Gli 'stracci' di Menelao. Polemica ed autoironia nell'Elena di Euripide

In his hundredth revival of the 'king in rags', in Helen, Euripides seems to emphasise the particularly wretched aspect of the character of Menelaus. Some of the verbal coincidences present in the tragedy both in the Aristophanean parody of the Acharnians as well as in the Telephus--which was the subject of this parody--lead to think that Euripides intended to reassert the validity of his particular stage choices. A number of 'quotes' from Aristophanes comedies recognisable in the Euripidean theatre of that period (the most famous, the 'quotation' of the ode to the nightingale in Birds, returns again in Helen) seem to support the idea of an overturning of the traditionally existing relation between comedy and tragedy