(William Arrowsmith Translation)
(423 B.C.)
Characters of the Play
STREPSIADES. father of Pheidippides
PHEIDIPPIDES. a playboy
XANTHIAS. a slave
STUDENTS OF SOKRATES SOKRATES
CHORUS OF CLOUDS
KORYPHAIOS. Or Chorus Leader
ARISTOPHANES PHILOSOPHY
SOPHISTRY
PASIAS. creditor of Strepsiades AMYNIAS. creditor of Strepsiades CHAIREPHON.
disciple of Sokrates SLAVES. STUDENTS. WITNESSES. etc.
SCENE: A street in Athens. On the left, the house of Strepsiades, an old farmer
compelled by the war to leave the country and take up residence in Athens; on the
right, the tiny, grubby, ramshackle hovel which houses Sokrates' Thinkery. On
the
extreme left, a statue of Poseideon. Before Strepsiades' house stands a Herm, a
bust of the god Hermes supported by a square pillar: in front of Sokrates' house,
balancing the Herm, stands a potbellied stove with a long tapering flue and a
placard which reads:
MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE
ACCORDING TO THE CONVECTION PRINCIPLE.
(Two cots are placed before Strepsiades' house, one occupied by Strepsiades
himself,
the other by Pheidippides. Huddled on the ground nearby lie several loudly snoring
slaves. The time is just before dawn.)
STREPSIADES
(Thrashing restlessly, then throwing off his blankets and sitting bolt upright.
He
yawns.)
Yaaaahhuuuuu.
Great Zeus Almighty, what an endless monster
of a night it's been! Won't the daylight ever come?
I could have sworn I heard the roosters crowing hours ago.
And listen to those slaves. Still snoring away!
By god, things around here were a long sight different in the good old days before
this war! Drat this stinking war anyway! It's ruined Athens.
Why, you can't even whip your own slaves any more or they'll desert to the Spartans.
Bah.
(Pointing to Pheidippides.)
-And as for him,
that precious playboy son of mine, he's worse yet. Look at him, stretched out there
sleeping like a log under five fat blankets, farting away.
--All right,
if that's the way you want it, boy, I'll snuggle down and fart you back a burst or
two.
(He burrows under the blankets for a moment, then throws them off and sits
up again.)
DAMN!
I'm so bitten up by all these blasted bedbuggering debts and bills and stables-fees,
I can't catch a wink.
(Turning on Pheidippides.)
And all because of YOU!
Yes, you and your damned horses! Gigs, rigs, nags, ponytails. . . Hell,
horses everywhere! Horses in your dreams!
But me?
I'm bankrupt, broke, ruined, waiting for the end of the month when all these debts
come due.
(Savagely kicking Xanthias awake.)
--You. You there, light me a lamp and bring me my ledger.
(The slave rises, lights a flickering lamp, and brings him the ledger.)
Now then. I'll just run over this account of my debts and see
how much I owe.
Hmmmm.
(Reading aloud.)
TO PASIAS: THE SUM OF THREE HUNDRED--
Three hundred to Pasias? What in god's name for?
Of course. I remember. That gelding I bought from him. Idiot! Better I should have
gelded myself.
PHEIDIPPIDES
(Shouting in his sleep.)
PHILO,
YOU FOULED ME! KEEP IN YOUR OWN LANE!
STREPSIADES
That's it.
That's the horsey blight that has blasted me dead. Even in his dreams he thinks he's
winning the derby.
PHEIDIPPIDES
(In his sleep.)
HOW MANY LAPS FOR THE STEEPLE-CHASE?
STREPSIADES
Laps, is it?
A fat lot of laps you've driven your poor old man!
(Resuming his accounting.)
Let's see now. What's the next entry after Pasias? Reading aloud.
TO AMYNIAS: FOR GIG, BODY AND WHEELS INCLUDED, THE SUM OF-
PHEIDIPPIDES
(In his sleep.)
ROLL THE HORSE IN
THE DUST, TRAINER, AND THEN STABLE HIM.
STREPSIADES
You've rolled me out of house and
home, damn you!
I've lost two or three lawsuits on your account and now the other creditors are
clamoring for confiscation.
PHEIDIPPIDES
(Waking up crossly.)
Damn it,
Dad, why do you have to thrash around like this all night long?
STREPSIADES
Because there's a bumbailiff in the mattress biting me, that's why.
PHEIDIPPIDES
Oh, for god's sake, let me sleep, will you?
STREPSIADES
Go on, damn you, sleep! But I give you warning, boy. Someday these debts will land on
your head.
(Pheidippides' only answer is a snore.)
By god,
I hope that meddling matchmaker who prodded me on to marry your mother dies a nasty
death! I used to be a farmer--the sweetest life on earth, a lovely, moldy, unspruce,
litter-jumbled life, bursting with honeybees, bloated with sheep and olives. And then,
poor hick, what did I do but marry your mother, a city girl, and niece of that Megakles
who was son and heir of old Blueblood Megakles himself? She was a pretty piece: Miss
Megakles-deluxe Well, so we got married and we clambered into bed--me,
a stink of wine-
lees, fig-boxes, and wool-fat; she, the whiff of spices, pure saffron, tonguekisses,
Luxury, High Prices, gourmandizing, goddess Lechery, and every little elf, imp, and
sprite of Intercourse. But I'll say this for your mother: she was a worker. Nothing
slow about her. All day long she'd sit there working away at her loom and shoving in
the wool. and then in bed at night she'd work on me for more.
Expense meant nothing.
Clipped? I was shorn. "Madam," I said, "what do you think I am? A man or a goat?"
(Suddenly the oil lamp sputters and goes out.)
XANTHIAS
There's no oil left in the lamp.
STREPSIADES
Jackass!
And why in god's name did you light that guzzler of a lamp? Come here and be whipped.
XANTHIAS
But why? What have I done?
STREPSIADES
Because you put in potbellied wicks, that's why.
(He lunges at Xanthias who ducks away and disappears into the house.)
Anyway, when that darling brat of ours was born
to the missus and me, we immediately started squabbling over his name. She, of course.
wanted something fancy. some upperclass, high-horse handle with hippos in it-Xanthippos
or Charippos or Kallippides--while I naturally wanted to give him the fine old name of
Pheidonides in honor of his thrifty grandfather. Well, we haggled and at last agreed
on a compromise name: Pheidippides. She used to gush over the baby: "Just imagine.
Some day he'll be an important man, just like his Uncle Megakles. and drive
in his purple
robes up to the Akropolis." And I'd put in: "Ha, drive his goats from the hills, you
mean, dressed like his dad in a filthy smock." Well, needless to say, he paid no heed
to me and now he's ended up by squirting his dirty horse-pox all over my money.
Anyway, after beating my brains all night long, I think I've finally found
a way,
the only way out, a wonderful little chink of a loophole. Now if I can only shove him
through it, I'm saved. But first I've got to find some way of waking him up. I wonder
what's the nicest way to wake up.
Hmmmm.
(Cooing in Pheidippides' ear.)
Pheidippides.
Little Pheidippides.
PHEIDIPPIDES
(Waking angrily.)
Damn it, Dad, what now?
STREPSIADES
Give your Old Man a kiss. There, now your hand, son.
PHEIDIPPIDES
Look here, what's this all about?
STREPSIADES
Tell me, my boy, are you really fond of your poor old father?
PHEIDIPPIDES
Sure, Dad.
I swear it. So help me Poseidon.
STREPSIADES
No, NOT THAT! For god's sake, none of those horse-god oaths of yours! Poseidon indeed!
That god's the cause of all my troubles. But if you really love me, my boy, I beg you,
implore you. do what I ask. Please.
PHEIDIPPIDES
(Suspiciously.)
Depends. What are you asking?
STREPSIADES
Reform yourself, boy. Change your whole way of life Follow my advice and make a new man
of yourself A fresh Pheidippides.
PHEIDIPPIDES
But how?
STREPSIADES
First promise.
PHEIDIPPIDES
(Reluctantly.)
I promise.
So help me--Dionysos.
STREPSIADES
Good. Now then, look over there.
Do you see that dirty little hovel with the dinky door?
PHEIDIPPIDES
Yes. But what are you driving at, Dad?
STREPSIADES
(Awesomely.)
My boy, that little hovel is the Thinkery Intellectuals live there.
professors who will teach you--and what's more, prove it--that the whole atmosphere is
actually a Cosmical Oven and we're not really people but, little bits of charcoal blazing
away. What's more--for a fee, of course--they offer a course called The Technique of Win-
ning Lawsuits. Honest or dishonest, it's all one.
PHEIDIPPIDES
Who are they?
STREPSIADES
Great Scholars. Scientists.
PHEIDIPPIDES
Fine. Who are they?
STREPSIADES
Er
Gentlemen. Men of Learning.
PHEIDIPPIDES
Yes, but what are their names?
STREPSIADES
Why . . .
PHEIDIPPIDES
Oh lord, I know those filthy charlatans you mean--those frauds, those barefoot pedants with
the look of death. Chairephon and that humbug, Sokrates.
STREPSIADES
(Scandalized.)
Here, here, boy. Hush. For shame. Don't ever let me hear you talking so disrespectfully.
What's more, if you don't want your poor Old Man to starve, you'd better go study there
and ditch your damn horses.
PHEIDIPPIDES
By Dionysos, I won't!
Not on your life. I wouldn't go there if you bribed me with every racehorse in Leogoras'
stable!
STREPSIADES
My dearest boy,
I implore, you. Please go and study at the Thinkery.
PHEIDIPPIDES
Study what?
STREPSIADES
I've heard that they teach two kinds of Logic. One of them is called Philosophical, or Moral,
Logic--whatever that may be. The other one is called Sophistic, or Sokratic, Logic. Now, if
you could learn this second Logic, I wouldn't have to pay a penny of all those debts you've
saddled me 'with.
PHEIDIPPIDES
Count me out.
I'd rather die. Why, those vampires would suck me dry. They'd scrape the tan right off my
face. How could I face the fellows down at the track?
STREPSIADES
Then, by Demeter,
you've had your last meal on me. Take your critturs and pack out of this house and be
damned to you!
PHEIDIPPIDES
Uncle Megakles won't let me go horseless for long. I'll go to him.
The hell with you.
(Exit Pheidippides.)
STREPSIADES
I'm down, but not for long.
First I'll say a little prayer to the gods, and then I'll go and enroll at the Thinkery myself.
But whoa: at my age the memory is bad, the intellect dull. How could I
ever master that hair-
splitting logic? Still, I have to go, so why am I dawdling here instead of banging on the
door?
(He walks over to Sokrates' house and kicks at the door.)
--Hey, porter!
STUDENT
(From within.)
Go bang yourself.
(Opening the door)
Who are you to kick our door?
STREPSIADES
Strepsiades, son of Pheidon. From Kikynna.
STUDENT
By god, the way you come here and kick in our door
I think your name should damn well be Stupidities.
Do you realize that you've just caused the miscarriage of a great scientific discovery?
STREPSIADES
(Humbly apologetic.)
Oh, please excuse me.
I didn't realize. You see, I come from the country. But tell me, what discovery miscarried?
STUDENT
It's top secret.
Classified information. Access only to students.
STREPSIADES
You can tell me then. That's why I've come here, to be a student at the Thinkery.
STUDENT
In that case, very well.
But remember, our researches are solemn mysteries.
(Whispering.)
Listen.
Just a minute ago Sokrates was questioning Chairephon about the number of fleafeet a flea
could broadjump. You see, a flea happened to bite Chairephon on the eyebrow and then vaulted
across and landed on Sokrates' head.
STREPSIADES
How did he measure it?
STUDENT
A stroke of absolute genius. First he melted some wax. Then he caught the flea, dipped its
tiny feet in,the melted wax, let it cool, and lo! little Persian bootees.
He slipped the bootees off and measured the distance.
STREPSIADES
Lord Zeus, what exquisite finesse of mind!
STUDENT
Elementary really. You haven't heard anything yet. Would you like another sample?
STREPSIADES
Oh, I'd like that. Go on.
STUDENT
Well, it seems that Chairephon was asking Sokrates which of two theories he held: that
gnats tootled through their mouths or, in reverse, through their tails.
STREPSIADES
(Eagerly). Gosh. Go on. What was his theory about the gnat?
STUDENT
Attend. According to him, the intestinal tract of the gnat is of puny proportions,
and
through this diminutive duct the gastric gas of the gnat is forced under pressure down
to the rump. At that point the compressed gases, as through a narrow valve, escape with
a whoosh, thereby causing the characteristic tootle or cry of the flatulent
gnat.
STREPSIADES
So the gnat has a bugle up its ass! O thrice-blessed mortals! What bowel-wisdom! Why,
the man who has mastered the ass of the gnat could win an acquittal from any court!
STUDENT
And you know,
just the other day he was cheated of an immense discovery because of a lizard.
STREPSIADES
Cheated by a lizard? But how?
STUDENT
It happened at night, during the course of his researches on the orbit of the moon.
There he stood, gaping wide-mouthed at the sky, when a lizard on the roof let loose
on him.
STREPSIADES
Ha! A lizard crapping on Sokrates! That's rich.
STUDENT
And last night there was nothing in school to eat.
STREPSIADES
Goodness,
how did he ever manage your supper?
STUDENT
A combination of science and legerdemain.
He quickly sprinkled the table
with a fine film of powderlike ashes. Then,
deftly bending a skewer in the shape of a compass he drew a vast arc along whose per-
imeter the hook of his compass encountered somebody's cloak. Quickly flicking his hand,
he pulled back compass and catch. He pawned the cloak; we ate the proceeds.
STREPSIADES
Why, Thales himself was an amateur compared to this!
Throw open the Thinkery! Unbolt the door and let me see this wizard Sokrates in person.
Open up! I'm MAD for education!
The ekkyklema is wheeled about to show the whole interior court of Sokrates' Thinkery.
High overhead the crane supports. Sokrates in his basket busily scanning the heavens.
Hanging on the walls of the Thinkery are various charts, maps, instruments, etc. In
the center 'of the courtyard stand a number of utterly pale, emaciated students deeply
engaged in a rapt contemplation of the ground.
Great Herakles,
what kind of zoo is this?
STUDENT
What's so strange about it? What do you take them for?
