a.d. elliott - Take the Back Roads

  Dear Henry, Book 16 of the Bucket List is DONE! Let me tell you all about Clouds by Aristophanes. Aristophanes was born about 450 BC and was one of Ancient Greece's comedic playwrights. He is the only one whose work has survived. His career began about 427 BC with the play Diataleis. He may have written as many as 40 plays. However, most of his work remains fragmented.  None of Aristophanes's plays are cohesive stories but relatively small, loosely connected scenes with a chorus occasionally breaking in. It reminded me a bit of a sketch comedy series you would find on  Saturday Night Live or Monty Python, and I wonder if this playwright is the progenitor of that type of comedy. Clouds is Aristophanes' most notorious surviving play. The play begins when Stepsiades, a distraught father who is completely bankrupt due to his son's gambling problems, enrolls in the philosophy school next door to learn how to stop his son from ruining the family. It recounts the ridiculousn...