lady's day is great

Read Lysistrata. Great translation, and excellent fun all around. (And given that all the women were intended to be played by men anyway, Michael was perfect for the parts.)

[Actually read in the Macmillan Literature of the Western World anthology, Vol. 1 (1992).]

What's best about Fitts's translation is that he modernizes the dialogue in such a way that it still sounds like they're scholars in 500 A.D. but manage to sound like contemporary idiots all the same. The edition makes for a seamless transition from ancient humour to modern humour; nothing is lost. In particular, I enjoyed the translation of "The Frogs", which has become one of my favourite plays to read, again and again.

Greek tragedy is better. This isn't bad, but I think Lysistrata was the only one I really enjoyed reading.

2.5 stars
Lysistrata: 4 stars
The Frogs: 3 stars
The Birds: 1 star
Ladies' Day: 2 stars
Comedy is so culture-specific; even with the explanatory notes for each play, I felt like I was missing a lot. Combine that with an acknowledged flaw of Aristophanes' plays is his plots, and even with all the bird puns, The Birds was virtually unintelligible. In contrast, with its strong plot, reliance on sex jokes, and the relatively small amount of background knowledge needed to make the play intelligible to the modern reader, Lysistrata was easily the most relatable.
I think I would have rated Ladies' Day higher, but there is a much stronger undercurrent of misogyny in Ladies' Day than in Lysistrata geared towards both women and effeminate men. I could imagine a genderqueer version that could make it actually funny.
The Frogs is just a good old fashioned roast of both Aeschylus and Euripides with some very silly scenes with Dionysus and his slave. The Birds is just a very specific send up of Athenian politics and I could not make myself care about any of it.

It's good to read the anarchic comedies before Menander came in and kind of ruined things by inventing the romantic comedy.

What I've learned:
1. Aristophanes is bawdy.
2. Dudley Fitts is bawdier.

"is that a spear under your cloak, spartan, or do you just miss me?"

i love these plays. i was five or six when i first read them, and even though i didn't get a lot of the bawdier jokes, i still loved them.

i remember being really amazed that a two thousand year old voice could still sound so clear, so contemporary. a large part of the credit, of course, belongs to dudley fitts, who i still think is one of the best translators i've ever read. but it's aristophanes and his joyous irreverence that keeps me coming back to this book. leaders of cities go around permanently priapic because their wives won't give them sex. gods shit themselves in fear. euripides and aeschylus bitchslap each other in hell. these are amazingly brave, and laugh-out-loud-on-the-tenth-reading funny. read them!

(or go see them. lysistrata, for example, has been recently performed in central park, re-worked as a commentary on the war in iraq)