Aristophanes 1: Clouds, Wasps, Birds

459 Pages·1998·5.6 MB·English

by  Aristophanes

“Peter Meineck has produced a lively, idiomatic translation of Aristophanes
that should be eminently accessible to the modern student. With a fine ear
trained by years of practical experience as Director of the award-winning
Aquila Theatre Company, Meineck knows exactly what works on stage
before a contemporary audience, yet sacrifices none of the allusive subtlety
and satirical vigor of the plays in their original historical context. The
translations are accompanied by detailed footnotes and endnotes, as well as
balanced introductions and bibliographies by a first-rate scholar, Ian Storey,
which ably survey the major critical issues raised by each play. This volume
is ideally suited for adoption as a course text.”
—THOMASK. HUBBARD, University of Texas at Austin
“I was glad earlier, when Meineck’s players showed us that Aristophanes
could still bring down the house; and now I’m glad to see the ‘hot script’
over which he, like his author, ‘sweated night and day.’ Faithful to the
Greek, yet playable on the modern stage, these translations of Clouds,
Wasps,and Birdsonce again bring the healing laughter of Athenian Old
Comedy to a busy and anxious world.”
—KENNETHJ. RECKFORD, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
“. . . a perfect translation for performance, and performance was, and is,
the most important thing for Aristophanes and should be for us.”
—DOUGLASSPARKER, University of Texas at Austin
PETERMEINECKis Artistic Director of the Aquila Theatre Company and
Clinical Assistant Professor of Classics and Ancient Studies, New York
University.
IANC. STOREYis Professor of Ancient History and Classics, Trent University.
ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-360-0
90000
Cover art: Michael Sowa, Carpathian Chicken,
reproduced by permission of Inkognito. 9 FnL1 00 0000 780872 203600
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Aristophanes 1
Clouds, Wasps, Birds
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Aristophanes 1
Clouds, Wasps, Birds
Translated, with Notes, by Peter Meineck
Introduced by Ian C. Storey
Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Indianapolis/Cambridge
Copyright © 1998 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
10 09 08 07 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
For further information, please address
Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
PO Box 44937
Indianapolis, IN 46244-0937
www.hackettpublishing.com
Cover design by Brian Rak and John Pershing.
Interior design by Meera Dash and Dan Kirklin.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Aristophanes.
[Selections. English. 1999]
Aristophanes / translated, with notes, by Peter Meineck : introduced
by Ian C. Storey.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references
Contents: Clouds—Wasps—Birds
ISBN 0-87220-361-1 — ISBN 0-87220-360-3 (pbk.)
1. Aristophanes—Translations into English. 2. Greek drama (Com-
edy)—Translations into English. I. Meineck, Peter, 1967– . II. Title.
PA3877.A2 1999 98-37824
882'.01—dc21 CIP
ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-361-7 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-360-0 (pbk.)
Adobe PDF ebook ISBN: 978-1-62466-053-5
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Contents
General Introduction vii
Diagram of the Stage xxxviii
Translator’s Preface xxxix
Clouds: Introduction 2
Clouds:Cast of Characters 8
Clouds 9
Clouds: Endnotes 107
Wasps:Introduction 125
Wasps:Cast of Characters 132
Wasps 133
Wasps:Endnotes 234
v
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vi Contents
Birds:Introduction 262
Birds:Cast of Characters 266
Birds 267
Birds:Endnotes 382
Appendix: The First Version of Clouds 401
Works Cited 406
Further Reading 409
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General Introduction
Old (and Aristophanic) Comedy
Aristophanic comedy is not the sort of comedy with which we are
familiar: situation comedy, comedy of errors and manners, plot and
subplot, romance, with an emphasis on the familial and domestic. I
would rather ask the reader to imagine a dramatic combination of
the slapstick of the Three Stooges, the song and dance of a Broad-
way musical, the verbal wit of W. S. Gilbert or of a television show
like Frasier, the exuberance of Mardi Gras, the open-ended plot line
of The Simpsons, the parody of a Mel Brooks movie, the political
satire of Doonesbury (or your favorite editorial cartoonist), the out-
rageous sexuality of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and the fantasy
of J. R. R. Tolkien, wrapped up in the format of a Monty Python
movie.
Aristophanic comedy is “fantasy” or “farce” rather than pure
“comedy.” It depends not on complicated plot or subtle interaction
of characters, but on the working out of a “great idea,” the more
bizarre the better (e.g., the sex-strike that stops the war in Lysistrata,
or the establishment of Cloudcuckooland in Birds). Imagine a fantas-
tic idea, wind it up and let it run, watch the logical (or illogical) con-
clusions that follow, and let the whole thing end in a great final
scene. “Plot” is not a useful term here; of the eleven extant comedies
of Aristophanes, only Thesmophoriazusaehas anything like the linear
plot of a modern comedy. The background is always topical and im-
mediate, the city of Athens in the present, although in Plutuswe can
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viii Aristophanes 1
detect a shift from the local problems of Athens to those of Greece as
a whole.
The comedy often features a central character—avoid the term
“hero” here—who is responsible for the creation and execution of
the great idea. Whitman attempted to create a type of “comic hero”
in whose nature was a wide streak of poneria(“villainy”), but Aristo-
phanes’ heroes are not all cut from the same cloth. Some are old men
(Dicaeopolis, Strepsiades, Trygaeus, Peithetaerus, Chremylus, “rela-
tive” in Thesm.); two are mature women (Lysistrata, Praxagora). In
Frogsthe protagonist is a god, Dionysus, a familiar character in com-
edy, and in Waspsthe great idea is devised by a younger man (Con-
tracleon) for the good of his elderly and cantankerous father (Pro-
cleon), a younger man who has much in common with the poet.
These protagonists stand up against a situation they find intolera-
ble, create a brilliant and fanciful solution, and keep the comic pot
bubbling to the end of the drama. Not all are wholly sympathetic;
Strepsiades can be stupid and tiresome in the teaching scene with
Socrates (Cl. 627–804), and more than one critic has seen Peithetaerus,
“Makemedo,” of Birdsas a comic portrait of megalomania.
Although Aristotle (Poetics1447a35) knows of an etymology of
“village song,” comedy (komoidia) is “revel-song” (komos+ ode), the
celebration of exuberant release that was inherent in the worship of
Dionysus. Songs and dancing must have been common to every
Greek state, but formal comic drama is attested for Sicily in the early
fifth century and then for Athens, where the genre would reach its
greatest heights, in the fifth and fourth centuries.1 As early as 330
B.C.E., Aristotle (Ethics1128a 21–24) can distinguish “old” (palaia)
comedy, where “indecency” (aischrologia, the closest the Greeks get
to “obscenity”) provided the humor, from “new” (kaine) comedy,
where humor is derived by “innuendo” (hyponoia). Later in the age
of Alexandrian scholarship (the last three centuries B.C.E.), comedy
1 There are hints of something called “Megarian comedy,” but whether the
Megara meant is the city to the northwest of Athens or that in Sicily is un-
certain (Aristotle Poetics1448a29). Athenian comedians would make jokes at
Megarian comedy as poor trash in comparison with their own—one such
joke occurs at Wasps56ff., “you shouldn’t expect anything too high-brow
from us, but you’re not going to get any of that disgusting stuff lifted off the
Megarians either.” It is uncertain whether this indicates a formal genre of
comic drama at Megara.