Aristophanes - The Complete Plays

After having analyzed during the last months a bunch of plays written by the comedian Aristophanes, I guess now it's a good time to make a little review of all his masterpieces.

Greek's Theater of Dionysus, in Athens

Of the many comedies produced by this Greek author, only eleven of them have survived and reached our modern times in a complete state: Acharnians, Knights, Clouds, Wasps, Peace, Birds, Lysistrata, Women at the Thesmophoria Festival, Frogs, A Parliament of Women and Plutus (Wealth). Among all these poems, I've already shared with you the three ones I found most captivating: The Acharnians, Clouds and Lysistrata.

How would I describe his plays ?
I if had the possibility to gather all Aristophanes's plays in a single and illustrating label I wouldn't hesitate to choose "ABSURD" or any of its equivalents: ridiculous, laughable, risible, idiotic, stupid, foolish, silly, insane, unreasonable, irrational, illogical, incongruous, senseless, crazy. Aristhopnahes was the first known artist to make Comedy and Entertaining a serious business ... and he did it in a outstanding way.

What drew most of my attention ?
The vast theatrical mastery the audience ought to have in order to get a complete understanding of his plays, or even to just "follow" them. You would miss half of them shouldn't you have first read or heard about the other many stories and authors he constantly parodies and quotes: the great Homer, Socrates, Aesop ... or even his arch-rivals Sophocles, Euripides or Aeschylus and their many, many performed plays.

Why read Aristophanes ?

The easiest and most direct response would be "You can't travel the road of Classical Mythology without paying a visit to Aristophanes". Apart from this "canned answer", my personal reply would be "the much he makes you think !"; disguised in foolish, entertaining and perspicacious dialogues, deep topics reach the surface. Aristophnes makes his audience laugh and enjoy the moment, and leaves them with a great number of profound things in which to turn their minds to.

And what about the rest of the poems ?

Can't let you empty handed; here is a little summary of 4 of his other plays:

- Peace: Trygaeus, sick of war (27 years have passed since the beginning of The Peloponnesian War), flies to Olympus on a gigantic beetle - parodying Bellerophon's aerial journey on Pegasus - to ask Zeus what he is doing about the conflict. But Zeus has washed his hands of humanity and is allowing War (who has trapped Peace inside a cave) to have free rein. Finally, Peace is rescued and brought back in triumph to Earth.

- Birds: two middle-aged Athenians, fed up with the world they live in, decide to go in search for a better one. Under the direction of two pet birds, they seek advice from Tereus, who used to be human but is now a hoopoe: why not join the birds and create a new and invincible empire ? An aerial city (later baptized "Cloudcuckooland") placed between the Earth and the high Sky, where Gods and humans alike would have to pay tributes to them.

No doubt, this is the most absurd of all Aristophanes's plays !

- Frogs: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides are all dead, and there are no more good poets or good theater; so Dionysus, patron of the stage, decides to go down to Hades and bring back the best of the three. An artistic contest begins between the play writers; Aeschylus gets the first prize, and accompanies Dionysus back to the mortal world.

- Plutus (Wealth): Zeus once blinded Plutus so that he couldn't tell the difference between god and bad people (being rich has nothing to do with being good). Chremyslus, an Athenian citizen, decides to take him to Aesclepius, god of healing, to get his sight back. On their way they come across Poverty who tells them they are making a big mistake: "without the fear of poverty, mortals would have no motive to make an effort". Plutus then gets his sight back.