STREPSIADES
Spartan prisoners
from Pylos. But why are they all staring at the ground?
STUDENT
They're engaged in geological research: a survey of the earth's strata.
STREPSIADES
Of course. Looking for truffles.
(To one of the students.)
--You there, don't strain yourself loqking. I know where they grow big and beautiful.
(Pointing to other students who are bent completely double.)
Hey, and look there.
what are those fellows doing bent over like that?
STUDENT
Those are graduate students doing research on Hades.
STREPSIADES
On Hades? Then why are their asses scanning the skies?
STUDENT
Taking a minor in Astronomy.
(To the students.)
--Quick, inside with you
Hurry, before the Master catches you.
STREPSIADES
No, wait. Let them stay a little longer. I want to speak to them on a private matter.
STUDENT
Impossible. The statutes clearly forbid overexposure to fresh air.
(The students disappear through a door at the rear. Strepsiades meanwhile
is staring at
the various maps and instruments on the walls.)
STREPSIADES
(Pointing to a chart.)
In the name of heaven, what's that?
STUDENT
That's for astronomy.
STREPSIADES
(Pointing to surveying instruments.)
And what are those?
STUDENT
They're for geometry.
STREPSIADES
Geometry? And what's that good for?
STUDENT
Surveying, of course.
STREPSIADES
Surveying what? Lots?
STUDENT
No. The whole world.
STREPSIADES
What a clever gadget! And as patriotic as it is useful.
STUDENT
(Pointing to a map.)
Now then, over here we have a map of the entire world. You see there? That's
Athens.
STREPSIADES
That, Athens? Don't be ridiculous. Why, I can't see even a single lawcourt
in session.
STUDENT
Nonetheless, it's quite true. It really is Athens.
STREPSIADES
Then where are my neighbors of Kikynna?
STUDENT
Here they are And you see this island squeezed along the coast? That's Euboia.
STREPSIADES
I know that place well enough. Perikles squeezed it dry. But where's Sparta?
STUDENT
Sparta? Right over here.
STREPSIADES
That's MUCH TO CLOSE!
You'd be well advised to move it further away.
STUDENT
But that's utterly impossible.
STREPSIADES
You'll be sorry you didn't.
by god.
(For the first time Strepsiades catches sight of Sokrates in his basket overhead.)
Look: who's that dangling up there in the basket?
STUDENT
Himself.
STREPSIADES
Who's Himself?
STUDENT
Sokrates.
STREPSIADES
SOKRATES! Then call him down. Go on. Give a great big shout.
STUDENT (Hastily and apprehensively taking his leave.) Er . . . you call him. I'm
a busy man.
(Exit Student.)
STREPSIADES
O Sokrates!
(No answer from the basket.)
Yoohoo. Sokrates!
SOKRATES
(From a vast philosophical height.)
Well, creature of a day?
STREPSIADES
What in the world are you doing up there?
SOKRATES
Ah, sir, I walk upon the air and look down upon the sun from a superior
standpoint.
STREPSIADES
Well, I suppose it's better that you sneer at the gods from a basket up in the air
than do it down here on the ground.
SOKRATES
Precisely. You see, only by being suspended aloft, by dangling my mind in the heavens
and mingling my rare thought with the ethereal air, could I ever achieve strict scien-
tific accuracy in my survey of the vast empyrean. Had I pursued my inquiries from down
there on the ground, my data would be worthless. The earth, you see, pulls down the
delicate essence of thought to its own gross level.
(As an afterthought.)
Much the same
thing happens with watercress.
STREPSIADES
(Ecstatically bewildered.)
You don't say? Thought draws down . . . delicate essence . . . into watercress. O dear
little Sokrates, please come down. Lower away, and teach me what I need to know!
(Sokrates is slowly lowered earthwards.)
SOKRATES
What subject?
STREPSIADES
Your course on public speaking and debating techniques. You see, my creditors have become
absolutely ferocious. You should see how they're hounding me. What's more, Sokrates, they're
about to seize my belongings.
SOKRATES
How in the world could you fall so deeply in debt without realizing it?
STREPSIADES
How? A great, greedy horse-pox ate me up, that's how. But that's why I want instruction in
your second Logic, you know the one--the get-away-without-paying argument. I'll pay you any
price you ask. I swear it. By the gods.
SOKRATES
By the gods? The gods, my dear simple fellow, are a mere expression coined by vulgar super-
stition. We frown upon such coinage here.
STREPSIADES
What do you swear by?
Bars of iron, like the Byzantines?
SOKRATES
Tell me, old man, would you honestly like to learn the truth, the real
truth, about the gods?
STREPSIADES
By Zeus, I sure would. The real truth.
SOKRATES
And also be admitted to intercourse with their Serene
Highnesses, our goddesses, the Clouds?
STREPSIADES
Intercourse with real goddesses? Oh yes, I'd like that.
SOKRATES
Very well. First, however,
you must take your seat upon the mystical couch.
STREPSIADES
I'm sitting.
SOKRATES
And now we place this sacrificial wreath on your head.
STREPSIADES
A sacrificial wreath?
Hey, NO!
Please, Sokrates,
don't murder me like poor Athamas in Sophokles' play!
OKRATES
Athamas was saved. You must mean Phrixos.
STREPSIADES
Athamas.
Phrixos--so who's the critic? Dead is dead.
SOKRATES
Courage, gaffer. This is normal procedure. required of all our initiates alike.
STREPSIADES
Yeah? What's in it for me?
SOKRATES
(Sprinkling Strepsiades from head to toe with ritual flour)
You shall be reborn, sir, as the perfect flower of orators.
a consummate, blathering, tinkling rascal
STREPSIADES
That's no joke I'll be all flour the way you're powdering me.
SOKRATES
Silence!
Holy hush command your tongue. Listen to my prayer.
(He stretches out his hands to heaven and prays.)
O Lord God Immeasurable Ether, You who envelop the world!
O Translucent Ozone!
And you. O lightningthundered holy, Clouds!
Great Majesties. arise!
Reveal yourselves to your Sophist's eyes.
STREPSIADES
Whoa, ladies, don't rain yet. Don't get me wet. Let me wrap up.
(He wraps his head in his tunic.)
What a damned fool! Coming without a hat.
SOKRATES
Come forth,
be manifest. majestic Clouds! Reveal your forms to me.
And whether on Olympos' snow your brooding eyrie lies,
or on the waves you weave the dance with Ocean's lovely
daughters.
or dip your golden pitchers in the waters of the Nile,
or hover on Mount Mimas' snows. or over Lake Maiotis--
come forth. great Clouds!
Accept our prayers!
O hear us!
Amen.
(From far off in the distance the Clouds are heard singing. As they slowly
approach
Athens, the singing increases steadily in volume as it rises in pitch.)
CHORUS
Rise and soar
eternal Clouds!
Lift your loveliness of rain,
in sodden splendor come!
Soar from ocean's sullen swell,
rise higher to the peaks,
to the tall cliffs and trees!
Rise and soar,
while far below,
earth and shining harvest lie,
sound of god in river water,
blessed ocean at its roar Arise!
For Ether's sleepless eye
now breaks with blazoned light!
Shake loose the rain,
immortal forms,
and walk upon the world!
(A sustained burst of thunder is heard.)
SOKRATES
O Clouds consummately blest, how clearly thy answer rumbles!
(To Strepsiades.)
--Did you hear that thunder crack. that basso profundo peal?
STREPSIADES
And how!
All hail your holyships! What a nasty jolt you gave me!
What a ratatat!
You scared me so I've got to thunder too.
(He breaks wind.)
Sacrilege or not, I'VE GOT TO CRAP!
SOKRATES
Silence, boor!
No more of your smut. Leave filth like that to the comic stage.
A short low growl of thunder is heard.
Shhh:
Quiet.
The goddess swarm is stirring to its song.
CHORUS
Virgins of rain,
look on Pallas' shining earth,
this oil-anointed land,
country of Kekrops'
hero-breeding plain!
Holiness is here,
home of the mysteries,
whose unrevealable rites
sanctify the soul.
And here the gods have gifts.
Below the splendid gables go
processions of the blest,
and every season sees
its festivals, its crowns.
And early every Spring
Dionysos brings his joy,
the weaving of the dance,
the Muses and the flutes.
STREPSIADES
Holy Zeus, Sokrates, who were those ladies that sang that solemn hymn?
Were they heroines of mythology?
SOKRATES
No, old man.
Those were the Clouds of heaven, goddesses of men of
leisure and philosophers. To them we owe our repertoire of
verbal talents: our eloquence, intellect, fustian, casuistry, force, wit,
prodigious vocabulary, circumlocutory skill--
STREPSIADES
(Suddenly carried away in cloudy inspiration.)
Then that's why
I suddenly tingled all over--as though I were carried up, buoyant, exalted, swollen somehow
with the flatus of philosophy: a mist of verbal fluff, a sudden unsubstantial swelling, a
tumid bubble of wrangling words, a windbag of debate! I seemed rent by lightning speech, ah,
the thrust and parry of opinion, of minds massively meeting...
In short, Sokrates,
if I could see those ladies in person, I'd LOVE to.
SOKRATES
Then look over toward Parnes. I can see them settling down ever so gently.
STREPSIADES
Where?
SOKRATES
There, a vast drifting swarm nuzzling along through woods and valleys.
STREPSIADES
(Rubbing his eyes.)
I wonder what's wrong.
I can't see them.
SOKRATES
Look: just offstage.
STREPSIADES
Now I see them!
SOKRATES
You've got cataracts, friend, if you can't see them now.
(Slowly and majestically, the Chorus of Clouds files in
and takes up its position in the orchestra.)
STREPSIADES
Ooh, what venerable ladies! They take up all the space.
SOKRATES
And you actually mean to say that it's never occurred to you
that the Clouds of heaven were goddesses?
STREPSIADES
By Zeus, it's news to me. I always used to think
they were just fog and drizzle and mist.
SOKRATES
Clearly then you must also be ignorant of the fact that the Clouds are also patrons of a varied
group of gentlemen, comprising: chiropractors, prophets, longhairs, quacks, fops, charlatans,
fairies, dithyrambic poets, scientists, dandies, astrologers, and other men of leisure. And be-
cause all alike, without exception, walk with their heads among the clouds and base their inspi-
ration on the murky Muse, the Clouds support them and feed them.
STREPSIADES
I see.
That's why they write--
O downblow, dazed. of the sodden slues!
and
Ho, tresses of the Typho-headed gale! Ho. puffcheek squalls!
or
Spongy humus of the hyaline!
and
Hail ye heaven-scudders, sudden ospreys of the winds!
and
Come ve wheeling cumuli, ye clammy condensations, come!
And in return, these poets gorge themselves on the flesh of the mullet and eat of the
breast
of the thrush?
SOKRATES
And why not?
STREPSIADES
But what I want to know is this
why if these ladies are really Clouds, they look like women?
For honest clouds aren't women.
SOKRATES
Then what do they look like?
STREPSIADES
I don't know for sure. Well, they look like mashed-up fluff,
not at all like women. No, by Zeus. Women have . . . noses.
SOKRATES
Would you mind if I asked you a question or two?
STREPSIADES
Go right ahead.
SOKRATES
Haven't you sometimes seen a cloud that looked like a centaur?
Or a leopard perhaps? Or a wolf? Or a bull?
STREPSIADES
Often. So what?
SOKRATES
Well, the Clouds assume whatever shape they wish. Now suppose they happened to meet
some
shaggy, hairy beast of a man--Hieronymos, for instance; instantly they turn into wild cen-
taurs as a caricature of his lust.
STREPSIADES
I see. But what if they
run into Simon, that swindler of government funds?
SOKRATES
Presto, they turn into wolves
and catch his likeness to a T.
STREPSIADES
Oh, I see. And yesterday
because they met the coward Kleonymos, they turned into deer?
SOKRATES
Precisely. And just now, when they saw Kleisthenes in the audience,
they suddenly turned into women.
STREPSIADES
Welcome then, august Ladies! Welcome, queens of heaven!
If ever you spoke to mortal man, I implore you, speak to me!
(A great burst of thunder. Strepsiades cowers with fright.)
KORYPHAIOS
Hail, superannuated man! Hail, old birddog of culture!
(To Sokrates.)
And hail to you, O Sokrates,
high priest of poppycock!
And hail to you, O Sokrates,
Inform us what your wishes are. For of all the polymaths on earth, it's you we most prefer--
you and Prodikos. Him we love for wisdom's sake, but you, sir, for your swivel-eyes, your
barefoot swagger down the street, because you're poor on our account and terribly affected.
STREPSIADES
Name of Earth, what a voice! Solemn and holy and awful!
SOKRATES
These are the only gods there are. The rest are but figments.
STREPSIADES
Holy name of Earth! Olympian Zeus is a figment?
SOKRATES
Zeus? What Zeus?
Nonsense.
There is no Zeus.
STREPSIADES
No Zeus?
Then who makes it rain? Answer me that.
SOKRATES
Why, the Clouds, of course.
What's more, the proof is incontrovertible. For instance. have you ever yet seen rain when you
didn't see a cloud? But if your hypothesis were correct, Zeus could drizzle from an empty sky
wile the clouds were on vacation.
STREPSIADES
By Apollo, you're right. A pretty proof.
And to think I always used to believe the rain was just Zeus pissing through
a sieve.
All right, who makes it thunder? Brrr. I get goosebumps just saying it.
SOKRATES
The Clouds again, of course. A simple process of Convection.
STREPSIADES
I admire you, but I don't follow you.
SOKRATES
Listen. The Clouds are a saturate water-solution. Tumescence in motion, of necessity, produces
precipitation. When these distended masses collide--boom! Fulmination
STREPSIADES
But who makes them move before they collide? Isn't that Zeus?
SOKRATES
Not Zeus, idiot. The Convection-principle!
STREPSIADES
Convection? That's a new one. Just think. So Zeus is out and convection-principle's in.
Tch, tch. But wait: you haven't told me who makes it thunder.
SOKRATES
But I just finished telling you! The Clouds are water-packed;
they collide with each other and explode because of the pressure.
STREPSIADES
Yeah? And what's your proof for that?
SOKRATES
Why, take yourself as example You know that meat-stew the vendors sell at the Pana-thenaia? How
it gives you the cramps and your stomach starts to rumble?
