Greek New Comedy was shaped in the fourth century for audiences accustomed to the dramatic technique developed upon the tragic stage. Antiphanes reveals clearly in a well-known passage what the audience expected (Kock, II, _Antiphanes_ 191): “Fortunate the task of the tragic poet! Before a word is spoken, the spectator knows the theme ... at the mere mention of the name Oedipus he knows the rest.” Then he proceeds to say that the writer of comedy had to prepare the audience in every detail, since if a single item was missed the spectator started to hiss. This reveals the fact that in viewing a comedy the spectator expected not only to know the situation but also to have a clear clue to the solution, just as he had when viewing tragedies. The well-known prologues of Euripides did not have to foretell as well as prepare; a prologue in tragedy needed at most to remind the spectators of the main outline of the tale and to show the point at which action started. Euripides was well aware that most of his audience would at once know what the end of the story would be.[5] Now if the outcome was foreseen, the ancient dramatist, unlike the modern, could obviously not make free use of suspense and surprise. The writer of tragedy had to draw his emotional values from the pity of a well-informed audience viewing “with a sense of fear or dread” the groping of characters involved in the meshes of fate. Thus the obvious consequence of the use of a known plot was of course dependence upon the theme of _fate_, the constant employment of gloomy foreshadowing, the use with frequent reiteration of what has been called “tragic irony.” There seems to be a feeling in Aristotle that “pity and dread” are the essential elements of tragedy, but it is safe to say that had Greek tragedy frequently used invented plots Aristotle would have found that sympathetic suspense with catastrophic surprise would rather have been employed to produce the tragic catharsis, and would have been equally effective. In studying the new comedy we may assume with Antiphanes, and on the basis of Menander, that the writer thought out his plot in terms of this well-established technique. In that case an omniscient prologue must give the situation and give it more explicitly than in tragedy because he had to do much more than remind. He must present the whole situation and in addition he must give explicit hints of the solution, if the spectator was to have the same advantage as he had in tragedy where the solution was a matter of common knowledge. That is the new element forced upon the writer of comedy by fifth-century convention. In Menander’s _Perikeiromene_, for example, the deferred prologue, Agnoia, not only gives the situation but adds: “this was done ... in order to start the train of revelations, so that in time these people might discover their kin.”