Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/331

 TRAGEDIES AND COMEDIES IN PARTICULAR. 305 some of the plays, especially in the Birds and the Peace, and that there is a complete change of scenery in the following Comedies — in the Birds at v. 1565, where the city of Nejplielococcygia is seen for the first time; in the EcclesiazuscB at v. 877, where it is clear that we are no longer in the neighbourhood of the house of Prax- agora (see vv. 1125, 1128), which had formed the center of the scene in the previous part of the play ; in the Frogs, where the first act represents the house of Hercules and the Acherusian lake (1 — 270), and the second act the subten-aneous regions with the palace of Pluto ; in the Thesmophoriazusce, where the first act gives us the house of Agathon (1 — 279), and the second act the Thes- mophorion ; and in the Lysistrata, where the first act gives us a street in Athens with the heroine's house in the center (1 — 253), and the second act exhibits the Acropolis with its propylaea. In the last-mentioned play, as has been already intimated, there are four or five changes of the left-hand ^er^'acto^. There is no change of scene in the Clouds; but Strepsiades and his son are shown in their beds at the beginning of the Comedy by means of an eccydema, and it is expressly stated that the phrontisterion of Socrates is managed by a parencyclema, that is, by a practicable building projected at the side of the stage i, which admits of being destroyed at the end of the play. The KpefiaOpa, on which Sophocles is first seen (v. 218), was not a basket, for he says (225), depo^arw, but a sort of shelf, connected no doubt with the balcony of the scene. ^ See above. P- 2 39- D. T. G. 20