Plautus

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For the Roman noble, see Rubellius Plautus.

Plautus

Picture of a bust of Plautus

Born

c. 254 BC
Sarsina, Umbria

Died

184 BC
Rome

Nationality

Roman

Information

Period

Ancient Rome

Genre

comedy

Dramatic devices

stock characters

Titus Maccius Plautus (/plts/; c. 254 184 BC), commonly known as "Plautus", was
a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest surviving intact works
in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin
literature, Livius Andronicus. The word Plautine /pltan/ refers to both Plautus's own works and
works similar to or influenced by his.

Influences[edit]
Greek Old Comedy[edit]
In order to understand the Greek New Comedy of Menander and its similarities to Plautus, it is
necessary to discuss, in juxtaposition with it, the idea of Greek Old Comedy and its evolution
into New Comedy. The ancient Greek playwright that best embodies Old Comedy
is Aristophanes. Aristophanes, a playwright of 5th century Athens, wrote plays of political
satire such as The Wasps, The Birds and The Clouds. Each of these plays and the others that
Aristophanes wrote are known for their critical political and societal commentary.[19] This is the
main component of Old Comedy. It is extremely conscious of the world in which it functions and
analyzes that world accordingly. Comedy and theater were the political commentary of the time
the public conscience. In AristophanesThe Wasps, the playwrights commentary is
unexpectedly blunt and forward. For example, he names his two main characters Philocleon
and Bdelycleon, which mean pro-Cleon and anti-Cleon, respectively. Simply the names of
the characters in this particular play of Aristophanes make a political statement. Cleon was a
major political figure of the time and through the actions of the characters about which he writes
Aristophanes is able to freely criticize the actions of this prominent politician in public and
through his comedy. Aristophanes underwent persecution for this.
Unlike Aristophanes, Plautus avoided current politics (in the narrow sense of the term) in his
comedies.[20]

Greek New Comedy[edit]

Greek New Comedy greatly differs from those plays of Aristophanes. The most notable
difference, according to Dana F. Sutton is that New Comedy, in comparison to Old Comedy, is
devoid of a serious political, social or intellectual content and could be performed in any
number of social and political settings without risk of giving offense.[21] The risk-taking for which
Aristophanes is known is noticeably lacking in the New Comedy plays of Menander. Instead,
there is much more of a focus on the home and the family unitsomething that the Romans,
including Plautus, could easily understand and adopt for themselves later in history.

Fatherson relationships[edit]

One main theme of Greek New Comedy is the fatherson relationship. For example, in
Menanders Dis Exapaton there is a focus on the betrayal between age groups and friends. The
father-son relationship is very strong and the son remains loyal to the father. The relationship is
always a focus, even if its not the focus of every action taken by the main characters. In
Plautus, on the other hand, the focus is still on the relationship between father and son, but we
see betrayal between the two men that wasnt seen in Menander. There is a focus on the proper
conduct between a father and son that, apparently, was so important to Roman society at the
time of Plautus.
This becomes the main difference and, also, similarity between Menander and Plautus. They
both address situations that tend to develop in the bosom of the family.[21] Both authors,
through their plays, reflect a patriarchal society in which the father-son relationship is essential
to proper function and development of the household.[22] It is no longer a political statement, as
in Old Comedy, but a statement about household relations and proper behavior between a
father and his son. But the attitudes on these relationships seem much different a reflection of
how the worlds of Menander and Plautus differed.

Farce[edit]
For the Italian tradition of farce, see Atellan farce.
There are differences not just in how the father-son relationship is presented, but also in the
way in which Menander and Plautus write their poetry. William S. Anderson discusses the
believability of Menander versus the believability of Plautus and, in essence, says that Plautus
plays are much less believable than those plays of Menander because they seem to be such a
farce in comparison. He addresses them as a reflection of Menander with some of Plautus own
contributions. Anderson claims that there is unevenness in the poetry of Plautus that results in
incredulity and refusal of sympathy of the audience.[23]

Prologues[edit]
The poetry of Menander and Plautus is best juxtaposed in their prologues. Robert B. Lloyd
makes the point that albeit the two prologues introduce plays whose plots are of essentially
different types, they are almost identical in form[24] He goes on to address the specific style of
Plautus that differs so greatly from Menander. He says that the verbosity of the Plautine
prologues has often been commented upon and generally excused by the necessity of the
Roman playwright to win his audience.[24] However, in both Menander and Plautus, word play is
essential to their comedy. Plautus might seem more verbose, but where he lacks in physical

comedy he makes up for it with words, alliteration and paronomasia (punning).[25] See also
"jokes and wordplay" below.
Plautus is well known for his devotion to puns, especially when it comes to the names of his
characters. In Miles Gloriosus, for instance, the female concubines name, Philocomasium,
translates to lover of a good partywhich is quite apt when we learn about the tricks and wild
ways of this prostitute.

