To what extent is the theme of gender confusion used to create comic effect in Aristophanes' The Poet and the Women?

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To what extent is the theme of gender confusion used to create comic effect in Aristophanes’ The Poet and the Women?

When one reads The Poet and the Women, what strikes the reader the most is that Aristophanes uses men dressing as women to amuse the audience and create comic effect.  This essay will explore the playwright’s use of gender confusion, as well as his manipulation of the theatrical conventions of the time, in an attempt to understand the true extent of the contribution of gender confusion to the play.

Before exploring the extent to which the theme of gender confusion contributes to the comic effect of the play, one must first understand what gender confusion is in terms of Greek plays.  Gender confusion occurs when the sex of a character is indiscernible; it is unclear as to whether the character is male or female.  Gender confusion can affect both the audience and the surrounding characters of the play.  

Aristophanes often manipulated the theatrical conventions of the current Greek theatre in order to achieve comic effect.  For example, one Greek theatrical convention was that male actors played all of the characters on stage, including the female characters.  This convention was used in both Greek tragedies and Greek comedies, so this in itself would not have been funny.  However, Aristophanes makes this convention humorous by playing with it, and he takes it one stage further to do so.  As well as the custom that male actors played female characters, Aristophanes uses male actors playing male characters that are dressed up and are pretending to be female.  This not only confuses the audience, but also other characters on stage.  Aristophanes also uses male actors playing male characters that are so effeminate that they are mistaken for women, which once again confuses both the audience and the other characters on stage.

The first type of gender confusion that one encounters when reading The Poet and the Women is male actors playing male characters who are intentionally dressed as, and are pretending to be, women.   The first character we encounter is Mnesilochus, who, in Act I Scene I, is preparing himself to look like a woman so that he may able to blend in at the Thesmophoria festival.  Euripides, having decided that he must send his in-law Mnesilochus to the Thesmophoria to defend him against the women, shaves Mnesilochus’ face, singes his private area (says Euripides: “Now stand up and bend over, I’ve got to singe you”[1]) and dressed him in a yellow gown, girdle, wig and shoes (all belonging to the effeminate Agathon),  in an attempt to create a feminine look.  Shortly before Mnesilochus leaves for the women’s festival, Euripides says to him, “Well, you certainly look like a woman now”[2].  This example is comic not only because of the farcical slapstick humour (with both Mnesilochus and Euripides running around the stage frantically), but also because of his comical feminine appearance.  The reader already knows from earlier on in this scene that Mnesilochus is very masculine, using very coarse and vulgar language (says he to the servant of Agathon, “Someone who’ll take you and your precious poet and perforate your posteriors with his private protuberance”[3], as well as after his encounter with Agathon himself: “Let me know if you are writing a satyr play, and I’ll come and help with the rude bits.” [4]); however, seeing him at the end of this scene wearing women’s clothing, as well as impersonating a woman’s voice in the next scene, is such a harsh contrast that it contributes greatly to the comic effect.  This example also adds comedy to the play because of the fact that Mnesilochus makes such an unconvincing woman.  The reader can assume, both from Mnesilochus’ rather strange transformation from a typical, vulgar man to a ‘woman’, as well as the nonsensical way in which Euripides has shaved and dressed Mnesilochus, that he would appear to the Greek audience not as a ravishing young lady, but rather a derisory, somewhat ugly woman, and this surprise also adds to the comic effect.

Another example of a male character dressed as and pretending to be a woman is Euripides near the end of the second Act.  To help Mnesilochus escape from the captivity of the women at the Thesmophoria, Euripides enters the stage in an old woman’s costume with a dancing girl to preoccupy the Scythian officer while he helps Mnesilochus.  This example is funny because, during the course of the current act, Euripides appears on stage in a series of disguises, all of which are male characters, such as Menelaus from the play The Helen, and Perseus from the play Andromeda.  Both of these men are the young, attractive heroes of their plays who at the end of their own plays get their women (Helen and Andromeda respectively).  This scene is humorous because instead of a handsome hero saving the damsel from danger, it is Euripides, dressed as an old, haggard woman, saving the poorly disguised Mnesilochus (who we can still tell is a man, not the woman he was trying to be disguised as).  Also, both of the male characters are dressed as women: thus the scene is altered into a rescue scene involving a woman saving a woman, rather than the conventional man rescuing a woman.  The effect of both of these differences adds greatly to the comic effect of the play.

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Another example of this is in Act II.  Aristophanes includes parodies of two famous rescue scenes from plays written by Euripides: The Helen and Andromeda.  In Euripides’ play The Helen, the character of Helen, although in actual fact a female character, is supposed to be played by a male actor (as Greek theatrical conventions dictated); however, in Aristophanes’ parody of The Helen, he uses Mnesilochus dressed up as a woman (even though, at this point in the play, his cover of the woman attending the Thesmophoria has already been blown) acting as another woman (Helen).  Not only is this funny ...

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