FROGS SCHOLARS

Question 1

Frogs is a fantasy play

Answer 1

– everything is ‘unreal’. Political and topical comment are less important.’ – McLeish

Question 2

The Chorus of Initiates

Answer 2

Initiates is used to establish a particular atmosphere – a dimension removed from everyday mortal experience. It doesn’t advance the plot at all.’ – McLeish

Question 3

Comedy tends to

Answer 3

take normal life situations and suspends and subvert them.’ – Cartledge

Question 4

Dionysus in Frogs is a

Answer 4

coward, buffoon and literary critic.’ – Russel

Question 5

The gods were assumed to be

Answer 5

sensible enough to take a joke.’ – Macdowell

Question 6

it is interesting how

Answer 6

Dionysus the character would be performing in front of his own image. This ‘doubling’ allows the play to create ‘a satirical setting of its own.’ – McLeish

Question 7

Dramatic poetry,

Answer 7

it seems, can save the city. Drama and civic life are inextricably connected. The very fact that you could write a comedy about tragedy marks the place that drama, as an institution, occupied in Athenian life. - Agocs

Question 8

Aeschylus wins because he represents

Answer 8

a nostalgic vision, uncontaminated by the small-mindedness of daily life, by corrupt and incompetent leadership, and by the losses of war, of a bygone age of Athenian heroism.
- Agocs

Question 9

Frogs is more

Answer 9

preoccupied by tragedy than comedy.
shows awareness of its status as a comedy.
- Tsoumpra

Question 10

tragedy should

Answer 10

teach - it should display cleverness and good advice and make men better.
for Euripides, the goal is to examine conventional wisdom, to scrutinise and provoke. For Aeschylus, dramatic characters should be models of good behaviour for the audience to imitate.
- Ruffell

Question 11

Euripidean

Answer 11

subversiveness and Aeschylean morality
- Ruffell

Question 12

there is nothing

Answer 12

so universal as a fart joke
- Dover

Question 13

women in comedy

Answer 13

were passed over or represented as sex mad or crazed
- Jones

Question 14

Aristophanes truly believes

Answer 14

tragedy has an educational function
- MacDowell

Question 15

Aeschylus and Euripides’

Answer 15

characters are seen like their plays
- Halliwell

Question 16

tragedies were written for mass audiences

Answer 16

and so could be used as material for humour - it was part of the life of the community
- Dover

Question 17

you won’t learn much that

Answer 17

is positive about tragedy from Aristophanes’ Frogs, but you will discover a lot that is wrong with it.
- Ruffell

Question 18

Dionysus has no idea to row

Answer 18

this would seem contemptible and ridiculous especially to Athenian spectators, many of whom would have been oarsmen in the navy.
- MacDowell

Question 19

cowardly and effeminate Dionysus

Answer 19

seems naturally servile… trespassed too far on the human side to qualify for godhood.
- Cartledge

Question 20

Dionysus is deliberately made

Answer 20

ridiculous because he was a force to be reckoned with
- Cartledge

Question 21

incongruity between the effeminacy of the

Answer 21

god and his dangerous power has a potentially comic side
- Segal

Question 22

the choice of the Eleusinian Mysteries

Answer 22

would reassure the audience that the religious proprieties were not being entirely neglected.
- Cartledge

Question 23

Aristophanes shows considerable versatility

Answer 23

in his use of different sorts of humour and fun.
- Macdowell

Question 24

he shows supreme

Answer 24

mastery of almost every known means of making people laugh
- Stanford

Question 25

Aristophanes used many of his plays as

Answer 25

vehicles for the expression of serious political views
- de Ste Croix

Question 26

serious in its

Answer 26

ultimate political message
- Edith Hall

Question 27

mixture of

Answer 27

seriousness and foolery
- de Ste Croix

Question 28

political topics are

Answer 28

notably absent from the early parts of Frogs
- Macdowell