The Opening (1-25)

Martha. Should I tell one of those usual jokes, which always makes the audience of

by you say what you want, except I'm hard pressed. Forget that one.

It's really quite annoying.

Nothing else witty either

anything but what a strain.

What, then, can I really? Can I say the really funny one?

Of course. Go ahead. But don't let me catch you saying this.

What's that?

That you must shift your pack to ease yourself?

Well, can't I say I've got such a load on me.

Unless someone takes it off, I'll burst the gut.

Please don't unless you wish to make me sick.

So why should I have to carry all this stuff without doing any of the jokes that

frantic Asse and Liquors and Mencius always make

the baggage carriers say in all their comedies?

Just don't.

Since when I'm in the theatre and hear any of those stupid jokes,

I go away just older by a year.

Alas, all wretched me. My neck is really strange, but can't crack the joke.

How is this not outrage and utter incidents that I myself die in?

Isis,

son of wine Duck must walk and let this fellow right so he might feel no pain and bear.

No burden

in this section will be looking at the opening of the Frogs, so nines 1 to 25

thinking about the impact that makes on the audience

from the very, very beginning. The first words spoken by the slaves am Theus,

make it clear to the audience what they're getting in a number of ways.

So if we look at it where he refers to die on Isis as the spotter,

what that tells the audience is that actually,

this opening will be a variation on the normal opening to

a comedy where you have to slaves talking to each other.

That's an opening that Aristophanes had used already in 44 BC in the

nights he'd used it in 4 to 2 BC in his wasps.

And here you're going to get something a

bit different because you're going to get a slave

and his master, who, as we're gonna find out, happens to be dyin, Isis.

And so just dropping in that address is a way to signal to the audience.

Actually, we're doing something a bit different here, and of course,

it's really unexpected that he's a slave because when, uh

when the audience experiences seen what

they're looking at is Dionysus walking along

as becomes clear in this passage and Xanthi asses up on the donkey,

and he's carrying a load of baggage on top of the donkey.

But he's the one talking to his master who's walking on the ground.

And what Cynthia's asks is really important, he says.

And

shall I tell them one of those usual jokes,

the ones on the basis of which

the Spectators always laugh?

So now we've got the Spectators in the equation.

There have been

name checked by Xanthi Asse

and that triangle between Dionysus Cynthia's,

their interaction and the audience who are viewing it

is made really, really clear.

That explicit reference to them from the very, very beginning of this comedy

shows that we're going to actually be entering into a comedy

that is so self conscious it's exploring what comedy does,

and it's certainly going to explore later on what tragedy does and

how you should make how you should put your tragedy together.

But here,

that request for permission from Dionysus,

the airport should I say,

tell them one of these usual jokes that they always laugh at.

So it's that diagnosis is going to be very much in control

of the comedy in the way that the comedy unfolds appropriately,

the god of drama will be the one to decide what jokes

the audience are going to get

and also important there and we're thinking about is that a always

They always laughed at those jokes.

That's actually a little bit of a joke at the expense of the audience.

It's asking the audience to laugh at themselves,

for actually choosing to always laugh at the same jokes that are told.

And that is the exchange develops from there,

where Diane Isis is going to be an opportunity for Diane Isis to

actually tell a lot of those jokes about how painful it is,

um, to carry baggage.

Dionysus will refer to all of those jokes and refer to them and say,

Please don't tell that joke.

So it's actually a variation of that form that you get in rhetoric, the priority, Oh,

where you are deliberately not going to mention something.

But of course, in saying that you're not going to mention it, you get to mention it,

and that's what happens here where Diane Isis starts to list a

load of jokes that he doesn't want something else to tell.

He doesn't want him to tell the joke about how he's so hard pressed. PSD my

and he because it really gets on Dionysus nerves.

So now we're getting the characterisation of our god of drama.

And this delicious irony is that down Isis doesn't find those usual.

Jokes at the audience are fat.

He doesn't find them funny, and he doesn't want them to be told.

And you can see um, increasingly, that he gets quite

exercised about that whole idea about what's funny or not.

And he's desperate, actually,

that Xanthia should not tell some of these jokes,

and his language really reflects that as well.

Even goes so far as to say, Please don't tell that joke. This is 9 11

here, care tour.

I beg you,

um, unless you want to make me sick.

So he's that desperate not to hear these jokes. And, of course,

what this actually allows Microsoft needs to do is build up

to defining the kind of comedy that he's going to produce,

and he and his frogs will not tell the jokes that all of his rival

Zambia's tells us all these rival comics,

like Fran Arkus tell these jokes every time about whenever

they've got someone who's carrying baggage in their comedies,

they're always bringing up these jokes.

So there's a criticism going on of comedy and the type of comedy you should do.

All of this, though, is undermined by that moment when Xanthi asse,

despite himself,

will actually tell that joke and that entire lead up to Lines

19 and 20 where Xanthia says that he's in some lovely,

uh, exaggerated, melodramatic proclamation.

He says, um, that he's thrice wretched,

and he there says that, well, he's his poor neck,

but he can't even tell the joke about it, even though, um,

it's chafing and he uses their liberty.

He uses precisely the verb that Diane Isis that is,

the centre of jokes that Diane Isis has explicitly earlier

in the exchange requested that he should not use.

So um,

and that's a 95 that he says he doesn't want that joke using that verb to be used.

And there it is.

Cynthia's actually tells the joke, despite all of this lead up,

saying aristo phonies is better than his rivals that this

comedy won't be using the joke about the baggage.

And, of course, instead of just having a one line joke about baggage,

you have almost 29th in the opening of your comedy dedicated to that kind of joke.

And it sets the tone

for what we're going to get

in the comedy that follows, because that is exactly

what

Aristo phonies is interested in exploring.

He wants to think about what's appropriate to comedy.

He wants to think about what's appropriate to tragedy,

and in this opening exchange you start to get the characters as well,

coming out really clearly

and die in Isis,

who is desperate not to hear these jokes he's

heard hundreds of times before in the theatre.

And what makes that really funny is that

in the

performances in the drama festivals,

you would have had a statue of diagnosis actually in the theatre.

So he's been a spectator and experienced this, um, these comedies

and that's something which is going to come in later

on that he's actually had the experience of these plays,

and it's mentioned that she, at 9 16,

he talks about when he was the Army knows when he was the spectator,

and that is something he's going to bring to bear when he's trying to judge

between the tragedy ins because he's been the

one to sit and experience their comedies.

Also typical here is the undermining of Dionysus.

He's this great God, and we get this build up where he talks about the

the hubris, you know.

So he's this grand God as though he's used to talking about hubris,

the hubris of mankind.

And of course, in this case,

it's the hubris of Cynthia's getting to ride on the donkey.

And what deflates that what debunks it is that use of what

should be a very grand patronymic way of referring to himself.

He's dying Isis and his son of

standing his son of a wine jug.

So actually it undercuts the grandeur of that line,

which otherwise sounds like a line from tragedy.

And that's exactly what we're going to get to

see in the rest of this comedy is it unfolds