Looking at Lysistrata ─ Eight Essays and a New Version of Aristophanes' Provocative Comedy

In Aristophanes' Lysistrata the women of Athens. fed up with the war against Sparta. go on a sex strike and barricade themselves into the aeropolis to persuade their husbands to vote for peace. In recent years. It has been claimed as an inspiration by political movements from Feminists, to Greenham Common protestors, to the movement against the invasion of Iraq. The most often performed of all Aristophanes' comedies, it is also, perhaps, the most misunderstood.

This collection of essays byeight leading academics sets the play firmly in its historical and social context. While exploring Aristophanes' purpose in writing it and considering the responses of modern audiences and directors.

The book has been compiled and edited by David Stuttard, whose fast-paced performer-friendly version of the play is included here, bringing out Aristophanes' earthy (sometimes scatological, sometimes anatomical) raw wit as well as his love of word-play and glorious sense of the absurd.

David Stuttard has directed his own translations and adaptations of Greek drama throughout the UK and in classical theatres in Turkey and Albania. He has edited numerous books on Greek tragedy, and is the author of An Introduction to Trojan Women (2005) and, with Sam Moorhead, of AD 410. The Year That Shook Rome (2010).