Slater, Plautus in Performance (Princeton 1985)įor general introductions to Roman comedy, the chapters by Gratwick in Cambridge History are very good. Handley, Menander and Plautus: a study in comparison (London 1968) D. Gruen, Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy (Leiden 1990) E.
Fraenkel, Elementi plautini in Plauto (Rome 1960) E. One other main strand of recent Plautine criticism (see Segal, below) is to look at Plautine character and scene as a function of festival: the world turned upside down. But how much difference does that make to the interpretation of the play? Does it make the same sense as a text as it would have on the stage? the torture of slaves) meant to be social criticism, or simply funny? Is Sosia's great speech on the battle meant to evoke Roman experience? If so, to what effect?Ĭhristenson makes a great deal of Amphitruo as "metatheater" (see Slater, below), and it is indeed important to recognize that Plautus' plays are not realistic theater, and do indeed draw attention to their own theatricality. 1162 lines of Latin text, a little over 110 pages of commentary, a very thorough bibliography up through 1990, an index, and four brief appendices containing, respectively, an overview of the textual criticism on the play, a metrical conspectus, a discussion of Plautine prosody, and a. Putting it another way, how does Plautus make his plays at home in Rome? to what extent is he commenting on his own society (see Gruen and Konstan below)? Are allusions to Roman social situations (e.g. Plautus Menaechmi (Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics).
How can you tell what is "Greek" and what is "Roman"-and does it matter? Roman comedy is generally (and rightly) said to be based on Greek New Comedy, and one of the major strands of Plautine criticism until recently has been to try to detect what is "Plautine" or "Roman" in Plautus (see Fraenkel and Handley, below). Why? what does he mean? What is the effect of a comedy of mistaken identity (a common plot compare Menaechmi) in which one of the pairs is god/king and the other is god/slave? And although I will not ask you to sing Sosia's great canticum, you should attempt to understand the meter of this and of the regular spoken meter, the iambic senarius.Īmphitruo is, as Plautus himself makes clear in the prologue, not a typical comedy indeed, Mercury calls it tragicomoedia. On all these topics, Christenson's commentary is very good, and you should use it as needed. Unless you have read Roman comedy before, Plautus is likely to be the most difficult text to read this semester, if only because the language is archaic and the vocabulary unfamiliar.