Roman Comedy Five Plays By Plautus And Terence

This anthology contains English translations of five plays by two of the best practitioners of Roman comedy, Plautus and Terence. The plays, Menaechmi, Rudens, Truculentus, Adelphoe, and Eunuchus, provide an introduction to the world of Roman comedy. As with all Focus translations, the emphasis is on a handsomely produced, inexpensive, readable edition that is close to the original, with an extensive introduction, notes and appendices.

"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.

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. This is a book to be used and enjoyed. --Raymond J. Clark, The Classical Outlook

This book provides the most complete and definitive study of Roman comedy. Originally published in 1952. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Provides a comprehensive critical engagement with Roman comedy and its reception presented by leading international scholars in accessible and up-to-date chapters.

The Life of Comedy after the Death of Plautus and Terence documents the ongoing popularity of Roman comedies, and shows that they continued to be performed in the late Republic and early Imperial periods of Rome. Playwrights Plautus and Terence impressed audiences with stock characters as the young-man-in-love, the trickster slave, the greedy pimp, the prostitute, and many others. A wide range of spectators visited Roman theaters, including even the most privileged members of Roman society: orators like Cicero, satirists like Horace and Juvenal, and love poets like Catullus and Ovid. They all put comedy’s varied characters to new and creative uses in their own works, as they tried to make sense of their own lives and those of the people around them by suggesting comparisons to the standard personality types of Roman comedy. Scholars have commonly believed that the plays fell out of favor with theatrical audiences by the end of the first century BCE, but The Life of Comedy demonstrates that performances of these comedies continued at least until the turn of the second century CE. Mathias Hanses traces the plays’ reception in Latin literature from the late first century BCE to the early second century CE, and shines a bright light on the relationships between comic texts and the works of contemporary and later Latin writers.

The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy marks the first comprehensive introduction to and reference work for the unified study of ancient comedy. From its birth in Greece to its end in Rome, from its Hellenistic to its Imperial receptions, no topic is neglected. The 41 essays offer cutting-edge guides through comedy's immense terrain.