2007 Season - Genesius Guild

Aristophanes: "The Frogs"

“The Frogs” was staged shortly before Athens was to lose the 27-year war with Sparta. While Aristophanes gets his usual jibes at generals and leaders, the comedy concentrates on a safer topic: literary criticism.

Euripides had recently died, following the deaths of Sophocles and Aeschylus, bringing to a close Athen’s Golden Age of tragedy. In this play, Dionysus, the god in whose honor such plays were written, decides to go to Hades and bring Euripides back to earth. He and his servant, Xanthias, pay a visit to Herakles, who made a famous trip to the Underworld, to get some pointers for their trip and to borrow his lion skin as a disguise.

They journey to the lake which separates our world from the underworld and hail the boatman, Charon, in order to be ferried across. During the trip, they are pestered by a chorus of noisy frogs.

They next encounter a chorus of Initiates, those who are versed in ways of Hades. They are challenged by Aiakos, a guardian of Pluto’s gate. They encounter two women who remember Herakles’ last visit and his destruction of their tavern. Then Aiakos subjects them to some tests to discover which of them is really a god. They are admitted, at last, into Pluto’s presence.

While Dionysos intends to take Euripides back to earth, he consents to a series of poetry contests between Aeschylus and Euripides, which Aeschylus wins. Euripides is left in Hades and Aechylus prepares to return with Dionysus.

Aristophanes’ humor lies in the fact that he never really liked Euripides’ work and delighted in making fun of it in the “contests.”
The play is substantially written to include contemporary topical references and to achieve a farcical effect.