STREPSIADES
Yes by Apollo! I remember. What an awful feeling! You feel sick and your belly chums and the
fart rips loose like thunder. First just a gurgle, pappapax; then louder, pappa-PAPAXapaX, and
finally like thunder, PAPAPAPAXA-PAXAPPAPAXapap!
SOKRATES
Precisely. First think of the tiny fart that your intestines make.
Then consider the heavens: their infinite farting is thunder. For thunder and farting are, in
principle, one and the same.
STREPSIADES
Then where does lightning come from? And when it strikes why is it that some men are killed and
others aren't even touched? Clearly it's got to be Zeus. He's behind it, blasting the liars with
bolts of lightning.
SOKRATES
Look, you idiotic Stone-Age relic, if Zeus strikes the liars with lightning, then why on earth
is a man like Simon still alive? Or Kleonymos? Or Theoros? They're liars ten times over. But no.
Instead of doing that, he shatters his own shrines, blasts the holiest place names in Homer and
splinters the great oaks. And why, I ask you? Have you ever heard of an oak tree committing per-
jury?
STREPSIADES
Say. you know, you've got something there. But how do you explain the lightning?
SOKRATES
Attend.
(illustrating his lecture by means of the potbellied-stove Model of the
Universe.)
Let us hypothesize a current of arid air ascending heavenwards.
Now then, as this funnelled flatus slowly invades the limp and dropsical
sacks of the Clouds. they, in turn. begin to belly and swell. distended with gas like
a child's balloon when inflated with air. Then so. prodigious become the
pressures
within that the cloud-casings burst apart, exploding with that celestial
ratatat called
thunder and thereby releasing the winds. These, in turn. whizz out at such
incalculable
velocities that they catch on tire Result: lightning
STREPSIADES
The very same thing that happened to me at the great feast of Zeus!
I was roasting myself a sausage and forgot to slit the skin
Well. suddenly it bloated up and SPLAT
-singed my eyebrows off and splattered my face with guts
CHORUS
-Ah, how he hungers after learning!
(To Strepsiades)
-Sir. if you can pass our test,
we guarantee that you shall be
-the cynosure of Hellas
-Our requirements are these:
-First. is your memory keen?
-Do you hanker for researching?
-Are you subject to fatigue
from standing up or walking?
-Does winter weather daunt you?
-Can you go without a meal?
-Abstain from wine and exercise?
-And keep away from girls?
-Last, do you solemnly swear
adherence to our code?
-To wrangle
--niggle
-haggle
-battle
-a loyal soldier of the Tongue. conducting yourself always
like a true philosopher.
STREPSIADES
Ladies, if all you require
is hard work, insomnia, worry, endurance, and a stomach
that eats anything, why, have no fear. For I'm your man
and as hard as nails.
SOKRATES
And you promise to follow faithfully in my path,
acknowledging no other gods but mine, to wit, the Trinity-
GREAT CHAOS, THE CLOUDS, and BAMBOOZLE?
STREPSIADES
If I met another god,
I'd cut him dead, so help me.
Here and now I swear off
sacrifice and prayer forever.
KORYPHAIOS
Then, Sir, inform us boldly what you wish.
Providing you honor and revere the Clouds and faithfully
pursue the Philosophical Life, you shall not fail.
STREPSIADES
Ladies, I'll tell you.
My ambition is modest, a trifling favor.
Just let my muscular tongue outrace the whole of Hellas
by a hundred laps.
KORYPHAIOS
Sir, you may consider your wishes granted. Never, from this time forth,
shall any politician in Athens introduce more bills than you.
STREPSIADES
But I don't want to be a Senator!
Listen, ladies: all I want is to escape the clutches of my creditors.
KORYPHAIOS
Your wishes are modest; we grant them.
And now, Candidate, boldly commit yourself to the hands
of our ministers.
STREPSIADES
Ladies, you've convinced me completely Anyway, thanks to
my thoroughbreds. my son. and my wife. I have no choice
So I hereby bequeath you my body.
for better, dear girls. or worse
You can shrink me by slow starvation.
or shrivel me dry with thirst
You can freeze me or flay me skinless:
thrash me as hard as you please.
Do any damn thing you've a mind to--
my only conditions are these:
that when the ordeal is completed.
a new Strepsiades rise.
renowned to the world as a WELSHER.
famed as a TELLER OF LIES.
a CHEATER,
a BASTARD.
a PHONEY
A BUM.
SHYSTER,
MOUTHPIECE.
TINHORN,
SCUM,
STOOLIE,
CON-MAN.
WINDBAG
PUNK,
OILY,
GREASY,
HYPOCRITE,
SKUNK,
DUNGHILL,
SQUEALER,
SLIPPERY SAM,
FAKER,
DIDDLER,
SWINDLER,
SHAM,
--or just plain Lickspittle.
And then, dear ladies, for all I care,
Science can have the body,
to experiment, as it sees fit,
or serve me up as salami.
Yes, vou can serve me up as salami!
KORYPHAIOS
Ah, here's a ready spirit, undaunted, unafraid! --Sir,
complete your course with us and
you shall win a glory that towers to heaven.
STREPSIADES
Could you be a little more specific?
KORYPHAIOS
You shall pass your entire existence up in the air,
among us, strolling about with your head in the
Clouds. Your life shall be the envy of all mankind.
STREPSIADES
Ah, when shall I see that day?
KORYPHAIOS
Before long thousands of clients will stampede to your doors,
begging, pleading, imploring your service and advice in all their lawsuits--
many involving incredible sums. I say no more.
--And now, Sokrates, take this old candidate and test his worthiness
to undergo the solemn rites of initiation. Examine his mental powers;
probe his mind and sift him.
SOKRATES
Now then, tell me something about yourself. The information is essential
if I'm to know what strategies to employ against you.
STREPSIADES
Strategies? What do you think I am? A military objective?
SOKRATES
No. I'm merely attempting to ask a few questions. First, is your memory keen?
STREPSIADES
Well, it is and it isn't. If a man owes me money, I never seem to forget
it.
But if I do the owing, I somehow never remember.
SOKRATES
Well, perhaps you have some talents for speaking?
STREPSIADES
No, no talent for talk. But for larceny, lots.
SOKRATES
But how can you possibly learn?
STREPSIADES
Don't you worry. I'll manage somehow.
SOKRATES
But look: suppose I toss you some tidbit of higher wisdom?
Could you catch it on the fly?
STREPSIADES
What do you take me for? A puppydog snapping up wisdom?
SOKRATES
No, a beastly old ignoramus. In fact, I'm afraid we'll
have to whip our wisdom into your hide. Hmmm.
Tell me, suppose someone gave you a thrashing, what would you do?
STREPSIADES
Why, I'd take my thrashing. Then after a little while I'd hunt up a witness,
and then a little while later I'd bring suit for Assault and Battery.
SOKRATES
All right, old man. undress.
STREPSIADES
Undress? But why? Have I said something wrong?
SOKRATES
No, no. But we require all candidates for initiation to strip naked.
STREPSIADES
But I'm not a burglar, Sokrates. Here, search me if you want.
SOKRATES
What do you think I am? A policeman?
This is a solemn philosophical initiation
So stop your idiot blather and get undressed.
STREPSIADES
(Starting to undress with extreme reluctance)
Oh, all right. No, wait.
First answer me this. If I study very hard
and pay attention in class, which one of your students
will I look like?
SOKRATES
Why, you'll be the spitting image of--
Chairephon.
STREPSIADES
CHAIREPHONI But he's a walking cadaver
I'll graduate a corpse
(He .feverishly whisks his cloak back on.)
SOKRATES
Damnation! Stop this stalling and GET UNDRESSED!
He pulls off Strepsiades' cloak and shoves him bodily
toward the black cavelike opening at the rear of
the Thinkery
Forward Candidate!
STREPSIADES
NO! WAIT'
I'm scared Brr, it's as dark as a snakepit down there.
Give me a honeycake to throw to the snakes. Sokrates.
or they'll eat me alive
SOKRATES
Forward, fool. No hesitation now!
(Sokrates shoves Strepsiades before him into the opening at
the rear of the Thinkerv. Then he rushes back, snatches up
Strepsiades' discarded cloak, smiles, tucks it under his tunic.
and vanishes into the Thinkery.)
CHORUS
Farewell, brave soul,
and may your future gleam as bright
as shines your courage now!
May all good fortune come to you
who, sunk in bitter age,
in the somber twilight of your years,
stride forth, undaunted, unafraid,
toward that uttermost frontier of thought
where wisdom lures you on,
O pioneer!
(The Chorus turns sharply and faces the audience. From the
wing appears the poet, the bald Aristophanes; he strides forth
and addresses the audience directly.)
ARISTOPHANES
Gentlemen, in the name of Dionysos to whom I owe my nurture as a poet,
I intend to confront you with my personal complaints, frankly and freely,
as a poet should.
My ambitions, of course, are very simply stated:
the First Prize and a reputation for talent and wit.
Accordingly,
firmly convinced that this audience was composed of men of taste,
and that this play, The Clouds, was the finest of my comedies to date,
I submitted an earlier version, expecting your pleasure and approval.
It cost me enormous anguish and labor, and yet I was forced to withdraw,
ignobly defeated by cheap and vulgar rivals. My present reproaches,
needless to say, are aimed at those self-styled critics and wits
for whom this revision has been made.
However, to the men
of true taste among you, I say this: I am, as always,
your faithful friend, and never will I willingly or knowingly abandon you
or reproach you.
After all, I still remember that glorious day when the
Judges--
men of whose extraordinary taste and discrimination it is a
joy to speak--
awarded the First Prize to my youthful comedy, The Ban-
queters.
Now at that time, gentlemen, my Muse was the merest slip
of a girl,
a tender virgin who could not--without outraging all propriety--
give birth. So I exposed her child, her maiden effort, and a
stranger
rescued the foundling. But it was you, gentlemen, whose
generous patronage
nourished my offspring, and I have never since doubted those tokens
of your exquisite taste.
And now, gentlemen, like Elektra in
the play,
a sister-comedy comes in search of you today, hoping to find
those same tokens of recognition. Let her so much as
glimpse
a single curl from her brother's head, and she will know
her own,
as I shall know the tokens of your approval.
She's a dainty play.
Observe, gentlemen, her natural modesty, the demureness of
her dress,
with no dangling thong of leather, red and thick at the tip,
to make the small boys snigger. Note too her delicate refine-
ment--
her refusal to indulge in cheap cracks at the expense of
baldness,
and the quiet dignity of her dancing, with nothing salacious
about it.
Observe the absence of farcical slapstick and sensational
situations.
Here you see no poor old man drubbing his opponents with
a stick
in a futile attempt to hide the abysmal poverty of his verses.
Nor does she fling herself on stage with tragic torches
blazing
and bloodcurdling fustian. No, gentlemen, my comedy
comes to you
relying upon herself and her poetry.
This is what she is,
and I am the poet, her adoring father. Now I may be bald-
headed
(as some of my competitors so tirelessly point out), but I
am not vapid;
and it has never been my practice to serve you up some
rechauffee
of stale and tired plots. No, my fictions are always fresh,
no two of them the least alike, and all of
them uproariously
funny.
Observe, moreover, gentlemen, that it was I who punched
Kleon
in the paunch in his hour of pride; yet once I had him on
the ground,
I refused to kick him
But consider my competitors, note
their conduct
with poor Hyperbolos. Once they had him floored, they
never stopped
grinding him down in the dirt--plus his mother into the
bargain.
It was Eupolis, of course, who led the mass-attack upon
Hyperbolos;
he gutted my Knights, botched it, and then dragged the
resultant abortion
on stage--a stunning new plagiarism entitled (of course)
The Pederast.
Even as larceny, a complete flop: Eupolis wanted a dirty
dance,
so what did he do but introduce a drunken old hag to shake
her hips?
Not that she was original either; he lifted her from an
ancient play
by Phrynichos (who quite sensibly fed the old bitch to a sea
monster).
So much for Eupolis.
After him, Hermippos opened up on
Hyperbolos,
and before long every imitator in town was after Hyperbo-
los' hide,
and every last one of them plagiarized my celebrated simile
on the eels.
I devoutly pray that those who like such stuff are bored to
death
by mine. But as for you men of taste who enjoy your Aris-
tophanes
and applaud his talent, why, posterity will endorse your
judgment.
(Exit Aristophanes.)
CHORUS
You, our king, we summon first.
Omnipotence, in glory throned,
look down upon our dances.
O Zeus, be with us now!
And you, steward of the sea,
whose savage trident's power
heaves the shattered world
and pries the waters up,
O Poseidon, hear our prayer!
And you, O Father, Ether,
pure presence of Air,
nourisher, sustainer,
O Spirit, quicken us now!
And you whose flaring horses blaze
across the skies! O benison,
splendor whose shining spills
on earth, on heaven,
O Light, illuminate us all!
KORYPHAIOS
Gentlemen, Critics, and Clever Fellows:
YOUR ATTENTION
PLEASE.
Because our agenda includes a few complaints and home
truths,
we shall be blunt.
WE ARE TIRED OF BEING IGNORED.
Of all the gods
to whom this city stands in debt for benefits
conferred,
no god has brought more benefits than we. Yet we alone,
forsaken and forgotten gods, receive no sacrifice at all.
But surely we need not remind you of all our loving care,
the unsleeping devotion lavished, gentlemen, on your behalf?
For example,
whenever you launch some exceptionally crack-brained
project,
we promptly thunder our objection; we drizzle our dis-
pleasure.
Or look to recent history. Have you forgotten that black day
when a low tanner, a repulsive atheist nicknamed Paphlagon
was running for election as General? And how we re-
sponded?
How we furrowed our beetling brows and rumbled with
rage,
and hard on the heels of the Levin rattled the steeds of
Thunder?
How the moon, in dudgeon, snuffed her flame amongst the
rack,
and the sun in sullenness withdrew, curling his blazing wick
back beneath his globe, refusing to shine if this Kleon
were elected!
So you elected--Kleon!
As native Athenians,
gentlemen,
you are all familiar with that local brand of statesmanship
sometimes known as Blundering Through--the curious be-
lief
which holds that, by virtue of some timely divine interven-
tion,
all your most appalling political blunders will sooner or later
redound to the interest of Athens.
