Plautus and the English Renaissance of Comedy

Plautus and the English Renaissance of Comedy
Author: Richard F. Hardin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2017-11-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1683931297

The fifteenth-century discovery of Plautus’s lost comedies brought him, for the first time since antiquity, the status of a major author both on stage and page. It also led to a reinvention of comedy and to new thinking about its art and potential. This book aims to define the unique contribution of Plautus, detached from his fellow Roman dramatist Terence, and seen in the context of that European revival, first as it took shape on the Continent. The heart of the book, with special focus on English comedy ca. 1560 to 1640, analyzes elements of Plautine technique during the period, as differentiated from native and Terentian, considering such points of comparison as dialogue, asides, metadrama, observation scenes, characterization, and atmosphere. This is the first book to cover this ground, raising such questions as: How did comedy rather suddenly progress from the interludes and brief plays of the early sixteenth century to longer, more complex plays? What did “Plautus” mean to playwrights and readers of the time? Plays by Shakespeare, Jonson, and Middleton are foregrounded, but many other comedies provide illustration and support.

Five Comedies

Five Comedies
Author: Plautus
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
Total Pages: 436
Release: 1999-03-12
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780872203624

"This is a book worthy of high praise... All versions are exceedingly witty and versatile, in verse that ripples from one's lips, pulling all the punches of Plautus, the knockabout king of farce, and proving that the more polished Terence can be just as funny. Accuracy to the original has been thoroughly respected, but look at the humour in rendering Diphilius' play called Synapothnescontes as Three's a Shroud... Students in schools and colleges will benefit from short introductions to each play, to Roman stage conventions, to different types of Greek and Roman comedy, and there is a note on staging, with a diagram illustrating a typical Roman stage and further diagrams of the basic set for each play. The translators have paid more attention to stage directions than is usually given in translations, because they aim to show how these plays worked.

Plautus

Plautus
Author: Titus Maccius Plautus
Publisher:
Total Pages: 232
Release: 1983-06
Genre: Drama
ISBN:

The plays translated in this volume represent everything one would not expect either from the third-century B.C. playwright Plautus or from Roman comedy in general. A common theme in all three comedies is the triumph of women over men. In Truculentus, prostitutes snare all of the men in the play; in Bacchides, the victims include fathers and sons. In Casina, Plautus creates a fantasy that turns traditional social and sexual roles upside down. The plays' mordant, cynical treatment of the normal plots and casts of Roman comedy, their dark humor rooted in homosexuality, oedipal encounters, cruelty, larceny, and prostitution, and their pervasive lack of romance or sentimentality have alternately puzzled and offended the few audiences that have seen them since the Renaissance. Now these unusual plays have been rescued from obscurity in the best possible way—through performance. James Tatum's translations, revised from actual productions, demonstrate that these are among the most entertaining and theatrically effective of Plautus's comedies. The speakable, performable scripts, along with Tatum's introduction, notes, and critical essays summarizing his own experiences in producing them, make this a gold mine for troupes wishing to produce these classics on the contemporary stage as well as for students of classical drama.

Plautus: Menaechmi

Plautus: Menaechmi
Author: V. Sophie Klein
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2022-04-07
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 135009272X

This new volume in the Bloomsbury Ancient Comedy Companions series is perfect for students coming to one of Plautus' most whimsical, provocative, and influential plays for the first time, and a useful first point of reference for scholars less familiar with Roman comedy. Menaechmi is a tale of identical twin brothers who are separated as young children and reconnect as adults following a series of misadventures due to mistaken identity. A gluttonous parasite, manipulative courtesan, shrewish wife, crotchety father-in-law, bumbling cook, saucy handmaid, quack doctor, and band of thugs comprise the colourful cast of characters. Each encounter with a misidentified twin destabilizes the status quo and provides valuable insight into Roman domestic and social relationships. The book analyzes the power dynamics at play in the various relationships, especially between master and slave and husband and wife, in order to explore the meaning of freedom and the status of slaves and women in Roman culture and Roman comedy. These fundamental societal concerns gave Plautus' Menaechmi an enduring role in the classical tradition, which is also examined here, including notable adaptations by William Shakespeare, Jean François Regnard, Carlo Goldoni and Rodgers and Hart.

