformation of the character (often called the “blocking character”) who has attempted to impede the successful resolution of the problem at the heart of the play; he must be humiliated and then reintegrated into the group from which he has become alienated.4 Knemon certainly fits this description: his misanthropic behavior threatens to frustrate Pan’s scheme to marry Knemon’s pious daughter to Sostratos. It might be argued that these problems were resolved after Knemon’s rescue from the well, when he abandons his belief that he can live without the help of others and gives Gorgias complete authority to oversee his affairs, which includes the betrothal of his daughter to Sostratos. But the resolution of the family’s problems is only partial: even though his daughter is free to marry, Knemon himself is not completely reformed. Far from integrating himself into society, Knemon’s grant of power of attorney to Gorgias enables him to cut himself off from all contact with the outside world.5 His...