Frogs

Abstract At the beginning of Frogs, Dionysus, moved by his reading of Euripides’ Andromeda, decides to retrieve the recently dead poet from the under¬ world. After he reaches Hades, Dionysus learns that a contest is under way between Euripides and Aeschylus for the title of best poet. Dionysus, installed as judge, decides in favor of Aeschylus and brings him-not Euripides-back to Athens. Critics have proposed various explanations for this shift in plan. According to an early view, Aristophanes began working on Frogs after Euripides’ death in Macedon, but while Sophocles was still alive. Upon Sophocles’ death in 405 B.c., Aristophanes revised his original intention, which was the recovery of Euripides, in order to take up the general question of poetic values now that the last of the three great tragedians was gone. The accident by which Dionysus arrives in Hades just as a contest is in progress allows for an easy transition from the first theme to the second. References early in the play to the death of Sophocles are, on this view, later insertions designed to bring the two halves into line.