The Frogs by Aristophanes is this week’s play. It was performed in what now look like the waning days of Athens, just before their conquest by Sparta, and in particular the last days of Athenian tragedy, with Euripides and Sophocles both recently dead. In what may be the most outrageous conceit of Aristophanes, Dionysus, understandably worried about the quality of the plays at his festivals, travels to Hades to retrieve Euripides to save his festival, and to save Athens. “I need a poet who can write,” Dionysus says (tr. David Barrett, p. 159). But once he gets to Hades, it turns out there are options.
The first half of the play is the journey to Hades by
Dionysus and his servant. Here we find
the famous chorus of the frogs:
FROGS: Brekeke-kex, ko-ax, ko-ax,
Ko-ax, ko-ax, ko-ax!
Oh we are the musical Frogs!
We live in the marshes and bogs!
Sweet, sweet is the hymn
That we sing as we swim,
And our voices are known
For their beautiful tone… (164)
I cannot guess how often I have seen writers, modern
writers, quote those frogs.
The second half of the play contains a duel between
Euripides and Aeschylus over who is the better poet. Sophocles if of course above all this
nonsense. The debate, whatever
ridiculous turns it takes, is genuine, a real contrast of the aesthetic ideas
of the two poets. It is the invention of
Western literary criticism, perhaps a hundred years before Aristotle’s Poetics,
which, by the way, I invite you to read along with me next week. Some of the terms of the debate are obscure
for us, and not just us:
DIONYSUS: Brilliant! Brilliant! Wish I knew what you were talking about! (198)
But many are clear enough from the plays we have. A surprising number of the plays mentioned
are ones we have, which may say something, although I do not know what, about which
plays survived;
AESCHYLUS: Then I put on The Persians: an effective sermon on the will to win. Best thing I ever wrote.
DIONYSUS: I loved that bit where they sang about the days of the great Darius, and the Chorus went like this with their hands and cried ‘Wah! Wah!’ (194)
Dionysus is perhaps not the most sophisticated theater-goer.
If The Frogs were some poor reader’s first Greek play
it would likely be gibberish. Too
inside. I mean, the first line of the play is literally a joke
about jokes:
XANTHIAS: [surveying the audience unenthusiastically]: What about one of the old gags, sir? I can always get a laugh with those. (156)
But for those of us who have made it to this point in the
readalong, The Frogs is like a reward.
I illustrated this post with two performance stills of the weighing of
the poetry of Euripides and Aeschylus, one from 1947 and one from 2013, both
from the Cambridge Greek Play site.
Next week is the last surviving tragedy, Oedipus at
Colonus by Sophocles, performed posthumously in 404 BCE, or perhaps 401 BCE,
or perhaps some other time. It makes a
fine ending to this great tradition.
“We like your plays, particularly the early, funny ones.”
ReplyDeleteThat line will come in handy when we get to the Middle Comedy plays in a couple weeks, except it may be reversed - we like the early, less funny ones.
ReplyDeleteFor "reasons" I once translated a chunk of this play into a pastiche Elizabethan English: https://amechanicalart.blogspot.com/2014/06/aristophanes-in-elizabethan-english.html
ReplyDeleteGolly, that is so, so good. I would love to see Aristophanes performed in Elizabethan English. Though "Medea" would be even better.
DeleteWell, it's funny you should say that ... https://amechanicalart.blogspot.com/2014/06/euripides-in-elizabethan-english.html
DeleteOutstanding. Thank you for that link.
DeleteThere are always reasons.
ReplyDeleteI don't know anything about the Greeks, but there are some exceptional Elizabethan translations of Seneca, one of the pleasures of reading him.
Miss Lambert is taking the clergyman through the wicket-gate to her private garden; and when she comes to the pond, she sees a chorus of frogs on their many leaves, who begin to sing "brekekekek," and that too will change everything. All is solemn, all is pale where she stands amidst the song of the frogs, like a statue in a grove. --Virginia Woolf, The Waves
ReplyDelete"We have to remember to keep telling ourselves that we're still alive," Tessa said, loud enough for the others to hear. When they realized what she'd said, her fellows nodded and repeated her words, "We have to remember to keep telling ourselves that we're still alive," over and over to themselves, the end of the phrases overlapping all around Tessa, "still alive, still alive," exhausted voices croaking like a chorus of frogs. --Don DeLillo, The Silence
ReplyDeleteThanks for showing some examples. Such references are common in the early 20th century - so many people who studied at least a little bit of Greek - but i did not have any particular ones in mind.
ReplyDeleteHave I said anything about "Frogs," though? No, I see I haven't yet. The first two-thirds is Aristophanes back to his SNL-style running gags and scatological humor, but he name-checks dozens of playwrights along the way before Dionysus reaches Pluto's house. Aristophanes knew his theater, and we must assume that so did his audience, to get all of those references.
ReplyDeleteThe poetry slam/criticism battle is terrific, and accurate in terms of literary analysis. Great stuff. It's too bad we don't have the music to go along with the battle of songs. That would be fascinating. I didn't know that Euripides was an innovator in terms of songs, incorporating foreign and folk tunes into his productions. He's the ur-Haydn.
It's disappointing to see Aristophanes choosing political expediency over actual democracy. I wonder if he regrets that a year later.
I would love to know the music. It is hard for me to remember or imagine that these great writers were also composers, choreographers, and directors. As Wagner later wished for, the Complete Work of Art.
ReplyDelete