Wasps

Wasps was first produced at the Lenaea festival of 422 BC. The play is at once a political satire and also, like Clouds and the lost Banqueters, a comedy on the theme of the conflict of generations. The play follows the efforts of a mischievous and mercurial old man to escape the control of a stern and heavy son.

Alan H. Sommerstein is Professor of Greek and Director for Ancient Drama and its Reception, University of Nottingham, and editor of the celebrated complete edition of Aristophanes volumes in the Aris & Phillips Classical Texts series. His many other publications include Aeschylean Tragedy (1996), an edition of Aeschylus Eumenides (1989), Greek Drama and Dramatists (2002) and Sophocles: Selected Fragmentary Plays Volumes 1 and 2 (2006, 2011) in this series.