Limitations. The origins of comedy as a formal genre of drama are even more obscure than those of tragedy. Aristotle's Poetics (after 335 B.C.E.) is vague enough about the origins of the latter but explicitly says that much less is known about how comedy developed because in its early stages it was not taken seriously enough to warrant proper records being kept. Originally the performers in comedies were volunteers, and only at a comparatively late date did the medium win state support comparable to that of tragedy. Another source dates the earliest comic victory to one Chionides in 486 B.C.E. (thus, well after the traditional date of Thespis's first victory in tragedy) and regular competitions in comedy are certainly established by 472 B.C.E., when an incomplete inscription recording dramatic victors in Athens begins. However, even this date is nearly fifty years before...