Frogs
EN302: European Theatre
Comedy
• kômôidia, ‘revelsong’
• ritual celebration,
including mockery
• introduced into the
City Dionysia around
486 BC
• incorporated into the
midwinter festival of
the Lenaea around
440 BC
‘Old’ Comedy
• Mocked public figures
• Parodied well-known
myths
• Physically grotesque:
• distorted masks (often
caricatures)
• padded bellies and
buttocks
• large dangling leather
phalluses
‘Old’ Comedy
• Formal elements of Attic
comedy:
• Prologos
• Parados
• Agon
• Parabasis
• Episodes
• Exodos (also Kômos, i.e.
revels)
Aristotle (Poetics, c. 335-22 BC):
• ‘Comedy is, as we have said,
an imitation of characters of a
lower type, - not, however, in
the full sense of the word
bad; for the ludicrous is
merely a subdivision of the
ugly. It may be defined as a
defect or ugliness which is not
painful or destructive. Thus,
for example, the comic mask
is ugly and distorted, but does
not cause pain.’ (Palmer 1984:
27)
Comic actors
Statuettes of comic actors, late 5thc.- early 4th c. BC, New York Metropolitan
Museum of Art
Comic actors
Statuettes of comic actors, late 5thc.- early 4th c. BC, New York Metropolitan
Museum of Art
Comic actors
Statuettes of comic actors, late 5thc.- early 4th c. BC, New York Metropolitan
Museum of Art
Comic actors
Statuettes of comic actors, late 5thc.- early 4th c. BC, New York Metropolitan
Museum of Art
Aristophanes (c. 446 BC – c. 386 BC)
• The only comic dramatist of the period whose plays have survived
(11 of around 30-40 plays).
• Won first prize at least three times (probably more):
• Acharnians (425 BC),
• Knights (424 BC)
• Frogs (405 BC)
• Attacked the powerful Athenian politician Cleon in numerous plays:
Babylonians (426), Acharnians, Knights, and Wasps (422).
Aristophanes alludes to Cleon’s lawsuit against him in Frogs.
• Used drama to advocate peace with Sparta in Acharnians, Peace
(421) and Lysistrata (411).
• Frogs was performed as the Lenaea in 405 BC, where Aristophanes
was not only awarded first prize, but also rewarded with a crown
and an unusual opportunity to revive the play.
Meta-Comedy in Frogs
The play’s first line:
XANTHIAS. How about one of the old gags, sir? I can always get a
laugh with those. (p. 133)
XANTHIAS. Do you mean to say that I've been lugging these
props around but I'm not allowed to use them to get a laugh?
That's what usually happens. Phrynichus, Lycis, Ameipsias – all
the popular playwrights do it. The comic porter scene. There's
one in every comedy. (p. 134)
[All three of the comedians referred to here won first prizes]
References to the audience
Flattery:
CHORUS. Here sit ten thousand
men of sense,
A most enlightened audience (p.
159)
CHORUS. As for the audience,
You're quite mistaken
If you think subtle points
Will not be taken.
Such fears are vain, I vow –
They've all got textbooks now –
However high your brow,
They'll not be shaken. (p. 176)
Mockery/abuse:
The audience are associated
with the unsaved souls of the
Underworld.
DIONYSUS. Any sign of those
murderers and perjurers he told
us about?
XANTHIAS. Use your eyes, sir.
DIONYSUS. [looking towards the
audience] Oh, yes, I see them
now. (p. 145)
Comedy as corrective?
• Henri Bergson (‘Laughter’, 1900):
• ‘Always rather humiliating for the one against whom it is directed,
laughter is really and truly a kind of social “ragging”. … In laughter
we always find an unavowed intention to humiliate, and
consequently correct our neighbour.’ (1900: 148)
• ‘…it is the business of laughter to suppress any separatist
tendency… Its function is to intimidate by humiliating.’ (1900:
174, 188)
• Topical, targeted satire, for example of the radical democrat
Cleigenes as a corrupt ‘wash-house proprietor’ during the
Parabasis (p. 161).
• Does the play’s literary parody work in a similar way? Or is
something else at work?
Comedy as battle?
• See the Chorus’s parodic description of the contest on pp.
165-6:
Huge are the words that he wields, great compounds with rivets and
bolts in,
And epithets hewn from stone.
