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When you start an Aristophanes play, you have to strap yourself in for a wild ride. Lysistrata is perhaps his most famous comedy; the one known as the "sex strike" play, where the clever Athenian lady Lysistrata, with the support of the the brawny Spartan lady Lampito, convince the women to withhold sex in order to make the men stop fighting & end the Peloponnesian War. Hijinks & phallic jokes ensue. Funnier than I remembered.

Overall, I found this pretty enjoyable and funny. But the misogyny of the ancient Athenians is pretty clear in some of the lines. Nowadays, the play is often performed as a feminist piece, but originally it was playing on how incapable women were thought to be by Athenian men - a world where women exhibit such agency and control was so impossible it was funny. That bit isn‘t funny today, but the other jokes still hold up 😆
6.5/10

This was super fun to read! I read this on Serial Reader and assumed I would take some time gong through the different serials. That didn't happen and I read this in one sitting.

An Ancient Greek play that is a strong contender for one of the funniest, raunchiest things I‘ve ever read.

To end an endless war, the women of Athens and Sparta band together in the decision to refuse sex until the war is ended.

Thank you for the chance to read this, @SerialReader . I loved it!

(Illustration from Google.)

Another play I read for my college acting class, I realized why my 10th grade English teacher didn't have us read it all those years ago and instead told us about it: IT'S FLIPPING DIRTY! Probably one of the raunchiest things I've ever read. I did really like it though the ancient Greeks views on women were appalling and that does come through in the writing toward the beginning.

Leaving soon to see Lysistrata performed at Bard on the Beach tonight. I‘m feeling excited. 😊

Not the tagged book, but Looking at Lysistrata: Eight Essays and a New Version of Aristophane‘s Provocative Comedy, edited by David Stuttard. Informative and academic; I‘m pleased to have read it. I was led to this book from the bibliography in Mary Beard‘s Women & Power: A Manifesto. I was able to get it via interlibrary loan, all the way from Newfoundland (6,000 km from Edmonton). #Litsyloveslibraries!

I‘m going to see two plays at Bard on the Beach in Vancouver at the end of July: Lysistrata and Timon of Athens. I didn‘t realize that there was a connection between the two until I read Lysistrata (in the modern adaptation by David Stuttard, above). I double-checked a standard translation online and there, too, found Timon “the rough-hewn fellow” who shuns everyone. It makes sense that Shakespeare would have read Aristophanes.

It‘s a good thing I brought my own book over to my friend‘s house where I‘m looking after her cats while she‘s away. Meat scientists have strange reading material. Front page story on the Western Producer: “Huge grain carryout expected.” (?!)

Scholars often point to the passage in Pericle‘s funeral oration, delivered in honour of the first Peloponnesian War dead in 431 BC, in which he tells the women who have lost men to bear up and not to make a fuss, since ‘the greatest glory of a woman is to be mentioned as little as possible.‘
-Edith Hall, The Many Faces of Lysistrata, in the essay collection Looking at Lysistrata.

“Then card the wool into the work-basket of union and concord, mixing in everyone; and all the immigrants, and any foreigner who‘s friendly to you, and anyone in debt to the treasury, they should be mixed in as well. And yes [...] take the human flock from all of them, bring them together here and join them into one, and then make a great ball of wool, and from that weave a warm cloak for the people to wear.”
#knittersofLitsy: fibre arts metaphor!

Lots of interesting stuff in ‘Looking at Lysistrata,‘ a collection of essays that‘s not in the Litsy database. 3 examples:
🏺The “phalli of comedy normally droop,” but they remain erect in this play.
🏺The main character was likely modelled on a real woman, Lysimache, who was the priestess of Athena at the time the play was first performed.
🏺Referring to a respectable woman by name in public was “a contravention of normal Athenian etiquette.”

If only all wars could be ended this way...

I forgot how funny this play is!

Ancient Greece. The Peloponnesian War rages relentlessly. The women of Athens, led by Lysistrata, try to force the men to negotiate for #peace by withholding sex. Comedic hilarity ensues and gender relations are explored. #maybookflowers

#peace #maybookflowers
@RealLifeReading

I love my job. I get to watch this modernized Lysistrata and see how much of it I can show my 11th graders.

Next up for my juniors. I love this play so much.

#TeachersOfLitsy

Very good play, quite feministic already back to the days of Aristophanes. Really funny to read it. Hoping to find a good adaptation of it on the internet.

Strong females and humanized animals? Sign me up! These are a few of my favorite #BannedBooks! If you haven't read them, give 'em a go for #BannedBooksWeek! #SeptPhotoChallenge

Calonice: "And what if they grab us and drag us into the bedroom by force?"

Lysistrata: "Hold onto the door."

Calonice: "And what if they beat us?"

Lysistrata: "Then submit, but disagreeably: men get no pleasure in sex when they have to force you. And make them suffer in other ways as well. Don't worry, they'll soon give in. No husband can have a happy life if his wife doesn't want him to."

#FunFridayPhoto: favorite book you were assigned to read in school. This play was definitely the most hilarious thing my high school self was ever required to read.

I was tempted to use The Hobbit for this prompt, but it was assigned reading for a college seminar on Tolkien that I chose to take because I was already a Tolkien nerd and therefore probably shouldn't count. 🤓