Laughing with Ancient Greeks. Examples of Comic Use of Metres and Sounds in Aristophanes

Greek Comedy was one of the most popular performative genres in antiquity. In particular during the 5th century in Athens, comedy was part of important festivals connected with Dionysus, taking place in theatre and collecting not only citizens but also foreign people. Comedy adopted all kinds of resources for making people laugh, and to gain the victory in the “agon”: apart from the aspects connected with the “lexis”, even masks, costumes, gestures, and music, were used by poets in many different ways in order to obtain funny effects. While consistent attention is generally paid to characters and to their comic speaking, very little is said about musical comedy techniques. Analyzing the metrical structures of the songs, and paying attention to scenes containing references to musicians and musical instruments, allow us to identify precise ways of “musical comedy”, more or less connected to the semantics of the text and to the scene in general. This paper aims to enter the poet’s laboratory, and to show, through a brief selection of passages from Aristophanes’ plays, how ancient Greeks had fun from music in comedy.