Character[edit]
Plautus charactersmany of which seem to crop up in quite a few of his playsalso came
from Greek stock, though they too received some Plautine innovations. Indeed, since Plautus
was adapting these plays it would be difficult not to have the same kinds of charactersroles
such as slaves, concubines, soldiers, and old men. By working with the characters that were
already there but injecting his own creativity, as J.C.B. Lowe wrote in his article Aspects of
Plautus Originality in the Asinaria, Plautus could substantially modify the characterization, and
thus the whole emphasis of a play.[26]

New Comedy
New Comedy, Greek drama from about 320 BC to the mid-3rd century BC that offers a mildly satiric
view of contemporary Athenian society, especially in its familiar and domestic aspects. Unlike Old
Comedy, which parodied public figures and events, New Comedy features fictional average citizens
and has no supernatural or heroic overtones. Thus, the chorus, the representative of forces larger
than life, recedes in importance and becomes a small band of musicians and dancers who
periodically provide light entertainment.
The plays commonly deal with the conventionalized situation of thwarted lovers and contain such
stock characters as the cunning slave, the wily merchant, the boastful soldier, and the cruel father.
One of the lovers is usually a foundling, the discovery of whose true birth and identity makes
marriage possible in the end. Although it does not realistically depict contemporary life, New
Comedy accurately reflects the disillusioned spirit and moral ambiguity of the bourgeois class of this
period.
Menander introduced the New Comedy in his works about 320 BC and became its most famous
exponent, writing in a quiet, witty style. Although most of his plays are lost, Dyscolus (The Grouch)

survives, along with large parts of Perikeiromen (The Shorn Girl), Epitrepontes (The Arbitration),
and Samia (The Girl from Samos). Menanders plays are mainly known through the works of the
Roman dramatists Plautus and Terence, who translated and adapted them, along with other stock
plots and characters of Greek New Comedy, for the Roman stage. Revived during the Renaissance,
New Comedy influenced European drama down to the 18th century. The commedia erudita, plays
from printed texts popular in Italy in the 16th century, and the improvisational commedia dellartethat
flourished in Europe from the 16th to the 18th century used characters and plot conventions that
originated in Greek New Comedy. They were also used by Shakespeare and other Elizabethan and
Restoration dramatists. Rodgers and Harts The Boys from Syracuse (1938) is a musical version of
Shakespeares Comedy of Errors, which in turn is based on
Plautuss Menaechmi and Amphitruo, which are adaptations of Greek New Comedy. See
also comedy.

COMEDY: PLAUTUS & TERENCE

The first comic dramas that the Romans saw were based on the Greek new comedies of the kind
staged in Athens from about 400 to 200 BC. Their hallmarks included stratagems and counterstratagems, stock characters (young lovers, scheming slave, family hanger-on), and standard
situations (obstacles to young love, mistaken identities, revelations of true identity), with some
musical accompaniment.
The principal writer of the Greek new comedy was Menander (342 - c. 292 BC), who influenced
Plautus and Terence.

This second-century or early first-century mosaic from Pompeii illustrates a scene from Menander's
Ladies at Lunch, of which only a few lines survive. (VRoma: National Archaeological Museum, Naples:
Barbara McManus)

Titus Maccus Plautus (254 - 184 BC) was not the first of these Roman dramatists, but of 130 plays
attributed to him twenty have survived. This in itself is a measure of popularity, were it not also
that in spite of being based on earlier Greek models, his work retains a raw freshness of its own.
He devised ways of adapting Greek verse metres to the Latin language, and introduced to
audiences whose taste had tended towards farce and slapstick several varieties of literary
comedy, such as burlesque and domestic and romantic pieces in which verbal fireworks replaced
crude banter. He also surmounted the problem of playing consecutive scenes, without any break
between them, in front of a standard back-drop, usually a street with entrances to two houses.

