A collection of over 200 of the most interesting and important fragments of Greek comedy, accompanied by a commentary; an extensive introduction discussing the history of comic genre; a series of appendixes on the individual poets, the inscriptional evidence, and the like; and a complete translation of the fragments. Individual sections illustrate the earliest Greek comedy from Syracuse; the characteristic features of Athenian `Old', `Middle', and `New Comedy'; the comic presentation of politicians, philosophers, and women; the comic reception of other poetry; and many aspects of daily life, including dining and symposia.

The era of Old Comedy (ca. 485–ca. 380 BC), when theatrical comedy was created and established, is best known through the extant plays of Aristophanes. But the work of many other poets, including Cratinus and Eupolis, the other members, with Aristophanes, of the canonical Old Comic Triad, survives in fragments.

This 1996 text was the first detailed commentary on the fragments remaining from the plays of the Greek comic poet Alexis (c. 375-270 BC).

"The eleven plays by Aristophanes that have come donw to us intact brilliantly illuminate the eventful period spanned by his forty-year career ... But the Athenians knew much more of his work: over forty plays by Aristophanes were read in antiquity, of which nearly a thousand fragments survive ... Jeffrey Henderson's new ... Loeb edition of Aristophanes is completed by this volume containing what survives from, and about, his lost plays ... Also included in this edition are the ancient reports about Aristophanes's life, works, and influence on the later comic tradition."--Front inside flap of dust jacket.

This volume examines whether dramatic fragments should be approached as parts of a greater whole or as self-contained entities. It comprises contributions by a broad spectrum of international scholars: by young researchers working on fragmentary drama as well as by well-known experts in this field. The volume explores another kind of fragmentation that seems already to have been embraced by the ancient dramatists: quotations extracted from their context and immersed in a new whole, in which they work both as cohesive unities and detachable entities. Sections of poetic works circulated in antiquity not only as parts of a whole, but also independently, i.e. as component fractions, rather like quotations on facebook today. Fragmentation can thus be seen operating on the level of dissociation, but also on the level of cohesion. The volume investigates interpretive possibilities, quotation contexts, production and reception stages of fragmentary texts, looking into the ways dramatic fragments can either increase the depth of fragmentation or strengthen the intensity of cohesion.

The work of the 'other' comic poets of classical Athens, those who competed with, and in some cases defeated, their (eventually) better-known fellow comedian, Aristophanes, has almost eluded the historical record. The poetry of Cratinus, Phrynichos, Eupolis and the rest has survived only in tantalising, often tiny, fragments and citations. Modern studies in this field have themselves often been difficult of access. Here an exceptional cast of scholars, including most of the leading international authorities, provides a set of 28 interpretative essays to cover every one of these 'other' poets of Athenian Old Comedy for whom significant evidence survives. The work includes a comprehensive bibliography, and is a landmark in the study of Old Comedy.

Aristophanes' engagement with tragedy is one of the most striking features of his comedies. Tragedy on the Comic Stage contextualizes this engagement with tragedy within Greek comedy as a genre by examining paratragedy in the fragments of Aristophanes' contemporaries and successors in the fifth and fourth centuries.