As I work on reading the Great Books of the Western World, I’ve now read two plays by the ancient Greek comedian Aristophanes. I read The Frogs last summer, and The Clouds a couple of weeks ago. I enjoyed both, but let’s see how they stack up against each other:
Frogs: About Dionysus going to the underworld to bring back a great dead writer because the current theater was awful. +1
Clouds: About a man who wants his son to learn rhetoric so they can weasel their way out of paying debts. +2
Frogs: [paraphrased] “Well, here we are in the underworld. Where are all the freaks and perverts that are supposed to be here?” [looks out over the audience] “Oh, there they are.” +3
Clouds: [paraphrased] “Ugh. I had a great thought, but you made me miscarry it.” +1
Frogs: Nathan Lane and Stephen Sondheim wrote a musical version. I listened to the score last year, and it’s not bad. Not great, but not bad. It’s often clever, and I wouldn’t mind seeing it performed. +2
Clouds: Socrates tells a fart joke. +3
Frogs: Ends with Aeschylus and Euripides, two of Greece’s greatest dramatic writers, hurling insults at each other in a verbal standoff to prove who was better. They get pretty close to just saying “Yo momma!” and slapping each other. +3
Clouds: Satirizes higher education (a pompous enterprise then just as it is now), often implying it’s a bunch of airy nonsense (hence the title). +1
Frogs: Has a snarky servant who constantly insults his slow-witted master, Jeeves and Wooster-style. Also, Hercules is in it, none too flatteringly. +3
Clouds: Ends with a scathingly logical argument about why people are justified in beating the snot out of their parents. +2
Results:
Frogs 12
Clouds 9
Gently Hew Stone 