A Chorus of Clowns (Continued)

by Midori Snyder

As the playwrights were developing scripts for satyrs, in the countryside Greek Dorian mimes were creating a popular rural comic theatre. 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 theatre 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.

After the demise of the Phlyax sometime in 300 B.C., the comedic theatre found a new expression in the indigenous fabula Atellana from the Oscan town Atella in the Campania (near Naples.) The Atella used the familiar masks and stock characters of ancient comedy but drew their plots almost entirely from the rural life of their audiences with only rare appearances of mythological and legendary figures. These stories were rife with all the sins and scandals of any community. In these short Atellan farcical plays, we begin to see the first inklings of a not–yet–born Italian comic theater, the Commedia dell' Arte. As with the Commedia, the Atellan farces crowded the stage with stock characters, fools and tricksters, known by their appetites and foibles; and actors spent their careers polishing the roles of these specific masks. Bucco, the first of four stock characters, was a boisterous but stupid fool, who delighted in bragging and eating. His mask had a high forehead, puffed out cheeks and wide opened mouth (bucca means cheek or mouth). Dossenuss appeared as a scary mask with an exaggerated jaw full of teeth and a huge hooked nose. In small statues he was shown hunchbacked and corpulent, often with a large wart on the end of his beak–nose. Like Bucco, he was considered a fool — but of a higher order, for he was witty, malicious, and clever enough to obtain his food at the public's expense. Maccus was known as a glutton and clumsy, head–banging, toe–stubbing fool. His mask was round, plump, and bald headed, emphasizing his soft, pudgy features. The name of Pappus, the last of the four, came from the Greek pappos meaning papa. An old man with a bald head and straggling beard, he was stupid and wandering in mind, and often taken advantage of by younger companions.

The Atellan farces became popular enough to spread in professional troupes from Naples up to Rome where they were beloved by audiences for their burlesques, their rude wit, and bold political satire. On occasion performers got away with outrageous political barbs, and audiences roared their approval when, for example, an excessive Emperor was slyly referred to as "the old–he goat." But there were risks involved in pushing the satire too far. The Emperor Caligula once went so far as to burn the writer of an Atellan farce alive. While condemned by the intellectual upper classes as merely obscene, there is a good deal of evidence to suggest the Atellan farce mixed delicate phrasing and a rich tradition of puns with its naughty rustic wit. The Latin may have been in the vulgate, but it was wielded by clever comedians who knew how to manipulate the language. City youths with time on their hands formed small groups to bring Atellan farces to the public in various venues while professional Atellan troupes performed in small neighborhood theaters and at royal banquets, alongside poets, harp players, and tragedians. The Atellan farces flourished as a popular entertainment for almost 150 years before being slowly eclipsed by the more elaborate mimic dramas approved by the state.

These early forms of comic theatre laid the foundations of a popular, low brow comedy. In Mask Mimes and Miracles, Nicoll describes it thus: "All make free use of every means offered by the stage. Music, dancing, and acrobatics mingle with regular dialogue. The dramatic poet for the most part remains in the background; much of the mimic activity is purely improvisational. All keep strictly to life. There may be exaggeration, but there is no artificiality. The gods are brought from the high paths of Olympus to walk the common streets along with grotesquely conceived characters of the day. The bombastic and grandiloquent language of tragedy is dragged from its tottering throne and mocked at. Naturally, this being so, all these forms of drama are unconfined in scope; they sweep not only over the whole of human life, but, in their secular tendencies and in their general appeal, embrace along with these all creations of myth, all abstract figures of the popular imagination." While court jesters and "wise fools" who attended royalty offered solo performances like a standup comic, the Dorian mimes, satyr plays, Phlyax, and Atellan farces created an unruly crowd of clowns and fools in whose convoluted plots and antics an audience might see its own human weaknesses, its foolishness, and its appetites played out in frank, good humor.