The Birds and Other Plays by Aristophanes

The Birds and Other Plays Reviews

• 
  Jason

  Some people pride themselves on finding fart jokes and cock jokes unfunny. "It's the lowest form of humor!" they scoff, then try to direct you to something more sophisticated and mature. Well, it is refreshing to learn that fart jokes and cock jokes are precisely where Western humor began, and were good enough, indeed the specialty of, one of the greatest comic playwrights who ever lived. If elevated wit mixed with incisive social criticism are what you want, go read Bernard Shaw. If you want complex exploration of human motivation and vice, read Shakespeare. If you want extremely broad and larger-than-life characters engaging in utterly insane plots while throwing cock and vagina and tit and ass and fart jokes and insults back and forth faster than you can keep track, than Aristophanes is the man for you. You'll also get more than your share of female-bashing, old person-bashing, government official-bashing, celebrity-bashing, and every other kind of bashing you can imagine. This is comedy of the throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks variety, and if you can get into that over-the-top mindset, you'll have a great time with this.
  
  The Birds is a genuine fantasy, something I was surprised to see (I had thought that all supernatural elements in Ancient Greek literature came from myth). It's about a disgruntled Athenian who convinces a bunch of birds to build a magic city in the sky (called Cloudcuckooland) in order to separate the humans from the gods and help the birds regain their supposedly natural bird-ascendency over the universe. The birds fall for it, choosing the disgruntled Athenian as their leader, and the protagonist's rise to power over the world of birds, humans, and eventually gods is portrayed with flair and comic intensity. The play is almost epic in its ludicrousness. Lysistrata is the famous play where the women take over the city and refuse to offer sex to the men unless they promise to end the war on Sparta. Don't kid yourself - this is not necessarily a feminist play, at least not by modern standards, but it is a very funny one, and a very good one. The Assemblywomen is another "women" play of Aristophanes', this time about the women taking over the government. They want to replace the current male system with a socialist state (the joke being, I suppose, that women are more compassionate and eager to share.) The results are predictably disastrous, and the play's comical swipes at socialism are entertaining, but the climax, involving three old ladies, a young man, and the laws regarding sex, is a masterpiece of offensive craziness, both hilarious and shocking, even to a modern audience. The final play, Wealth, is the weakest of the lot, by quite a margin, but it's worth reading for a nicely considered, if flawed, argument against the distribution of wealth exclusively to the good and the just. It doesn't have the "reckless abandon" approach to comedy of the earlier plays - it's more dogmatic and controlled (it's a precursor to what the historians call "New Comedy") - so those used to the broader tone of the others may find this one on the dull side. It is very short, though, so you might want to read it anyway.
  
  In any case, anyone interested in the roots of comedy should read this. I can't speak to the accuracy of this translation, not being fluent in Ancient Greek, but I can speak to its wonderful readability - it sounds like it was written yesterday. The footnotes in this edition were also very helpful, and not overpowering. All in all, this was, to me, a surprisingly lively and entertaining reading experience.
• 
  Rhys

  Several years ago I resolved to read all existing ancient Greek drama. I have read all the surviving plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Now I have read all of Aristophanes too. Only Euripides and Menander to go and my pledge will be fulfilled.
  
  These five plays are all very good. The Birds is utterly tremendous, perhaps my favourite of Aristophanes' plays with the exception of The Frogs. The outcome of this work is rather shocking, no less than the overthrow of the gods, but the individual scenes are mostly delightful, sometimes grotesque, exuberant and fantastical.
  
  I also enjoyed Peace (very absurd) and The Assemblywomen (although regarded as one of Aristophanes' weaker plays I found it genuinely hilarious). Wealth began strongly but had a disappointing climax.
  
  I am now in a position to list my three favourites of his plays as follows:
  (1) The Frogs
  (2) The Birds
  (3) Lysistrata
  
  Menander next! I have a copy of his Plays and Fragments waiting for me.
• 
  Diem

  Well, that was enlightening. If you're someone who is concerned that Ancient Greece was all Oedipal complexes and gouged out eyeballs and such you'll be very relieved to read the plays of Aristophanes. Aristophanes isn't afraid of a dirty joke or scatological references or employing enormous fake phalluses as stage props. I know more about the personal grooming habits of the Ancient Greek women than I probably *needed* to know. I almost typed WANTED to know but then I realized that if someone had dangled that information just out of my reach I probably would have reached out a hand and made at least a half-hearted snatch (sorry) for it. So, on some level I WANTED to know. But I didn't NEED to.
  
  I understand that the work of Aristophanes represents and important element of Greek life and I'm glad I read this but I don't need to read any of his other plays. I get it.
  
