The Wasps - Aristophanes

...performed in 422 BC at the Lenaia and won second prize. Wasps are basically about Cleon's control over the Athenian jury system.

In the play Wasps the two main characters are Procleon and Anticleon, father and son. Procleon has an obsession with sitting on juries and Anticleon his son, wants to cure his addiction and tries locking im his house, but Procleon tries to escape many times, one of which he pretends he is going to sell his ...
...Odysseus under the Cyclops's ram, we would expect Anticleon to recognise this straight away, but the joke is delayed to fit in the joke about Odysseus this is an example of incongruity. The father and son have a debate (the agon) and Anticleon decides to set up a court in their house and have a trial about a dog who has stolen Sicilian cheese. The chorus is made up of old jury men, who often talk about the Persian wars. Whereas the first half is ... more

Wasps was performed in 422 BC at the Lenaia and won second prize. Wasps are basically about Cleon's control over the Athenian jury system.

In the play Wasps the two main characters are Procleon and Anticleon, father and son. Procleon has an obsession with sitting on juries and Anticleon his son, wants to cure his addiction and tries locking im his house, but Procleon tries to escape many times, one of which he pretends he is going to sell his donkey at the market but hides underneath the donkey, like Odysseus under the Cyclops's ram, we would expect Anticleon to recognise this straight away, but the joke is delayed to fit in the joke about Odysseus this is an example of incongruity. The father and son have a debate (the agon) and Anticleon decides to set up a court in their house and have a trial about a dog who has stolen Sicilian cheese. The chorus is made up of old jury men, who often talk about the Persian wars. Whereas the first half is mainly about the jury and the second half seems to drift way which includes Anticleon and Procleon attending a dinner party in which Procleon steals a flute girl and gets very drunk.

I have chosen this question, to write about on Wasps because I think that having a detailed knowledge does depend on the way in which one would react to the play as a whole, or at least the first half of the play, as in the second half it drifts away from the Athenian legal system and juries.

At the time Wasps was written, the Athenian legal system was very different than today, a trial would have to be over in a day, there would be no over-running trials where the defendant, prosecutor, jury and judge would be called back for another day. The juries decision would come to a conclusion after listening to both sides of the case in comparison to a modern jury, in the Athenian legal system they didn't go into a different room to discuss the case it was by secret ballot. This would involve two urns: guilty and not guilty in which they had to put the appropriate voting-pebble.

If the verdict came back as guilty, and if the penalty was not fixed then jurors had to yet again vote but this time on a wax covered tablet to deicide the punishment, if there was to be a lighter penalty and short scratch was to be made on the wax covered tablet and if a heavier penalty, a longer scratch.

In the first half of the play Aristophanes gives many references to the Athenian legal system and juries, verdicts and such. A few examples are: The fact that Procleon has an obsession with sitting on juries; this is stressed by Xanthias in a speech that gives many references such as:

"…Clutching his voting-pebble that he wakes up with his thumb and two fingers glued together, as though he'd been sprinkling incense for a new-moon sacrifice."

In comparison to this quote:

"Beautiful urn, how I long for you slot"
If one went to see this play without having any background knowledge about the Athenian legal system, they may guess what a voting pebble was because the means of voting is something that most people are aware of and probably wouldn't really matter how they voted because of peoples knowledge of voting in general, therefore, it is not hard to guess what a voting pebble was, especially since at this point of the play we have already heard that Procleon has an obsession for sitting on juries. However "Beautiful urn, how I long for your slot" may not be as clear to an audience with any knowledge of the Athenian legal system as it was with the voting-pebble.

Again, for the same reason, unacknowledged people who don't know about the legal system wouldn't know about the urns and the slot in which you put the voting-pebble. Xanthias makes a joke about Procleon and the wax covered tablet:

"…He's so mean that he scratches the long line on his tablet every time they get a conviction - full damages; honestly, he comes home with enough wax under his fingernails to furnish a beehive."

"My nails are itching to plough through that wax again"

The joke here is that, like mentioned before, that if the jury wanted a heavy penalty they would scratch a longer line in the wax covered tablet, the audience wouldn't know this unless they were told or if they knew already. Perhaps the fact that "he's so mean…conviction-full damages" maybe the audience would understand but they would be too busy watching it to think hard about it, they would be concentrating more on what was happening next. The second quote, the audience wouldn't understand.

A big song and dance is made of emptying the "voting-urns" where normally there are just two ladles, one of which contains the pebble in it, and this would provide a lot of range for exaggerated visual humour that one may not understand because of lack of detailed knowledge on the other hand one may possibly be able to guess again because of the voting knowledge most people know.

The second half is more relaxed and easy to understand for example the dinner party when Procleon steals the flute girl a joke such as this:

"Hold onto this rope. It's a bit old and worn: but you will be surprised what it'll stand up to"

Most people would understand this, considering that Procleon is drunk and is talking to the flute girl. Another example of a joke that most people would understand is when Procleon sort of makes a dig at Anticleon by saying:

"I've got the money, you see, but im not allowed to handle it myself just yet- not till I'm a bit older"

The funny thing about this joke is that Procleon is an old man but is throwing a sly dig at Anticleon for treating him like a baby.

However there are a couple of parts where a bit of knowledge. One example is Aesop Fables, simple but if one was not to know what it was then they probably wouldn't understand it. In the play, Anticleon tells Procleon that if he was to get in trouble "to smooth things out" use a quotation from Aesop Fables.

The first Parabasis, it is divided into two sections Aristophanes career spoke by the chorus leader and the second the veterans of the Persian Wars spoken by both the leader and the chorus a detailed knowledge of the every day stories the Athenians would hear then some of the jokes wouldn't be understandable such as the play Clouds

"When he tried last year to sow a crop of new ideas, you failed to see the pint… yet he swears by Dionysus there was never a better comedy…the shame is yours for being so obtuse"

The year before when the play Clouds was performed it came last in the competition, and although the plays were only played once the plays were wrote down and told over and over again, so if one didn't know about things like this sometimes the things that the characters were saying may not make sense unless you have the detailed knowledge to understand the mood and content of Wasps.

In the second half of the Parabasis, where the chorus (the old jury men) talk about the Persian Wars is quite easy to understand and doesn't require as much knowledge as the references and jokes to the juries, the Athenian legal system and the background knowledge of Aristophanes older plays and performances.

In the second parabasis is shorter and lighter than the first parabasis and consists mainly of in-jokes , doesn't really require detailed knowledge of them, they were mainly aimed at the people in the audiences, for example; Amynias who is mentioned as a compulsive gambler who manages to maintain a luxurious lifestyle despite always claiming that he has no money.

Before reading this play and studying it, I looked at bit of background information on the Athenian legal system, and in my opinion without doing so, I fear I wouldn't not have understood it as well as I have, I still had to look back at jokes and references and figure them out myself, but in a play being performed if I had not looked at the Athenian law system before hand I would not understand the jokes that are being made in this play.

In conclusion, to wrap this essay up, I think that for the first half of the play a bit of background knowledge is needed to understand the references and jokes about the Athenian legal system and to understand the mood, some jokes are probably easy to understand without detailed knowledge because most of the jokes are not too complex although a few are a bit confusing, the rest of the play makes up for that fact.

 

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