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23-08-2015, 20:43

Aristophanes

Playwright

Born: c. 450 b. c.e.; Athens, Greece Died: c. 385 b. c.e.; Athens, Greece Category: Theater and drama

Life Aristophanes (ar-uh-STAHF-uh-neez) is considered the greatest writer of Greek comedy, and his plays have been produced for centuries because of their wit, comic invention, poetic language, and characterization. Politically, Aristophanes was noted for his aristocratic, rather than democratic, views of government. Very little is known of the life of Aristophanes; even the dates given for his birth and death vary as much as five to ten years. His parents were Philippus and Zenodora, and their son was born into the Athenian township of Cydathenaeon of the tribe Pandionis. The father was a landowner in Aegina, which gave the young playwright certain status, and he may even have owned land at a young age. He may not have been out of his teens when his first play, The Banqueters (427 b. c.e.), which is no longer extant, was produced to great applause. As to his appearance, he was certainly bald by the time he produced Eirene (Peace, 1837) in 421 b. c.e. His vitality must have been great, since he produced and acted in several of his earlier plays.

Aristophanes inherited the traditions ofthe Greek Old Comedy, consisting of broad political and personal abuse, low-comedy farce of an earthy nature, inappropriate flights of poetic fancy, and theatrical conventions of costume, mask, music, and dance. The Age of Pericles allowed its comedians great license and freedom for political satire, a tradition which Aristophanes followed assiduously. He hated the age of decadence, compromise, departure from the vigorous way of life, the “new” sophistries and systems. He used his plays to influence the political, moral, and religious life of his times, and his was a vigorous campaign. Under their farcical exteriors, his plays were serious allegories aimed at the emotions rather than the intellect he so mistrusted. His art passed through three major periods and bridged the gap between the Old Comedy and the New.

Principal Works of Aristophanes

AcharnTs, 425 b. c.e. (The Acharnians, 1812) Hippes, 424 b. c.e. (The Knights, 1812)

Nephelai, 423 b. c.e. (The Clouds, 1708)

Sphekes, 422 b. c.e. (The Wasps, 1812)

Eirene, 421 b. c.e. (Peace, 1837)

Ornithes, 414 b. c.e. (The Birds, 1824)

Lysistrate, 411 b. c.e. (Lysistrata, 1837) Thesmophoriazousai, 411 b. c.e. (Thesmophoria-zusae, 1837)

Batrachoi, 405 b. c.e. (The Frogs, 1780) Ekklesiazousai, 392 b. c.e.? (Ecclesiazusae, 1837) Ploutos, 388 b. c.e. (Plutus, 1651)

In the first of the extant plays, Acharnes (425 b. c.e.; The Acharnians, 1812), Aristophanes won the first prize at the Lenaea in 425 b. c.e., a remarkable feat for the young actor-director-playwright. This play is remarkable as well in that he introduces the antiwar theme for the first time in history, and he played the part of the protagonist, a simple country man who thoroughly routs the antagonist, a warmonger. Hippes (424 b. c.e.; The Knights, 1812), following the next year, so soundly berated the tyrant and usurper Cleon that litigation was put in motion to prove the playwright of foreign birth and therefore disqualify him from competition. Continuing the one-play-a-year routine, Aristophanes presented next Nephelai (423 b. c.e.; The Clouds, 1708), satirizing the modern sophistries personified, although unfairly, by Socrates. This was one of his most widely read and discussed plays. Athens’s love of litigation, which Aristophenes thought wasteful of time and energy, he attacked in Sphekes (422 b. c.e.; The Wasps, 1812); in the second part he demonstrates how the populace could have benefited from art, literature, and music were it not for this involvement in demagoguery. Peace returns to his original theme, suggesting strongly that Athens should accept the Spartan peace offer and demonstrating the contrast of rural peace and strident war.

In his middle period, Aristophanes wrote his best-known and greatest

Plays. Ornithes (414 b. c.e.; The Birds, 1824) the play he liked best and one containing some of the greatest lyric poetry of all time, advances the utopian theory that humankind should begin to build a simpler kingdom. The plan fails when this heavenly birdland is overrun by the same old Athenian complications: litigation, demagoguery, and warfare. LysistratT (411 b. c.e.; Lysistrata, 1837) takes its name from the feminist protagonist, who decides that women can end the sad spectacle of war by resisting men’s amorous advances. The play’s risque wit and humor make this one of the best comedies of manners and the most frequently produced Greek play of the modern theater. The Thesmophoriazousai (411 b. c.e.; Thesmophoria-zusae, 1837), presented that same year, continues a theme begun earlier, that of dramatic criticism, especially of Euripides, whom Aristophanes criticized as unfairly as he did Socrates and for about the same reasons. In Batrachoi (405 b. c.e.; The Frogs, 1780) he combines many elements of criticism—of state, art, reason—into a masterpiece of theater in which Dionysus goes to the underworld to bring back the greatest poet for troubled times. The chorus of frogs chides, admonishes, and exhorts, while the arguments for and against finally agree on Aeschylus, the tragedian of the great period of Greek drama.

Aristophanes. (Library of Congress)

Aristophanes’ last period bridges the final gap from the old Dionysian revel to the bourgeois comedy of Menander. The Ekklesiazousai (392 b. c.e.?; Ecclesiazusae, 1837) fails to support the facetious view held in Lysistrata, for when women intrude themselves into office they establish a novel form of communism, foreshadowing platonic sophistries and satirizing them in advance.

Ploutos (388 b. c.e.; Plutus, 1651), the last extant play under the old master’s name, appeared probably in the year before Aristophanes’ death. This work looks backward to the preoccupation of the middle period with mythological themes; blind Plutus is given sight and wisdom to see that wealth belongs to those who can sanely use it, while the way of the foolish is poverty. This play, with its simple (and not topical) allusions, struck a vibrant chord for playgoers and readers from antiquity down through the Renaissance.

Influence Aristophanes’ three sons carried on the dramatic tradition with some success, for one play—probably written by the father—won a prize in 387 b. c.e. The youngest son evidently won honors in the New Comedy. Centuries later, the plays of Aristophanes exerted considerable influence on English satire, especially on William Congreve, Ben Jonson, Henry Fielding, Somerset Maugham, and Noel Coward.

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Aristophanes