The Eleven Comedies, vol 1

The Eleven Comedies, by Aristophanes et al

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Title: The Eleven Comedies
Author: Aristophanes et al
Release Date: August, 2005 [EBook #8688] [This file was first posted on August 1, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO Latin-1
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The Athenian Society
ARISTOPHANES
THE ELEVEN COMEDIES
Now For The First Time Literally And Completely Translated From The Greek Tongue Into English
With Translator's Foreword An Introduction To Each Comedy And Elucidatory Notes
The First Of Two Volumes
* * * * *
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME
Translator's Foreword Authorities
THE KNIGHTS Introduction Text And Notes
THE ACHARNIANS Introduction Text And Notes
PEACE Introduction Text And Notes
LYSISTRATA Introduction Text And Notes
THE CLOUDS Introduction Text And Notes
INDEX
* * * * *
Translator's Foreword
Perhaps the first thing to strike us--paradoxical as it may sound to say so--about the Athenian 'Old Comedy' is its modernness. Of its very nature, satiric drama comes later than Epic and Lyric poetry, Tragedy or History; Aristophanes follows Homer and Simonides, Sophocles and Thucydides. Of its essence, it is free from many of the conventions and restraining influences of earlier forms of literature, and enjoys much of the liberty of choice of subject and licence of method that marks present-day conditions of literary production both on and off the stage. Its very existence presupposes a fuller and bolder intellectual life, a more advanced and complex city civilization, a keener taste and livelier faculty of comprehension in the people who appreciate it, than could anywhere be found at an earlier epoch. Speaking broadly and generally, the Aristophanic drama has more in common with modern ways of looking at things, more in common with the conditions of the modern stage, especially in certain directions--burlesque, extravaganza, musical farce, and even 'pantomime,' than with the earlier and graver products of the Greek mind.
The eleven plays, all that have come down to us out of a total of over forty staged by our author in the course of his long career, deal with the events of the day, the incidents and personages of contemporary Athenian city life, playing freely over the surface of things familiar to the audience and naturally provoking their interest and rousing their prejudices, dealing with contemporary local gossip, contemporary art and literature, and above all contemporary politics, domestic and foreign. All this farrago of miscellaneous subjects is treated in a frank, uncompromising spirit of criticism and satire, a spirit of broad fun, side-splitting laughter and reckless high spirits. Whatever lends itself to ridicule is instantly seized upon; odd, eccentric and degraded personalities are caricatured, social foibles and vices pilloried, pomposity and sententiousness in the verses of the poets, particularly the tragedians, and most particularly in Euripides--the pet aversion and constant butt of Aristophanes' satire--are parodied. All is fish that comes to the Comic dramatists net, anything that will raise a laugh is fair game.
"It is difficult to compare the Aristophanic Comedy to any one form of modern literature, dramatic or other. It perhaps most resembles what we now call burlesque; but it had also very much in it of broad farce and comic opera, and something also (in the hits at the fashions and follies of the day with which it abounded) of the modern pantomime. But it was something more, and more important to the Athenian public than any or all of these could have been. Almost always more or less political, and sometimes intensely personal, and always with some purpose more or less important underlying its wildest vagaries and coarsest buffooneries, it supplied the place of the political journal, the literary review, the popular caricature and the party pamphlet, of our own times. It combined the attractions and influence of all these; for its grotesque masks and elaborate 'spectacle' addressed the eye as strongly as the author's keenest witticisms did the ear of his audience."[1]
Rollicking, reckless, uproarious fun is the key-note; though a more serious intention