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Intratext and Irony in Aristophanes

Jon Hesk
The terms ‘intratext’, ‘intratextual’ and ‘intratextuality’ are conspicuous by their absence in
the indices and glossaries of the current crop of introductions to ‘Literary Theory’ which fill
the shelves of good bookshops and university libraries. In various dictionaries of ‘literary
terms’ and ‘critical theory’, there are entries for ‘intention’, ‘intentional fallacy’,
‘interpretant’ and ‘intertextuality’. But the next entry is usually ‘irony’, or occasionally
‘intonation.’ In this essay I want to use the comedy of Aristophanes to outline some of the
ways in which questions of authorial intention, the role of the interpretant, the deployment of
‘intertexts’ and ‘contexts’, the ascription of ‘tone’, and (most crucially) the perception of
‘irony’ all hinge on the notion of ‘intratextuality.’ Furthermore, the particular controversies
which motivate recent criticism in Aristophanic studies are, to a great extent, implicated in
questions of ‘intratextuality’.

My understanding of ‘intratextuality’ will be as follows. The term ‘intratextuality’ essentially

describes any literary critical discourse which engages with the question of how different
‘parts’ of a discrete work (in our case a single play) relate or do not relate to each other. By
‘part’ of the text, I mean any ‘ element’ within the text which the critic takes to be significant
for the text’s meaning by virtue of a perceived relationship between that ‘element’ and
another ‘element’. For example, when a critic says that ‘flattery of the demos’ is a ‘theme’ of
Aristophanes Knights she is engaging with ‘intratextual’ discourse. This is because she sees
the play’s dialogue as containing elements which constantly recur and have a relationship of
identity or similarity between them. That relationship constitutes a ‘theme’ of the play. When
a critic describes the apparently ‘benign’ attitude of the sausage-seller at the end of Knights
as unexpected or constituting a reversal of characterisation, she is again thinking
‘intratextually.’ She does so by marking an ‘end’ of the play which is commensurate with the
sausage-seller’s unanticipated change of character. She has defined an element of the play as
the ‘end’ and hence sees it as having a significant relationship with the rest of the play. She is
also thinking intratextually by establishing a relationship of reversal, contradiction or
unexpected discontinuity between the sausage-seller’s character at the ‘end’ and the sausage-
seller in the ‘rest’ of the play. So, ‘intratextual thinking’ is pervasive in the way in which
critics ‘make sense’ of a text. Whether they are discussing characterisation, thematics,
political ‘messages’, language register, conformity to generic archetypes and so on,
‘intratextual’ thinking is unavoidable. And it should be stressed that while ‘intratextual’
thinking involves the identification of a ‘relationship’ between selected ‘elements’, it is not

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the case that such a relationship has to be one of identity or similarity. It can also be a
relationship of difference, contradiction, paradox or reversal.

There are some perennial questions which inform Aristophanic studies. How serious is
Aristophanic comedy? Did Aristophanic comedy offer coherent political advice and solutions
which were meant to be taken up by its audience? How are we to read Aristophanes’
deployment of so-called ‘fantasy’ and utopia? What is the relationship between an
Aristophanic parabasis and the rest of the play which frames it? Can we identify
Aristophanes’ intentions or agendas at work in his plays and their satirical
(mis)representations of Athens and its citizens? Why and to what ends is Aristophanic
comedy so pervasively self-reflexive or metatheatrical? I want to suggest that critical
responses to many of these questions revolve around whether or not we perceive a
relationship of irony between two ‘elements’ of a comedy. And if we do perceive an
intratextual irony in Aristophanes, our sense of what his comedies are all about is crucially
dependent on our attitude towards the concept of ‘irony’ itself.

As Don Fowler has recently commented, it is impossible to adequately define irony or to

offer a convincing taxonomy of different ironic forms and traditions. It is equally hard to
draw attention to such problems of definition and classification without (ironically) lapsing
into cliché.1 In this essay, I will not be concerned to distinguish or identify different forms of
irony (romantic, dramatic, tragic, Socratic, situational…). But I will be pressing the point
that Aristophanic comedy’s humour and meaning are crucially dependent on the
(non)recognition and interpretation of ironic intratextual relationships between elements
within one play. In a very loose sense these possible ironies could be characterised as
instances where an Aristophanic character or chorus undercuts a stated intention or claim
from the same or a different character and chorus elsewhere in the play. An irony is
generated because the audience perceives an intratextual contradiction between two
elements: a claim or intention is not honoured and this contradiction is implicit within the
play’s action and dialogue rather than explicitly sign-posted for the audience. Now this very
general isolation of the kind of ‘intratextual irony’ with which I am concerned does not
preclude consideration of other traditional notions of irony. In particular, this undercutting
mode has affinities with the complexities of what has become known as ‘Romantic Irony’
and I will be assessing the significance of these affinities in my conclusion.

I am not claiming that Aristophanic comedy is solely or always significantly reliant on

intratextual irony for its creation of humour and meaning. Aristophanic obscenity is often
funny and satirical without being particularly intratextual or ironic. When the protagonist of
Lysistrata announces that the women of Athens must ‘abstain from the prick’ (tou peous:

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124), there is a sense in which the joke relies on an intratextual relationship between
Lysistrata’s high-flown purpose (to end the war) and her sudden descent into sexual and
vernacular language.2 And this announcement certainly generates an irony: the women think
they desire peace most of all but their sexual desire proves to be nearly as strong when it
emerges that they must abstain from sex to secure peace. But to focus on the intratextual
features of this use of obscenity hardly enhances our appreciation of the joke or our
interpretation of its significance. Parody is also crucial to our sense of what Aristophanes is
all about and while this comic mode may generate important ironies, it is primarily
intertextual rather than intratextual.3 What I am claiming however, is that ‘intratextual
irony’ of the kind which I have isolated offers an important critical site from which to
(re)view the ways in which we read Aristophanes and to question certain assumptions which
underpin controversies of interpretation in Aristophanic studies. It would be banal simply to
argue that we read Aristophanes ‘intratextually’ – of course we do. Rather, my argument is
that a focus on ‘intratextual irony’ in Aristophanic comedy can provoke a productive self-
awareness in the reader/critic, a self-awareness which in turn offers a fresh perspective on
perennial problems of interpretation associated with this particular dramatist.

Recent theoretical work has recognised irony’s problematic status in the fields of politics and
aesthetics due to the role of the interpretant. Different audiences and different audience-
members will ‘make’ irony in ways and places which (supposedly) weren’t intended or else
will evaluate supposedly ‘clear’ ironies along lines which weren’t anticipated by an author. 4
What ironies you perceive in a text or performance and the significance which you attach to
those ironies will depend to some degree on your own cultural and political identity, your
moral views, your gender, your age, your class, your personal history and so on. For me, the
question of how your particular ‘subject position’ affects the way you perceive relationships
between elements of a work (ironic or not) is a crucial one for literary criticism. It is also an
unsettling question: if we admit that the meaning of a work can vary in accordance with the
different ways in which different people do their intratextual reading, then we have to worry
about what a literary-critical reading should look like. Should it posit a plurality of readings,
not in the broadly poststructuralist sense of denying closure or promoting différence, but in
the sense of offering a series of complete and often opposed interpretations of what the text
means? To do this would risk the institutional charge of not doing proper criticism at all.
We all work under the academic assumption that we have to decide on a reading, even if that
reading itself chooses to stress undecideability as a feature of the text’s meaning. There is a
subtle but important difference between a reading which emphasises undecideability and a
reading which actually insists on offering two or more complete and opposed readings
without giving priority to either. To claim that a text was read in a number of specific and

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differing ways due to its intratextual openness to such specific and competing readings is to
risk charges of ‘positivism’, crude historicism and speculation but it is also a different
approach to that which critics usually adopt. Having said this, I do not wish to ground my
reading of Aristophanes’ intratextual irony solely in terms of audience response or to claim
that Aristophanic comedy offers no control or limitation on the possible readings it generates.
In this essay, I will be claiming that Aristophanes’ comic design encourages different
members of an Athenian audience to mark and interpret his plays in different (often
competing) ways.

