The extant plays of Aristophanes, together with a few fragmentsof lost Attic comedies, provide useful indications about a range of issues concerning the arrangement of scenic space and the staging of Greek comedy inthe Theatre of Dionysus in Athens. Three of these issues are explored in thepresent paper. The first one concerns the number of practicable doors that wereavailable on the façade of the skene building and were used in the performanceof ancient comedy. Two simultaneously operating doors are necessary for thestaging of some Aristophanic plays (Acharnians, Clouds), while others (Peace,Ecclesiazusae, cf. fr. 48 from Eupolis’ Autolycus) indicate the existence of three.Secondly, two Aristophanic comedies (Wasps and Ecclesiazusae) attest the useof another opening, which was situated on a higher level of the skene façade andrepresented a window of one of the houses allocated on the background. Playswhich dramatized affairs of adultery, whether in the form of mythological burlesque or in an urban setting, may also have used the window as a focal point ofthe adulterer’s schemes. Thirdly, some Aristophanic passages point to the presence of a moderately raised stage platform in front of the skene building. Thisplatform was destined for the actors and must have been low enough, so that theperformers could easily mount on it and descend to ground level.
