Aristophanes: The Wasps, The Poet and the Women, The Frogs (edition 1964)

I don't like Aristophanes. Perhaps it's in part because his political humour is based on things that, while I can study them and look them up and piece apart why it's funny, I can't understand in the way the intended audience could. Sometimes it's because it's just crude and silly. ( )

Anthologies are great but I often forget what stories are in what book. Not to mention, the GoodReads Book Challenge doesn't take this into consideration, so I decided to split the reviews.


REVIEWS

The Wasps

Women at the Thesmophoria

The Frogs

EXTRAS
The book includes a good introduction, and each play is preceded by a preface. I found the prefaces invaluable! I usually skip them but I really enjoyed all the background information. As an added bonus, the plays are annotated. This was helpful with the historical elements in the plays. This alone was worth buying the book instead of downloading one of the many free versions.

TRANSLATION
I didn't research translations before picking up this book. I knew Aristophanes includes many jokes, so it was important for me to understand the content of the play. This translation fit that purpose well.

EBOOK FORMAT
I love the content of Penguin Books, but their typeface doesn't resonate to my personal preferences. Unfortunately, I had issues with the eBook format as well. The character name is inline with the text and looks sloppy on my Nook; on a larger screen this may not be an issue. ( )

Oh Frogs, Frogs, I do love you.

Book Description: NY Penguin 1968 Reprinted. Soft cover. Good .

A slim volume containing three plays by Aristophanes (translated by David Barrett) - The Wasps, The Poet and the Women and The Frogs.

Aristophanes was an Athenian, born around 450 BC, and was a satirist. This volume has an interesting introduction to Greek plays, their origin, politics, religious significance and format. The plays are a mixture of biting satire, bad puns and bawdy slapstick - rather like something Jonathan Swift might have written for Frankie Howard - we even have characters called Vagina and Erektion (titter ye not). The translator had a problem with the explicit nature of the text, and tamed it down - this edition was written in 1964 - the notes kept saying things like "of course this is far more obscene in the original" - I must seek out a recent translation! Here is a polite version of a song by the chorus :

But young Ariphrades is much
The brightest of the three:
In one respect, at least,
he was An infant prodigy.
They took him to a lady once
Who said that she could teach
Him twenty ways of making love
At half an obol each:
But when she'd taught him all she knew
(Or so his father swore),
He turned the lady upside down
And taught her twenty more. ( )