The Knights - The Knights and Old Comedy

The Knights and Old Comedy

The Knights is one of the earliest of Aristophanes' surviving plays and generally it obeys the conventions of Old Comedy. There are some significant variations in this play:

• Agon: An agon is symmetrical scene in which a debate is conducted in long lines, typically anapests. In a few cases however anapests are used to indicate arguments that the poet wants to be taken seriously while iambs are used to indicate arguments not to be taken seriously. Examples of this are found in The Clouds (lines 949-1104) and in The Frogs (lines 895-1098). The agon in The Knights is another example. It takes the form of a debate on the Pnyx between Cleon and the sausage-seller. The first half is in anapests and it features serious criticisms of Cleon (lines 756-835) but the second half is in iambs and the criticisms of Cleon are comically absurd (lines 836-940).
• Concluding episodes: It is typical for an agon to result in the protagonist's victory and thereafter the action becomes a farcical anticlimax characterized by the comings and goings of 'unwelcome visitors'. The agon in The Knights results in the conventional victory for the protagonist but the anticlimax involves a highly comic variation - the only unwelcome visitor in this play is Cleon, who will not accept defeat and who thus inflicts upon himself a series of defeats that is conventionally reserved for a series of secondary characters.
• Exodos: Old Comedy mandates a happy ending that culminates in a final song to mark the cast's departure. There is no such song in The Knights and it is possible that it has been lost in the transmission of the ancient manuscripts.

Minor variations include:

• Prologue: Other plays by Aristophanes begin quietly, with characters seated, lying or standing. This play begins with an unusually dramatic entry - two characters run onto the stage howling. The prologue here is otherwise quite conventional.
• Parodos: The Chorus of knights runs into the theatre and immediately skirmishes with Paphlagonian - such a rapid entry into the action is unusual.
• Symmetrical scenes: Old Comedy is full of scenes in which two sections resemble each other in meter and length. This play features a symmetrical scene inside another symmetrical scene - one pair of scenes (303-21 and 382-96) features trochaic tetrameter and the other (322-381 and 398-456) features iambic tetrameter.
• Parabasis: It is conventional for the Chorus to address the audience while the actors are offstage and usually there are two such addresses - one in the middle and a second address later in the play. The Knights exemplifies these conventions but it also provides a thematic link between the first and second parabasis. The first parabasis (lines 498-610) features a description of horses that talk and act like good men. The second parabasis (lines 1264-1315) features a description of ships that talk and act like good women. However, it has been suggested, on the basis of ancient commentaries, that the second parabasis was actually written by Eupolis, another comic poet.