Are some works now purely of historical interest only?

We have to study Aristophanes' Lysistrata for Drama, and I can honestly see no reason why anyone would bother staging it. Whilst Greek tragedy has been terribly influential on drama and prompted some great plays, Greek comedy (there is only one playwright's works surviving but still) just isn't funny. The translation is terrible- it reads like a bad Carry On film- and aside from that, it's boring. There isn't a plot and there's too much formal verse and convention for anyone who isn't a historian or theatre buff to find funny. Theatre's moved on, people have more sophisticated tastes, comedy's moved on.
The only thing it has to recommend it is an anti-war message but there are far better plays with that.

Can you think of any literature that now seems irrelevant?

I recently read, and enjoyed, The Faber Pocket Guide to Greek and Roman Drama by John Burgess. It's an account of these Ancient dramas from someone who actually puts them on in today's theatre. He recommends some modern translations.

Having finished with Homer I'm now trying to build up the courage to tackle the Greek dramatists. But there are so many different translators it's difficult to choose. I was thinking of going for Paul Roche's Complete Aristophanes 'cause he seemed more readable than most, at a cursory glance. But I've seen him accused of being a bit 'carry on' with his translations!

Anyone out there read one translation of Aristophanes that they would recommend above others? Anyone recommend Paul Roche? Anyone have reasons not to recommend him?

I'm looking most for readability, and therefore want to avoid literal & archaising translations, and I'm quite happy with radical modernisers. For instance, I bought Ted Hughes' version of Aeschylus and am tempted by Tony Harrison's version of Lysistrata - his verse isn't formal or conventional - he even mentions CND, so it's not a literal translation!

Note, I'm a common reader so I'm not bothered if I miss some subtle scholastic points, - but if you are studying it I guess you better stick to the set text. Quoting Harrison's line about CND might not go down well in the exam :-)

I love the Lysistrata -- and I recently assigned it to a rhetoric class that I was teaching and they enjoyed it more than almost any other thing that I assigned to them. Several even staged a portion of the play as part of a final project and it was the hit of the class. The play has blistering satire and sexual humor that could make a porn star blush. What's not to like? :-)

Yeah, I don't agree with the original poster either. Lysistrata is great. In many ways, it is the most modern of Aristophanes plays. I wrote my thoughts on it here. It is extremely sophisticated with whole scenes standing in as allegory for the larger themes of the play.

Mal4mac,

I read the Paul Roche translations. I can't say I loved them. I have nothing really to compare as I haven't read other versions, but it was a lot of little things that bothered me while reading.

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Originally Posted by Drkshadow03

I read the Paul Roche translations. I can't say I loved them. I have nothing really to compare as I haven't read other versions, but it was a lot of little things that bothered me while reading.

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Can you expand on the "things"? He's been criticised for using accents, from another forum:

"I haven't read a lot of Aristophanes, apart from Lysistrata, but one thing I always watch out for in translations of that play is how they handle Lampito's dialogue. For some reason it really bothers me when they try to render her Spartan dialect into what they think is some contemporary "equivalent" in English. I've seen it done as everything from highland Scots to American "hillbilly" and it never fails to annoy the hell out of me."

If you do a search of Google Books for ...

"Lampito Corinth inauthor:aristophanes"

... you can see this in action. Lampito is from Sparta and the other women make fun of her for being a gym-obsessed babe. Roche actually states that he translates her into cockney, and even gives a synopsis of how to speak cockney! That certainly makes it feel like a carry on film. (Roche actually developed UK film scripts in the 1960s based on Ancient Classics so perhaps he was hoping to do "Carry On Spartans!")

I think the cockney could work, but Roche handles it badly. For instance, he translates the gymnastic exercises into exercises never heard of ("bumping my tail") in a strained effort at crude humour, while others (Zeiger) translate this quite straightforwardly.

Penguin (Sommerstein) take the Scottish route: "LAMPITO [indignantly]: I'd thank ye not tae feel me over as if ye were just aboot ..." Actually this is perhaps my favourite version. There's a description of the gymanistic move that makes it seem strange & funny (unlike Zeiger) while knowing what is going on (unlike Roche).

There are worse! Much worse!

