Aristophanes, the last — and greatest — poet of Old Comedy, is Europe’s first — and greatest — comic playwright. The verdict is time’s, unless it is mere accident that his plays alone survive into our era. He was not, it is true, invariably successful in his lifetime, and Aristotle’s somewhat jaundiced view of comedy did not assist his reputation later. Yet appreciative if not always fully comprehending readers have in every age responded to his χάρις. It was, we may suppose, this indefinable attractiveness that was ultimately lacking in his rivals: Alexandria classified him in a ‘triad’ or ‘big three’ with Eupolis and the bibulous Kratinos, Eustathios refers to him, unnamed and unaccompanied, as òκωμικός, ‘the comic poet’.

The plays that have survived into modern times are these:

This information is derived from the hypotheses (introductory summaries, Hellenistic and Byzantine, with extracts from the official public record of performances) prefixed in manuscripts to all the plays: those in Thesmophoriazusae and Ecclesiazusae are truncated. Thesmophoriazusae is datable, however, by its mention of (a) ‘last year’s council’ (the Council of Five Hundred, 413/12); (b) the play of Euripides produced ‘last year in this same place’ (Andromeda, City Dionysia, 412); Ecclesiazusae refers to ‘this alliance’ (the pact between Thebes and Athens, 396/5), and a scholion, quoting Philochoros, dates the play two years before it (394/3). This is consistent with Praxag-ora’s allusions to the current situation (E. 195 ff.).

The evidence of the comedies suggests a formal structure — perhaps conventional in earlier Old Comedy — which Aristophanes, at any rate, felt able to modify at pleasure. This formal structure is most complete in Wasps: certain components, in other plays, are either truncated or omitted. The structural elements are these:

(1) Prologue: the tragic prologue is defined by Aristotle (Po. 1449a 4) as ‘all that precedes the entry of the chorus’, and the same definition applies here. Aristophanes’ prologues introduce us to the theme and (directly or indirectly) to the ‘hero’. Dikaiopolis and Praxagora are ‘on stage’ from the beginning, with monologues that set the scene (the Pnyx, A. 20) or hint at a woman’s plot (E. 17, cf. L. 13, 39): so is Strepsiades, who informs us of his troubles (C. 5 ff.), and, in conversation with Pheidippides, of his plan to overcome them (107: cf. Euripides to Mnesilochos, T. 82 ff.). A dialogue between slaves — in Plutus, Karion’s monologue, 1 ff. —prepares us for the first sight of their masters: Philokleon is real to us (W. 87 ff.) before we see him (144), as is Trygaios (P. 54 ff.) before bis entry (62), and in both plays a slave undertakes the exposition of the ‘story’ (λóγoς) for the spectators (W. 54, P. 50: cf. Euelpides in Birds 30-48). Similarly, Demosthenes and his fellow-slave in Knights prepare us for the hated Paphlagonian, and the intended allegory is shown straightaway by a reference to Pylos (55).

Many of the plays exhibit common themes. Few of them offer, in the normal sense, a ‘plot’ — the tenuous λόγος often ends with the parabasis and thereafter collapses into farce. They introduce us to a world outside reality: a world of fantasy where men can join the birds, and fly to visit Zeus upon a beetle (Birds, Peace), of topsy-turveydom where women can be leaders (Lysistrata, Ecclesiazusae), of dreams in which the little man can take on ‘the establishment’ —his political, social, or intellectual superiors — and rout them (Acharnians, Clouds). Their appreciation asks acceptance of a number of conventional assumptions: that old men are lecherous and gluttonous, that women (old and young) are obsessed with sex and drink, that politicians — tradesmen, foreigners and/or bastards, and perverts to a man — are ‘only in it for the money’. Kleon the tanner, in the early plays, is particularly stigmatized: but attacks on demagogues like Hyperbolos the lamp-maker continue throughout the poet’s lifetime. A ‘private’ citizen — guilty perhaps of a single foolish action — is mercilessly pilloried thereafter: poets and playwrights — Euripides especially — are mocked for their literary foibles. The young men are morally and physically decadent: notoriously, Socrates (a ‘type’ of the new learning) is depicted as a mountebank and quack.

Dikaiopolis and his followers speak contemporary Greek, but not, of course, as they would at home or elsewhere. Comic dialogue, like tragic, is in verse, and its characters normally carry on their conversation, as in tragedy, in iambic trimeters. The rhythm, however, as earlier noted, is a free one, which (a) admits a great deal of resolution: in the first five feet anapaests (besides the normal spondees), dactyls (in the first, third, and fifth), and tribrachs may represent iambi; (b) ignores Porson’s Law, i.e. permits a fifth-foot spondee to be shared between two words; (c) permits irregular word-division in trisyllabic feet; (d) neglects caesura. Aristophanes employs the line with skill and versatility — in its strictest tragic rhythm (C. 794-6), and at the other extreme resolved into five anapaests (W. 979, κατάβα κατόβα κατάβα κατάβα καταβήσομαι).

The staging and performance of Aristophanes’ comedies have in recent times been given much attention. Comedies were presented at the City Dionysia and (more often than tragedy) at the Lenaia. They were put on — at whichever of these festivals — in the Theatre of Dionysos: it has been supposed, but on no convincing evidence, that Lenaian comedies were also staged in the Lenaion, the site of a ‘teatro di fortuna’. The Dionysan theatre had probably no stage, at least not a permanently raised one: ava-, καταβαίνω, verbs quoted in support of it, are consistent — where their meaning is not completely different — with a low, temporary platform, giving easy access to the orchestra (Dardanis is pulled up from there to the ‘stage’ by Philokleon, W. 1341). Performances took place in the open air, in daylight, and the audience could not consult a programme; a play which has a night scene must therefore either say so (‘Will it never be day?’, C. 3) or introduce some prop (a lamp, E. 1) to indicate it.

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.