LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Aristophanes: Plays
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Aristophanes would return to his political theme of pacifism in Lysistrata. Written twenty-one years into the Peloponnesian War, the play revolves around the women of Athens who finally tire of losing their sons on the battlefield and conspire to deny their husbands sexual intercourse until they make peace with the Spartans. Lysistrata, who leads the revolt, is one of Aristophanes' most completely realized characters. Although the play is light-hearted, it was written out of the poet's grief over the thousands of Athenians who had recently lost their lives in the terrible defeat at Syracuse.
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The greatest of the Greek comic playwrights, Aristophanes ridiculed Athenian statesmen and intellectuals, censured government policies and protested against what he perceived to be the decay of Athenian values. Of course, behind his wit lay his seriousness and there was much in the Peloponnesian War that angered him. An aristocrat himself, he was disgusted when Cleon, a common tanner, succeeded Pericles. Aristophanes believed the ancient Athenian values of honor, duty and moderation had been destroyed by the Sophists who had come to Athens in the 5th century
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The use of metadrama, although similar in all three playwrights, nonetheless brings entirely different consequences: Aristophanes seems once again to authenticate his work through means of illusion-breaking scenes, calling attention to his own artistic prowess. Plautus, though, calls far more attention to the events within his own plot line, and only surreptitiously remarks upon the reality beyond the stage. Goethe, then, incorporates both types of illusion-breaking: his metadrama is certainly plot-dependent, yet it is ... an escape from the dramatic tension, and can even be used convincingly to produce social criticism, which the ancient dramatists tended to state more bluntly and openly -- through direct remarks rather than in disguise. Social criticism in Goethe is, in fact, accomplished in large part though metadrama; while the same may be said of Plautine comedies, Aristophanic social critique tends to pervade the entire drama, and is by no means restricted within the confines of dramatic irony.
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THE literary activity of the famous Greek comedy writer, Aristophanes, covered a period of forty years. During that time the telling satire of his pen was brought to bear alike on prominent men, political trends, and social foibles. Of the forty plays known to be genuine products of his genius eleven remain for posterity. But these easily prove that for wit, rollicking humor, invention, and skill in the use of language Aristophanes has never been surpassed.
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Aristophanes was a Greek comic poet, famous for writing plays, especially comedies such as The Birds for the two Athenian festivals: the Dionisia and the Lenea. Many of his plays were political, and he is known to have been prosecuted for Athenian law's equivalent of libel more than once. A famous comedy, The Frogs, was given the unprecedented honor of a second perfomance.
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Aristophanes wrote some forty plays, of which eleven are extant. Nine of these are in the form scholars refer to as Old Comedy. One, Ekklesiasuzae (Women in Power), is a transitional form and one, Plutus, is referred to as Middle Comedy.
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