Marble relief of theatre set design with three entrance doors. (VRoma: AICT)

Plautus was born in Sarsina, a small village in Umbria, but left home early to go to Rome. He first
worked as a stage props-man, and then, with the money he had earned, set himself up in some
kind of business. When that failed, he took a job turning a bakers handmill, which he was able to
give up after writing his first three plays.

Mosaic of comic masks of a young woman and a slave. (VRoma: Capitoline Museums, Rome: Barbara
McManus)

Publius Terentius Afer (c.185 - 159 BC) was brought to Rome as a slave, possibly from Africa. He
took his name from that of his owner, Terentius Lucanus, who educated him and gave him his
freedom. The story goes that he submitted his first play, The Girl from Andros, to the curule
aediles; they referred him to Caecilius Statius (c. 219 - c. 166 BC), the most popular playwright of
the day. Caecilius was dining when Terence called, but he immediately began reading the play
aloud. He was so impressed by it that he invited Terence to share the couch of honour with him.
The play was first performed in 166 BC, and Terence wrote five more before he died in a
shipwreck, or of disease, while on a trip to Greece to find more plots. He was only about 26.

Reconstruction of Roman theatre stage and marble flooring of orchestra. (VRoma: Lyon Museum: Paula
Chabot)

Terences plays are better plotted than those of Plautus and of some of the originals which he
adapted. With him the comedy of manners effectively began. He was adept at employing the
double plot, especially to illustrate different characters responses to a situation, and in
developing the situation itself. There is also more purity of language and characterization than in

Plautus, which may account for Terence not being as popular in his own day as he was to become
later.

A. Plautine Comedy
Plautus' comedies revolve mostly around daily life and average people, superficially
the stuff of Greek New Comedy as opposed to the politically oriented Old Comedy of
the Classical Age or the spoofs of tragedy popular in post-classical Middle Comedy.
Plautus, however, generates humor in a different way from Menandrean comedy.
Often extreme personality types set in outlandish situations, Plautine characters as a
group recall Aristophanes' creations more than Menander's. Indeed, devious pimps,
mercenary prostitutes, lustful young men, lustful old men, tortured mothers and
torturing wives and, most of all, crafty slaves who delight in deception populate
Plautus' plays.
This feast of broad stock types is a far cry from Menander's
subtly shaded characters, and in a way, Plautus's comedy
rewinds the evolutionary clock and returns Menander's
characters to the caricatures from which they arose. Lest,
however, this be seen as some sort of step backwards toward
more "primitive" comedy, he did it all to excellent effect.
Plautus's sense of comic timing, exactly how far to take a joke
or run a scene, is unsurpassed in Western drama, even by
Shakespeare, all of which presupposes a shrewd
understanding of his audience's needs, intelligence and the
reason they are sitting in the theatre at all.
As a result, Plautus' plays may not always be great art, nor do they strive at every
moment to educate or improve the audience or advance the technology of theatre, but
Plautus' comedies are invariably and without exception entertaining. To the extent,
then, that effective comic drama entails art or education or technological
advancement, Plautus can be all those things, so long as the final product works on
stage and people will pay to see it. The fact is, his comedies continue to be performed
with great success todaythey were among the first ancient plays produced on stage
in the Renaissance, the dawn of the modern ageand even such crusty curmudgeons
as the Christian fathers saw worth in his drama. St. Jerome, in particular, seems to
have been quite fond of Plautus, at least to judge from how often he quotes Plautine
comedy, all of which attests to this playwright's astute and practical assessment of
what a general viewership seeks from comic drama: wit and diversion, spiced with
sage observation of human life.

