Greek Drama · Part 14 · Comedy · B1
Aristophanes: The Birds
Part 14 of Greek Drama: two Athenians, tired of lawsuits and taxes, leave Athens to look for a quieter life, and persuade the birds to build a great city in the sky, Cloudcuckooland, between gods and humans. Soon the gods are starving, every busybody in Greece wants to move in, and one of the Athenians is planning to marry the goddess of power. The future: plans, intentions and arrangements (going to, will, the present continuous), and the language of cities and building, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight’s comedy is pure fantasy. Two Athenians are so tired of Athens, where everyone spends their time in the law courts, that they leave the city with a crow and a jackdaw to guide them, looking for somewhere quieter. They end up founding a new city in the sky, with the birds.
Cloudcuckooland, Marcos. People still use that word today for a place of impossible dreams. Tonight we learn the grammar of plans: what you are going to do, what you will do, what is already arranged. Because the Athenians have big plans, and the birds have even bigger ones.
A city between heaven and earth. Our scriptures have a story about that too.
The wild country, and then the sky between earth and heaven
The Birds (414 BCE) was performed the year after Athens sent a huge fleet to conquer Sicily, at the height of Athenian ambition. It won second prize. Some scholars read it as a satire on Athens’ dreams of empire; others as simple, joyful fantasy. It has some of the most beautiful lyric songs in Greek comedy, and a chorus of twenty-four different birds.
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