Einhorn makes her sound like a cave woman crossed with a Russian discus thrower: LAMPITO: Yes, me can throttle bull! Me do gymnastics, make lots of muscles!

Campbell McGrath makes her sound like Rocky! And her friends like prom queens...

So far Sommerstein is definitely at the top of the pile! Also the "Oxford Guide..." gives it an honourable mention. But much more (amusing) research to do. Anyone who finds a recommendable translation please post to this thread...

Heh, I think Mortal Terror is going to pass a kidney stone over this one.


The play itself has been appropriated and genre setting, that is probably its main resistance to oblivion, in the sense that it is easy to transfer Athens to the modern day United States, and make it a play about ending the Iraq War (which has been done already).

I think, also as a political sort of satire, it works well as a genre setter, as it seems the first play we have that uses theatre as this sort of direct social commentary. It's not to hard to see a connection in genre between Aristophanes, and, lets say, Harold Pinter, but even perhaps more so in Roman Satire, which takes things to the next level, which I am sure you are well aware of, being a more accomplished theatre buff than myself.

I don't know - I'm not about to defend the text, or degrade it - I think we should take it as it is, as a contemporary satire. Staging to me seems silly, as it seems more time bound that most plays, given the nature of satire. In the same sense, I wouldn't stage Plautus for example either.


That being said, I think of it as a work similar to Swift's Modest Proposal - funny, satirical, but, at the same time, nothing to really fall in love with in the way one would fall in love with a book of poetry, for instance, but yet, still somewhat readable.

Who knows though - I wouldn't consider it an "essential work", though, perhaps a curious one. But then again, I am not particularly fond of classic comedy.

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Originally Posted by Drkshadow03

Yeah, I don't agree with the original poster either. Lysistrata is great. In many ways, it is the most modern of Aristophanes plays. I wrote my thoughts on it here. It is extremely sophisticated with whole scenes standing in as allegory for the larger themes of the play.

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Are we reading the same play?! Maybe it's a man thing because a friend of mine really likes it.

It's terrible! Yeah, I know it was written in the war times but that's like saying the Carry On Films were written in the 60's when there was lots of protests so that means it's sophisticated satire.

Having no plot, it's impossible to stage. There is nothing of interest to your average theatre member and I could either do a preachy anti-war one (Aristophanes accused Euripides of being misogynistic but at least Euripides wrote decent parts. What woman would want to play any part in Lysistrata? It's like a 15 year old boy wrote it in History class) or a totally campy one and then be accused of misreading it.

I am tempted to suggest doing an entirely male cast (apart from Lysistrata). If we're going to bash the sexes, let's do it properly.

is a reprint or copy of the famed one illustrated by Pablo Picasso. I also have some nice copies of The Frogs and The Birds. I haven't looked up the translator of the latter two, but Lysistrata was translated by Gilbert Seldes, probably in the 1930s. I have no problem with the older translations. In fact, when I read Homer, I prefer the translation in verse by Alexander Pope, rather than a modern free-verse translation.

The poster who says that Aristophanes is not relevant to the modern world is probably too young to have valid opinions. He should grow up a bit before subjecting others to his opinions. It is one thing to ask about the Greek playwrites, but another to state an invalid opinion which will probably change with age.

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Originally Posted by dfloyd

is a reprint or copy of the famed one illustrated by Pablo Picasso. I also have some nice copies of The Frogs and The Birds. I haven't looked up the translator of the latter two, but Lysistrata was translated by Gilbert Seldes, probably in the 1930s. I have no problem with the older translations. In fact, when I read Homer, I prefer the translation in verse by Alexander Pope, rather than a modern free-verse translation.

The poster who says that Aristophanes is not relevant to the modern world is probably too young to have valid opinions. He should grow up a bit before subjecting others to his opinions. It is one thing to ask about the Greek playwrites, but another to state an invalid opinion which will probably change with age.

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I'm sorry but your preference for the Alexander Pope translation is an invalid preference. But it's okay, when you grow older you'll understand why Fagles is better.

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Originally Posted by dfloyd

The poster who says that Aristophanes is not relevant to the modern world is probably too young to have valid opinions. He should grow up a bit before subjecting others to his opinions. It is one thing to ask about the Greek playwrites, but another to state an invalid opinion which will probably change with age.