Indeed, what audiences really want is a paradox, a stark enigma Plautus understood as
well as anyone ever has. While many viewers announce in public that they want to
learn from plays or see goodness and morality triumph, all too often what they
actually pay for are flashy, vapid, sensual, amoral spectacles. At the same time, if
there is nothing to be gained intellectually or esthetically from a play, their attention
quickly turns to fresher, slicker, more novel nonsense and they tend not to come back
a second time or send those friends of theirs who own wallets. Plautus' drama shows
that he understood this conundrum quite well, and his finest talent is, no doubt, his
ability to walk the fine line between fine art and a fine
time.
This raises, then, a question that lies at the very heart of
studies in Roman Comedy: how did Plautus create theatre
so effective in such a place and time? While his cultural
situation may look like a disadvantageespecially in
comparison to the erudite and drama-mad society that for
centuries packed the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens
there is much to say that Plautus' Rome was actually a
fertile field for his art. The absence, for instance, of a
commanding native tradition of theatre in late thirdcentury Rome gave him carte blanche to create plays in a manner that suited his
talent. He could follow his instincts and write with a freedom Menander never had nor
even Euripides, a parrhesia ("freedom of speech") , in fact, no Greek playwright had
ever had, at least not since Aeschylus' day.
Furthermore, he had an eager audience ready to explore the stage and vast dramatic
wealth to draw upon. Far from a poor "niche" for theatre, when seen this way, the
Roman world of Plautus' day had everything going for it. He could pull what he
wanted from Atellan farce, with which he was clearly familiar, to judge from his
stage-name. What's more, he could siphon off ideas at will from the great, untapped
reservoir of Greek comic drama. Thus, from one perspective, his plays represent an
inspired blend of native Italian drama and Hellenistic comedy, the product of lathering
a bawdy slapstick tone over the well-oiled machinery of Menandrean plots. To have
seen and utilized the opportunities for making effective comedy in such a
situation,that is surely Plautus' finest stroke of genius.

B. OLD COMEDY

The following are the principal characteristics of Old Comedy, the leading figure of
which was Aristophanes:
the key role played by the chorus, who formed a procession of singers and dancers
fantasy plots
series of scenes loosely strung together in an arbitrary sequence
a curious section, found in most of the plays, called the parabasisthis is a nondramatic element in which the action stops, the chorus steps forward, and it speaks to
the audience on whatever topics the playwright desiresit then steps back and the
action begins again
the use of the property phallus conspicuously displayed and with exaggerated
paddingsome believe these were part of the fertility rites connected with the
worship of Dionysius
the relating of alleged vices of prominent Athenians and the ridiculing of their
habits and actions
the parody of tragedy, usually by introducing vocabulary drawn from tragedy,
which used much language that was not ordinary Attic speech; put in the mount of a
down-to-earth character, this was comically inappropriate, especially if mixed with
everyday phrases and colloquialisms
In 404 B.C., after 27 years of fighting, the war between Athens and Sparta finally
ended in victory for Sparta. Athens was prostrate. Her empire had vanished, her armed
forces had been destroyed, and her treasury was empty. People were in no mood to
listen to the merciless criticism that had been the very soul of Aristophanes greatest
plays. The chorus had just about disappeared. The invective and lashing satire is gone;
in their unhappy circumstances, Athenians wanted to be amused, not lectured.
C. MIDDLE COMEDY

The first three-quarters of the fourth century was a time of change and experiment. No
firm line can be drawn between Middle and Old on the one hand, or between Middle
and New on the other. The only two extant plays to which the label Middle Comedy
can be attached are by Aristophanes: Women at the Assembly (392 ?),
and Plutus or Wealth (388). The following are the dominant traits of this interim art
form:.
less ridicule and satire
more restricted languagethe vocabulary of the street gives way to a less vulgar
expression
place of dramatic action no longer shifts with arbitrary freedom, part of the
movement towards naturalism
parabasis truncated

 growing irrelevance of chorus; it was thought unnecessary to preserve the words of

some of the chorus songs, now represented by phrases like little piece by chorus
or by chorus; the verses spoken by the leader of the chorus, although no longer
numerous, are still, however, integrated into the text
D. NEW COMEDY

