This is one of the few selections in the whole run that I'd actually read before I started on this. Way back in '97 when I was living without a TV for a year I pulled this up in one of my books and read it through. I remember enjoying it and I enjoyed it again this time.
Even before then I'd heard of the idea of this play. The main theme is fairly memorable: women cutting their men off from sex until they stop going to war. It's surprising that this didn't have some kind of comeback during the hot phase of the Iraq war protests.
Again, the version that you read matters quite a bit. Mine was produced by Ingram, Berger and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team and purports to be a literal and complete translation from Greek to English. It is much, much more bawdy than the translation that was used for the Great Books. After a bit I started reading them side by side to see how they tackled certain situations. Here is a hint: if it seemed a bit dry to you, that's because the translator didn't trust you with adult material.
More serious notes? I'm a little bothered by the idea that war is simply caused by too much testosterone from men. And that if they wanted to put down their toys then we could simply have peace. This idea bugged me when we were fighting in Iraq and it still bothers me somewhat. On the other hand, the Pelopennsian War was a certainly bad for Athens. It's hard to look at it as 'essential' from the vantage point of 2000 years. My crystal ball doesn't work well enough to see how things will look from the year 2100.
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