Frogs

The contest serves as a vehicle for Aristophanes to critique the shifting cultural and moral values of Athens during the Peloponnesian War. By forcing the god of theater to choose between the traditional, grand style of Aeschylus and the modern, intellectual approach of Euripides, the play interrogates the role of poetry in guiding a city in crisis.

The play was famously adapted into a musical by Burt Shevelove and Stephen Sondheim, which premiered in 1974. This version reimagines the central quest by having the protagonist travel to the underworld to retrieve a playwright who can save civilization, though it substitutes the original Greek poets with George Bernard Shaw and William Shakespeare.