Friday, November 4, 2022

The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes - Octopus tunnyfish dogfish and skate

The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes – or The Parliament of Women, or several other titles – was performed in 392 BCE, thirteen years after The Frogs.  In the interval many things had changed.  Athens had been conquered; democracy was overthrown but restored; one endless war ended and another began.  So maybe the one thing that changed, and is now detectable in the play in a way I had not perceived before, is that Athens, once rich, is now poor.  No more spectacularly costumed Choruses of the Birds.  Fortunately, comedy is cheap.

The central conceit of The Assemblywomen is outstanding.  The women of Athens, fed up with it all, as they were in Lysistrata and The Poet and the Women, disguise themselves as men (see left) in order to infiltrate the democratic assembly en masse and vote to put the women in charge.  The disguise scene is a quarter of the play. 

The women, once ruling as women, enact communism, a communism so close to that of Plato’s Republic, written over a decade later.  Not only is wealth held in common, but so are children and most importantly for comic purposes so is sex.  The last half of the short but rambling play is a series of comic sketches about life under communism.

It ends with the invitation to a feast.  Here we find the famous Longest Word in Greek, 171 letters long, just a stew but with the ingredients and even the recipe contained in the name of the dish.  The word by itself is a great gag, full of possibilities for performers, full of tension for the audience.  English translators occasionally try to reproduce it but generally break it up:

                          For –

                              there’ll –

                                     be –

Mussels and whelks and slices of anchovy

Octopus tunnyfish dogfish and skate

Savoury chutney and sauce with a zing in it

Lashings of pickle to pile on your plate…

[seven more lines about fowl] – and that’s about that.  (263, tr. David Barrett)

Is The Assemblywomen cruder than the other Aristophanes plays?  Certainly compared to the last few we have read.

The Assemblywomen is performed fairly often – you can see it at the Warwick Ancient Drama Festival in January, for example – but I had trouble finding a performance still I thought was interesting, so I borrowed a promotional image, visible above, from a 2010 production by the No.11 Productions company.

Scholars have found it useful to call The Assemblywomen and next week’s play, Wealth (388 BCE), “Middle Comedy,” distinct from the Old Comedy we have been reading and the New Comedy of Menander.  It is transitional, perhaps, with a reduced role for the chorus, more prose and less verse, and more stereotypical comic characters.  Maybe so, but I thought it was recognizably Aristophanes, not just in the gags but in the moral imperative: Someone clean up this city!

I do not remember Wealth at all.  The title subject is obviously of endless satirical value.  Next week.

3 comments:



  1. As in Poochigian's translation of Lysistrata, there is very explicit language, that now would make the work at least R rated. As I read this I wondered if this language was meant to shock the audience or was it just how people in Athens in 351 BCE talked?. Women are depicted as craving sex but tired of just being a vehicle for the penises of men. Older women resent younger women getting all the sex.

    I found the debates interesting. The depiction of women is kind of amusing.
    A blog I have followed for many years, Wuthering Expectations, is doing a read through of all the surviving Greek Plays, a marvelous endeavor I wish I could have emulated.

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  2. Do you think the sexual expressions were meant to shock or was this an accurate rendering of how people spoke then?

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  3. My understanding is that the earthiness of Aristophanes is an exaggeration of the speech and attitudes of the time. The Greeks were much more direct and open about sexual matters, and incorporated sexual matter into religious ceremonies. Then there are the satyrs and their phalli. Imagine dignified Aeschylus directing his satyr plays. The Athenians would certainly have shocked the Puritans and their American descendants.

    I should say, though, that in my lifetime the sexual material allowed on American television has massively increased. The culture has become a lot earthier.

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