![]() ![]() I love Lysistrata's strut and wit and nerve, its utopian yearnings, its magical locale an Acropolis where, by dream-logic, a handful of couples can reconcile the love of the battlefield with the battlefield of love. ![]() ![]() Historically understandable but his certitudes flatten his play. Twelve years into a failed imperialist incursion, Aristophanes felt no need to weigh a pro-war case, to squint at his women's motives, to paint his men as anything but blowhards and buffoons. Lysistrata, Kleonike, Myrrhine: these are less persons than personae, masks of text through which their play-wright declaims an impassioned political broadside. Our heroine concocts this strategy: she bullies her team into agreeing the plan works end of play. This iconic comedy, unveiled in 411 B.C.E., eyes the women of Athens and Sparta, disgusted by an endless, pointless war, who barricade themselves in the Athenian treasury and swear a sanction on sex until their men make peace. The Nude Goddess is not your mother's Lysistrata. ![]()
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