Whence the question arises:
why not make a good thing of this latest glaring example of
Blundering Through?
How?
By convicting this cormorant
Kleon
of bribery and peculation. Then muzzle his omnivorous
maw
and slap a yoke around his neck. Not only is such action
in perfect accord with your long tradition of Blundering
Through,
but with one shrewd stroke all your bungling is redeemed
as statesmanship, manifestly furthering the noblest interests
of Athens.
CHORUS
O lord of Delos, you
who haunt the cliffs and scarp,
where the ridge of Kynthos rises,
O Phoibos, be with us now!
And you of Ephesos, lady,
glory of the shrine of gold
where the Lydian women worship,
O Artemis, come to the dance!
And you, goddess on the hill,
mistress of this lovely land
beneath your aegis guarded,
O Athene, be with us now!
And you, dancer of Delphoi,
runner upon the peaks, at dark
when the trailing torches flicker
and the whirling Maenads cry their joy,
O Dionysos, dance with us now!
KORYPHAIOS
Our cluster of Clouds had gathered for the outing down to Athens
when we chanced to run into the Moon, who asked us to deliver
the following message on her behalf:
GREETINGS SALU-
TATIONS ETCET
TO ATHENS AND ALLIES STOP MY DEITY MOR-
TALLY OFFENDED
BY YOUR SCANDALOUS RUDENESS DESPITE
MANY SUBSTANTIAL CONTRIBUTIONS
TO WELFARE OF ATHENS STOP AM WOMAN OF
ACTIONS REPEAT ACTIONS
NOT WORDS
(Signed)
THE MOON.
And the Moon has a point, gentlemen.
Thanks to her shining efforts on your behalf, your average
savings
on lighting alone run more than a drachma a month. Why,
I can hear you now, instructing your slaves as you leave the
house,
"No need to buy torches tonight, lad. The moonlight's lovely."
And moonlight is merely one of her many services.
Nonetheless,
you brusquely refuse to devise an Accurate Lunar Calendar,
and your month is a consequent chaos, a masterpiece of
temporal confusion.
Worse still, when the gods come hungrily trudging home at
night
and find they must do without their dinner because you
celebrate
your festivals on the wrong day, it's the poor innocent Moon
who bears the brunt of their heavenly grumbling. What's
more,
on the days when you ought to sacrifice to the gods, you're
bustling
about holding trials or torturing some poor witness on the
rack.
And conversely, no sooner do the gods fast or go into
mourning
for Memnon or Sarpedon, than you Athenians start
carousing
and boozing.
So be warned, gentlemen.
Very recently the gods
stripped Hyperbolos of his seat on the Commission for Public Festivals
and Other Red-Letter Days--a measure designed to teach him
and all such Johnnies-Come-Lately a little respect for time.
(While the Chorus resumes its customary position, the
doors of the Thinkery are thrown open and Sokrates
appears.)
SOKRATES
Almighty Effluvium! Ozone and Chaos! Never
in all my days have I seen such peerless stupidity,
such a bungling, oblivious, brainless imbecile as this!
I no sooner teach him the merest snippets of science
than he suffers an attack of total amnesia. Still,
the Truth is my mistress and I obey.
(He goes to the Thinkery door and peers into the darkness.)
--Strepsiades,
where are you?
Fetch your mattress and come outside.
(Strepsiades appears at the door, tugging at his mattress.)
STREPSIADES
I can't come. The little bugs won't let me leave.
SOKRATES
Down with it, blockhead. Now your attention, please.
STREPSIADES
Ready.
SOKRATES
To resume then, what particular discipline
in that vast array of choices offered by your ignorance
would you especially like to acquire? For instance,
would you prefer diction or rhythm or measures?
STREPSIADES
Measures.
Why, just the other day the flourman swindled me
of half a peck.
SOKRATES
Not dry measures, dunderhead!
I want to know which meter you'd prefer to master-
trimeter or tetrameter.
STREPSIADES
Well. I like the yard
as well as anything.
SOKRATES
Rubbish. Palpable rubbish.
STREPSIADES
What would you like to bet that your trimeter isn't
exactly three feet?
SOKRATES
Why, you illiterate numskull!
However, perhaps you'd do better with rhythm.
STREPSIADES
Will rhythm buy the groceries?
SOKRATES
Sensitivity to rhythm
confers a certain ineluctable social savoir-faire
Polite society will accept you if you can discriminate, say,
between the martial anapest and common dactylic-
sometimes vulgarly called finger-rhythm.
STREPSIADES
Finger-rhythm?
I know that.
SOKRATES
Define it then.
FREPSIADES
(Extending his middle finger in an obscene gesture.)
Why, it's tapping time
with this finger. Of course, when I was a boy--
(Raising his phallus to the ready.)
I used to make rhythm with this one.
SOKRATES
Why, you lout!
STREPSIADES
But look, you goose, I don't want to learn this stuff.
SOKRATES
Then what do you want to learn?
STREPSIADES
Logic! Logic!
Teach me your Immoral Logic!
SOKRATES
But, my dear fellow,
one must begin by mastering the rudiments of language.
For instance, can you list me the male quadrupeds?
STREPSIADES
Pooh, I would be a damnfool if I didn't know them.
Listen: the ram, the buck, the stallion, the bull,
the duck--
SOKRATES
And now the females of the same quadrupeds.
STREPSIADES
Let's see: the ewe, the doe, the mare, the cow, The duck--
SOKRATES
Stop right there. A gross solecism.
According to you, the word duck apparently applies
to both the male and female of the species.
STREPSIADES
Huh?
How do you mean?
SOKRATES
In your usage, they're both ducks.
STREPSIADES
Holy Poseidon, you're right! What should I have said?
SOKRATES
The male is a duck; the female's a duchess.
STREPSIADES
A duchess?
Bravo! Almighty Ozone, that's a good one!
For that little lesson, you can bring out your basket
and I'll fill it with seed.
SOKRATES
Oops. Another solecism.
You've made basket masculine, when it's feminine.
STREPSIADES
What?
Basket is masculine? But why?
SOKRATES
Because the ending -et
is what in grammar we call a masculine termination.
Like the -os ending of Kleonymos.
STREPSIADES
Wait. I don't see.
SOKRATES
I repeat: basket and Kleonymos are masculine in form
and ending.
STREPSIADES
Kleonymos masculine? But he's feminine.
Form and ending. Queer as they come.
But look,
what should I call a basket?
SOKRATES
Why, a baskette, of course.
By analogy with toilette.
STREPSIADES
Baskette. eh?
SOKRATES
That's it.
Now you're talking Greek.
STREPSIADES
The baskette of Kleonymette?
SOKRATES
Precisely. Which brings us to the distinction between
men's names and women's names.
STREPSIADES
Oh, I know the female name
SOKRATES
For example?
STREPSIADES
For example, Lysilla, Philinna, Demetria,
Kleitagora--
SOKRATES
And now recite some masculine names.
STREPSIADES
Easy. There's thousands of them. Like Philoxenos, Melesia,
Amynias-
SOKRATES
Stop, you nincompoop. I asked for men's name
not women's names.
STREPSIADES
You mean those aren't men's names
SOKRATES
Not men's names at all. A transparent confusion
between singular and plural. Suppose, for instance,
we drop the plural s from Amynias, what would we have
STREPSIADES
Why, Amynia
SOKRATES
You see, by dropping the plural s,
you've made Amynias a singular woman.
STREPSIADES
Well, the draftdodger,
it serves him right. But why am I learning stuff
any damn fool knows?
SOKRATES
Fool, you flatter yourself.
However, lie down on your mattress and-
STREPSIADES
And what, Sokrates?
SOKRATES
And lucubrate upon your dilemma.
STREPSIADES
Please, no, Sokrates!
Anywhere but there. Couldn't I just go and lubricate
on the ground?
SOKRATES
Permission refused.
STREPSIADES
Ohh, what a fate!
Those little bugs are sure to crucify me now.
(Strepsiades burrows under the infested sheepskins on his
mattress while Sokrates chants encouragement.)
SOKRATES
First concentrate
Then cerebrate
Now concentrate again.
Then lucubrate.
Next, speculate.
Now ruminate And then,
if your mind gets stuck,
don't curse your luck.
Get up! Quick as a wink,
cut through the knot,
swift as a thought,
but THINK. Candidate. THINK!
Now hence, ye Syrops of Sleep! Come hither, O Pain!
STREPSIADES
YOOOOOOOw! YOOOOOOOw!
SOKRATES
Look here, what's biting you now?
STREPSIADES
Biting, you say?
THEY'RE MURDERING ME!
Out of the ticking
the bugs come creeping.
They're biting my ribs.
They're swilling my blood.
My balls are all sores.
My ass is a shambles
THEY'RE MURDERING ME!
SOKRATES
There, there, old fellow. Don't take it so hard.
STREPSIADES
DON'T TAKE IT SO HARD?
When my money's gone?
When my skin's gone?
When my blood's gone?
And then what's more,
when I tried to hum
and forget these bites,
I DAMN NEAR DIED!
(There is a brief interval of silence during which Strepsiades
hums and thrashes under his covers. Then Sokrates picks up
a sheepskin and peers under.)
SOKRATES
Here, what's this? Have you stopped lucubrating?
STREPSIADES
Who, me?
By Poseidon, I have not!
SOKRATES
What thoughts have you had?
STREPSIADES
Only this. I've been thinking how much of me would be
left when the bugs got through.
SOKRATES
Bah! Consume you for an ass.
STREPSIADES
I am consumed.
SOKRATES
Courage, gaffer. We mustn't repine.
Pull back your covers and concentrate. What we need
is some clever quibbling subterfuge with which to frustrate
and fleece your creditors.
STREPSIADES
Who's fleecing who, Sokrates?
That's what I'd like to know.
(Another brief silence follows.)
SOKRATES
Hmmm. I wonder
what he's up to now? I'll peek under the covers.
(He lifts the sheepskin.)
What's this? Asleep on the job, are you?
STREPSIADES
By Apollo,
I'm not sleeping!
SOKRATES
Any thoughts yet?
STREPSIADES
Not a thing.
SOKRATES
Surely you've found something.
STREPSIADES
Well, only this thing
I've got in my hand.
SOKRATES
Buffoon! Get back to your pallet
and cogitate.
STREPSIADES
But, Sokrates, what am I cogitating about?
SOKRATES
A moot question, friend, whose answer lies with you.
When you know what you want, kindly illuminate me.
STREPSIADES
But I've told you ten thousand times already, Sokrates.
It's my debts. I want to welsh on my debts.
SOKRATES
Splendid.
Then back to your pallet.
(Strepsiades dutifully crawls under his sheepskin.)
And now distill your mind
to its airiest essence, allowing the subtle elixirs of thought
to permeate and penetrate every pore of the problem.
Then Analyze, Refine, Synthesize, Define--
STREPSIADES
(Frantically thrashing to escape the bugs.)
OUCH!
SOKRATES
Stop fidgeting!
--However, in the case of a dilemma.
defer your inquiry briefly. When refreshed, return,
sift your conclusions and knead vigorously Then mull
the results.
STREPSIADES
(Suddenly illuminated.)
OOOOh, Sokrates!
SOKRATES
Yes?
STREPSIADES
EUREKA! I've got it. A glorious dodge for ditching my debts!
SOKRATES
Aha. Expatiate.
STREPSIADES
Well, just suppose--
SOKRATES
Supposing what?
STREPSIADES
Just suppose I rented one of those witchwomen from
Thessaly and ordered her to charm down the moon from
the sky. And then I snatch up the moon and I pop her into
a box, and polish her face until she shines like a mirror
SOKRATES
And what would you gain by that?
STREPSIADES
What would I gain?
Why, think what would happen if the moon never rose.
I wouldn't have to pay interest.
SOKRATES
No interest? But why?
STREPSIADES
Because interest falls due on the last day of the month,
before the New Moon, doesn't it?
SOKRATES
A superlative swindle!
Now then, let me propose a somewhat thornier case.
You are threatened, we assume, with a suit for five talents.
Problem: how do you quash the verdict?
STREPSIADES
How? I don't know.
I'd have to meditate on that.
SOKRATES
By all means meditate;
but beware of immuring your mind with excessive intro-
spection. Allow your intellect instead to sally forth upon
her own. as though you held a cockroach on a leash.
STREPSIADES
(Suddenly illuminated.)
Ooh, Sokrates. I've found a glorious bamboozle! I've got it!
Admit it, it's wonderful!
SOKRATES
Kindly expound it first.
STREPSIADES
Well, have you ever noticed in the druggists' shops
that beautiful stone, that transparent sort of glass
that makes things burn?
SOKRATES
A magnifying glass, you mean?
STREPSIADES
That's it. Well, suppose I'm holding one of these,
and while the court secretary is recording my case,
and scorch out every word of the charges.
SOKRATES
By the Graces
a magnificent bamboozle!
STREPSIADES
Whew, and am I glad
to get that suit quashed!
SOKRATES
Now then, try your teeth
on this little teaser
STREPSIADES
Shoot
SOKRATES
This time imagine
that you find yourself a defendant without a witness.
Your case is absolutely hopeless. Problem: to prevent
your opponent's suit from coming to trial
STREPSIADES
Pooh.
nothing to it at all.
SOKRATES
Elaborate.
STREPSIADES
But it's a pushover,
Sokrates. While they were trying the case before mine.
I'd go hang myself
SOKRATES
Preposterous!
STREPSIADES
It's not preposterous.
You can't sue a corpse.
SOKRATES
Poppycock. Palpable rubbish.
As your tutor, I hereby resign. And now, GET OUT!
STREPSIADES
You resign? But why?
Falling on his knees in supplication.
Oh, please. I implore you, Sokrates...
SOKRATES
But you forget everything as fast as you learn it, numskull!
Tell me, what was the first lesson?
Well, speak up.
STREPSIADES
Let me think. The first lesson? The first lesson?
Ummm. That whoozit you put seeds in! For god's sake.
what is it called?
SOKRATES
Why, you blithering bungler!
You senile incompetent! You...you mooncalf! Clear out!
STREPSIADES
Sweet gods in heaven, what's to become of me now?
I'm a goner unless I master those sleights-of-tongue.
