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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2016
The new appreciation of Aristophanic stagecraft enriches us with many welcome insights. Everyone knows (Molière alleged, with confidence) that plays were intended to be acted, though writers on Aristophanes have sometimes — one admits — appeared not to possess that common knowledge. Yet the effort, stimulating and important in itself, to visualize the comedies in action should not distort our critical perspective — it is possible, in redressing an imbalance, to tilt the scales the other way too sharply. We cannot, whatever our imaginative scholarship, completely recreate a first production: we judge the playwright solely by his words. It is likely that, as readers, we do not greatly differ here from Aristophanes’ spectators; words were the medium of his poetry and wit, and they must have been his audience’s principal criterion in judging among competing playwrights. A different age and culture, of course, make it improbable that their views and ours will chime in detail; however, if their verdict on Knights, Wasps, and Birds surprises us, we cannot but heartily support their nomination, for first prize, of Acharnians and Frogs.
1. The verdict, of course, was delivered by the judges, but one may assume (as Aristophanes himself does) the influence of audience reaction. He appeals to both audience and judges for goodwill and a favourable verdict (B. 445, E. 1141), claims that he himself has never hired claqueurs (A. 656), and blames the audience (whom he had wrongly seen as 6e£iot) for permitting his earlier Clouds to be defeated (C. 525). There are no grounds — given the elaborate procedure of selection — for supposing that the judges would themselves be men of particular discernment: Aristophanes himself discriminates among them (E. 1154 ff., cf. above, p. 26 n. 69), but one suspects that the division was not in effect a very real one (for the unity of a ‘popular’ audience see Walcot, P., ‘Aristophanic and Other Audiences’, G. & R., 18 (1971), 35–50)Google Scholar. At the end of Acharnians and Frogs ol σοφοι’and ol уектчпч τ)δέως were one, and — whether as official judges or as audience — awarded them first prize διά TÒv 7^λωμ (E. 1156).
2. See (e.g.) Lord, L.E., Aristophanes, his Plays and Influence (London, 1925)Google Scholar; Süss, W., Aristophanes und die Nachwelt (Leipzig, 1911)Google Scholar.
3. Leg. 2. 37.
4. Mor. 853B, то φορτικάν . . . καί υυμεΜκον каі βάνοαισον.
5. E.N. 1128a 15 ff., Rh. 1419b 8.
6. A.P. 9. 186, φοβερών πλη#όμεΐΌΐ χαρίτων. See further Ussher in G. & R. 24 ( 1977), 71 ff.
7. On the Modern Element in Literature: The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold i (Ann Arbor, 1960), 30.
8. The Covent Garden Journal, No. 52, Tuesday, 30 June 1752. See, however, the Dedication and Preface (‘in recommendation of our author’) to his Plutus (1742). The judgement in the first passage contrasts with that on Lucian ‘. . . in the exquisite pleasantry of his humour, in the neatness of his wit, and in the poignancy of his satire’.
9. Cf. Forrest, W.G., ‘Aristophanes’ Acharnians’, Phoenix 17 (1963), 1–12 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; (more generally) Gomme, A.W., ‘Aristophanes and Politics’, CR 52 (1938), 97–109 Google Scholar.
10. Hor. Sat. 1.4, 1 ff.