Female slaves and citizens were actively engaged with and reflected in Roman Republican drama, as the Plautine narrator reveals in the prologue to the Poenulus (Plaut. Poen. 28–35). Contra that narrator's censorious instructions, this volume amplifies and vivifies the female voices within Roman drama, providing vital gender perspectives into the fabulae palliatae, togatae, crepidatae and praetextae. It comprises an introduction, eleven essays in three sections, and concludes with a brief index. The three sections, ‘Females in Performance’, ‘Women in Roman Drama and Society’ and ‘Receptions’, cover the staging of women, their depiction and its socio-historical context, and their afterlife in the plays of Machiavelli, Shakespeare and Silva. The editors avow that ‘drama at Rome was a cultural practice located within Roman festivals, sponsored by Roman officials, played by Roman actors, and enjoyed by Roman audiences’ and that ‘Latin plays were written for audiences whose gender perspectives and expectations were shaped by life in Rome and its environs’ (p. 5); these premises are soundly defended within this volume as they have been elsewhere (e.g. in G. Manuwald, Roman Republican Theatre [2011]). Their stated goals are to provide ‘resources to students and teachers’ of Roman drama, as well as to ‘bring attention generally to the crucial roles of women on the Roman stage’ (p. 8): this they accomplish with vim and vigour.
In their introduction, the editors situate the volume within a scholarly milieu characterised by an interest in the socio-historical contexts of Roman drama. They trace the introduction of drama into Republican Rome and its different genres without assuming significant prior knowledge, providing helpful historical context and definitions. While they recognise pre-existing specialised contributions on gender and Roman drama, they rightly identify a lamentable gender gap in broader scholarly and pedagogical texts, positioning the volume as an initial response to that lacuna, but acknowledging that it is limited in scope to principally Roman comedy.
The first section, ‘Females in Performance’, opens with an essay by D. on the corporeal aspects of male actors staging female bodies in Plautine drama, underscoring their visual and imaginary embodiments of female flesh, highlighting the multiplicity of gendered sensory evocations (through visual and textual means) and intimating that some staged female bodies may have stood ‘as a potential comparandum for the living bodies of Roman women’ (p. 30). She closes by arguing that these male impersonations would have allowed the audience to ‘contemplate the body's capacity to perform various identities' (p. 30). This is followed by a salutary intersectional provocation from Richlin, where she positions Roman drama within the slave society of the Roman Republic, reminding the modern reader how the institution of slavery and the male drag act would have influenced audience perceptions, and contesting that it is occasionally possible to glimpse female characters speaking ‘on the basis of the experience of real slave-women and freedwomen’ (p. 61), as evinced by Virgo in Plaut. Pers. 360–4, 615–16, 655–7 and Ancilla in Plaut. Truc. 810–15. Moore closes the section with a technical essay on musical patterns and gender in Terence's Hecyra, revealing how the musical passages ‘draw extra attention’ to the female characters, ‘their knowledge’ and ‘the male characters' ignorance’ (p. 84), as evident in Ter. Hec. 201–16 and 849–51.
Fantham commences the second section, ‘Women in Roman Drama and Society’, with an essay on women's power in Roman comedy, where she assesses the types and means of control that female characters express over male characters, and cautions modern readers against assuming that wealthy dotatae, for example, exercised unrestricted control over their husbands (pp. 91–3). Ultimately, she concludes that what puts female characters in control in Roman comedy is male characters' ‘sexual frailty’, describing how they exercise this control via methods including ‘emotional blackmail’ and ‘playing a man against his rival’ (p. 102), but stressing that these female characters tend to have more control in Plautus' plays than Terence's (pp. 103–4). J.'s fascinating essay shows how citizen mothers' speech in Roman comedy denotes the ‘contexts, purposes, goals, and conditions of women's lives’ (p. 108), namely how they use context dependent female speech markers, including plain and intensified speech amongst each other (p. 110), assertive and harsh speech with husbands where propriety is at stake (p. 112), and endearments, intimacies and deferential speech with male characters when they lack power (pp. 113–15). Notably, she exposes how changes in female speech markers (to deferential or subservient) highlight the abiding concern citizen mothers had for their daughters' ‘physical and sexual vulnerability’ (p. 121). Similarly, Feltovich's essay discloses the fundamental vulnerability of female characters in Plautus' and Terence's plays, but reveals how sisterly cooperation allowed them to ‘challenge the system that deprives them of control over their own bodies’ and to use ‘persuasion and manipulation’ to seize some control, even if it was only to grant it to a preferred male (pp. 148–9). The following essay by Welsh deals with the place of female characters in the fragments of the fabulae togatae, namely those of Titinius and Afranius, noting their greater independence and diversity of experiences than their counterparts in the fabulae palliatae. In particular, he shows how the women of the togatae creatively respond and react to a range of ‘challenging circumstances’ in their lives (p. 165), including undesirable betrothals, husbands and marriages, as well as divorces and widowhood. Manuwald adroitly caps this section with an essay on women in the fragments of the fabulae crepidatae and praetextae, wherein she details various formulaic ‘statements about women's characteristics and social roles’ (p. 181), but stresses that stereotypical female characters are, like their male counterparts, meant to be understood as negative or positive exempla, ‘representing values and modes of behaviour directly applicable to Roman society’ (p. 182), as Cicero affirms (Cic. Planc. 59; Rab. Post. 29; Sest. 102). This section adeptly reflects how female characters in Roman drama resonated with and were recognised by their contemporary audiences.
In the third and final section, ‘Receptions’, Cinaglia and K. open with an essay on the reception and transformation of female characters from Roman comedy in Niccolò Machiavelli's Mandragola, particularly in the highly independent figure of Lucrezia. In contrast to her Roman models, Machiavelli's Lucrezia emerges happily from the play with concurrent relationships (husband Nicia and lover Callimaco), mocking perhaps Roman comedy's preoccupation with chastity and ‘Livy's heroine’ (p. 207). Subsequently, Traill, drawing on L.G. Clubb's ‘theatergram’ concept, details how Shakespeare altered Roman models of meretrices, stripping them of their ‘bawdiness’ in his plays and viewing them through the ‘filter of Terentian humanism’ (p. 226), so that only traces of their speech and actions remain in the behaviours of his wives and courtesans. Finally, Gonçalves recounts the eighteenth-century adaptation of Plautus’ Amphitruo in Antônio José da Silva's Anfitrião ou Júpiter e Alcmena, disclosing Silva's innovative introduction of Juno as vengeful protagonist and ‘equipotent female opposition’ to Jupiter (p. 248), and reading it as a commentary on the destructive nature of absolute power. These strikingly different receptions speak to the endless possibilities for re-readings of Roman drama.
Given it is meant as a resource for students and teachers, the volume could have benefited from a fuller index (or indeed separate indexes of subjects, sources and names) yet, as the editors themselves indicate in the acknowledgements (p. vii), the index was constructed close to publication, and this may have been impractical. But this is a mere peccadillo.
The volume is an outstanding collection of essays, illuminating how female slaves and citizens were centre stage in Roman Republican drama, and it will serve as an invaluable resource for students and teachers of Roman drama. One is reminded of [Tib.] 3.12.17, where the Sulpician narrator declares ‘uritur’; so too, in this volume, Roman women are set ablaze for all to see.
