15/2/07 - Classical Literature - Aristophanes: Thesmophoriazusae

Structure of Thesmophoriazusae:

Scene 1, Prologue: Euripides, with his relation Mnesilochus in tow, tries to convince the effeminate poet Agathon to sneak into the women's festival, so as to defend him from the women's accusations. Agathon, in semi-drag, performs a sample of his 'sexy', enticing music, but declines to help. Mnesilochus then agrees to do the job, so Euripides shaves him and dresses him up in drag.

Scene 2: The forecourt of the temple of Demeter Thesmophoros.

Parodos: Entrance of chorus of women.

Agon: Mnesilochus sneaks into the women's festival. The women gather in assembly. The first woman makes a speech accusing Euripides of slandering women in his plays and proposes to have him done away with. A second woman seconds her, adding that his atheism is hurting her garland business. Mnesilochus, somewhat carried away by the first two speakers, forgets himself and confesses a number of outrageous womanly crimes. The women have already turned on him, when Cleisthenes (another soft, half-man) arrives to denounce Euripides' plot. The women undress Mnesilochus to ascertain his gender (a lot of physical humour in this). He is found out and in despair takes a baby hostage (this is taken from an earlier play of Euripides', Telephus, where the hero does the same) but the baby turns out to be a wine-skin. Caught, he crafts a cunning secret message, as he saw Palamedes do in Euripides' Palamedes, and awaits rescue.

Parabasis: The women defend their sex to the audience, using examples taken from contemporary Athens. They suggest rewards and punishments be given to the mothers of good and bad politicians. (Note, in the parabasis the chorus addresses the audience directly to discuss Athenian issues outside of the play, although in this instance the chorus stays in character.)

Episodes: Mnesilochus and Euripides try to fool the women guarding Mnesilochus by reciting parts of the Helen, a play all about escape. The women find the pair thoroughly unconvincing. A magistrate arrives, and Euripides dashes off.
The magistrate, accompanied by a Scythian archer (a foreigner hired to act as a policeman), sentences Mnesilochus to be tied to a plank and exposed to public ridicule in his woman's clothes. The magistrate departs.
Choral interlude.
Further episodes. The Scythian leaves to fetch a mat on which to nap while he guards Mnesilochus. Euripides sails in on a crane, as Perseus to Mnesilochus' Andromeda (Euripides' Andromeda was also produced in 412 BC). Echo, from the same play, is brought in, but she only gets Mnesilochus into trouble with the Scythian. Euripides touches down as Perseus, but cannot convince the Scythian that he is Perseus. He leaves.
Choral interlude.
Exodus.
Euripides returns, cuts a quick deal with the women, and resorts to a ploy the Scythian can finally understand: dressed as a bawd, he lures the Scythian away with a (real) sexy dancing-girl and frees Mnesilochus. The point: the comic solution works, while Euripidean tragedy cannot save the day.

Thesmophoriazusae is interested in theatricality and illusion. Actors in drama shaved their beards so it was easier to wear the mask, but normally shaven men were considered to be effeminate in antiquity.

Rules for gender identity were rigidly established. Women covered themselves and wore a veil when they were outside the home, especially young women. There was no advertisement of sexuality or availability. Woman married young, often to older men who were the heads of their household. Women had the status of a child to their husband, in terms of obedience. They were expected to leave the house to attend religious festivals and ceremonies. It is debated whether women were allowed to go to the theatre, but the evidence suggests that they were. It was Plato who said that women and men would choose tragedy as their favourite entertainment.

The Thesmophoria was a women's festival lasting three days. The women camped out in tents and did secret things (we don't know what) in honour of Demeter and her daughter Kore (meaning bride/maid). The festival took place in autumn. The myth took its cue from a Homeric hymn to Demeter. In it, Hades abducts Kore while she picks flowers and in the underworld she eats six pomegranate seeds and thus becomes his wife. Her mother complains to Zeus, who agrees that Kore can live in the underworld and be Hades' wife for six months every year, and be allowed to come home to her mother for the remaining six, hence the seasons of summer and winter.

The play calls on themes of agriculture and sexuality/fertility. It is a symbolic re-enactment of the myth. On the second day of the festival, the women fast and on the third day they celebrate birth.

Was Euripides a misogynist? In his plays, Medea kills her own children and Phaedra falls in love with her son-in-law; yet he is sympathetic towards women and domestic drama and he gave birth to the rise of the tragic heroine. Euripides experimented with what could be dramatised, hence the invention of 'kitchen sink' drama, i.e. realistic, gritty theatre. Euripides included women who were fully characterised, so they had a mixture of heroism and immorality.

In Euripides' last days, 415 and following, he seems to have invented the romance and adventure genres. In 415 he produced Trojan Women, Ion in 417, Helen in 412 and Iphigenia in Tauris in 413. They all have happy endings, exotic locations and escape plots, including adventure and intrigue. These plays raise many issues: are they untragic?; are they as they seem (e.g. Helen and the eidolon)?; are they convincing as drama? And Aristophanes introduced one other issue: what happens when Euripides is put into his own plays? This introduces theatre within theatre: metatheatricality, or self-awareness.

The plot of Agathon goes nowhere, so is it pointless? It is expository: it questions the gender of Agathon, and it questions theatricality. By modern standards, Agathon is homosexual; Plato wrote than Agathon had had an older male lover (which was common), but they stayed together for longer than was usual. In the play, Agathon is good at being a woman, whereas Mnesilochus is not.