The Clouds

CLOUDS

Production

The setting of the Clouds requires two doors in the skene, one representing Strepsiades's 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 theater 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 front of one of the doors of the skene representing Strepsiades's house. The audience was no doubt expected to imagine that this was an indoor scene, because it was not usual for Greeks to sleep outside. This assumption is strengthened by the fact that, since Pheidippides is sleeping under five blankets, the weather is cool, which would make it even less 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 means certain. K. J. Dover (Aristophanic Comedy, Berkeley 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 canvas 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 become the door of the Thinkery for the rest of the play.

One other aspect of production needs 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, but in comedy is used for any character who needs to fly or just be in the air.

Aristophanes's Comic Portrait of Socrates

Although there is something of the real Socrates1 in the character of the same name in the Clouds, it is clear that Aristophanes's depiction of Socrates in the Clouds is in good part a comic 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 head of the Thinkery, in which subjects such as rhetoric and astronomy are taught. As will become evident in the Apology and the Republic, Socrates was not a teacher of rhetoric or any of the other topics taught in the Thinkery. He was not concerned with teaching students to achieve material success through oratory; in fact, his main interest was to encourage young men toward spiritual, not material progress. Despite Socrates's atheism in the Clouds, he was not a scoffer at traditional religion, but a pious believer in the gods.

1. E.g., the metaphor of midwifery (137 ff.); Socrates's shoelessness and endurance (363); his reduction of Strepsiades to a state of utter bewilderment (791 ff.)

It indeed seems shocking that Aristophanes could so completely misrepresent Socrates, but in 423 B.C. when the Clouds was first presented, the distinction between Socrates and the Sophists might not have been as clear as it became later when Plato in the fourth century began to write philosophical dialogues with Socrates as the central character. To the average observer at the time of the Clouds Socrates did not seem terribly different from the Sophists. Like the Sophists, he was constantly seen in the company of wealthy young men, who, if they did not pay him regular fees, no doubt from time to time gave him financial support. Even if Socrates emphasized spiritual over material values, the actions of his young friends did not always reflect this emphasis, as in the case of Alcibiades and Critias.2

2. Alcibiades was a brilliant but unprincipled aristocrat who, although an Athenian general, left Athens and helped the Spartans after he had been brought up on charges of impiety. Critias was one of the oligarchical Thirty whose reign of terror at Athens after the end of the Peloponnesian War brought about the death or exile of numerous democrats and the confiscation of their property.

As Plato's depiction of him reveals, Socrates was not a typical Athenian. His rejection of the normal concerns of life such as money made him seem quite abnormal. One reaction of society to the abnormal man is to laugh at him. Aristophanes, whether he knew the real character of Socrates or not, did not hesitate to take advantage of the comic potential of this unusual man.3

3. This discussion owes much to K.J. Dover's edition of the play (Oxford 1968) and his book, Aristophanic Comedy, cited earlier.

EXERCISES FOR READING, COMPREHENSION AND INTERPRETATION

Strepsiades's House (beginning with prologue) - Strepsiades, Pheidippides, Xanthias (slave) (1-132)4

4. The numbers in parentheses refer to lines in Clouds.

The play begins with Strepsiades's monologue (prologue), which is interrupted by the sleep-talking of Pheidippides and two brief comments of a servant (1-79). What is the dramatic purpose of this monologue? What is Strepsiades's problem with his son (12-27)? with his wife (41-74)? What does his son's name mean and why was he so named (63-67)? What salvation does Strepsiades see in the Thinkery (94-99)? Why does Pheidippides refuse to study there (102-104;119-120)?

Thinkery (containing parodos) - Strepsiades, Student, Socrates, Students of Thinkery and Chorus (133-510)

When Strepsiades arrives at the Thinkery, the Student speaks of the researches in the Thinkery as mysteries (143). He is referring to the secret knowledge and ritual which were known to only the initiates of mystery cults, like some Dionysiac cults and the Eleusinian mysteries.5 Can you suggest a reason why Aristophanes uses the motif of mystery religion in reference to the education offered by the Thinkery?

5. In Eleusis, a town in Attica about 12 miles from Athens, mysteries in honor of the agricultural goddesses Demeter and Persephone were celebrated.

What impression is given by the Student's description of the experiments in the Thinkery? What view are we given of Socrates before he arrives in person (144-174)? What is the physical condition of the students in the Thinkery and what subjects do they study there (186-217)?

Socrates appears suspended in the air in order to satirize