In his preface to The Skewing-Up of Blanco Posnet, which is about institutionalized censorship in early twentieth-century United Kingdom, George Bernard Shaw wrote, It is no more possible for me to do my work honestly as a playwright without giving pain than it is for a dentist. The nation's morals are like its teeth: more decayed they are more it hurts to them (Shaw 1970-1974, 3: 751). These words were repeated, not quite verbatim, (1) by a fictionalized George Bernard Shaw in 2004 Broadway musical The Frogs. The Frogs was, according to playbill, written in 405 B.C. by Aristophanes, freely adapted by Burt Shevelove, even more freely adapted by Nathan with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. In Aristophanes' Frogs, Dionysus travels to Underworld to fetch Euripides to bring skill back to tragic stage (Ran. 71); as play progresses, god's mission shifts to salvation of Athens (1419-21). In musical, Shaw takes place of Euripides and represents for Dionysus best hope for the survival of mankind right from beginning of play (act 1, p. 3). In both ancient and contemporary versions, Dionysus judges an Underworld contest between his favorite and a revered of yesteryear. In Aristophanes, Aeschylus takes role of nostalgic greatness; in musical, part goes to William Shakespeare. In both versions, Dionysus chooses to bring back older playwright. The musical's Dionysus says he prefers Shakespeare to witty but prosaic Shaw because Shakespeare is a poet who can touch people's hearts as well as their minds (act 2, pp. 55-6). Dionysus selects poetry's pleasure over dentist's drill. (2) His decision raises question whether musical is aiming at pleasure or moral rectification Shaw extols, for play, like its ancient predecessor, is pleasurable and also comments forcefully on world's decadent moral and political condition. In this paper, after some necessary background material, I broach question of The Frogs' construction of its moral compass by interrogating one particular aspect of 2004 production: construction of Dionysus's sexuality, as Dionysus was performed by Nathan Lane, and its relationship to Lane's and Sondheim's articulation of their politics. I argue that Lane's and Sondheim's 2004 revisions of The Frogs make Dionysus into a purportedly inoffensive, heterosexual god in order that more painful antiwar political message might get a better hearing. The Frogs began its twentieth-century life in November 1941 as a short play with choruses, staged at Payne Whitney Gymnasium pool at Yale University by Yale Dramat, with Yale swim team playing aquatic frogs. The play is often attributed to Shevelove, who was director of Yale Dramat at time; a contemporary notice in New York Times, however, names Shevelove as director but gives writing credit to one John Ward Leggett, Yale Class of 1942. (3) The play used Aristophanes' framework as a critique of mid-twentieth-century the-atrical scene, and already contained substitution of Shakespeare and Shaw for Aeschylus and Euripides. In 1974, Shevelove decided to produce play' in an expanded version, again at Payne Whitney Gymnasium, which at time he called the nearest thing we have in America to a Greek amphitheater (Gardner 1974). He asked Sondheim, with whom he had collaborated on Plautus-inspired A Fumy, Thing Happened on Way to Forum, to write songs for production. Even at height of Watergate and Vietnam crises, it remained a largely apolitical piece promoting a vague notion of fixing things that had gone bad and taking over from those who had grown complacent. On 22 May 2000, in celebration of Sondheim's seventieth birthday (which had been on 22 March 2000), Music Division of Library of Congress organized a concert performance of The Frogs in Washington, D. …