Plautus is Roman comedy at full volume.
He loves the mistaken identities, greedy old men, boastful soldiers, scheming slaves, sexual intrigue, sudden reversals and plots like a cart coming downhill with one wheel missing. Written for popular audiences in the late third and early second centuries BCE, these plays adapt Greek comic models into something more unruly, musical and aggressively theatrical.
This collection includes The Pot of Gold, The Prisoners, The Brothers Menaechmus, The Swaggering Soldier and Pseudolus. Together they show the range beneath Plautus’s apparent chaos: The Pot of Gold turns miserliness into social pathology; The Brothers Menaechmus builds an entire machine from identical twins and confused recognition; The Swaggering Soldier attacks masculine vanity; while Pseudolus gives the stage to one of drama’s great trickster-slaves, who treats hierarchy as material for improvisation.
Plautus was foundational to European theatre. Any Shakespeare, Molière, commedia dell’arte, farce, sitcom or plot involving twins, disguises or servants outthinking their masters all carry some trace of him. Translated from Latin by E. F. Watling, whose versions privilege pace, speakability and comic momentum.
Penguin Classics, 1976 reprint of the 1965 translation. Paperback. Age-toned pages; rubbing, marks and moderate edge wear to covers; binding sound.