Falling on his knees before the Chorus
O most gracious Clouds, please advise me. Tell me what to do
KORYPHAIOS
Our counsel, reverend sir, is this.
Have you a grown-up son perhaps?
Then send him off to study in your place
STREPSIADES
It's true. ladies. I have a son. but he's a gentleman. you see,
with a true gentleman's natural distaste for learning. So what can I do?
KORYPHAIOS
Is he the boss?
STREPSIADES
Well, he's a strapping, sturdy boy, and there's a bit of eagle-blood
on his mother's side. Still, I'll go fetch him anyway. If he refuses
to learn his lessons, by god, he'll never set foot in my house again!
(To Sokrates.)
--I won't be gone a moment.
Exit Strepsiades into his house
CHORUS
Now, sir, you see
what blessings we,
the Clouds, have brought to pass.
E.g. this foolish,
willing tool,
this frantic, eager ass.
But seize your prey.
Avoid delay.
No matter how well hooked,
your fish is not
fried fish till caught--
and goose is better cooked.
(Exit Sokrates. Enter Strepsiades, dragging Pheidippides.)
STREPSIADES
Out with you! By Condensation, you won't stay here!
Go cut your teeth on Megakles' money!
PHEIDIPPIDES
But Father,
what's the matter with you? Are you out of your head?
Almighty Zeus, you must be mad!
STREPSIADES
"Almighty Zeus!"
What musty rubbish! Imagine, a boy your age.
still believing in Zeus!
PHEIDIPPIDES
What's so.damn funny?
STREPSIADES
It tickles me when the heads of toddlers like you
are still stuffed with such outdated notions.
Now then, listen to me and I'll tell you a secret or two
that might make an intelligent man of you yet.
But remember: you mustn't breath a word of this.
PHEIDIPPIDES
A word of what?
STREPSIADES
Didn't you just swear by Zeus?
PHEIDIPPIDES
I did.
STREPSIADES
Now learn what Education can do for you:
Pheidippides, there is no Zeus.
PHEIDIPPIDES
There is no Zeus?
STREPSIADES
No Zeus. Convection-Principle's in power now.
Zeus has been banished.
STREPSIADES
Take my word for it,
it's absolutely true.
PHEIDIPPIDES
Drivel!
PHEIDIPPIDES
Who says so?
STREPSIADES
Sokrates. And Chairephon too.
The famous expert on fleafeet.
STREPSIADES
Are you so far gone on the road to complete insanity
you'd believe the word of those charlatans?
STREPSIADES
Hush, boy. For shame. I won't hear you speaking disrespectfully
of such eminent scientists and geniuses. And, what's more,
men of such fantastic frugality and Spartan thrift,
they regard baths, haircuts, and personal cleanliness generally
as an utter waste of time and money--whereas you, dear boy,
have taken me to the cleaner's so many times, I'm damn near washed up.
Come on, for your father's sake, go and learn.
PHEIDIPPIDES
What do they teach that's worth knowing?
STREPSIADES
Worth knowing? Why, the accumulated wisdom of mankind.
For instance, what a blockhead and numskull you are.
Hmmm. Wait here. I'll be right back.
(Strepsiades darts into his house. )
PHEIDIPPIDES
Gods in heaven,
what should I do? My father's gone completely balmy.
Should I hale him into court on charges of insanity
or notify the undertakers?
(Strepsiades reappears with a pair of ducks.
He holds up first one and then the other.)
STREPSIADES
Now then, what's this called?
PHEIDIPPIDES
That? A duck.
STREPSIADES
Excellent. Now what do you call this?
PHEIDIPPIDES
Why, another duck.
STREPSIADES
Another duck? You stupid boy. From now on you must learn
to call them by their right names. This one is a duck;
that one's a duchess.
PHEIDIPPIDES
A duchess! So this is the glorious wisdom
you've picked up from those walking corpses!
STREPSIADES
Oh, there's lots more too, but I'm so old everything
I learn goes in one ear and right out the other.
PHEIDIPPIDES
Ah. Doubtless that explains how you lost your cloak.
STREPSIADES
I didn't lose it. I swapped it.
For thoughts.
PHEIDIPPIDES
And where have your sandals gone, you idiot?
STREPSIADES
In the words of Perikles himself when they asked him
where the money went: Expended as required. No comment.
And now, inside with you, boy. Humor me in this and
you can make an ass of yourself in any way you like.
Ah, how well I remember those days when you were six,
and I had to humor your tantrums. Why, the very first
pay I ever drew as a juror went to buy you a cart at the fair.
PHEIDIPPIDES
All right, Dad.
But someday you'll be sorry.
STREPSIADES
Ah, good dutiful boy.
--Hallo there, Sokrates!
Hey, Sokrates, come outside.
I've brought my son along--
no damn thanks to him.
(Enter Sokrates from the Thinkery. )
SOKRATES
Why, he's still a baby. How could a toddler
like this possibly operate our Hanging Baskets?
PHEIDIPPIDES
As for you, why don't you
hang yourself and skip the basket?
STREPSIADES
Here.
for shame! You'd insult the Master?
SOKRATES
(Imitating Pheidippides.)
"Thkip the bathket."
Dear me, what adorable, childish prattle. And look
at those great sulking lower lips. How in the world
could this fumbling foetus ever master the arts
of Verdict-Quashing, False Witness, Innuendo,
and Character Assassination? On the other hand, however,
the case is not without precedent. Even Hyperbolos,
after all, somehow mastered the tricks of the trade.
The fee, of course, was prodigious.
STREPSIADES
Now don't you worry
Sokrates. The boy's a born philosopher.
Yes, sir, when he was just a mite of a shaver, so high,
he used to make the cleverest things you'ever saw.
Why, there were dollhouses, sailboats,
little pushcarts from scraps of leather,
and the sweetest little frogs carved from fruit peel.
He's a scholar, all right.
So tutor him in your two logics--
traditional Philosophical Logic
and that flashy modern sophistic logic.
they call Immoral because it's so wonderfully wicked.
In any case, if he can't master both logics,
I insist that he learn the Immoral Kind of argument.
SOKRATES
Philosophy and Sophistry will instruct your son in person.
And now, gentlemen, if you'll excuse me, I must leave.
STREPSIADES
But remember, Sokrates:
I want him able to make an utter mockery of the truth.
(Exit Sokrates. After his departure the doors of the Thinkery
are thrown open and Philosophy and Sophistry are rolled forward
in great gilded cages. From the shoulders down, both are human;
from the neck up they are fighting-cocks. Philosophy (or the
Traditional Logic) is a large, muscular rooster, powerful
but not heavy, expressing in his movements that inward harmony
and grace and dignity which the Old Education was meant to produce;
his plumage is so simple and dignified as to seem almost dingy.
Sophistry. by contrast, is comparatively slight, with
sloping shoulders, an emaciated pallor. an enormous tongue
and a disproportionately large phallus. His body is graceless
but extremely quick-moving; his every motion expresses
defiant belligerence, and his plumage is brilliant
to the point of flashiness. The debate itself should be
conducted at top speed with much scratching and spurring.
As the Attendants open the cages, the fighters step out
and circle each other warily, jockeying for position.)
PHILOSOPHY
Front and center, you Feathered Impertinence.
Take your little bow before the audience.
You like to swagger.
SOPHISTRY
Why, you Pompous Lump,
with all my heart. The bigger the crowd,
the better I'll rebut you.
PHILOSOPHY
You'll rebut me?
Who are you. runt?
SOPHISTRY
A Logic
PHILOSOPHY
You, A Logic? Why, you cheap,
stunted Loquacity! You pipsqueak Palaver!
SOPHISTRY
I may be called
Mere Sophistry,
but I'll chop you down to size.
I'll refute you.
PHILOSOPHY
Refute me? How?
SOPHISTRY
With unconventionality.
With ultramodernity.
With unorthodox ideas.
PHILOSOPHY
For whose present vogue we are indebted
to this audience of imbeciles and asses.
SOPHISTRY
Asses? These sophisticated gentlemen? These wits?
PHILOSOPHY
I'll invalidate you.
SOPHISTRY
Invalidate me?
How, fossil?
PHILOSOPHY
My arguments are Truth and Justice.
SOPHISTRY
Then I'll disarm you and defeat you,
friend. Your Justice doesn't exist.
PHILOSOPHY
What? No Justice?
Preposterous!
SOPHISTRY
Then show it to me. Where is it?
PHILOSOPHY
Where is Justice'' Why. in the Lap of the Gods.
SOPHISTRY
In the Lap of the Gods? Then would you explain how
Zeus escaped punishment after he imprisoned his father?
The inconsistency is glaring.
PHILOSOPHY
Aaaagh. What nauseating twaddle. It turns my stomach.
SOPHISTRY
Why, you Decrepitude! You Doddenng Dotard!
PHILOSOPHY
Why, you Precocious Pederast! You Palpable Pervert!
SOPHISTRY
Pelt me with roses!
PHILOSOPHY
You Toadstool! O Cesspool!
SOPHISTRY
Wreath my hair with lilies!
PHILOSOPHY
Why, you Parricide!
SOPHISTRY
Shower me with gold!
Look, don't you see
I welcome your abuse?
PHILOSOPHY
Welcome it, monster? In my day
we would have cringed with shame.
SOPHISTRY
Whereas now we're flattered. Times change.
The vices of your age are stylish today.
PHILOSOPHY
Repulsive Whippersnapper!
SOPHISTRY
Disgusting Fogy!
PHILOSOPHY
Because of you the schools of Athens
stand deserted; one whole generation
chaffers in the streets, gaping and idle.
Mark my words: someday this city
shall learn what you have made her men:
effeminates and fools.
SOPHISTRY
Ugh, you're squalid!
PHILOSOPHY
Whereas you've become a Dandy and a Fop!
But I remember your beggared beginnings,
playing as Telephos, grubby and shifty,
tricked out in Euripidean rags and tatters
and cramming your wallet with
moldy leavings from Pandaletos' loaf.
SOPHISTRY
What a prodigy of wisdom
was there!
PHILOSOPHY
And what a prodigy of madness here--your madness,
and madder still than you, this maddened city which
lets you live--you, corrupter and destroyer of her youth!
SOPHISTRY
(Throwing a wing about Pheidippides.)
Why, you Hoary Fossil! This is
one student you'll never teach!
PHILOSOPHY
(Pulling Pheidippides back.)
Teach him I shall--
unless he's prepared to devote his career
exclusively to drivel.
SOPHISTRY
Bah, rave to yourself.
--Come here, boy.
PHILOSOPHY
You touch him at your peril.
KORYPHAIOS
(Intervening.)
Gentlemen, forego your wrangling and abuse.
and each present his arguments in turn.
Describe how you taught the men of the past,
and you, Sir, your New Education.
PHILOSOPHY
I second your proposal.
SOPHISTRY
As do I.
KORYPHAIOS
Excellent.
Who will speak first?
SOPHISTRY
Let him begin. I yield the floor. But when he's done,
I'll smother him beneath so huge a driving hail of
Modern Thought and Latest Views, he cannot speak--
or if he does, my hornet words and waspish wit will
sting him so, he'll never speak again.
CHORUS
--At last!
--The Great Debate begins!
--Between these two
contending, clever speakers,
--matched so fairly,
--who
will win, is anybody's guess.
--Both are subtle,
--both facile, both witty,
--both masters of rebuttal
--and abuse.
--The stake? Wisdom.
--For her they fight.
--Wisdom is the prize
--For her their rival hackles rise.
--So listen well.
--Upon their skill, the destinies of Language,
Intellect, and Educated Athens hang.
KORYPHAIOS
(To Philosophy.)
Come, Sir, I summon you--
you who conferred your crown of virtue
upon the Older Generation--to take the stand.
Be bold; rise and with clarion tongue
tell us what you represent.
PHILOSOPHY
Gentlemen,
I propose to speak of the Old Education, as it flourished
once
beneath my tutelage, when Homespun Honesty, Plainspeaking,
and Truth
were still honored and practiced, and throughout the schools
of Athens
the regime of the three D's--DISCIPLINE, DECORUM,
and DUTY--
enjoyed unchallenged supremacy.
Our curriculum was
Music and Gymnastic,
enforced by that rigorous discipline summed up in the old
adage:
BOYS SHOULD BE SEEN BUT NOT HEARD. This was
our cardinal rule,
and when the students, mastered by groups according to
region,
were marched in squads to schools, discipline and absolute
silence prevailed.
Ah, they were hardy, manly youngsters. Why,
even on winter mornings when the snow, like powdered
chaff,
came sifting down, their only protection against the bitter
weather
was a thin and scanty tunic. In the classes, posture was
stressed
and the decencies firmly enforced: the students stood in
rows,
rigidly at attention, while the master rehearsed them by rote
over and over. The music itself was traditional and
standard--
such familiar anthems and hymns as those, for instance,
beginning
A Voice from Afar or Hail, O Pallas, Destroyer!--and the
old modes
were strictly preserved in all their austere and simple beam
Clowning in class was sternly forbidden, and those who
improvised
or indulged in those fantastic flourishes and trills so much in
vogue
with the degenerate, effeminate school of Phrynis, were
promptly thrashed
for subverting the Muses.
In the gymnasium too decorum
was demanded.
The boys were seated together, stripped to the skin, on the
bare ground,
keeping their legs thrust forward, shyly screening their
nakedness
from the gaze of the curious. Why, so modest were students
then,
that when they rose, they carefully smoothed out the ground
beneath them,
lest even a pair of naked buttocks leaving its trace in the
sand
should draw the eyes of desire. Anointing with oil was
forbidden
below the line of the navel, and consequently their genitals
kept
their boyish bloom intact and the quincelike freshness of
youth.
Toward their lovers their conduct was manly: you didn't
see them.
mincing or strutting, or prostituting themselves with girlish
voices
or coy, provocative glances.
At table courtesy and good
manners
were compulsory. Not a boy of that generation would have
dreamed
of taking so much as a radish or the merest pinch of parsley
before his elders had been served. Rich foods were
prohibited,
raucous laughter or crossing their legs forbidden...
SOPHISTRY
Ugh, what musty, antiquated rubbish. It reeks of
golden grasshoppers, all gewgaws and decaying institutions!
