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 because it confuses surrounding characters such as the Third Woman, who misunderstands the situation altogether (“At it again – pretending to be a woman! Before you’ve ever been punished for your first little game!”[5]), but also because Mnesilochus, an old man still dressed as a woman from his antics from beforehand, is inadequately trying to masquerade as the beautiful Helen (this is seen in the fact that the Third Woman continues to refer to Mnesilochus as “This fellow…”[6] as well as stating that, “…he’s having you on.” [7], despite Euripides’ sustained references to Mnesilochus as a woman: “Who art thou, woman?” [8], “– art thou she?” [9], and “Alas, my wife…”[10]). This obviously is not having the desired effects on the other characters on the stage, and this confusion creates comic effect. This type of confusion is continued later in the same act, when Mnesilochus is impersonating Andromeda from the play Andromeda (says Euripides to the Scythian: “Oh Scythian, thou art wrong;/This is Andromeda, the child of Cepheus”[11]). The confusion caused by the presence of the Scythian officer, and the fact that the Greek audience would be seeing a beautiful heroine being portrayed by the ugly old man Mnesilochus (despite Euripides/Perseus’ indications that Mnesilochus is actually a “beauteous virgin” [12] and a “Fair virgin…”[13], the Scythian refuses to believe so, rebutting: “No, no, he not any virgin, he just a dirty ol’ man.” [14], and trying to prove that Mnesilochus is indeed a man by lifting up his skirt to show Euripides his phallus), both add to the hilarity of the play.
Male actors playing effeminate male characters is another type of gender confusion displayed in the play The Poet and the Women. Early in Act I, we encounter Agathon, the famous Greek poet. When he enters the stage, Mnesilochus immediately comments on his appearance:
MNES.: … ‘Whence art thou, womanish creature? What is thy costume… A lute, a yellow gown? A lyre and a hair-net, a woman’s girdle and a wrestler’s oil-flask? A sword and a hand-mirror? … What are you – a man? Then where’s your cloak? Where are your shoes? And what have you done with your tool? But if you’re a woman, what’s happened to your bosom? [15]
This example of gender confusion is important because the Greek audience would have known that Agathon was quite an effeminate character in real life, but they still would have expected to see the actor dressed fully in masculine clothing. The costume worn by the actors is very important in this example of gender confusion. Costume played an integral part in the play for the audience, as the costume worn by a character helped the audience to identify whether the male actor was playing a male or a female character. Therefore, the audience would assume that Agathon, a male character, would appear on the stage in masculine clothing; however, unexpectedly seeing the actor playing Agathon in a mixture of masculine and feminine clothing throws the audience into mystification. It is this confusion of physical characteristics of men and women (as well as the fact that this arrival on the scene is very unexpected) that surprises the audience, as well as the other characters on stage, and creates comic effect.
Comic effect is also created in this scene not only in the way in which Agathon is presented physically, but also the way in which he is presented verbally prior to entering the stage. Before he even enters the scene, the reader finds Euripides attempting to explain to Mnesilochus what Agathon looks like. Euripides, however, finds himself drawing blanks, because Mnesilochus is thinking of the wrong ‘Agathon’, and Mnesilochus’ connotations with the name ‘Agathon’ seem to be the complete opposite of what Agathon looks like in real life (he asks Euripides whether Agathon is a “Big, strong, dark fellow.” [16], or “…that chap with the long bushy beard…”[17]). Although this may not seem humorous to the audience at first, when Agathon is wheeled out later onto the stage, dressed half in male clothing and half in female clothing and singing with the chorus in an extravagant, feminine voice, the contrast of a very masculine, strong man with an effeminate character brings out the humour of the situation, creating the desired comic effect.. As well as this, throughout the rest of this first scene, the reader continues to find Agathon being described as a somewhat effeminate character, rather than a male character, as one would expect. When Agathon implores as to why Euripides refuses to attend the Thesmophoria festival in person, he states: “…I’m old and white-haired and bearded; whereas you are good-looking, fresh-complexioned, clean-shaven, you have a woman’s voice and a dainty manner, you’d be quite pretty to look at.” [18], implying the extent to which Agathon seems to be a woman. Although put quite bluntly, the contrast between these two extremely opposite and different characters adds humour to the scene, and to the play.
Humour is also created in relation to Agathon’s femininity when he describes to Euripides and Mnesilochus about his attitude to the composition of his works, as well as the attitudes of real women in relation to him. After Mnesilochus’ comment as to Agathon’s masculine/feminine appearance, Agathon defends his clothing by describing the motivation behind his dress:
AGAT..: … I wear my clothes to suit my inspiration. A dramatic writer has to merge his whole personality into what he is describing. If he is describing a woman’s actions, he has to participate in her experience, body and soul. … If he’s writing about a man, he’s got all the bits and pieces already, as it were; but what nature hasn’t provided, art can imitate. [19]
The audience would find this humorous because, as he has said himself, Agathon is a dramatic writer; the audience, therefore, would have expected him to be a somewhat solemn figure, looking – and indeed dressing – normally. However, seeing this ‘dramatic’ writer clothed in what would have been very comical dress would have struck the audience as a great contrast, and this alone is makes the scene very comical. Later in the same scene, Euripides pleads with Agathon to attend the Thesmophoria and defend him (Euripides) against the charges that the women have made against him. Agathon states that he could not possibly go to the festival, because “They [the women] consider I steal their business” [20]. After seeing the way in which he is dressed as well as they way in which he behaves, they would realise that Agathon is certainly capable of ‘stealing the women’s business’, and indeed they could imagine him as a woman. The audience would therefore, in the context of the play, find this statement amusing.
