Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

In his searing comedy, Frogs , Aristophanes asked his audience which tragic playwright would be better suited to inspire Athens at a time of crisis: the heroic and stirring Aeschylus or the skeptical and emotional Euripides. Dionysus descends to Hades to satisfy his longing for Euripides, who has just died, but he stumbles into a competition between Aeschylus and Euripides for the name of the greatest tragic poet. The two tragedians battle it out over style, and both poets are mocked unmercifully, but finally Dionysus declares that what he really seeks is a poet who can serve the city. Once that end is declared, it is clear the deck is stacked: when it comes to saving cities, it appears, ironists need not apply. Aeschylus is chosen as the poet to cure the state and bring peace to Athens, and Euripides is abandoned in Hades. The premise of Frogs – that the tragic playwright might indeed be able to rescue the state from disaster – is critical for understanding what tragedy might mean to us today. The increasing segregation of tragic theater from public life in our own time may have seriously diminished its claim to immediacy. But we still reach out to the idea of the tragic when confronted by horror or catastrophe. Tragedy can shape experience and history into meaning, and the shock of significance may have the power to transform us. The distinction between tragedy and the merely ... log in or subscribe to read full text