Drama, Classical Resource Guide

The highly entertaining plays of Aristophanes provide the only extant examples of Old Comedy. His writings reveal much about not only dramaturgy in late fifth century b.c.e. Athens but also the social, political, and economic conditions of the time.

Born: Athens, possibly c. 450 BC, possibly as late as 444 BC. Career: May have lived or owned property on Aigina. His first plays directed by others; Hippeis (The Knights, 424 BC) was his first production in his own name. Besides the 11 surviving comedies, 32 other titles are known (some possibly alternative titles; four probably spurious), and nearly 1,000 fragments survive.

(ăr´´ĭstŏf'ənēz), c.448 B.C.–c.388 B.C., Greek playwright, Athenian comic poet, greatest of the ancient writers of comedy. His plays, the only full extant samples of the Greek Old Comedy, mix political, social, and literary satire. The direct attack on persons, the severity of invective, and the burlesque extravagances made the plays fitting for the festival of Dionysus.

Articles about Aristophanes.

As irreverent and bawdy as Aristophanes, but with more accessible humor, this pseudo-biography juxtaposes elements of Aristophanic plays with the activities of contemporaneous people to show how Aristophanes became the father of political satire and why his theatrical innovations are still staples of the contemporary theater.