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How dare I have opinions?! And I'm female, by the way, and you have spelt 'playwrights' wrong so your opinion on theatre is not looking as reliable as the others.

We can claim relevance for everything- the Teletubbies is relevant because they don't speak English and it's for children and we still have children.

Aristophanes actually teased Euripedes for being so concerned about plot and these days in theatre, we're discerning enough to like a plot or at least character change to reward us for wasting a few hours. It was probably amusing at the time and one could probably find some amusing lines but the amount of profanity and 'bawdy' jokes just makes it tiresome.

As theatre, it fails. As literature, it is of mild interest because it's an example of Greek comedy. People try so hard to force this play on the modern audience, updating it in various novel ways, but it just isn't funny.

Personally, I think that Lysistrata is the funniest play ever written. People who accuse Aristophanes of misogyny are often the kind of people who accuse Mark Twain of racism. However, those opinions could not be further from the truth. I can understand if the OP didn't think the play was funny. I've run into people who didn't think Catch-22 was funny either, but going a step beyond that and saying that none of the Greek plays are good is the height of ridiculousness.

The fact is, they are the only group of plays that can rival Shakespeare for greatness. In my opinion, as a whole, they surpass him. As much as I love The Lion in Winter, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Fences, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Long Days Journey Into Night I honestly have to give preference to those heroic forebears who forged the genre as we understand it today, gave it a name, and its first masterpieces.

We have many great tragedies, so I can understand people wanting to tuck aside Aeschylus or Shakespeare in preference of others, but comedy is such a rare thing. You can count the true masterpieces on one breathe. Lysistrata, The Pot of Gold, Satyricon, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Don Quixote, Tartuffe, The Farce of Sodom, Gulliver's Travels, The Way of the World, The Importance of Being Ernest, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Catch-22. We don't have enough truly great comedies to go chucking them out willy-nilly.

By the way, if anybody loved Aristophanes as much as I did and enjoys a bit of hyperbole and vulgarity in their humor, you might want to check out this forgotten gem of a play by John Wilmot 2nd Earl of Rochester, The Farce of Sodom. It's a bawdy satire about the incursion of Roman Catholic influence into Protestant England.

P.S. I was looking at Pope's translation of The Odyssey the other day and it's kinda' growing on me.

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Originally Posted by kelby_lake

It was probably amusing at the time and one could probably find some amusing lines but the amount of profanity and 'bawdy' jokes just makes it tiresome.

People try so hard to force this play on the modern audience, updating it in various novel ways, but it just isn't funny.

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I'm curious what you think is funny worthwhile theater. Most of the really good comedies these days are made for film instead of theater: Blazing Saddles, City Lights, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Idiocracy, The Big Lebowski. I thought Noises Off was alright, but hardly in the same league as Lysistrata. I'm curious what you would replace this with, Jeeves and Wooster, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Oscar Wilde, or Terry Pratchett? Is Shakespeare another artifact, and if not when will it become so? I have grave misgivings about dropping the Greeks and the Shakeman for Chekhov and Ibsen.

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

I'm curious what you think is funny worthwhile theater. Most of the really good comedies these days are made for film instead of theater: Blazing Saddles, City Lights, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Idiocracy, The Big Lebowski.

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Indeed. Nowadays, the artifice of the stage is so transparent that it seems any attainable humour value rises inversely to its genuine comedic attempts. Alas, I’m so uncultured. :redface:

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Originally Posted by Drkshadow03

I'm sorry but your preference for the Alexander Pope translation is an invalid preference. But it's okay, when you grow older you'll understand why Fagles is better.

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How is it an invalid preference? Many serious, old critics like Pope's version.

IMHO Fagles is awful, like a bad imitation of Shakespeare. Mix that in with the severe, intrinsic problems Homer himself poses and you have unreadability. At least for me. I gave up after a few dozen pages! I managed to get through Homer by reading Rieu's lucid prose translations, but it was still a heavy plod.

