Background and Preliminaries

• A COMEDY, produced 405 BC, following directly the deaths of Euripides and  Sophocles in 406 BC
• won first prize among the comic competition
• Summary of the opening to the play
• Frogs is the (comic) account of how Dionysus tries to rescue tragedy by going to the underworld
• Since Euripides had died in 405 BC, and Sophocles almost immediately after, the future of tragedy seemed unpromising, at best
• Thus Dionysus, god of the theater, resolves to go down into Hades, in order to release Euripides (his favorite tragic poet) and bring him back to Athens
• Disguised as Heracles (who had successfully gone to the underworld to bring back Cerberus), Dionysus with his slave and sidekick Xanthias descend into the world below
• With many a comic setback, the two manage to cross the river Styx in Charon's ferry
• While crossing the river, they meet the chorus of Frogs
• With the chorus of Frogs, they sing and dance brek-ke-ke-kek ko-ax ko-ax (what Greek frogs seem to say)
• In Hades, it turns out that Euripides, in his usual pushy way, has managed to seize the Chair of Poetry from Aeschylus (who has been the Poet Laureate of the Underworld since his death in 456/455 BC)
• Some ghosts object and insists that Euripides should be tested in a fair competition
• (Sophocles, in deference to Aeschylus, refuses to intervene unless Aeschylus is defeated by Euripides)
• When Dionysus arrives on the scene, Euripides and Aeschylus are about to begin their public competition before Pluto's palace; when it's discovered that this Heracles-like figure is in fact the god of theater, Dionysus is appointed judge of the competition
• (Our excerpt begins here)