The Audiences of New Comedy

Abstract

There is a school of thought which attributes the more refined discourse of New Comedy (compared with that of the Old) at least in part to a change in the composition of Athenian theatre audiences. This way of thinking assumes that payment for attending theatre performances (the so-called theōrikon ) was discontinued along with other payments for i public service under the oligarchic regimes Macedonia imposed upon Athens in the late fourth century B.C.; and it further assumes that with the elimination of this subsidy many of the poor could no longer afford to attend the theatre. The first of these assumptions, that the audiences for New Comedy did not receive theōrikon payments, is reasonable enough, but the second assumption, that the poor therefore stopped coming to the theatre, is more problematic.

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