There are clear critical and theoretical barriers to making good such a claim. I cannot
conclusively demonstrate that Aristophanes was received in different ways and that those
differing responses mapped onto its intratextual openness. Nor will it be possible for me to
provide an adequate account of the way in which this (or any other) text both determines
meaning whilst at the same time remaining indeterminate enough to allow different audience
members to make the text mean different things. One of the few virtues of recent ‘reader-
response’ criticism has been a willingness to accept that while responses to a text can differ
greatly among different individuals and groups of individuals, such responses are generally
explicable in terms of the content of the text in question: a text shapes the responses of its
readers even though the responses may differ wildly or contradict each other. There are
cases where a response may be deemed truly bizarre or even ‘psychotic’ because it seems to
bear no relation whatsoever to the content of the text. Of course it can be argued that it is a
dubious exercise to discount such responses simply because they make no sense to the
critic/researcher. But if I interpret Aristophanes’ Acharnians as a coded memo from my
Head of Department or as having a bottom-line message that all Athenians should eat more
cheese, it is fairly safe to assume that I need a holiday a lot more than inclusion within an
academically agreed range of ‘legitimate readings’ of Acharnians. How do we decide the
extent to which a text has determined the content of a reader’s response or the extent to
which a reader has ‘made’ and ‘marked’ that text themselves? It will not do to offer the
trivial truth that there are no texts with meaning without readers to interpret them. All I can
say is that texts have a configuration which to some degree delimit and define readers’
responses. For my money, Aristophanes’ (intra)textual configurations are loose enough to
allow for legitimately competing interpretations within their Athenian audiences.

Ma(r)king Irony
Let me begin with a ‘straightforward’ example of Aristophanic intratextual irony. A great
deal of critical attention has focused on what we might call the anti-realist nature of
Aristophanic plot and dialogue. For example, characters will disrupt or fail to construct a

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‘dramatic illusion’, drawing attention to the fact that they are in a play. In the opening lines
of the Frogs the slave Xanthias begs his master Dionysus to allow him to tell hackneyed
jokes in the manner of other comedies (1-2): ‘Shall I say one of the usual things, master, that
the audience always laughs at?’. Dionysus (the god of drama) refuses to allow any great
descent into generic cliché, while Xanthias persists with the request (3-6):

Dio: Yes, indeed, whatever you like, only not ‘What a weight!’ (plēn
“piezomai”) Mind out for that because I’m thoroughly sick of it by now.
Xan: Then some other witty saying?
Dio: Anything bar ‘It’s really chafing my shoulder’ (plēn g’ “hōs
thlibomai”).

No sooner has the play begun than the audience is made aware of its fictive status and
generic conventions. The two men ‘play two different roles simultaneously.’ (Dover 1993:
191). They are both characters in the story the play will enact and at the same time they are
comic speaking of the enactment as a theatrical event. Xanthias next asks Dionysus where
point of him carrying luggage lies, if he’s not allowed to do anything which Phrynichus,
Lycis and Ameipsias (Aristophanes’ comic rivals) do in their luggage-carrying scenes (13-
16). Dionysus replies that these other poets’ ‘clever routines’ make him feel a year older (17-
19). The metatheatrical joke here serves to imply Aristophanes’ superiority over his rivals. 5
But where Xanthias initiates the the digressive and perhaps disruptive metatheatrical joke of
a comic character who is aware that he is not ‘real’ and therefore ‘just’ a comic character, his
disruption of illusion also sets up intratextual ‘continuity’ at another level. For in subsequent
lines, Xanthias manages to articulate a cliché which he wanted to do in the first place (20-1):
‘Wretched hard luck on this neck of mine, in that case, that it’s getting chafed (hoti thlibetai),
and yet can’t make a joke about it.’ The cliché (and the joke) gets told ‘in a manner suitably
fenced with ironic self-awareness’ (Goldhill 1991: 221). Indeed Xanthias will carry on
slipping in the supposedly prohibited ‘luggage jokes’ at strategic moments (ho d’ ōmos
houtosi piezetai at line 30 and as an aside at 88).

There are a number of points I want to make about this metatheatrical joke in relation to
intratextuality and irony. Firstly, we can see here how difficult it is to keep control over the
language of (dis)continuity and (un)connectedness in relation to Old Comedy’s thematic and
formal ‘anatomy.’ Xanthias’ metatheatrical joke may be regarded as breaking the continuities
of illusion6, or as an amusing and irrelevant delaying device for an audience eager to learn
the ‘plot’ of this play. But the joke also creates continuity by setting up a genre-related
prohibition which will then be ironically and ‘hypocritically’ broken later on. This is a
markedly ‘intratextual’ continuity - the irony is generated and marked by what theorists call
‘repetition’ or ‘echoic mention’ (Sperber and Wilson 1981; Hutcheon 1994: 158). Xanthias

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repeats certain items of vocabulary and phrases which Dionysus prohibits. Of course the use
of intratextual repetition need not always be a mark of irony. But it can be one of the ways in
which we notice irony in certain contexts. Of course, it could be argued that the irony is not
completely ‘intratextual’. The phrases supposedly ‘originate’ in the plays of other comic
poets, so there are intertextual elements at work here too. When Xanthias breaks the
prohibition using the commonplaces of other poets, he undermines the initial implication of
Aristophanic superiority to those other poets. This is why the joke has been equally at home
in studies of Aristophanic parody as opposed to ‘irony’.7 But the joke and the irony are
marked primarily through a process of continuity and repetition within the text.

And yet, there is yet another sense in which such intratextual irony cannot simply be a form
of ‘continuity’ because the joke is predicated upon a notion of contradiction or ‘friction’
within the text. There is Xanthias’ (Aristophanes’?) desire to conform to the generic
stereotypes which constitute the kind of play he inhabits and then there is the desire of
Dionysus (Aristophanes?) to resist such stereotypes. This ‘friction’ can be said to be ironic
because two ‘elements’ (the prohibition of cliché and the enactment of cliché) rub against
each other to produce an unstated but implied inference for an audience, namely that the play
or its author are in some sense being ‘hypocritical’. Thus the irony is ‘intratextual’ but its
visibility and its meaning or significance for an audience are generated both by relations of
continuity and discontinuity or contradiction within that intratextual framework.

My second point is that the irony is marked. That is to say, the comic contradiction between
the proposition that hackneyed jokes must be avoided and the subsequent appearance of those
very jokes is highly visible or noticeable through ‘echoic mention’. One might want to say
that the irony seems to be ‘intended’ by Aristophanes because it seems easy for any audience
to ‘get’ the irony. But, as recent theorists of irony have pointed out, it is often more
appropriate to think in terms of interpreters or communities of interpreters intentionally
making irony as opposed to them getting an intentional irony.8 Linda Hutcheon points out
that irony has a ‘cutting edge’ (Hutcheon 1994: 37), but it is not always the case that a
perceived irony is intended to cut in the manner in which audiences interpret that irony.
Furthermore, it is rare that interpreters will all see the marks of irony in the same place or
regard them as cutting towards the same victim or target. The metatheatrical routine
concerning generic convention which Xanthias sets in play may constitute a
straightforwardly noticeable irony for most modern readers because they still have enough of
a cultural repertoire of knowledge and expectation in common with fifth-century Athenians
to mark it. Of course, this would imply that Aristophanes intended his audience to ‘make’
and mark precisely the intratextual irony I have outlined. Did Aristophanes intend this
intratextual irony?

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One of the ironic things about certain forms of irony is that the more you mark them, the less
ironic they become: ‘the degree of ironic effect is seen to be inversely proportionate to the
number of markers necessary to get that effect’ (Hutcheon 1994: 152). An irony often relies
on the possibility of its nonrecognition in order for it to be what it is: ‘irony must not be
commented upon’ (Eco 1986: 273). Xanthias says: ‘Wretched hard luck on this neck of mine,
in that case, that it’s getting chafed (hoti thlibetai), and yet can’t make a joke about it.’ The
combination of ‘echoic mention’ and the reference to the fact that Xanthias can’t make the
joke would seem to be quite strong markers of irony, especially when we remember that
Xanthias is saying this only a few lines after Dionysus has prohibited the joke. But it is still
possible to miss this and later ‘ironic’ enactments of the prohibited cliché because this form
of irony can only be ‘made’ from a level of indirection. Xanthias’ enactments of the cliché
are conceivably ironic because the contradiction or ‘hypocrisy’ they rely upon remains
unstated. Imagine that Xanthias said the following to Dionysus ‘this neck of mine’s getting a
chafing - aha! I just said one of those things you said I couldn’t say!’ This might still be
intratextually funny; Xanthias disobeys his master’s previous prohibition in a pathetic
manner. But it wouldn’t be particularly ironic because the Xanthias explicitly draws attention
to the fact that he is contradicting Dionysus. Irony’s frequent requirement of implicitness and
indirection makes even the most apparently obvious intratextual ironies difficult to
conclusively or securely attribute to authorial intent. But who would seriously argue over
whether Aristophanes intended an audience to see the irony of Xanthias’ joke?
Commentators with very different perspectives on ‘intention’ are happy to see ‘irony’ in this
opening scene without any reference to controversy over Aristophanes’ intentions. This is
because they have all ‘seen’ the markers of irony, ‘made’ the irony in the same way and
given it roughly the same significance. There is no need to debate Aristophanes’ intentions or
the question of whether authorial ‘intent’ is a critical fallacy when everybody identifies the
same intratextual relationship and evaluates it in the same way. But what is happening when
critics do not share the same identification or evaluation of intratextual relationships? Is there
any way to resolve disputes over the marking and evaluation of intratextual irony?

The Parabasis: Whose Irony Is It Anyway?

Another recognised element of intratextual ‘discontinuity’ (which itself often partakes of the
‘metatheatrical’ strand) in Aristophanic comedy is the convention of the parabasis where the
chorus will, in different ways and to differing degrees, address the audience in a manner
which apparently digresses from the main action of the play. They can come ‘out of
character’ to speak in the first person as the poet himself (Clouds 518-62). Usually they stay
‘in character’. Often they ‘report’ the views of Aristophanes (Acharnians, Knights, Wasps
and Peace). Sometimes the chorus speak simply as choric actors or as a non-specific festival

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chorus (Peace 773ff. and Frogs).9 The parabasis has a self-contained and distinctive formal
structure, although not all parabases adhere to it completely.10 Furthermore, the parabasis can
justifiably be described as a ‘free-standing form’ because of its length and the fact that ‘it
never concretely affects the action of the play proper’ (Halliwell 1997: xxxviii). The
parabasis is undeniably a form of ‘interlude’ which marks it as a ‘discontinuous’ element in
any Aristophanic play.

But while the these formal discontinuities might qualify the parabasis as a kind of ‘paratext’
(Genette 1997: 166), it can hardly be described as thematically discrete form the rest of the
play which frames it. In the Acharnians for example, the chorus use the parabasis to extol
Aristophanes’ virtues as a civic poet. Aristophanes does not flatter the Athenians like its
politicians and usefully draws their attention to the deceits and flatteries of foreign
ambassadors (633-8, 656-8). This claim links the parabasis to Aristophanes’ (now lost)
previous comedy Babylonians.11 But it also recalls the opening scene of Acharnians itself,
where the peasant-hero Dicaeopolis is presented as unmasking the deceits of a Persian envoy
(64ff.). In a much-discussed and vertiginous game of multiple-identities and role playing, this
parabasis forges a link between itself and the rest of the play because its main character
Dicaeopolis has already identified himself with Aristophanes at one point and made reference
to an attempt by the demagogue Cleon to prosecute him for criticizing the city in a previous
play (370-84, 497-504).12 The themes of the parabasis develop further identifications
between Dicaeopolis’ outspokenness and Aristophanes’ representation of himself and his
comedy.13

Whilst Acharnians perhaps provides the best example, few critics would now argue that the
parabasis of an Aristophanic comedy can simply be read as thematically discrete and
discontinuous from the rest of the drama which frames it.14 Nor (therefore) should we assume
that a parabasis’ ‘claim’ to speak out on behalf of Aristophanes himself is straightforward. In
the parabasis of Acharnians, Aristophanes is represented by the chorus as Athens’ secret
weapon in the war against Sparta (643ff.) They make the ridiculous claim that Athens’ allies
will send representatives with tribute just so that they can see Aristophanes. They even say
that the King of Persia has commented on Aristophanes’ indispensibility to Athens’ war
effort. All this in a play where Aristophanes has been momentarily identified with a
protagonist (Dicaeopolis) who makes his own personal peace treaty with Sparta and whose
arguments for doing so nearly get him killed by a chorus of citizens from Acharnae.

The exaggerated boasts of the parabasis represent a response to real or imagined opposition
from the demagogue Cleon . There is a thematic link between the parabasis and the earlier
claims of Dicaeopolis (‘Just City’) that comedy (literally ‘trugedy’) ‘knows justice too’ (to

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gar dikaion oide kai trugōidia: 500).15 Dicaeopolis cast himself in the role of a comic
playwright here and the claim to ‘justice’ prefaces his argument that the war with Sparta
cannot be entirely blamed on the enemy. Despite all the boasting mock-seriousness
concerning Aristophanes’ status as a ‘secret weapon’, the parabatic chorus argue that their
playwright deserves a reward ‘for showing what democracy meant for the peoples of the
allied states’ (642). It is not clear quite what this means - it is almost certainly a reference to
Aristophanes’ Babylonians performed the previous year - the play which
Dicaeopolis/Aristophanes claims got him into trouble with Cleon. But the seemingly
exaggerated claim that the allies will consequently flock to Athens with tribute, eager to see
Aristophanes contains a less comic suggestion. The allies will come to see ‘that superb poet
who took the risk of talking justice (ta dikaia) to the Athenians’ (644-5). It is difficult to read
the parabasis of Acharnians as a completely ‘serious’ defence in the light of all the boasting
and the marked intratextual ironies which are generated through its juxtaposition with other
‘elements’ in the play. But the claim to ‘speak justice’ is also underscored by intratextual
‘echoic mention.’ How ‘genuine’ or ‘serious’ we take this claim to be ultimately depends on
whether we wish to see Dicaeopolis’ argument against continuing the war with Sparta as a
‘just’ argument. If we do not, then the parabasis’ claim that Aristophanes ‘speaks justice’ in
his plays may be taken to be ironic. If we do see Dicaeopolis as ‘speaking justice’ then a
recognition of mock-seriousness in the parabasis must be supplemented with an
acknowledgement that Aristophanic comedy does offer ‘unironic’ political advice. It may be
true that ‘the determination of relevance or significance depends on the active involvement of
an audience, its work in constructing or ignoring possible significant links between parts of
the play, and between the play and its audience, and between the citizens in the ritual frame
of the festival and the citizens in the life of the polis outside the festival... as the frames of
reference multiply to an ever wider context for comedy’s relevance.’ (Goldhill 1991: 201).
But even the vertiginous and unsettling series of overlapping voices (and frictions between
them) which the intratextuality of Acharnians offers does not preclude the possibility that
some members of the play’s original audience would make and mark its intratextual
relationships in such a way as to take the parabasis’ claim to ‘speak justice’ seriously. This is
precisely because the work of ‘ignoring or constructing possible significant links between
parts of the play’ is not done innocently. Imagine that you held the same views as the so-
called Old Oligarch. You have pro-Spartan sympathies and you do not believe in democracy
because you regard it as serving the interests or the poor ignorant masses and acting against
the interests of wealthy men like yourself. You prefer the prospect of a Spartan-backed
oligarchy in Athens. The war with Sparta presents this opportunity. You will probably find a
path through the Acharnians ‘ intratextual relationships in a manner similar to that recently

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traced by Paul Cartledge. On the question of whether the Acharnians advocates a serious
‘plea for peace’ with Sparta, he sees it like this:

‘A plea for tolerance towards, say, Hitler’s Germany uttered on the London stage in 1940 is
totally unthinkable - Bud Flannagan’s comedy for example, took a quite different form. But
that in effect is what Aristophanes/Dikaiopolis uttered at the Lenaia of 425, prefaced it is true
by ‘Now I hate the Spartans intensely...’ (though he doesn’t feel hatred on principle, only
because they’ve destoyed his vines too), but followed almost immediately by ‘why do we
blame it all on the Spartans?’ When we find that plea for tolerance combined with abuse of
‘sycophants’ (‘vexatious’ prosecutors in the popular jurycourts) and of Kleon, and when we
consider how extraordinarily mild his satire of Sparta is, then... all our worst suspicions
should surely be aroused. The line that this is drama and carnival drama at that begins to
wear pretty thin. What Aristophanes is advocating, I suggest, is not peace for its own sake,
but a peace from which Sparta mainly would profit. That for Aristophanes is ‘what is right’
(Acharnians 645, cf. 500).’ (Cartledge 1990: 58)

For Cartledge, Aristophanes is constrained by the requirements of the Athenian democratic

comic competition: ‘his message, in short, had to be prettily heavily wrapped up in comic
trappings, which would inevitably hide its anti-democratic source from all but the sharpest
playgoers’ (Cartledge 1990: 46). Aside from the attribution of authorial intention here, what
Cartledge effectively does is to think of Aristophanes’ audience in terms of differentiated
interpretive communities, or what Hutcheon prefers to call ‘discursive communities’
(Hutcheon 1994: 89). Cartledge’s recourse to ‘intention’ and his mention of the ‘sharpest
playgoers’ means that he is thinking in terms of an ideal ‘implied’ audience which will
‘make’ and ‘mark’ ironies and jokes in the play but which will, through superior competence
ultimately get to the ‘real’ and ‘serious’ significance of the play.

