Dyskolos (, , translated as The Grouch, The Misanthrope, The Curmudgeon, The Bad-tempered Man or Old Cantankerous) is an Ancient Greek comedy by Menander, the only one of his plays, and of the whole New Comedy, that has survived in nearly complete form. It was first presented at the Lenaian festival in Athens in 316 BC, where it won Menander the first prize. It was long known only through fragmentary quotations; but a papyrus manuscript of the nearly complete Dyskolos, dating to the 3rd century, was recovered in Egypt in 1952 and forms part of the Bodmer Papyri and Oxyrhynchus Papyri. The play was published in 1958 by Victor Martin. The story of the play concerns a rich young man, Sostratos, who falls in love with a village girl, whose father, Knemon, is very bad-tempered and hard to approach. Eventually, after helping Knemon's stepson Gorgias to rescue him from a well, he wins Knemon over and gains his assent to marry his daughter. He also persuades his own father to allow him to betroth his own sister to Gorgias. The Dyskolos inspired Molière, who knew only the theme of the play, as it had not yet been found, in his writing of The Misanthrope (1666). Plot Setting The backdrop of the stage consists of three buildings: the house of Gorgias (a farmer who is the stepson of Knemon), a temple of Pan and the Nymphs, and the house of Knemon (the Bad-Tempered Man of the title). The action of the play takes place in the street in front of these buildings. Prologue The god Pan comes out from his temple, and explains the background to the play. The scene is the village of Phyle (some 13 miles north-west of Athens). He says that in the house next door lives a bad-tempered and irritable old man, living with his daughter and an old servant-woman. He tells how Knemon married a widow who already had a son by her first husband, but his continual bad temper caused her to leave him and go to live with her son. Pan says that because the girl won his favour by honouring the nymphs in his temple, he caused a certain rich city boy (Sostratos), who was hunting and spotted Knemon's daughter honouring the nymphs, to fall in love with her. Act 1 Sostratos, a young Athenian man who is hunting in the forest, enters