Incongruity In Lysistrata

There are three definitions of comedy that have surrounded the material of this course thus far. The one I will be focusing on throughout the course of this paper is concerning incongruity. The disruption of what we, the audience, are used to seeing with our characters, action, and even language. Lysistrata, originally written by Greek playwright Aristophanes, and translated into English by Donald Sutherland is comedy that relies almost entirely on incongruity to ensure laughs from its audience. Part of the laughs comes from the effectiveness of the translation of the play. While researching the play I found that there were many instances were the play was not successful because it all either all wit or all physical humor—the translation of found in The Longman Anthology Theater and Drama: A Global Perspective is effective because it represents some harmony between the two types of comedy. There is low comedy and high comedy, but within Lysistrata there are instances that can be regarded as both. Low comedy and high comedy invoke different types of laughs from individual members of the audience.
High comedy is regarded as humor that is based on and reliant on intellect. It has more refined taste and is often witty; this include puns, sarcasm, dramatic irony, parodies, wit, and saturnalia. Saturnalia is an example of incongruity of character, it dates back to the Roman holiday were slaves were permitted to talk back to their slave masters for one day, and one day only. On the other hand, is …show more content…
High comedy humor requires intellectual thought processes to understand why something is funny. While Lysistrata is riddled with an abundance of low comedy jokes, there is a substantial amount of high comedy humor through the entirety of the play. The witty banter of the chorus of men and the chorus of men is defined as repartee; quick witted responses between the chorus of men and women who insult each other