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felinity's review against another edition
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.0
Aristophanes invented "Carry On"!
ricksilva's review
4.0
I read this for Banned Books Week (it shows up on Wikipedia's list of banned books because it was banned in Greece in the 1960s for its pacifist politics), and went into it not really knowing what to expect. It's been well, a while since I've read any classical drama.
I was surprised by how funny it was. The dialogue holds up pretty nicely. Most people know the basic plot: The the title character convinces the women of Athens and Sparta and their allies to withhold affection until a peace treaty is negotiated. But it's the interplay between the characters as they try to deal with the situation that makes the play work. The play really focuses primarily on the rather tenuous hold that Lysistrata has over her coalition of women, who are all torn between their loyalty to the cause and their desire to go back to regular relations with their husbands. Lysistrata spends much of her time using any means necessary to prevent desertion or backsliding on the promises that she has extracted from her allies.
The humor is very raunchy. It's amusing just for the shear quantity of the phallic jokes (let's just say it's a topic that is covered, well, at length). Men and women get made fun of on a fairly equal basis, and there are plenty of elements spoofing life in Athens and among its allied city-states. The Spartans, in this translation, speak in Scottish dialect, which makes the whole thing even more amusing to a modern reader, even if it is slightly off-putting at first.
As pointed out by numerous critics, this story is not a perfect political statement from either an anti-war or a feminist perspective. However, it does manage to nicely intersect those causes, and in spite of being very much grounded in the culture of its time, does a good job of showing how that it is real people who are at the forefront of the struggle for peace and equality.
I was surprised by how funny it was. The dialogue holds up pretty nicely. Most people know the basic plot: The the title character convinces the women of Athens and Sparta and their allies to withhold affection until a peace treaty is negotiated. But it's the interplay between the characters as they try to deal with the situation that makes the play work. The play really focuses primarily on the rather tenuous hold that Lysistrata has over her coalition of women, who are all torn between their loyalty to the cause and their desire to go back to regular relations with their husbands. Lysistrata spends much of her time using any means necessary to prevent desertion or backsliding on the promises that she has extracted from her allies.
The humor is very raunchy. It's amusing just for the shear quantity of the phallic jokes (let's just say it's a topic that is covered, well, at length). Men and women get made fun of on a fairly equal basis, and there are plenty of elements spoofing life in Athens and among its allied city-states. The Spartans, in this translation, speak in Scottish dialect, which makes the whole thing even more amusing to a modern reader, even if it is slightly off-putting at first.
As pointed out by numerous critics, this story is not a perfect political statement from either an anti-war or a feminist perspective. However, it does manage to nicely intersect those causes, and in spite of being very much grounded in the culture of its time, does a good job of showing how that it is real people who are at the forefront of the struggle for peace and equality.