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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 byAristophanes
ChorusClouds (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]
Setting1. House of Strepsiades
2. The Thinkery (Socrates's school)

The Clouds (Ancient Greek: Νεφέλαι, Nephelai) is a Greek comedy play written by the 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 and 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 cited by Plato in the Apology as a contributing factor to the philosopher's trial and execution.[7][8]

  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

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