The Frogs: A Comedy

[1785]

de Beer Ec 1785 A

Oxford: Printed for J. and J. Fletcher; and sold by Messrs. Rivington…, at Cambridge

Of forty plays written by Aristophanes (446-386 BC), only eleven survive. They are the only extant examples of comedy from his time. His comedies have influenced the likes of Racine (1639-99), Goethe (1749-1832) and Shelley (1792-1822) and are still performed around the world today. A mixture of satire, farce, burlesque, slapstick and parody, these comedies always have a happy ending. First performed in 405 BC, Aristophanes’s Frogs features the god Dionysus (Bacchus) who is lamenting the quality of the current Greek tragedians and ventures into the Underworld with his half-brother Heracles, to bring back the playwright Euripides. The introduction to the edition on display states it is the first translation in English and some of the more ribald and lascivious parts ‘are either omitted, or qualified;… it is hoped, without injuring the context’.