caa a22 4500 388082135 CHVBK 20180307125219.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e199910 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1093/gr/46.2.203 doi S0017383500026267 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.1093/gr/46.2.203 Bond R. P. Plautus' Amphitryo as Tragi-Comedy [Elektronische Daten] [R. P. Bond] J. L. Styan in his book The Dark Comedy quotes a comment of Federico Garcia Lorca, ‘If in certain scenes the audience doesn't know what to do, whether to laugh or cry, that will be a success for me'. A friend and colleague suggested in a conversation after witnessing my production of the Amphitryo in Perth in 1991 that he found that play similarly fascinating, because at times it made certain parts of the audience feel so uncomfortable, even as it was making them laugh. Riotously funny the Amphitryo undoubtedly is from time to time, but there is often a savage bite to the humour and a feeling evoked by the action which is not dissimilar to the effect of tragedy, especially when the unwitting humans have their lives and fortunes distorted by the amoral antics of the immortals. In short, the play shows signs of being of mixed genre, a fact which is acknowledged by the famous statement of Mercury in the prologue: Copyright © The Classical Association 1999 Greece and Rome Cambridge University Press 46/2(1999-10), 203-220 0017-3835 46:2<203 1999 46 GAR https://doi.org/10.1093/gr/46.2.203 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1093/gr/46.2.203 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Bond R. P. NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Greece and Rome Cambridge University Press 46/2(1999-10), 203-220 0017-3835 46:2<203 1999 46 GAR CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge