In a similarly frequent misrepresentation, no less a critic than Northrop Frye ( Anatomy 163) declared, “What normally happens” in Plautus and Terence is that a lover’s desire is resisted by “opposition, usually paternal,” until the boy gets the girl. Nevertheless, there still exists the major error regarding his comedies exemplified in Andrew Stott’s Comedy (Routledge, 2005): that Roman comedy “was built almost exclusively on plots and characters so similar that to modern readers the genre seems narrow and formulaic” (21). I think most classically educated people now understand that Plautus was not a hack translator of superior (lost) Greek dramatists. I hope that these readers will appreciate the playwright’s inventive comic genius and discover his remarkable variety in tone, characters, and situations.įirst, his inventiveness second, his variety.
Which ones to choose? They could do worse than turn to the ones that led Shakespeare, Molière, and Sondheim to write their imitations. Readers or actors may, I hope, go on to read or see or produce complete plays by Plautus. Most or all of these scenes are suitable to use for audition or separate performance. Then I hope to interest people who like doing comedy as well as reading it, feeling the threads tying ancient to modern comic plots and characters. First, those (like me) also interested in the classical tradition, comedy above all, and its history. I have assembled this collection of scenes with several audiences in mind, besides, of course, readers who like to laugh. Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, Taming of the Shrew, Merry Wives of Windsor, and The Tempest are partly based on Menaechmi, Amphitruo, Mostellaria, Casina, and Rudens Molière’s L’Avare ( The Miser), on Aulularia Gelbart and Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, on Pseudolus, Miles Gloriosus, Casina, and Mostellaria David Williamson’s Flatfoot (2004) on Miles Gloriosus the Capitano in Commedia dell’Arte, Shakespeare’s Falstaff, and Jonson’s Bobadill all inherit traits of Plautus’s braggart soldiers. The jokes, characters, and plots that Plautus and his successor Terence left have continued to influence comedy from the Renaissance even to the present. These first situation comedies, Greek then Roman, were called New Comedies, in contrast with the more loosely plotted Old Comedies, surviving in the plays of Aristophanes. In Rome the forerunners of such plays, existing a generation before Plautus, were called fabulae palliatae, comedies in which actors wore the Greek pallium or cloak. He spun his work from Greek comedies, “New Comedies” bearing his own unique stamp. This collection celebrates a comic artist who left twenty plays written during the decades on either side of 200 B.C.
At length, through the agency of the latter, the brothers recognize each other on which Messenio receives his liberty, and Menaechmus of Epidamnus resolves to make sale of his possessions and to return to Syracuse, his native place.Plautus (c.254 BC–184 BC) - An Introduction to Plautus Through Scenes: Selected and translated by Richard F. In consequence of his resemblance to his brother, many curious and laughable mistakes happen between him and the Courtesan Erotium, the wife of Menaechmus of Epidamnus, the Cook Cylindrus, the Parasite Peniculus, the father-in-law of Menaechmus of Epidamnus, and lastly Messenio himself.
Having wandered for six years, lie arrives at Epidamnus, attended by his servant, Messenio. Menaechmus Sosicles, on growing to manhood, determines to seek his lost brother. The original name of the other twin-brother was Sosicles, but on the loss of Menaechmus, the latter name has been substituted by their grandfather for Sosicles, in remembrance of the lost child. Disagreements, however, arising with her, he forms an acquaintance with the Courtesan Erotium, and is in the habit of presenting her with clothes and jewels which he pilfers from his wife. One of these, whose name was Menaechmus, when a child, accompanied his father to Tarentum, at which place he was stolen and carried away to Epidamnus, where in course of time he has married a wealthy wife. MOSCHUS, a merchant of Syracuse, had two twin sons who exactly resembled each other.