Parabasis
Encyclopedia
In Greek comedy, the parabasis (plural parabases; ) is a point in the play when all of the actors leave the stage and the chorus
is left to address the audience directly. The chorus partially or completely abandons its dramatic role to talk to the audience on a topic completely irrelevant to the subject of the play.
For example, in the play The Wasps
by Aristophanes
the first parabasis is about Aristophanes' career as a playwright to date, while the second parabasis is shorter, and contains a string of in-jokes about local characters who would be well known to the ancient Athenian audience (e.g. the politician Cleon
).
A parabasis usually consists of three songs (S) alternating with three speeches (s) in the order S-s-S-s-S-s. The first speech often ends with a passage which is to be rattled off very quickly (theoretically in one breath - called a πνῖγος - pnigos).
The parabasis is exclusively a feature of Old Comedy
, and after the parabasis was abandoned the role of the chorus declined.
Greek chorus
A Greek chorus is a homogenous, non-individualised group of performers in the plays of classical Greece, who comment with a collective voice on the dramatic action....
is left to address the audience directly. The chorus partially or completely abandons its dramatic role to talk to the audience on a topic completely irrelevant to the subject of the play.
For example, in the play The Wasps
The Wasps
The Wasps is the fourth in chronological order of the eleven surviving plays by Aristophanes, the master of an ancient genre of drama called 'Old Comedy'. It was produced at the Lenaia festival in 422 BC, a time when Athens was enjoying a brief respite from The Peloponnesian War following a one...
by Aristophanes
Aristophanes
Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...
the first parabasis is about Aristophanes' career as a playwright to date, while the second parabasis is shorter, and contains a string of in-jokes about local characters who would be well known to the ancient Athenian audience (e.g. the politician Cleon
Cleon
Cleon was an Athenian statesman and a Strategos during the Peloponnesian War. He was the first prominent representative of the commercial class in Athenian politics, although he was an aristocrat himself...
).
A parabasis usually consists of three songs (S) alternating with three speeches (s) in the order S-s-S-s-S-s. The first speech often ends with a passage which is to be rattled off very quickly (theoretically in one breath - called a πνῖγος - pnigos).
The parabasis is exclusively a feature of Old Comedy
Old Comedy
Old Comedy is the first period of the ancient Greek comedy, according to the canonical division by the Alexandrian grammarians. The most important Old Comic playwright is Aristophanes, whose works, with their pungent political satire and abundance of sexual and scatological innuendo, effectively...
, and after the parabasis was abandoned the role of the chorus declined.
External links
- Early Greek Comedy - Mark Damen, Utah State University