  As regards this particular translation, I would recommend it even though the translator's notes are a bit dense and he does love to use a long, complicated word where a concise one would do the job. I liked that this collection was designed to show the progression from Old Comedy to Middle Comedy. I could have done without the many references to plays and characters outside of this collection but ultimately I didn't feel like I was missing the point by just skimming over those.
  
  
• 
  Michael Arnold

  These plays are hilarious!
• 
  Marcos Augusto

  A political satire on the imperialistic dreams that had led the Athenians to undertake their ill-fated expedition of 415 bce to conquer Syracuse in Sicily. Peisthetaerus is so disgusted with his city’s bureaucracy that he persuades the birds to join him in building a new city that will be suspended in between heaven and earth; it is named Nephelokokkygia, translatable as “Cloud-cuckoo-land.” The city is built, and Peisthetaerus and his bird comrades must then fend off the undesirable humans who want to join them in their new utopia. He and the birds finally even starve the Olympian gods into cooperating with them. Birds is Aristophanes’ most fantastical play, but its escapist mood possibly echoes the dramatist’s sense of Athens’ impending decline.
• 
  Б. Ачболд

  Birds is amazing. I honestly couldn't believe it when I read it.
• 
  Garry

  Just read The Birds.
• 
  Michael Canoeist

  Was hoping, but not truly expecting, these would be funny plays. "The Birds" exceeded my hopes. Sitting outside by a swimming pool in Florida, surrounded by young adults on hedonism pilgrimages and even younger Spring Break'ers, I was the one laughing out loud. Oxford Classics editor Stephen Halliwell used different translators' versions of the four plays in this volume; this "Birds" was by Nan Dunbar, from 1995, and it made the play read as though it had been written two weeks ago.
  
  I read "Lysistrata" long, long ago, like any young American schoolboy with a geeky streak, to see what the sex talk would be about. But I do not recall this degree of casual, impish humor. In "The Birds," characters address the audience, the judges, and anyone else Aristophanes feels like bringing into the action. It starts like "Waiting for Godot" -- two older men, sad sacks, who seem to be lost and wondering what to do next. Turns out they are renegades from classical Athens and all its taxation, lawsuit-craziness, and general irritations. They want some relief; a new place where they can live more peacefully. (It was a valuable reminder of some of the flaws of Periclean and post-Periclean Athens.)
  
  "You want a greater city than Athens?" a hoopoe asks them.
  One answers:
  "A place where in the street I'd be rebuked
  By some good-looking boy's indignant father:
  'Well, what a spendid way to treat my son!
  You saw him as he left the gymnasium,
  But didn't kiss, or speak, or try to touch him.
  A family friend, and you didn't squeeze his balls!' "
  
  That's the general tone. The comedians had great license during the festivals, and Aristophanes took full advantage of it. Of course, just as they are succeeding in a wonderfully absurd project to make the birds create their paradise, CloudCuckooland, all the priests, oracle-mongers, and other rent-seeking creeps of Athens start to appear -- even (shudder) a poet. Aristophanes mocks them all wonderfully. His fantasies about what one could do if blessed with a pair of wings make for earthy humor, too.
  
  On to the others.... "Lysistrata," "Assembly-Women," and "Wealth."
  
  
• 
  Ad

  This volume contains translations of Birds, Lysistrata, Assembly-women and Wealth, by Stephen Halliwell. Below follows my discussion of one of the four plays, Lysistrata.
  
  Lysistrata is one of the most well-known of the Greek comedies by Aristophanes, written in the spring of 411 BC - in the twentieth year of the Peloponnesian War. In the same year in Athens aristocrats overthrew the radical democratic government in a coup. Lysistrata is the third of Aristophanes' pacifist anti-war pieces, the story of a female sex-strike to force the men to stop running off to yet another war or battleground.
  
  The piece addresses the fact that men are the cause of war and the suffering that goes with it, and the struggle of women against that. Lysistrata is an extraordinary woman with a large sense of individual and social responsibility. She has convened a meeting of women from various Greek city-states that are at war with each other. With support from the Spartan Lampito, Lysistrata persuades the other women to sexually deny their husbands as a means of forcing them to conclude the Peloponnesian War. The women are very reluctant, for obvious reasons, but the deal is sealed with a solemn oath. Soon after that, a cry of triumph is heard from the nearby Acropolis - the old women of Athens have seized control of it at Lysistrata's instigation, since it holds the state treasury, without which the men cannot continue to fund their wars. Lampito goes off to spread the word of revolt, and the other women retreat behind the barred gates of the Acropolis to await the men's response.
  
