Aristophanes' Lysistrata (1-54)

[quinara]

A project I was working on a few years ago (which never got anywhere) involved trying to translate Aristophanes' Lysistrata in way that actually got across a bit more of the cultural implications, using another cultural context - in particular traditional British comedy, which is what I'm familiar with, like Monty Python and the Carry On films. Even though it's from 411 BC, Lysistrata, it seems to me, is popularly understood as having a vaguely proto-feminist message (the women go on a sex-strike, thereby taking their sexual agency into their own hands and asserting their political opinions for the benefit of Athens and Greece), and while that's a reading of the play that's feasible (especially in modern performance), it's not what I think follows naturally from the Greek and the Athenian context. The lambasting of women through stereotypes is the main thing that comes over to me, even amongst the humour, and Lysistrata's steady (and self-motivated) masculinisation and retreat from society over the course of the play feels more worrying than laudable. Especially since the play was written and performed by men for men (primarily in purpose if not literally in terms of the actual audience).

So here is something like the first 'scene', hopefully rendered in a way that gets some of the issues across. Beneath the first cut is the Greek (edition N.G. Wilson, Aristophanis Fabulae, Tomus II. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007]) and a slightly more literal translation (A.H. Sommerstein, Aristophanes Lysistrata. [Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1990]), which takes a couple of liberties for sense, but keeps it culturally located in ancient Athens. Beneath the second is my playscript cultural translation.

( Lysistrata (1-54) )

( British Cultural Translation. )