The failure here alluded to is his Ploutos or Plutus—an inoffensive but tame comedy written when Aristophanes was advanced in years, and of which the ill-success has been imputed to this fact. Mr. Browning, however, treats it as a proof that the author's ingrained habit of coarse fun had unfitted him for the more serious treatment of human life.
Figures placed above the entrance of Athenian houses, and symbolizing the double life. It was held as sacrilege to deface them, as had been recently and mysteriously done.
Introducing him into the play, as in the disguise of a disreputable woman.