The Frogs
1884
Dionysus, god of wine and theater, is having a crisis. The greatest tragedian in Athens just died, and what remains on stage is, in his opinion, garbage. So he does what any rational deity would do: he grabs his slave Xanthias and heads to the underworld to kidnap Euripides back from the dead. What follows is one of the oldest surviving examples of Old Comedy, a genre that made later Roman satire look positively prim. Aristophanes sends his frogs to croak at the audience, lets his slave land the best punchlines, and stages a literal showdown between two dead playwrights fighting for the throne of tragedy. It's a literary brawl wrapped in a road trip through hell, with the god of drama himself too cowardly to face a scary shade without histrionics. The play works as both ancient Greek comedy and surprisingly sharp commentary on what art owes to the city that makes it. Aristophanes asks: does tragedy instruct or merely entertain? Is Aeschylus's grandeur or Euripides's psychological depth the higher form? And why are these questions being argued in front of an audience of frogs?
