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A hit or miss collection - though with more hits than misses thankfully - of Aristophanes' plays translated for usage in theater properly rather than merely closet plays.
This has some advantages, namely that all of the plays here feel quite modern, but that is its own issue: the lack of footnotes is, I think, rather impermissible because, to put it bluntly, so much of the humor relies on topical references from 2400 years ago - some reference entirely unknown to us now, and the average one needing a footnote for context for everyone who doesn't remember every single name from the Peloponnesian War! So, if you are looking for semi-scholarly editions of these plays like the Loeb or Penguin Classics ones, or even editions which provide fully accurate texts, with no attempt at adapting them to a modern literary audience, then you should look elsewhere.
On the other hand, these plays can be really funny, in part due to the modernizaton: the references, subtle enough, to such works as the KJV Bible, Nabokov and the Wizard of Oz when translating random elements of the Ecclesiazusae specially got a chuckle out of me and strikes me as a creative means of adapting the impossible to translate references to Euripides and other classical tragedians' high-minded style. It is specially pleasant because it is a play that normally does not get much attention from translators, who don't capture how scatological Aristophanes' humor is in that play as often as anywhere else.
Overall, there are some misses: the Lysistrata translation here is kind of middling, and I'm not sure I like The Frogs all that much compared to other translations I've read though I highly appreciate translating it in prose only to switch to properly metered verse once Euripides and Aeschylus start competing with one another. But the overall product is an entertaining, and to anyone looking to actually stage these plays, very welcome collection of the most ancient comedians' work.
This has some advantages, namely that all of the plays here feel quite modern, but that is its own issue: the lack of footnotes is, I think, rather impermissible because, to put it bluntly, so much of the humor relies on topical references from 2400 years ago - some reference entirely unknown to us now, and the average one needing a footnote for context for everyone who doesn't remember every single name from the Peloponnesian War! So, if you are looking for semi-scholarly editions of these plays like the Loeb or Penguin Classics ones, or even editions which provide fully accurate texts, with no attempt at adapting them to a modern literary audience, then you should look elsewhere.
On the other hand, these plays can be really funny, in part due to the modernizaton: the references, subtle enough, to such works as the KJV Bible, Nabokov and the Wizard of Oz when translating random elements of the Ecclesiazusae specially got a chuckle out of me and strikes me as a creative means of adapting the impossible to translate references to Euripides and other classical tragedians' high-minded style. It is specially pleasant because it is a play that normally does not get much attention from translators, who don't capture how scatological Aristophanes' humor is in that play as often as anywhere else.
Overall, there are some misses: the Lysistrata translation here is kind of middling, and I'm not sure I like The Frogs all that much compared to other translations I've read though I highly appreciate translating it in prose only to switch to properly metered verse once Euripides and Aeschylus start competing with one another. But the overall product is an entertaining, and to anyone looking to actually stage these plays, very welcome collection of the most ancient comedians' work.
