Search Results: City comedy

Ancient Greek comedy was a popular and influential form of theatre performed across ancient Greece from the 6th century BCE. The most famous playwrights of the genre were Aristophanes and Menander and their works and those of their contemporaries...

Plato's Euthyphro is a Socratic dialogue on the concept of piety whose meaning and purpose continue to be debated. In reading the work only as a serious inquiry into the definition of an abstract concept, however, one is apt to miss the comical...

Greek theatre likely sprang from the lyrical performance of ancient epic poetry and the rituals performed in the worship of the god Dionysos where goats were sacrificed and participants wore masks. From the 6th century BCE, Greek tragedy...

Greek theatre began in the 6th century BCE in Athens with the performance of tragedy plays at religious festivals. These, in turn, inspired the genre of Greek comedy plays. The two types of Greek drama would be hugely popular and performances...

Titus Maccius Plautus, better known simply as Plautus (actually a nickname meaning 'flatfoot'), was, between c. 205 and 184 BCE, a Roman writer of comedy plays, specifically the fabulae palliatae, which had a Greek-themed storyline. His plays...

The origin of Ancient Greek comedy has been lost to time, however, we know from pottery depicting men as actors dressing up in wild costumes that it was a firmly established genre by the 6th century BCE. Ancient Greek comedy can be split...

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) was an Italian poet and politician most famous for his Divine Comedy (c. 1319) where he descends through Hell, climbs Purgatory, and arrives at the illumination of Paradise. Dante meets many historical characters...

Cratinus was a highly successful writer of Attic Old Comedy, but the very fragmentary nature of his surviving plays means that he is not as well remembered as Aristophanes (eleven of whose plays come down to us intact). Despite this, it is...

A terracotta comedy theatre mask from Roman Tarentum, southern Italy. 2nd-1st century BCE. (National Archaeological Museum of Taranto, Italy)

A terracotta comedy mask, 200-250 BCE. (Agora Museum, Athens)