The fact that women’s parts in Elizabethan drama were played by boys has been used to explain the fondness of Elizabethan heroines for masquerading in masculine attire. Now the Greek theater, likewise, knew no actresses—all parts, regardless of sex, were presented by men. Can any effect of this practice be traced in the extant plays? In the first place Greek drama also was not unacquainted with the spectacle of masculine performers impersonating women who were disguised as men; cf. the rôle of Mnesilochus in Aristophanes’ _Women at the Thesmophoria_, and the chorus and several characters in the same author’s _Women in Council_. But in the Greek theater this occurrence was too rare to be significant. Secondly, it has frequently been observed that the heroines of Greek tragedy are as a rule lacking in feminine tenderness and diffidence and are prone to such masculine traits as boldness, initiative, and self-reliance. On the other hand the women who have speaking parts in comedy are usually either impaired in reputation or disagreeable in character—courtesans, ravished maidens, shrews, scolds, jealous wives, intriguing mothers-in-law, etc.[286] Now these facts are doubtless the resultant of many factors. For example, tragedy has little direct use for the modest violet type of woman, and the sharp demarcation between dramatic genres (see p. 201, below) tended to prevent their indirect employment in scenes meant merely to relieve the tragic intensity of the main plot. Likewise, social conditions must have had a great deal to do with the exclusion of women of unblemished reputation and attractive years from the comic stage (see pp. 277-79, below). Nevertheless when all is said I consider it quite possible that the representation of women by men actors was partially responsible for such a choice and for the delineation of female rôles. At least male performers must have found such types of women much easier to impersonate. Finally, if children were represented only in pantomime and their words spoken by a grown actor from behind the scenes (see pp. 179 f., above) we can understand why girls never have a speaking part and one reason why the words put in boys’ mouths are often too old for them. A competent critic has declared: “Euripides’ children do not sing what is appropriate to children in the circumstances supposed but what the poet felt for the children and for the situations. In particular the song of the boy over the dead body of his mother in the _Alcestis_ is one of his grossest errors in delineation.”[287] This situation, also, is capable of several explanations, but who will deny that the practice of having children’s parts declaimed by adults belongs among them?