This is the general term which includes plays written after the death of Alexander the
Great. Comedy, tragedy, and philosophy helped to shape the new form of comedy, but
the most potent formative influence was the condition of the world in which the
dramatists lived. Athens had lost her political independence at Chaeronea in 338.
After the death of Alexander the Great in 323, the city revolted against Macedonian
rule but was defeated and her sea power destroyed in 322. A Macedonian garrison
was installed. The freedom of speech, of which Aristophanes had availed himself so
liberally, no longer existed. In 317 Demetrius of Phalerum was appointed viceroy of
Athens, a position he held until 307. Demetrius favored the wealthy and the
aristocrats, relieving them of duties which had taxed their resources and transferring
the expenses of dramatic choruses to the state. He was also instrumental in stopping
the theorica, a fund which paid the wages of working men during the days of festivals
so that they could attend the theatre without loss of pay. Although working men were
still free to attend the theatre if they wished, few could afford to lose a days pay.
The result was a change in the composition of the audience which the dramatist was
seeking to please. The majority of the spectators now were leisured and educated,
rendered prosperous by the economic policy of the ruler and by peace and left free for
cultural pursuits by their loss of political freedom and responsibility.
In comparison with the large, new capitals of the successors of Alexander, Athens was
of no political importance whatever. It remained to the end of antiquity the center of
art, science, philosophy, and rhetoric, but life became comfortable and commonplace.
The sorrows, joys, manners, and peculiarities of individual citizens took the
foreground. As more attention was paid to personal character in life, it also played a
more prominent role in comedy.
The following are some of the major features of New Comedy:
prologue is a prominent featurethis is in the form of an address to the audience,
sometimes spoken by a character in the play, but more frequently given to a divine
figure (Pan in The Grouch2); its function was to inform spectators of the situation at
the time when the action began; the dramatist did not use the device of keeping up his
sleeve facts with which to surprise the audience; instead, he gave them a share of
divine omnisciencenot only did they know a happy ending was possible, but the

divine prologue sometimes concluded by promising it: although the spectator was in
no suspense about the result he enjoyed another kind of suspense, that of not knowing
how the result would be brought about, what would be the train of events to achieve it
composes of five acts divided by interludes irrelevant to the action; these were
performed by the chorus which took no part in the play proper (a substitute for a
curtain): an example can be seen in The Grouch at the end of the first act when Daos
announces the arrival of the chorus by stating: . . . I see a group of somewhat
drunken worshippers of Pan carousing toward us. Id just as soon miss their
revelry.3
no lyric portions to be sungall dialogue was spoken, mostly delivered in ordinary
speech, some in recitative to flute accompaniment; a taste of the simple speech
patterns in The Grouch follows (the protagonist is in one of his typical moods and the
slave Pyrrhias is frantically describing his actions to his master Sostratos):.
____P: Let me pass! Watch out! Get out of the way!
________The madmans after me!
____S: Whats this, boy?
____P: Clear out!
____S: What is it?
____P: Hes throwing stones and mud at me! Ive had it!4

a few references to individual Athenians or to events; treated universal, not local

themes, and the plots were realistic; satire of certain social types by using fictitious
characters (the parasite, cook, and old servant are vividly portrayed in The Grouch)
actors padding and property phalloi were things of the past; they were now
dressed in decent conventional contemporary clothes and represented the men and
women, free and slave whom one might have met in an Athenian street or home;
masks were still worn: those of young men and women were handsome, those of the
elderly and slaves were grotesque exaggerations of human features (refer to mask and
costume section of this unit for further detail specific to The Grouch)
concern with the individuality of the characters and their relation to each other
also concerned with the evolution of the plot, as determined by the reactions of
these characters to the initial circumstances
motifs are constantly repeated: rich young men fall in love with poor girls but
obstacles to marrying them are in the end removed; newly born children are exposed
if unwanted and rescued to be brought up by substitute parents, usually of humble
station; older children are kidnapped by pirates; these exposed or stolen offspring are
finally recognized and welcomed back by their parents; slaves help to find the cash
needed to buy them by stratagems directed against the owner or against their own
master; slaves come running on the stage either in fright or with unexpected news;
brides are given handsome dowries (Old Comedy was remarkable for the variety and
ingenuity of its comic ideas, New Comedy, for its sameness; part of the spectators

pleasure, if he had seen many plays, lay in noticing how traditional features were
altered, and in recognizing allusions to them)
ROMAN COMEDY: Plautus and Terence

