Thames & Hudson, 1980. Hardcover. Blue cloth covered hardcover with silver lettering to spine and decoration to the front. Like new dust jacket. 8vo. (9.5x7x1 inches) Clean text free of marks or underlining. B&W line drawings. Includes a chronological table, notes to text, selected bibliography, index of lines referred to in the text and a general index. 192 pp.

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ISBN: 9780800876302

Aristophanes is the first creative genius in Western stage comedy, and by common consent one of the supreme masters of his craft. Much of his stock-in-trade - physical slapstick, bawdy (anging from outright obscenity to subtle double entendre), tragic parody, surreal fantasy, lampoon, dazzling verbal wit - is highly familiar to a twentieth-century audience reared on Laurel and Hardy, Groucho Marx and Frankie Howerd; further removed from present-day conceptions of comedy are Aristo-phanes' haunting lyricism, his deep religious feeling, and his passionate
concern for the moral and political wellbeing of his fellow citizens.

How would Aristophanes' works have first been staged in the fifth century BC at the Theatre of Dionysos in Athens?
What would have been their original effect on the great festival audiences of the Lenaia and the City Dionysia? How would the actors have interpreted the lines, how would they have 'played' the jokes and comic routines of which the extant texts are blueprints? Treating the eleven surviving plays essentially as scripts for performance, and drawing on his own considerable 'behind-the-scenes' experience as scriptwriter, producer and actor, Kenneth McLeish brilliantly analyses the components of Aristophanes' art, the unique performing traditions of Greek Old Comedy, and the theory and evolution of the comic theatre itself. The Theatre of Aristophanes constitutes a major addition to Aristophanic scholar-ship, a field long dominated by textual and historical studies; it is aimed both at the classical student and at the non-specialist, and it will be required reading for all those seeking to present Aristophanes in the modern theatre.

Price: $49.95