  A chorus of old men arrives, carrying heavy timbers, intent on burning down the gate of the Acropolis if the women do not open up. From the other side, a chorus of old women arrives, bearing pitchers of water. Threats are exchanged, water beats fire, and the old men get a soaking. The magistrate then arrives with Scythian Archers (the Athenian version of police constables), blaming the men for poor supervision of their womenfolk. He has come for silver from the state treasury to buy oars for the fleet, but his Scythians are quickly overwhelmed by groups of determined women.
  
  Lysistrata explains the frustrations that women feel at a time of war when the men make stupid decisions that affect everyone, without listening to the opinions of their wives. She drapes her headdress over the magistrate, gives him a basket of wool and tells him that war will be a woman's business from now on. Outraged at these indignities, he storms off.
  
  Now Lysistrata has to restore discipline among the women, for her comrades are themselves so desperate for sex that they are beginning to desert on the silliest pretexts. But the condition of the husbands is even worse. The women play with them - enticing them and then again pushing them away.
  
  A Spartan herald (in a very bad state) then appears requesting peace talks, and these indeed commence. Lysistrata introduces the Spartan and Athenian delegates to a gorgeous young woman called Reconciliation. The delegates cannot take their eyes off the young woman; meanwhile, Lysistrata scolds both sides for past errors of judgment. The delegates briefly squabble over the peace terms, but with Reconciliation before them and the burden of sexual deprivation still heavy upon them, they quickly overcome their differences and retire to the Acropolis for celebrations. The war is ended!
  
  Over the centuries, Lysistrata has been frequently adapted: as a play (The Woman's Prize by John Fletcher, 1611); as a musical (The Greatest Sex, 1956; The Happiest Girl in the World, 1961); as an opera (by Mark Adamo, 2005); as an operetta (Paul Lincke, 1902); as ballet (1941), and it has inspired (sub-)plots of various films.
  
  Lysistrata is notable for being an early exposé of gender relations in a male-dominated society. It was produced in the same year as Women at the Thesmophoria, another play with a focus on the subversive role of women in a male-dominated society, just two years after Athens' catastrophic defeat in the Sicilian Expedition. And in Assembly-women of 391 BCE Aristophanes invented a scenario where the women of Athens assume control of the government and instate reforms that ban private wealth and enforce sexual equity for the old and unattractive. Modern adaptations of Lysistrata are often feminist and/or pacifist in their aim (although dramatic poets in classical Athens were neither unreservedly pacifist not feminist in the modern sense).
  
  Finally a few words about Aristophanes (c. 446 – c. 386 BCE), who has been dubbed "The Father of Comedy." Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete. Like the work of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, his plays were written for production at the great dramatic festivals of Athens, the Lenaia and City Dionysia, where they were judged and awarded prizes in competition with the works of other comic dramatists. His plays were highly political, addressing topical concerns by mentioning real individuals and local issues - "topicality" and "political theater" are the keywords here. The plays have a significance that goes beyond their artistic function, as historical documents that open the window on life and politics in classical Athens, in which respect they are perhaps as important as the writings of Thucydides. The artistic influence of the plays is immeasurable. They have greatly contributed to the history of European theater.
  
  See more discussions of great plays at my website:
  https://adblankestijn.blogspot.com/p/...
  
