Aristophanes
was a leading dramatist of ancient Athens
and,
owing to the quantity and quality of his works
that
have been preserved, is customarily recognized as
being
the leading comic playwright of his society and
age.
Greek comic drama passed through two main
phases,
referred to as Old Comedy and New Comedy.
The
transition between the two stages included Middle
Comedy,
which is largely conjectural, although the last
work
of Aristophanes is often ascribed to this stage.
Old
Comedy featured a chorus, which commented on
the
action in verse and song, mime and burlesque, as
well
as a sense of ribaldry, broad political satire, and
farce.
New Comedy dispensed with the chorus and adopted
more
of a sense of social realism, although this
is
still relative. As a representative of the end of one
phase,
Aristophanes was working in a time of innovation
and
change, and as might be expected, his works
excited
both favorable and unfavorable comment.
The
entire canon of Aristophanes’ works is not
known,
but it is believed to have extended to perhaps
40
works, of which 11 have survived in partial
or
complete forms. His career coincided with the
Peloponnesian
War, and this formed the backdrop
of
many of his surviving major works. Aristophanes’
most
fantastical play is The Birds, which follows the
adventures
of a group of birds who become so disaffected
by
life in their home city that they leave to
establish
their own, which is called Cloud Cuckoo
Land
and is suspended between heaven and earth.
The Birds can be read as an attack on
the rulers of
Athens
and the idea that people would be better off
elsewhere.
Acharnians is an earlier play, which more
directly
addresses the misery of war. In Frogs the actions
of
the gods are explicitly brought into the sphere
of
humanity as Dionysus descends into hell to retrieve
a
famous tragedian to produce work that could enlighten
the
lives of the people of Athens, given the
currently
woeful state of that art in the city.
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