Theatrical Soup


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Aristophanes, 4th century BCE Athenian comic poet, in Lysistrata:
"I saw a cavalry captain buy vegetable soup on horseback. He carried the whole mess home in his helmet"

Aristophanes, in Plutus (388 BC):

CHREMYLUS ...In short, Plutus, it is through you that everything is done; you must realize that you are the sole cause both of good and evil.
CARIO In war, it's the flag under which you serve that victory favours.
PLUTUS What! I can do so many things by myself and unaided?
CHREMYLUS And many others besides; wherefore men are never tired of your gifts. They get weary of all else,-of love...
CARIO Bread.
CHREMYLUS Music.
CARIO Sweetmeats.
CHREMYLUS Honours.
CARIO Cakes.
CHREMYLUS Battles.
CARIO Figs.
CHREMYLUS Ambition.
CARIO Gruel.
CHREMYLUS Military advancement.
CARIO Lentil soup.
CHREMYLUS But of you they never tire. If a man has thirteen talents, he has all the greater ardour to possess sixteen; if that wish is achieved, he will want forty or will complain that he knows not how to make both ends meet.
Dan Goggin's musical Nunsense, 1986, which features Sister Julia Child of God killing nuns at the Order of the Little Sisters of Hoboken convent with botulism-laced bouillon:
"Soup's On (The Dying Nun Ballet)"

Charlotte Jones' Humble Boy:

Dotty spinster Mercy Lott unwittingly spices the summer soup with the ashes of poor Dad, the diseased.
Wolf Mankowitz' The Bespoke Overcoat, 2000, which tells the story of Fender, an elderly clerk who freezes to death then returns to earth as a ghost to visit Morry the tailor, who was making an overcoat for him, and such an overcoat:
"Imagine, I dream of flying sheepskin coats with pockets full of soup."

Shakespeare in King Henry IV, 2:

"If I had one thousand sons, the first principle I would teach them should be, to foreswear thin potations."


Molière's L'École des femmes (1662) or, The School for Wives:
Alain remarks, "La femme est en effet le potage de l'homme : et quand un homme voit d'autres hommes parfois qui veulent dans sa soupe aller tremper leurs doigts, il en montre aussitôt une colère extrême."
Many thanks to Sarah Thomas, Bloomington, Indiana, for the contribution. Her translation: "Woman is truly the soup of man : and when a man sees other men who want to dip their fingers in his soup, he quickly shows an extreme anger of it."

Molière (1622-1673) , French dramatist, in Les Femmes Savante, II, 7 (1672):

"Je vis de bonne soupe et non de beau langage," or "It's good soup, not fine words that keeps me alive"

Aristophanes, The Frogs (405 BC):

DIONYSUS I can't describe it. But yet I'll tell you in a riddling way. Have you e'er felt a sudden lust for soup?
HERACLES Soup! Zeus-a-mercy, yes, ten thousand times.
DIONYSUS Is the thing clear, or must I speak again?
HERACLES Not of the soup: I'm clear about the soup.
DIONYSUS Well, just that sort of pang devours my heart For lost Euripides.
Miriam Weiss offers this even more appealing translation by Dudley Fitts:
DIONYSOS: Tell me, O Herakles, hast ever been seized by a craving for pea soup?
HERAKLES: Over and over again.
DIONYSOS: "Spake not my tongue plainly," or must I elaborate?
HERAKLES: I see pea soup in my mind's eye.
DIONYSOS: Just such a longing consumeth me now for Euripides.

Emilio Carballido, early 20th century Mexican playwright in "Te Juro, Juana, Que Tengo Ganas":

"Life is like a well-organized banquet, only we start with dessert and finish with soup."

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), British dramatist, in Man and Superman:

"There is no love sincerer than the love of food"