Menander and New Comedy

Shakespeare’s relation to his classical predecessors has been studied and pondered from a multiplicity of angles, from the perspective of specific borrowings and analogues in the work of Baldwin, Bullough and others, to the structural and thematic relationships suggested by Barber and more recently Leo Salingar and Robert Weimann. Inquiry into the influence of New Comedy on Shakespeare has generally fallen into two major areas: Saturnalia or the festive element which Barber so cogently explored in Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy, and stock characterization and plot which Bernard Knox delineated in his classic essay on The Tempest and ancient comedy. ¹ Though Salingar has contributed astute readings of often ignored classical plays, and Weimann has assembled often overlooked popular source materials, both remain essentially within the parameters defined by earlier scholars. Both give short shrift to Menander and the New Comic tradition he represents. Careful reading of the extant plays of Menander as well as his Roman imitators, however, suggests another field of comparison which serves to illuminate both the nature of Shakespeare’s debt to the earliest practitioners of comedy and his own originality.