The Clouds

This article is about the play by Aristophanes. For other uses, see Cloud (disambiguation).
The Clouds

Strepsiades, his son, and Socrates (from a 16th-century engraving)
Written by Aristophanes
Chorus Clouds (goddesses)
Characters
  • Strepsiades an elderly farmer
  • Pheidippides his son
  • Slave
  • Two Students at The Thinkery
  • Socrates the philosopher
  • Superior Argument (Right)
  • Inferior Argument (Wrong)
  • First Creditor
  • Second Creditor
  • Chaerephon the philosopher

Silent roles

  • Witness brought by First Creditor
  • Students at the Thinkery
  • Slaves to Strepsiades
The dramatis personæ in ancient comedy depends on interpretation of textual evidence.[1] This list is based on Alan Sommerstein's translation.[2]
Setting 1. House of Strepsiades
2. The Thinkery (Socrates' school)

The Clouds (Ancient Greek: Νεφέλαι Nephelai) is a Greek comedy play written by the celebrated playwright Aristophanes. A lampooning of intellectual fashions in classical Athens, it was originally produced at the City Dionysia in 423 BC and was not as well-received as the author had hoped, coming last of the three plays competing at the festival that year. It was revised between 420-417 BC and was thereafter circulated in manuscript form.[3]

No copy of the original production survives, and scholarly analysis indicates that the revised version is an incomplete form of Old Comedy. This incompleteness, however, is not obvious in translations and modern performances.[4] Retrospectively, The Clouds can be considered the world's first extant 'comedy of ideas',[5] and is considered by literary critics to be among the finest examples of the genre.[6] The play also, however, remains notorious for its caricature of Socrates, and is mentioned in Plato's Apology as a contributor to the philosopher's trial and execution.[7][8]

Plot

The play begins with Strepsiades suddenly sitting up in bed while his son, Pheidippides, remains blissfully asleep in the bed next to him. Strepsiades complains to the audience that he is too worried about household debts to get any sleep – his wife (the pampered product of an aristocratic clan) has encouraged their son's expensive interest in horses. Strepsiades, having thought up a plan to get out of debt, wakes the youth gently and pleads with him to do something for him. Pheidippides at first agrees to do as he's asked then changes his mind when he learns that his father wants to enroll him in The Thinkery, a school for wastrels and bums that no self-respecting, athletic young man dares to be associated with. Strepsiades explains that students of The Thinkery learn how to turn inferior arguments into winning arguments and this is the only way he can beat their aggrieved creditors in court. Pheidippides however will not be persuaded and Strepsiades decides to enroll himself in The Thinkery in spite of his advanced age.

There he meets a student who tells him about some of the recent discoveries made by Socrates, the head of The Thinkery, including a new unit of measurement for ascertaining the distance jumped by a flea (a flea's foot, created from a minuscule imprint in wax), the exact cause of the buzzing noise made by a gnat (its rear end resembles a trumpet) and a new use for a large pair of compasses (as a kind of fishing-hook for stealing cloaks from pegs over the gymnasium wall). Impressed, Strepsiades begs to be introduced to the man behind these discoveries. The wish is soon granted: Socrates appears overhead, wafted in a basket at the end of a rope, the better to observe the Sun and other meteorological phenomena. The philosopher descends and quickly begins the induction ceremony for the new elderly student, the highlight of which is a parade of the Clouds, the patron goddesses of thinkers and other layabouts. The Clouds arrive singing majestically of the regions whence they arose and of the land they have now come to visit, loveliest in all being Greece. Introduced to them as a new devotee, Strepsiades begs them to make him the best orator in Greece by a hundred miles. They reply with the promise of a brilliant future. Socrates leads him into the dingy Thinkery for his first lesson and The Clouds step forward to address the audience.

Putting aside their cloud-like costumes, The Chorus declares that this is the author's cleverest play and that it cost him the greatest effort. It reproaches the audience for the play's failure at the festival, where it was beaten by the works of inferior authors, and it praises the author for originality and for his courage in lampooning influential politicians such as Cleon. The Chorus then resumes its appearance as clouds, promising divine favours if the audience punishes Cleon for corruption and rebuking Athenians for messing about with the calendar, since this has put Athens out of step with the moon.

