Ion
In Ion, unlike the preceding plays, the mother-son recognition is placed at the end of the play and the threat of kin-murder is dexterously intertwined with the recognition-motif so that the double suspense is held throughout the action until at the end the anagnorisis stops the crisis. The double joy then converges further with the festive mood of the rebirth of Athens. The story is centered on an abandoned baby (Ion, born from Apollo's rape, now serving, by the god's secret care, as a temple servant in Delphi) reunited with his mother (Creusa, Athenian Princess) and finally blessed as the youthful successor to the Athenian royal throne.
The prolongation of the anagnorisis necessitates diversion from the main plot. Until the reunion of Ion and Creusa is achieved at the play's end, a number of catching and intriguing dramatic features are joined together which, again, contribute to render the play "tragi-comic". For example, the first appearance of Ion is done with a lyrical monody frequently assigned before the parodos to the central characters of early Euripides,(21) but Ion's lyrics (82-183) are sung almost as a mock-tragic hymn in the mode of Aristophanic parody.(22) The "household matters, things we use and live with" as jeered by Aristophanes to have "corrupted" tragedy (RANAE 959, 1063), are also eminent in the hymn as well as in the mother-son dialogue exchanged in complete ignorance of the other's identity(314-5, 322-6), which takes place on Creusa's visit to Delphi as the childless wife with Xuthus. The false reunion between this nominal father and son forms a sheer comic sequence with its qui-pro-quo style in trochaic tetrameters(510-65).(23) (On consulting Apollo's oracle about child-birth, Xuthus blissfully mistakes Ion for his natural son). Ion's speech, in which he refuses to go to Athens as Xuthus' son, is delivered (585-647) in the manner of parabasis, a comic convention(24) which, by referring to a world outside, threatens the dramatic illusion, the breach of which is not allowed in tragedy. In Creusa's officious old servant who instigates her to poison Ion to death, taking him for a usurper-to-be of the royal throne, one may see an archetype of servus dolosus in Roman comedy.(25) He forms the focus of a long report (1122-1228) on the merry banquet with plenty of wine and food(26) held as a farewell party at Ion's departure but meant, in Xuthus' mind, as the celebration of his son's advent. Xuthus thus believes that he has successfully smuggled his own son into the Athenian royal lineage, but it is he who is deceived.
By being left in felicitous ignorance forever, he is punished for his presumption.(27) This type of ironical fun, hyponoia, was pointed out by Aristotle (ETH. NIC. 1128a20) as an essential attribute of Attic New Comedy. Hyponoia is used with sharper sarcasm on Apollo, the god of prophesy (line 7) whose project has to be modified in that Ion is revealed to be Creusa's son at Delphi rather than at Athens. The fall of divine prestige, if it was to be perceived by the audience at the play's end, may have been anticipated by the boy's saucy preaching to unseen Apollo (436-51), a picture of the reversal of established values often seen in comedy.(28)
At any rate this kind of eventful play forming a long-winded zigzag plot cannot be easily accommodated in the dramatic structure of an authentic tragedy, which is supported by consistent logical sequence but would suit a comedy. For the audience of tragedy to make any affective response to the drama, to have pity or fear or any other tragic emotion, the reality of what is happening on stage is absolutely necessary. The action in tragedy must have as much likelihood as to make the audience strongly involved in it so that they can share the protagonists' passion and pathos, and for that purpose strictly logical development of the plot is needed, as Aristotle analyzed with his terms "probability and necessity" (1452a20). On the contrary in comedy the audience rather enjoy loiterings and breaks that release their mind from time to time from dramatic tension and refresh it for another turn of events. A loose or even disjointed structure is one aspect of comedy.(29) So, Creusa's long and beautiful monody accusing Apollo (859-922), for example, right in the middle of the play is followed by the Old Servant's insistence on a repetition of her tale which, conducted in a quasi-comical manner, brings no substantial change in the development of the plot. (In fact the story of Creusa's rape is repeated six times in the play.)(30) And yet, the audience does not lose interest but are most probably amused, because such detours and digressions allow them to play with the author.
