The Clouds by Aristophanes

1/ Strepsiades is an old farmer who runs into debt because of his son Pheidippides’s love of horses. Hearing about the Thinkery and the new thinkers, Strepsiades decides to send his son there to be trained to argue his way out of paying the money back. 

The head of the Thinkery is Socrates, a stand-in for the Sophists. My friend Tom (Wuthering Expectations) however told me “The Clouds has very little to do with the actual Socrates. Or anyway with Plato’s recurring character Socrates. The Aristophanes Socrates is more of, well, an influencer. A self-help influencer. We have those today!” 

For this play, I switched back and forth between the translations by Alan H. Sommerstein and Paul Roche. 

2/ There are some very funny bits at the beginning of the play. 

“FIRST PUPIL And see, here is a map of the entire world—look, there’s Athens. 

[…]

STREPSIADES […] But where is Sparta? 

FIRST PUPIL Oh… er?... Right here. 

STREPSIADES Far too close! Think again! Get it away from us!” 

(translated by Paul Roche) 

That’s how I feel about France. 

“SOCRATES […] Do you have a good memory? 

STREPSIADES Yes and no. Very good if somebody owes me something—very bad if I owe it to someone else.” 

(translated by Alan H. Sommerstein) 

Relatable. 

I also like it when someone from the Chorus speaks as Aristophanes: 

“LEADER [addressing the audience] 

[…] I thought that you an audience intelligent would be 

And also thought I’d never written a play so witty 

As this—and that is why I first produced it in this city. 

A lot of toil went into it—and yet my play retreated 

By vulgar works of vulgar men unworthily defeated.

For your sake I took all these pains, and this was all your gratitude!...” 

(translated by Sommerstein)

That reminds me of John Webster’s preface to The White Devil. 

The Clouds was a flop when first performed; the text we have is the revised version that was never produced. 

3/ My problem with The Clouds is that I didn’t find it particularly funny—in fact, it was quite tough to read. Part of it is probably that one should be more familiar with the Sophists, the same way Women at Thesmophoria Festival wouldn’t be very funny if one never read Euripides. But it’s not just that. The Clouds is thick with references to Greek mythology, contemporary figures, local incidents, trendy ideas, and so on—my translators kindly explain all the puns, all the parodies and references, but jokes are not particularly funny when you hear them explained, are they? 

This is the difference between The Alchemist (perhaps Ben Jonson’s comedies in general) and Shakespeare’s comedies: The Alchemist is thick with local and contemporary references that now mean nothing to us, Shakespeare’s plays are not. Shakespeare’s comedies still suffer to some extent, because of slang (now obsolete) and puns (if read in translation), but much of the comedy is in characters, situations, and witty dialogue rather than parody, satire, or references to contemporary issues. 

Compared to Lysistrata and Women at Thesmophoria Festival, The Clouds didn’t make me laugh all that much. It’s too sour, I think.