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'The Haunted House OF PLAUTUS 'franslated by Harry ]. Leon INTRODUCTION THE ROMANS were first introduced to drama after the Greek model in 240 B.C. by the freedman Livius Andro· nicus, a Greek of Tarentum. Following his example, the Roman dramatists generally based their plays, both tragedies and comedies, on Greek originals. Roman tragedy , the chief writers of which were Quintus Ennius, Marcus Pacuvius, and Lucius Accius, has perished, except for scattered quotations. The Romans, however, greatly preferred comedy, especially the type based on Greek New Comedy and known as tabula palliata, after the pallium, a name given by the Romans to the outdoor costume of Greek men, since the settings of these plays were Greek. For their models the Romans took not the older plays of Aristophanes and his contemporaries, but the so·called New Comedy of Menander, Diphilus, Philemon , and Apollodorus, who wrote in the latter part of the fourth and the first part of the third centuries B.C. and derived their themes primarily from the private life of contemporary society. Of the large output of Roman comedy we have twenty plays by Plautus and six plays-his entire work-by Terence. The works of the other writers of comedy, the most important of whom were Gnaeus Naevius and Caecilius Statius, are lost, except for fragmentary quotations . Of the life of Titus Maccius Plautus very little is known. Born in the Umbrian town of Sarsina (the year of his birth has been conjectured as about 254 B.C.), he knocked about with the theatrical groups in Rome and, after losing his savings in some commercial venture, was forced to do hard physical labor until success as a playwright brought him better circumstances. He died in 184 B.C. His output of comedies was large. While many spurious plays were attributed to him in antiquity, Marcus Terentius Varro, the scholarly contemporary of Cicero, selected twenty·one plays as certainly by Plautus. It is a reasonable assumption that the twenty which have survived are those of Varro's list, especially since the oldest of our Plalltine manuscripts has fragments of a twenty·first play, the Vidularia, which, coming at the end of the alphabetically arranged sequence, was somehow lost. The Mostellaria (The Haunted House) is typical of many of Plautus' plays and, generally, of the author's style. The plot is loosely constructed of a series of more or less farcical episodes. The dissolute young man, the credulous old man, the henpecked husband, the clever slave, and the devoted mistress are familiar characters in Roman comedy. The language is colloquial and racy, with frequent touches of slang. Puns and wordplays (generally untranslatable) are quite common. The humor is for the most part broad and without subtleties, the only kind that could go over with a not very cultivated audience which could become unruly if its interest were not sustained. There is comparatively little character delineation. In those plays which depend on character portrayal, such as the Aulularia with its miser and the Miles Gloriosus with its swashbuckling soldier, the char· acterization is applied thickly. The reader should bear in mind that the plays of Plautus were musical comedies and that verse is used throughout, even for the dialogue portions. Some parts were spoken (comparable to the blank verse in a Shakespearian playJ, some were delivered in a sort of recitative, and some were sung as arias or duets. The musical accompaniment was supplied by a single Ilute player. It may be that the singer accompanied his aria with some dancing steps, but there is no evidence either way. The division into five acts, while it has become traditional , does not go back beyond the Renaissance. The plays may have been presented continuously, with no break, or there may have been musical interludes at certain points. On this matter we have but little information . The normal setting of a comedy of this type was a street in 8 Greek city, usually Athens, with the doors of two or three houses opening on the street. By convention , the exit on the left (from the point of view of the audience) led to the harbor or to foreign parts, 14 C LAS SIC 8 IN T RAN S L A T ION while that on the right led to the forum or to the country. Usually there was no change of scene throughout the play, and the whole action was supposed to occur within the two hours or so of the actual...

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