Lysistrata and Two Other Plays: Women in Parliament and Women at the Festival

This volume is a threesome of hilarious comedies which shine a light on the weakness of the powerful and the power in the weak. Views on these two antagonists are challenged and finally reversed. Women are now "on top." The weak and the powerful are thrown into the sand pits of sex and gender and we laugh at the tactics employed by each to get the upper hand.

His Lysistrata is the first true feminist in literature, the first activist, the first to disband an army, the first to bring war to an end and the first to organise a sex strike. The first to show us that war and sex are connected.

In his Women in Parliament, he has women "penetrating" the epicentre of the men's power, their fortress and the place where they exercise their ego. The activist this time is Praxagora (the woman who is active in the agora, the public, marketplace) They dress themselves in men's clothing (but mustn't kick too high less they reveal their identity) and enter the building well before the men do. Again, the women are the winners and we see the effect of the laws the pass... and, in his Women at the Festival, he depicts their festive behaviour.