Comedy Outside the Canon: from Ritual Slapstick to Hellenistic Mime

Maurizio Sonnino deconstructs the hitherto current view of mime as the original form of ‘secular’ farce giving rise to the more canonical forms of the fifth and fourth century BCE. Sonnino recovers the rich and complex plurality of submerged laughter-inducing spectacles (from the Theban Kabeirion to the italic phlyakes) connected to precise socio-ritual occasions that acted as the fertile background for more elaborate forms (in Megara, Athens, and Syracuse in particular). Son- nino shows furthermore that dramatic mime is, contrary to current opinion, a later elaborate production that underwent submersion in that it eluded the mechanisms of textual control.