Aristophanes Would Laugh

Abstract

same story in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Courses include Hamlet, where the main character's melancholia often becomes a synonym for deep thought, and never acknowledge that Jaques in As You Like It thinks in a similar way and is a fool for it. Teachers pound Antigone's self righteous civil disobedience into recalcitrant students' heads, never revealing that Aristophanes lampooned the same idea in Lysistrata. No wonder students' memories of English teachers are of legions of Miss Stonebreakers (from the comic strip Freddie) or Miss Crabtrees (from the Our Gang comedies). The human spirit has both a comic and a tragic side, and courses in literature ought to reflect both. However, there are two problems with presenting comic works to classrooms full of American teenagers. The first problem in attempting to balance comedy with tragedy is censorship. Tragedy shows that the destruction of order is evil; it is therefore deemed morally suitable for disorderly adolescents. Comedy gallops over the niceties of polite society, lampooning both language and sex taboos. Furthermore, comedy often makes heroes of those characters who are most disrespectful of tradition and who smash society's conventions with unabashed glee. Most adults do not approve of adding more fuel to the smoldering adolescent fires of negativity that may burn high, roaring out of control at the slightest provocation. Even classics like Chaucer's work must be presented in a bowdlerized fashion. To include a work like Lysistrata in a course for high school juniors entails considerable risk for the teacher, both for its language and its portrayal of situations.