The Brothers Menaechmus Female Characters

Q) Comment on the female characters in Plautus' The Brothers Menaechmus.
The Brothers Menaechmus is a comedy of mistaken identity, written by the Roman

playwright Plautus around the beginning of the second century BC, as McCarthy (2013)
says, "The play employs humour in the mistaken identity of the twin-brothers, who
unfortunately hold the same name, Manaechmus". Plautus' work is based on the plays of
Menander and other Greek playwrights. The Roman playwrights translated the Greek plays
into Latin and made them more appealing to the native Roman audience. Most Roman plays
like The Brothers Menaechmus were comical farces. With its shimmering wordplay and
twisting plot, the play served a crucial role in the development of comedy as a genre,
inspiring playwrights such as Shakespeare and Molière.
The play includes stock characters, sexual & satirical humour, and slave-culture. The stock
characters comprise the clever slave, the shrewish wife, the greedy old man, and the youthful
lover or the prostitute. Each of these characters can be easily recognized from the typical
behaviour and how they portray themselves. In most Roman plays, women or female
characters did not have many speaking roles. However, in The Brothers Manaechmus, the
wife and the prostitute have a large part to play and contribute to the exchange of dialogue.
Also, the fact that the two women were quite headstrong and humourous would have been
laughable when the play was written, because the average women of those times were quiet
and dutiful.
One of the most important characters of The Brothers Manaechmus is the shrewish and
quarrelsome wife of Menaechmus I. The traditional reader may have sympathy for her
situation. She is upset that Manaechmus I so blatantly visits Erotium, the prostitute, and
relies on her father for support later in the play when she deems her husband to be mad
because he does not recognize her. For Menaechmus' status, he feels trapped by his marriage.
His first song reveals he is a henpecked husband and continually rebuked by his wife, who
will not let him out of her sight. Instead of a wife, he feels he has a “customs office
bureaucrat,” since “I must declare the things I’ve done, I’m doing, and all that!”
Menaechmus I criticizes her and claims he owes her no explanation because he takes care of
her needs and offers her everything she could ever want. The most important element of this
play is the dress of Menaechmus I's wife. Menaechmus II comes out of his house, wearing
his wife’s dress under his cloak. He addresses the “philandering husbands” in the audience
and tells them to congratulate him, for he has taken a dress of his wife’s to give to his
mistress, Erotium. A common motif presented in the play is the idea that Menaechmus’s
wife is uncontrollable and violent. When she appears on stage, she is presented almost like a
rabid dog, someone who has no control over her actions. She is compared time and time
again with various wild animals just to highlight how she does not behave in a normal way.
This way of comparing her becomes a common motif in the play. Menaechmus I also
compares his wife to Hecuba, the bitch, and said that she showered abuse on everybody in
sight.
The other significant female character is Erotium who is a prostitute. She lives near the
house of Menaechmus I. She is referred to as 'The Lady of Pleasure', as Manaechmus I finds
pleasure in all his endeavors with Erotium. Menaechmus I steals his wife's dress for Erotium
to return all her favours. "The woman flatters him as long as she sees what he's stolen", these
words are uttered by Peniculus when Menaechmus I presents Erotium with the dress he stole
from his wife. When she sees her dress, her behavior changes in a matter of minutes and she
becomes sweet and loving. The reason why she acts in such a way is that she wants to profit
from Menaechmus I and get the dress even though she knows it once belonged to
Menaechmus I's wife. This shows that for Erotium, money and financial gain are the most
important things in the world and that she does not care if a man loves her or not, as long as
he gives her what she wants. Erotium is symbolical as she represents the slave culture that
was quite prevalent at the time when this play was written.
The wife and Erotium represent the two poles of a Greek man's life: obligation and pleasure.
The Wife constrains and represses Menaechmus, holding him back from the pleasures he
wishes to indulge. Related to that, Menaechmus I also has to attend to his business at the
forum, a tedious situation that vexes him. By contrast, Erotium and her offerings of sex,
praise, and good food and drink are everything that Menaechmus I desires but cannot have as
frequently as he wants. When he balances obligation and pleasure, life is generally tolerable
and harmonious, but if he behaves out of line (e.g., stealing his wife's dress), then the balance
is threatened.

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Q) Comment on the female characters in Plautus' The Brothers Menaechmus.

The Brothers Menaechmus is a comedy of mistaken identity, written by the Roman

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