Pros And Cons Of Lysistrata

As is historically the case when any concept, invention or discovery is slated to help mankind, Christianity, in all its self-appointed divine glory, waltzes in with a bottle of holy water and squelches even the most vehement of would-be do-gooders. My statement may be overdramatic, but there is no denying that there was (and still is) much contention between the Church and the artists & creators of their respective eras. Most notably of these, the Dark Ages (Middle Ages, Early-Middle Ages), aptly named for its description of the time after the fall of the Roman Empire and the growth of Christianity in the form of Catholicism. Many forms of art were censored, theatre being at the top of the list. But what if Lysistrata were somehow presented …show more content…
In this event, the lower & middle class would be the only groups willing to perform such a piece. Of those groups, only those not fearful of the consequences and in a position to perform would be capable to doing such a thing, further lessening our pool of candidates. At this point, one could argue that nobody within our pool of candidates could put on Lysistrata, more than likely because of illiteracy or a lack of education. I imagine many commoners of the time would have had incredible difficulty reading, let alone understating Lysistrata. However, for discussions sake, let’s assume there is a small traveling acting troupe capable of taking up such a task or perhaps a personal troupe to King Henry VII or Richard III. These types of people may be successful actors, professionally trained or not, though more than likely not, because of the emergence of professional acting towards the end of the Middle Ages (Newman, "Theatre in the Middle Ages "). These productions would be taking place within the courts of Kings & Queens or within the patios/outside areas of Inns or taverns. Speaking on the latter scenario, these traveling …show more content…
However, there are also going to be many distinct differences from that of the more free-thinking acting troupes. Firstly, judging by the source material for Lysistrata as well as the content of the text, I would be willing to bet that if the Church decided to put it on, it would go through an extensive editing process. Most of the humor in Lysistrata is heavily sexualized, a topic that would not have worked in a church setting. On top of that, the production would more than likely be performed in a church building, a regular practice for liturgical dramas of the time. Another very defining difference would be the utilization of laymen or the common man as actors. Rather than hiring professional actors (the Church was not fond of actors or their craft), roles would be assigned to commoners and carried out as such. This, as you can imagine, would lead to inexperienced actors attempting to portray difficult to perform texts, especially if those people were illiterate. Another issue we may run into is the lack of women as performers. This was rarely an occurrence outside of the Church, and it probably never happened within it either, but seeing as how the Lysistrata would have been originally performed without any females, this is an easily avoidable problem.