Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Lysistrata
    Lysistrata
    Lysistrata
    Ebook92 pages44 minutes

    Lysistrata

    By Aristophanes

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Aristophanes was one of the Ancient Greeks' most famous playwrights, and some of his works survived to the modern day, including this one.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCharles River Editors
    Release dateMar 22, 2018
    ISBN9781508013129
    Author

    Aristophanes

    Aristophanes, son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete.

    Read more from Aristophanes

    Related authors

    Related to Lysistrata

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Nevers season 1 part 1

      Jul 23, 2021

      The Nevers season 1 part 1
      1 min read

    • Article

      When Will Machine-like Thinking Prompt Moral Panic?

      Apr 27, 2018

      In Frank Herbert's "Dune" series (my favorite-science fiction books), he made a bold writerly decision. In a genre famous for robots and computers (particularly in the 1960s), Herbert imagined a futuristic universe with neither. In his telling, some

      3 min read

    • Article

      From Paradise Lost To The Lord Of The Rings: Top 10 Epics In Fiction | Stephanie Sy-Quia

      Nov 10, 2021

      What are epics? Typically, they are defined first by their length: they are traditionally long, and poems (this being the older, oral form). They often concern male heroes fighting a good fight (against an enemy either monstrous or geopolitical), and

      5 min read

    • Article

      Tale As Old As Time: The Dark Appeal of 'Beauty And The Beast'

      Mar 26, 2017

      Disney's new live-action extravaganza is just the latest retelling of this classic fairy tale. But why do Beauty and her Beast have such a hold on us? And why are there so many versions of their tale?

      4 min read

    • Article

      Mae Martin: ‘We Have To Give Ourselves A Break For Being Turned On By Weird Stuff’

      Jun 9, 2021

      As a child, Mae Martin used to fantasise about their first breakup. Not the relationship. Just its devastating end. “Pain just seemed so appealing, you know?” says the Canadian comedian, tucking into an egg and bacon sandwich. “Most of the love stori

      7 min read

    • Article

      V (formerly Eve Ensler) On Biden, Feminism And Why She Was Wrong To Cancel Her Father

      Mar 9, 2021

      You don’t just hook up with Eve Ensler," said Glenn Close, who performed in the play that made Enlser’s name and changed the lives of women around the world, The Vagina Monologues. "You become part of her crusade". Talking to Ensler, who is now known

      6 min read

    • Article

      Top 10 Theater

      Dec 6, 2019

      Top 10 Theater
      3 min read

    • Article

      Room To Grow In Arizona

      Apr 27, 2020

      Room To Grow In Arizona
      12 min read

    • Article

      Carrie Coon Has Drawn Acclaim for Her TV Work, but Her Return to Theater in 'Mary Jane' Brings a Welcome Clarity of Character

      Oct 27, 2017

      NEW YORK - You can tell by the way Carrie Coon confidently maneuvers around the tables of a crowded Tribeca restaurant that this is an actress who has hit her stride. She recently completed two tours of television duty, receiving acclaim for her work

      6 min read

    • Article

      A Symposium on Desire

      Sep 1, 2019

      A Symposium on Desire
      23 min read

    • Article

      On Writing Poems Facing Into The Broken World

      Mar 1, 2020

      Kaveh Akbar and Jane Hirshfield have been in a running e-mail conversation since January 2016, when Akbar first contacted Hirshfield about doing an interview in his Divedapper series, before his first, widely acclaimed book, Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Al

      16 min read

    • Article

      On Apocalyptic Poetry

      Jun 25, 2018

      On Apocalyptic Poetry
      14 min read

    • Article

      An Interview With Bianca Stone

      May 1, 2023

      An Interview With Bianca Stone
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Larger Idea Of Love

      Mar 7, 2022

      The Larger Idea Of Love
      5 min read

    • Article

      Anyone Will Tell You

      Sep 1, 2020

      APZ Books Anyone Will Tell You by Wendy Chin-Tanner Paperback, 76 pages, $15.95 Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019 “Don’t look away. Look straight at everything. Look it all in the eye, good and bad,” said Henry Miller. This form of courage, in poetry as we

      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Lysistrata

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Lysistrata - Aristophanes

      LYSISTRATA

      ………………

      Aristophanes

      WAXKEEP PUBLISHING

      Thank you for reading. In the event that you appreciate this book, please show the author some love.

      This book is a work of nonfiction and is intended to be factually accurate.

      All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.

      Copyright © 2015 by Aristophanes

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      INTRODUCTION
      DRAMATIS PERSONAE
      SCENE
      Lysistrata
      By
      Aristophanes

      INTRODUCTION

      ………………

      LYSISTRATA IS THE GREATEST WORK by Aristophanes. This blank and rash statement is made that it may be rejected. But first let it be understood that I do not mean it is a better written work than the Birds or the Frogs, or that (to descend to the scale of values that will be naturally imputed to me) it has any more appeal to the collectors of curious literature than the Ecclesiazusae or the Thesmophoriazusae. On the mere grounds of taste I can see an at least equally good case made out for the Birds. That brightly plumaged fantasy has an aerial wit and colour all its own. But there are certain works in which a man finds himself at an angle of vision where there is an especially felicitous union of the aesthetic and emotional elements which constitute the basic qualities of his uniqueness. We recognize these works as being welded into a strange unity, as having a homogeneous texture of ecstasy over them that surpasses any aesthetic surface of harmonic colour, though that harmony also is understood by the deeper welling of imagery from the core of creative exaltation. And I think that this occurs in Lysistrata. The intellectual and spiritual tendrils of the poem are more truly interwoven, the operation of their centres more nearly unified; and so the work goes deeper into life. It is his greatest play because of this, because it holds an intimate perfume of femininity and gives the finest sense of the charm of a cluster of girls, the sweet sense of their chatter, and the contact of their bodies, that is to be found before Shakespeare, because that mocking gaiety we call Aristophanies reaches here its most positive acclamation of life, vitalizing sex with a deep delight, a rare happiness of the spirit.

      Indeed it is precisely for these reasons that it is not considered Aristophanes’ greatest play.

      To take a case which is sufficiently near to the point in question, to make clear what I mean: the supremacy of Antony and Cleopatra in the Shakespearean aesthetic is yet jealously disputed, and it seems silly to the academic to put it up against a work like Hamlet. But it is the comparatively more obvious achievement of Hamlet, its surface intellectuality, which made it the favourite of actors and critics. It is much more difficult to realize the complex and delicately passionate edge of the former play’s rhythm, its tides of hugely wandering emotion, the restless, proud, gay, and agonized reaction from life, of the blood, of the mind, of the heart, which is its unity, than to follow the relatively straightforward definition of Hamlet’s nerves. Not that anything derogatory to Hamlet or the Birds is intended; but the value of such works is not enhanced by forcing them into contrast with other works which cover deeper and wider nexus of aesthetic and spiritual material. It is the very subtlety of the vitality of such works as Antony and Cleopatra and Lysistrata that makes it so easy to undervalue them, to see only a phallic play and political pamphlet in one, only a chronicle play in a grandiose method in the other. For we have to be in a highly sensitized condition before we can get to that subtle point where life and the image mix, and so really perceive the work at all; whereas we can command the response to a lesser work which does not call so finely on the full breadth and depth of our spiritual resources.

      I amuse myself at times with the fancy that Homer, Sappho, and Aristophanes are the inviolable Trinity of poetry, even to the extent of being reducible to One. For the fiery and lucid directness of Sappho, if her note of

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1