Socrates returns to the stage in a huff, protesting against the ineptitude of his new elderly student. He summons Strepsiades outside and attempts further lessons, including a form of meditative incubation in which the old man lies under a blanket while thoughts are supposed to arise in his mind naturally. The incubation results in Strepsiades masturbating under the blanket and finally Socrates refuses to have anything more to do with him. The Clouds advise him to find someone younger to do the learning for him. His son, Pheidippides, subsequently yields to threats by Strepsiades and reluctantly returns with him to the Thinkery, where they encounter the personified arguments Superior (Right) and Inferior (Wrong), associates of Socrates. Superior Argument and Inferior Argument debate with each other over which of them can offer the best education. Superior Argument sides with Justice and the gods, offering to prepare Pheidippides for an earnest life of discipline, typical of men who respect the old ways; Inferior Argument, denying the existence of Justice, offers to prepare him for a life of ease and pleasure, typical of men who know how to talk their way out of trouble. At the end of the debate, a quick survey of the audience reveals that buggers - people schooled by Inferior Arguments - have got into the most powerful positions in Athens. Superior Argument accepts his inevitable defeat, Inferior Argument leads Pheidippides into the Thinkery for a life-changing education and Strepsiades goes home happy. The Clouds step forward to address the audience a second time, demanding to be awarded first place in the festival competition, in return for which they promise good rains - otherwise they'll destroy crops, smash roofs and spoil weddings.

The story resumes with Strepsiades returning to The Thinkery to fetch his son. A new Pheidippides emerges, startlingly transformed into the pale nerd and intellectual man that he had once feared to become. Rejoicing in the prospect of talking their way out of financial trouble, Strepsiades leads the youth home for celebrations, just moments before the first of their aggrieved creditors arrives with a witness to summon him to court. Strepsiades comes back on stage, confronts the creditor and dismisses him contemptuously. A second creditor arrives and receives the same treatment before Strepsiades returns indoors to continue the celebrations. The Clouds sing ominously of a looming debacle and Strepsiades again comes back on stage, now in distress, complaining of a beating that his new son has just given him in a dispute over the celebrations. Pheidippides emerges coolly and insolently debates with his father a father's right to beat his son and a son's right to beat his father. He ends by threatening to beat his mother also, whereupon Strepsiades flies into a rage against The Thinkery, blaming Socrates for his latest troubles. He leads his slaves, armed with torches and mattocks, in a frenzied attack on the disreputable school. The alarmed students are pursued offstage and the Chorus, with nothing to celebrate, quietly departs.

Historical background

The Clouds represents a departure from the main themes of Aristophanes' early plays - Athenian politics, the Peloponnesian War and the need for peace with Sparta. The Spartans had recently stopped their annual invasions of Attica after the Athenians had taken Spartan hostages in the Battle of Sphacteria in 425 and this, coupled with a defeat suffered by the Athenians at the Battle of Delium in 424, had provided the right conditions for a truce. Thus the original production of The Clouds in 423 BC came at a time when Athens was looking forward to a period of peace. Cleon, the populist leader of the pro-war faction in Athens, was a target in all Aristophanes' early plays and his attempts to prosecute Aristophanes for slander in 426 had merely added fuel to the fire. Aristophanes however had singled Cleon out for special treatment in his previous play The Knights in 424 and there are relatively few references to him in The Clouds.

Freed from political and war-time issues, Aristophanes focuses in The Clouds on a broader issue that underlies many conflicts depicted in his plays - the issue of Old versus New, or the battle of ideas.[9] The scientific speculations of Ionian thinkers such as Thales in the sixth century were becoming commonplace knowledge in Aristophanes' time and this had led, for instance, to a growing belief that civilized society was not a gift from the gods but rather had developed gradually from primitive man's animal-like existence.[10] Around the time that The Clouds was produced, Democritus at Abdera was developing an atomistic theory of the cosmos and Hippocrates at Cos was establishing an empirical and science-like approach to medicine. Anaxagoras, whose works were studied by Socrates, was living in Athens when Aristophanes was a youth. Anaxagoras enjoyed the patronage of influential figures such as Pericles, but oligarchic elements also had political advocates and Anaxagoras was charged with impiety and expelled from Athens around 437 BC.

