The Wasps – The Poet and the Women – The Frogs

Aristophanes (c.445-c.383 BC), the supreme master of Old Comedy, wrote plays whose cheerful obscenity and sharp political satire have never been equalled.

Ιn The Wasps an old-fashioned father and his loose- living son come το blows – and end up ίn court; elsewhere Aristophanes milks the clash of generations for all it’s worth by sending up the purveyors of new ideas like Socrates and Euripides (the most controversial οf the great tragedians). Ιn The Poet and the Women Euripides, accused οf misogyny, gets a relative in drag to infiltrate an all-woman festival and find out what revenge is being plotted, with predictably bawdy results. Ιn The Frogs, written in the darkest days of the Peloponnesian War, the god Dionysus descends το the Underworld to find a poet to bring back: does Athens in her hour of danger need the traditional wisdom of Aeschylus or the brilliant modern cleverness of Euripides? As the great debate proceeds, Aristophanes combines parody with slapstick and political discussion with pantomime high spirits, to produce a hilarious and unique masterpiece.