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New Comedy is the very inspiration from which Shakespeare based many of his own comedies, and where modern soap operas find their plot lines, yet I always believed it to be vastly more inaccessible than Old Comedy. Aristophanes demonstrated mastery of both language and the stage in his plays, but Menander too, writing fifty years later, shines through with his Dyskolos.

The play differs from standard Old Comedy or Tragedy in that it has no chorus, and focuses on stock characters - the beautiful young girl, the stupid slave, the handsome beau. The Dyskolos focuses on Knemon, a grumpy old man who hates everyone and everything, and Sostratos, who's trying to marry his daughter, Myrrhine. Menander cleverly frames the plot around the god Pan, and intersperses the play with funny set pieces from the slaves to ensure that the audience is not bored by continual monologuing from Sostratos or Knemon.

The play itself functions almost tragically, with each character's flaws being pointed out and emphasised with each of their speeches. Sostratos is wealthy but lazy; Knemon is stubborn but just and fair; Gorgias is prejudiced but honest. Menander brings each character to life with startling vibrancy and this allows him to explore relationship between characters who normally would not interact, like Simike and Sicon, for example.

The play features an unnatural amount of characters, but Menander works hard to ensure that no more than four are ever present on stage at the same time, thereby still conforming to the rules of the stage in general. Wholeheartedly I believe The Dyskolos deserving of the first prize it received, because its plot is tangible, humorous, and still applicable today.