• 
  Markus

  A must read
• 
  Milo

  Of Aristophanes’ intact plays, here survive the two worst. First, The Assemblywomen, which begins as an improved riff upon Women at the Thesmophoria and Lysistrata before abruptly – past the middle section – shifting into a different, hardly related collection of vaguely inspired ‘gags’. Some are funny; none complete the comic drama so carefully aligned in the play’s beginning. There is something sad about it. A kind of disintegration. The chorus were, at this period, fading from the Greek stage (for reasons of misery before those of art); this play seems a representative of an artform in decline. A shift from the grand Old Comedy to the miserly New; only without whatever fine-spun talent or detail that might glory the latter. It is instead a compromised work. The translator implies the second part might be the hand of another, the elder Aristophanes uninterested in completing the play. I cannot speak to the linguistic plausibility of this, but it is a tempting proposal. The Knights is the other weak play of the set, although its circumstances are wholly different. It hails not from the flailing end but the skyscraper beginnings of Aristophanes’ career. And it is defined not by compromise; rather its opposite. The issue is one of breadth: it is, in essence, a play-long diatribe against a particularly dreadful demagogue in Athenian politics (the infamous Cleon, populist urtext). This drama is not built upon nor shifted in any way. It is a continuous piling of insults, a vast work opprobrium that drives on relentlessly. Being removed from its original context, I cannot help but be removed from its effect. It is, more than The Assemblywomen in general, funny, but perhaps ragging on the same bit for much too long. A similar takedown on a slightly less abstract politician would, no doubt, be somewhat more cathartic. (Though: crude, gauche? Those elements are probably inherent.) Leaving the rough works aside, there remain some of Aristophanes’ gleaming artefacts. Peace begins with the kind of genius image Hieronymus Bosch might dream: a man flying to heaven atop a dung beetle, to entreat the gods. The drama is quickly resolved: here is a play more concerned with farcical situation and revelry than plot; this preference succeeds. The Birds might well be Aristophanes’ best play: at the least, it is the easiest for a modern reader to parse without wondering how many jokes he’s missing, and how many footnotes lie ahead. It builds in the way of a Gilbert & Sullivan – an absurd premise is established, and then escalated to the extreme of absurdities. The base suggestion – past the talking birds – is that these birds ought to wall off the sky and take tribute from the offerings meant for the gods. An extremely literal interpretation of godly position versus that of man (ignoring, dutifully, those gods who supposedly dwell beneath); this idea is compounded upon the revelation that there exists another pantheon above the familiar Greek set. Aristophanes does not take it so far, but like in Euripides’ Helen one could envisage infinite heavens above one another, and perhaps infinite below, an endlessly repeating absurdity kept in check only by the continued faith in things remaining as they are. Aristophanes throws the balance off, and in his outward ridicule reveals so many exposed sinews. He jabs at them, not in search of revolution (it seems Aristophanes is of the reactionary class in several respects), but rather to see how they squirm. Wealth is then a fine epilogue to the Penguin series on Aristophanes: it is of the ‘new’ style but, unlike The Assemblywomen, it does not seem caught up in the old, nor does it collapse upon its own conceit. Instead it is a long and strung-out metaphor, one that both enjoys a certain wish fulfilment (makes its noble characters rich; its ignoble poor) while acknowledging the fundamental problem of this wish. It is not unlike a variation on Psalm 73, here imagining the ‘alternate world’ where the good prosper and (by a kind of necessity) God is shown to be cruel, and his cruelty is overthrown. But that short agon with Poverty, which seems stabbed in the midst of this play with no provocation nor resolution, complicates matters. It reminds us that wealth and poverty are, in wheel-form, motivators; that without motivation human hands grow idle, and industry fails. Today we may aspire to fully-automated luxury communism; the olden Greeks still relied upon genuine toil as a fact of life. If we all have everything in great quantities, what would propel human society? Of course, this is Aristophanes at his most wily and most conservative; he is the wealthy poet musing upon the ‘idle poor’, should the poor be rendered idly wealthy. But he strings this bow with expected poise; the truth of its aim matters little.
• 
  Mike

  Fart jokes, philandering, sharp political satire, and the battle of the sexes circa 500 B.C. Aristophanes’ plays are all very witty and even quite brave considering how relentlessly he attacked Athens’ politicians and power players during this time, of which he was liable for slander. The common targets of Aristophanes’ irreverent lampooning are the city leaders, gluttons, soothsayers, priests, and notably the Gods. Some plays are better than others, with The Birds being the crowd favorite. The Knights was agonizing for me and seemed to wander quite a bit in the dialogue and Chorus. Peace and the Assemblywomen were my favorites; through Aristophanes, you can feel the Athenian’s legitimate anxiety over their impending doom as they were losing the war with the Spartans (similar to his other famous work, Lysistrata) and facing destruction of their democracy and untold horrors. Much like gallows humor. Comprehending this backdrop of the internecine Peloponnesian War and pairing it with the heavy dose of Aristophanes’ satiric barbs in these plays, one gains an appreciation for the ancient Athenian’s yearning for good governance, prosperity, peace, and happiness—things most of us can identify with today. That and fart jokes.
• 
  Alison

  I read this one straight after Halliwell's more scholarly translation of Clouds, Women of Themosphoria and Frogs. Whereas that focused on the verse and beauty of Artisophanes, Barratt and Somerstein have produced something designed to be performed: the rapid-fire comedy hits in a very modern way, helpful staging is included, and the translations are significantly briefer than Halliwell's. The loss is not insignificant - the plays are bawdy and light, with less gravitas and poetry, but on the other hand, they are very funny, which is somewhat the point.
  The historical notes are excellent, and I appreciated the chronological glimpse into the transition from lavish to impoverished and how that connected to the demise of Old Comedy.
• 
  Julesmarie

  Some Favorite Quotes:
  From the introduction to the Project Gutenberg version I read: the play appeals perhaps more than any other of our Author's productions to the modern reader. Sparkling wit, whimsical fancy, poetic charm, are of all ages, and can be appreciated as readily by ourselves as by an Athenian audience of two thousand years ago.
  
