Page:Acharnians and two other plays (1909).djvu/155



—An Athenian citizen, but disgusted with his own country, starts on his travels proposing to seek his fortune in the kingdom of the Birds. He is represented as the essential man of business and ability, the true political adventurer, the man who directs everything and everybody, who is never in the wrong, never at a loss, never at rest, never satisfied with what has been done by others, uniformly successful in his operations. He maintains a constant ascendency, or if he loses it for a moment, recovers it immediately.

—A simple, easy-minded, droll companion, his natural follower and adherent, as the Merry Andrew is of the Mountebank. It will be seen that, like the Merry Andrew, he interposes his buffoonish comments on the grand oration delivered by his master.

—King of the Birds, formerly Tereus king of Thrace, but long ago, according to the records of mythology, transformed into a Hoopoe. He appears as the courteous dignified sovereign of a primitive uncivilised race whom he is desirous to improve; he gives a gracious reception to strangers arriving from a country more advanced in civilisation and adopts the projects of aggrandisement suggested to him by Peisthetairus.

, his subjects, retain, on the contrary, their hereditary hatred and suspicion of the human race; they are ready to break out into open mutiny against their king, and to massacre his foreign (human) advisers upon the spot. It is with the greatest difficulty that they can be prevailed upon to hear reason, and attend to the luminous exposition of Peisthetairus. His harangue has the effect of conciliating and convincing them; his projects are adopted without a dissentient voice. War is not immediately declared against the gods, but a sort of Mexican blockade is established by proclamation.

—A malcontent deity, the ancient patron of the human race, still retaining a concealed attachment to the deposed dynasty of Saturn. He comes over secretly with intelligence which Peisthetairus avails himself of, and which proves ultimately decisive of the subjugation of the gods.

, or the —Joint ambassadors from the gods, commissioned to treat with Peisthetairus. Neptune is represented as a formal dignified personage of the old school. Hercules as a passionate, wrong-headed, greedy blockhead; he is cajoled and gained over by Peisthetairus, and in his turn intimidates the Triballian, an ignorant barbarian deity who is hardly able to speak intelligibly. They join together, Neptune is out-voted, and