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The different preoccupations of Aristophanes and Menander may be found through exploring the plays. Aristophanes' main preoccupation was to entertain the people, and then to try to educate them about the politics of Athens at the time. Menander's main preoccupation was, like Aristophanes, to entertain the people, but also to try to teach them some sort of moral that they could hang on to at the end.
The fact that Aristophanes set `Frogs' in `real time' in Athens in 405 BC shows that the play is a political comment on life in the city at that time. In 405 BC Athens was in a sorry state. Athens and her allies have been at war with Sparta and her allies, and in 411 there was in Athens a brief Oligarchic coup, during which the Oligarchs, led by Antiphon, had replaced the Council with a new Council of 400. Theramenes led an uprising against them and in 410 full democracy had finally been restored under Cleophon. In `Frogs' Aristophanes has Dionysus seeking a way to "save the city" and restore Athens to her former glory through a revival of tragedy. After the recent deaths of Euripides and Sophocles, the future of both tragedy and Athens seemed dark.
The plot in `Frogs' is fundamental to the success of the play as a great deal of the humour comes from the situations that the characters are put into. Dionysus appears humorously dressed in a mixture of traditional tragedy costume and a home made Heracles costume. He goes to Heracles house to ask him how to get to the underworld, as he knows that Heracles has been there before when he went to steal Cerberus. He tries to explain his intention of bringing back Euripides, as he feels a longing for "a poet who can write" to Heracles Here we see development of the different characters. ...
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...ut a dowry, and swears to Pan and the Nymphs that he has not come there with any criminal purpose in mind. Gorgias response shows an entire change of opinion:
"you've convinced me completely, and I'm on your side."
This moves the action and the plot on quickly.
Aristophanes and Menander had different preoccupations. Menander's comedy has been described as "a serious attempt at light drama". His is a Comedy of Manners, with a great deal of emphasis on morals and also on piety. `Old Cantankerous' is universally accessible, and Menander did not only write for the Athenian audience. Aristophanes, however got caught up in whichever problem Athens was experiencing at the time. This meant that it must have been biting wit , but for anyone who was not an Athenian at that time would need some background knowledge to understand many of the jokes and references.
...ty since "things could happen in the real life of Athens which were virtually unthinkable in tragedy, and vice versa." Perhaps the safest assessment of Dionysus is that while not a direct opponent of the traditional ways, his presence, and especially his effect on other characters, serves to highlight many social norms. According to Bernad Knox, "From start to finish, Euripides was 'attempting to show citizens bred in the traditional views...that such conceptions of the gods should offend them.'" Perhaps we as readers will never fully understand the Dionysus that appears in this play, but a closing look at a remark of the Chorus may bring us a step closer to this understanding:
Assemblywomen, by Aristophanes, posits a system in which the institution for the transfer of wealth within a patrimonial line is subverted by a system that closely resembles the ordering of a Greek household. In Assemblywomen, the women take power and redesign the social mechanisms. Although the Assemblywomen radically change some elements of the Greek social institution, such as private property and sexual limitation, the women remain, although in an expanded form, within the structure of a household. Male dominance is tempered but gender roles are reinforced. The institution of the household in Assemblywomen is expanded into the body politic but its fundamental nature does not change.
Antigone is a play about the tension caused when two individuals have conflicting claims regarding law. In this case, the moral superiority of the laws of the city, represented by Creon, and the laws of the gods, represented bt Antigone. In contrast, Oedipus The King is driven by the tensions within Oedipus himself. That play both begins and concludes within the public domain, the plot being driven by the plague that troubles the city, and which is so graphically brought to life by the Priest. In both Antigone (ll179-82) and Oedipus The King (ll29-31) the city is likened to a storm tossed ship, and it cannot be merely coincidence that Oedipus The King was written at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, a time when Athens itself was suffering the effects of plague. Oedipus The King reaches its climax with a now blinded Oedipus daring to show himself to the people of Thebes, forgetting that he is no longer the leader of the state. In Antigone, it is Creons abuse of absolute power that leads to his tragic downfall. Whilst Oedipus determinedly tried to get to the root of his peoples ills, ultimately discovering that he was in fact the cause of them, Creon morphs from a supposedly caring leader into a tyrannical despot, eager to take the law into his own hands. It is the actions of Antigone that helps to bring about Creons fall from grace, as her steadfast refusal to accept th...