I like to re-read classics, but I'm tempted not to re-read Homer! Peter France is very dismissive of all modern translator's and suggests I.A. Richards' abridgement or Picard's children's version... Maybe I'll try those next time. Anyone read these? Recommend them?

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

I'm curious what you think is funny worthwhile theater. Most of the really good comedies these days are made for film instead of theater: Blazing Saddles, City Lights, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Idiocracy, The Big Lebowski. I thought Noises Off was alright, but hardly in the same league as Lysistrata. I'm curious what you would replace this with, Jeeves and Wooster, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Oscar Wilde, or Terry Pratchett? Is Shakespeare another artifact, and if not when will it become so? I have grave misgivings about dropping the Greeks and the Shakeman for Chekhov and Ibsen.

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These days, hee hee- didn't some of those films come out in the 80's?

And I haven't dissed all Greek plays. Greek tragedy was basically the birth of theatre and we wouldn't have some great American plays without it.

Comic theatre? Well, I tend to find comic bits in not so comic plays (I cried laughing at Titus Andronicus with the cannibal and eating bits). I quite like some of Noel Coward's plays (Blithe Spirit is excellent), and Oscar Wilde wrote some good plays.

If you stage Lysistrata, you basically need to get by on gimmicks and reduce it to its mildly amusing 'plot'. I don't actually get why it would work either- surely the men would, um, find other ways of satisfying themselves, so to speak?

R e m i n d e r

Please do not personalise your arguments.

Posts containing such remarks will be deleted without further notice.

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

Personally, I think that Lysistrata is the funniest play ever written.

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Have you a preferred translator?

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

Have you a preferred translator?

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Not really. I like them all, but the one I own is translated by Jack Lindsay for Bantam Classic's Complete Plays of Aristophanes.

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Originally Posted by kelby_lake

These days, hee hee- didn't some of those films come out in the 80's?

And I haven't dissed all Greek plays. Greek tragedy was basically the birth of theatre and we wouldn't have some great American plays without it.

Comic theatre? Well, I tend to find comic bits in not so comic plays (I cried laughing at Titus Andronicus with the cannibal and eating bits). I quite like some of Noel Coward's plays (Blithe Spirit is excellent), and Oscar Wilde wrote some good plays.

If you stage Lysistrata, you basically need to get by on gimmicks and reduce it to its mildly amusing 'plot'. I don't actually get why it would work either- surely the men would, um, find other ways of satisfying themselves, so to speak?

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It's ironic though, how Greek theatre was hardly the birth of Drama - I suspect drama in at least one form or another existed long before the 5th century BCE. In truth, I suspect it has existed since very, very early periods - keep in mind, it evolved even in Greece out of a sort of folk ritual - as for Textual theatre, perhaps there is some credit there - there is clearly textual theatre alive as a tradition outside of the region centuries before that, but perhaps as refined theatre, it was something new.


I think the strength of the Greek theatre though, is its ability to shape the structure of subsequent drama over the "western" region, to the point where the genre solidified into a solid, textual form - the Aristotelian diagram, dominating up until even today.

But what of comedy? How has that solidified? I don't think, for instance, Shakespeare is very close to Aristophanes when it comes to a model - the Petrarchan influences on his work seem to overpower the classical models here - Roman work certainly got something of it, but lets be honest, how many people are reading those works today? Comedy in itself seems to have morphed more drastically than tragedy (from my view), and perhaps the Aristophanes model has taken a beating, especially perhaps with the emergence of Love as a literary theme in the middle ages, and its domination over the comedic (with the emergence of the wedding ending). Italian Comedia, for instance, seems far more liberal and varied than the earlier model too, with again, the romance dominating - though there are still the Roman stock figure presences - something which also carries forward to other genres, like Opera and French Theatre (notably Moliere). It's actually quite interesting to see how the emergence of the romantic plot has beaten up the old model severely - even the satirical comedies in other forms seem to have been gripped by this model - one thinks of Jane Austen, or even some remote source as Francois Villon.

