Frogs And Three Other Plays PDF Download

Excerpt from The Frogs: And Three Other Plays But the ancient Aristophanic comedy proceeded upon a principle of compensation totally different. In this species Of composition, the utter extravagance and impossibility of the supposed action is an indispensable requisite; the portion of truth and reality, which is admitted as a counterpoise, consists wholly in the character and language. It is a grave, humorous, impossible, great lie, related with an accurate mimicry of the language and manner of the persons introduced, and great exactness Of circumstance in the inferior details. In its simpler state, it appears to be one of the commonest and most spontaneous products of the human mind; and usually arises in some strong expression, which, a moment after, is taken literally, converted into a reality, and invested with all the circumstances Of action and dialogue. We shall show that the plays, the Acharna and the Knights (or Dema gogues),1 are capable Of being traced to the kind of conver sation, out of which, in all probability, they did originate. There are other plays, which appear to have grown up from mere sport, when, in a playful conversation, fancied events are developed into an imaginary detail. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.