Sigh. I think I'm in the minority here, but for the most part, I just don't find Aristophanes funny. I found myself reading over passages thinking, Okay, I should be laughing, but probably ended up looking like this the entire time:That is all.

“Well, what do the slanderers say? They shall be my prosecutors, and I will sum up their words in an affidavit: 'Socrates is an evil-doer, and a curious person, who searches into things under the earth and in heaven, and he makes the worse appear the better cause; and he teaches the aforesaid doctrines to others.' Such is the nature of the accusation: it is just what you have yourselves seen in the comedy of Aristophanes (Aristoph., Clouds.), who has introduced a man whom he calls Socrates, g

I'm not really sure how you're supposed to review a play that has been around since 423 BC but...y'all, this was really funny. I found it unexpectedly thought-provoking and entertaining. I'm sure I missed most of the jokes since I just decided to read it without doing any prior research, but standing alone it proved itself quite fun. Possibly it helps that I have no opinion whatsoever about Socrates and did not mind him getting mocked. I'm not sure I "agree" Aristophanes position, but I admire t...

3.5The Clouds I read The Clouds more as a historical source than as a drama. I have read in many texts that this play contributed to Socrates' conviction and death close to twenty years after its debut. I was curious to see what Aristophanes could write that could contribute to the demise of such an eminent philosopher. The Clouds satirizes the " new learning" and its impact on the education of Athenian youth. His target was Sophists, who taught rhetoric to construct winning persuasive argument

The Clouds may be the best play I've read so far from Aristophanes. It's the cleverest in satire as well as genuinely funny- I mean, if an ancient play can make me laugh as much as an Oscar Wilde play makes me laugh, that's a very, very good sign for what's to come in the future. In this play, Aristophanes attacks and satirizes Socrates and his followers/students, making them seem ridiculous and illogical. In fact, Aristophanes includes Socrates as a character, who is portrayed as a great teache...

This review is of the translation by K.J. Dover.Ugh this edition is so sexy... I mean, that introduction talking about the history of Aristophanes, his plays, the lost plays, and the two variations of Νεφέλαι itself; the history of ancient Greek theatre in general; contemporary politics and philosophy; the concepts of Right and Wrong as adduced in Νεφέλαι; staging, production, and reception; metrical analysis, textual analysis, linguistic analysis...? Come on! The line-by-line commentary? Yes pl...

While this edition suffers from a too modern translation The Clouds resonates, all too self aware, castigating the audience, slurring them actually. This great farce takes aim at the secular university and the godless wiseasses it produces.As Goodreads friend Sologdin noted, it is intriguing to see Socrates cast as a pre-Socratic. Much like Derrida’s post card.A middle class father is deep in debt as a result of his son's lavish lifestyle. Father hopes education will allow the son to use logic a...

I love Greek tragedies, but have always struggled with the comedies. The tragic is tragic forever, but comedy is more subtle, more ephemeral, and it’s hard to laugh at anything more than a couple hundred years old. When I see Shakespeare comedies on the stage the audience always seems eager to laugh, but it’s almost as if everyone just wants to prove that they’re smart enough to get the jokes. But getting a joke and thinking a joke is funny are sometimes two different things. Shakespeare is grea...

Read in the translation of William Arrowsmith.

What's the deal with The Clouds? Things you should know:1. This is allegedly the play that defamed Socrates so badly that Athens rose up and executed him.2. This is a revised version of the original play, and contains speeches complaining that the play came in third place when it debuted.3. This play is a brutal satire in the vein of Swift's A Modest Proposal, and it is more shocking than most modern comedies.4. At its heart, this play is a debate between tradition and enlightenment/debauchery.

If you don't laugh when you read this play, you simply don't have a pulse...This play is "immediately-turn-you-into-an-actor-reciting-lines-while-walking-through-your-house-by-yourself-as-you-laugh" funny...But one problem is, I suspect I will never see a live performance that lives up to the one portrayed in my imagination. Honestly a great play to read and probably an especially difficult play to pull off on stage. You need to be very reckless, loud, and have some eccentric, brilliant exaggera...

What follows is a transcript of an occurrence that transpired within my place of residence approximately a month before my destruction at the tiny, filthy hands of Frodo. An orc captain, Glumbarg, entered unbidden with a proposition of sorts.Glum.: Oh great and wise Sauron, who speakest wisdom for and through all Ages, I beg of thee to hear my humble proposal, and to dignify it with no less than seven and one-half seconds of thoughtful contemplation! To have access to your great Ear, O Earless O...

