Aristophanes Plays: 2: Wasps; Clouds; Birds; Festival Time; Frogs

Description

Reissue of Aristophanes' most famous plays in the Methuen Classical Greek Dramatists series Aristophanes is the oldest comedic writer in Western literature. Although only eleven of the some forty plays he wrote survive, his unique blend of slapstick, fantasy, bawy and political satire provide us with a vivid picture of the ancient Athenians - their social mores, their beliefs and their exuberant sense of occasion. Wasps is a lawcourt satire, Clouds a lighthearted look at education, Birds a search for the perfect society, Festival Time a feminist trial of Euripides and Frogs a celebration of and debate around the theatre. Aristophanes was a unique writer for the comic stage as well as one of the most revealing about the society for which he wrote.

Aristophanes (c. 446-386 BC) was Athens's greatest comic playwright, whose plays define the genre of Old Comedy. His was a precise, poetic vision articulated in pin-sharp images, his works being some of the most revealing about the society for which he wrote. Although only eleven of the some forty plays he wrote survive, his unique blend of slapstick, fantasy, bawdy and political satire provide us with a vivid picture of the ancient Athenians - their social mores, their beliefs and their exuberant sense of occasion. Kenneth McLeish studied Classics and Music at Worcester College, Oxford. Once a full-time translator, author and dramatist, he published extensively including The Good Reading Guide, Shakespeare's People, The Theatre of Aristophanes, Companion to the Arts in the Twentieth Century, Myth, The Listener's Guide to Classical Music and Crucial Classics (both with Valerie McLeish) and The Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought (as general editor). His original plays and his translations - from ancient Greek drama, as well as from Strindberg, Ibsen Moliere and Strindberg - have been widely performed, most notably by the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.