The battle of ideas had led to some unlikely friendships that cut across personal and class differences, such as between the socially alert Pericles and the unworldly Anaxagoras, and between the handsome aristocrat, Alcibiades, and the ugly plebeian, Socrates. Socrates moreover had distinguished himself from the crowd by his heroism in the retreat from the Battle of Delium and this might have further singled him out for ridicule among his comrades.[11] He was forty-five years old and in good physical shape when The Clouds was produced[12] yet he had a face that lent itself easily to caricature by mask-makers, possibly a contributing reason for the frequent characterization of him by comic poets.[13] In fact one of the plays that defeated The Clouds in 423 was called Connus, written by Ameipsias, and it too lampooned Socrates.[14] There is a famous story, as reported for example by Aelian, according to which Socrates cheerfully rose from his seat during the performance of The Clouds and stood in silent answer to the whispers among foreigners in the festival audience: "Who is Socrates?"[15]

Places and people in The Clouds

At one point in The Clouds, the Chorus declares that the author chose Athens for the first performance of the play, implying that he could have produced it somewhere else (line 523). In fact, the Chorus is joking; tragic poets sometimes produced their plays in other cities (Euripides' play Andromache for example was possibly performed in Argos just before The Clouds appeared at the City Dionysia)[16] yet comic poets in Aristophanes' time wrote specifically for local audiences and their plays were studded with topical jokes that only a local audience could understand. The following places and personalities are mentioned in The Clouds and they are explained and listed in various editions of the play.[17][18][19]

Places
Foreigners and foreign influences
Religious, historic and mythical identities
Athenians
Poets

Discussion

Plato appears to have considered The Clouds a contributing factor in Socrates' trial and execution in 399 BC. There is some support for his opinion even in the modern age.[73] Aristophanes' plays however were generally unsuccessful in shaping public attitudes on important questions, as evidenced by their ineffectual opposition to the Peloponnesian War, demonstrated in the play Lysistrata, and to populists such as Cleon. Moreover, the trial of Socrates followed Athens' traumatic defeat by Sparta, many years after the performance of the play, when suspicions about the philosopher were fuelled by public animosity towards his disgraced associates such as Alcibiades.[74]

Socrates is presented in The Clouds as a petty thief, a fraud and a sophist with a specious interest in physical speculations. However, it is still possible to recognize in him the distinctive individual defined in Plato's dialogues.[75] The practice of ascetism (as for example idealized by the Chorus in lines 412-19), disciplined, introverted thinking (as described by the Chorus in lines 700-6) and conversational dialectic (as described by Socrates in lines 489-90) appear to be caricatures of Socratic behaviours later described more sympathetically by Plato. The Aristophanic Socrates is much more interested in physical speculations than is Plato's Socrates, yet it is possible that the real Socrates did take a strong interest in such speculations during his development as a philosopher[76] and there is some support for this in Plato's dialogue Phaedo 96A.

It has been argued that Aristophanes caricatured a 'pre-Socratic' Socrates and that the philosopher depicted by Plato was a more mature thinker who had been influenced by such criticism.[75] Conversely, it is possible that Aristophanes' caricature of the philosopher merely reflects his own ignorance of philosophy.[77] According to yet another view, The Clouds can best be understood in relation to Plato's works, as evidence of a historic rivalry between poetic and philosophical modes of thought.[78]

The Clouds and Old Comedy

During the parabasis proper (518-62), the Chorus reveals that the original play was badly received when it was produced. References in the same parabasis to a play by Eupolis called Maricas produced in 421 BC and criticism of the populist politician Hyperbolus who was ostracized in 416 indicate that the second version of The Clouds was probably composed somewhere between 421-16 BC. The parabasis also includes an appeal to the audience to prosecute Cleon for corruption. Since Cleon died in 422 it can be assumed that this appeal was retained from the original production in 423 and thus the extant play must be a partial revision of the original play.[79]

