The Clouds and The Pot of Gold [antikvár]

aristophanes and the cloudsThe clouds belongs to the genre known as Old Comedy,the distinctive Greek comic form of the fifth century b.c.For us, because of the selective processes of literary sur-vival, Old Comedy and Aristophanes are virtually syn-onymous. Although a multitude of fragments have beenpreserved, we have no complete plays by any other authorfrom this important period. It is a form that, for modernaudiences and readers, contains some unusual and occa-sionally puzzling features. They are puzzling, however,only because modern ideas of comedy derive from a laterperiod, finding their source in the sort of play that Plautuswrote rather than in Aristophanes. Once we make thenecessary mental adjustment Aristophanes' comedies maybe seen as a natural outgrowth of the theater and socialconditions of his time.Greek comedy, like Greek tragedy, seems to have orig-inated in community festivals and choral revels, and thebasic ingredients are the same in each casea chorus thatcan both act as narrator or commentator and take animportant part in the action, and a limited number ofactors who may each take several roles in the course ofone play. Tragedy develops as a fairly rigid alternationof choral song and acted scenes. In comedy the pattern islooser. This is probably due to the comparatively late dateat which comedy won official recognition and was ad-mitted to the dramatic festivals. It had less time to acquirerules and traditions, and so developed in a more flexibleand uninhibited manner. In comedy the chorus may haveimmense importance in some parts of the play and bepractically ignored at others. The dramatist is free tomanipulate the various components of his comedy as themood takes him. In tragedy the dramatist was limited byexpediency and convention to a fairly small repertoire of