The work of Aristophanes is a pendant to that of Euripides, and is often inspired by a much more serious purpose than is commonly supposed. Aristophanes is no mere vulgar buffoon, and most of his obscenity is an empty parade made necessary by the conditions of the Attic stage which Aristophanes himself in the course of his career rendered obsolete. He was a member of the Socratic Circle (the famous Symposium ends with Socrates expounding to Agathon and Aristophanes the nature of tragedy and comedy, and explaining the essential similarity of their functions), and in his early manhood he fell under the spell of the great tragedian. Of all his comedies there is hardly one which in language, music, and dramatic technique does not reveal the intimate harmony that exists between the two men. Aristophanes and Euripides, like our Shelley, were born to be lyric poets, and they both possess the divine gift of melody. But they were interested in so many other things, in politics, in feminism, and in social reform, that art with them often takes the second place. As men they are incomparably greater than such self-centred poets as Sophocles; as artists they neither aim at nor achieve his academic perfection. Their methods are curiously alike, and it is because Aristophanes knows Euripides so well, and is in such intimate sympathy with him, that the constant parody of the Euripidean style in the comedies never becomes wearisome.

Parody, gross humour, indecency even, these were the qualities that a comic poet at Athens had necessarily to display, and Aristophanes, having chosen his medium of expression, is compelled to obey the restrictions of the comic stage. Moreover, it is obvious that he enjoys indulging his humour to the utmost. The wit of Euripides is restrained and ironical, with something of the bitterness of old age; Aristophanes in most of his plays has the exuberance of youthful spirits and an overflowing stock of fantastic inventions.

But a dramatist, even a comic dramatist, however fantastic and inventive his humour may be, must have some foundation of serious purpose, and that foundation Aristophanes takes very largely from Euripides. His three chief themes are the same as those of the tragedian: firstly, that war is a curse—it is useful perhaps for politicians and soldiers, but only brings disaster to real workers; secondly, that a belief in gods made in mortal shape is absurd—such a belief will certainly lead to farcical situations, which if treated realistically will be excellent material for a comic poet; thirdly, that women are as capable, intellectually and morally, as men—their experience of house-management especially fits them for carrying on the business of a State, and a feminist administration might solve many problems that have proved too hard for men. The first of these themes appears in the plot of the Acharnians, the Peace, and the Knights; the second in the Birds, the Frogs, and the Plutus; the feminist plays are the Women at the Festival, the Lysistrata, and the Women in Assembly.

It is obvious that the treatment of these themes in tragedy and comedy will be different; but the initial point of view is very much the same. As for the abuse of Euripides, and there is plenty in the comedies, it is merely part of the comic game, and it is foolish to take it seriously. Aristophanes, Euripides, Plato, and Socrates were all close friends, as intimate one with the other as are our leading politicians, and to speak of Aristophanes ‘attacking’ Euripides and Socrates is to misread the situation.

It is not to be supposed that all the members of the Socratic Circle thought alike on all subjects, and even as regards feminism there are some points of difference between Euripides and Aristophanes. The comic poet is rather interested in the woman’s cause than devoted to it, and in many of his plays he certainly hesitates between the gross realism of the phallic god and the new ideas of feminist doctrine. Often, too, in his theatre women occupy as insignificant a place as they did in the actual life of his time. In the Wasps, for example, Philocleon’s household apparently consists of his grown-up son and the attendant slaves: nothing is said of wife or daughter. In the Knights, ‘Demos’—John Bull—has no Mrs. Bull to keep him company: his domestic arrangements are in the hands of men slaves. In the Clouds there is a vivid picture of Socrates at home: house, furniture, and pupils are all described, but nothing of XanthippË. So in the Acharnians and the Peace we have household scenes, but no women take part in the action: the women are there, but they are persons of no importance. TrygÆus, before setting off on his adventurous voyage, bids an affectionate farewell to his little children, but for his wife he has no message. The Megarian sells his two daughters for a handful of leeks and a measure of salt, and then prays to all his saints that he may be lucky enough to get as good a price for his mother and his wife.

A realist, depicting life at Athens in the fifth century, was compelled to give women an insignificant rÔle, but even in this group of plays Aristophanes makes one exception, the exception, perhaps, that proves the rule, for even under the harem system the masterful woman will sometimes come to the front, and Haroun al Raschid goes in fear of Zobeida. In the Clouds, Strepsiades is married and by no means independent of his wife: the lady is mentioned, although she takes no part in the play, and the reasons of this difference are instructive. Strepsiades himself is a person of inferior social position, lacking both in will-power and intellectual force; his wife is a woman of property, the daughter of a noble family and herself of determined character. Using all these advantages, she is just able to hold her own with her feeble, foolish husband, and to insist at least on a compromise when their opinions differ.

But it is possible to make too much of the absence of women characters, for the conditions of performance at the LenÆan festival were all against feminine interests, and even though the plot of many of the comedies has little to do with women, there are constant flashes that reveal the author’s feminist sympathies. Of all the episodes in the Birds there is none quite so freshly humorous as the arrest of Iris, the girl messenger of the Gods, and even in the midst of the fierce political raillery of the Knights there comes the delicious interlude of the lady triremes meeting in council; the old stager NauphantË, addressing the assembly first and revealing the goings-on of the Government, followed by the shy young thing ‘who has never come near men,’ and is determined to keep her independence, ‘heaven forfend, no man shall ever be my master.’ Indeed, considering the state of Athens and the necessity that lay upon a comic poet of suiting the tastes of his audience, the real surprise is that no less than three of the remaining eleven plays—the Lysistrata, the Women at the Festival, and the Women in Assembly—should be concerned with the feminist movement and be written in open advocacy of the women’s cause.

The Women at the Festival—ThesmophoriazusÆ—is the lightest of the three, and is really a very brilliantly written feminist ‘revue.’ Euripides is the ‘compare,’ and in various disguises takes part in most of the incidents. He has heard that the women, now assembled in their own festival to which no men are admitted, intend to have him put to death, firstly for being a playwright and secondly as a slanderer of womenkind. He goes round to his friends to save him (the scene is a parody on the Alcestis), and first of all to his fellow-dramatist, Agathon. But Agathon, whose music is then burlesqued, is too much like a woman to be of any assistance. He is another of the inner Socratic Circle, but in the way of jest the most infamous conduct is imputed to him: his appearance is as ambiguous as his morals, and all he can do for Euripides is to lend him some articles of women’s dress for the purpose of a disguise. So Euripides has to fall back on his father-in-law, Mnesilochus, the buffoon of the piece, and there follows one of those scenes of disrobing with which we are familiar on the modern stage. The old gentleman is undressed, shaved all over and arrayed in woman’s garments, i.e., he exchanges his rough white blanket for a finer yellow one; winds a band-corset round his breast and puts on a hair-net and bonnet. He is now to all appearances a woman and goes to the Thesmophorian Festival to find out the details of the women’s proposal.

The women assemble, and in an elaborate burlesque of a public meeting recount their grievances against Euripides. It is because of the poet that men have become so suspicious: they scent a lover everywhere, spy on their wives, and lock up the store cupboards. Old men who once would take young wives now remain unmarried, for the poet has told them, ‘When an old man marries a young wife, the lady is master.’ Finally, by his atheistical doctrines, Euripides has ruined many an honest flower-girl, for men do not offer garlands now to the gods. Then Mnesilochus gets up for the defence. ‘I detest the fellow as much as you do,’ he says; ‘but it is unreasonable to be annoyed with him for talking about one or two of our weaknesses—we have ten thousand which he has never mentioned.’ He then proceeds to dilate on some of the frailties which Euripides has omitted; but he is stopped by his angry audience. ‘There is nothing so bad as a woman who is naturally shameless’—the chorus say—‘except it be a woman.’

A fierce discussion begins, until their arguments are interrupted by the appearance of Cleisthenes, one of those womanish men so unpleasantly familiar in Athens, who tells the assembly that a real man is among them. Suspicion at once falls on Mnesilochus; he is discovered by plain evidence to be of the male sex, and is seized by the women. He makes a gallant attempt to escape by snatching a baby from a woman’s lap, and holding it to ransom (a parody on Euripides’ Telephus); but, when he unfastens the child’s wrappings, it is not a baby, but a leather skin, full of wine, which the lady has brought for her private refreshment during the proceedings. He then decides to send to Euripides for help, and a parody of the Palamedes ends the first part of the play.

