Frogs

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Summary: A wonderful edition, and a wonderful play.
Review: As a struggling (college) student of Classical Greek, I found K.J. Dover's edition of Frogs to have a wonderful amount of translation help and historical notes, without being overwhelming (or overly expensive). Since the second half of the play is a gentle parody of Aeschylus and Euripides, it helps to have read those authors (preferrably in the original) to get some of the jokes -- if you're new to Greek Comedy, take a look at K.J. Dover's edition of Clouds, which I haven't yet tackled, but intend to. (That one parodies Plato and Socrates...)

N.B. -- this edition doesn't include a translation, which is how I prefer it, but some may not.

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Summary: Great comedy has no expiration date......
Review: I re-read this play recently after being asked to submit a few choices to direct at a local theater, and fell in love with the humor of Aristophanes all over again.

His comedies are virtually unparalelled in the surviving classical works. The humor of the plays, particularly the Frogs, is just as fresh and vibrant today as it was thousands of years ago.

Dionysus, Greek God of theater, has grown despondant that upon the death of Euripides there are no great poets left on Earth. He resolves to travel to Hades and beg Pluto to allow him to resurrect Euripedes so that he might continue his work.

Dionysus, accompanied by his faithful porter Xanthias, travels first to the house of Heracles, dressed as the Greek hero, to ask his advice...as well as directions. Heracles suggests conventional methods (death by ones own hands) before he reveals the path he himself followed.

The two then set out to rescue Euripides. Xanthias, being a slave, is given a foot route to follow, while Dionysus enjoys a boat ride courtesy of Charon, the ferryman of the dead. Upon arrival at Pluto's house, and after a case of mistaken/disguised identity ends up in a draw, Dionysus finally meets up with Euripides.

However, Aeschylus isn't about to give up without a fight...Pluto has arranged for a contest between the two famed poets to determine the better of them...as Aeschylus decries Euripides as merely a 'flavor of the month' among the people of Hades. A dialogue ensues between he and Euripides, with Dionysus left to judge the merits of each.

Full of delightful comic insight into the works of both poets, The Frogs is a completely accessible foray into classical theater that you don't need to be a scholar to understand. While a basis of Euripides and Aeschylus helps to augment enjoyment of the work, it stands apart on its own.

An enchanting, intriguing, and entertaining read.

Rating:
Summary: One of his best
Review: In "Frogs" (Batrakhoi), the god Dionysus, complaining that the art of poetry has declined, goes down to Hades to bring the playwright Aeschylus back from the dead. Once he gets there, however, Euripides (one of Aristophanes' favorite targets) claims that he is better than Aeschylus, and a contest of wits ensues. This my favorite of Aristophanes' plays and has a tidier ending than most of them. Watch out, though-this book (ed. Kenneth Dover) is the original Greek text. If you don't know Greek, buy the Penguin translation.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining
Review: My friend and I were doing a project for school on the internet and we stumbled across the whole text of this play (we were reasearching ancient Greece). We decided to bookmark it, and then during lunches we read through it until we finished it. It's very amusisng, I highly recommend it! I love the songs!

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Summary: Aristophanes's farcical attempt at dramatic criticism
Review: On the one hand Aristophanes's comedy "The Frogs" is a farce, but it is of more interest because it presents the earliest known example of dramatic criticism. Presented in 405 B.C., the play tells of how Dionysus, the god of drama, had to go to Hades to fetch back Euripides, who died the previous year, because Athens no longer had any great tragic poets left. The first part of the comedy involves Dionysus, who has disguised himself as Heracles, and his slave Xanthias on their way to Hades and features several interesting songs by the chorus of blessed mystics and the chorus of frogs. However, the high point of the comedy is the contest between Euripides and Aeschylus.

Each of the two great tragic poets denounces the other and quotes lines from their own works to prove their superiority. We discover that Euripides writes about vulgar themes, corrupts manners, debases music and has prosaic diction. In contrast, Aeschylus finds obscure titles and is guilty of turgid prose. In the end Dionysus finds that artistic standards of judgment are useless and turns to a political solution. This makes sense since the problem facing Athens is a political one: what to do about the tyrant Alcibiades. What is most interesting is the implicit belief that the tragic poets had a social responsibility towards the audiences of their dramas.

"Frogs," in addition to being one of the better comedies by Aristophanes, is also of interest because it contains the only fragments from several tragedies by Euripides and Aeschylus that have been long lost to us. As always, I urge that if you are studying Greek plays, whether the comedies of Aristophanes or the tragedies by those other more serious fellows, it is important to understand the particular structure of these plays and the various dramatic conventions of the Greek theater. This involves not only the distinction between episodes and stasimons (scenes and songs), but elements like the "agon" (a formal debate on the crucial issue of the play), and the "parabasis" (in which the Chorus partially abandons its dramatic role and addresses the audience directly).