A Companion to Plautus

Dorota Dutsch, George Fredric Franko, Dorota Dutsch, George Fredric Franko

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781118958001
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

An important addition to contemporary scholarship on Plautus and Plautine comedy, provides new essays and fresh insights from leading scholars

A Companion to Plautus is a collection of original essays on the celebrated Old Latin period playwright. A brilliant comic poet, Plautus moved beyond writing Latin versions of Greek plays to create a uniquely Roman cultural experience worthy of contemporary scholarship. Contributions by a team of international scholars explore the theatrical background of Roman comedy, the theory and practice of Plautus' dramatic composition, the relation of Plautus' works to Roman social history, and his influence on later dramatists through the centuries.

Responding to renewed modern interest in Plautine studies, the Companion reassesses Plautus' works—plays that are meant to be viewed and experienced—to reveal new meaning and contemporary relevance. Chapters organized thematically offer multiple perspectives on individual plays and enable readers to gain a deeper understanding of Plautus' reflection of, and influence on Roman society. Topics include metatheater and improvisation in Plautus, the textual tradition of Plautus, trends in Plautus Translation, and modern reception in theater and movies. Exploring the place of Plautus and Plautine comedy in the Western comic tradition, the Companion:

• Addresses the most recent trends in the study of Roman comedy
• Features discussions on religion, imperialism, slavery, war, class, gender, and sexuality in Plautus' work
• Highlights recent scholarship on representation of socially vulnerable characters
• Discusses Plautus' work in relation to Roman stages, actors, audience, and culture
• Examines the plot construction, characterization, and comic techniques in Plautus' scripts

Part of the acclaimed Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World series, A Companion to Plautus is an important resource for scholars, instructors, and students of both ancient and modern drama, comparative literature, classics, and history, particularly Roman history.

CHAPTER ONE
The State of Roman Theater c. 200 BCE

Timothy J. Moore

To understand the works of any playwright, we should know the theatrical context in which those works were first performed. Playwrights respond to the theater they know, and what spectators have experienced elsewhere profoundly affects the expectations they bring when they watch a play. This context is especially important in the case of Plautus, whose plays are adaptations of Greek comedies. Because his Greek originals are lost, one of the key questions of Plautine scholarship has been the extent to which he changed those comedies as he adapted them, especially how in doing so he responded to the theatrical traditions he knew at Rome (see Chapter 2). Yet we also have no surviving plays written by Plautus's predecessors or contemporaries at Rome, so a reconstruction of the theatrical world he and his audience knew presents many challenges. Much of what follows in this chapter, therefore, will involve probabilities rather than certainties.

Sources

We rely on several kinds of sources for our information on Roman theater in the late third and early second centuries (all ancient dates BCE unless noted). Plautus's plays themselves include explicit and implicit references to the theater of his day; and while the plays of Plautus's contemporaries have been lost, a number of fragments (quotations from those plays by later authors) survive. We can learn about the spaces where some of Plautus's plays were performed by examining remains of temples, on the steps of which audience members sat for some performances (Goldberg 1998; see Chapter 3 in this volume). Some Roman objects from Plautus's day and earlier may show theatrical scenes, and archeological evidence from elsewhere in Italy, including performances painted in Etruscan tombs and portrayals of theatrical scenes on vases from southern Italy, provide analogies and signs of possible influence.

Later Roman authors, ranging from Plautus's successor Terence (died 159) to grammarians of late antiquity such as Donatus and Diomedes, provide most of our evidence. The most important among these texts are passages in several authors that describe the origins of Roman theater. All these accounts probably go back to one or more now‐lost works on theater by the great scholar Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27). The fullest version of Varro's account is a digression (7.2.3–12) by the historian Livy (59 or 54 BCE–12 or 17 CE), who wrote a history of Rome from its beginnings to his own day. Livy reports the following steps in the development of Roman theater:

1. Hoping to appease the gods in response to a plague in 364, Roman leaders introduced to their religious games (ludi) “dancers, summoned from Etruria,” who “performed quite refined dances in the Etruscan manner, without singing or imitating any specific action.” They were accompanied by a tibicen, who played the tibia, a woodwind instrument consisting of two pipes with double reeds (see Chapter 17, pp. 252–253).
2. Roman youth imitated these dancers, “at the same time hurling insults at each other with rude verses; and their motions were in agreement with their voices.”
3. Professional actors abandoned the rude verses of the Roman youth and introduced more refined versions of this combination of song and dance, which were called saturae.
4. Some time later, Livius Andronicus brought plays with plots to Rome.
5. Because he lost his voice performing in his own plays, Livius Andronicus introduced a new practice, in which actors vocalized only the spoken parts of the drama. Instead of singing the musical parts, they gestured silently while someone else sang to the accompaniment of the tibia. Not having to sing themselves, the actors could gesture more energetically.
6. The youths left these more sophisticated performances to professional actors, “and they themselves began to toss back and forth jokes intermingled with verses, just as they had done in the old days.” These ruder performances became associated with exodia (short performances after regular plays) and with the fabula Atellana, an Oscan performance genre imported into Rome.

