The Clouds - The Clouds and Old Comedy

The Clouds and Old Comedy

During the parabasis proper (518-62), the Chorus reveals that the original play was badly received when it was produced. References in the same parabasis to a play by Eupolis called Maricas (produced in 421) and criticism of the populist politician Hyperbolus (ostracized in 416) indicate that the second version of The Clouds was probably composed somewhere between 421-16 BC. The parabasis also includes an appeal to the audience to prosecute Cleon for corruption. Since Cleon died in 422 it can be assumed that this appeal was retained from the original production in 423 and thus the extant play must be a partial revision of the original play.

The revised play is an incomplete form of Old Comedy. Old Comedy conventionally limits the number of actors to three or four yet there are already three actors on stage when Superior and Inferior enter the action and there is no song at that point that would allow for a change of costume. The play is unusually serious for an Old Comedy and possibly this was the reason why the original play failed at the City Dionysia. As a result of this seriousness, there is no celebratory song in the exodus, and this also is an uncharacteristic omission. A typical Aristophanic Chorus, even if it starts out as hostile to the protagonist, is hardly more than the protagonist's cheer squad by the end of the play. In The Clouds however, the Chorus appears sympathetic at first but emerges as a virtual antagonist by the end of the play.

The play adapts the following elements Old Comedy in a variety of novel ways.

• Parodos: The arrival of the Chorus in this play is unusual in that the singing begins offstage some time before the Chorus appears. It is possible that the concealed Chorus was not fully audible to the audience and this might have been a factor in the original play's failure. Moreover the majestic opening song is more typical of tragedy than comedy.
• Parabasis: The parabasis proper (lines 518-62) is composed in eupolidean tetrameter rather than the conventional anapestic tetrameter. Aristophanes does not use eupolideans in any other of his extant plays. The first parabasis (510-626) is otherwise conventional. However the second parabasis (1113–30) is in a shortened form, comprising an epirrhema in trochaic tetrameter but without the songs and the antepirrhema needed for a conventional, symmetrical scene.
• Agon: The play has two agons. The first is between Superior and Inferior (949-1104). Superior's arguments are in conventional anapestic tetrameter but Inferior presents his case in iambic tetrameters, a variation that Aristophanes reserves for arguments that are not to be taken seriously. A similar distinction between anapestic and iambic arguments is made in the agons in The Knights and The Frogs. The second agon in The Clouds is between Strepsiades and his son (1345–1451) and it is in iambic tetrameter for both speakers.
• Episodes: Informal dialogue between characters is conventionally in iambic trimeter. However the scene introducing Superior and Inferior is conducted in short lines of anapestic rhythm (889-948). Later, in the agon between Strepsiades and his son, a line of dialogue in iambic trimeter (1415) - adapted from Euripides play Alcestis - is inserted into a speech in iambic tetrameter, a transition that seems uncharacteristically clumsy.