1
Comedy, as we have said, is a representation of inferior people, not indeed in the full sense of the word bad, but the laughable is a species of the base or ugly.Ugly was to a Greek an equivalent of bad. The persons in Comedy are inferior (see chapter 2.), but have only one of the many qualities which make up Ugliness or Badness, viz. the quality of being ludicrous and therefore in some degree contemptible.
2
It consists in some blunder or ugliness that does not cause pain or disaster, an obvious example being the comic mask which is ugly and distorted but not painful.
3
The various stages of tragedy and the originators of each are well known, but comedy remains obscure because it was not at first treated seriously. Indeed it is only quite late in its historyProbably about 465 B.C. that the archon granted a chorus for a comic poet; before that they were volunteers.In the fifth century dramatists submitted their plays to the archon in charge of the festival at which they wished them to be performed. He selected the number required by the particular festival, and to the poets thus selected granted a chorus, i.e., provided a choregus who paid the expenses of the chorus. The earlier volunteers had themselves paid for and produced their plays.
4
Comedy had already taken certain forms before there is any mention of those who are called its poets. Who introduced masks or prologues, the number of actors, and so on, is not known.
5
Plot making [Epicharmus and Phormis]Epicharmus and Phormis, being both early Sicilian comedians, are appropriate here. Either part of a sentence is lost or an explanatory note has got into the text. originally came from Sicily,
6
and of the Athenian poets CratesFragments of his comedies survive, dating about the middle of the fifth century B.C. was the first to give up the lampooning form and to generalize his dialogue and plots.