JBI, I don't agree with that at all. What you are talking about would be the differences between New Comedy, Middle Comedy, and Old Comedy models. The Old Comedy ie "Aristophanes style" as represented by comedic duos, hyperbolic characters with big ideas, unusual/fanciful situations, and absurdly escalating actions is very much alive today. South Park very obviously takes Aristophanes for their model. South Park is lewd, vulgar, scatological, politically conservative, topical, frequently including real public personalities in their art and addressing important issues of their day. The plots often revolve around characters with an odd scheme to fix something they don't like about the world and taking that idea to it's extreme conclusion or reductio ad absurdum.

Then you have Bill and Ted, two slacker idiots who solve their relatively simple problem through time travel. There are any number of great duos in comedy like this from Abbott and Costello to Harold and Kumar, two stoners who embark on an epic journey to a fastfood restaurant.

What I find particularly interesting is Kevin Smith's film Mallrats. He manages to balance a New Comedy romance plot with an Old Comedy scheme subplot. The primary characters are your new comedy middleclass everymans, the loverboy with his clever slave/friend. Then you have Jay and Silent Bob, an old comedy team, cartoonish in their idiosyncrasy, with a plan to destroy a gameshow.

Moliere borrows from Plautus for his Amphytrion, and Shakespeare borrowed from him for The Comedy of Errors and Falstaff, but they both owe more to the Comeddia dell'Arte. South Park even borrows from them, as you can see in the episode Tweek vs. Craig where two boys are told that the other wants to fight them and are essentially forced into a fight for the other boys amusement. This is essentially the trick that Sir. Toby Belch plays on Viola and Sir. Andrew in Twelfth Night. These are more stock gags, than big ideas, but at least they are better than the comedy of manners.

I'd say that the Comeddia tradition is pretty much alive and well in the sketch comedy circuit and shows like SNL. Comedy of manners is more like Seinfeld. Then there is lampoon, burlesque, satire, farce, and various mixings of the genres and cross pollinations. There are many forms of comedy and each contains traces of it's antecedents if you look hard enough.

The thing is, comedy has no straight definition, which on one hand makes it experimental and varied but on the other, it has less of an impact. We can't really study how good it is, because we have no model.

Tragedy, by definition, is the fall of a man/woman by an innate flaw and lack of self-knowledge. Iago is a villain, and falls due to his own nature, but because he recognises the flaw within himself, he is not tragic by definition. Because of tragedy's definition, there is a strong appeal and one could even take the structure of a tragedy and create a comedy.

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Originally Posted by kelby_lake

Can you think of any literature that now seems irrelevant?

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Yes I can, but strangely it is authors like Iris Murdoch, rather than Aristophanes or Austin, that seem so dated as to be irrelevent.

As Social Historical studies, novels like Murdoch's The Bell or An Unofficial Rose, are fascinating, and the nearness to us in time, makes the strangeness of the social attitudes and mores even more strange.
As literature they are difficult, the actions motivations constraints and concerns of the characters are so out of time with now, its hard to believe that anybody would act that way.

It seems counter intuitive that novels of the 50s and 60s are less relevent than those of the ancient Greeks. I think it is the closeness in time compared with the distance in attitudes that causes this.

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Originally Posted by kelby_lake

Tragedy, by definition, is the fall of a man/woman by an innate flaw and lack of self-knowledge. Iago is a villain, and falls due to his own nature, but because he recognises the flaw within himself, he is not tragic by definition. Because of tragedy's definition, there is a strong appeal and one could even take the structure of a tragedy and create a comedy.

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But Iago's a villain, not a hero. Surely the innate flaw and lack of self-knowledge refers to the hero/heroine of the piece, which would be Othello.

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Originally Posted by prendrelemick

Yes I can, but strangely it is authors like Iris Murdoch, rather than Aristophanes or Austen, that seem so dated as to be irrelevent.

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Harold Bloom is wonderfully ambivalent about Murdoch, check out his comments in "Genius" and "Novels & Novelists". I read several of her novels decades ago and she seemed a bit dated then. I tend to only retain a "warm glow" or "cold feeling" for novels I've read quickly that long ago. Murdoch is in the "cold feeling" camp! So i doubt I'll be reading her again, even though she makes Bloom's "top 100 geniuses of all time" ( probably at position 100 :-)

Bloom says "representation of character finally evaded her". Too right! I can't remember one character of hers, while retaining some glow of memory of characters in Lawrence, Hardy, George Eliot, etc. Bloom suggests this was due to a conscious philosophy of "unselfing". Maybe philosophers shouldn't write novels?

