Aristophanes

-Aristophanes is an Athenian comedic playwright with eleven surviving comedies:

• The Acharnians
• The Knights
• The Clouds
• The Peace
• The Wasps
• The Birds
• The Frogs
• Plutus
• Lysistrata
• Ecclesiazusae
• Thesmophoriazusae

 

They represent the Old Comedy, combining personal attacks, obscenities, parodies, songs, and hymns with ideas on poetry, politics, religion, and the sexes. In Aristophanes’ The Clouds, Socrates is ridiculed and Euripides is poked at in others. The Old Comedy is fast paced humor that is the standing block for satire and farce today. In keeping with tradition, Aristophanes’ The Birds is a fantasy about escape from war. Aristophanes' influence on English drama can be seen in Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, and especially Henry Fielding. Robert Browning's poem Aristophanes' Apology has the dramatist defend the naturalness of comedy.

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