Some things haven't changed much in 2400 years. What is a parent to do with a hard to raise kid? Send them to a good school, a thinkery. But to what end? So his kid can learn logic to outsmart his creditors and not be held accountable for his actions. #EducationGoalsSocrates provides evidence against a supernatural entity. Yet, no matter the scientific evidence, religion is hard to kill. The religious go against evidence and end up with stronger beliefs, no matter how illogical. All the while, t...

I find it really funny how people think that "in the old days" everything was so much better and they were so much mature, but this play proves them so wrong!I love the way Aristophanes got so offended by the third place that he re-wrote this play and made fun of how he did not win because of his dirty jokes. This comedy proves that even in the ancient Greece the humour were the same as now, and the presence of irony and mocking were ever so funny!

Three plays by Aristhophanes: Clouds: funny, coherent and often very clever.Birds: pure blasphemy, sometimes very vulgar; has a complex structure but not coherent; sometimes long-winded.Frogs: not too coherent structure, but lots of funny passages, sometimes flattened; also remarkably many references to current affairs.

On the benefits of liberal arts education.

I guess it was my first time reading a comedy... I picked it up on purpose actually! I think I still need to think about it but the way Socrates was depicted by Aristophanes and how the struggle between old and new is presented is really smart! Strepsiades, who is trying to use the new for his own good, eventually reaches the point that he notices the new is not merely going to be an operator but is going to act as a condition whose dominance will turn up against old, no matter what! I'm going t...

This was a very pleasant surprise. Not only did this deliver on being a very amusing read, but it gave me real insight into the political and philosophical climate of Classical Greece in a way that I didn't expect. It was also a surprise seeing how the chorus behaved in Aristophanes's comedy versus all of the ancient tragedies I've read. It's so interesting that the version we have now is the revised and never performed version, especially as so much of what the chorus does is speak to the audie...

This is Aristophanes' satire lambasting the Sophists, and Socrates in particular (even though Socrates despised the Sophists he was associated with them by the masses). It's also a critique of the litigious nature of Athens at that time. I was struck by some similarities today, especially, ironically, the underlying concept of our society's lax attention to morality in the face of personal gain. "lie a little, take advantage of one's neighbor a little..." etc.My first foray into the works of Ari...

Funny, witty Greek comedy. Only thing I've fully understood in my Ancient Philosophy class so far. Amusing to read such crass humor and language from the Ancients- it was like reading a really good SNL skit set a couple thousand years ago.

This is quite funny in parts (although comedy, in my view, does not transfer well to different eras) and surprisingly modern in its theme (how to worm one's way out of debt without actually paying it). I think readers need an introduction in order to understand the text properly.

bizarre to see socrates presented as a pre-socratic. that's some kinda derridean thing from 'outworks,' no?

A funny play on morality and sophistry. A lot more fart jokes than I would have expected from this time period

This was excellent and so much fun.It's a great comedy, but it's even better social-commentary on 5th-century BC Athens.I had not expected Aristophanes to implicitly defend old morality and conventional religion in this way, but watching Socrates and Wrong Argument work together to corrupt Pheidippides and turn him against his own father, Strepsiades, in a reversal of Strepsiades' desires to have his own son learn rhetoric so he can rid himself of his debtors is great. (It's funny that Strepsiad...

Written in the 5th century BC as a polemic against the "new" intellectual movement in Athens, Aristophanes lampoons Socrates and the movement of philosophers in general for being immoral pedants and sophists. Filled with witticisms and vulgar humour, it is an entertaining read. Like when a lizard shits on Socrates face.

hilarious.

Interesting and slightly absurd at times. The translation I read was a tad clunky which probably (definitely) affects my review but the main ideas were communicated well. If comedy is to display the ridiculous, Aristophanes' comedic critique of new philosophies hits the nail on the head. This play is a good caution to blindly accepting new things for the sake of novelty and change.

A complete farce, but a funny one.

“Then tell me, isn’t it also just for me likewise to be well-intentioned toward you and to beat you, since in fact to be well-intentioned is to beat? For why should *your* body be unchastised by blows, but not mine? And in fact I too was born free. Children weep: does it seem fit to you that a father not weep? *You* will say that it is the law that this is a boy’s work, but *I* would say in return, ‘Old men are children twice.’ And it’s more appropriate for the old to weep than the young, inasmu...

The edition of 'The Clouds' that I read was a part of the anthology Eight Great Comedies and was translated by Benjamin Bickley Rogers. This book that was lent to me by my school as a part of our English unit on comedy, where we briefly studied The Importance of Being Earnest, another play within the volume. As this school year is coming to an end, I figured that I should try to read some of the other comedies while I had the book in my hands.Reading ancient plays do, by nature, come with some d...