Birds and Other Plays

I call this volume the "first" in a series of three by Penguin classics, because it presents the most extensive introduction, and is described as the first volume within this introduction. The two subsequent volumes, one with translations by Sommerstein, the other with translations by Barrett, can be arranged in any order. The best part of these translations is that they are actually funny. Many of the jokes are political, and requre more than a passing knowledge of Greek culture, but when the protagonist's husband in the 'Assemblywomen' talks about "pushing out a cucumber" (speaking about bowel movements), one can't help but chuckle. He's also wearing his wife's dress at the time, and doing his business by squating on the streetside. Another excellent feature is the great efforts to putting the verse translations in rhyme. These are very well done, however liberal the translation. From personal perspective, I found Sommerstein's translations superior to those of Barrett, having better end notes and more use of rhyming verse. I have two qualms with this (these) book(s)... The first is occasional 'British' humor. I can't recall specific examples, but, as an American, there were times where I'd feel I had to put the joke under a second translation to make it funny. The second is the lack of FOOTnotes, which I find far superior to endnotes.

Aristophanes is considered the finest comic playwrite of the Classical Era. This is certainly born out through the selection in this volume. Birds is a comedy about an Athenian who decides to incite the birds to take over the world and replace the classical deities as its rulers. Both Lysistrata and Assembly-Women are about what would happen if the women took over the government. In the former, the women of Greece band together in a sex-strike, to end the Pelopennesian Wars. In the later, the Athenian women use trickery to be elected the the leaders of the democracy, and they institute economic and sexual communism. In the last selection, Wealth, the deity of Wealth, Ploutos, is captured and made to distribute wealth only to the good. However, as Poverty points out, that might not be a good thing. These plays are full of topical comedy, but much of the humor still is funny 2400 years later. The translation is very uncensored, as Greek comedy itself was, so that very little is lost in metaphor. The imagery in some of them is highly amusing. Although this is a great example of the way life was in Classic Athens, these plays are not for the squeamish!!