This book interprets the handling of costume in the plays of the ancient Greek comic playwright Aristophanes, using as evidence the surviving plays as well as vase-paintings and terracotta figurines. This book fills a gap in the study of ancient Greek drama, focusing on performance, gender, and the body.

In this thesis I argue for the consequential role costume change plays in Aristophanic comedy, that these changes either advance the plot or convey a change a character has undergone. Specifically, I focus on changes of hair, clothing, and mask, because these are the parts of costumes that characters most often manipulate. My first chapter draws from Knights, Ecclesiazusae, Thesmophoriazusae, and Wasps and argues for the clothing changes of certain characters as central to turning point of the plot. My second chapter is centered on manipulation of hair in Lysistrata, Ecclesiazusae, and Thesmophoriazusae, looking especially at gender and the role hair plays in establishing gender boundaries. Finally, my third chapter focuses on Knights, Plutus, and Clouds, all of which contain a character who undergoes a significant transformation of lifestyle. These transformations, I argue, could possibly have been made visually more effective by a change of the character's mask.

Aristophanes and Women, first published in 1993, investigates the workings of the great Athenian comedian’s ‘women plays’ in an attempt to discern why they were in fact probably quite funny to their original audiences. It is argued that modern students, scholars, and dramatists need to consider much more closely the conditions of the plays’ ancient productions when evaluating their ostensible themes. Three plays are focused upon: Lysistrata, Thesmophoriazusae, and Ecclesiazusae. All seem to speak quite eloquently to contemporary concerns about women’s rights, the value of women’s work, and the relationships between women and war, literary representation and politics. On the one hand, Professor Taaffe tries to retrieve what an ancient Athenian audience may have l appreciated about these plays and what their central theses may have meant within that culture. On the other hand, Aristophanes is discussed from the perspective of a late twentieth-century, specifically female, reader.

Greek comedy offers a unique insight into the reality of life as a slave, giving this disenfranchised group a 'voice'.