Aside from all the prodigious number of Greek tragedies in history, stands a collection of Greek comedies which serve as humorous relief from the powerful overtone of the tragedy. These comedies were meant to ease the severity and seriousness sometimes associated with the Greek society. The ideas portrayed in the comedies, compared to the tragedies, were ridiculously far-fetched; however, although abnormal, these views are certainly worthy of attention. Throughout his comedy, The Clouds, Aristophanes, along with his frequent use of toilet humor, ridicules aspects of Greek culture when he destroys tradition by denouncing the importance of the gods' influence on the actions of mortals, and he unknowingly parallels Greek society with today's. Aristophanes also defiantly misrepresents an icon like Socrates as comical, atheistic, and consumed by ideas of self interest, which is contradictory to the Socrates seen in Plato's Apology or Phaedo.
In the Symposium, a most interesting view on love and soul mates are provided by one of the characters, Aristophanes. In the speech of Aristophanes, he says that there is basically a type of love that connects people. Aristophanes begins his description of love by telling the tale of how love began. He presents the tale of three sexes: male, female, and a combination of both. These three distinct sexes represented one’s soul. These souls split in half, creating a mirror image of each one of them. Aristophanes describes love as the search for the other half of your soul in this quote: “When a man’s natural form was split in two, each half went round looking for its other half. They put their arms around one another, and embraced each other, in their desire to grow together again. Aristophanes theme is the power of Eros and how not to abuse it.
The group of characters named as Chorus in both Sophocles' Antigone and Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound witness the rebellion of the titular characters against their respective authorities. In both plays, the Choruses (heretofore distinguished as Chorus A for Antigone and Chorus P for Prometheus Bound) recognize the ruling powers as both dangerous and tyrannical and are sympathetic to the plights of Antigone and Prometheus. However, the similarities between the two groups end at this point. While the actions of Chorus A are understandable given that their maturity has made them keenly aware of their own mortality, they appear mundane and self-serving in comparison to the noble selflessness of the youthful Chorus P.
A Greek drama is a series of actions within a literary presentation in which the chief character has a disastrous fate. Many Greek dramas fall under the theatrical category of a tragedy due to the tragic events and unhappy ending that cause the downfall of the main character. During the famous play “Antigone” the Greek author Sophocles incorporated several features of a tragedy. These features include a morally significant dilemma and the presence of a tragic hero. The grand debate over which character can hold the title of the tragic hero has been discussed in the literary world for ages.
...trated this by betraying the trust that people had in men and the gods with his foolish and reckless action against Cadmus and his family. Dionysus refuted rational thinking by letting his emotions for revenge stand in the way of his contemplating how a god should behave. In doing all the things Dionysus has destroyed the ideal way one would expect a god to conduct their self. Euripides portrays a Dionysus that single handily destroys all the cultural values of Hellenic Greece; however, Euripides is able to capture the changing values of his audience and pave the way for the culture of Hellenistic Greece to begin to dominate societal thought.
Aristophanes’ original work was meant to entertain an audience of ancient Greece, but the translations allow for the play to remain a timeless part of history. Although the works of different translators in different time periods make all the translations dissimilar; they all share a common theme and a root of the same language. These translations are the reason the play can continue to be told throughout time. Translations make ancient stories accessible to the people of the modern world. Aristophanes’ work is not being shredded or forgotten; instead it remains to be a part of the literary world. Lysistatra can continue to affect the lives of the masses because of our ability to alter the wording to make the play both informative and amusing. Authors write to entertain or express their ...
