ABSTRACT
Ecclesiazusae (392 or 391 bce) combines Aristophanes’ interest in female protagonists with his use of gender disguise and role reversal as comic devices, themes he explored twenty years earlier, albeit in different ways, in both Lysisirata and Thesmophoriazusae. In Ecclesiazusae the women of Athens, tired of conditions in the city, dress themselves as men, pack the assembly, and propose that a new government run by women be established.1 The measure passes, and the women set up a communal government in which everyone shares ownership of everything and all needs are provided for. The manipulation of costume and role makes theatricality a central motif of Ecclesiazusae. Women in particular receive special dramatic treatment. As its main characters, they assume most of the play’s action. The characterization of women here follows the trends of female characters in Aristophanes’ earlier plays. Although they are in control of the plot and eventually of civic power, women reveal their theatrical ability to deceive by appearing in guises other than female; at the same time, their disguises also reveal their true natures.This chapter will argue that in Ecclesiazusae the traditional division of authority, based on sexual difference, no longer functions normally and that the play presents an evanescent illusion of gender that exists in a rapidly changing Athens. An analysis of both the physical and the linguistic costumes of the women in Ecclesiazusae will show that gender definitions and representations can be constructed and taken apart quite easily. Aristophanes links the cultural definition of male and female directly to the health of the state. The manipulation of costume and disguise also links the workings of theater directly to the workings of government. Finally, our knowledge of social and political conditions in Athens in the early fourth century leads to the conclusion that the time was right for this comic fantasy. 103
RENDERING THE MALE BODY Ecclesiazusae opens with a visual trick on costume and identity. A figure enters dressed in men’s clothing, a himation draped in the masculine style and Laconian shoes, and carrying a walking-stick (PaKippia; 73-5).2 She is identified later as Praxagora, the head of the conspiracy. At first, however, her appearance suggests the uneasiness and humorous incongruity that cross-gender dressing generally provokes. Although the actor wears a woman’s white mask, for his character is female, he also wears men’s clothing. Stone conjectures, reasonably, that ‘the actors’ female costumes must be realistic, while the male disguises are unconvincing and transparent. The poet relies on the rigid conventions of mask color, which provide a much needed point of reference’ (Stone 1980:410-11). In other words, the audience is never meant to believe the disguise of this woman as a man. Vase illustrations show, however, that even the conventions of mask color themselves tend to underscore the artifice of dramatic representation (for example, see again Figure 1, p. 6). While real upper-class women’s skin may indeed have been lighter than that of women and men exposed to the sun, surely it was not as chalky white as the masks and vase-paintings indicate. Yet, if a woman wore make-up to enhance the whiteness of her skin, as the old women at the end of Ecclesiazusae do, then the mask imitates that sort of artificial skin color. The figure at the opening of the play most likely wears a light-colored female mask. Its exaggerated color reminds us that it is a mask, and perhaps that there is a male underneath playing the part of a woman.3 The artificiality of the representation establishes the difference between what might appear to be a real woman and what might appear to be an artificial woman.True-to-life representation seems not to have been the central aim of comic costumes and masks, however. The mask offered a somewhat believable convention for the portrayal of females by male actors. A female mask worn by a padded actor in woman’s clothes emphasizes, in fact, the theatrical nature of the imitation. The vase illustrations also show padded actors playing women; the pads are as rigid a convention of drama as the colored masks are (see Figure 2, p. 7). Underneath the feminine clothing they wear to present themselves as women, the comic actors here may well be wearing the exaggerated padding and adjustable phallos. There is no way to determine the actual nature of the costumes for Ecclesiazusae, but speculation on the possibilities is not entirely useless. If the actors wore pads and the phallos protruded from these supposedly feminine bodies once in a while, the comic and
