Getting It

Zusammenfassung

Professor Amott describes a wide variety of techniques and devices used at the beginnings of their plays by Aristophanes and Menander to secure their spectators’ attention yet not tax them with too many details all at once. He focuses on the two playwrights’ parallel and divergent manners of presenting expository materials needed by the audience to make sense of the action as it unfolds. Aristophanes, on the one hand, uses visual and verbal tricks that puzzle the spectators and cause them to ask: “What’s going to happen?” “Why is this situation reversed?” ”What does the playwright have up his sleeve?” and even (locally) “What could that strange word mean?” Sometimes the answers are not far off, but often they are delayed, so that tension is attenuated over a span of time, from the moment the playwright presents the visual or verbal enigma until its clarification. In short, Aristophanes captures and holds audience attention by releasing “expository snippets” as the play moves forward. Menander follows the same practice, along with the puzzle and occasional para prosdokian but what Professor Amott highlights as Menander’s hallmark is the playwright’s use of plausibly structured, carefully integrated plotting, consistent presentation of character, direct address to the audience in the opening prologue, and a seemingly casual mention of the title of his play in the opening scenes.