Now it's the challenger's turn to reply to this verbal bombardment:
Neatly each phrase he dissects, with intelligence subtle and keen;
Harmless around him the adjectives tumble, as he ducks for cover
And squeaks, 'It depends what you mean.’ (p. 166)
Comedy as battle?
• Sigmund Freud (Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious,
1905):
• ‘It is easy to divine the characteristic of jokes on which the
difference in their hearers’ reaction to them depends. In the one
case the joke is an end in itself and serves no particular aim, in
the other case it does serve such an aim – it becomes
tendentious. […] Where a joke is not an aim in itself – that is,
where it is not an innocent one – there are only two purposes
that it may serve, and these two can themselves be subsumed
under a single heading. It is either a hostile joke (serving the
purpose of aggressiveness, satire, or defence) or an obscene joke
(serving the purpose of exposure).’ (1976: 132, 140)
• Certainly both sexual innuendo and hostility feature heavily in
this play
Agon
• Athenian cultural life was characterised by a spirit of
competition.
• The idea of a competition for first place between two great
tragedians was, of course, rooted in reality.
• Euripides and Sophocles had both died very shortly before the
first performance of Frogs: in 406 and 405 BC respectively.
• [N.B. The Bacchae had been written when Frogs was
performed in early 405 BC, but was not performed until later
that year.]
• Aeschylus had died many years earlier, around 455 BC (thus
not really in living memory).
The contest
• What are the criteria by which the contest is judged?
• Chorus leader in Parabasis:
We chorus folk two privileges prize:
To amuse you, citizens, and to advise. (p. 160)
AESCHYLUS. What are the qualities you look for in a good
poet?
EURIPIDES. Technical ability. A poet should also teach people
how to be better citizens. (p. 172)
The contest
• ‘…and lost his little flask of oil’
• A puzzling sequence, in which Aeschylus parodies Euripides’
formulaic verse. But is he mocking:
• Euripides’ plots?
• Euripides’ use of metre?
• Euripides’ choice of subject matter?
The contest
What are Aeschylus and Euripides used to represent?
Aeschylus
‘Old’
‘Might’ (Chorus, p. 168)
Cultural authority
Patriotism
High-blown style, compound
adjectives
Masculine, heroic characters*
Euripides
‘New’
‘Wit’ (Chorus, p. 168)
Radical experimentation
Scepticism
Style closer to everyday speech
‘Women, slaves, the master, the
young maiden, the old crone –
they all talked. […] It was
democracy in action.’ (p. 170)
*N.B. this does not quite tally with what survives of Aeschylus’ work, e.g.
the choruses of Choephori and Eumenides.
Euripides as radical
Euripides’ admirers in the Underworld appear to be ‘cut-throats,
highwaymen, murderers, burglars’ (p. 164).
He was associated, both in Frogs and in life, with impiety:
EURIPIDES. I pray to other gods. […] Hail Ether, my sustainer! Hail,
Hinge of Tongue! Hail, Mind and sentient Nostrils! Inspire me
with successful arguments. (p. 168)
Euripides as radical
Euripides was infamous in this respect for a line in Hippolytus:
‘My tongue did swear, but my heart is not under oath’. Frogs
refers twice to this line:
DIONYSUS. I defy you to find a genuine poet among the whole lot of
them: one who can coin a memorable line. […] One who can
produce something truly original, like [...] that bit about the
tongue being allowed to perjure itself when the heart is not
committed. (p. 137)
EURIPIDES. Now remember the gods by whom you swore to take me
home! Pick me, your friend!
DIONYSUS. It was my tongue that swore… but I choose Aeschylus.
(p. 189)
Euripides as sceptic
• ‘I taught them to observe, to discern, to interpret; to use spin, to
massage the facts; to suspect the worst, to take nothing at face
value… What I did was to teach the audience to use its brains,
introduce a bit of logic into the drama. The public have learnt
from me how to think, how to run their households, to ask ‘Why
is this so? What do we mean by that?’’ (p. 171)
• Sophistry: new movement in education, focus on rhetoric
EURIPIDES. What about Persuasion? Doesn't that carry any weight? So
beautifully phrased too.
