This play, as we now have it (for it had been brought out in a different form twenty years before), shows evident signs of a transition in the character of Athenian comedy. It is less extravagant, and more domestic, and so far approaches more nearly to what is called the “New” Comedy, of which we know little except from a few fragmentary remains and from its Roman adapters, but of which our modern drama is the result. Possibly, now that the great war was over, and the spirit as well as the power of Athens was somewhat broken, Aristophanes no longer felt that deep personal interest in politics which has left such a mark on all his earlier pieces. Another reason for the change, independent of the public taste, seems to have been the growing parsimony in the expenditure of public money on such performances. Critics have detected, in the character of the Chorus of ‘The Ecclesiazusæ,’ exhibited five years previously, in which the masks and dresses for a body of old women could have involved but little expense in comparison with the elaborate mounting of such plays as ‘The Birds’ and ‘Wasps,’ an accommodation to this new spirit of economy; and the same remark has been made as to the poverty of the musical portion of the play. The same may be said of the Chorus of rustics in this latter drama. ‘Plutus’ was the last comedy put upon the stage by Aristophanes himself, though two pieces which he had composed, of which we know little more than the titles, were exhibited in his name, after his death, by his son. They appear to have approached still more nearly, in their plot and general character, to our modern notions of a comedy than even ‘Plutus.’ Whether the author made any important alterations in this second edition of the play is not known; but in its present state, the piece seems to want something of his old dash and vigour. He was getting an old man; and probably some young aspirants to dramatic fame remarked upon his failing powers in somewhat the same terms as those in which, thirty-seven years before, he had spoken of his elder rival Cratinus-- “The keys work loose, the strings are slack, the melodies a jar.”[56] If so, Aristophanes never challenged and won the dramatic crown again, as Cratinus had done, to confound his younger critics. The curtain was soon about to fall for him altogether. He died a year or two afterwards. END OF ARISTOPHANES. PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH. FOOTNOTES: [1] Introd. to ‘Cicero’ (A. C.) [2] “Here, in his native tongue and among his own countrymen, Punch is a person of real power: he dresses up and retails all the drolleries of the day; he is the channel and sometimes the source of the passing opinions; he could gain a mob, or keep the whole kingdom in good humour.”--Forsyth’s Italy, ii. 35. [3] See ‘Æschylus’ (A. C.), chap. i.