Reviews

Aristophanes: Frogs and Other Plays: A New Verse Translation, with Introduction and Notes by Aristophanes

Only show reviews with written explanations

oldsouls_lovebooks's review against another edition

4.0

This is my first real review in forever. Yay!! I finally felt inspired enough and not too lazy to share my thoughts.

Frogs was my favorite. Then Wasps. Unfortunately, Women at the Thesmophoria doesn’t make the list.
Frogs had everything you could want, or, at least everything I could want in a play: Dionysus, the underworld, and two well established tragedians, Aeschylus and Euripides, taking shots at each other in death over whose writings are best. Old versus new. Oh, Sophocles and Plato were there too.

The same theme of old vs. new is present in Wasps, where Aristophanes has two generations, a father and son, come to blows over the very real political climate in Athens. Seeing that it’s a comedy, you giggle at the ridiculousness of what’s going on while at the same time recognizing it’s a stand in for Aristophanes’ frustration with a corrupt judicial/governmental system and those economically poor; ignorant people who blindly perpetuate the problem. A quite timely play, unfortunately.

As for Women at the Thesmophoria, I will say I didn’t absolutely hate it, but it was pretty lack luster for me. I won’t say insulting because if you’re reading ancient literature, you probably know there’s going to be misogyny, non-Greeks being referred to as “barbarians," and of course people owning slaves. Although, there was a part towards the end of Act I with the chorus leader and chorus I liked that gave some justice to the plight of women. It's quite long so these are just excerpts:
CHORUS LEADER
Have you heard of a woman who'd steal from the State
to the tune of a million or so,
Then ride in a coach with pockets distended,
Like one politician we know?
CHORUS
Well, you must admit it's true
That it's chiefly among you
That gluttons, thieves and criminals abound.
Have you heard of banditresses,
Let alone hijackeresses?
Are there many female pirates to be found?
Overall, the play was kind of interesting but it didn’t have as much meat to it like the others. I do find it funny though that Euripides is center stage again in Aristophanes’ play.

I'll mostly reread these plays in a different translation at some point because I while I know it can be incredibly difficult to translate ancient texts into English, the stand in English words felt far too modern in my opinion. I want to see how similar and different the translations are from each other and whether David Barrett did the most accurate job.