ARISTOPHANES - The Plays of Aristophanes: The Thesmophoriazusae

ARISTOPHANES 

  The Plays of Aristophanes:

THE THESMOPHORIAZUSAE

 QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION

Aristrophanes, c.445 c. 380 BC

Biographical Note

However, his first play, the Banqueters, won the second prize in 427 B.C, and he must then have been less than eighteen years of age, since as he notes in the Clouds, he was too young to produce it in his own name.

Aristophanes, Great Books Volume 5, pg 451

Biographical Note

Aristophanes produced a play for the last time in 388. The following year, his son Araros, won the first prize with one of his father's plays. Since Araros was producing his own plays by 375, it has been inferred that Aristophanes died somewhere between 385 and 375 B.C.

Aristophanes, Great Books Volume 5, pg 451

Mnesilochus: Whence art thou, what they country, what thy Aristophanes, The Plays of Aristophanes: The Thesmophoriazusae, Great Books Volume 5, pg 602

Euripides: What's the matter? Shut your mouth, or else I'll clap a gag in.

Mnesilochus: Lackalackaday!

Aristophanes, The Plays of Aristophanes: The Thesmophoriazusae, Great Books Volume 5, pg 602

Mnesilochus: O me, you'll scald me like a sucking-pig.

Aristophanes, The Plays of Aristophanes: The Thesmophoriazusae, Great Books Volume 5, pg 603

Euripides: Now for a snood and hair-net

Aristophanes, The Plays of Aristophanes: The Thesmophoriazusae, Great Books Volume 5, pg 603

1st Woman: I don't believe that there's a single fault he's not accuse us of; I don't believe that there's a single theatre or stage, but there is he, calling us double-dealers, false, faithless, rippling, mischief-making gossips, a rotten set, a misery to men. Well, what's the consequence?

The men come home looking so sour - O we can see them peeping in every closet, thinking friends are there. Upon my word we can't do anything we used to do; he has made the men so silly.

Aristophanes, The Plays of Aristophanes: The Thesmophoriazusae, Great Books Volume 5, pg 604

1st Woman: Euripides declares, the scandal-monger, "An old man weds a tyrant, not a wife." You know, my sisters, how they mew us up, guarding our women's rooms with bolts and seals and fierce Molossian dogs. That's all his doing.

Aristophanes, The Plays of Aristophanes: The Thesmophoriazusae, Great Books Volume 5, pg 605

Mnesilochus: But now we're all alone, there's no reporter, all among friend, why not be fair and candid? Grant that the man has really found us out, and told a thing or two, sure they're all true, and there's a many thousand still behind.

Aristophanes, The Plays of Aristophanes: The Thesmophoriazusae, Great Books Volume 5, pg 605

Mnesilochus: Nor how a wife contrived to smuggle out her frightened lover, holding up her shawl to the sun's rays for her husband to admire.

Aristophanes, The Plays of Aristophanes: The Thesmophoriazusae, Great Books Volume 5, pg 605

1st Woman: It is, indeed: how dare you plead for him who always chooses such odious subject for his plays, on purpose to abuse us?

Aristophanes, The Plays of Aristophanes: The Thesmophoriazusae, Great Books Volume 5, pg 606

Cleisthenes: Euripides, they say, has sent a cousin, a bad old man, amongst you here to-day.

Chorus: O, why and wherefore, and with what design?

Cleisthenes: To be a spy, a horrid, treacherous spy, a spy on all your purposes and plans.

Aristophanes, The Plays of Aristophanes: The Thesmophoriazusae, Great Books Volume 5, pg 606

Chorus: Men never speak a good word, never one, for the feminine gender, everyone say we're a plague, the source of all evils to man, war, dissension, and strive. Come answer me this, if you can; Why if we're really a Plague, you're so anxious to have us for wives; and charge us not to be peeping, not to stir out of doors for our lives, isn't it silly to guard a Plague, with such scrupulous care? Zounds! How you rave, coming home, if your poor little wife isn't there, should not rather be glad, and rejoice all the days of your life.

Aristophanes, The Plays of Aristophanes: The Thesmophoriazusae, Great Books Volume 5, pg 609

Chorus: But this is a true description of you. Are ye not gluttonous, vulgar, perverse, kidnappers, housebreakers, footpads, and worse? And we in domestic economy too are thriftier, shiftier, wiser than you. For the loom which our mothers employed with such skill, with its Shafts and its Thongs, we are working it still, and the ancient umbrella by no means is done, we are wielding it yet, as our shield form the sun.

Aristophanes, The Plays of Aristophanes: The Thesmophoriazusae, Great Books Volume 5, pg 609

Chorus: Merrily, merrily, merrily on to your own confusion go. But we've ended our say and we're going away, like good honest women, straight home form the play.

Aristophanes, The Plays of Aristophanes: The Thesmophoriazusae, Great Books Volume 5, pg 614

The Complete Plays of Aristophanes

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