A Chorus of Clowns and Masked Comic Theater II

As the playwrights were developing scripts for satyrs, in the countryside Greek Dorian mimes were creating a popular rural comic theater. Mime here means "mimic," and the Greek mimes were considerably noisy compared with the silent affairs of modern mime. These performances included song, dance, and the improvised dialogue between favorite stock characters that appeared in hilarious comic sketches. Costumes included broad, grotesque masks, wild hair, and large phalluses dangling beneath too short tunics, all which suggest they too were influenced by the early masked revels of the Dionysian cults.

As early as 581 B.C. the citizens of the Dorian city of Megara were producing comedies in which ordinary men interacted with a host of gods and devils in a frankly burlesque performance. Nicoll suggests, "[T]he form this burlesque took evidently called for the dragging down of the divine legends to the level of ordinary life. Of prime importance it is to note that burlesque of the divine or heroic legend has always been associated with all forms of mimic drama." These comedies were not scripted plays, but largely improvised, by both professional and amateur troupes of actors composed of both men and women. The stock characters of these plays included Herakles (the god whose misadventures with humans seems to have been a favorite plot), an old man with a pointed beard, an old–hag–like woman, a fool, an incompetent doctor, and at least two slaves, who were often thieves and gluttons. The performance was livened up with operatic bits, when the speakers mixed dialogue with snatched songs, a few dance steps, and perhaps a bit of sleight of hand. Occasionally, there were dancers in animal masks of pigs, asses, and cocks, along with jugglers, acrobats, and fire eaters.

Over time, the traditions of the Dorian mimes migrated northward toward Italy. Named for the Phlyakes, "Gossip Players," the Phlyax comic theater developed in the Greek colonies of Southern Italy and served as a bridge between the early Greek comic theater of Megara and the later evolution of comedy in Rome. Like the Dorian mimes, Phlyax comedies formed around mythological burlesques in which ordinary citizens became entangled with legendary heroes, especially Odysseus and Herakles.

Perhaps these two figures were so popular because they echoed the transgressive nature of rural comic theater. If one's life was in the hands of fickle gods, certainly these two human characters had had more than their fair share of entanglements. Odysseus was a cunning enough trickster to thwart the gods (and even sleep with a goddess or two). Despite being half divine, Herakles often suffered at the hands of the goddess Hera, who regarded this illegitimate son of Zeus as an insult to her dignity.

We can get a vivid impression of what Phlyax comedies were like from vases, painted with scenes from the plays, showing these two heroic figures, often in compromising or questionable positions. On one vase, Herakles follows a veiled woman with lusty intentions, only to draw back in horror when she turns and reveals her hag's face. On other vases, Herakles uses his club to batter down a door while his servant, seated on a horse, keeps guard; Odysseus battles an old man for possession of the image of Pallas he has stolen from Troy. Zeus, a crowd pleaser no doubt because of his persistent womanizing, appears on vases ogling a woman in a window while an old man holds a ladder for the god to climb. There are depictions of drunken actors prancing before Dionysus, and various nymphs gazing down from their windows looking amused while hapless slaves try to pull and push the elderly centaur Cheiron up the ladder to meet them.

The Phlyax plays combined these mythological burlesques with comedies of everyday life: the agony of a hangover when returning from a revel, the struggle to pay the rent, and many scenes involving the preparation of food and feasting. The cast of characters included ordinary unmasked characters, as well as masked stock characters who were becoming ever more solidified in their archetypal roles. For example, the masks of the old men always showed them to be either bald with small pointed beards, or snub–nosed and clean shaven. The mask of a peasant had a small white cap with two peaks, almost like a cockscomb (bearing a striking similarity to the later fool's caps of the Middle Ages). There are several slave masks with similar features; a stump nose, a wide opened mouth, and worried brow.

The Phlyakes players introduced a new slave mask, with a bald head and a sharply raised eyebrow that gave the face a wild, asymmetrical look. Phlyax costumes were simple; short tunics over thin leggings that created the impression of nakedness. Many of the characters wore heavy padding around the middle for a paunch, or on the hip to create a large rump (not unlike the hind end of an ass.) The settings for the plays were simple, suggested more by props than scenery: rudimentary altars, thrones for important characters, a laurel bush to represent a grove, and a tripod with a wooden structure atop intended to be Apollo's temple at Delphi.

 

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