ABSTRACT
It does not lie within the scope of this chapter to give a complete and general characterization of what is called Old Attic Comedy. Questions, for instance, relating to the development of artistic form, or the religious and social antecedents of comedy, though they may arise incidentally, are not fundamentally relevant to our inquiry. The three questions, or groups of questions, with which it is proposed to deal in this chapter, are: (i) The unity of Old Comedy, (2) The poet and his audience, (3) Reality in comedy.