We must use Varro's account of Roman theater's origins, and especially Livy's version of it, with extreme caution. It is unknown what sources Varro had available to him, and he may have filled gaps in those sources with speculation based on accounts by Aristotle and others on the origins of Greek theater. Further suspicion of Livy's account arises from the historian's personal bias against theater and what appears to be his determination to minimize Greek influences. Not surprisingly, therefore, Livy's digression is one of the most controversial passages in Latin literature, and it is beyond the scope of this chapter to evaluate its truthfulness regarding how Roman theater began (see Oakley 1998 for a full discussion). Because the steps of Livy's account are likely to reflect aspects of theatrical practice in his own and/or earlier times, however, they will provide a good starting point for much of what follows.

A Well‐Established and Cosmopolitan Tradition

Livy and the other sources available to us suggest that by Plautus's day Rome had known theater for many decades. Plautus's career probably started in the last years of the third century, over 150 years after Livy's Etruscan dancers joined the Roman ludi (step 1). Other sources suggest that the “plays with a plot” introduced by Livius Andronicus (step 4) were adaptations of Greek tragedies and comedies, and that Livius offered the first such play at a festival in 240, 30 or so years before Plautus began producing plays.

Our sources further suggest that Plautus's audience had a large number of opportunities to see plays. Plays were performed at several major annual ludi (see Chapter 21, pp. 319–320). The number of days at those ludi dedicated to theater increased in the years after 240, reaching about nine days a year by about 200, and still more by the time Plautus died in 184. Plays were also performed at festivals held to mark special occasions such as funerals and the dedication of temples. Terence's Hecyra, for example, was offered for performance first at a major annual festival (the ludi Megalenses) and then at funeral games.

There is no reason to doubt Livy's association of Rome's first theater with Etruscans. Rome was subject to the Etruscans early in its history, and dance performances play a conspicuous role on many frescoes adorning Etruscan tombs. Etruscan influence may have gone further than dance. Though Livy's Etruscan dancers use no words or mimesis, some figures on the frescoes are masked and may be in performances with characters and a plot. Several Latin terms for el...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgement
• Introduction: A 2020 Vision of Plautus
• CHAPTER ONE: The State of Roman Theater c. 200 BCE
• CHAPTER TWO: Plautus and Greek Drama
• CHAPTER THREE: Stages and Stagecraft
• CHAPTER FOUR: Actors and Audience
• CHAPTER FIVE: Nouo Modo Nouom Aliquid Inuentum: Plautine Priorities
• CHAPTER SIX: Plays of Mistaken Identity
• CHAPTER SEVEN: Plautus and the Marriage Plot
• CHAPTER EIGHT: Stock Characters and Stereotypes
• CHAPTER NINE: The Servus Callidus in Charge: Plays of Deception
• CHAPTER TEN: To Hell and Back: Comedy, Cult, and the House of the Meretrix
• CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Wife in Charge, the Husband Humiliated: Stock Characters in Evolution
• CHAPTER TWELVE: Archetypal Character Studies: Masculinity and Power
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Plotting the Romance: Plautus' Rudens, Cistellaria, and Poenulus
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Tragicomedy and Paratragedy: Plautusʼs Amphitruo, Captivi, and Rudens
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN: The Language of Plautus
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Metatheater and Improvisation in Plautus
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Music and Meter in Plautus
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Comic Technique in Plautus's Asinaria and Casina
• CHAPTER NINETEEN: Plautus and the Topography of His World
• CHAPTER TWENTY: Warfare and Imperialism in and Around Plautus
• CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Religion in and Around Plautus
• CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Gender and Sexuality in Plautus
• CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Owners and Slaves in and Around Plautus
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Slave Labor in Plautus
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Plautus and His Dramatic Successors in the Republican Period
• CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Alii Rhetorica Tongent: Plautus and Public Speech
• CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: The Textual Tradition of Plautus
• CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: The Medieval Reception of Plautus's Aulularia: Querolus and Vitalis Blesensis
• CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: From Ferrara to Venice: Plautus in Vernacular and Early Italian Comedy (1486–1530)
• CHAPTER THIRTY: Plautus in Early Modern England
• CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: Reception Today: Theater and Movies
• CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: Trends in Plautus Translation
• Index
• Index Locorum Plautinorum
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