The intermezzo, as we might call it, between the two acts is a humorous statement of the women’s case on strict Euripidean lines:

The second act is a series of attempts by Euripides to rescue his defender. In the first episode the tragedian appears disguised as the Menelaus of his Helen. Old Mnesilochus is the fair but frail queen, and the scene is supposed to change to Egypt. But the women refuse to let their captive free, and he is finally handed over to a north-country policeman, an illiterate gentleman with a very strong accent. On him Euripides tries the effect of another tragedy. Disguised as Perseus he insists that Mnesilochus is the captive maiden, Andromeda, and that he has come to release her. But the policeman proves obdurate. Then Euripides plays his last card. Remembering that all policemen have a faiblesse for the weaker sex, he disguises himself as an old woman, and comes in, leading by the hand a young and attractive female. The policeman begins at once to soften, and when the plump flute-girl sits down on his knee he capitulates, murmuring, ‘What a swaÄt toÖng: it’s reaÄl Attic hoÖney!’ A last vestige of professional caution makes him ask the old lady her name. Euripides, having to choose a title, chooses a good one, and says, ‘Artemisia,’ which the policeman enters as ‘Artamouxia’ in his note-book, and then, handing over the custody of his prisoner to the old lady he retires indoors with his young acquaintance. The other pair hasten to make their escape, and the play ends with the policeman’s despairing cry, ‘Artamouxia, Artamouxia, where are you?’

The Lysistrata, ‘breaker up of armies,’ is a much stronger play, and the heroine is a masterpiece of dramatic characterisation. From the beginning of the action, when she stands in the darkness waiting for the women she has summoned, and frowning with impatience—‘although a frown spoils her looks,’ as her one companion tells her—until the end, when, her purpose accomplished, she can say, ‘Let man stand by woman and woman by man. Good luck to all, and pray God that we make no more of these mistakes,’ she is a real living woman. If Aristophanes had written nothing else, Lysistrata shows that he understood the female mind almost as well as Euripides himself: better far than most women authors, except only the incomparable Jane, to whose Emma in masterfulness and independence the Athenian lady bears a close resemblance. The plot of the play is simple. Under the lead of Lysistrata the women of Athens make a league with the women of Sparta, Boeotia, Corinth, and the other Greek States (for the solidarity of women is one of the key-notes of the play), to stop the war. For this purpose they put into effect both active and passive measures: they bind themselves by oath to have no further intercourse with their husbands until peace is made (the women at first object, but under the lead of the athletic Spartan finally agree), and they also seize the Acropolis with the treasury. The old men left at home, and the officials, for most of the men are at the war, try to use force; but Lysistrata has marshalled and drilled her women. In a very vivid scene the men attack, but, ‘Up guards, and at them!’ cries Lysistrata; and the forces of male law and order, as represented by the Scythian policemen, are put to ignominious flight. Then the men think it expedient to propose a friendly meeting, and the ‘conversation’ between Lysistrata and the Chief Commissioner is the most instructive part of the play.

‘Why have you seized the treasury?’ he asks. Lysistrata explains that all wars depend on financial considerations, and that the women mean to stop supplies. His argument, that women have no administrative skill or financial knowledge, is countered by the plain facts of home management. ‘It is not the same thing,’ says the Commissioner; ‘this is a war fund.’ Then Lysistrata declares that the war has to stop—now, at once.

At this the Commissioner breaks in furiously: ‘You accursed baggage, I hold my tongue before you! Why, you are wearing a veil now to hide your face. May I die rather.’ But his anger does him little good.

‘If that is your difficulty,’ says Lysistrata, ‘take my veil’—and she puts it on his head—‘and now hold your tongue; moreover, here is my wool-basket, so you may munch beans and card the wool; for now “Women, women never shall be slaves.”’ And so the scene ends with the triumphant chorus.

Between this, the first act, and the second there is a short interval of time; and when we see Lysistrata again she is having some difficulty in keeping her women together and away from their husbands. ‘You long for your men,’ she says; ‘don’t you think they are longing for you? I am sure they are finding the nights very hard. Hold out, good friends, and bear it for a little while longer.’ Her arguments are successful, and soon the first man comes in, with a baby in his arms, prepared to submit to any terms. But till the peace is made, no arrangement is possible and the poor husband goes away unsatisfied. Finally, a joint deputation of Spartans and Athenians appear before Lysistrata. She, as a woman, and therefore, she says, a person of sense, has no difficulty in arranging for them terms of peace which are satisfactory to both sides; and so the play ends with a ‘necklace’ dance, men and women dancing hand in hand.

But this brief summary gives little idea of all the devices of stage-craft in which the Lysistrata abounds. It is eminently an acting play, and can still fill a theatre. The language is certainly gross and its heroine is entirely lacking in modest reticence, but a glance at the French adaptation by M. Donnay, of the Academy, and especially at the additional episodes there introduced, will prove that grossness is not the worst thing in the world, and that a quiet tongue does not always mean a virtuous mind.