For the audience of Ion having enjoyed such breaks and ramblings, now ready, perhaps, for a new turn of events, the double suspense of recognition and murderous design between mother and son would be more effectively dispelled by a new, accidental stroke than by a tightly knit dramatic sequence of probability and necessity. At the moment when the unknowing Ion is about to kill his own mother in revenge for the attempted assassination by her, the priestess of the Delphic temple suddenly appears to stop him and displays his birth-tokens. Creusa finds in astonishment that they are the items she left with the baby, and the anagnorisis ensues. The danger of murder also disappears. The priestess of the Delphic temple is often called the first Deus ex Machina in the sense that her appearance is certainly abrupt but that she cuts a part of the Gordian knot of mother-son misunderstanding and impending homicide.(31)
The true status of Ion the foundling revealed in a last-minute reversal of the situation (peripeteia) has turned out to be that of the legitimate Athenian prince. If he succeeds to the throne and restores the deteriorated morale of Athens under the rule of a false king (the criticised Athens, 585-647), the play will be a congratulatory piece celebrating the resuscitation of Athens. In the celebration scene of the rebirth of the polis-Athenae the presence of her guardian goddess is indispensable. When Ion, after the recognition, still hesitates to accept Creusa's words that his father is Apollo, a divine being, who alone can clear him of his suspicion, appears as the second Deus ex Machina. Athena arrives on behalf of Apollo, who does not think it fit to come out lest any accusation on the past act should be made in the public (1558-9), and brings to perfection the anagnorisis begun by the priestess. The skeptical attitude of Ion about his paternal parentage may be said to be another invention of the playwright to urge the appearance of a Deus ex Machina. The goddess blesses Ion's enthronement soon to occur, declares the establishment of the Ionian race and gives the finishing touches to the festivities of the honour of the polis-Athenae. Ion is the only extant play of the so-called foundling plays possibly produced in succession around 410 B.C.. Other plays of this kind known from fragments and other evidence are ALOPE, ANTIOPE, AUGE, MELANIPPE SOPHE, MELANIPPE DESMOTIS and TYRO by Sophocles may be added.(32) Almost all deal with an abandoned baby or twins becoming kings. A Deus ex Machina ending is supposed or testified in many of them. The remarkable similarity of the stories of these plays and those of Attic New Comedy leads us to see in them the prototype of New Comedy, as has been suggested by critics,(33) and of Western classical comedy, because almost all the comedies in this tradition as represented in the list below are about the blessing of a new generation, through recognition, or the rebirth of the society.
And throughout this history of imitation and sophistication, as I said in the beginning, the play's endings have been amazingly similar, i.e., by the transference from ignorance to knowledge (anagnorisis), a reversal of the situation occurs (peripeteia) followed by a happy ending. We find here the dramatic design for tragic effect as formulated by Aristotle transplanted and utilized by comedy again and again. However these anagnoriseis and peripeteiai in comedy are accidental rather than logical, artificial rather than spontaneous, author-induced rather than ensuing from the events themselves, just as Deus ex Machina in Euripidean recognition plays are abrupt rather than probable, contrived rather than natural, extra-dramatic rather than dependent on the action. If Euripides' audience were much entertained by his Deus ex Machina, the writers of Attic New Comedy, when they probably took over the theme of recognition and rebirth, could not fail to see how useful the device was as is shown, for example, in Ion in which the Deus ex Machina not only materializes and finalizes anagnorisis and peripeteia but also places the whole affair under gods' benevolence and ends the play happily. The comedy writers most likely scooped up the device, dismantled it into dramaturgical ingredients and reintegrated them into their plays in the form of a final twist of their plots, followed by a happy ending.
The endings of later comedies in this tradition show such a regular pattern that its formulaic nature can be easily grasped. (1) Anagnorisis, the staple of the plot, is brought in, whether by a dramatic character or through tokens or a trick in situation, from outside or nearly outside with the minimum of motivation, in other words, contrary to Aristotelian prescription for tragic effect. (2) Anagnorisis occurs in the last minute or very near the end, as one can see from the line numbers attached in the chart below. (3) If the anagnorisis is caused by a newly-arriving character, his or her entrance can sometimes be apparently casual, but, equipped with some power superior to or more privileged than others, can resolve a critical situation with a dramatically drastic measure (peripeteia). (4)The intervention of such a surrogate for the author brings in a happy ending required by comedy, assuring, through reconciliation, marriage for the young and a happy retirement for the old. The numerical figures on the extreme right of the appended chart are the number of marriages that take place at each play's end. The bracketed one means the reconciliation of estranged husband and wife. This remarkably consistent pattern of the formulaic endings of Western classical comedy cannot be explained, as it seems to me, unless we suppose it to derive from one dramatic device, Deus ex Machina which functioned so well in "comic" contexts in the recognition plays of Euripides.