PHILOSOPHY
Nonetheless, these were the precepts
on which I bred a generation of heroes, the men who fought
at Marathon.
(To Sophistry.)
And what do you teach?
Modesty?
No, vanity and softness, and the naked beauty
of the body muffled in swirling clothes gross and unmanly.
Why, at Panathenaia now it sickens me to see the boys dancing,
ashamed of their own bodies, effetely forgetting their duty
to the goddess while they screen their nakedness behind their shields.
Bah.
(To Pheidippides.)
No, young man, by your courage I challenge you.
Turn your back upon his blandishments of vice,
the rotten law courts and the cheap, corrupting softness of the baths.
Choose instead the Old, the Philosophical Education. Follow me
and from my lips acquire the virtues of a man:--A sense of shame,
that decency and innocence of mind that shrinks from doing wrong.
To feel the true man's blaze of anger when his honor is provoked.
Deference toward one's elders; respect for one's father and mother.
To preserve intact, unsullied by disgrace or stained with wrong,
that image of Manliness and Modesty by which alone you live.
Purity:--to avoid the brothels and the low, salacious leer
of prostituted love--which, being bought, corrupts your manhood
and destroys your name. Toward your father scrupulous obedience;
to honor his declining years who spent his prime in rearing you.
Not to call him Dotard or Fogy--
SOPHISTRY
Boy, if you follow his advice, you'll finish by looking like
one of Hippokrates' sissified sons. They'll call you Mollycoddle Milksop.
PHILOSOPHY
Rubbish. I promise you,
not contentious disputations and the cheap, courtroom cant
of this flabby, subpoena-serving, shyster-jargoned de-generation,
but true athletic prowess, the vigor of contending manhood
in prime perfection of physique, muscular and hard, glowing with health.
Ah, I can see you now, as through an idyl moving--
you with some companion of your age, modest and manly like you,
strolling by Akademe perhaps, or there among the olives,
sprinting side by side together, crowned with white reed,
breathing with every breath the ecstasy of Spring returning,
the sudden fragrance of the season's leisure, the smell of woodbine
and the catkins flung by the poplar, while touching overhead,
the leaves of the linden and plane rustle, in love, together.
So follow me, young man, and win perfection of physique. To wit--
(Demonstrating each attribute individually.)
BUILD, Stupendous.
COMPLEXION, Splendid.
SHOULDERS, Gigantic.
TONGUE, Petite.
BUTTOCKS, Brawny.
PECKER, Discreet.
But follow my opponent here, and your reward shall be, as follows:
BUILD, Effeminate.
COMPLEXION, Ghastly.
SHOULDERS, Hunched.
TONGUE, Enormous.
BUTTOCKS, Flabby.
PECKER, Preposterous!
(But thereby insuring you an enormous and devoted political following.)
What is worse, you shall learn to make a mockery of all morality,
systematically confounding good with evil and evil with good,
so plumped and pursy with villainy, sodomy, disgrace, and perversion.
you resemble ANTIMACHOS himself
Depravity can sink no lower.
CHORUS
--Bravo!
--What brilliance!
--What finesse!
--This is wisdom at its noble best!
--Such Modesty,
--such Decorum in every lovely word distilled!
--Ah, lucky they
--whose happy lives were lived
--beneath your dispensation,
--by all the ancient virtues blessed! To Sophistry.
--So, sir.
--despite your vaunted subtlety and wit,
--take care:
--Your rival's speech has scored.
--Some crushing tour de force,
--some master stroke,
--is needed now.
--The stage is yours.
KORYPHAIOS
Unless your strategy is shrewdly planned and your attack ferocious,
then your cause is lost. We'll laugh you out of court.
SOPHISTRY
At last!
A few minutes more and I would have exploded from sheer impatience
to refute him and demolish his case. Now then, I freely admit
that among men of learning I am--somewhat pejoratively--dubbed
the Sophistic, or Immoral, Logic. And why? Because I first devised
a Method for the Subversion of Established Social Beliefs
and the Undermining of Morality. Moreover, this little invention of mine,
this knack of taking what might appear to be the worse argument
and nonetheless winning my case, has, I might add, proved to be
an extremely lucrative source of income.
But observe, gentlemen,
how I refute his vaunted Education.
(To Philosophy.)
Now then, in your curriculum hot baths are sternly prohibited.
But what grounds can you possibly adduce
for this condemnation of hot baths?
PHILOSOPHY
What grounds can I adduce? Why, they're thoroughly vicious.
They make a man flabby and effeminate.
SOPHISTRY
You can stop right there, friend. I have you completely at my mercy.
Answer me this: which of the sons of Zeus was the most heroic?
Who suffered most? Performed the greatest labors?
PHILOSOPHY
In my opinion, the greatest hero who ever lived was Herakles.
SOPHISTRY
Very well then. But when we speak of the famous Baths of Herakles,
are we speaking of hot baths or cold baths? Necessarily, sir, of hot baths.
Whence it clearly follows, by your own logic,
that Herakles was both flabby and effeminate.
Q.E.D.
PHILOSOPHY
Q.E.D.! This is the rubbish I mean!
This is the logical claptrap so much in fashion with the young!
This is what fills the baths and empties the gymnasiums!
SOPHISTRY
Very well,
if you like, consider our national passion for politics and debating,
pastimes which you condemn and I approve. But surely, friend,
if politics were quite so vicious as you pretend, old Homer--
our mentor on moral questions--would never have portrayed Nestor
and those other wise old men as politicians, would he?
Surely he would not. Or take the question of education in oratory--
in my opinion, desirable, in yours the reverse.
As for Moderation and Decorum, the very notions are absurd.
In fact, two more preposterous or pernicious prejudices,
I find it hard to imagine. For example, can you cite me
one instance of that profit which a man enjoys
by exercising moderation? Refute me if you can.
PHILOSOPHY
Why, instances abound:
Er...Peleus. for example. His virtue won him a sword.
SOPHISTRY
A sword, you say? What a charming little profit for the poor sucker!
Look at our Hyperbolos: nothing virtuous about him, god knows,
and yet, what with peddling lamps--plus a knack for swindling--
he piled up a huge profit. All cold cash. No swords for him.
No sir, Hyperbolos and swords just don't mix.
PHILOSOPHY
Furthermore.
Peleus' chastity earned him the goddess Thetis for his wife.
SOPHISTRY
Precisely, and what did she do? Promptly ditched him
for being cold, no passion for that all-night scrimmage
between the sheets that lusty women love,
Bah, you're obsolete.
(To Pheidippides.)
--Young man.
I advise you to ponder this life of Virtue with scrupulous care,
all that it implies, and all the pleasures of which its daily practice
must inevitably deprive you. Specifically, I might mention these:
Sex. Gambling. Gluttony. Guzzling. Carousing. Etcet.
And what on earth's the point of living, if you leach your life
of all its little joys? Very well then, consider your natural needs.
Suppose, as a scholar of Virtue, you commit some minor peccadillo,
a little adultery, say, or seduction, and suddenly find yourself
caught in the act. What happens? You're ruined, you can't defend yourself
(since, of course, you haven't been taught). But follow me, my boy,
and obey your nature to the full; romp, play, and laugh
without a scruple in the world. Then if caught in flagrante,
you simply inform the poor cuckold that you're utterly innocent
and refer him to Zeus as your moral sanction. After all, didn't he,
a great and powerful god, succumb to the love of women?
Then how in the world can you, a man, an ordinary mortal,
be expected to surpass the greatest of gods in moral self-control?
Clearly, you can't be.
PHILOSOPHY
And suppose your pupil, by taking your advice, is promptly
convicted of adultery and sentenced to be publicly reamed
up the rectum with a radish? How, Sir, would you save him from that?
SOPHISTRY
Why, what's the disgrace in being reamed with a radish?
PHILOSOPHY
Sir, I can conceive of nothing fouler than being buggered by a radish.
SOPHISTRY
And what would you have to say. my friend.
if I defeat you on this point too?
PHILOSOPHY
What could I say? I could never speak again for shame.
SOPHISTRY
Very well then.
What sort of men are our lawyers?
PHILOSOPHY
Why. they're all Buggers
SOPHISTRY
Right!
What are our tragic poets then?
PHILOSOPHY
Why, they're Buggers too.
SOPHISTRY
Right!
And what of our politicians. Sir?
PHILOSOPHY
Why. Buggers to a man.
SOPHISTRY
Right!
You see how stupidly you spoke?
And now look at our audience
What about them?
PHILOSOPHY
I'm looking hard.
SOPHISTRY
And what do you see?
PHILOSOPHY
By heaven,
I see an enormous crowd of people,
and almost all of them Buggers.
(Pointing to individuals in the audience.)
See there? That man's a Bugger,
and that long-haired fop's a Bugger too.
SOPHISTRY
Then how do we stand, my friend?
PHILOSOPHY
I've been beaten by the Buggers.
(Flinging his cloak to the audience.)
O Buggers, catch my cloak
and welcome me among the Buggers!
(With a wild shriek Philosophy disappears into his cage and
is wheeled away into the Thinkery, just as Sokrates comes
out.)
SOKRATES
Well, what are your wishes? Will you take your son home,
or shall I instruct him in the Pettifogger's Art?
STREPSIADES
Teach him--
and flog him too. But remember: I want his tongue
honed down like a razor. Sharpen him on the left side
for piddling private suits, but grind him on the right
for Grand Occasions and Affairs of State.
SOKRATES
Sir, you may depend upon me. I promise
I'll send him home a consummate little Sophist.
PHEIDIPPIDES
God, what a picture of misery--
a nasty, pasty-faced, consummate little stinker!
(Exuent Sokrates and Pheidippides into the Thinkery.)
KORYPHAIOS Very well, go in.
(To Strepsiades.)
--You, Sir, shall live to regret your decision.
(Exit Strepsiades into his own house, as the Chorus turns
sharply and faces the audience.)
CHORUS
And now, Gentlemen of the Jury, a few brief words about
the Prize
and the solid benefits you stand to gain by voting for The
Clouds--
as you certainly should anyway.
First of all, when the season sets
for Spring and plowing time has come, we guarantee each
judge's fields
the top priority in rain. Let others wait. Furthermore,
for his vineyards and orchards, we promise, perfect growing-
weather:
no drought shall touch them, no flooding rains destroy.
However,
if some presuming mortal dares dishonor our divinity,
let him savor his punishment:
His acres, hard, dry, and barren,
shall see no harvesting. No wine, no fruit, shall ripen for
him.
And when the olives sprout, and the season's green festoons
the vines, his shall wither, battered by our ratatat of rain.
And when he's busy baking bricks, we'll snuff his kiln with
water
and smash his tiles with cannonades of hail. If he, his friend,
or relatives should celebrate a wedding, we'll send a
DELUGE down
and drown the wedding night in rain!
By god, we'll make him say
he'd rather be roasting in Egypt than have voted wrong
today!
(Enter Strepsiades from his house, counting on his fingers.)
STREPSIADES
Five days, four days, three days, two days, and then
that one day of the days of the month
I dread the most that makes me fart with fear--
the last day of the month, Duedate for debts,
when every dun in town has solemnly sworn
to drag me into court and bankrupt me completely.
And when I plead with them to be more reasonable--
"But PLEASE, sir. Don't demand the whole sum now.
Take something on account. I'll pay you later."
-- they snort they'll never see the day, curse me
for a filthy swindler and say they'll sue.
Well.
let them. If Pheidippides has learned to talk,
I don't give a damn for them and their suits.
Now then.
a little knock on the door and we'll have the answer.
(He knocks on Sokrates' door and calls out.)
Porter!
Hey, porter!
(Sokrates opens the door.)
SOKRATES
Ah, Strepsiades. Salutations.
STREPSIADES
Same to you, Sokrates.
(He hands Sokrates a bag of flour.)
Here. A token of my esteem.
Call it an honorarium. Professors always get honorariums.
(Snatching back the bag.)
But wait: has Pheidippides learned his rhetoric yet--
that swindling Rhetoric that performed for us just now?
SOKRATES
(Taking the bag.)
He has mastered it.
STREPSIADES
O great goddess Bamboozle!
SOKRATES
Now, sir, you can evade any legal action you wish to.
STREPSIADES ?
Really? Even if I borrowed the money before witnesses?
SOKRATES
Before ten thousand of them. The more the merrier
STREPSIADES
(In parody.)
Then let my loud falsetto peal
with gladsome paeans plangent!
Mourn, O ye lenders of money,
weep, O principals! Gnash your teeth,
O ye interests compounded.
For lo, within mine halls
a son hath risen,
a son with burnish'd tongue,
yea, with double edges lambent!
Hail, O hero of my halls,
who delivered my domicile,
who fractur'd mine enemies
and drowned a father's dolor!
Ho, fetch forth mine son
forthwith! O my son,
debouch from mine abode!
O heed thy father, prithee!'
(Pheidippides, the very image of "modern youth," slouches
contemptuously out of the Thinkery.)
SOKRATES
Behold the man!
STREPSIADES
O joy! My boy!
SOKRATES
Take him and go.
STREPSIADES
O my son! O! O!
O! O! O! O!
Oh, how gladly I behold thy pasty face,
that negative and disputatious look! And see there,
how there blossoms on his lips our national rejoinder,
"Huh? G'wan!" How perfectly he is the rogue,
but looks the victim through and through. And on his face
that utter pallor, ah, that true Athenian look!
--All right, Son, you ruined me so it's up to you
to save me.
PHEIDIPPIDES
What's eating you, Dad?
STREPSIADES
Your damn debts.
And the date. That's what. Your debts are due today.
Today's Dueday.
PHEIDIPPIDES
Today's two days? Or two Duedays?
But how can one day be two days?
STREPSIADES
How should I know?
It just is!
(Resuming more calmly, patiently explaining.)
Today's Dueday, son. This is the day
when creditors are required by law to post their bond
in court in order to obtain a summons against their debtors.
No bond, no summons.
PHEIDIPPIDES
Ergo, they will forfeit their bond.
By definition, one day cannot be two days.
STREPSIADES
It can't be?
But why not?
PHEIDIPPIDES
Because it's a logical impossibility, numskull.
If one day were two days, then ipso facto a woman
could be simultaneously a young girl and an old hag.
Which she can't be.
STREPSIADES
But it's the law!