DIONYSUS. No, Persuasion is hollow. It has no substance of its own. (p. 186)
Aeschylus as conservative patriot
AESCHYLUS. Well, my Seven Against Thebes, for example. No one could
see that play without wanting to go off at once and slaughter their
enemies. […] I also put on my Persians: a telling lesson on the will to
win. (p. 173)
EURIPIDES. Did I invent the story of Phaedra?
AESCHYLUS. Of course not, but the poet should keep quiet about them,
not put them onstage as an example to everyone. Schoolboys have
a master to teach them, adults have poets. We have a duty to see
that what we teach them is right and proper. (p. 174)
The question of Alcibiades
• Alcibiades was in exile during this period (and had even served
as military adviser to the Spartans), but was widely seen as
the natural successor to the leader Pericles.
CHORUS-LEADER. We don’t want the traitor who sides with the foe,
We don't want the soldier who lets the fort go;
The greedy official who'd even be willing
To sell his own city just to make a killing. (p. 148)
EURIPIDES [after some thought]
I loathe a citizen who acts so fast
To harm his country and yet helps her last,
Who's deft at managing his own success,
But useless when the city's in a mess. (p. 187)
The question of Alcibiades
AESCHYLUS. It is not very wise for city states
To rear a lion cub within their gates;
But if they do so, they will find it pays
To tolerate its own peculiar ways. (p. 187)
• In reality, the salvation of Athens (which Dionysus hopes to
achieve by bringing back Aeschylus) was not achieved: within
two years, Athens would be comprehensively defeated.
The ending
• Does the play show Aeschylus to be a deserving winner?
• Ambiguity in the moments leading up to Dionysus’ judgement:
DIONYSUS. You know, I like them both so much, I don't know how to
judge between them. I don't want to make an enemy of either.
One's so wise, and the other I just love. (p. 187)
DIONYSUS. Honestly, I can't decide between them, when one speaks
so discerningly, the other so distinctly. (p. 187)
• The audience are thus encouraged to judge for themselves before
Dionysus reveals his answer.
The ending
• Is Aeschylus’ win expressive of Athenian nostalgia for a bygone
age?
• Mark Griffith:
• ‘Aeschylus stands for an idea (ideal) of the tragic art (and of
democracy?) in which certain things are not spoken of or shown,
and the audience need not confront the uncomfortable
possibilities of female desire, class inequality, or divine ineptitude
(or nonexistence), settling instead for an ideal of unity and
community in which such divisions have been poetically
transcended or obliterated.’ (2013: 218)
Comedy as rebirth?
• Why does Dionysus look to playwrights to save the city?
• Northrop Frye (‘The Argument of Comedy’, 1948):
• ‘…the action of the comedy begins in a world represented as a
normal world, moves into the green world, goes into a
metamorphosis there in which the comic resolution is achieved, and
returns to the normal world.’ (Palmer 1984: 80)
• Christopher Booker (The Seven Basic Plots, 2004):
• ‘…we see a little world in which people have passed under a shadow
of confusion, uncertainty and frustration, and are shut off from one
another; …the confusion gets worse until the pressure of darkness is
at its most acute and everyone is in a nightmarish tangle; … finally,
with the coming to light of things not previously recognised,
perceptions are dramatically changed. The shadows are dispelled,
the situation is miraculously transformed and the little world is
brought together in a state of joyful union.’ (2004: 150)
•
The battle of Arginusae (406 BC)
• Context of ongoing Peloponnesian War
• The Athenian navy defeated the Spartan navy in 406 BC, at a
cost of a quarter of their fleet
• Citizenship was offered to all slaves and foreigners who fought
for Athens
• Many existing Athenian citizens felt threatened and affronted
• The eight victorious generals were blamed for these losses
and sentenced to death, at the urging of radical democrat
leaders including Cleophon and Theramenes (mentioned by
name in Frogs)
• Many Athenians subsequently doubted the ethics of this move
The battle of Arginusae (406 BC)
XANTHIAS. Oh, for heaven's sake! If only I'd been in that sea battle, I'd
be a free man now. (p. 134)
CHARON. I don’t take slaves. Not unless they fought in the sea-battle.
(p. 140)
CHORUS-LEADER. […] it does not seem right,
When slaves who helped us in a single fight
Now vote beside our allies from Plataea
And put on masters’ clothes, like Xanthias here.
