Comedy Scholars

Question 1

Frogs

Cartledge - Costume vulgarity

Answer 1

• “The wearing of the erect phallos…corresponded to the exaggeratedly male-dominated quality of the sexuality celebrated in Dionysiac rituals both on and off the stage.”

Question 2

Frogs

Dover - Comedy an opportunity for men to ‘let off’ some of their impulses

Answer 2

• ”..since Athenian society imposed a high degree of segregation on women and girls of citizen status and strict standards of decorum on the language used on serious public occasions,
• the ordinary man enjoyed the sexuality of comedy as a channel for his own ‘excess’ sexuality.”

Question 3

Frogs

Macdowell - Laughing at the God

Answer 3

• '’Aristophanes is using the gods as comic characters and wants the audience to laugh at them, but this does not necessarily mean that he and the audience do not believe in their real existence’’

Question 4

Frogs

Cartledge - Dionysus

Answer 4

• ”..his cowardly and effeminate Dionysos…has clearly trespassed too far on the human side of the human/divine divide to qualify any longer for godhead.”