Aristophanes: Lysistrata, The Women's Festival, and Frogs, and: Aristophanes: Acharnians, Knights, and Peace (review)

From practical questions about staging to the lack of context for topical humor, the ancient comedies of the Greek playwright Aristophanes present major challenges to theatre artists and students alike. Michael Ewans addresses many of these issues in his two volumes of new translations with critical notes. Ewans successfully combines scholarly research with his personal experience as a teacher and director of Aristophanes' plays to provide a comprehensive guide for the study and performance of Aristophanic comedy.

Each volume begins with an introduction that provides general information on the nature of the festivals during which ancient Greek drama was performed, and a brief discussion of the fundamental characteristics of Aristophanes' comedic style. This basic knowledge, necessarily conveyed almost verbatim in both volumes, segues to specific details relevant to the plays in the individual books. The introduction to the first volume contains sections on politics, women, and the tragic playwright Euripides that provide a foundation for the included translations: Lysistrata, The Women's Festival, and Frogs. Likewise, the introduction to the second volume includes a segment on Aristophanes' view of the political scene in Athens, which specifically pertains to issues addressed in Acharnians, Knights, and Peace.

Ending the introductions on a utilitarian note, Ewans discusses his process of translation, as well as the often neglected yet immensely important topic of the performance conventions and staging of ancient comedy. These sections provide essential information for reading the translations and understanding the following commentaries. Ewans considers issues such as translating dialects, names with symbolic meaning, and allusions that often escape modern audiences. Using examples from the plays, Ewans explains strong and weak performance positions in the orchestra, the performance space of the ancient theatre. He also provides a helpful system of notating location in this space, which he will use throughout his commentaries to discuss where certain scenes may have taken place during performances in antiquity, as well as to describe how he and others have staged scenes in modern performances.

Framed as a practical guide, Ewans's two volumes are divided into parts: translations of the plays, theatrical commentaries, appendices, and glossaries that are designed to aid in the study or performance of Aristophanes' comedies. Each volume includes an appendix on recommended cuts for modern performance. These cuts are based on Ewans's personal experience in bringing the plays to life for workshops and full productions. The second volume contains an additional appendix called "Peace Speaks" that contains a rewritten scene from Peace, in which Peace is no longer an inert statue onstage but is played by a live actress with spoken lines. The alteration of this scene, written for Ewans's production, addresses criticism of this play that stems from antiquity. As Ewans explains: "the mute statue may have been one of the reasons why Peace received only the second prize. The effect may have seemed slightly artificial then; it seems very much so now" (2:250). With such emphasis on the sentiments of the modern audience (or reader), the books contain a glossary of Greek theatre terminology that is helpful to those not familiar with ancient Greek, and a second, much-needed glossary of proper names referenced in the plays.

Surrounded by this wealth of supporting information, the modern English translations of Aristophanes' plays remain at the core of these books. Ewans indicates in the first volume that his translations are in modern Australian English. However, there is nothing in the phrasing of the words and the expression of the humor that would seem odd or stilted to an American audience, as is often the case with modern British translations. This makes Ewans's work particularly significant to the field, as there is little competition in recent US translations of Aristophanes' plays. Jeffrey Henderson's translations for the Loeb editions, for example...