The character of Cleisthenes is another example of a male actor playing an effeminate male character. The reader encounters Cleisthenes in the middle of the second scene in the first Act, just after Mnesilochus had been discovered by the women at the Thesmophoria festival to be a man. Before he even appears on the stage, however, the Leader of the chorus states that “…there’s a woman on her way up here…”[21]. This, at first, appears to be nothing to the Greek audience; the true hilarity of this statement only becomes clear when Cleisthenes appears on stage, and the audience realises that this ‘woman’ that the Leader is referring to is actually an extremely effeminate man: he tells the women at the Thesmophoria festival that they “…do resemble me [Cleisthenes] so very very closely, I often think…”[22]). Another way in which the reader can tell that Cleisthenes looks like a woman is when, in the first scene, where Euripides was preparing Mnesilochus to look like a woman, Mnesilochus exclaims, “It’s not me, it’s Cleisthenes!” [23] after having his beard shaved off by Euripides. When Cleisthenes first enters the stage, the reader can also see that he says, “…I come as a friend. I do assure you – look at my cheeks!” [24], suggesting that his clean-shaven look make him look like one of the women. This contrast of what is imagined by the audience with what is actually seen on the stage is so stark that this difference adds greatly to the comic effect.
Another type of gender confusion is male actors playing female characters who seem to act more like men than women. The best example for this is the women who are attending the Thesmophoria festival. It was a well-known, and accepted, fact in Greek times that women did not have as much power, either politically or socially, as their male counterparts; so the Greek audience would have expected the women, as society dictated, to have fewer powers than the men. Aristophanes, however, turns this societal rule on its head, giving the women at the Thesmophoria festival powers as if they were men. Aristophanes also emphasises this by meddling with the convention of male actors. It seems to the audience, and to the reader, that, at first, Aristophanes is following the convention of using male actors to play female characters; however, Aristophanes still uses this convention for comic effect, turning it around so that the women seem to have the same powers as men would do in the ‘real world’. This means that they are able to debate important political issues (the introduction of the motion by the Leader at the beginning of the Thesmophoria gathering is in a comparable style to the introduction of a ‘real-life’ debate in a political forum), decide verdicts upon such political issues as “…what steps should be taken for the punishment of Euripides…”[25], and deliver “…long speech[es]” [26] in the style of the professional male conversationalists of the time. Although this type of gender confusion does not involve any physical deception, the subtle difference also adds greatly to the comic effect of the play.
Gender confusion is an important theme in the play The Poet and the Women, as most of the characters of the play are involved some way. However, throughout the entire play there is only character that the reader encounters that does not exhibit any sort of gender confusion, and that is the Scythian officer, who is encountered in Act II. The Scythian officer here is shown as a very crude, quite masculine man: for example, when Euripides comes to rescue Mnesilochus dressed as Perseus, the Scythian officer coarsely suggests to Perseus what he could do with ‘Andromeda’:
EUR.: … Love for this maid hath smit me at first sight.
SCY.: Then you got-a da verra peculiar taste. If he was tied up da oder way round, den I understand.
EUR.: O Scythian, let me but her bonds untie,
And I will bear her to the bridal bed.
SCY.: You want-a verra much make-a love to da ol’ gentleman, you gotta go round-a da backside, yes. Bore-a da hole through da wood, ha ha! [27]
Another example is when the Scythian officer comments upon the physical appearance of the dancing girl brought in by Euripides, especially “…da nice firm titties, like-a da turnip” [28] and “…da nice round bottie…da beautiful shape, all round da fanny” [29]. This portrayal of the Scythian would have been twice as comic to the Greek audience because of the association, at the time, of Scythians with cross-dressing.
During the era at which The Poet and the Women was written, there was an association by the Greeks of the Scythian people with cross-dressing. Herodotus mentioned the Greeks as believing that some of the Scythian people had been cursed with the ‘feminine disease’ by the goddess Aphrodite for plundering a temple of hers at Ascalon in Palestine:
“The Scythians who pillaged the temple [of Aphrodite in Ascalon in Syria], and all their descendants after them, were afflicted by the goddess with the ‘female’ sickness (enares) [loss of virility]: and so the Scythians say that they are afflicted as a consequence of this and also that those who visit Scythian territory see among them the condition of those whom the Scythians call ‘Hermaphrodites’ [someone/thing that possess both male and female sexual organs or other qualities from both the male and the female genders].” [30]
Herodotus also believed that the Scythians therefore compensated for this supposed ‘sin’ by dressing as women and devoting themselves to a feminine life [31]. The fact that the Scythian is so over-masculine makes him a parody in himself; it is the lack of the confusion of his gender (which would have been more appreciated in the Greek society of the time) that adds to the comic effect of the play.
