The Acharnians

No idea what I was expecting from my first venture into Classical Greek comedy, but it wasn't the crude, lewd, verbal and physical humour coupled with puns and political and personal satire that I got! The Introduction and notes were extremely useful for setting the historical and cultural scene, explaining how the Comedy of the day worked and elucidating obscure references and jokes. This made me wonder how well it would go on the modern stage, where one would surely expect most of the audience to be oblivious to everything explained in the apparatus. A lot of the humour would translate and the general message of peace vs. war might come through, but all the cultural and historical references would be lost, I think.

Tremendous fun from the page, though.

The Clouds

This time Aristophanes turns his satirical wit on the Sophists, as exemplified by none other than Socrates himself! The new education, based on - sophistry! - and the lack of belief in the traditional pantheon of gods are the prime targets.

It turns out that the surviving text is an unfinished revision of the play. This may be a factor in why I didn't like it as much as The Archarnians, or it might be that it's simply because I have a lot of sympathy for the Sophists' viewpoint on several matters. Either way, I didn't think it was as funny...

Lysistrata

For me the least funny but most interesting of the three plays in this volume. It's full of the same sexual humour as the others and equally preposterous. It's examination of sexual politics is more interesting than its plea for peace with Sparta (perhaps partly because the latter is treated more thoroughly in The Archanians, anyway). It seems that many things have not changes in nearly 2,500 years... One of them appears to be that perceived hairlessness (of women's bodies) was considered more attractive, then as now. I've often wondered if that has been a pan-cultural, pan-historical trend and, if so, whether it is a deep-rooted instinct that has led to evolution away from other, full-on furry, primate species? Odd thing to end up thinking about because of an old Greek drama, but there you go!