metatheatrical effects would be hilarious. The audience may see actors, identified as comedians by their stylized padded uniforms, consciously playing women.4 The audience may choose to suspend their disbelief and accept the fiction of seeing women on stage. At times Aristophanes requires that suspension; the audience should occasionally see women mocking men. When the male actors acting the parts of women put on their masculine costumes, they play women playing men; both sexes are mocked simultaneously. The phallos may be hidden or displayed. As long as the audience knows it is there, it is aware of the illusory nature of the stage representation the entire time, accepting it as part of the dramatic experience. If the phallos is not worn, then these effects can only be suggested or imagined.One other aspect of Praxagora’s costume blurs the visual and auditory distinction between an actor self-consciously representing a woman and the representation of a real woman on stage: her voice. Whether or not ancient Greek actors who played women spoke in falsetto is unclear.5 If the actor here hopes to make Praxagora even just the least bit convincing, however, he must give her a plausible feminine voice; a deeper masculine falsetto may be saved for the assembly rehearsal. Praxagora is dressed in men’s clothing at the start, and should not present a convincing male figure now. An incongruent feminine voice would help her do so.The prologue of Ecclesiazusae announces all of the play’s important themes. This as yet unnamed transvestite figure addresses a little oil-lamp:
O bright eye of this lamp turned on the potter’s wheel, invented beautifully by the clever artisans - for we shall reveal your birth and fortune - set in motion by the potter’s whirl, you possess the bright honors of the sun in your nostrils - the starting-point, the agreed-upon signal of fire. We reveal [things] to you alone, naturally, when quite often you stand beside us when we are trying out the positions of sexual love [lit. the twists and turns of Aphrodite] in our bedchambers, the guard of arched bodies, and no one in the house awakens from your eye. You alone shine in the corners of the thighs that are not to be spoken about, singeing the blooming hair, and you stand with us when, in secret, we open the storehouses full both of grain and of the spring of Bacchus [wine]. And, being a companion in these actions, you don’t babble about it to others. TQ A.a|!7tp6 v oppa too TpoxB^oiToi) \v%vo\)
yovac; is yap caq Kai xbxaq SqtabGopev* ipoxco yap eXaQeiq K8papiKr|g pupr|<; ano jiUKTfjpai Xaixnpaq f]Woo xijia<; 8X£i<; - oppa (pA,oyo<; arjpsia xa ^uyKsipeva. aoi yap povco fir^oOpev eiKoxcoq, ¿rcei Kav xoiai Scopaxioiaiv ’AcppoSiiTjc; xporccov 7i8ipcop8vaiai Ti^rjaiov rcapaGxaxeig,X,op5oup8vcov xe acopaxcov 87uaxaxr|v 6(p0a>4idv ooSei^ xov gov ¿^eipyei Sopcav. povoc; 8e pr|pcov eiq a7toppi)xoi)<; pi)%oi)(;>.dp7r8i(; dipeucov xf]v ¿7rav0ouaav xpixa* gxo&c, xe Kap7ioC Baicxiou xe vapaxo(;7cX,f| peic; wroiyvuGaiQi aupTrapaaxaxeii;- Kai xaoxa GDv8p©v ou XaXeiq xoiq TiXrjGiov. (1-16)6
The most obvious quality of this monologue is its tone. The speaker’s elaborate diction parodies tragedy, and this description of a lowly little oil lamp becomes more and more absurd. By means of paratragic apostrophe, the speaker turns the lamp into another comic actor: it wears a mask and its ‘nose’ illuminates the scene. Here Aristophanes employs one of his standard comic techniques, borrowing postures from tragedy to aid his protagonist.7 The monologue is a joke on the audience as well. Since the audience is expecting a comedy, its naive expectations may be disappointed for a moment. If we recall that this is an Aristophanic comedy, and remember to expect paratragedy, then everything fits into place (cf. the paratragic openings of Lysistrata and Thesmophoriazusae, for example). The speaker takes words from one type of dramatic situation and makes them comic by recasting and reclothing them. The speaker is clever, albeit overly dramatic. Finally, the lines emphasize that the play opens at night, the time for trickery and secrecy.This light is not for practical illumination alone, however. It is, first, a signal (Gr||i8ia, 6) for the speaker’s companions. The speaker also has a more intimate relationship with the lamp, one intimate enough to say melodramatically that she knows - and will reveal - its birth and its fortune (3). Her choice of verb (Sq^oco) emphasizes her own identity as one who knows and reveals secrets. Throughout this play almost every character will cover up or reveal something true or something false. When she invokes Aphrodite (8-9), the speaker gives us the first syntactical indication of her actual sex: she uses a feminine participle (7t8ipcop8vaiGi, 9).
