It was refreshing to see such a different genre of comedy (so different from today's style of absurdist comedy). Also, very disorienting. I read this primarily for the Birds at a friend's recommendation (I tell stories about birds a fair bit), but learning about classical Greek comedic theatre was an eye opener. The introduction is very useful and well written.

My experience of the comedic style:
Everything, every subject of life is ridiculous (ridiculed and not worth taking seriously), but there is a tacit understanding that underneath all of this ridicule there is an extreme earnestness. That's the easiest way to explain the contradictions. The breakneck pace of moving from intense political criticism, to fart joke, to emotional plea, to foreskin joke...

What in the nine hells were those endings though? The emotional logic is so different from modern plays. They just wrapped up in a moment's notice, like a gong had gone off to give the text its 10 second warning to wrap up the play.

For all the ways the plays jarred me, I am glad I read them.

Stephen Halliwell crafts accessible translations to Aristophanes' comedies, he is so skilled that he was able to make me laugh out loud to 2000 year old plays. In terms of my Classical Civillisation A-level and its topic on Greek drama, the introduction was extremely useful as it acted as both a revision guide and a source of new information. His explanatory notes are indispensable and gave the crucial context to each play simply. This book has provided me with my new favourite Ancient Greek play, The Assembly-Women, and I know that Halliwell's version of it will remain my favourite. To conclude, this book does exactly what it says it will, gives simple and funny translations to four examples of old comedy whilst also providing the reader with extensive context.

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.

Just read The Birds.

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?

Only read Lysistrata.

Humour has remained the same for so long, I’m happy

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.

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.

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.

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.

(*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.