PHEIDIPPIDES
In that case,
I suspect the law on debt has been profoundly misinter-
preted.
STREPSIADES
Misinterpreted? But how?
PHEIDIPPIDES
Enigmatically.
Old Solon loved the people.
STREPSIADES
And what in god's name has that got to do with the Due-
date?
PHEIDIPPIDES
Solon's sympathies lay with the debtor, not with the creditor.
STREPSIADES
And so?
PHEIDIPPIDES
And so, when Solon promulgated his law on debt,
he carefully specified two distinct Duedates
for debts, not one, as the current interpretation has it.
Prima facie, a summons could be issued on either day,
though in practice this was impossible, since the creditor's
bond could be paid only on the second Duedate.
STREPSIADES
But why did Solon
set two Duedates?
PHEIDIPPIDES'
Read between the lines, moron.
Solon intended that the debtor should present himself in
court on the first date and declare himself absolved of his
debts on the grounds of the creditor's failure to issue a
summons. He won by default. If, however, the debtor failed
to take advantage of the deliberate ambiguity of the law,
he had to account to his creditors in court the next day.
Not an attractive prospect.
STREPSIADES
But wait. If that's the law,
then how do you account for the glaring fact that the magis-
trates actually demand that the creditor's bond be paid on
the first day and not on the second?
PHEIDIPPIDES
Precisely because they
are magistrates.
Ipso facto, their greed is magisterial and their gluttony
uncontrollable. And because they can't wait to get their
fingers in the pie, they have quietly connived among
themselves to set the Duedate back a day earlier. Their
procedure. of course, is utterly illegal.
STREPSIADES
Still perplexed.
Huh?
But suddenly illuminated.
Hey!
Haw, that's good!
Turning to the audience.
Well, numskulls, what are you gawking at?
Yes, you down there!
You dumb sheep with the pigeon faces!
Cat's-paws for cleverer men! Any sophist's
suckers!
O shysterbait!
Generation of dupes!
Poor twerps, poor silly saps!
O Audience of Asses,
you were born to be taken!
--And now, gentlemen, a song
A little ditty of my own, dedicated to me and my son,
offering us warmest congratulations on our success.
Ready everybody?
(Singing and dancing.)
Oh, Strepsiades, Strepsiades,
there's no one like Strepsiades!
He went to school with Sokrates
who taught him all his sophistries!
He's smarter than
Euripides,
for only he's,
yes, only he's
Pheidippides'
Old Man!
By god, if ever I heard a hit, that's it!
(To Pheidippides.)
Once you finish off my creditors' suits, the whole town
will go green with envy of Strepsiades.
And now, son,
I'm throwing a dinner in your honor. So let's go in.
Exeunt Strepsiades and Pheidippides into the house. An in-
stant later Pasias arrives, accompanied by his Witness,. with
a summons against Strepsiades. A notorious spendthrift,
drunkard, and glutton, Pasias is grotesquely fat. Essentially
a good-natured man, he has prepared himself for a difficult
ordeal, and comes equipped with a wine flask from which he
periodically fortifies himself.
PASIAS
Well,
what am I supposed to do? Throw my hard-earned money
down the drain?
(Something in his own words reminds him that he needs a drink, a stiff one.)
Playboy Pasias. is it?
Nossiree.
Bah! Me and my great big heart! Soft-touch Pasias.
But I should have known. You've got to be a bastard.
Hard as nails.
(He hardens himself with a drink.)
If I'd sent him packing when he tried
to put the touch on me, I wouldn't be in this fix now.
What a mess!
To Witness.
I have to drag you around to stand witness.
and what's more, I'll make an enemy of Strepsiades for life.
He fortifies himself with still another drink.
Well. I'll sue him anyway.
Yessiree.
Athens expects it.
and I won't have it said that Pasias ever besmirched
the National Honor *
Nossiree.
Shouting into the house
-Strepsiades! I'm suing you !
STREPSIADES
Apearing at the door Somebody want me?
PASTAS
I do Today's the Dueday.
STREPSIADES
To the audience
Gentlemen, you're all witness: he distinctly mentioned
two days
To Pastas
What are you suing me for?
PASIAS
What for? Why.
the money you borrowed from me to buy that horse.
STREPSIADES
"Horse"
What horse? Everybody knows I'm allergic to horses.
Ask the audience
PASIAS
By god, you swore you'd pay me! You swore it by the gods
STREPSIADES
Well, by god, now I swear
I won't. Anyway, that was before Pheidippides learned the
Science of Unanswerable Argument.
PASIAS
And that's why you won't pay me?
STREPSIADES
Can you think of a better reason? I'm entitled to some return
on his education, aren't I?
PASIAS
And you're prepared to perjure yourself
on an oath sworn by the gods?
STREPSIADES
By the gods?
What gods?
PASIAS
What gods?
Why, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hermes.
STREPSIADES
Damn right
I would. And what's more, I'd do it again. Gratis,
by god! I like perjury.
PASIAS
You damnable liar!
Why, you barefaced swindler!
STREPSIADES
Prodding Pasias in the belly
Boy. what blubber'
You know,
that paunch of yours ought to make someone a mighty
dandy wineskin
PASIAS
By god. that's the last straw'
STREPSIADES
Hmmmm. Yup.
five gallons. I'd guess offhand
PASTAS
So help me Zeus!
So help me every god in heaven, you won't get away
with this!
STREPSIADES
You know, you and your silly gods tickle me.
Zeus is a joke to us Thinking Men
PASIAS
By god. someday
you'll regret this.
Now then, for the last time.
ill you pay me or won't you? Give me a straight answer
and I'll be off
STREPSIADES
Don't you budge. I'll be right back
and bring you my final answer.
Strepsiades rushes into the house.
PASIAS
To his Witness
I wonder what he's doing.
Do you think he'll pay me?
STREPSIADES
Reappearing from the house. in his hands he holds a large
basket
Now where's that creditor of mine?
Holding up the basket in front of Pasias
All right. you. what's this?
PASIAS
That? A basket.
STREPSIADES
A basket?
And a stupid ignoramus like you has the nerve to come
around badgering me for money? By god, I wouldn't give a
cent to a man who can't even tell a basket from a baskette
PASIAS
Then you won't pay me back?
STREPSIADES
Not if I know it.
Look here,
you Colossus of Lard, why don't you quietly melt away?
Beat it, Fatboy'
He threatens to beat him with his baskette
PASIAS
I'm going. Yessiree. And by god.
if I don't post my bond with the magistrates right now,
my name's not Pasias.
Nossiree.
STREPSIADES
Tch tch. Poor Pasias.
You'll just lose your bond on top of all your other losses.
And, personally speaking, I wouldn't want to see you suffer
just because your grammar's bad.
Beating Pasias over the head with his baskette.
Remember?
Baskette!
(Exit Pasias at a run pursued by Strepsiades. An instant later,
hideous wails and shrieks are heard off-stage, and these are
followed by the pathetic entrance of the notorious effeminate
and gambler, Amynias. He has just had an accident with his
chariot, and his entrance is a picture of misery: his head is
covered with blood, his clothes torn, and his language, a
delirious compound of tragic rhetoric and a marked lisp, is
almost unintelligible.)
AMYNIAS
Alackaday!
Woe is me!
Alas! Alas!
STREPSIADES
Gods in heaven,
what a caterwauling!
--Look, who are you?
The way you whine
you sound like some poor blubbering god from a tragedy
by Karkinos.*
AMYNIAS
Wouldst hear how I am high? Know then
a wretched wight in woe am I. Adversity yclept.
STREPSIADES
Then hit the road, Buster.
AMYNIAS
O Funest Doom!
O Darkling Destiny!
How fell the fate by which I fall.
ah, Pallas!
O all unhors'd! O human haplessness
I am!
STREPSIADES
I get it. You're an actor, and you want me to guess
what part you're practicing.
Hmm.
Must be a female role
But of course!
You're Alkmene in the play by Xenokles.
and you're mourning your brother
AMYNIAS
You're such a tease.
you naughty man.
Now then, be a dear, and ask Pheidippides
to pay me my money. You see, I'm in the most frightful
way. You simply can't imagine!
STREPSIADES
Money? What money?
AMYNIAS
Why, the money
Pheidippides borrowed.
STREPSIADES
Hmmm. You are in a frightful way.
You simply can't imagine.
AMYNIAS
But I can. You see, on my way,
I was thrown from my chariot. Literally hurled into the air.
It was too awful.
STREPSIADES
It fits. You must have hurt your head.
That would explain that gibberish about money.
AMYNIAS
What's gibberish
about wanting my money?
STREPSIADES
Obvious case of delirium. Brain damage too, I suspect.
AMYNIAS
Brain damage?
STREPSIADES
Yup.
You'll probably be queer the rest of your life.
That's how I see it.
AMYNIAS
Pay me my money, or I'll sue you! That's how
I see it.
STREPSIADES
Is that so?
All right, let me ask you a question.
I'm curious to know which theory on rainfall you prefer.
Now then, in your considered opinion, is the phenomenon
of rain best explained as a precipitation of totally fresh
water, or is it merely a case of the same old rainwater in
continuous re-use, slowly condensed by the Clouds and then
precipitated once more as rain?
AMYNIAS
My dear fellow.
I really couldn't care less.
STREPSIADES
Couldn't care less, eh?
And a sophomore like you, completely ignorant of Science,
thinks he's got the right to go around pestering people
to pay him money? Boy, some nerve!
AMYNIAS
Look here,
if you're temporarily short of cash, then let me have
the interest.
STREPSIADES
Interest? What the devil's interest?
AMYNIAS
Why, interest
is nothing more than the tendency of a cash principal
to reproduce itself by increments over a period of time.
Very gradually, day after day, month after month,
the interest accrues and the principal grows.
STREPSIADES
Dandy.
Then in your opinion there's more water in the ocean now
than last year? Is that right?
AMYNIAS
But, of course, it isn't.
Oceans can't grow, you silly man. It's against the Law
of Nature.
STREPSIADES
Then what about you, you unnatural bastard?
If the ocean, with all those rivers pouring into it,
doesn't grow, then who the hell are you to expect your
money to grow?
And now CLEAR OUT! Go peddle your
subpoenas somewhere else.
Amynias stands firm and Strepsiades calls out to his slave.
--Bring me my horsewhip.
The slave brings the whip and Strepsiades cracks it threaten-
ingly at Amynias.
AMYNIAS
Appealing in terror to the audience.
--Gentlemen,
you're my witnesses!
STREPSIADES
Still here, are you?
He flicks Amynias with the whip.
Giddeap!
Gallop, you gelding!
Gee!
He flicks Amynias again with his whip, this time in the rear.
AMYNIAS
A hit! A hit!
A palpable hit!
STREPSIADES
Raising his phallus to the ready.
Git, dammit, or I'll sunder your rump
with my ram!
With a wild whinny of fright, Amynias rushes offstage.
Going, are you?
A damned good thing.
And don't come back here nagging me about your money,
or I'll badger your bum!
You'll get the ride of your life!
Strepsiades re-enters the house to resume his interrupted dinner with Pheidippides.
CHORUS
Individually.
--Such is wickedness,
--such is fatal fascination:
--this senile amateur of fraud,
--by greed and guile obsessed,
--frantic to disown his debts
--(and,
--such his luck,
--apparently
--succeeding).
--BUT please take note:
--soon,
--perhaps today,
--this poor man's Sokrates must learn his lesson,
--viz.
--CRIME DOES NOT PAY.
--Dishonesty comes home to roost.
--It's Poetic Retribution!
--But now, poor fish!
--he thinks he's sitting
--pretty.
--Success at last!
--For hasn't his Pheidippides become
--so voluble a speaker,
--so specious a sophist,
--a shyster so vicious,
--that he's now
--ABSOLUTELY INVINCIBLE?
--So he gloats.
--But wait!
--Take note:
--the time will come
Strepsiades howls in pain offstage.
--in fact, it's coming now-
-when poor Strepsiades
will wish to god
--Pheidippides were
--DUMB!
With a bellow of pain and terror, Strepsiades plunges out of
his house, hotly pursued by Pheidippides with a murderous
stick.
STREPSIADES
OOOUUUCH!!! HALP! For god's sake, help me!
Appealing to the Audience.
Friends!
Fellow-countrymen! Aunts! Uncles! Fathers! Brothers!
To the rescue! He's beating me! Help me! Ouuch!
O my poor head!
Ooh, my jaw!
To Pheidippides.
--You great big bully, Hit your own father, would you?
PHEIDIPPIDES
Gladly, Daddy.
STREPSIADES
You hear that? The big brute admits it.
PHEIDIPPIDES
Admit it? Hell, I proclaim it.
STREPSIADES
You Turd!
You cheap Cutthroat! You father-beating Bastard!
You...you...you--
PHEIDIPPIDES
Carry on. Don't you
you're complimenting me?
STREPSIADES
Why, you . . . you . . you Palpablvert! You Pederast!
PHEIDIPPIDES
Roll me in roses, Daddy!
STREPSIADES
You Bugger!
Hit your own father, would you?
PHEIDIPPIDES
Damn right I would.
God knows, I had good justification.
STREPSIADES
Justification, you say?
Why, you Dunghill, what justification could there ever be
for hitting your own father?
PHEIDIPPIDES
Would a logical demonstration
convince you?
STREPSIADES
A logical demonstration? You mean to tell me
you can prove a shocking thing like that?
PHEIDIPPIDES
Elementary, really.
What's more, you can choose the logic. Take your pick.
Either one.
STREPSIADES
Either which?
PHEIDIPPIDES
Either which? Why,
Socratic logic or pre-Socratic logic. Either logic.
Take your pick.
STREPSIADES
Take my pick, damn you? Look,
who do you think paid for your shyster education anyway?
And now you propose to convince me that there's nothing
wrong in whipping your own father?
PHEIDIPPIDES
I not only propose it;
I propose to prove it. Irrefutably, in fact. Rebuttal
is utterly inconceivable.
STREPSIADES
By god, this I want to hear!
CHORUS
Old friend, WATCH OUT.
Upon this bout
may hang your own survival.
What's more, unless
I miss my guess,
the odds are on your rival.
That curling lip,
that sneer's a tip,
and you'd be wise to heed it.
