Aristophanes in Performance 421 BC-AD 2007
Peace, Birds, and Frogs

Edited by Edith Hall and Amanda Wrigley

Legenda (General Series)

Legenda

24 August 2007  •  410pp

ISBN: 978-1-904350-61-3 (hardback)  •  RRP £80, $110, €95

ClassicsArtDramaSatire


Flying to Heaven to demand an end to war, building Cloudcuckooland in the sky, descending to Hades to retrieve a dead tragedian - such were the cosmic missions on which Aristophanes, the father of comedy, sent his heroes of the classical Athenian stage. The wit, intellectual bravura, political clout and sheer imaginative power of Aristophanes' quest dramas have profoundly influenced humorous literature and satire, but this volume, which originated at an international conference held at the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama at Oxford University in 2004, is the first interdisciplinary study of their seminal contribution to the evolution of comic performance. Interdisciplinary essays by specialists in Classics, Theatre, and Modern Literatures trace the international performance history of Aristophanic comedy, and its implication in aesthetic and political controversies, from antiquity to the twenty-first century. The story encompasses Jonson's satire, Cromwell's Ireland, German classicism, British Imperial India, censorship scandals in France, Greece and South Africa, Brechtian experiments in East Berlin, and musical theatre from Gilbert and Sullivan to Stephen Sondheim.

Edith Hall is Professor of Classics and Drama at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Co-Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama. Amanda Wrigley is Researcher at the Archive for the Performances of Greek and Roman Drama at the University of Oxford.

Reviews:

  • ‘This volume, produced under the auspices of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, contains an all-encompassing performance history of three plays of Aristophanes' Old Comedy from their first performance to the present day. Aristophanic comedy, despite its highly politicized, sexual, and time-bound humour, is shown to be the touchstone of comedy, influential from the Renaissance onwards.’ — Regine May, Modern Language Review 103.3, July 2008, 807-08 (full text online)
  • ‘This exceptionally handsome and well-produced volume... Its scope, as its title indicates, is very broad, and most of its readers are likely to be selective in the use they make of it. Roughly half of the essays discuss twentieth-century productions of Aristophanes’ plays and there is, inevitably, an emphasis upon the problems involved in translation in both the narrower (linguistic) and the broader (theatrical/cultural) senses of the term.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 45.3 (2009), 351-54
  • ‘There are dozens of plates in this volume, and the visual record of the performances described can be of great interpretative value for the reader. There is a healthy range in the scale of these performances: university productions or small-scale professional (or semi-professional) shows stand alongside much better funded and larger scale endeavours. This is, I feel, essential.’ — C. W. Marshall, Phoenix LXIV.1-2, 2010, 172-75

Contents:

1-30

Introduction: Aristophanic Laughter across the Centuries
Edith Hall

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Part I: Precedents
32-51

The Ups and Downs of Aristophanic Travel
Ewen Bowie

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52-65

Aristophanes in Early Modern England
Matthew Steggle

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66-92

The English-Speaking Aristophanes, 1650–1914
Edith Hall

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Part II: Excursus: Publication As Performance
94-105

Publication as Intervention: Aristophanes in 1659
Rosie Wyles

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106-116

Revolutionary Aristophanes?
Charalampos Orfanos

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117-134

Aristophanes’ Wealth and Dalpatram’s Lakshmi
Phiroze Vasunia

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Part III: Revival To Repertoire
136-154

Aristophanes Revitalized! Music and Spectacle on the Academic Stage
Amanda Wrigley

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155-178

From Scandal to Success Story: Aristophanes’ Birds as Staged by Karolos Koun
Gonda Van Steen

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179-193

The Use of Masks in Koun’s Stage Interpretations of Birds, Frogs, and Peace
Angeliki Varakis

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194-208

‘Aristophanes is Back!’ Peter Hacks’s Adaptation of Peace
Bernd Seidensticker

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209-230

Sondheim Floats Frogs
Mary-Kay Gamel

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Part IV: Close Encounters
232-246

Freeing Aristophanes in South Africa: From High Culture to Contemporary Satire
Betine Van Zyl Smit

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247-254

Aristophanes’ Peace on the Twentieth-Century French Stage: From Political Statement to Artistic Failure
Malika Bastin-Hammou

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255-266

Poetry and Politics, Advice and Abuse: The Aristophanic Chorus on the Italian Stage
Martina Treu

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267-275

A Poet without ‘Gravity’: Aristophanes on the Italian Stage
Francesca Schironi

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276-286

A Version of The Birds in Two Productions
Sean O’brien

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287-308

Translating/Transposing Aristophanes
Michael Silk

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309-342

Aristophanes in Translation before 1920
Vasiliki Giannopoulou

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Bibliography entry:

Hall, Edith, and Amanda Wrigley (eds), Aristophanes in Performance 421 BC-AD 2007: Peace, Birds, and Frogs (Legenda, 2007)

First footnote reference: 35 Aristophanes in Performance 421 BC-AD 2007: Peace, Birds, and Frogs, ed. by Edith Hall and Amanda Wrigley (Legenda, 2007), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Hall and Wrigley, p. 47.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Bibliography entry:

Hall, Edith, and Amanda Wrigley (eds). 2007. Aristophanes in Performance 421 BC-AD 2007: Peace, Birds, and Frogs (Legenda)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Hall and Wrigley 2007: 21).

Example footnote reference: 35 Hall and Wrigley 2007: 21.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)


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