England's Amphitruo before Dryden: The Varied Pleasures of Plautus's Template

Plautus's Amphitruo exemplifies remarkably the process whereby, over a period of millennia, old texts enter into new ones. In the Renaissance, with its reference to "tragicomedy," the play contributed to the wide European interest in the possibilities of mixing dramatic genres. In England this developed into a mingling of comic, romantic, and mystical strands of drama perfected in Shakespeare's Cymbeline. Other texts discussed are the anonymous Jack Jugeler and Birth of Hercules, and Thomas Heywood's Silver Age, as well as the little-known "supplement" to Plautus's play. This was a sizeable addition to the defective text of Amphitruo in Latin written by an unknown fifteenth-century author, found in many editions of Plautus, and enhancing the play's central concern with identity.