A more subtle type of gender confusion used in the play is that of grammatical gender confusion, as noted by Alan H. Sommerstein in the introduction of Thesmophoriazusae. Throughout the play The Poet and the Women, gender confusion is not only presented to the Greek audience in a physical form, but also, in the original Greek, grammatically. Grammatical gender confusion would have been an inevitable part of all Greek plays, as any male actors playing female characters would have been referred to in the original Greek manuscript of the play using the feminine form[32]. Aristophanes manipulates this custom in several ways, primarily by continuously switching the form to which a single character (who usually presents physical evidence of gender confusion) is referred to in the original Greek. During most of the play, the gender of some of the grammar corresponds with the actual gender of the character in the play; for example, even when Mnesilochus is dressed as a woman at the Thesmophoria festival, Aristophanes refers to him grammatically in the feminine form, up until the discovery of his true sex, whereupon he is referred to in the original Greek using the masculine form. The audience is left bewildered, not only by the lack of clarity over Mnesilochus’ appearance, but also by the changeover in the grammatical gender, which adds humour to the situation.
Another example of this grammatical gender confusion comes later in Act II, when Euripides arrives on scene in his first attempt to rescue Mnesilochus from captivity. In the original Greek, Mnesilochus (here playing Helen) refers to himself, and Euripides (or Menelaus) refers to Mnesilochus, using the feminine form; the Third Woman, however, in her confusion over Mnesilochus’ real identity, continues to refer to Mnesilochus in the masculine form. This not only confuses characters such as the Third Woman, but also the audience, who may be left confused over Mnesilochus’ real gender, which adds comedy to the scene.
This grammatical gender continues throughout the rest of the play. Another example of this is when the Scythian officer enters with Mnesilochus. Despite being the only character in the entirety of the play who does not display any sort of gender confusion in any physical form, the Scythian succumbs to uttering a series of grammatical gender mix-ups in the original Greek during Euripides and Mnesilochus’ parody of the Andromeda. Although he seems to himself to be able to distinguish between Mnesilochus’ actions as a man (as himself) and his actions as a woman (as Andromeda), the original Greek shows the Scythian combining the masculine and the feminine forms when describing Mnesilochus. Not only does this amplify the Scythian’s supposed confusion, but it also confuses the Greek audience, who may wonder whether the Scythian actually believes Mnesilochus and Euripides’ masquerade.
In conclusion, Aristophanes uses gender confusion to great success in the play The Poet and the Women to create comic effect. Types of gender confusion such as male actors playing male characters who are intentionally dressed as (and are pretending to be) women, as well as male actors playing effeminate male characters, are most often used by Aristophanes by creating huge contrasts which cause uncertainty and confusion in the minds of the Greek audience; whereas other types of gender confusion, such as male actors playing female characters who seem to act more like men than women, as well as the grammatical gender confusion, use more subtle deceptions to create comic effect and humour in the play; Aristophanes also uses cultural references in this play to encourage the Greek audience to draw upon their experiences of this said reference and to the humour in his satirical allusion. Aristophanes is also able to use gender confusion to great success in the play by combining it with other types of humour, such as slapstick humour, which embellish the comedy already present in the scene.
Appendix
Bibliography
The following books have been used as reference in the essay:
-
The Frogs and Other Plays, tr. D. Barrett, Penguin, 1964
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Cross-Dressing, Sex and Gender, Vern L. Bullough and Bonnie Bullough
-
Thesmophoriaezusae, Alan H. Sommerstein
-
Histories Book I, Herodotus
Page References
The following twenty-nine page references refer to The Frogs and Other Plays, translated by D. Barrett, as in the Penguin Classics series:
[[1]: page 108
[2]: page 109
[3]: page 102
[4]: page 105
[5]: page 130
[6]: page 132
[7]: page 131
[8]: page 132
[9]: page 133
[10]: page 133
[11]: page 141
[12]: page 140
[13]: page 140
[14]: page 140
[15]: page 105
[16]: page 101
[17]: page 101
[18]: page 106
[19]: page 105
[20]: page 107
[21]: page 118
[22]: page 118
[23]: page 108
[24]: page 118
[25]: page 113
[26]: page 113
[27]: page 141
[28]: page 143
[29]: page 143
The following reference refers to Histories Book I, a work by Herodotus (ed. A. D. Godley):
[30]: Book I, Chapter 105, Section 4
The following reference refers to Cross-Dressing, Sex and Gender by Vern L. Bullough and Bonnie Bullough:
[31]: pages 24-25
The following reference refers to Thesmophoriazusae, edited and with translation and notes by Alan H. Sommerstein:
[32]: pages 7-8