The number of speaking actors in Old Comedy

Abstract

The number of speaking actors in Old Comedy has been much discussed, but no consensus has been reached. The old assumption that the number was three, as in tragedy, was shaken when it was realized that some scenes of Aristophanes have four characters on-stage at once, all taking part in the dialogue: for example, in Lys. 77–253 we have Lysistrate, Kalonike, Myrrhine, and Lampito, and in Frogs 1414–81 we have Dionysos, Aiskhylos, Euripides, and Plouton. Rees therefore argued that there was no fixed number, but that view was not generally accepted. A more widely held view is that there were three principal actors with additional performers for small parts. However, there is no evidence contemporary with Aristophanes which distinguishes three actors from the others in this way, and it is probable that writers of later periods who mention three actors are referring to their own times and did not have authentic information about the fifth century. The passage which DFA, p. 149, seems to regard as the most trustworthy is in a brief account of comedy attributed to Tzetzes: πιγενμενος δ Κρατῖνος κατστησε μν πρτον τ ν τῇ κωμῳδᾳ πρσωπα μεχρ τριν, στσας τν ταξαν4DFA paraphrases this as ‘Cratinus reduced the disorderliness and, in some sense, fixed the number of regular actors at three’. But πρσωπα means ‘masks’ or ‘characters’; it does not mean ‘actors’ (for which the Greek word is ὑποκριτα). What the writer meant by saying that Kratinos settled the masks or characters in comedy at ‘up to three’ is not clear, but his statement is useless as evidence for the number of actors.