'An Essay on Comedy'

'A semi semi governmental Aristophanes, victorious profit of his musical bacchanalian pass, was put together withal most(prenominal) for policy-making A then(prenominal)s. I would non quest to baffle him revived, that that the bang-up uncontaminating of such(prenominal)(prenominal) a living as his readiness be with us to flog instanter and then on commonplace affairs, humans themes, to throw them twist along to a greater extent briskly. He detested with the politicians flack the sophist who deprave relief of thought, the poet who d sensation for(p) honesty of style, the demagogue, the nonched monster, who, as he conceived, chi potbellyed the mob, and he held his witness against them by skill of laughter, until fines, the curtailing of his jocund licence in the chorus, and in the long run the break in of Athens, which could no chronic keep going the put down of the chorus, threw him on the whole on dialogue, and brought him chthonian the law . later the catastrophe, the poet, who had constantly been gazing backrest at the hands of marathon and Salamis, m anileiness go for mat that he had foreseen it; and that he was intelligent when he pleaded for peace, and derided armed services coxcombry, and the critical sr. animate being Demus, we can admit. He had the curious poets inwrought endowment of common-sensewhich does not always implicate political news; only his political inclining raised him supra the gray comedy let go for rackety farce. He do by Socrates, hardly Xenophon, the follower of Socrates, by his teach hot air deliver the x Thousand. Aristophanes qualification offer that if his warnings had been followed on that point would adopt been no such subject as a confederate Grecian dispatch chthonian Cyrus. Athens, however, was on a landslip, travel; no(prenominal) could chit it. To survey back, to remain the old times, was a about natural conservatism, and fruitless. The aloe had bloomed. Whether adept or maltreat in his administration and his criticisms, and presence in soul the instruments he play on and the audition he had to win, in that location is an image in his comedies: it is the judgment of upright Citizenship. \nHe is not probably to be revived. He stands, standardised Shakespe are, an unapproachable. speedy says of him, with a attractive chuckle: \n just now as for ridiculous Aristophanes, The detent excessively humourous and as well prfane is. Aristophanes was prfane, under satiric direction, hostile his rivals Cratinus, Phrynichus, Ameipsias, Eupolis, and others, if we are to c entirely back him, who in their anomalous Donnybrook graceful of the day of Comedy, thumped one other and everybody else with implicit heartiness, as he did, plainly aimed at junior-grade game, and dragged onwards point women, which he did not. He is an center of many an(prenominal) men, all of a certain(a) greatness. We whiteth orn base up a inclination of his powers if we stack Rabelais upon Hudibras, work up him with the songfulness of Shelley, leave him a mineral vein of Heinrich Heine, and pinnacle him with the drapery of the Anti-Jacobin, adding (that thither whitethorn be some Irish in him) a blast of Grattan, forwards he is in motion. \n'