Bloom backs your thesis by calling them "very readable period pieces". I did find them readable and philosophical, like one of Bryan Magee's introductions to philosophy. No bad thing. But if all you want is readable philosophy then I'd pick Bryan Magee!

Why does Bloom include Murdoch then? Because "philosopher-novelists are rare in English, as opposed to French and German". This is a very weak reason! Why not include Russell, Magee or Mill if he wanted a readable philosopher?

Here's a quote form Murdoch herself that makes me less worried that my memory cells are shot:

"My problem is not being great. I'm in the second league, not among the gods like Jane Austen, and Henry James and Tolstoy. My characters are not as memorable as theirs"

Wow! Brutal self-honesty. You have to admire that.

Bloom suggests she pretends to being a great novelist through using moral intensity and complex social situations, but her characters are as weak as those of R.L. Stevenson's -- who beats her for story, imagination and visionary space. I'd agree with this except that I think Stevenson does generate *some* memorable main characters - Long John Silver, Dr Jekyll,... Only his secondary characters are as weak as Murdoch's.

I get the impression that Bloom only includes her in his top 100 because he enjoys criticising her so much, and had just forced himself through a bushel of her novels for some class or other!

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Originally Posted by wessexgirl

But Iago's a villain, not a hero. Surely the innate flaw and lack of self-knowledge refers to the hero/heroine of the piece, which would be Othello.

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The other thing making a tragic hero is the fall from a great position. You can get tragic villains, which have basically the same qualities as the hero- inability to recognise the evil in themselves and perhaps a villain by accident.

Tragedy the definition:

"drama in which the protagonist is overcome by some superior force or circumstance; excites terror or pity" - wordnetweb.princeton.edu

Nothing that says the protagonist needs to be felled by an innate flaw. I agree, they often are, but not always. Hadji Murad has no flaw. He is crushed between the rocks of Russian Orthodoxy and Fundamentalist Islam...

If the protagonist has no flaw it makes the tragedy all the stronger!

There are no tragic villains. When only villains fall it is a comedy. In As You Like It the Good Duke and Rosalind fall, but it is a light fall & they regain power. Hence comedy. The Bad Duke suffers a permanent fall. Still comedy.

Dictionary definition of tragedy:
a dramatic composition, often in verse, dealing with a serious or somber theme, typically that of a great person destined through a flaw of character or conflict with some overpowering force, as fate or society, to downfall or destruction.

If the protagonist has no flaw it makes the tragedy all the stronger!

It would be an upsetting story, if they were the victim of a war or something, but it doesn't count as a tragedy in the dramatic sense as it doesn't give the audience any satisfaction- it's just merely frustrating or unfortunate, as there is no reason for it. If the protagonist made a bad decision and then paid for it, that would be tragedy.

Tragedy normally has a catharsis at the end- which is normally the character dying or realising their flaw upon dying. Brecht didn't really like the catharsis.

What about Humbert Humbert? Wouldn't you say he's a tragic villain? It depends how the villain is portrayed.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

Harold Bloom is wonderfully ambivalent about Murdoch, check out his comments in "Genius" and "Novels & Novelists". I read several of her novels decades ago and she seemed a bit dated then. I tend to only retain a "warm glow" or "cold feeling" for novels I've read quickly that long ago. Murdoch is in the "cold feeling" camp! So i doubt I'll be reading her again, even though she makes Bloom's "top 100 geniuses of all time" ( probably at position 100 :-)

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I admit, I had to research the titles of her books I read only 2 years ago.

Most of her main characters follow the same pattern, They all seem to spurn an oppotunity to simply reach out their hand and grasp happiness/fullfilment/their heart's desire. They blame society for this, but it is something within themseves, you suspect, is the real cause.

After several "me me me" decades I think this lack of self interest dates her stuff and leaves her characters wanting.

I'm currently reading The Sea, The Sea but it's very slow-paced.

what is that Kelby? It sounds like something based on xenophon's Anabasis

It's an Iris Murdoch novel about an ex-actor/director who retires to the sea (well, near it).