After the women greet and inspect one another, Lysistrata asks them what they’d be willing to do to bring about an end to the Peloponnesian War: we’d be willing to die, they say. The other women arrive soon enough, including the Athenian Myrrhine, the brawny Spartan woman Lampito, and the Peloponnesian women Ismenia and the Corinthian girl. Lysistrata’s neighbor Kleonike enters and tries to calm her, but Lysistrata denigrates the women of Greece as weak and lazy, and she announces that she has on her mind nothing less than a plot to end the Peloponnesian War between Athens and the Peloponnesian League (led by Sparta). If you enjoyed Lysistrata and Other Plays, you might like Aristophanes' The Birds and Other Plays, also available in Penguin Classics.Lysistrata begins with the Athenian woman Lysistrata pacing the streets of Athens, waiting for the Greek women she has summoned to arrive. The eleven surviving plays of Aristophanes are published in the Penguin Classics series as The Birds and Other Plays, Lysistrata and Other Plays, The Wasps and Other Plays and The Frogs and Other Plays. Aristophanes had his first comedy produced when he was about twenty-one, and wrote forty plays in all.

He was twice threatened with prosecution in the 420s for his outspoken attacks on the prominent politician Cleon, but in 405 he was publicly honoured and crowned for promoting Athenian civic unity in The Frogs. Little is known about his life, but there is a portrait of him in Plato's Symposium. Sommerstein has completely revised his translation of the three plays, bringing out the full nuances of Aristophanes' ribald humour and intricate wordplay, with a new introduction explaining the historical and cultural background to the plays.Īristophanes (c.445-386 BC) was probably born in Athens.

The darker comedy of The Clouds satirises Athenian philosophers, Socrates in particular, and reflects the uncertainties of a generation in which all traditional religious and ethical beliefs were being challenged.įor this edition Alan H. In Lysistrata, the titular heroine persuades the women of Greece to withhold sex from their husbands, forcing them to end the Peloponnesian War and in The Archanians, a lone peasant enters into a private peace treaty with the Spartans, much to the chagrin of his fellow Athenians. Writing at a time of political and social crisis in Athens, Aristophanes was an eloquent, yet bawdy challenger to the demagogue and the sophist. Edexcel 2016 A Level Drama Teaching ResourcesĮduqas New GCSE Drama Resources (England)Ĭollecting three comedies that show Aristophanes tackling the consequences of war and social upheaval in Athens with his characteristic wit, Lysistrata and Other Plays is translated from the Greek with an introduction and notes by Alan H.

Best translation of lysistrata