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Satire In Lysistrata

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“Since his [Aristophanes’] plays were often sharply critical of Athenian policies, his ability to make people laugh was essential to conveying his message. He was a practitioner of what we now call Old Comedy, an irreverent form that ridiculed and insulted prominent people and important institutions” (80).

Consistent with the textbook, The Compact Bedford Introduction to Drama, the play Lysistrata by Aristophanes contains the elements of satire with its notable humors that ridicule his contemporary time’s politicians. Simply, he used his contemporary political figures, who caused the war and unable to stop the war, and the situation in war of his time as important factors for his humors that he is famous for. Consequently, his play Lysistrata …show more content…

Learning about the context begins with the situation of the era the author lived and wrote the play. Consequently, “[a]t the time Lysistrata was written (411 BCE), Athens had suffered a steady diet of war for more than twenty years. Political groups were actively trying to persuade Athenian leaders to discontinue the policies that had alienated Athens from the other city-states…” (p.81). Simply, Athene was caught in difficult situations with wars and Athenians’ dissatisfactions with their leaders when the author wrote the script of the play. Consequently, the author of the play represented the popular opinions and dissatisfactions toward their leaders about the wars. That is, the Lysistrata contained a really strong mockery and humors toward the leaders of the Atheninas. But, how does that connect to women’s roles in the play? Simply, Aristophanes used women in his play to show political disapproval and discontents in his later play again—that politicians are doing worse than women who are, Athenians believed, incompetent in politics: “Aristophanes’ third and final period, from 393 BCE to his death, includes The Ecclesiazusae (c.392 BCE) (translated as “The Women in Government”). In which women dress as men, find their way into parliament, and pass a new constitution. It is a highly topical play that points to the current situation in Athens and the …show more content…

Consequently, Lysistrata tells Kalonike, “…Only we women can save Greece!” (p.84, line 23) by ending the war, on which Kalonike replies, “[o]nly we women? Poor Greece!” (p.84, line 24) and “[h]ow can women do a thing so austere, so political? We belong at home. Put only armor’s our perfumes, our saffron dresses and our pretty little shoes!” (p. 84, line 34-37) that Lysistrata agrees. Simply, Lysistrata and Kalonike decide to fight to end the war by utilizing their beauty with perfumes, dresses, and their refusal to have sex with men. Consequently, Lysistrata and other women refuse to “engage in sex with their husbands until the men stop making war” (p.82) and seizes the national treasury so that war cannot happen. Then, she That is, the unique way women were able to hold the political power was only in their sexual power, refusing sex, not in their political ability or competence, which depicts their ridiculousness in political ineptness also. Yet, are there any depiction of women’s political ideas? Simply, Lysistrata answers the commissioner who asks her how she is going to bring a peace to Greece by telling him that it is analogous to weaving, “[s]ay the yarn gets tangled: we thread it this way and that through the skein, up and down, until it’s free. And it’s like that with war. We’ll send out envoys up and down, this way and that, all over Greece, until it’s

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