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Plautus’ Asinaria is full of variations more than any other play, as well as sudden transformations of plot, mixing in the same character traits, and irrationally motivated actions in events. Thus, this play can be said that it is a farce that turns into an incoherent comedy, whether because of neglect or reformulation by Plautus, and this is not befitting Plautus’ status and the theatrical traditions in which he worked. Plautus has excelled through his play in drawing characters who play the roles of each other, showing the wife and mother controlling her husband and her son, in a way that is not appropriate for women. It is different from the obedient and submissive woman, and this was laughable, for depicting the comic role of a woman, playing the role of a man is a parody characterised by exaggeration and distortion of usual behaviours and normal roles. This causes sarcasm and ridicule of the role played by women, contrary to the stereotype that they should be. As for the husband and father, in exchange for the enjoyment of his wife’s financial resources, he admits that he has relinquished his powers as a man in his family to her. As a result, he has relinquished his position, losing his dignity, becoming as nothing in the family, and has had no control on his wife’s life or even the evaluation of his son. All what concerns him is only to satisfy his pleasures away from his wife, who controls him, and to obtain her money without her knowledge. As for the wife, playing the role of the husband in managing the financial affairs of her family, she forgots to take care of her husband, who made her husband, who could not find love and care, and looked for them elsewhere to the point that he looked like an adolescent. This renunciation also made his father’s relationship with his son abnormal; the son missed the rol model represented by his father, these things that led him to fall in love with a whore, and this matter prompted him to seek money, regardless of the result or concessions he would make. Thus, Plautus presents in The Asinaria the young man who is rewarded for his misbehavior and the old man who misbehaves and is punished by his wife. Plautus did not stop at embodying the man who plays the role of the woman and vice versa, but he also embodied the slaves as they take advantage of this wrong situation in the family and try to make themselves masters of their masters, things which generated many comic scenes in this play.
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