For me, Cartledge’s reading is justifiable as one reading of Aristophanes’ text. Different
readings are not generated because different discursive communities have different levels of
competence ranging from ‘sharp’ to ‘stupid’. Rather, these readings are generated because
the communities have different identities, allegiances, experiences and ideologies. The
educated Oligarchic citizen does not ‘read’ Acharnians in terms of an ironic relationship
between the parabatic claim to justice (645) and Dicaeopolis’ claim to ‘justice’ (500). He
does not conclude that Aristophanes is ironically framing his own claims to be giving good
political advice with a representation of his protagonist as a selfish pro-Spartan traitor who
also claims to be giving good political advice. Instead, he dismisses any possible irony as a
device which ‘protects’ the comic poet from the censure of democracy and its representatives
such as Cleon. He reads the play ‘straight’ - Dicaeopolis/Aristophanes think the war is unjust,

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the Spartans are unfairly blamed and Athens should make peace now. The Old Oligarch’s
attitude towards democracy affects his ma(r)king of intratextual relationships in the
Acharnians. He does not read the play as having a pro-Spartan agenda masked by intratextual
ironies because that really is what Aristophanes definitely intended and only he and his kind
are clever enough to work that out. Rather, he reads in this way because he is ideologically
predisposed to do so and because the play does not resist ma(r)king along those ideological
lines. To be sure, he may believe he has divined Aristophanes’ true intentions and seen
through the protective veils of ironic undercutting which the democratic and public comic
competition makes necessary. The point here is that a member of a different discursive
community to that of the Old Oligarch will ‘make’ and ‘mark’ the play’s intratextual
relationships in a different way: the pro-democratic citizen may view the play as a dizzying
presentation of conflicting voices and unsettling ironies which has no underlying message
beyond the implication that playwrights, politicians, ambassadors and even ‘ordinary’ fellow
citizens are not to be trusted when they claim to be saying ‘what is right.’

A focus on ‘intratextual’ controversies in the Acharnians and particularly on the different

ways in which audiences and critics make and mark relationships between the parabasis and
the rest of the play suggests to me that Aristophanic Comedy allowed for very different and
sometimes conflicting interpretations. This is not to claim that a comedy can mean anything
we want it to. It is rather to suggest that the design of Aristophanic comedy, coupled with its
context of performance (before an Athenian citizenry made up of diverse ‘subject positions’)
made it open to competing or conflicting ma(r)kings. This is not the same as acknowledging
that Aristophanic comedy requires the ‘active involvement of the audience.’ Critics may
acknowledge a play’s openness to ‘straight’ or ‘ironic’ interpretation, but they frequently
privilege one over the other. This is not some terrible sin and is difficult to avoid: in this
essay, I am necessarily and happily privileging a whole range of critical assumptions over
and above others. But I am suggesting that the conditions of production and reception in
democratic Athens may require us to replace current strategies of privileging either an
‘ironic’ intratextual reading or ‘straight’ intratextual reading with a strategy which gives
equal legitimacy to both. We need to think a lot more about the way in which democratic
Athenian drama may have catered for different ‘discursive communities’ or ‘subject
positions’ contained within its audience. With this point in mind, I want to turn now to
another Aristophanic parabasis in order to stress that the openness of Aristophanic drama to
differing intratextual readings is pervasive.

The parabasis of Frogs is much less easily interpreted in terms of ‘mock seriousness’ than
that of Acharnians . The chorus boldly and plainly advise the audience that it should re-
enfranchise those individuals who lost their citizenship rights because of their role in the

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oligarchic coup of 411 (689f.). They complain that the city has put the wrong people in
charge (725f.). It should make use of its best citizens and clearly identifies ‘the best’ with
those who display ‘nobility’ of birth and aristocratic virtue. They point to the irony that the
noblest citizens languish in exile when slaves and Plataean allies have recently gained
citizenship rights following their contribution to the battle of Arginousae (695f.). This
extraordinary decision (not in itself criticized by the chorus) is clearly mirrored in the play’s
action where Xanthias and his master Dionysus keep swapping clothes and undergo a torture-
trial to establish which of them is the slave and which is the god. But while it is clear that
such thematic continuities can be seen to exist between the Frogs parabasis and the rest of
the play, it is far from clear how those continuities are to be understood. For example, in the
scene immediately after the parabasis we see Xanthias and Pluto’s slave discussing Dionysus
(738-40):

Slave: By Zeus the saviour, your master’s a noble man.

Xan: Of course he’s a noble man. All he knows is how to drink and to
fuck.

Goldhill has argued that this scene interrogates the seriousness of the chorus’ advice that the
city should restore those exiled after the events of 411 and place its public affairs in the
hands of those of noble birth. The ‘good advice’ of the parabasis is said to have been the
main reason for the play’s success and subsequent reperformance. Goldhill questions the
soundness of this tradition, arguing instead that the parabasis’ advice cannot escape its
juxtaposition with the next scene between Xanthias and Pluto’s slave which explicitly
questions the fitness of ‘gentlemen’ to do anything beyond getting drunk and laid (Goldhill
1991: 203-6).

Goldhill’s reading of Xanthias’ joke at his master’s expense works well because it generates
a comic irony which undermines the content and status of the parabasis. This is a classic
example of an undercutting intratextual irony. It is tempting to make it a rule of thumb in
Aristophanic criticism that the funniest reading is the best one – the reading we should
privilege. But Goldhill’s reading involves the adoption of a strategy and a decision rather an
inescapable trajectory of interpretation. To be more accurate, Goldhill’s reading is a counter-
strategy: ‘[To] view the parabasis as separate from the play of which it is a constitutive part
is, then, a critical strategy with crucial implications for understanding the drama.’ (Goldhill
1991: 205). Goldhill sees a joke here which challenges many critics’ view of the preceding
parabasis as a serious item of political advice which can be kept apart from the rest of the
play. He identifies a thematic continuity between the parabasis and the subsequent scene in
order to establish a disruption of a ‘serious’ reading of the parabasis. It should be pointed out
that Goldhill also sees the ‘seriousness’ of the parabasis as possibly problematised by other

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‘elements’ which succeed it, particularly in the intratextual link between the parabatic advice
to ‘bring back’ disenfranchised citizens to lead the city and similar-sounding advice which is
offered by Euripides or Aeschylus (the attribution of lines is uncertain) when Dionysus asks
them what to do with Alcibiades and how the city is to be saved in order that their answers
might help him to decide which poet to ‘bring back’ from the underworld to Athens (1437f.).
The text in this later scene is uncertain and consideration of it would lead me into a minefield
of debate and discussion.16

Returning, instead, to the scene immediately following the parabasis, Goldhill’s line of
interpretation is clearly attractive. But it is possible to imagine a reading which does not
connect the parabasis with the subsequent scene. This is, after all, to read the parabasis
‘straight’ as many critics have done in the past. The parabasis of Frogs is very different in
tone to that of the Acharnians. There is none of the mock-serious boasting which we noted
earlier and the ‘holy chorus’ do not invoke the persona of the playwright when they give their
advice. As Sommerstein points out ‘this is the most political parabasis in the surviving works
of Aristophanes.’ (Sommerstein 1996: 13-14). Even a critic who has argued that Aristophanic
Comedy did not have, and was not intended to have, an effect on political reality is prepared
to make an exception for the parabasis of Frogs.17 We can argue that the parabasis refers to
events and problems which the rest of the play also invokes, for example the role-swapping
between Dionysus and Xanthias, but that the comic exaggerations and distortions of the rest
of the play do not or need not encroach on the distinct integrity of the parabasis. In this
instance we would be arguing that its distinctive tone (an absence of boasting, ‘persona’ and
mock-seriousness which we can detect in other Aristophanic parabases) offers us grounds for
viewing the Frogs parabasis as resistant to ironic undercutting in subsequent scenes. The
marked seriousness of the holy chorus’s advice is able to combat or cancel out any attempts
to mark an intratextual irony which undermines that seriousness.

Alternatively, we could argue that the ironic frisson which Goldhill marks actually moves in
an opposite direction. Xanthias’ view that gentlemen only know how to drink and fuck
actually exemplifies a ‘lower class’ prejudice against the élite - a prejudice which the
parabatic chorus aims to neutralise. As Goldhill himself notes, the phrase for ‘drink and fuck’
(pinein kai binein) has ‘the air of catch-phrase or proverb about it’. (Goldhill 1991: 204) It
may be right to free slaves who have rowed in the Athenian fleet, but what sort of attitudes
will such ex-slaves bring to the democratic process? As Loraux and Rose have argued, the
ideology of inherent and inherited nobility was a prominent (albeit problematic) element in
Athenian democratic discourse.18 Is Xanthias’ joke really made at the expense of the
parabasis’ viewpoint or does it actually rebound on him? If we posit our Old Oligarchic
spectator again, we could easily imagine his interpretation being along these lines. The Old

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Oligarch notoriously takes a dim view of slaves in Athens and believes that they are given
too much money and licence to be insubordinate.19 He even argues that Athens’ slaves are
impossible to distinguish from its citizens. Is he going to view Xanthias’ joke as one which
ironically undercuts the parabasis’ recommendation that there be an amnesty for those
involved in the oligarchic coup and that the city should be run by those who are the ‘noblest’
(chrestoi)? He is at least just as likely to see Xanthias’ prejudice as typical slave humour and
thus typically worthless.

