Three Plays by Aristophanes

Staging Women

Jeffrey Henderson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415871327
• eBook ISBN: 9781135173753
• Edition: 2
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

These three plays by the great comic playwright Aristophanes (c. 446-386 BCE), the well-known Lysistrata, and the less familiar Women at the Thesmophoria and Assemblywomen, are the earliest surviving portrayals of contemporary women in the European literary tradition. These plays provide a unique glimpse of women not only in their familiar domestic roles but also in relation to household and city, religion and government, war and peace, theater and festival, and, of course, to men.

This freshly revised edition presents, for the first time in a single volume, all three plays in faithful modern translations that preserve intact Aristophanes' blunt and often obscene language, sparkling satire, political provocation, and beguiling fantasy. Alongside the translations are ample introductions and notes covering the politically engaged genre of Aristophanic comedy in general and issues of sex and gender in particular, which have been fully updated since the first edition in light of recent scholarship. An appendix contains fragments of lost plays of Aristophanes that also featured women, and an up-to-date bibliography provides guidance for further exploration.

In addition to their timeless humor and biting satire, the plays are unique and invaluable documents in the history of western sexuality and gender, and they offer strikingly prescient speculations about the social and political future of the female sex.

Notes

Introduction

1. Attika was divided into 139 demes, semi-autonomous communities each belonging to one of ten tribes and serving as the political district of its citizens.

2. For full details and ancient testimonia about these festivals see Pickard-Cambridge 1988, Csapo/Slater 1995, P. Wilson 2007.

3. On this material, which has roots in fertility cults (particularly those of Dionysos and Demeter), see Henderson 1991; on its abusive and satirical functions see Edwards 1991; on Aristophanes’ language generally, see Willi 2003.

4. For a political history of this period see Ostwald 1986; for theatrical festivals as a venue for experimental politics see Longo 1990; and for a detailed analysis of comedy as a privileged extension of political debate see Henderson 1990, 2007.

5. Women occupied some of these religious positions: see Lysistrata, Introduction 2, Connelly 2007.

6. For a full account of the history and operation of the choregic system see Wilson 2000.

7. On carnival and Old Comedy see Edwards 1993, Platter 2007; on comedy and ritual laughter see Halliwell 2008:206–14.

8. For the composition of the audience at the Dionysia see III, below, and Henderson 1991b, 1998–2007 I:19–22, Sommerstein 1998b; for theatrical rituals, see Chaniotis 2007.

9. On the phallephoria and associated rituals see Cole 1993.

10. For a survey and interpretation of these features see Henderson 1991.

11. See Halliwell 2002, 2008:242–63. Attic visual art of the late archaic period is also rich in erotic themes: for a survey see Kilmer 1993.

12. The anti-democratic pamphleteer known as the “Old Oligarch” (Pseudo-Xenophon, Constitution of the Athenians), writing c. 425 bce, claims that while the comic poets criticised prominent individuals, they did not criticize the demos (2.18).

13. For discussion see Wallace 1994a and 1994b, Henderson 1998.

14. Contrast the criticisms of the demos and of democracy that are found in such non-public writings as Thucydides’ History and the works of Plato.

15. During the Peloponnesian War the number of comedies may have been reduced to three, though this is uncertain.

16. For review and discussion of the evidence for women’s attendance see Henderson 1991a; for a much more cautious response, inclining toward women’s nonattendance, see Goldhill 1994, though his attempt to discredit the Platonic testimony is unconvincing (the principal texts are Gorgias 502b–d and Laws 658a–d) and his emphasis on the theater as civic (and therefore male) space neglects its festive/religious dimension.

17. See MacDowell 1995:257–58. For a critique of the attempt by Taafe 1993 to find comic rupture of this illusion see Gilbert 1995.

18. Thus the employment of approaches from film criticism, with its emphasis on closeups and directorial shaping of the viewer’s gaze, to analyze Aristophanic comedy is inappropriate.

19. See Schaps 1977, Sommerstein 1980. For the important dichotomy between public and private in Athenian life see IV, below.

20. See Thucydides 2.45.2 (Perikles’ plea for public decorum to the war-bereaved women), with Kallet-Marx 1993.

21. Taking the advice of a woman could indeed be cited in court to prove an opponent’s incompetence: Demosthenes 46.16, Isokrates 2.20.

22. In general see Stone 1981.

23. The phallos, in addition to being a traditional element of comic and satyric costumes, was a traditional symbol of fertility and masculine power, and it was especially associated with the worship of Dionysos; on the phallephoria see II, above.

24. There was no ancient counterpart of the “choral speaking” often heard in modern performances of Greek drama.

25. For a selection of epitaphs see Lattimore 1942, and for cult-records see Turner 1983, Connelly 2007.

26. The archaic period, by contrast, did produce female poets, notably Sappho of Lesbos, who flourished around the turn of the sixth century BCE.

27. Schaps 1977, Sommerstein 1980; for women’s conventional invisibility in the theatrical audience see III, above.

28. Euripides’ alleged violation of this protocol motivates the women’s conspiracy against him in Women at the Thesmophoria.

29. The women of tragedy often protest their lot too, but they are significantly distanced by their confinement to the heroic age and mostly to places other than Athens.

30. For more detailed overviews of the material background see Blok and Mason 1987; Cohen 1989, 1991; Dover 1974:95–102; Foxhall 1989; Gould 1980; Henderson 1988; Just 1989; McClees 1920; Schaps 1979, 1982; Turner 1983; Versnel 1987; Winkler 1990; for dramatic portrayals see Assaël 1985; Blundell 1995:130–49; Foley 1981b, 1982; Gardner 1989; Henderson 1987b, 1991a; Muecke 1982; Said 1979; Shaw 1975; Sommerstein 1980; Taafe 1993; Zeitlin 1985.

31. Athenian cults, festivals and religious societies at both the local and national levels offered many opportunities for citizen women to serve the community outside the household. As priestesses women could even have a public identity and some public influence, since ...

Table of contents

• THE NEW CLASSICAL CANON
• Contents
• Preface to the Revised Edition
• Preface to the First Edition
• INTRODUCTION
• LYSISTRATA
• WOMEN AT THE THESMOPHORIA
• ASSEMBLYWOMEN
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography