This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
©Damen, 2009
Classical Drama and Theatre
| Syllabus | |||
Brief Overview of Menander's Surviving Corpus
| Dyscolus ("Old Cantankerous"): This is the only play of Menander to survive entire. The curmudgeonly old Knemon lives far outside Athens, with only his nubile daughter and an old serving woman. One day when the wealthy young Sostratos is riding in the country, he sees Knemon's daughter and falls in love. He runs into several obstacles in trying to ask her father for her hand in marriage. Even though it is a union the old grump should be happy to make, Knemon wants no one around and chases everyone away, until he suffers near catastrophe and death. Only then does the churlish loner give in and allow the marriage. In the final act of the play, the lower-class characters exact their revenge on Knemon, in an effort to teach him some civility. |
| Samia ("The Woman of Samos"): see Chapter 10. |
| Aspis ("The Shield"): Only the first two acts and some of the third remain complete. Kleostratos has gone off to war and left behind in Athens a young wife. When (false) reports come of his death, his oldest brother Smikrines claims the right to marry Kleostratos' young widow—the Athenian law of the "heiress" requires that a wife's inheritance from her deceased husband stay with his family, forcing her to marry one of his male relatives—not so much in order to get his hands on the girl as her money. To divert this disaster, Cleostratos' faithful servant Daos stages the false death of Cleostratos' other brother Chairestratos in an effort to distract the greedy Smikrines with an even greater inheritance. Daos' misuse of tragic quotes in overplaying the report of Chairestratos' (false) death is unusually farcical for Menander. It's unclear how the plot resolved. |
| Sicyonius ("The Man from Sicyon"): The later parts of the play are better preserved than the earlier ones. A classic tale of discovering lost children, this comedy involves pirates and yet another pair of Moschion and Smikrines, those perennial favorites of New Comedy, as well as a quite likeable braggart soldier named Stratophanes ("The Army Appears") who gets the girl he loves in the end. The best scene surviving features a messenger who seems to have walked straight out of Euripides' Orestes and reports the proceedings of a trial to decide the fate of the young girl whose fortunes drive the plot. If any drama by Menander demonstrates that Euripides was the "Father of New Comedy," this is it. |
| Perikeiromene ("The Rape of the Locks"): Another play revolving around the fortunes of a soldier, in this case, Polemon ("War") who is in love with a girl named Glykera ("Sweet"). After seeing her embrace a young man named Moschion who lives next door, Polemon flies into a rage and cuts off some of her hair. Moschion is, of course, Glykera's brother, though only she knows that. Polemon immediately regrets his barberous barbarity but the "shorn girl" (the literal translation of the title) flees next door where Moschion thinks his sex appeal has lured her. As he preens and plans his next move with his servant Daos, that rare thing in Menander, a truly hilarious scene, ensues. But the best moment in the play comes in the next act when Polemon begs an old friend to plead his case to Glykera and, as proof of his love for her, insists he come inside the soldier's house and see all the beautiful dresses he has bought for her. A soldier parading the fine attire he's bought for his beloved? Only in Menander. |
| Misoumenos ("The Man She Hated"): A badly preserved play but with remains coming from all five acts. Clearly, it was a drama beloved in antiquity, to judge from the numbers of different papyri which have emerged with this comedy on them. It is only our misfortune that we have not found more of it, and if there is hope of recovering any particular play by Menander, it is this one. The plot centers on a soldier named Thrasonides ("Son of Daring") who is desperately in love with a young woman Krateia ("Power") but she hates him, as the title suggests, apparently because she believes he's killed her brother, which, of course, he hasn't. The opening scene in which Thrasonides paces outside his own house, afraid to go in and face Krateia, and laments to the Night his misfortunes is a classic instance of the Menandrean inversion of character type and a rare, almost lyrical moment in New Comedy. |
| Other Short Fragments (The Farmer; The Toady; The Harpist; The Hero; The Phantom; The Girl Possessed; The Girl From Perinthos): A collection of short fragments from Menandrean comedy which hints at the wealth of drama we would have if more of Menander should emerge from the sands of Egypt. Classic New Comedy complications like unexpected pregnancies, braggart cooks and hungry parasites weave in and around unique and fascinating situations such as that of The Phantom in which a young man has fallen in love with a vision he saw at the family shrine. In reality, this "phantom" is the daughter of his step-mother who has excavated a secret tunnel behind the shrine to the house next door where she is keeping her illegitimate daughter by a previous marriage. |
Return to the List of Plays for Section 3
| Syllabus | |||
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.