Dyskolos
Dyskolos
A misanthropic old man's stubborn isolation from his neighbors and even his own family can be broken down by a young man's persistent courtship of his daughter and by chance misfortune forcing him to accept help, showing that ordinary social bonds, not heroic action, resolve the real conflicts of everyday life.
- the only nearly-complete surviving Menander play
- New Comedy's domestic, non-political focus
- reconciliation through patience, not trickery
- recovery from a mid-twentieth-century papyrus
- template for Roman and later European comedy
Dyskolos (The Grouch), the only play by Menander to survive nearly complete, recovered on a papyrus not published until 1958, won first prize at the Lenaia festival in 316 BC and exemplifies the domestic New Comedy that succeeded Aristophanes's political Old Comedy after Athenian democracy's decline. Its plot follows Sostratos, a wealthy young Athenian who falls in love with the daughter of Knemon, a bitter farmer isolated from society, and who must win the old man over through patient goodwill rather than trickery. The play's domestic template was adapted almost unchanged by the Roman playwrights Plautus and Terence and shaped the entire subsequent tradition of European romantic comedy.
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