A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Wasps And The Frogs

Aristophanes (c.447-c.380 BC) was an ancient Athenian playwright and his plays are the extant example of Attic Old Comedy. He wrote during the Golden Age of Athens (c. 5th Century BC), a period of political hegemony, and survived the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) among other events that shaped the social and political messages behind his plays. Regarded by many as the Father of Comedy, Aristophanes used a range of humor devices in his plays, such as Wasps (422 BC), Frogs (405 BC), to provide socio-political satire, literary criticism and entertainment. He reflected the meaning of Athenian identity and citizenship, as well as the decline of the Golden Age toward the end of the 4th century BC.

His comedic plays have significantly
influenced comedy throughout time. Aristophanes’ influence on the Elizabethan era (1558-1603) is clear in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Aristophanes has also indirectly influenced modern comedy in Pendleton Ward’s Adventure Time(2010), an animated television series.
Across all texts humour devices have been a tool for commanding the audience’s attention and to communicate similar messages through social commentary. The texts concern the universal themes of restoration to old values, the role of the poet and the nature of entertainment.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Wasps and the Frogs are comedic plays which express serious messages of Shakespeare and Aristophanes through the use of humour devices such as mockery. Mocking is the ridicule of others for comedic effect. Aristophanes’ influence on Shakespeare is revealed through their use of the same humour device, mockery. Mockery is used in the Wasps, the Frogs and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare uses mockery when Puck tells Oberon “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” Through Puck, Shakespeare comments on, not only the young Athenians, but on humanity in general in saying that humans, such as Lysander, are capable of committing strange actions and saying strange things because of what they perceive as love. This is supported through the actions of Lysander and Hermia’s elopement, Demetrius’ act of stalking Hermia and Helena’s act of stalking him. They foolishly do not pay heed to social
expectations set by Egeus and Theseus, their superiors. This is also supported by the words of Helena, who says “but herein mean I to enrich my pain, to have his sight thither and back again.” She is foolish, chasing someone who is betrothed to another. Further, she wants to be near Demetrius even if he is nothing but disdainful towards her. In calling humans fools, Puck insults the audience and says that humanity is silly in nature. Aristophanes’ use of mockery is used to insult the audience. However, he brings attention to the foolishness of Athens’ people through topical social commentary on the current state of Athens rather than a social commentary on humanity in general. The audience in the prologue is said to be full of gamblers such as Amynias who is “a compulsive diceplayer” suffering from “cubomania”,‘stranger lovers or xenophiles such as Philoxenus, and alcoholics. In the Frogs, Dionysus and Xanthias arrive in Hades and call the Athenians the "murderers and perjurers” of Hades. By mocking Athens and its people as Hades, Aristophanes is commenting on the deteriorating, dying state of Athens when a glorious polis that he loves has become a land of highwaymen, thieves, burglars. This relates to the Athenian’s internal conflict during the Peloponnesian War(431-404 BC) and response to the war. The Peloponnesian War occurred during the Wasps and the Frogs, and was a factor in hastening the destruction of morale and moral values of Athenians, the rise of political and social strife, and concluded the Golden Age of Athens. Athens and her people are unrecognisable and not much different to Hades, showing the fall of Athens. Thucydides observed that Athens had “three of the gravest failings, want of sense, of courage, or of vigilance.”

In criticising the audience, Shakespeare and Aristophanes show that, in their comedies, everyone is driven foolish by self-obsessed human motivations, such as selfishness and greed.
By mocking mortals in general, and in mocking specific individuals in the Athenian audience, the playwrights broke the fourth wall and this enabled them to add a realistic dimension to their heavily fantastical plays. By humorously breaking the fourth wall, the audience is deliberately made aware that they are watching the play. This is a technique of metafiction and its purpose is to capture the audience’s attention and remind them of their serious messages in a humorous manner. Mockery is a tool for Aristophanes and Shakespeare to portray the root of problems faced in society. The blame falls on both the humans and the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The lovers attempt to run away from their problems and dishonour tradition and society’s expectations of them. Puck and the fairies meddle with human affairs and use love potions on them. In the Wasps their moral values are lost as drunkenness, gambling and homosexuality are mocked as hedonistic behaviour in the Wasps when the slaves ask the audience to guess Philocleon’s addiction. Both generations are at fault in the Wasps, in the same sense that in the Frogs, everyone is at fault for letting Athens deteriorate. In the Wasps, Aristophanes admires the older generation of Marathon Men yet acknowledges that, had they been
stronger in their later years, they would not be so vulnerable to loving Cleon and easily swayed by demagogues. He criticises the younger generation as they seem to be obsessed with circulating trends. He sees them as “sting-less brutes” who “shirk their military duties” and “let others do the work.” At the end of the Wasps, the audience understands that Bdelycleon “has shown both good sense and devotion” and “filial affection” towards his father in attempting to educate him in the comic episodes after the parabasis . At the end of the Frogs, Dionysus and Aeschylus “educate the fools” and the chorus informs the audience that “to the city’s counsels may he wisdom lend; then of war and suffering shall there be an end.” Puck declares “if you pardon, we will mend.” Across these texts, civic reconciliation and restoration to peace and happiness has been a key element in the conclusion of their comedies.

A possible reason for the difference in the target of mockery is that Shakespeare had to be much less direct than Aristophanes due to censorship during the Elizabethan era. Shakespeare lived in a period of heavy censorship. He could not offend his royal patrons who funded his plays, livelihood and theater group in the 15th to 16th century. He had to write to cater to his audience’s needs, and when he didn’t, some of his comedies were censored, such as the Merchant of Venice, or his plays rewritten in a less offending version. Thus, he criticises humanity in general rather and does not risk identifying specific individuals in the audience. Aristophanes is less censored, though still funded by the choregos. Aristophanes directly targets politicians, foreigners, and many other members of Athens such as Amynias. A reason for this is because it was a cultural expectation of the audience to be made fun of in Attic Old Comedy as no one in the audience could escape the playwright’s powers. A reason for this may have been the different cultural context. The social atmosphere when Aristophanes’ plays were performed was much more relaxed, with more freedom and less censorship. The city Dionysia festival allowed three days for Athenians to engage in revelry and Athenians had to behave for the rest of the year. An exception is the litigious demagogue Cleon, who was continually satirised by Aristophanes throughout his plays including both the Wasps and the Frogs, and brought Aristophanes to the courts because Aristophanes satirised Cleon as a slave in the Knights(424 BC).