Play: Wasps

Overview
Wasps is a sharp civic comedy by Aristophanes from 422 BCE that skewers Athenian litigiousness and the power of popular demagoguery. The play centers on an elderly juror whose addiction to serving on the people's courts becomes a comic obsession, and on his son's attempts to break that habit. A chorus of aging jurors, likened to stinging wasps, provides both mockery and mournful chorus to the central conflict, turning a private family quarrel into a public satire of Athenian civic life.
Aristophanes mixes broad farce, pointed political critique, and parody of legal procedure to expose the way courts and prosecutors could be instruments of popular manipulation. The play balances ribald humor and rhetorical mock-trials with a deeper meditation on how democratic institutions can be captured by habit, resentment, and the appetite for punishment.

Plot
The play opens in the household of Philocleon, an old man who cannot resist serving as a juror. His son Bdelycleon, ashamed of his father's addiction to the lawcourts, decides to cure him by confining him at home and surrounding him with comforts and entertainments. Bdelycleon attempts to substitute the addictive pleasures of jury service with music, a staged banquet, and literary diversions, believing that diversion and domestication will break the old man's civic vice.
When the cure proves difficult, Bdelycleon resorts to more theatrical remedies. He arranges a home-bound imitation of courtroom activity designed to satisfy Philocleon's craving for judicial power while keeping him out of the actual lawcourts. The plot builds toward farcical mock-trials that both mimic and parody actual Athenian legal procedures, allowing Aristophanes to lampoon the rhetoric, the appeals to emotion, and the petty aggressions that characterized many public prosecutions.

Satire and themes
At its core, Wasps attacks the culture of litigation and the ways democratic processes can be degraded by personal vendettas, professional informers, and demagogues who manipulate popular anger for gain. The chorus of old jurors embodies the social pathology the playwright condemns: they are both comic and frightening, eager to sting and to be stung, deriving pleasure and identity from punishing others. Aristophanes ridicules the procedural absurdities of the courts, the theatricality of prosecutors, and the ease with which civic responsibility turns into a moral habitus of resentment.
The play also probes generational and domestic tensions. Bdelycleon's attempts at reform reflect a rationalist, reformist impulse that clashes with his father's stubborn attachment to civic ritual. That clash highlights anxieties about democracy's stability: the danger is not only external corruption but the internalization of punitive behavior as a way of life.

Characters and characterization
Philocleon is comic and sympathetic: proud, querulous, childlike in his cravings, and yet indicative of a wider civic malady. Bdelycleon functions as foil and would-be moral therapist, practical and shaming his father for the ruinous pleasures of the lawcourts. The chorus, men who have made jurisprudence their social identity, alternately applaud and parody Philocleon's impulses, turning individual folly into a collective caricature of Athenian civic life.
Minor characters, servants, would-be performers, and mock-accusers, populate the staged trials and entertainments and help Aristophanes expose the emotional mechanics of persuasion and punishment. Their exaggerated speeches and antics allow the playwright to mimic courtroom rhetoric while undermining its pretensions to civic virtue.

Performance and legacy
Wasps was a popular and pointed piece of political comedy in its time, engaging contemporary audiences with recognizable targets and with the pleasures of impersonation and song. Its combination of domestic farce and institutional satire made it a durable critique of how democratic institutions can be turned into spectacles of punishment. Modern readers and theatergoers continue to find in Wasps a witty exploration of how civic life can be captured by habit, how the love of accusation corrodes community, and how laughter can both expose and complicate political reform.