LYSISTRATA’s “Happy Idea”

Aristophanes created a series of comedies that solved problems with a “happy idea,” a fantastical, impossible solution. The working out of the problem through the happy idea created a type of humor that, today, we often associate with plays of Bertolt Brecht, the political comedy of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, or the techniques of stand-up comics: To find peace, Aristophanes’ hero of the Peace flies to Olympus on the back of a dung beetle to ask for the gods’ help. Aristophanes’ heroes of the Birds sprout wings, and a chorus of birds help them build Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, a more peaceful city than Athens. In the Frogs Aristophanes creates a comedy about theatre criticism and has as his hero, the god Dionysus, who, yearning for better tragedies, journeys to Hades with a chorus of frogs to rescue the recently deceased playwright Euripides.
      Each of these comedies is about something that concerned Aristophanes and the citizens of Athens. And each of these comedies probes at and solves its problem with a fantastical, impossible solution.
      The men of Athens did not hear the Lysistrata with our sensibilities: They had no experience with the League of Women Voters, had not heard or read Gloria Steinem, nor had seen the elections of Margaret Chase Smith, Hillary Rodham Clinton, or Margaret Thatcher. Aristophanes’ “happy idea” of women going out in public, uniting, and bringing about the end to a horrible war was—to both the playwright and his audience—an inspired comic “solution” and as pure a fantasy as a chorus of birds finding peace in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land.

—Tom Shafer with Steve Madore and Rachel Westwood

Sources for these short essays include the following works:
Boardman, Griffin, and Murray, eds. The Oxford History of Greece and the Hellenistic World.
Sue Blundell. Women in Ancient Greece.
Andrew Brown. Entries in the Cambridge Guide to World Theatre.
James H. Butler. The Theatre of Greece and Rome.

Where to go:

About Ranjit Bolt, the adaptor, and Aristophanes, the playwright
The war between Sparta and Athens
Theatre and festivals in classical Athens
Lysistrata and Old Comedy
Women in Athens and Sparta

Lysistrata page
IU Theatre and Drama home page
Indiana University Bloomington home page