Sunday, February 23, 2014

Closing the curtain on The Frogs (spoilers below)

The Frogs concludes with quite a twist.

Early in the play, Dionysus states clearly that he is going to Hades to free Euripides. But in the end it is Aeschylus whom the god brings back to advise Athens and guide her choral games.

After the contests between Euripides and Aeschylus, why Dionysus made the choice he did is clear.

For starters, this sequence takes up most of the play. It also includes the literal weighing in a scale of each's poetic wit. As you might guess, the play maintains its comedic strain throughout this poetic competition. Aeschylus' demonstrating that many of Euripides' prologues can be concluded with the sentence "Lost his bottle of oil," also damns the deity's initial pick.

The shifting of Dionysus' choice from Euripides to Aeschylus also reflects Aristophanes' own conservative philosophy. Presented with an older, more august Aeschylus it should be obvious that the younger, shallower Euripides won't be going back to the land of the living with Dionysus. Yet, because of his constant waffling and his stated interest in Euripides, Dionysus' final choice still came as a surprise to me.

If you have interest in (ancient Greek) drama, definitely do give The Frogs a read.

Although, even at the end of the play, I'm not so sure about its title. Why was it called The Frogs if a group of them have only a small role near the beginning of the play? Because it's about rescuing a dramatist and poet (someone intricately tied with public presentations) are those frogs supposed to be identified with the audience and vice versa?

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