To risk the perilous terrain of the ‘modern parallel’ for a moment, we could compare the
Xanthias joke with the ambivalent British television comedy of the nineteen sixties and
seventies. In a highly successful ‘sitcom’ called Til Death Us Do Part , audiences were
treated to the character of Alf Garnett, an old working-class bigot who regularly comes into
conflict with his family and wider society because of his racism, sexism and conservatism.
Now it would be very difficult to argue that Alf’s jokes were funny simply because
everybody who watched found sympathy with the attitudes they betrayed. Frequently, the last
laugh was on Alf as he got shown up for his small-mindedness. But it would also be naive to
assume that Alf was universally regarded as a reactionary buffoon whose comic attacks
always rebounded on him. Alf seemed to be funny whether you agreed with him or not. The
extent to which Alf was seen as an amusing stereotype or a hero must have depended (among
other things) on the class, gender, age, political sympathies and regional or ethnic identity of
the viewer. Now, it would be methodologically bankrupt to move from Alf Garnett’s
audience to the Athenians who watched Frogs. But again, I want to raise the possibility that
an audience is often made up of different ‘discursive communities’. The intratextual irony
which Goldhill marks as operating between the parabasis and the subsequent scene may not
only cut in the direction which he outlines. Furthermore the word for ‘noble man’ (gennadas)
which Pluto’s slave uses of Dionysus is used of Xanthias by Dionysus and Aeacus elsewhere
in the play. Xanthias’ comment about drinking and fucking ‘jibes at the master whose role he
no longer usurps’ (Goldhill 1991: 204). But the parabasis do not deploy this particular item
of vocabulary in their advice about using the ‘noblest citizens’. They refer instead to the
kaloi kagathoi and the chrestoi. This raises the possibility that Pluto’s use of gennadas may
not signal an intratextual relationship with the parabasis for all readers.

So how do we decide whether to read the parabasis of Frogs as a straight item of political
advice or to see it as ironically undercut or questioned by its intratextual relationship with
another ‘element’ in the play? I have argued that Goldhill’s ‘marking’ of intratextual irony is
attractive but avoidable. Even if we do mark an ironic relationship there seems to be room for
disagreement over what that marked relationship might signify - the irony can cut in more
than one way. Thus the Frogs parabasis is open to differing intratextual markings, some

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involving undercutting irony, some allowing that parabasis’ apparent seriousness to stand
unaffected. This openness involves an intratextual design which provokes laughter but
allows for that laughter to be directed along different trajectories depending on (in my
example) the ideological prejudice of the spectator. This makes Aristophanes’ comedy rather
resistant to a single ‘dominant reading’ which plumps for one configuration of marked
intratextual relationships and their significance. Of course, the critic cannot hope to
accurately reconstruct the range of different and shared responses an Aristophanic comedy
may have elicited any more than she can hope to reconstruct what the playwright actually
intended. But when we argue for the ‘best’ reading of intratextual controversies, we might do
well to step back and reflect on the way in which a public democratic art form needs to
negotiate ‘inclusiveness’: differences in viewpoint and ideology amongst the Athenian
citizenry called for a kind of comedy which catered for a variety of ‘discursive communities’
and ‘subject positions’ in an audience. To make our dominant reading into a range of
competing readings, some contradictory in terms of where, or the extent to which they mark
ironies and how they are to be evaluated is not a ‘cop out’. It is simply to recognise that the
notion of ‘intratextuality’ might reveal areas where the meaning and significance of the text
is irreducibly negotiable. In the next section, I am going to examine some further important
strands of intratextual (dis)continuity. Focusing on ‘plot’ and ‘characterisation’, I will
demonstrate that Aristophanic comedy (and in particular, the Knights) yields very different
interpretations depending on what assumptions we make concerning intratextual ‘unity’ and
the relationship between literature and the ‘context’ we choose to frame it with. But my
point will ultimately be that these different assumptions are all quite reasonable responses to
the play in question.

Plots and Characters: Knights

Aristophanic comedy poses some peculiar challenges and opportunities for the notion of
‘intratextuality.’ Aristophanes’ texts are marked by provocative discontinuities, reversals and
changes or tensions in tone. It is a commonplace of criticism that Aristophanic
characterisation and plot-structure often lacks coherence.20 Comedy somehow licenses leaps
of probability and plausibility. Indeed, Michael Silk has gone so far as to describe the
discontinuous aesthetic of Aristophanes as ‘imagist’ as opposed to ‘realist’:

‘The mobile, continuous characters of the realist tradition do, or can, develop: they do, or
can do so by gradual movement between their particular traits. The imagist characters of
Aristophanes are fundamentally different. If and when they change, they change abruptly
and, perhaps, entirely - like the women at the Thesmophoria, dropping their respectability
and picking it up again; like the clever Euripides, abruptly accepting Mnesilochus’ offer to
help (which might be explicable in terms of Euripides’ own traits of character); or like the

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stooge Mnesilochus, suddenly assuming the role of hero by making that offer (which is not
apparently explicable in such terms). In short, the realist tradition, at its extreme, permits
character development, whereas the Aristophanic mode of representation involves, at its
extreme, a binary principle: instead of development, it permits inversion or reversal. Imagist
representation, it will be gathered, accepts a merely sequential view of time. In the realist
tradition, by contrast, time is perceived as a (literally) consequential matter, as an
Aristotelian process of events that follow the laws of ‘probability or necessity’.’
Silk (1990) 162

Silk is at pains to make it clear that Aristophanes can deploy a more ‘realist’ mode. For
example, Strepsiades in Clouds has a more continuous and ‘developing’ character along
Menandrian and Aristotelian (and hence, ‘realist’) lines. Silk also concedes that Aristophanic
‘discontinuity’ of characterisation is also marked by a realism which can then be disrupted by
‘imagist’ presentation.21 Furthermore, this kind of anti-realist disruption, where (for example)
the women of Thesmophoriazusae suddenly and unaccountably adopt vulgar and obscene
language, is not to be confused with a very different kind of ‘imagism’ which is at work in
some of Aristophanes’ characterisations, namely metaphor and allegory. Silk points out that
Aristophanes’ ‘non-fictional’ characters (Euripides, Socrates) can be held to represent
concepts (new-fangled tragedy, the intellectual ‘enlightenment’) in a manner similar to that
deployed in modern political cartoons. He cites Demos in the Knights as the most transparent
example of this use of metaphor. Here, the old man of the house stands for the Athenian
people while his three slaves represent the politicians Demosthenes, Nicias and Cleon.

Silk perceptively demonstrates that both kinds of imagism (the ‘metaphorical’ and the
‘discontinuous’) are at work in the characterisation of Euripides in Thesmophoriazusae. He
doffs and dons tragic disguises in a manner which makes him ‘stand for’ his own
controversial dramatic techniques. He revels in unexpected behaviour, thereby
metaphorically ‘representing’ Euripidean techniques and deploying a discontinuous ‘anti-
realism’ at the same time. And yet, Silk concludes, Euripides is undoubtedly a character who
belongs to the ‘realist’ tradition in that he is ‘consistently inconsistent.’ (Silk 1990: 162).

As Silk himself observes, Aristophanes’ penchant for ‘discontinuity’ of character also has
ramifications for the nature of his plots and narrative. But even if we accept that Aristophanic
narrative and characterisation follows an ‘imagist’, discontinuous or ‘improvisatory’
aesthetic, it is sometimes difficult to square certain instances of discontinuity with other
factors which are affected by characterisation. In the Knights we have an instance where an
apparent ‘discontinuity’ of characterisation affects our perception of the entire play’s plot

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and its thematics. For most of the play the old man Demos is presented as gullible; he is
easily deceived, defrauded and flattered by his Paphlagonian slave. Demos clearly represents
the ‘people’ of democratic Athens and the Paphlagonian is Cleon, a prominent demagogue
whom Aristophanes also attacks in Wasps and Acharnians. Two other slaves who represent
the Athenian generals Nicias and Demosthenes are desperate to break Paphlagon’s power in
the household. How can they end his influence over Demos? They consult oracles which
suggest that the Paphlagon will be only defeated by someone who is equally low-born,
loathsome and devious. And when the sausage-seller appears (later named as Agoracritus),
the chorus of Knights and the two slaves/generals encourage him to defeat Paphalgon at his
own game. A series of competitions to win Demos’ affection ensue. These competitions
involve the representation of the competitors as Demos’ rival ‘lovers’ and there is a great
emphasis on the stealing and provision of food to satisfy his considerable appetite (1161-
11263 ).22 Paphlagon stands accused of stealing both from his rival and of withholding food
from Demos for himself (1121-3). The emphasis on food, erotics and theft constitutes a
satirical allegory of Athenian political affairs: as Aristophanic choruses and characters claim
elsewhere, the Demos is vulnerable to the deception, flattery and corruption of its elite
advisers. Agoracriticus proves to be better than the Paphlagon at currying favour with his
master.