  Undoubtedly; words give wings to the mind and make a man soar to heaven.
• 
  Whiskey Tango

  This comedy ridicules the disastrous Greek expedition to Sicily in 413 BC. More generally, The Birds is a rollicking commentary on man's eternal dissatisfaction with his lot; his habit of ignoring the divinities which shape his ends; is crowded, evil-breading cities; and his tendency to disturb the equilibrium of the universe, Pisthetaerus, with his irresistible rhetoric, is a forebear of the men who sell salvation or the world's goods with equal glibness and ease.
  
• 
  Marbeth Skwarczynski

  I throughly enjoyed this collection of plays. The introductions (at the beginning of the book and then one for each play) we interesting and mercifully short (usually, the scholars who compile these collections feel the need to write nearly as many pages explaining the works as the original author wrote for the works themselves). The humor is enjoyably crude and farcical and the metaphors highlighting problems with Athenian politics and economics are delightfully sarcastic.
• 
  Catherine Pace

  It was really interesting, but also super weird. I feel bad rating it 4 stars because it's pretty impressive to have been written thousands of years ago and translated into English. But just because something is old doesn't mean it's necessarily the pinnacle of human achievement. I feel like some of the ancient literature we hail and worship was really just preserved by luck, and wasn't necessarily the best work of the civilization it came from...just me?
• 
  Bailey

  (*I only had to read "Birds" for class, but I have read Lysistrata before!)
  I didn't really enjoy this play. I usually don't find Aristophanes funny, but I did like Lysistrata which I read last year. I think I'll develop more insight when my prof explains why we read this play.
• 
  Bay

  I laughed out loud when I read the Lysinastrata.
• 
  Kevin Yee

  (tr. Ian C. Johnston)
• 
  Jim

  Birds is great, the plays about women even are still good. Theaterkino.
• 
  Ida Sofie

  Only read Lysistrata.
• 
  Joel Gn

  The fact that these plays are likely to offend many if they were staged today, gives me more reason to enjoy and recommend it here!
• 
  Caracalla

  Acharnians, Peace, Assemblywomen, Wealth. Acharnians is pretty good at times, probably the best peace play, although it's nothing like as good as stuff like the Frogs or the Thesmophoriozusae. Highlights include the first Euripides sketch extant and a pretty good assembly episode. Peace is substantially made up of thanksgiving songs (Peace of Nicias is basically being celebrated), apart from some okay stuff about using a dung-beetle to fly to heaven, this is obviously the weakest play extant.
  
  The two other plays are 4th century and closer to what critics now call Middle Comedy. We basically don't have any extant plays from this period in Athenian comedy so I guess a lot of what we think we know about the direction these plays are going in, is horseshit but there's marked differences even from late fifth century stuff: choruses at least in Wealth, a 388 production, were potentially improvised, there's less interest in protagonists (particularly in Assemblywomen) and there's signs that economic downturn was a big issue (one of Athen's most disastrous attempts to revive their empire dates to around Wealth and Thrasybulus is referenced just before his assassination by subaltern Ionians). Mythological burlesque is supposed to be a Middle Comedy convention and a weird song about Circe and the Cyclops is incongruously placed in Wealth while both plays feature political fantasies that many suppose to be informed by Plato (were they friends despite the Clouds, given Aristophanes' prominence in the Symposium?). Interesting questions arise about fourth century literature and it's perhaps a shame no-one has ever written a literary history of this period or indeed particularly focussed on it anyway.
• 
  Elle Kay

  I very slowly tackled this one over the past month and while I was hoping to read all five plays, only The Knights and The Birds are the ones that held my interest. These two plays, especially The Birds, are incredibly witty and the humour translates well into modern day. They are also very scathing at times towards characters representing real people, usually politicians, of the day that Aristophanes truly disliked. He really enjoyed using this medium to target and ridicule his enemies. The introduction is also worth the read and very informative but my advice if ancient greek plays sound too much for you, just read The Birds, it really is very funny.
• 
  Derek

  This volume wasn't as much fun as the others, especially in later plays as they moved toward New Comedy. There were a few good gaffes and some very clever ideas going on, but I wasn't really too excited. I didn't find 'Birds' to be that interesting, regardless of how recommended it is in literary circles in terms of famous Aristophanic plays. I thought 'Knights' was probably the best of the lot and I especially appreciated the dung beetle routine.
  
  All-in-all, you could probably skip this lot of plays, unless you were really invested in reading all of the author's surviving works.