Today's class centered entirely around comedy, principally Old Comedy, which Aristophanes is the sole surviving representative of. New Comedy(revolving around a concept of boy-trying-to-get-girl-and-can't as well as mistaken identity and themes of death/reabirth)is represented by Menander. The essential chord of this comedy is the stabilization of society, personified by marriage at the end. Seems to me that Old Comedy ends up dealing with some form of distabilization of society, even though things do get worked out in the end, when the Happy Idea is realized.

And these are the two things we know about Aristotle's definition of comedy, being that the treatise on comedy from the Poetics has been lost.
1. Comedy is about people who are worse than we are
2.Comedy orignates from phallic processions. (I can now add that I now know what the god Priapus is a personification for--like when you are afflicted with priapsus--)