Four Comedies

Titus Maccius Plautus

Oxford University Press, 1996 - Drama - 242 pages

The first professional playwright in history, Plautus was the creator of racy, raucous, very funny plays that will make modern audiences laugh as much as the first Romans did. Plautus was the single greatest influence on Western comedy. Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors and Moliere's The Miser are two subsequent classics directly based on Plautine originals. Plautus himself borrowed from the Greeks, but his jokes, rapid dialogue, bawdy humour, and irreverent characterizations are the original work of an undisputed genius. The comedies printed here show him at his best, and Professor Segal's translations keep their fast, rollicking pace intact, making these the most readable and actable versions available. His Introduction considers Plautus' place in ancient comedy, examines his continuing influence, and celebrates his power to entertain.

About the author

Plautus and Terence used stock characters (the young lovers, the clever slave, the irate father) and devices (mistaken identity), but each handled these conventions in his own distinct manner. Plautus was the son of a poor Umbrian farmer who may have fought in the Second Punic War. The playwright Plautus is said to have been a popular actor, true comedian, jovial, tolerant, rough of humor. He not only modeled his plays on the Greek New Comedy, but unhesitatingly inserted long passages translated from the Greek originals. He was the master of comic irony and, as its originator, copied by Moliere, Corneille, Jonson, Dryden and Fielding. Shakespeare based his Comedy of Errors on Plautus's Menaechmi. Of more than 100 plays, 21 survive. Erich Segal is Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. He was Professor Classics at Yale and is author of Roman Laughter, a study of Plautus. He also wrote Love Story.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Four Comedies; World's classics
• Author: Titus Maccius Plautus
• Editor: Erich Segal
• Translated by: Erich Segal
• Contributor: Erich Segal
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1996
• ISBN: 0192831089, 9780192831088
• Length: 242 pages
• Subjects: Drama / Ancient & Classical; Drama / European / General; Literary Criticism / Ancient & Classical; Literary Criticism / Drama; Poetry / General