 Authors before Plato used mimêsis more vaguely than he did, neither specially applying the word to a poetic process nor necessarily implying its fraudulence —with one important exception. The comedies of Aristophanes, obsessed with Euripides and with tragedy in general (Birds 787, 1444; Clouds 1091; Plutus 423–4), introduce comments about tragic stagecraft that say mimeisthai and mimêsis in consistently pejorative ways.