Several studies of note have recently explored ‘paratragedy’ (comedy humorously exploiting tragedy), but Craig Jendza reverses the relationship, seeking instances from tragedy where the dramatist (usually Euripides) interacts with an earlier comic scene. This he calls ‘paracomedy’. Many would object that a comic moment is foreign to the accepted seriousness (spoudaios) of tragedy and that tragedy calling attention to another drama breaks the theatrical ‘fourth wall’. Jendza would argue that the ‘lightheartedness of comedy’ in a tragedy, such as Pentheus’ dressing scene, intensifies the coming horror, just as Dicaeopolis masquerading as the tragic Telephos ‘makes the audience laugh’ (39). He takes Cratinus’ marvellous coinage, ‘a Euripidaristophanizer’ (fr. 342), to mean first that both dramatists could be viewed as doing similar things, but also that they are engaging in a conscious professional rivalry (32–35). Jendza traces one such interaction from Euripides’ Telephus (438) through Acharnians, Helen, Andromeda and Thesmophoriazusae (a crucial text), to Orestes and Bacchae. For Jendza, ‘the heyday of paracomedy’ is the decade 415–405 (37). In the first chapter he lays down three criteria for ‘paracomedy’: (i) ‘distinctive correspondences’ between tragic and comic elements, (ii) priority of the comic elements, and (iii) authorial motivation and effect upon the spectators (17). In his conclusion he makes the good point that more than intertextuality is involved, that ‘intertheatricality’ might be a better term (165).
The core of the book lies in chapters 3 through 5, discussions of two tragedies already suspected of comic sympathies, Helen and Orestes. Chapter 3 regards Menelaus, a hero in ‘wretched rags’, as relating to Euripides’ earlier Telephus but through ‘the lens of Acharnians’ (100). But would most spectators know the Telephus from the tragic original or from the parody in comedy? In the next chapter, Jendza takes up Marshall’s suggestion that Helen is a pair of dramas, a tragic ‘Helen’ (1–385) and a comic ‘Menelaus’ (386–527). But where C.W. Marshall (The Structure and Performance of Euripides’ Helen (Cambridge 2014), 55–95) saw the ‘Menelaus’ as a humorous engagement with Proteus, the Oresteia’s lost satyr drama, Jendza sees Euripides as taking on Aristophanes’ comic criticisms and ‘reestablishing the superiority of the tragic genre’ (166). Incidentally, Victor Castellani (‘Notes on the Structure of Euripides’ Alcestis’, AJP 100 (1979), 487–96) had argued that in Alcestis, another ‘suspect’ play, we have a ‘tragic’ prologue at the beginning and then a ‘comic’ one when the slave enters at 747. Finally (chapter 5), he argues persuasively that the Orestes contains paracomical allusions to all four parodies in Thesmophoriazusae, and that ‘the play demonstrates a high level of cleverness and a subtle hand in their execution’ (213).
Some of Jendza’s examples of paracomedy Ifind less convincing. First, he argues (42–52) that the Eumenides displays several instances of comic influence, including the ‘episodic prologue’, which he finds in no other tragedy (but what about the opening of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris?). Ithink the fast-paced prologue has more to do with Aeschylus’ acceleration of the dramatic tempo in the second half of the trilogy. Second (206–12) he concludes from the description in the hypothesis to Orestes of the play’s ‘rather comic conclusion’ that Orestes’ threat to incinerate the palace comes from the closing scene of the revised Clouds. But since the 423 staged version of Clouds had a different ending and since this later Clouds was probably never performed, any direct influence seems unlikely. Could ‘rather comic’ (kōmikōteran) just mean a ‘happy ending’ (cf. Arist. Poet. 1453a35–39)? He argues (230–42) for Euripides’ lost Antiope frs 185–87 as a paracomedy of Thesmophoriazusae 148–67. But this assumes a late date for Antiope, based on Σ Frogs 52, which places the play ‘a little while before’ Frogs. The metrical evidence, however, suggests rather a date in the late 420s and the scholiast has likely confused Antiope with Antigone, certainly a late play. Alist of Euripides’ plays in the Roman inscription IG XIV 1154 lists ‘Antigone’ twice (column I6, 12) and omits ‘Antiope’. Finally, since so little remains of late fifth-century drama, there is a real danger of a post hoc propter hoc conclusion. Jendza sees (67–75) the frenzied dancing of Heracles as inspired by the inebriated performance of Philokleon at the end of Wasps and the noisy chorus that might disturb the sleeping Orestes as owing much to the boisterous chorus in Peace who Trygaeus fears may disturb War (309–10). But enthusiastic dancers and noisy choruses may just be a recurring feature of Athenian drama.
Jendza writes with intelligence and ingenuity, and with a lively enthusiasm that comes through on every page. His analysis of words is far-reaching: witness his running discussion of the significant terms palaios (‘old-fashioned’) and kainos (‘new-fangled’) and the play on xyrophorein (‘razor-bearing’)/xiphophorein (‘sword-bearing’) in Thesmophoriazusae and Orestes (175–84). And his command of the scholarship is impressive. He has succeeded in establishing ‘paracomedy’ as a subject worthy of further interest and study. One may raise an eyebrow (or two) at some of his suggestions, but his study will be the starting point for future discussions in the field.
