New Comedy
New Comedy, the name given to the kind of comedy that superseded the Old Comedy of Aristophanes in Athens from the late 4th century BCE, providing the basis for later Roman comedy and eventually for the comic theatre of Molière and Shakespeare. Preceded by a phase of ‘middle comedy’ (of which almost nothing has survived), New Comedy abandoned topical satire in favour of fictional plots based on contemporary life: these portrayed the tribulations of young lovers caught up among stock characters such as the miserly father and the boastful soldier. The chorus was reduced to a musical interlude. The chief exponent of New Comedy was Menander, of whose many works only one complete play, Dyskolos (The Bad‐Tempered Man, 317 BCE), survives, along with several fragments. Greek New Comedy was further adapted and developed in Rome by Plautus and Terence in the early 2nd century BCE. See also romantic comedy.