The revised play is an incomplete form of Old Comedy. Old Comedy conventionally limits the number of actors to three or four, yet there are already three actors on stage when Superior and Inferior enter the action and there is no song at that point that would allow for a change of costume. The play is unusually serious for an Old Comedy and possibly this was the reason why the original play failed at the City Dionysia.[73] As a result of this seriousness, there is no celebratory song in the exodus, and this also is an uncharacteristic omission. A typical Aristophanic Chorus, even if it starts out as hostile to the protagonist, is the protagonist's cheer squad by the end of the play. In The Clouds however, the Chorus appears sympathetic at first but emerges as a virtual antagonist by the end of the play.

The play adapts the following elements Old Comedy in a variety of novel ways.

Translations

Adaptations

Performances

Citations

  1. ↑ Aristophanes:Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds Alan Sommerstein, Penguin Classics 1973, page 37
  2. ↑ ibidem
  3. ↑ Clouds (1970), page XXIX
  4. ↑ Aristophanes: Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds A.Somerstein, Penguin Classics 1973, page 107
  5. ↑ Rhetoric, Comedy and the Violence of Language in Aristophanes' Clouds Daphne O'Regan, Oxford University Press US 1992, page 6
  6. ↑ Aristophanes:Old-and-new Comedy - Six essays in perspective Kenneth.J.Reckford, UNC Press 1987, page 393
  7. ↑ The Apology translated by Benjamin Jowett, section4
  8. ↑ Apology, Greek text, edited J Burnet, section 19c
  9. ↑ Aristophanes:Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds A. Sommerstein, Penguin Classics 1973, pages 16-17
  10. ↑ Early Greek Philosophy Martin West, in 'Oxford History of the Classical World', J.Boardman, J.Griffin and O.Murray (eds), Oxford University Press 1986, page 121
  11. ↑ Aristophanes:Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds A. Sommerstein, Penguin Classics 1973, pages 108
  12. ↑ Clouds (1970), page XVIII
  13. ↑ Aristophanes: Lysistrata, The Acharnians, Clouds A. Sommerstein, Penguin Classics 1975, page 31
  14. ↑ Aristophanes: Lysistrata, The Acharnians, Clouds A. Sommerstein, Penguin Classics 1975, page 16
  15. ↑ Clouds (1970), page XIX
  16. ↑ Clouds (1970), pages 119-20 note 523
  17. ↑ Clouds (1970)
  18. ↑ Aristophanes:Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds A.Sommerstein, Penguin Classics 1973
  19. ↑ Aristophanis Comoediae Tomus II F.Hall and W.Geldart, Index Nominum
  20. ↑ Wealth II 720
  21. ↑ Knights 55, 76, 355, 702, 742, 846, 1005, 1058, 1167, 1172, 1201; Peace 219, 665; Lysistrata 104, 1163
  22. ↑ Knights 582; Wasps 1076; Birds 1704; Thesmophoriazusae 1192
  23. ↑ Wasps 715
  24. ↑ Wasps 236
  25. ↑ Thesmophoriazusae 855
  26. ↑ Knights 560; Birds 868
  27. ↑ Frogs 1057, 1212
  28. ↑ Wasps 159, 1446; Birds 618, 716
  29. ↑ Wasps 1247, 1274; Lysistrata 1152; Plutus 522
  30. ↑ Acharnians 181, 697, 698; Knights 781, 1334; Wasps 711; Birds 246; Thesmophoriazusae 806; Frogs 1296
