Four Comedies

I looked at two of Aristophanes plays in this book: Lysistrata and The Frogs. In reading these plays I made notes for each time I laughed or smiled. I even took notes when I didn't laugh but thought that maybe someone else would. Rather than try to find a theory of humor, I simply recorded what it was that I thought made the line or scene funny. The list is somewhat shocking about the nature of humor, but the list is funny in itself. Some of the things that I found funny in the Lysistrata were: filing down a male body part, leather toys, filthy slang, slow talking yokel foreigners, taking pride in being called trampy, adultery, dumping a bucket of nasty on a stiff bureaucrat, threats of abuse, using lies and excuses to seduce, using a child as a tool to coax a wife into bed, desperate impatience and insensitivity, an abusive relationship happy in its misery, the mockery of a famous Greek homosexual, a logical argument against staying sober, perpetual arousal, ignoring the moral of the story while ogling a woman, and, finest of all, a drunken pile of people. Another moment in the Lysistrata that caught my attention was the misinterpretation of a line that reminded me of the movie Airplane: Lysistrata: "We want to get laid." Koryphaios of Women: "By Zeus!" Lysistrata: "No, no. Not by him." Co-Pilot: "Surely you can't be serious." Leslie Nielson: "I am serious. And don't call me Shirley." In reading The Frogs, I made another list, a much different list but perhaps a worse indictment of mankind's sense of humor than the previous list because it covers much more than sex. The short list I made begins with a dookie, or in other words stifling a number two while carrying a heavy load. It continues with laziness, whining, mocking a the same Greek homosexual with a joke, advice on suicide, bartering with a corpse, lampooning gods and heroes, excuses and lies, name calling, disrespecting superiors, imitations of nature, the inherent comedy of discomfort and injury, mocking the audience, making light of death and hell, false bravery followed up with fear and insecurity, mutation--in particular a leg made of number two--and handicaps, snobbery and pompous behavior, strange asides with interjections about a pair of perkies in the audience, undermining public figures by questioning their legitimacy, defamation of character, taking a large item--such as a tombstone--in an uncomfortable place, a disgruntled Greek slave, mutilation, dismemberment, disguise and surprise, misplacement of a sponge over an exposed "area", a frightened "member", role reversals and ensuing reversals of fortune, dancing girls, a subordinate having fun as a superior and then being disciplined, insults, kissing and dooking simultaneously, gluttony, mistaken identity, threats and violent imagery, torture, burial, a superior appealing to a subordinate using flattery, reusing an argument against the original speaker, promising things that don't exist, treache