Menander
born c.
342 bc
died c. 292 bc
Athenian dramatist whom ancient critics
considered the supreme poet of Greek New
Comedy—i.e., the last flowering of
Athenian stage comedy. During his life,
his success was limited; although he
wrote more than 100 plays, he won only
eight victories at Athenian dramatic
festivals.
Comedy
had by his time abandoned public affairs
and was concentrating instead on
fictitious characters from ordinary
life; the role of the chorus was
generally confined to the performance of
interludes between acts. Actors’ masks
were retained but were elaborated to
provide for the wider range of
characters required by a comedy of
manners and helped an audience without
playbills to recognize these characters
for what they were. Menander, who wrote
in a refined Attic, by his time the
literary language of the Greek-speaking
world, was masterly at presenting such
characters as stern fathers, young
lovers, greedy demimondaines, intriguing
slaves, and others.
Menander’s nicety of touch and skill at
comedy in a light vein is clearly
evident in the Dyscolus in the character
of the gruff misanthrope Knemon, while
the subtle clash and contrast of
character and ethical principle in such
plays as Perikeiromenē (interesting for
its sympathetic treatment of the
conventionally boastful soldier) and
Second Adelphoe constitute perhaps his
greatest achievement.
Menander’s works were much adapted by
the Roman writers Plautus and Terence,
and through them he influenced the
development of European comedy from the
Renaissance. Their work also supplements
much of the lost corpus of his plays, of
which no complete text exists, except
that of the Dyscolus, first printed in
1958 from some leaves of a papyrus codex
acquired in Egypt.
The
known facts of Menander’s life are few.
He was allegedly rich and of good
family, and a pupil of the philosopher
Theophrastus, a follower of Aristotle.
In 321 Menander produced his first play,
Orgē (“Anger”). In 316 he won a prize at
a festival with the Dyscolus and gained
his first victory at the Dionysia
festival the next year. By 301 Menander
had written more than 70 plays. He
probably spent most of his life in
Athens and is said to have declined
invitations to Macedonia and Egypt. He
allegedly drowned while swimming at the
Piraeus (Athens’ port).