The Women in Assembly, EcclesiazusÆ, is much less vigorous. Written twenty years later than the Lysistrata, it shows plain signs of old age and failing powers. Euripides and Socrates have both passed away; the Socratic Circle has broken up. Tragedy is dead, and comedy is dying, for Aristophanes has lost most of that ‘vis comica’ which was his most wonderful possession. The influence of Plato is substituted for the influence of Euripides, and the play is a parody of feminist theories as they are developed in the Republic.

The construction, however, is poor: the action halts and changes midway in the play; the first part is effective enough, but it would be more effective if we did not remember the Lysistrata, whose themes it repeats with less vigour.

At the beginning of the play Praxagora is waiting in the darkness for the women she has summoned to appear. They have resolved to disguise themselves as men, and to attend the assembly which has been called for that morning. There they are to propose and carry a resolution that the State shall be handed over to the management of women. Presently they begin to assemble; their husbands are safely in bed and asleep, for their wives have taken measures that they should have a restful night. Sticks, cloaks, shoes, and false beards are produced and adjusted, but before they set out to pack the assembly Praxagora proposes a rehearsal of their arguments. The ladies who have confined their attention to looking like men prove not very expert at speaking in the male style, and Praxagora herself has to give them a sample speech.

The women by the end of the speech have learnt their parts, and with one last instruction to thrust their elbows into the face of any policeman who tries to interfere they all set out for the assembly. Then Blepyrus, the elderly husband of Praxagora, appears, and the play begins to deteriorate, for it is one of the most dexterous touches in the Lysistrata that the husbands are for the most part away from home, and therefore can take no part in the action. Blepyrus and his neighbours have found that their wives have disappeared together with their cloaks and shoes. While they are standing in doubt they hear strange news. The assembly convened that morning to consider the vital question of State reform is already over; it was so well attended and so punctual to time that many men came too late to vote or to receive their attendance fee. A resolution has been passed unanimously that tailors shall provide clothes and bakers bread, free gratis to all; and, furthermore, that the government shall be in the hands of women. A good-looking young man, who made a most effective speech, was chiefly responsible for this change of policy. He pointed out that women could keep a secret far better than men; that they were in the habit of trusting one another, and that they never would be likely to plot against the government; moreover, everything but woman-government had been tried already without much success, and the experiment was well worth making. Blepyrus and his friends acquiesce in the fait accompli, and when Praxagora returns she learns from her husband that women are now in authority. The socialistic State begins at once to take shape. Praxagora decrees a community of property—land, food, slaves, belong now to the State—every one possesses everything. Women are part of the community of goods, but to avoid disputes the less well-favoured women and men are to have the first choice of partners, and such unions are purely temporary. Law courts, gambling saloons, and night clubs are all summarily closed; for these appurtenances of civilisation are incompatible either with socialism or feminism. The difficulty of work is disposed of by the convenient institution of slavery, and a rÉgime of universal happiness and feasting begins.

Thus far the first section of the play. The second part, which is very inferior, attempts to show the working of the new system. Praxagora disappears, and the characters are mere mechanical figures. A man, A; a man, B; a young man; a young woman; three old women. The scenes are coarse and uninteresting, nor is the prosiness of the dialogue relieved by any of the vivid touches of humour which mark the poet’s earlier plays. Finally, this section, like the first, ends with a banquet, given by the State, and open to all.

The EcclesiazusÆ is plainly inspired by Plato’s theories of communism and feminism as we have them now in the Republic and the Laws. A further example of the connection between the comedian and the philosopher is the Aristophanic tale of the origin of sex in Plato’s Symposium. The story—a Platonic myth with a difference—is so good a specimen both of Aristophanes’ humour and of the gay fashion in which the Greeks anticipate modern science that it is a pity its length prevents quotation.

There are many other details, but the most striking point in the story is the recognition of the original identity of sex. The man and the woman are not separate and opposite, but rather complementary halves of one organism, which once included both; they are a divided whole, and that is why men and women yearn one for the other. How far the tale is Aristophanes’ invention, how far Plato’s, cannot be decided, but the doctrine of the identity of sex-qualification is the common possession of all the Socratic Circle, and forms as clearly the basis of Plato’s serious philosophy as it does of the humorous apologue of Aristophanes.