The Greek world came to fruition sometime in the 7th c. BC, and was still
culturally active throughout the period in which the Roman Empire
flourished. By 300 BC Greek culture had subtly shifted over to what would
later be called Hellenistic, which refers to the transplanting of Greek ideas and
techniques to all parts of the then known world, both East and West. The Jews
of Palestine, the populace of Egypt, the Syrians, Armenians and the Romans in
their turn were exposed to the indelible influence of Greek thought, just as the
Arabs of the 7 c. AD were to be influenced in the same way. It was this
fermentative quality in the Greek mind which proved so attractive to less
cultivated peoples, and although everybody benefitted, nobody was ever the
same again.
By 300 BC the Romans began to seriously sense the presence of Greek
literature. Centuries earlier they had received an altered Greek alphabet from
the Etruscans in central Italy, now they became basically literate and ready to
read. Much of the writing which resulted from this first Hellenizing influx was
lost, and the little we know of writers like Accius, Pacuvius, Caecilius and
Lucilius comes from the quotations of words, single lines, and only
occasionally coherent paragraphs by the late Roman grammarians. We would
have a similar idea of the work of Shakespeare if we assembled all the singleline quotations from a large English dictionary.
Plautus is the earliest writer to survive in a full form. Born around the middle
of the 3 rd c. BC,. he lived on to 184 BC. He was a man of the people, a
carpenter in early life who wrote plays after constructing stage scenery for a
living. Born in the countryside, he said he had three hearts, which probably
means he was able to speak Latin, his native Oscan dialect, and Greek. From
the Greek New Comedy of the preceding century (Menander is our surviving
examplar of this genre, as distinct from older Aristophanic satire-comedy)
Plautus drew heavily, adapting plays, scenes, names and the style of the
Greeks. No Romans are portrayed in his plays as Romans, probably because of
a fear of satirizing the stately and self-conscious citizen body. But throughout
all of the twenty plays we have (he wrote more than a hundred) we find
interlarded a rough and wholesome, if often slightly obscene, Roman sense of

humor, and it is this characteristic, rather than the refined Menandran lightcomedy, which ensured Plautus' success.
The texts we have were touched up at least in orthography in the time of
Cicero, and were used as required reading in the Roman school system for
centuries. Plautus' vocabulary is huge, he uses strange and rare expressions,
when pressed invents his own punning coinages, and shows an interesting
side of the Roman character which disappears in the more self-conscious
Augustan Age.
The plays are really musical comedies, with about a third of the material in
sung or cantica form, with music which has virtually disappeared. A few
manuscript markings purport to outline the melody-line, but interpretation is
difficult and recreation of the sound of his music is not really possible. What
would a future age think about Mozart's Don Giovanni if we had only the
libretto to work with? Or Mahler's Lied von der Erde?
Despite these losses, Plautus has turned out to be incredibly popular through
the ages. Rediscovered in the Renaissance, Plautine plots furnished the basis
for over five hundred comedies in every European language, as a detailed
study by Reinhardstoettner (l875) points out. English Restoration Comedy is
Plautine in form and much of its spirit, role of the cunning slave, the arrogant
old master, and the lovably idiotic son are all there, with more that later times
would want to add. The standardized form of the Plautine plot may seem odd,
but not more so that the equally obvious plot of a typical American Western
movie, which also has a rubber-stamped dramatis personae. It would seem
that popular literature, as against high literature, does not have the same
requirements for originality, and is tends to be satisfied with the time-tested
and familiar.
In the eyes of the traditional Classical critics, Plautus is noted as "PreClassical", and for that reason, he is often ignored. It may be that his country
humor does not sit well with the Classical fraternity, who still represent
elevated aspirations with the upper-classes in their social allegiances, as they
did in the past centuries when Latin and Greek were the requirements for a
career in Church or State. True, his iambic senarii are rougher and more
irregular than the polished lines of his successor Terence, true his humor has
more the odor of the barnyard and stable than the drawing room. But through
the Greek disguise, shines one of the few glimpses of a basic, honest, genuinely
funny and multifarious Roman character and the old Roman mode of speech,
which were soon to be submerged by the elegance of the Augustan masters.
Only centuries later, in the unique novel of Petronius, are we to get another

