Like the 'Lysistrata,' the 'Thesmophoriazusae, or Women's Festival,' and
the next following play, the 'Ecclesiazusae, or Women in Council' are
comedies in which the fair sex play a great part, and also resemble that
extremely _scabreux_ production in the plentiful crop of doubtful 'double
entendres' and highly suggestive situations they contain.
The play has more of a proper intrigue and formal dénouement than is
general with our Author's pieces, which, like modern extravaganzas and
musical comedies, are often strung on a very slender thread of plot. The
idea of the 'Thesmophoriazusae' is as follows.
Euripides is summoned as a notorious woman-hater and detractor of the
female sex to appear for trial and judgment before the women of Athens
assembled to celebrate the Thesmophoria, a festival held in honour of the
goddesses Demeter and Persephone, from which men were rigidly excluded.
The poet is terror-stricken, and endeavours to persuade his confrère, the
tragedian Agathon, to attend the meeting in the guise of a woman to plead
his cause, Agathon's notorious effeminacy of costume and way of life
lending itself to the deception; but the latter refuses point-blank. He
then prevails on his father-in-law, Mnesilochus, to do him this favour,
and shaves, depilates, and dresses him up accordingly. But so far from
throwing oil on the troubled waters, Mnesilochus indulges in a long
harangue full of violent abuse of the whole sex, and relates some
scandalous stories of the naughty ways of peccant wives. The assembly
suspects at once there is a man amongst them, and on examination of the
old fellow's person, this is proved to be the case. He flies for
sanctuary to the altar, snatching a child from the arms of one of the
women as a hostage, vowing to kill it if they molest him further. On
investigation, however, the infant turns out to be a wine-skin dressed in
baby's clothes.
In despair Mnesilochus sends urgent messages to Euripides to come and
rescue him from his perilous predicament. The latter then appears, and in
successive characters selected from his different Tragedies--now Menelaus
meeting Helen again in Egypt, now Echo sympathising with the chained
Andromeda, presently Perseus about to release the heroine from her
rock--pleads for his unhappy father-in-law. At length he succeeds in
getting him away in the temporary absence of the guard, a Scythian
archer, whom he entices from his post by the charms of a dancing-girl.
As may be supposed, the appearance of Mnesilochus among the women dressed
in women's clothes, the examination of his person to discover his true
sex and his final detection, afford fine opportunities for a display of
the broadest Aristophanic humour. The latter part of the play also, where
various pieces of Euripides are burlesqued, is extremely funny; and must
have been still more so when represented before an audience familiar with
every piece and almost every line parodied, and played by actors trained
and got up to imitate every trick and mannerism of appearance and
delivery of the tragic actors who originally took the parts.
The 'Thesmophoriazusae' was produced in the year 412 B.C., six years
before the death of Euripides, who is held up to ridicule in it, as he is
in 'The Wasps' and several other of our Author's comedies.
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