Not that I disagree with that decision –
No, no, it shows intelligence and vision (p. 160)
The battle of Arginusae (406 BC)
CHORUS-LEADER. Upstarts, nonentities, foreigners, and slaves –
Rascals all! Honestly, what men we choose!
[…]
Try the good ones again: if they succeed,
You will have shown that you have sense indeed;
And if things don't go well, if these good men
All fail, and Athens comes to grief, why, then
Discerning folk will murmur (let us hope):
'She hanged herself, but with a first-rate rope!' (p. 162)
Slaves
• Observational routine between the two slaves:
SLAVE. There's nothing I like more than badmouthing my master
behind his back.
XANTHIAS. I bet you mutter a few things under your breath when
he's had a go at you.
SLAVE. Oh, yes! I like a spot of muttering.
XANTHIAS. And what about prying into his affairs, eh?
SLAVE. There's nothing quite like prying. (p. 163)
Slaves
• Formed a high proportion of Athens’ population; proportion in
the audience itself unknown
• Performed all sorts of jobs: domestic, manual, administrative,
educational and sexual
• Frequently drafted into military and naval service (some such
rewarded with citizenship)
XANTHIAS. Never a word about me. (p. 137)
Comic inversion
DIONYSUS. Well, if you're feeling so brave and heroic, how about taking
my place? Here you are, you take the club and lion-skin - a chance
to show your courage - and I'll carry the luggage for you (p. 153)
DIONYSUS. You can hardly expect me to watch my own man
Hard at it with dancing-girls on the divan,
And giving me orders, likely as not (p. 155)
Comic inversion
DIONYSUS. You know, Xanthias, I've come to grow very fond of you.
XANTHIAS. Oh no you don't! I know your game. I'm not playing Heracles
again.
DIONYSUS. Dearest Xanthias! Sweet Xanthias! (p. 156)
XANTHIAS. I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll let you torture this slave of mine.
(p. 157)
Presentation of Gods
• Athenian identity of gods and heroes:
PLUTO. Goodbye, then, Aeschylus. Off you go with your sound
advice – and save the city for us. (p. 190)
• Location of the first scene
• Heracles was frequently presented in comic and semi-comic
modes (see Euripides’ Alcestis)
• Aristophanes’ Dionysus is afraid of pain and death, and
cowardly, foolish and petty (but comic convention allows this)
• There is a visible disjunction between the cowardly, sex-driven
figure onstage and the Iacchus worshipped by both the Frogs
and the Chorus of Initiates (pp. 141-8).
• Is he a more god-like figure by the end?
• Remember the uncertain status of Dionysus in The Bacchae
Comedy as festivity?
• Etymology: Kômos
• Material body as demystification: Dionysus as subject of scatological
humour.
• In carnivalesque imagery, according to Mikhail Bakhtin, the human
body ‘is presented not in a private, egotistic form, severed from the
other spheres of life, but as something universal, representing all
the people’:
• ‘The people’s laughter which characterized all the forms of grotesque
realism from immemorial times was linked with the bodily lower
stratum. Laughter degrades and materializes. […] To degrade also
means to concern oneself with the lower stratum of the body, the life
of the belly and the reproductive organs; it therefore relates to acts
of defecation and copulation, conception, pregnancy, and birth.
Degradation digs a bodily grave for a new birth; it has not only a
destructive, negative aspect, but also a regenerating one.’ (1965: 1921)
Comedy as festivity?
• The play not only enacts but also depicts the ritual mockery of
the real-life Mysteries:
CHORUS. At distinguished bystanders / We’ll jest and we’ll
jeer. (p. 149)
• Aristophanes’ presentation of the cult of the Mysteries is
presumably not dangerously impious, but a form of
veneration through mockery…
References
• Bakhtin, M. (1965) Rabelais and His World, trans. H. Iswolsky,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Bergson, H. (1900) ‘Laughter’, in Sypher, W. (1956) Comedy,
New York: Doubleday Anchor, 59-190.
• Booker, C. (2004), The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories,
London: Continuum.
• Freud, S. (1976) Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious,
trans. J. Strachey, ed. J. Strachey & A. Richards, London:
Pelican, 132-161.
• Griffith, M. (2013) Aristophanes’ Frogs, Oxford: O.U.P.
• Palmer, D. J [ed.] (1984) Comedy: Developments in Criticism,
London: Macmillan.