The Clouds :: essays research papers

CLOUDS exertionThe setting of the Clouds requires both doors in the skene, one representing Strepsiadess house and the other, the Thinkery, both in the city of Athens. The play begins with Strepsiades and Pheidippides sleeping in their beds. Since the ancient Greek dramatics had no curtain, these two men in their beds had to be carried out in full view of the audience by stagehands (probably slaves) and placed in bowel movement of one of the doors of the skene representing Strepsiadess house. The audience was no doubt expected to imagine that this was an interior scene, because it was not usual for Greeks to sleep outside. This assumption is strengthened by the detail that, since Pheidippides is sleeping under five blankets, the weather is cool, which would make it even slight likely that this was intended as an outdoor scene. The method of presenting the scholarly activities that go on inside the Thinkery is by no way of life certain. K. J. Dover (Aristophanic Comedy, Berkel ey and Los Angeles, 1972, 107) suggests two possibilities. The students could come out of the door of the skene carrying their apparatus with them, which they could leave behind when they go back inside. Another possibility is that a screen made of hit the books and wood with a door, held from behind by stagehands, could conceal the students until Strepsiades asks that the door be opened. The stagehands then could remove this screen revealing the students and their equipment. When the students are ordered to go back inside, they could go through a door of the skene which then would construct the door of the Thinkery for the rest of the play. One other aspect of production call for to be mentioned. Socrates first appears in the play suspended in air. The means of his suspension is undoubtedly the mechane, which in tragedy is mostly used for gods, plainly in comedy is used for any character who needs to fly ball or just be in the air. Aristophaness Comic Portrait of SocratesAlthou gh in that respect is something of the real Socrates1 in the character of the same name in the Clouds, it is progress to that Aristophaness depiction of Socrates in the Clouds is in good part a derisory distortion. Socrates was a well-known figure in Athens who was popularly perceived as an intellectual. Aristophanes, taking advantage of this popular perception, arbitrarily places him at the passing game of the Thinkery, in which subjects such as rhetoric and astronomy are taught.