Amphibian ambiguities: Aristophanes and his Frogs

Abstract

Few would dispute that Frogs is one of Aristophanes’ supreme achievements; many would further claim as one of his most successful and famous scenes Dionysos’ encounter with those eponymous amphibians, the frogs themselves. This, however, brings us face to face with a major paradox which critics of Aristophanes frequently fail to emphasize in anything like adequate terms: quite simply, and astonishingly for such a well-loved scene, there is no scholarly agreement, even on the broadest level, as to how it was actually presented in the theatre. Apart from the fact that it is far from clear how Charon's boat was represented, we do not even have a sure answer to an even more basic question—whether those famous characters the frogs were visibly presented to the audience as yet another of Aristophanes’ coups de theatre, or whether they were only heard singing from offstage, thus altering the emphasis (or at least the focus) of the scene very considerably. Lack of agreement among scholars on such an important point is lamentable enough, but, worse, some recent criticism appears to have been developing a dangerous tendency not only to assert without adequate argument that the frogs were indeed visibly represented but, further, to build this highly insecure element into the foundations of various theories of wider significance as if it were a piece of orthodoxy. This suggests that a careful re-examination of the whole scene might not be out of place in an attempt to support or refute the ancient scholiastic opinion (Z Frogs 211), for long unquestioned, which states quite unequivocally ‘…the frogs are not seen in the theatre, nor is the chorus, but rather they imitate the frogs from offstage. The true chorus is composed of righteous souls of the dead.’ I will argue, from close consideration of the actual wording of the scene, and of its setting and action, that the frogs were indeed unseen and were only heard singing from somewhere offstage. To support this view, I believe important considerations of comparative dramatic practice, and even of natural history, can be adduced.