Once Cleon/Paphlagon is defeated, Agoracritus takes Demos off stage and ‘boils’ him down.
A rejuvenated Demos reappears dressed in the attire which an audience would associate with
the male fashion of the democracy in the years of the war with Persia (1331-2). The new
Demos is in fact the old Athenian dêmos from the days of the battle of Marathon: ‘such as he
was when in the days of yore he had Aristeides and Miltiades for his messmates’ (1325-6).
Now Agoracritus himself seems to have been transformed from a character who was even
worse than Cleon to a benign figure who acts in Demos’ best interests. The plot has now
gone beyond the initial challenge simply to defeat the Paphlagon and has introduced an
additional element, namely to transform Demos and put an end to his foolishness and
gullibility. It is as if the play has a false ending (the exit of Paphlagon) and then a ‘real
ending’ (Demos’ rehabilitation) and critics have referred to the play as having two endings or
a ‘double plot’.23

Firstly, I want to concentrate on a ‘discontinuity’ of characterisation which occurs during the

first ‘ending’. The run of the action suggests that Agoracritus ‘rescues’ a dêmos which is not
in control of its own affairs and which is very much manipulated by élite rhêtores. However,
prior to his supposed rehabilitation and the final defeat of Paphlagon, there is a curious lyric
exchange between the chorus and Demos (1111f.). Demos responds angrily to the suggestion
of the cavalry chorus that he is gullible. They accuse him of being easily flattered, deceived

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and overawed by every speaker (1111-20). The action of the play up to this point has seemed
to corroborate their accusation. But Demos’ reply problematises the chorus’ assessment
(1121-30 and 1141-50). He tells the Knights that they have no brains if they think he is
witless (1120-3). He deliberately acts like a fool because he takes pleasure in his daily feed
(1125-6). He deliberately ‘fattens up’ (trephein) a ‘thieving political leader’ (kleptonta
prostatên ) and when the thief is full, Demos strikes him down (1127-30). The chorus are
impressed (or are they humouring him?) that Demos is shrewd enough to deliberately fatten
up politicians until he needs some meat for a sacrifice and dinner. Demos then describes
himself as wisely (sophôs: 1141) ensnaring men who think they can deceive him
(exapatullein:1145). He watches them all the time, while seeming not to (1145-7). He lets
them steal from him and then uses the funnel of a voting urn to make them vomit up what
they have stolen (1147-1150). As Demos finishes this revelation, Cleon and Agoracritus
reenter, falling over each other to feed him (1151f.).

After his ‘rehabilitation’ Demos cannot remember anything about his former life and
shamefully accepts that he was manipulated by the politicians (1335-1355). Again, we meet
a possible case of ‘intratextual irony’ where an audience could be drawn to compare Demos’
lyrical claim to cunning control of politicians with a subsequent undermining of that claim.
But if there is a sense of ironic contradiction here, what is its significance? Critics have
dismissed Demos’ claims to have been the manipulator all the long as unconvincing,
implausible or a sop to the audience and implicitly bracket them off from the rest of the
plot.24 Landfester argues that Demos is deceiving himself here and remains in the power of
the demagogues.25 Thus Landfester makes Demos’ lyrics cohere with the rest of the play by
making Demos’ self-awareness false. For Brock, on the other hand, Demos’ self-awareness
must be taken at ‘face value’ (Brock 1986: 22). Demos’ revelation is one answer to the
charges made against Demos in the earlier part of the play: he is no fool, is not deceived and,
in the long run, he is not robbed. According to Brock’s reading , this is the most optimistic
‘solution’ which Aristophanes can reach on the premise of what he calls the ‘first plot’, a plot
which centres on the destruction of Paphlagon.

But for Brock there are also unsatisfactory implications which lie behind Demos’ claim that
he always triumphs over the demagogue in the end. Demos’ declared tactics are wasteful and
immoral because he gains at the expense of all those who have suffered at the hands of the
demagogues. Demos ‘simply restores the status quo after each prostatēs.’ (Brock 1986: 23).
There is no scope for improvement of the Demos and he seems to remain committed to
allowing the worst politicians to serve him rather than the best. For Brock, this unsatisfactory
side to Demos’ boasts paves the way for the ‘second solution’ and the ‘real’ ending, namely
the rejuvenation of Demos himself and his consequent return to an age of conservative

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democracy before the rise of the demagogues (1323, 1325, 1327, 1331). This is a fantasy and
depends on an equally fantastic transformation of the sausage-seller into a high-minded
politician who genuinely has the best interests of Demos in mind. Thus the play has two
endings and two ‘solutions’, the second fantastic solution serving to point up the partial
nature of the first. Brock claims that the inconsistency between the two ‘solutions’ is not
resolved, instead they are simply ‘juxtaposed.’ (Brock 1986: 23).

Brock’s approach to the problem posed by Demos’ lyrics at 1111ff. is sensitive and well-
argued. But it does rather hinge on an interpretation of Demos’ boasts as unsatisfactory and
the subsequent ‘rehabilitation’ of Demos as a positive and serious solution. Furthermore, as
Brock himself admits, there is still a contradiction between Demos’ claims to awareness and
his later shame that he was so gullible. Brock finds support for his view of the lyrics in the
unfavourable criticism of the Athenian democracy which we find in (our old friend) the Old
Oligarch’s treatise The Athenian Constitution. The Old Oligarch argues that while the
Athenian dēmos may embrace bad policy and bad politicians, this is a skilful means of
preserving their preferred form of government and hence, of guarding their own interests. 26
Thus, Demos’ representation of himself at 1111f. may replicate a contemporary critique of
democracy because the Old Oligarch’s treatise may well be contemporary with Knights.27
Aristophanes seeks to dramatize a response to this critique: ‘the argument of the play is that a
true solution must be founded on a reformation of and by Demos himself.’ (Brock 1986: 25).

Here Brock finds an ‘intertext’ or a ‘context’ which supports his ‘intratextual’ reading. But
other ‘intertexts’ have been suggested for Demos’ lyrics. For example, Dover cites fourth-
century oratory. The lyrics are reminiscent of orators’ claims that the dēmos is intelligent,
shrewd and vigilant in its maintenance of sovereignty. Dover acknowledges that the orators
also warn Demos to put right its lapses into gullibility at the hands of demagogues or to be
mindful ot their skills in flattery and deception. Thus fourth-century oratory articulates a
‘judicious blending of reproof and reassurance’ (Dover 1972: 96) and it is worth noting that
Ober has recently argued that such ‘contradictory’ topoi in the orators attest to the way in
which the Athenian dēmos maintained its sovereignty whilst at the same time utilizing elite
citizens as its advisers.28

The fact that the lyrics seem to contradict Demos’ apparent gullibility and foolishness
previously comes as no surprise to Dover: ‘if Demos really knows what he’s doing, there is
less danger that he will surrender everything to the sausage-seller; of course his boast is not
really in keeping with his shame and shock when he is told of his follies (1335-1355), but
contradictions must appear - in Aristophanes’ time, in Demosthenes’ or ours - when we try to

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push to extremes both satire on the style of democratic politics and an expression of faith in
the intelligence and integrity of ordinary people.’ (Dover 1972 98-9).

Although Brock argues for intratextual ‘juxtaposition’ rather than ‘consistency’ between the
solution embodied in Demos’ lyrics and the transformation of Demos which follows them, he
does effectively read ‘continuity’ into the characterisation of Demos and the play’s ending by
tracing a ‘double plot’. Demos’ lyrics prepare for his transformation because they are
‘unsatisfactory’ and the transformation frames the lyrics as ‘unsatisfactory.’ They are a
‘bridge’ between two possible endings. Furthermore, Brock seems torn between arguing for
‘juxtaposition’ between the two ‘solutions’ on the one hand and claiming that Aristophanes
wants us to prefer the second ‘fantastic’ solution’ on the other. For if the first ‘solution’ is
‘unsatisfactory’ and the second ‘solution’ constitutes an answer to oligarchic critique of
democracy, then it would seem that Knights does not want its audience to settle for the first
solution.

By contrast, Dover comes close to what might be described as a reflectionist approach to the
reversals and inconsistencies I have discussed. If there is contradiction in the text, then that is
because Athenian democracy’s rhetorical tropes articulated contradictory views of the dēmos.
The ‘blending of reproof and reassurance’ which we find in the contradictory depiction of
Demos as senile fool and sharp operator is simply a reflection of the political discourse
which surrounded the play and informed it. Furthermore, Dover almost seems to hint that the
genre of Old Comedy was delimited by this political discourse: it had to combine satire with
an expression of faith in the ‘power of the people.’