In the play Wasps, Aristophanes informs the audience about the fact that their leaders are completely corrupted. This is done frequently throughout the play through the use of the humour device of ridiculing of an individual, in this case, Cleon is that individual. Using comedy to his advantage, Aristophanes continuously mocks Cleon in the play. In fact, at one point he even calls him a ‘whale-creature’ to describe his physical appearance. i.e. “And this disgusting whale-creature had pair of scales and it was weighing out bits of fat from a carcass… Dividing up the body politic – I see it all. Horrible!” Aside from insulting Cleon’s appearance, Aristophanes also addresses the fact that political leaders are stealing from the people and, that
... convey deeper themes of life and death, the struggles between power and class structure and also the societal differences between men and women. Aristophanes uses humor to hook his audience into his play, and then undermines the surface humor with much bigger thematic issues. If this play had simply been about women withholding sex for other reasons such as wanting more money for shopping or other frivolous ideas it would not then be considered a satiric comedy. Satire requires more than physical humor. An issue must be raised such as the life and death theme that is seen in the war in Lysistrata, and a solution must then be made. Aristophanes created the women in the beginning to be bickering, unintelligent, and self-centered people. But in the end it was their idea and compromise that ended the war.
In answering this question, I will look at the question in two ways. Firstly, I will look at the role of the chorus objectively, examining the basic role of the chorus in the play, and looking at the role of the Chorus as Sophocles would have intended the role of the Chorus to be understood. However, I will then look at how I think the Greek audience would have perceived the role of the Chorus and then how the role of the Chorus is perceived today by a 20th century and examine the key differences in the two different sets of perceptions. Finally, I will look at the importance of the role of the Chorus to a 20th century audience and a Greek audience respectively.
Oedipus Rex, an ancient Greek tragedy authored by the playwright Sophocles, includes many types of psychological phenomena. Most prominently, the myth is the source of the well-known term Oedipal complex, coined by psychologist Sigmund Freud in the late 1800s. In psychology, “complex” refers to a developmental stage. In this case the stage involves the desire of males, usually ages three to five, to sexually or romantically posses their mother, and the consequential resentment of their fathers. In the play, a prince named Oedipus tries to escape a prophecy that says he will kill his father and marry his mother, and coincidentally saves the Thebes from a monster known as the Sphinx. Having unknowingly killed his true father Laius during his escape, he marries the widowed queen of Thebes, his mother Jocasta. Many events in the story should lead to suspicion of their marriage, but out of pride and ignorance Oedipus stubbornly refuses to accept his fate. Together, these sins represent the highest taboos of Greek society, revealed by Socphocles’s depiction of the already pervasive story. Before the Thebian plays, the myth centered more around Oedipus’s journey of self-awareness; meanwhile, Sophocles shows Oedipus’s struggles with his inevitable desire toward his mother throughout these stages of psychological development.
Euripides’ The Bacchae is a play about the cult of Dionysus, and more specifically about what happened to the city of Thebes after the king, Pentheus, prohibited the worship of Dionysus. The play begins with a lengthy monologue from Dionysus, in which he describes his birth, and journey throughout the East. As the first character to appear in the play, he also explains the reasons why future events will take place. He describes the actions of his mother’s sisters, his aunts, and the actions of the king, Pentheus. Dionysus is a vengeful god, and the message that this play sends to the audience is that “When insulted, gods do not forgive” (line 1818).
Greek tragedies began at a festival in honor of Dionysius, who was the god of wine. At the early festivals, drinking, quarrels, and sexual activity occurred frequently. Later on, tragedies gained much more respect and were taken very seriously. The plays dealt with man's relationship with god(s). These plays also dealt with a specific instance of life. The chorus wore goat-skins and served a great purpose in the tragedies, themselves. Thespis, the father of the tragedy, created an actor who talked with the leader of the chorus to further make the importance of the chorus seen.