Sarah's Reviews > The Ecclesiazusae (or Women in Council)

The Ecclesiazusae is another women-centric play by Aristophanes that focuses on women who want to change their domestic roles and experience being men... so they take their husbands' clothes and grow facial hair to become more like men. This play is a lot like Lysistrata in many senses- the plot is similar, the characters are similar, and the message being put across is similar. I think I may have liked this one a little bit more, but I think that is only marginal. Both are great, I just find it funny that this group of women would willingly start growing beards and leg hair.

I really enjoy plays like this because they feel so modern, yet so accurate for the time. In many ways, Aristophanes seemed to be very much ahead of his time, byt not to a degree which inhibited his ability to do well in competitions at the time. In short, I really see him as more than a funny comedian, but as a very scathing thinker as well. Plays that attack a patriarchy that was in place at the time only seem to come from Aristophanes most of the time, which really brings his intellectuality into light.