Here we can see how a problem of intratextuality, namely how to read Demos’ lyrics in
relation to the rest of the play, is radically affected by some basic assumptions and choices on
the part of the critic. Brock is clearly looking for a design and an agenda on the part of the
playwright and he finds it rather convincingly. Dover also sees certain political strategies
lying behind the Knights - like other scholars he argues that ‘many elements of the play seem
designed to promote a sentimental unity of classes against leaders like Cleon.’ (Dover 1972:
99) But in the case of 1111f. Dover sees the intratextual ‘problem’ as an inevitable function
of the relationship between Attic Comedy and the context of the democracy. In more up-to-
date critical language we might say that Dover sees the ‘problem’ as overdetermined by
contradictions which were inherent to Athenian democratic discourse: neither orator nor
comic playwright can free himself from the necessity to praise and blame the democracy at
the same time. To do the former without the latter would be to descend to the level of the
flattering demagogue. To attack the demos without any praise would be to invite the charge
of treason. At this point it would be tempting to address current controversies concerning the

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extent to which Old Comedy was an art-form which primarily acted as an extension of
‘people-power’, not to mention the question of whether or not Aristophanes’ plays promote a
quite specific and serious political outlook.29 But my purpose in singling out various readings
of Demos’ lyrics is to highlight the way in which possible intratextual contradictions can
generate a series of different but plausible readings. Landfester prioritises unity of
characterisation - the lyrics at 1111f. must be read as self-deception because Demos is
ashamed of his former gullibility when he is transformed and he is clearly not presented as
being in control of his slaves. Brock reads Knights as akin to an exploratory political tract
which experiments with form (the ‘double plot’) in order to juxtapose different views of
democratic politics. Dover sees the play as much less autonomous in relation to the genre of
which it is an example and much more ‘embedded’ in relation to the contradictory tropes of
democratic political discourse. I am not suggesting that Athenians would have interpreted
Demos’ lyrics in precisely these three ways. But again, we can see how an intratextual (and
on some readings, ironic) contradiction can allow for a number of plausible interpretations.
The Demos’ lyrics perhaps would have been read in several ways (a flattering rhetorical sop
to the demos/audience, a gross display of self-deception, a clever revelation of the masses’
true sovereignty…), depending on each citizen-spectator’s own sense of identification with,
or distance from this allegorical distillation of themselves.

In all of the above readings the problematic lyrics at 1111f. are in some sense ‘neutralised’ in
terms of their possible effect on our view of Demos’ and Agoracritus’ utopian
transformations. By invoking concepts such as ‘self-deception’, ‘double-plot’, ‘juxtaposition’
and ‘contradiction’, these readings manage to keep the lyrics from affecting Demos’
subsequent transformation. Demos claims that he is in control when he is apparently not (or
else he makes claims to types of political wisdom and control which are unsatisfactory) and
then he is converted into a Demos who will no longer be gullible and will make wise
decisions. Furthermore, all these readings assume that the ‘transformations’ of Demos and
Agoracritus can be viewed as unqualifiedly ‘utopian’, albeit fantastic. In order to demonstrate
once more the intratextual openness of Aristophanic Comedy, I want to close with a brief
‘ironic’ reading of the Knights which reads against the assumption that Demos’ and
Agoracritus’ transformations of character can be kept apart from the rest of the play.

An Ironic Ending
Agoracritus certainly appears from nowhere, apparently transforms Demos’ character and
usurps Paphlagon (Cleon). But his methods (of trickery, theft and flattery, not to mention his
social and sexual background) are marked in the play as identical to those of Cleon. Indeed

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the comic premise of the play is that Cleon can only be defeated by a man who can beat him
at his own game.30

Agoracritus’ acts of ‘exposing’ Cleon and of ‘boiling down’ Demos so that he supposedly
becomes less manipulable through gratification and flattery are explicitly represented as
making the old man grateful, attentive and loyal to the sausage-seller (1335-6 and 1404f.).
Agoracritus tells the rejuvenated Demos that if he knew what he was like in his previous
incarnation, he would call Agoracritus a god for transforming him (1337-8). And Agoracritus
does indeed tell Demos how he was easily deceived by the flattering rhetoric of politicians.
Demos is ashamed for his former errors. But Agoracritus then reassures him that he is not to
blame - the blame lies with the speakers who deceived him (1340-57). Demos then advocates
policies which illustrate his new-found sense and his rejection of the temptations of short-
term gratification. But Agoracritus rewards him with a well-hung boy to have sex with. Then
he brings out two or three women who personify a thirty years peace treaty with Sparta
claiming that Cleon has been hiding them away. Demos checks that he will be allowed to
katatriakontoutisai them (1391). This is a coined word which means both ‘to thirty yearise
up them’ and can be etymologised as ‘to pierce them three times with a long pole from
below.’31 This association between returned peace and sexual gratification is typical of
Aristophanic comedy.32 And it is indisputable that the play was performed when Cleon was
pressing for continuation of the war despite the fact that the Spartans had recently suffered
reverses and were offering a peace treaty.33 But in the context of the Knights where Cleon’s
deceptive rhetoric of flattery is constantly described as the immediate gratification of Demos’
insatiable appetites, Agoracritus’ motives for offering peace and Demos’ unconsidered and
hedonistic response allow for a suspicious interpretation of the ‘transformation’ of
democratic politics which has supposedly occurred.

Contrary to the view of most commentators, this reading suggests that the conclusion of
Knights is not, or need not be, a clear-cut utopian fantasy of a democratic politics freed of
flattery, deceit and the damaging short-term desire (coming from both the rhêtor and the
dêmos) for immediate gratification.34 I am not arguing that an unsuspicious ‘utopian’
interpretation could not be entertained by members of Aristophanes’ audience. Rather, the
play’s action and its conclusion raises disturbing and unsettling possibilities which might
encroach on the utopian reading for certain spectators. Perhaps Agoracritus has simply
enacted a new strategy of manipulating the dêmos by convincing it that Cleon is its enemy
rather than its friend. By making the dêmos feel that it has now mended its gullible ways, and
by claiming credit for the transformation, he has perhaps done nothing more than inherit and
deepen the process of manipulation from Cleon. After all, for most of the play, Agoracritus is
explicitly represented as a dead ringer for Cleon.

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Aristophanes’ presentation could provoke the suspicion that, instead of achieving a utopian
form of democracy, Agoracritus has made the current political climate even worse for his
own ends. This is the dystopian nightmare (as Thucydides would see it) of a Post-Periclean
demagogue who actually does manage to achieve total supremacy and control of the dêmos
through flattering rhetoric, gratification of his audience and the slandering of an opponent.
Of course, there is some virtue in imagining a spectator who holds both the utopian
intratextual ‘reading’ and the suspicious intratextual reading in tension. In this instance, the
undecideability or uncertainty over whether Agoracritus has made changes for the better or
for the worse emphasises the difficulty and danger of feeling secure about the newly emerged
speaker who claims to have exposed the corrupt rhetoric of his adversary and offers the
people an ‘instructive’ vision of a politics without manipulation. On the ‘undecideable’
reading, it is precisely by raising and not coherently answering the question of whether the
dêmos deceives the orator or vice versa, that Aristophanes makes his audience ponder the
relationship between deception and sovereignty in their political system. Demos is a comic
personification of Aristophanes’ audience. As I have already argued, Demos’ reply to the
Knights could be senile self-deceit with the implication being that their sovereignty over
Athens as members of the dêmos is a delusion. But others might feel they are being told of
Demos’ (their own) maintenance of sovereignty through countering surveillances and
deceptions of élite politicians. Perhaps then, Demos’ ‘transformed’ state is a pretence on his
part. Agoracritus thinks he has ‘boiled down’ Demos, but the old man has resisted the
process, choosing to appear to be transformed in order to maintain his ‘daily feed’ and begin
the process of ‘fattening up’ another dubious politician. This last interpretation may seem
over-subtle and even susceptible to the charge of ‘biographical fallacy’ where we start to
invent hidden motives and agendas for characters which are not signalled in the text. But
Demos’ lyrical assertion that he is capable of hiding his intelligence from demagogues and
then manipulates them at least offers the possibility that some members of the citizen-
audience could carry this image of a cunning Demos forward to the final ‘transformation’
scene.

By claiming (with indeterminate levels of sanity and honesty) that, like Agoracritus, he also
fights deception with counter-deception, Aristophanes’ Demos invites the audience to
consider the uncertain limits and powers of their sovereignty. Ober argues that, excepting the
events of 411 and 404, the dêmos was not cheated out of its sovereignty. This may be a
correct assessment, but Aristophanes articulates the difficulty of determining who has had the
last laugh and the last lie in a democracy. It may be that his and Thucydides’ vertiginous and
unsettling portrayals of rhetorical self-representation and counter-accusation in Athens’ legal
and political discourses helped citizens to remain alert to the ‘ambiguity’ of any speech -

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especially the speech which professed its honesty and its insulation from techniques of
deception. But here, I am being pulled towards a ‘dominant reading’: it is hard to make a
case for certain intratextual ironies whilst at the same time giving other readings equal
weight. But I hope I have shown that Aristophanes’ intratextual design in the Knights, a
design which posits surprising and sudden transformations of characterisation and plot, can
admit of a series of competing interpretations – interpretations which can compete in the
mind of an individual spectator or else form the basis of disagreement between different
citizens long after the comedy has ended.

