That poem, if we desire intellectual exercise, illuminated by flashings of imagination, is well worth reading, but to comprehend it fully, one must know a great deal of Athenian life and of the history of the Comic Drama.

It is the defence by Aristophanes of his idea of the business, the method, and the use of Comedy.

How far what he says is Browning speaking for Aristophanes, and how far it is Browning speaking for himself, is hard to tell.

And it would please him to leave that purposely obscure.

What is alive and intense in the poem is, first, the realisation of Athenian life in several scenes, pictured with all Browning's astonishing force of presentation, as, for instance, the feast after the play, and the grim entrance of Sophocles, black from head to foot, among the glittering and drunken revellers, to announce the death of Euripides.
Secondly, there is the presentation of Aristophanes.