such glimpse of the Roman lower classes, thepopulus minutus. It must be

remembered that these were the people, the merchants and farmers,the sharp
slaves and freedmen, who fought the Punic Wars and later made the infrastructure of the early Empire work. The sad fact is that Roman Literature and
the basic, popular Roman Character are not at all aligned.
Terence, born at Carthage in the time of Plautus' later years, was brought to
Rome as a slave and later freed. His name, taken from that of his master,
Public Terentius Afer, has been thought to refer to African and possibly black
origins, but nothing conclusive can be said. His six plays are less earthy than
those of Plautus, he has a winning and refined way of expressing himself in a
polished verse-form, but lacks Plautus' comic spirit and his sense of pun and
farce. Modern times have imbibed Terence along with Plautus, in the more
polished times he was preferred, while his influence on modern comedy is
analogous to his predecessor's. Cicero dubbed him a "pint-sized Menander"
(dimidiate Menander), and he is probably much more this, than a "pint-sized
draft of the Plautine brew". The formal and refined l8th c. in England, initially
having trouble with Tom Jones and Tristram Shandy, quite naturally
preferred Terence to his countrified and at times slightly gross compatriot.
The odd things about Roman Comedy, is that, although it is Greek in origin, in
plot, and in many details of its internal operation, it looks thoroughly Roman
when one compares it to the more heavily Hellenized literature of the
Augustan Age. Plautus and Petronius are still our best glimpse of the little
people of the Roman world, how they thought and some of the things that they
were liable to say.

comedy

Introduction

Origins and definitions

Theories

Kinds of comedy in diverse historical periods

comedy, type of drama or other art form the chief object of which, according to modern notions, is to
amuse. It is contrasted on the one hand with tragedy and on the other with farce, burlesque, and
other forms of humorous amusement.
The classic conception of comedy, which began with Aristotlein ancient Greece of the 4th
century BCE and persists through the present, holds that it is primarily concerned with humans as
social beings, rather than as private persons, and that its function is frankly corrective. The comic

artists purpose is to hold a mirror up to society to reflect its follies and vices, in the hope that they
will, as a result, be mended. The 20th-century French philosopher Henri Bergson shared this view of
the corrective purpose of laughter; specifically, he felt, laughter is intended to bring the comic
character back into conformity with his society, whose logic and conventions he abandons when he
slackens in the attention that is due to life.
Here comedy is considered primarily as a literary genre. The wellsprings of comedy are dealt with in
the article humour. The comic impulse in the visual arts is discussed in the articles caricature and
cartoon and comic strip.

Origins and definitions

The word comedy seems to be connected by derivation with the Greek verb meaning to revel, and
comedy arose out of the revels associated with the rites of Dionysus, a god of vegetation. The
origins of comedy are thus bound up with vegetation ritual. Aristotle, in his Poetics, states that
comedy originated in phallic songs and that, like tragedy, it began in improvisation.
Though tragedy evolved by stages that can be traced, the progress of comedy passed unnoticed
because it was not taken seriously. When tragedy and comedy arose, poets wrote one or the other,
according to their natural bent. Those of the graver sort, who might previously have been inclined to
celebrate the actions of the great in epic poetry, turned to tragedy; poets of a lower type, who had
set forth the doings of the ignoble in invectives, turned to comedy. The distinction is basic to
the Aristotelian differentiation between tragedy and comedy: tragedy imitates men who are better
than the average and comedy men who are worse.
For centuries, efforts at defining comedy were to be along the lines set down by Aristotle: the view
that tragedy deals with personages of high estate, and comedy deals with lowly types; that tragedy
treats of matters of great public import, while comedy is concerned with the private affairs of
mundane life; and that the characters and events of tragedy are historic and so, in some sense, true,
while the humbler materials of comedy are but feigned. Implicit, too, in Aristotle is the distinction in
styles deemed appropriate to the treatment of tragic and comic story. As long as there was at least a
theoretical separation of comic and tragic styles, either genre could, on occasion, appropriate the
stylistic manner of the other to a striking effect, which was never possible after the crossing of
stylistic lines became commonplace.
The ancient Roman poet Horace, who wrote on such stylistic differences, noted the special effects
that can be achieved when comedy lifts its voice in pseudotragic rant and when tragedy adopts the
prosaic but affecting language of comedy. Consciously combined, the mixture of styles produces

theburlesque, in which the grand manner (epic or tragic) is applied to a trivial subject, or the serious
subject is subjected to a vulgar treatment, to ludicrous effect.
The English novelist Henry Fielding, in the preface to Joseph Andrews (1742), was careful to
distinguish between the comic and the burlesque; the latter centres on the monstrous and unnatural
and gives pleasure through the surprising absurdity it exhibits in appropriating the manners of the
highest to the lowest, or vice versa. Comedy, on the other hand, confines itself to the imitation of
nature, and, according to Fielding, the comic artist is not to be excused for deviating from it. His
subject is the ridiculous, not the monstrous, as with the writer of burlesque; and the nature he is to
imitate is human nature, as viewed in the ordinary scenes of civilized society.