Funny Words in Plautine Comedy

Funny Words in Plautine Comedy
Author: Michael Fontaine
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2010
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0195341449

Combining textual and literary evidence, this book argues that many Plautine jokes, puns, and names of characters were misunderstood in antiquity. By examining the comedian's tendency to make up and misuse words, Fontaine elucidates many new jokes and argues for a sophisticated, Hellenistic Plautus who wrote for a sophisticated Roman audience.

Barbarian Play: Plautus' Roman Comedy

Barbarian Play: Plautus' Roman Comedy
Author: William S. Anderson
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 1996-10-16
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1442654295

In this volume William S. Anderson sets Plautus, who wrote Rome's earliest surviving poetry, in his rightful place among the Greek and Roman writers of what we know as New Comedy (fourth to second centuries). Anderson begins by defining major innovations that Plautus made on inherited Greek New Comedy (Menander, Philemon, and Diphilus), transforming it from romantic domestic drama to a celebration of rollicking family anarchy. He shows how Plautus diminished the traditional importance of love and replaced it with a new major theme: 'heroic badness,' especially embodied in the rogue slave (ancestor of the impudent servant, valet, or maid). Anderson then examines the unique verbal texture of Plautus' drama and demonstrates his revolt against realism, his drive to have his characters defy everyday circumstances and pit their intrepid linguistic wit against social order, their Roman extravagant impudence against Greek self-control. Finally, Anderson explores the special form of metatheatre that we admire in Plautus, by which he undermines the assumptions of his Greek 'models' and replaces them with a new, confident Roman comedy.

Plautus

Plautus
Author: Titus Maccius Plautus
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 1995-06
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780801850714

"The works of Plautus," writes Palmer Bovie, "mark the real beginning of Roman literature." In these lively new translations, which effectively communicate the vitality and verve of the originals, the plays of Plautus are accessible to a new generation. Plays and translators: Volume 1: Amphitryon, Constance Carrier. Miles Gloriosus, Erich Segal. Captivi, Richard Moore. Casina, Richard Beacham. Curculio, Henry Taylor Volume 2: Rudens, Constance Carrier. Aulularia, Palmer Bovie. Bacchides, James Tatum. Mercator, George Garrett. Truculentus, James Tatum

Plautus

Plautus
Author: Titus Maccius Plautus
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1916
Genre: Latin drama (Comedy)
ISBN: 9780674991811

Shakespeare and Classical Comedy

Shakespeare and Classical Comedy
Author: Robert S. Miola
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 256
Release: 1994
Genre: Drama
ISBN:

This book surveys Shakespeare's comedies, charting the influence upon them of the ancient playwrights, Plautus and Terence. Robert S. Miola analyses these sources, and places the comedies in their Renaissance context, as well as in the larger context of European theatre. Discovering new indebtedness, and discerning new patterns in previously attested borrowings, Shakespeare and Classical Comedy presents an integrated and comprehensive assessment of the complex interactions of the Classical, Shakespearean, and other Renaissance theatres. Robert S. Miola re-evaluates Plautus and Terence in the light of their Greek antecedents, and gives special attention to Renaissance translations and commentaries, Italian theorists, and playwrights, as well as contemporary dramatists such as Middleton, Jonson, Heywood, and Chapman. Four broad categories organize the discussion - New Comedic errors, intrigue, alazoneia (pretension), and romance - and each is illustrated by illuminating readings of individual Shakespearean plays. The author keeps in view Shakespeare's eclecticism, his habit of combining disparate sources and traditions, as well as the rich history of literary criticism and theatrical interpretation. The book concludes by discussing the presence of New Comedy in tragedy, in Hamlet and King Lear. Robert S. Miola's thoroughly researched book ranges over a vast amount of European drama, from Aristophanes to Beckett and Ionesco. It makes an important contribution to our understanding not only of Shakespeare and his foremost antecedents, but also of Renaissance theatre, and its complex adaptations of ancient texts and traditions.