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For readers who love satire, fantasy and sharp political jokes, and for anyone curious about ancient Greek theatre.
Che cos’è questo libro
The Birds is a comedy by the Athenian playwright Aristophanes, first staged in 414 BC at the spring festival of Dionysus in Athens. It is the longest surviving play of Old Comedy and one of its most inventive. Two worn-out citizens leave their city to find a quieter life among the birds. Before long they have founded a new city in the sky and picked a fight with the gods of Olympus.
Aristophanes wrote for a crowd of thousands, in a city at war and in a restless mood. His jokes about lawsuits, informers, flattering poets and grand schemes were aimed at people the audience knew. This summary gives you the story as it unfolds, the people who cross its path, and what the play is really laughing at. Let us begin with two men who have had enough of Athens.
In questo riassunto
- 1Two Athenians run away from homeFree
- 2Peisetaerus wins over the angry birds
- 3Cloudcuckooland rises in the sky
- 4Every sort of pest wants a place
- 5The gods are starved of their smoke
- 6What the comedy is really about
Punto chiave 1 di 6
Two Athenians run away from home
The play opens on a rocky roadside far from Athens. Two men trudge along, each carrying a bird in his hand, which they bought to guide them. One is Euelpides, whose name means hopeful. The other is Peisetaerus, whose name suggests a man good at persuading his friends. They are tired and lost, and the birds are no help at all.
The reason for their flight is simple. They are fed up with Athens, a city where people spend their days in court, suing each other over every small matter. They are not escaping debt or disgrace. They simply want a place without lawsuits, informers and endless public duties. Aristophanes makes the audience laugh at itself here, since the Athenians were famous for loving the courts.
The two men are looking for Tereus, a figure from Greek myth who was once a king and a man and was changed into a hoopoe, a crested bird. They reason that a creature who has been both human and bird must know the world from both sides. He should be able to tell them where a calm and easy town might be found. Their search is a comic quest with no clear goal.
A servant of the Hoopoe, who is also a bird, answers their knocking in a fright. Soon the great crested Tereus himself appears, in a splendid and rather ragged costume. He listens to the visitors with some sympathy. Then Peisetaerus, who cannot stop thinking, has an idea that will change the whole play. Why look for a city when the birds could have one of their own?
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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