"The Clouds" by Aristophanes

This is going to be quite underwhelming.  On my own I wasn't able to get to much out of it beyond some obvious satire of Socrates.  This is perhaps due to my choice to read it in daily sessions instead of all at once or watching or listening to it being performed.  Plays are designed to be consumed in a single session after all.  Either way, my deficiencies have been somewhat remedied by the SparkNotes, at least as far as the plot goes.

In short it's a comic satire that follows Strepsiades as he attempts to get his son Pheidippides to learn from Socrates' "Thinkery" how to talk his way our of the debts that Strepsiades has incurred as a result of his son's affinity to fine racehorses.  Strepsiades is an anti-hero in his quest to weasel his way out of his responsibility as a result of being unable to deny his son his very costly desires.

And in the end he succeeds getting Pheidippides "educated," but in comic form the education comes back to bite him as Pheidippides is able to justify beating and insulting his father.  After this Strepsiades burns down the "Thinkery" while driving out Socrates and the Students after renouncing everything he had also learned from Socrates' "new education" and thought style.

Overall I liked it.  Wasn't great, but I don't have the benefit of being in the atmosphere of the day.  It's strength for me was the comedy whenever Strepsiades was learning from Socrates.  Example:  thunder is the cause of the Clouds swollen with rain much the same as Strepsiades after gorging himself on stew.  In the words of Strepsiades:

"Yes, yes, by Apollo I suffer, I get colic, then the stew sets to rumbling like thunder and finally bursts forth with a terrific noise. At first, it's but a little gurgling pappax, pappax! then it increases, papapappax! and when I take my crap, why, it's thunder indeed, papapappax! pappax!! papapappax!!! just like the clouds."

I still snicker at that bit.  It has that wonderful quality of having a just the tiniest of a hint at truth in the analogy despite its literal absurdity.

Well, that's about it.  Bye.