SOURCE: Goldberg, Sander M. “Dyskolos (The Grouch): A Play of Combinations.” In The Making of Menander's Comedy, pp. 72-91. London: The Athlone Press, 1980.

In the following excerpt, Goldberg explains how the Dyskolos achieves much of its impact through a careful balance between the serious and the comic.

Knemon, a thoroughly inhuman human, and a grouch to all. He doesn't welcome crowds … 

(6-7)

The rhetorical flourish with which Pan introduces Knemon is calculated to suggest a familiar figure, for the misanthrope was an established comic type by Menander's time with a traditional vocabulary to describe his misanthropy. Pan tells us that he lives alone, though a daughter and servant actually share his house, and his character is much like that of Phrynichos' Loner (Monotropos, fr. 18K), who lived ‘Timon's life, wifeless, slaveless, sharp-tempered, approachless, humourless, with my own opinions.’ Phrynichos' play was produced in 414 bc, a century before Menander's...