An accessible and lively introduction to the work of one of the world’s greatest comic writers, this book covers the key subjects of staging, humour, songs, obscene language, politics and the modern translation and performance of Aristophanes’ plays. It opens up exciting and contentious areas of Aristophanic scholarship in a way that is engaging and readily comprehensible a non-specialist audience, never losing sight of the fact that Aristophanes’ plays are vibrant literary texts, designed primarily to appeal to a classical Athenian audience as pieces of living drama.

An accessible and lively introduction to the work of one of the world’s greatest comic writers, this book covers the key subjects of staging, humour, songs, obscene language, politics and the modern translation and performance of Aristophanes’ plays. It opens up exciting and contentious areas of Aristophanic scholarship in a way that is engaging and readily comprehensible a non-specialist audience, never losing sight of the fact that Aristophanes’ plays are vibrant literary texts, designed primarily to appeal to a classical Athenian audience as pieces of living drama.