Ancient Greek comedy was one of the final three principal
dramatic forms in the
theatre of classical Greece.
Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods, Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, and New Comedy. Old Comedy survives today largely in the form of the eleven surviving plays of
Aristophanes, while Middle Comedy is largely lost, i.e. preserved only in relatively short fragments in authors such as
Athenaeus of Naucratis. New Comedy is known primarily from the substantial papyrus fragments of
Menander. The philosopher
Aristotle wrote in his
Poetics that comedy is a representation of laughable people and involves some kind of blunder or ugliness which does not cause pain or disaster.
C. A. Trypanis wrote that comedy is the last of the great species of poetry Greece gave to the world.
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