They roast and boil after the good old fashion,
They keep the holidays that were kept of old,
They make their cheesecakes by the old receipts,
They keep a private bottle, like their mothers,
They plague their husbands—as they always did.
Even in the management of a campaign, they will be found more prudent and more competent than the men:—
Being mothers, they’ll be chary of the blood
Of their own sons, our soldiers; being mothers,
They will take care their children do not starve
When they’re on service; and, for ways and means,
Trust us, there’s nothing cleverer than a woman.
And as for diplomacy, they’ll be hard indeed
To cheat—they know too many tricks themselves.
Her speech is unanimously applauded; she is elected lady-president on the spot, by public acclamation, and the Chorus of ladies march off towards the Pnyx to secure their places, like the old gentleman in ‘The Wasps,’ ready for daybreak.
In the next scene, two of the husbands enter in great perplexity, one wrapped in his wife’s dressing-gown, and the other with only his under-garment on, and without his shoes. They both want to go to the Assembly, but cannot find their clothes. While they are wondering what in the world their wives can have done with them, and what is become of the ladies themselves, a third neighbour, Chremes, comes in. He has been to the Assembly; but even he was too late to get the threepence which was allowed out of the public treasury to all who took their seat in good time, and which all Athenian citizens, if we may trust their satirist, were so ludicrously eager to secure. The place was quite full already, and of strange faces too. And a handsome fair-faced youth (Praxagora in disguise, we are to understand) had got up, and amid the loud cheers of those unknown voters had proposed and carried a resolution, that the government of the state should be placed in the hands of a committee of ladies,—an experiment which had found favour also with others, chiefly because it was “the only change which had not as yet been tried at Athens.” His two neighbours are somewhat confounded at his news, but congratulate themselves on the fact that the wives will now, at all events, have to see to the maintenance of the children, and that “the gods sometimes bring good out of evil.”
The women return, and get home as quickly as they can to change their costume, so that the trick by which the passing of this new decree has been secured may not be detected. Praxagora succeeds in persuading her husband that she had been sent for in a hurry to attend a sick neighbour, and only borrowed his coat to put on “because the night was so cold,” and his strong shoes and staff, in order that any evil-disposed person might take her for a man as she tramped along, and so not interfere with her. She at first affects not to have heard of the reform which has been just carried, but when her husband explains it, declares it will make Athens a paradise. Then she confesses to him that she has herself been chosen, in full assembly, “Generalissima of the state.” She puts the question, however, just as we have all seen it put by a modern actress,—“Will this house agree to it?” And if Praxagora was at all attractively got up, we may be sure it was carried by acclamation in the affirmative. Then, in the first place, there shall be no more poverty; there shall be community of goods, and so there shall be no lawsuits, and no gambling, and no informers. Moreover, there shall be community of wives,—and all the ugly women shall have the first choice of husbands. So she goes off to her public duties, to see that these resolutions are carried out forthwith; the good citizen begging leave to follow close at her side, so that all who see him may say, “What a fine fellow is our Generalissima’s husband!”
The scene changes to another street in Athens, where the citizens are bringing out all their property, to be carried into the market-place and inventoried for the common stock. Citizen A. dances with delight as he marshals his dilapidated chattels into a mock procession—from the meal-sieve, which he kisses, it looks so pretty with its powdered hair, to the iron pot which looks as black “as if Lysimachus” (some well-known fop of the day, possibly present among the audience) “had been boiling his hair-dye in it.” This patriot, at least, has not much to lose, and hopes he may have something to gain, under these female communists. But his neighbour, who is better off, is in no such hurry. The Athenians, as he remarks, are always making new laws and abrogating them; what has been passed to-day very likely will be repealed to-morrow. Besides, it is a good old national habit to take, not to give. He will wait a while before he gives in any inventory of his possessions.
But at this point comes the city-beadle (an appointment now held, of course, by a lady) with a summons to a banquet provided for all citizens out of the public funds: and amongst the items in the bill of fare is one dish whose name is composed of seventy-seven syllables—which Aristophanes gives us, but which the reader shall be spared. Citizen B. at once delivers it as his opinion that “every man of proper feeling should support the constitution to the utmost of his ability,” and hurries to take his place at the feast. There are some difficulties caused, very naturally, by the new communistic regulations as to providing for the old and ugly women, but with these we need not deal. The piece ends with an invitation, issued by direction of Praxagora through her lady-chamberlain, to the public generally, spectators included, to join the national banquet which is to inaugurate the new order of things. The “tag,” as we should call it in our modern theatrical slang, spoken from what in a Greek theatre was equivalent to the footlights in a London one, by the leader of the Chorus of ladies, neatly requests, on the author’s behalf, the favourable decision of judges and spectators:—
One little hint to our good critics here
I humbly offer; to the wise among you,
Remember the wise lessons of our play,
And choose me for my wisdom. You, again,
Who love to laugh, think of our merry jests,
And choose me for my wit. And so, an’t please you,
I bid you all to choose me for the crown.
And let not this be counted to my loss—
That ’twas my lot to be presented first:
But judge me by my merits, and your oaths;
And do not take those vile coquettes for tutors,
Who keep their best smiles for their latest suitors.
It is plain from the whole character of this play, as well as from the ‘Lysistrata’ and the ‘Women’s Festival,’ that whatever reason the Athenian women might have had for complaining of their treatment at the hands of Euripides, they had little cause to congratulate themselves upon such an ally as Aristophanes. The whip of the tragic poet was as balm compared with the scorpions of the satirist. But it must be borne in mind, in estimating these unsparing jests upon the sex which we find in his comedies, as well as the coarseness which too often disfigures them—though it is but a poor apology for either—that it is very doubtful whether it was the habit for women to attend the dramatic performances. Their presence was certainly exceptional, and confined probably under any circumstances to the less public festivals, and to the exhibitions of tragedy. But women had few acknowledged rights among the polished Athenians. They laughed to scorn the notion of the ruder but more chivalric Spartan, who saluted his wife as his “lady,” and their great philosopher Aristotle reproached the nation who could use such a term as being no better than “women-servers.” These “women’s rights” have been a fertile source of jest and satire in all times, our own included; but there is a wide interval in tone and feeling between the Athenian poet’s Choruses of women, and the graceful picture, satire though it be, drawn by the English Laureate, of the