The Songs of Aristophanes

Book excerpt: A comedy of Aristophanes was in large measure a musical performance, and his lyric verse covers a wide range of styles - from popular song to parody of tragedy. The music is lost, and our only way of recovering something of the experience of an Athenian audience is by studying the rhythms of the poetry. This book provides a full text, with scansions, of the lyric of the surviving plays, and an introduction to the different rhythms used by Aristophanes, their origins, and literary associations. Dr Parker pays particular attention to the role played by lyric metre in the structure of the plays and to distinguishing the different levels of metrical style, thus illustrating the integral part metre plays in Aristophanes' dramatic art and satire. She also discusses fully the metrical aspects of textual problems in Aristophanes' lyric, and a section of the introduction traces the evolution of the study of Aristophanes' metres and the influence this has had on the text.