faculty of comprehension in the people who appreciate it, than could
anywhere be found at an earlier epoch. Speaking broadly and generally,
the Aristophanic drama has more in common with modern ways of looking at
things, more in common with the conditions of the modern stage,
especially in certain directions--burlesque, extravaganza, musical farce,
and even 'pantomime,' than with the earlier and graver products of the
Greek mind.

The eleven plays, all that have come down to us out of a total of over
forty staged by our author in the course of his long career, deal with
the events of the day, the incidents and personages of contemporary
Athenian city life, playing freely over the surface of things familiar to
the audience and naturally provoking their interest and rousing their
prejudices, dealing with contemporary local gossip, contemporary art and
literature, and above all contemporary politics, domestic and foreign.
All this _farrago_ of miscellaneous subjects is treated in a frank,
uncompromising spirit of criticism and satire, a spirit of broad fun,
side-splitting laughter and reckless high spirits. Whatever lends itself
to ridicule is instantly seized upon; odd, eccentric and degraded
personalities are caricatured, social foibles and vices pilloried,
pomposity and sententiousness in the verses of the poets, particularly
the tragedians, and most particularly in Euripides--the pet aversion and
constant butt of Aristophanes' satire--are parodied. All is fish that
comes to the Comic dramatists net, anything that will raise a laugh is
fair game.

"It is difficult to compare the Aristophanic Comedy to any one form of
modern literature, dramatic or other. It perhaps most resembles what we
now call burlesque; but it had also very much in it of broad farce and
comic opera, and something also (in the hits at the fashions and follies