In this essay I have argued for the intratextual ‘openness’ of Aristophanic Comedy, an
openness which I believe allowed Aristophanes’ audience to make and mark his plays in very
different ways. I have used a form of irony and its (non)manifestation through perceived
‘intratextual’ relationships of (non)contradiction or (dis)continuity to structure my
discussion. But it is perhaps worth noting in conclusion that my argument has a bearing on
the relationship between Aristophanic comedy and other, more grandiose definitions and
theories of irony. Amongst those intellectuals who are often held responsible for initiating
the various aesthetic precepts which come under the broad label of ‘Romantic Irony’ there
were several admirers of Aristophanic comedy and dramatists who deployed similar
theatrical techniques to Aristophanes.35 This may be instructive for us: Aristophanes’
intratextual openness allows conflicting and competing constructions of what his comedies
are all about. The spectator who reads a parabasis seriously comes into conflict with the one
who sees it as ironically undercut, the citizen who reads a play’s conclusion in terms of
utopian transformation is countered by the one who sees it as a dystopian nightmare, or one
who leaves the theatre with more questions than conclusions concerning the tone of the
play’s ending. In this sense, Aristophanic comedy provokes a Romantic Ironic response. Its
audiences did not share the same experience when they watched an Aristophanic comedy.
Rather, their different solutions and readings of intratextual problems permitted an awareness
that Aristophanes’ artistic representation of the city was subject to partiality and relative
perspectives. Aristophanes is to some extent able to free himself from the limitations of his
own creative ego by being self-aware (the classic Romantic Ironic imperative): he makes his
comedy metatheatrical, self-reflexive and thus aware of its own constructedness. But he also
achieves this rupture of ‘sublime’ illusion (whilst retaining sublimity) by making his work
structurally and intratextually open. The different responses which this openness provokes
enhance a sense of the constructedness and subjectivity of Aristophanes’ artistic construal of
Athens. There must have been much shared laughter within these different responses, but
there were also different motivations for that laughter and different groups laughing in
different places. Thus Aristophanic intratextuality was a mode through which Athens’

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citizens could measure and compare differing constructions of the comic city, constructions
which were both shaped by and yet transcended the comedian’s own subjective vision.

1 See Fowler (1994) 233.

2 On Aristophanic obscenity, see Henderson (1991).
3 On parody as an ancient and modern comic form, see Rose (1993), especially 20-36. On Aristophanic
intertextuality and parody, see for example Muecke (1977); Zeitlin (1982); Foley (1988); Hubbard (1991);
Goldhill (1991) 167-222.
4 See Hutcheon (1994), especially 176-204 where she shows how a Canadian Museum exhibition intended as an
ironic approach to Canada’s colonial involvement in Africa was very differently received by many visitors.
5 See Sommerstein (1996) 157; Dover (1993) 191.
6 Of course, by using the Brechtian language of ‘disruption’ and illusion, I am making an assumption about
Aristophanic comedy which I may not be entitled to make. We can identify ‘metatheatrical’ jokes and routines and
regard them as intratextually ‘disruptive’ or ‘discontinuous.’ But if such jokes and routines are common and
conventional, then in what sense can they be seen as ‘disruptive’? An audience perhaps expects a break in the
‘illusion’ when watching Old Comedy. It may be more profitable to describe the ‘metatheatrical’ elements of Old
Comedy by articulating the relationship between different levels or strands of representation rather than making an
a priori assumption that such elements necessarily constitute a disruption in terms of ‘audience expectations.’
What ‘metatheatre’ does seem to do, however, is conjure two texts or levels of textuality out of one text.
7 See Muecke (1977) ; Goldhill (1991) 220-1; Rose (1993) 36.
8 See Hutcheon (1994) 12 ff.
9Here I am drawing on the useful taxonomy of Halliwell (1997) xxxviii , who points out (n. 17) that the identity
of the chorus in the parabasis of Frogs is ‘actually a little more complex.’ This parabasis’ section of ‘advice’ might
be construed as ‘implicitly reminiscent of the convention of the poet’s own parabatic voice.’ Furthermore, the
parabasis’ reference to ‘sacred’ choruses (674, 686) could be read as ‘reminders of the Initiates’ identity.’
10 For the details of, and variations on, this structure see Halliwell (1997) xxxvi-xxxvii.
11 See MacDowell (1995) 32.
12 It should be pointed out that Dicaeopolis could be indentifying himself with a different comic poet: Bowie
(1988) argues that he is identifying himself with Eupolis. For arguments against this see Parker (1991) and Storey
(1993) 388-92.
13For key discussions of the parabasis in Acharnians see Forrest (1963); Bowie (1982); MacDowell (1983); Foley
(1988); Hubbard (1991) 41-59; Goldhill (1991) 188-201; Heath (1990), (1997).
14 For exemplary readings which relate the parabasis to the rest of the play, see Bowie (1982); Goldhill (1991).
Hubbard (1991) reads the parabasis as crucially linked to the rest of an Aristophanic play but also stresses its
intertextual relationship with other Aristophanic plays and (especially) those of other comedians.
15 For the use of trugōidia as a pun on ‘tragedy’ and ‘wine lees song’ (appropriate given that Dicaeopolis is
dressed up as the tragic Euripidean hero Telephus but is also identifying himself with a comic playwright), see
Taplin (1983).
16 On the problems of speaker-attribution in Frogs 1407-67 see MacDowell (1975) and Dover (1993) 75 and his
notes ad loc. (389-378).
17 See Heath (1987) 19-20.
18 See Loraux (1986); Rose (1992).
19 See [Xen.] Ath. Pol. 1.10-12.
20 See Dover (1974) 30-48 and Halliwell (1997) xxii-xxx.
21 Silk (1990) 159.
22 On the play’s emphasis on the stealing of food see Bowie (1993) 52-77.
23 See Brock (1986); MacDowell (1995) 106.
24 Sommerstein (1981) 2 sees Demos’ claim as a crude calculation of self-interest and offering ‘little comfort,
even if we believe it.’; Bowie (1993) 75 sees a link between the lyrics and Demos’ subsequent description of the

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defeated Cleon as a ‘scape-goat’ (pharmakos: 1405) but also describes the Demos’ claim to cleverness as
implausible; MacDowell (1995) 106-7 reads Demos’ claims as ‘wishful thinking, attractive to a complacent
audience’. Edmunds (1987) surprisingly makes no mention of the passage.
25 Landfester (1967) 68-73
26 [Xen.] Ath. Pol. 1.1, 1.6-9.
27 See Forrest (1970) who dates the treatise to around 424.
28 See Ober (1989), especially 43-49 and 293-339.
29For arguments on the questions of how ‘political’, ‘serious’ and ‘democratic’ Aristophanic comedy is or isn’t,
see Halliwell (1984); Henderson (1990); Heath (1987), (1990).
30 See Sommerstein (1981) 2: ‘At the moment of the sausage-seller’s rise to power we are encouraged to believe
that he will rule in the same way as his predecessor, by deception and robbery of the ‘Open-Mouthenian’ people
(1263), and by malicious prosecution of his political rivals (in which Demosthenes begs to be allowed to assist:
1255-6).’ See 125-44, where the oracle predicting Agoracritus’ rise states that a sausage-seller will usurp a leather-
seller (i.e. Cleon). See also 211-19 and 178-93. At 266-99 Cleon and Agoracritus compete over their skills in
shouting, thieving and denunciation. At 844ff. they compete in counter-accusations of deceiving Demos and
attempt to outdo each other in flattering him. At 1151-1226 they steal from each other in a competition to satisfy
Demos’ appetite. The parallels (at the level of imagery as well as theme) between the Paphlagonian and
Agoracritus in terms of their tricks, rhetoric and low social background are noted by Edmunds (1987) 1-37; Bowie
(1993) 42-77; MacDowell (1995) 89-103.
31 See Sommerstein (1981) ad loc. (219).
32 See Gomme (1938); Heath (1987); Newiger (1980).
33 Sommerstein (1981) 2.
34For the ‘utopian fantasy’ view see for example Sommerstein (1981) 2-3; MacDowell (1995) 104-7. For a more
sophisticated reading of Demos’ ‘boiling down’ and Agoracritus’ agency as connoting mythic and ritual reversals
and transformations, see Bowie (1993) 42-77.
35 On Romantic Irony, see the bibliography and discussion of Fowler (1994). For the Romantic interest in
Aristophanes, see for example Schlegel (1966) and the comments of the dramatist and critic Ludwig Tieck most
conveniently found in Wheeler (1984) 122-4.

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