  31. ↑ Peace 1253; Birds 504, 1133; Thesmophoriazusae 856, 878; Frogs 1206, 1406; Wealth II 178
  32. ↑ Birds 485, 707, 1030; Thesmophoriazusae 734, 1175; Lysistrata 229, 1261; Ecclesiazusae 319
  33. ↑ The Birds 1009
  34. ↑ The Birds 692
  35. ↑ Histories ii.2
  36. ↑ Knights 604,608; Birds 968, 969; Lysistrata 91; Thesmophoriazusae 404, 648; Frogs 443; Ecclesiazousae 199, 828; Wealth II 149, 173, 303
  37. ↑ Birds 1073; Frogs 320
  38. ↑ Acharnians 614
  39. ↑ Lysistrata 2
  40. ↑ Thesmophoriazusae 130
  41. ↑ Knights 1055; Wasps 438; Birds 1407; Wealth II 773
  42. ↑ The Knights 511
  43. ↑ Peace 418; Frogs 1090
  44. ↑ Frogs 963
  45. ↑ Frogs 855, 864
  46. ↑ Peace 420
  47. ↑ Knights 1189; Lysistrata 347
  48. ↑ Frogs 863
  49. ↑ Birds 1660
  50. ↑ Wasps 1408, 1412; Birds 1296, 1564
  51. ↑ Wasps 1269
  52. ↑ Knights 283; Peace 606; Lysistrata 530
  53. ↑ Acharnians 386
  54. ↑ Acharnians 88, 844; Knights 958, 1294, 1372; Wasps 19, 20, 822; Peace 446, 673, 675, 1295; Birds 289, 290, 1475; Thesmophoriazusae 605
  55. ↑ Knights 1374; Wasps 1187; Birds 831; Lysistrata 621, 1092; Frogs 48, 57, 426
  56. ↑ Acharnians 134, 155; Knights 608; Wasps 42, 47, 418, 599, 1220, 1236
  57. ↑ Acharnians 6, 300, 377, 502, 659; Wasps 62, 197, 242, 409, 596, 759, 1220, 1224, 1237, 1285; Peace 47, 270, 313, 648; Frogs 569, 577
  58. ↑ Acharnians 846; Knights 1304, 1363; Wasps 1007; Peace 681, 921, 1319; Thesmophoriazusae 840; Frogs 570
  59. ↑ Wasps 1397; Thesmophoriazusae 375; Ecclesiazusae 41
  60. ↑ Wasps line 84
  61. ↑ Aristophanes:Wasps D.MacDowell, Oxford University Press 1971, page 139 note 74
  62. ↑ The Wasps 74, 466, 1267
  63. ↑ Thucydides iv 66.1, 101.2
  64. ↑ Acharnians 1150
  65. ↑ Frogs 13
  66. ↑ Peace 798, 800
  67. ↑ Peace 1089, 1096; Birds 575, 910, 914; Frogs 1034
  68. ↑ Hecuba line 159 and 171
  69. ↑ Alcestis 691
  70. ↑ Aristophanes:Wasps D.MacDowell, Oxford University Press 1971, pages 326-7 note 1501
  71. ↑ Peace 697-8; Birds 919
  72. ↑ Acharnians 10; Birds 807; Lysistrata 188; Thesmophoriazusae 134
  73. 1 2 Aristophanes:Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds A.Sommerstein, Penguin Classics 1973, page 109
  74. ↑ Clouds (1970), pages XIV-XV
  75. 1 2 Postmodern Platos Catherine H.Zuckert, University of Chicago Press 1996, page 135
  76. ↑ The Socratic Movement Paul Vander Waerdt, Cornell University Press 1994, page 74
  77. ↑ Clouds (1970), pages XXII
  78. ↑ Postmodern Platos Catherine H.Zuckert, University of Chicago Press 1996, page 133, commenting on Socrates and Aristophanes by Leo Strauss, University of Chicago Press 1994
  79. ↑ Clouds (1970), pages XXVIII-XXIX
  80. ↑ Clouds (1970), page 99 note 275-90
  81. ↑ Clouds (1970), page XXVIII
  82. ↑ Clouds (1970), page 119 note 518-62
  83. ↑ Aristophanes:Wasps D.MacDowell (ed.), Oxford University Press 1971, page 207 note 546-630
  84. ↑ Knights 756-940
  85. ↑ Frogs 895-1098
  86. ↑ Aristophanes:Wasps D.MacDowell (ed.), Oxford University Press 1971, page 187 note 1415
  87. ↑ Times review March 2nd 1905

References

External links

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