Our first Geek play readalong supplement: I would like to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Plato’s Symposium (c. 380 BCE) in September. The piece depicts a banquet attended by a number of prominent Athenians, including Socrates and most importantly for our purposes Aristophanes, where the guests all deliver monologues about love. It is in a sense a “dialogue,” but also has more resemblance to a play than any other work of Plato’s. For someone, like me, intimidated by the label “philosophy,” Symposium is as friendly as it gets. It is a literary work. It is only 70 or 80 pages long. I plan to write something about it at the end of the month.
Today we have Thesmophoriazusae (411 BCE), or Women
at the Thesmophoria Festival, or as my Penguin Classics translation by
David Barrett sensibly calls it, The Poet and the Women. The poet is Euripides. This is the second of the three Aristophanes plays
featuring Euripides onstage. We will see
the triumphant conclusion of the theme, The Frogs, seven weeks from now.
It is also the second “battle of the sexes” play
Aristophanes wrote in 411, along with Lysistrata. Where the latter is deep and sincere, The
Poet and the Women is harmless fun.
Euripides gets off pretty well, too.
Sometimes Aristophanes wants to outrage his audience, but here everyone
is supposed to have a good time.
Euripides is concerned that the women at the Thesmophoria
Womyn’s Festival are planning to attack him for making women look bad in his
plays. Have they not seen how he makes
men look? Anyway, Euripides sends a
relative in drag to infiltrate the festival, and the play quickly turns into a
farce, with Euripides trying to rescue his partner the only way he knows how –
by reenacting scenes from Euripides plays.
Very kind of you to explain, I must say. What it is to have an intellectual in the family. (100, tr. Barrett)
The specific plays that get the most attention, although
there are references to a number of others, are Helen and Andromeda,
both performed at the Dionysian festival the previous year, so fresh in
mind. We just read Helen – sadly,
Andromeda is lost – so it is fresh in our minds. The Poet and the Women is a reward for
persistence reading Aristophanes and Euripides.
If this were one’s first Greek play, it would be baffling. But we are savvy readers now, able to enjoy
even this minor play. “I got that
reference” is a genuine source of pleasure, however shallow.
I borrowed a still from a recent performance of The Poet
and the Women at the International Festival of Ancient Greek Drama held in
Cyprus every July and August. That would
be a heck of a way to spend a vacation.
Next week’s play is The Phoenician Women by
Euripides, which whatever the title might suggest is a radical rewrite of Seven
Against Thebes by Aeschylus, Euripides again in his late “revisionary”
mode. I wish I remembered what he did
with the story, but I don’t.
Anyway, Euripides sends a relative in drag to infiltrate the festival, and the play quickly turns into a farce, with Euripides trying to rescue his partner the only way he knows how – by reenacting scenes from Euripides plays.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds so Godardian I'm surprised Godard never made a movie based on this play.
Yes, the play has a playful "New Wave" feel. Maybe the closest Godard got was his little inset performance in Cleo from 5 to 7.
ReplyDeleteThere is also some resemblance to the climax of Blazing Saddles, when the big fight crashes into the other movie sets.
I’ve been forced out of hiding by the lack of response to your inspired suggestion that we read Plato’s Symposium together. A long-term lurker in this blessed corner of the Internet, late last year I persuaded two of my friends to join me in your Big Greek Read, and what a high old time we’ve been having, zooming for an hour every Sunday to chew over the latest ancient offering! The synergy of our interests, knowledge and general talents has stood us in good stead over many years of group-reads, but this project seems especially well suited to us: for example, two of us recently read Square Haunting, and so we particularly liked the excuse to read HD’s version of Ion—but our overall discovery of the greatness of Euripides has been a special joy. I have been asked to say here, out loud, that he is The Man.
ReplyDeleteHowever, as I say, I’m not here just to thank you for giving us a grand opportunity to brighten our lives in these dark days (the schedule alone is worth the price of admission, so to speak). Chiefly it’s to say Yes, please, in due course do post about your reading of the Symposium. We surely aren’t the only folk who are following-but-not-participating in your discussion, and so I may well be speaking for more than us three …. who will certainly read the S very soon, and would find your insights and asides very useful; the variously learned comments btl would also, as usual, increase our pleasure in the whole exercise. I may even add our tuppenceworth.
The translation I have is from the 1910 Everyman edition of Five Dialogues, wherein the Symposium is entitled The Banquet, and is translated by Shelley, which I imagine has its pros and cons. Your thoughts on a more modern take would be welcome!
Finally, a note of appreciation for the weekly illustrations, to add to the others you’ve had. Last week’s glimpse of that jolly-looking Cyprus production of The Poet and the Women reminded me that I like to approach Aristophanes as a Christmas pantomime (I am writing from England): it made me put that festival on a bucket list.
This play looks pretty good, though I am still behind in my reading, darn it. Maybe I can get to it tonight. I just love the way Euripides is a recurring character in Aristophanes. I'll bet Euripides was disappointed when he wasn't.
ReplyDeleteI'm in on the Plato read, definitely. Our copy (Penguin Classics, Walter Hamilton's 1951 translation) is already sitting on my desk.
This is pleasant to see. Thanks. I know of some other non-internettish people following the schedule, and there are a few people I see on twitter who I don't know at all who are doing the same. I am pro-lurking, but again, how nice to hear from you.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering myself about translations. I'm likely reading Jowett, the 19th century translation that carried so many students for so long. But I know nothing, really.
Aristophanes is undoubtedly a direct ancestor of the panto. We'll see an intermediate ancestor in Menander.
Scott, also nice to hear. The not just sniping at but actual appearance of Euripides is amazing, and the big one, The Frogs, is still to come.
Also: I'm thinking of Aristotle's Poetics for the ned of October and maybe Longinus's On the Sublime for the end of November.
ReplyDeleteI'm interested in reading The Poetics and On the Sublime too
ReplyDeleteWe will be well-versed in ancient Greek - in Western - aesthetics when we are done.
ReplyDeleteMy memory is that both Poetics and On the Sublime are not exactly easy but certainly accessible. Poetics will be especially accessible since we all will have just read the evidence for the argument. Never a better time to read it.
And both are short, which does not hurt.
Scott on The Poet and the Women:
ReplyDelete"Euripides, against all expectations, is trapped in a Euripidean dramatic situation inside an Aristophanes comedy, and the only way to survive is to use Aristophanes' methods."