The tip? A trap.
But, verbum sap.
I wish you luck. You'll need it.
KORYPHAIOS
To Strepsiades.
And now, Sir, I suggest you brief the Chorus Begin at the
beginning and describe your little fracas exactly as it happened.
STREPSIADES
Yes'm.
The whole damn dirty squabble from start to finish.
As you know.
we both went in to celebrate. Well, Ladies, a custom's a
custom,*
after all, and there's nothing like a little music, 1 always say.
to get a party off to a good start. So naturally I asked him
to get down his lyre and sing a song. For instance.
Simonides'
Shearin' o' the Ram.*
Well, you know what the little stinker answered?
That singing at table was--Obsolete,
Old Hat,
Lowbrow,
Bullshit!
Strictly for grandmothers.
PHEIDIPPIDES
You damn well got what you
deserved. Asking me to sing on an empty stomach! What is
this anyway? A banquet or a cricket-concert?
STREPSIADES
You hear that? A cricket-concert!
His exact words.
And then he started sneering at Simonides!
Called him--get this--Puny Pipsqueak Hack!
Was I sore?
Brother!
Well, somehow I counted to ten, and then I asked
him to sing me some Aischylos.
Please.
And you know what he replied?
That he considered Aischylos "a poet of colossal stature:"-- Yup,
"the most colossal, pretentious, pompous, spouting, bom-
bastic bore in poetic history."*
I was so damn mad I just about went
through the roof. But I gritted my teeth together, mustered
up a sick smile and somehow managed to say, "All right,
son, if that's how you feel, then sing me a passage from
one of those highbrow modern plays you're so crazy about."
So he recited--you can guess--
Euripides! One of those slimy tragedies* where, so help me,
there's a brother who screws his own sister!
Well, Ladies, that did it!
I jumped up,
blind with rage, started cursing at him and calling him
names, and he started screaming and cursing back and
before I knew it, he hauled off and--wham!--he biffed me
and bashed me and clipped me and poked me and choked
me and--
PHEIDIPPIDES
And, by god, you
had it coming! Knocking a genius like Euripides!
STREPSIADES
That.... that.... !
Euripides! A GENIUS?? That...
Pheidippides raises his stick threateningly.
HALP! He's hitting me!
PHEIDIPPIDES
You've got it coming, Dad!
STREPSIADES
Got it coming, do I?
Why, you ungrateful brat, I raised you!
When you were a baby I pampered you! I waited on you
hand and foot!
I understood your 'babytalk. You babbled GOO and I
obeyed. Why,
when you whimpered WAWA DADA, who brought your water?
DADA did.
When you burbled BABA, who brought your Baby Biscuits?
DADA did. And when you cried GOTTA GO KAKA DADA. who
saved his shitty darling?
Who rushed you to the door? Who held you while you did
it? Damn you,
DADA did! And in return you choked me
and when I shat in terror,
would you give your Dad a hand,
would you help me to the door?
No, you left me there alone
to do it on the floor!
Yes, to do it on the floor!
CHORUS
YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE!
Pheidippides
now makes his demonstration--
a proof which will,
I'm certain, thrill
the younger generation.
For if this lad
defeats his Dad,
there's not an older man
or father in
this town, whose skin
is worth a Tinker's Damn!
KORYPHAIOS
And now that Doughty Champion of Change, that Golden-
Tongued Attorney
for Tomorrow, that Harbinger of Progress
--PHEIDIPPIDES!
To Pheidippides.
Remember, Sir,
we want the truth
--or a reasonable facsimile.
PHEIDIPPIDES
Gentlemen, Eloquence
is sweet, sweeter than I ever dreamed! This utter bliss of
speech! This rapture of articulation! But oh, the sheer Attic
honey of subverting the Established Moral Order!
And yet when I look back
on those benighted days of pre-Sokratic folly, upon the boy
I used to be, whose only hobby was horses, who could not
speak three words of Greek without a blunder, why...
words fail me.
But now, now that Sokrates has made a fresh Pheidippides
of me, now that my daily diet is Philosophy, Profundity,
Subtlety, and Science, I propose to prove beyond the
shadow of a doubt the philosophical propriety of beating
my Father.
STREPSIADES
For the love of Zeus,
go back to your damn horses! I'd rather be stuck with a
stable than be battered by a stick.
PHEIDIPPIDES
I ignore these childish interruptions
and proceed with my demonstration.
Now then, answer my question:
did you lick me when I was a little boy?
STREPSIADES
Of course I licked you.
For your own damn good. Because I loved you.
PHEIDIPPIDES
Then ipso facto.
since you yourself admit that loving and lickings are
synonymous, it's only fair that I--for your own damn good,
you understand?--whip you in return.
In any case by what right do you whip me
but claim exemption for yourself?
What do you think I am? A slave?
Wasn't I born as free a man as you?*
Well?
STREPSIADES
But . . .
PHEIDIPPIDES
But what?
Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child?
Is that your argument?
If so,
then I can be sententious too. Old Men Are Boys Writ Big,
as the saying goes.
A fortiori then, old men logically deserve
to be beaten more, since at their age they have clearly less
excuse for the mischief that they do.
STREPSIADES
But it's unnatural! It's...illegal!
Honor your father and mother.
That's the law. Everywhere.
PHEIDIPPIDES
The law?
And who made the law?
An ordinary man. A man like you or me.
A man who lobbied for his bill until he persuaded the
people to make it law.
By the same token, then, what prevents me now
from proposing new legislation granting sons the power to
inflict corporal punishment upon wayward fathers?
Nothing vindictive, of course.
In fact, I would personally insist on adding a rider,
a Retroactive Amnesty for Fathers, waiving our right to
compensation for any whippings we received prior to the
passage of the new law. However, if you're still uncon-
vinced, look to Nature for a sanction. Observe the roosters,
for instance, and what do you see?
A society
whose pecking-order envisages a permanent state of open
warfare between fathers and sons. And how do roosters
differ from men, except for the trifling fact that human
society is based upon law and rooster society isn't?
STREPSIADES
Look, if you want to imitate the roosters,
why don't you go eat shit and sleep on a perch at night?
PHEIDIPPIDES
Why? Er...
because the analogy doesn't hold, that's why. If you don'
believe me, then go ask Sokrates.
STREPSIADES
Well, whatever your roosters happen to do
you'd better not lick me. It's your neck if you do.
PHEIDIPPIDES
My neck
How so?
STREPSIADES
Because look: I lick you. All right, someday you'll
have a son and you can even the score with me by licking
the hell out of him. But if you lick me, then your son will
follow your precedent by licking you. If you have a son.
PHEIDIPPIDES
And if I don't have a son?
You've licked me, but where am I? I'm left holding the bag,
and you'll go to your grave laughing at me.
There is a long tense silence as the full force of this crushing
argument takes its effect upon Strepsiades.
STREPSIADES
What? But how.... ? Hmm,
by god, you're right!
To the Audience.
--Speaking for the older generation,
gentlemen, I'm compelled to admit defeat. The kids have
proved their point: naughty fathers should be flogged.
PHEIDIPPIDES
Of course, I nearly forgot.
One final matter.
STREPSIADES
The funeral?
PHEIDIPPIDES
Far from it. In fact, it may even soothe your feelings.
STREPSIADES
How to be licked and like it, eh?
Go on. I'm listening.
PHEIDIPPIDES
Well, now, Misery Loves Company, they
say. So I'll give you some company.
I'll horsewhip Mother.
STREPSIADES
You'll WHAT???
HORSEWHIP YOUR OWN MOTHER?
But this is worse! Ten
thousand times worse!
PHEIDIPPIDES
Is that so? And suppose I prove by Sokratic logic the utter
propriety of horsewhipping Mother?
What would you say to that?
STREPSIADES
What would I
say?
By god, if you prove that,
then for all I care, you heel,
you can take your stinking Logics
and your Thinkery as well
with Sokrates inside it
and damn well go to hell!
To the Chorus.
--You Clouds got me into this! Why in god's name
did I ever believe you?
KORYPHAIOS
The guilt is yours, Strepsiades,
yours and yours alone. The dishonesty you did
was your own choice, not ours.
STREPSIADES
But why didn't you warn me
instead of luring a poor old ignoramus into trouble?
Why did you encourage me?
KORYPHAIOS
Because this is what we are,
the insubstantial Clouds men build their hopes upon,*
shining tempters formed of air, symbols of desire;
and so we act, beckoning, alluring foolish men
through their dishonest dreams of gain to overwhelming
ruin. There, schooled by suffering, they learn at last
to fear the gods.
STREPSIADES
Well, I can't say much for your methods,
though I had it coming. I was wrong to cheat my creditors,
and I admit it.
To Pheidippides
--All right, boy, what do you say?
Let's go and take revenge on Sokrates and Chairephon
for swindling us. Are you game?
PHEIDIPPIDES
What? Raise a finger
against my old Philosophy professor? Count me out.
STREPSIADES
Show a little respect for Zeus.
PHEIDIPPIDES
Zeus?
You old fogy,
are you so stupid you still believe there's such a thing
as Zeus?
STREPSIADES
Of course there's a Zeus.
PHEIDIPPIDES
Not any more
there isn't. Convection-Principle's
in power now. Zeus has been deported.
STREPSIADES
That's a lie! A lot of cheap
Convection-Principle propaganda circulated by those
windbags in the Thinkery!
I was brainwashed! Why, they told me
that the whole universe was a kind of potbellied stove
Pointing to the model in front of the Thinkery.
like that model there, an enormous cosmical barbecue,
and the gods were nothing but a lot of hot air and gas
swirling around in the flue. And I swallowed it,
hook, line, and sinker!
PHEIDIPPIDES
Rave to yourself. Madman.
I'm leaving.
Exit Pheidippides.
STREPSIADES
0 Horse's Ass, Blithering Imbecile,
Brainless Booby, Bonehead that I was to ditch the gods
for Sokrates!
He picks up Pheidippides' stick and savagely smashes the
potbellied model of the Universe in front of the Thinkery. He
then rushes to his own house and falls on his knees before the
statue of Hermes.
--Great Hermes, I implore you!
Be gracious,
lord! Forego your anger and give me your compassion
Pity a poor old codger who was hypnotized with hogwash.
drunk on drivel.
0 Hermes. give me your advice.
tell me what to do.
Should I sue?
He puts his ear close to the dog's mouth as though listening
to whispered advice.
What?
Ummm.
Good.
Got it.
DON'T SUE
Go on.
Yes?
BURN DOWN THE THINKERY...SMOKE OUT
THE CHARLATANS
INCINERATE THE FAKES!
Aye aye, Sir!
Shouting to his slave.
--Xanthias! come here!
Quick, get me your ladder!
Bring me an axe!
Xanthias runs up with a ladder and an axe.
Now
scramble up there on the Thinkery and rip up the tiles
until the roof caves in.
Shoo. boy!
Xanthias sets his ladder against the Thinkery, clambers up,
and starts chopping at the tiles and prying them up with his
axe.
--Quick,
bring me a torch!
Another slave runs up with a blazing torch.
By god, I'll fix those fakes
for what they did to me or my name's not Strepsiades!
Let's see if they can fast-talk their way out of this.
He bounds up the ladder to the roof, furiously firing the
rafters and beams with his torch, while Xanthias pries at the
tiles with the axe. The smoke billows up in clouds and the
whole roof begins to glare luridly, while inside the Thinkery
are heard the first signs of alarm and confusion.
FIRST STUDENT
From within.
FIRE!! FIRE!!
HELP!
STREPSIADES
Scorch 'em, Torch!
Go get 'em!
When Xanthias stops to stare at the holocaust, Strepsiades
tosses him the torch, snatches up the axe. and starts slashing
furiously at the rafters.
FIRST STUDENT
Rushing out of the Thinkery and peering up to the roof.
--Sirrah, what dost?
STREPSIADES
Dust? That's chips,
Buster. I'm chopping logic with the rafters of your roof.
SECOND STUDENT
From within.
Who roasteth our rookery?
STREPSIADES
A man without a coat.
SECOND STUDENT
Rushing outside
But we're burning alive!
STREPSIADES
Hell, I'm freezing to death!
FIRST STUDENT
But this is Arson! Deliberate Arson! We'll die!
STREPSIADES
Splendid. Exactly what I had in mind--
He narrowly misses his leg with the axe and then teeters
dangerously on the roof.
Oops!--
so long as I don't split my shins with this axe
or break my neck in the process.
Wheezing, hacking, and gagging, Sokrates scuttles out of
the Thinkery. closely followed by an incredible procession
of emaciated, ghostlike Students, all gibbering with terror.
Finally. at the very rear, squawking and clucking like two
frightened roosters, come Philosophy and Sophistry.
SOKRATES
You there, sirrah!
What is thy purpose upon my roof?
STREPSIADES
Ah, sir,
I walk upon the air and look down upon the sun
from a superior standpoint.
SOKRATES
Choking on the smoke and almost incoherent with rage.
Why, you--
agh!
I'm gagging .
argh
I...
grhuahg
CAN'T
TALK!!
Arrggghhh.
As Sokrates collapses into a spasm of choked coughing,
Strepsiades and Xanthias come scrambling down the ladder
from the roof. Then Chairephon, totally covered with soot
and cinders and his cloak smouldering, streaks from the
holocaust of the Thinkery
CHAIREPHON
Yiyi!
HALP!
It's hie an oven in the Thinkery! I'm burnt to a crisp.
I'm a cinder
STREPSIADES
Belaboring him with a stick as Xanthias lashes Sokrates.
Then why did you blaspheme the gods?
What made you spy upon the Moon in heaven?
KORYPHAIOS
Thrash, them,
beat them, flog them for their crimes, but most of all
because they dared outrage the gods of heaven!
Strepsiades and his slaves thrash Sokrates and his followers
until the whole herd of thinkers. followed by Philosophy
and Sophistry, stampedes madly toward the exit Here they
meet--and flatten--Pasias and Amynias* returning to the
Thinkery armed with summonses and accompanied by their
witnesses. Exeunt omnes in a general rout. Behind them
the Thinkery with an enormous crash collapses into blazing
ruin.
CHORUS
Now ladies, let us leave
and go our way.
Our dances here are done,
and so's our play.
Slowly and majestically, the Chorus files out.