Part I, Short Identifications (choose 7 of 10; 7 points each, 49 points total)
1. Romanization: practice of Roman playwrights to make the nominally Greek setting (usually "Athens") of their source plays Roman by mixing in references to Roman institutions, places, persons, events, etc.
2. Menander: best known playwright of Greek New Comedy; one nearly complete Menandrean play and parts of several others survive; his work features theatrical naturalism (imitated by Terence) & interest in character psychology.
3. Cleostrata: the mother of the main family in Plautus's Casina who directs a play-within-the play (the fake wedding plot) to humiliate her lecherous husband, Lysidamus.
4. fabula palliata: "play in Greek dress", what Romans called their adaptation of Greek New Comedy, i.e. after the style of cloak that actors wore in Roman performances (the genre is cleverly referred to in the seemingly programmatic final song of Pseudolus).
5. metatheater: theater that draws attention to itself as theater-in-the-process-of-being-performed by, e.g., references to the audience & theater, use of a play-within-the-play, etc. (a favorite trick of Plautus, especially in Casina and Pseudolus).
6. Bacchis: the greedy prostitute of Terence's Self-Tormentor with whom Clitipho is in love, and who plays an important role in the play's complicated plot.
7. adulescens: the young man in love in Roman comedy (e.g., Calidorus in Pseudolus), not an "adolescent" in our sense, but probably in his twenties and still under the power of his father, who controls his finances and other aspects of his life, and typically blocks his son's amorous aims.
8. paterfamilias: all-powerful patriarch of the Roman family, often a target of humor and satire in Roman comedy, where, contrary to his socially prescribed role in real life, he may be represented as irresponsible and lacking self-control (e.g., Lysidamus in Casina) or presumptuous and ignorant (e.g., Chremes in Self-Tormenter).
9. Luscius of Lanuvium: rival playwright of Terence, described in Terence's prologues as a purist who is highly critical of the "contamination" and perceived plagiarism of both Greek and Roman plays & playwrights by Terence.
10. Titus Maccius Plautus: full name of Plautus, i.e., "Dick, Son of Clown, The Mime Actor"; obviously not a name given at birth but a pseudonym or possibly a name acquired by a freed slave (we know nothing of the historical Plautus, but the name suggests his involvement in various styles of Italian comedy as well as his possible freedman's status).
Part II, Commentary (choose 5 of 8: 20 points each, 100 points total; (a), (b), (c) = 2 pts each; (d) = 14 pts.)
Passage 1 (Plautus, Casina 1012-1018)
(a) Plautus, Casina
(b) unknown speaker of epilogue
(might be head of acting troupe, entire troupe, or Chalinus)
(c) The epilogue wraps up loose ends and provides closure to the play.
(d) some possible talking points for elaboration:
1. the climactic recognition scene (plus marriage) that probably was staged in Plautus's Greek original, and replaced by the cross-dressing faux wedding of Casina, is relegated to a brief mention here;
2. the epilogue speaker(s) strikes a bargain with spectators (here married males are primarily addressed) for their approval of the play and applause (an indication that there is some dramatic competition at stake?);
3. the call for continued adultery and deception of wives suggests that the household's status quo will be resumed after the play, including the relationship between the spouses, which had been turned on its head (temporarily and farcically) in the play.
Passage 2 (Terence, Eunuchus 197-206)
(a) Terence, Eunuchus
(b) Thais
(c) Thais has just talked a distrustful Phaedria into leaving for a couple days while she entertains Thraso, and, now alone, speaks to the audience.
(d) some possible talking points for elaboration:
1. in her monologue, Thais surprisingly reveals that she has genuine feelings for Phaedria;
2. Thais (metatheatrically?) alludes to the unusual nature of her character-type by contrasting herself with "the other women here" (= prostitutes in her house/comedy in general?);
3.
she discloses her intention (re Chremes) in a complexly motivated plan to help Pamphila, again in surprising contrast to the comic stereotype of the mercenary and only self-interested meretrix.
Passage 3 (Terence, Self-Tormentor 381-397)
(a) Terence, Self-Tormentor
(b) A =
Bacchis, B = Antiphila
(c) the first appearance of these two characters, as they are brought to Chremes's house;
(d) some possible talking points for elaboration:
1. Antiphila is represented as a potentially ideal virtuous Roman wife, entirely devoted to her lover Clinia's happiness;
2. the passage attempts to represent two sharply contrasted social realities in the ancient world for non-elite women (a poor but morally respectable life vs. working as a prostitute);
3. Bacchis's frank assessment of the two women's situations reflects Terence's general tendency to look beyond stereotypes and, in Bacchis's case at least, explore a non-elite woman's tinner thoughts and motivations (cf. his treatment of Thais in Eunuchus).
Passage 4 (Plautus, Pseudolus 1322-1325)
(a) Plautus, Pseudolus
(b)
A = Simo, B = Pseudolus
(c) master and slave settle their debt (owing to the bet Pseudolus has won) at the end of the play.
(d) some possible talking points for elaboration:
1. in the comic role-reversal here, the paterfamilias is forced to negotiate with his slave re the money wagered;
2. Pseudolus highlights the stark difference between what is at stake for each in the bet, i.e., physical torture for himself versus merely emotional anguish for this master;
3. despite Simo's violent threat of restoring the socially proper master/slave relationship of power after the play, Pseudolus remains definant ("I've got a strong back"), in effect identifying a creative, autonomous (mental) self distinct from his physically vulnerable body.
Passage 5 (Terence, Eunuchus 580-591)
(a) Terence, Eunuchus
(b) Chaerea
(c) Chaerea brags of his rape of Pamphila to his friend and fellow soldier–in-training Antipho.
(d) some possible talking points for elaboration:
1. the role of the ekphrasis of the painting of Jupiter and Danaë (and Chaerea's and Pamphila's very different relationship to the mythic scene as viewers of the painting) in the scene described;
2. Chaerea’s bold drawing of parallels between himself and the sexually all-powerful god Jupiter as a self-exhortation to and rationalization for committing his violent rape of Pamphila;
3. the strong discordance between the brutality of Chaerea’s act and his intellectualizing aestheticism (e.g. the artistic ekphrasis, his quotation of a line about Jupiter from Roman tragedy).
Passage 6 (Plautus, Truculentus 874-880)
(a) Plautus, Truculentus
(b)
A = Phronesium, B = Diniarchus
(c) Phronesium is convincing Diniarchus to allow her to keep his newly discovered baby a little longer in order to shake down Thraso for more goods.
(d) some possible talking points for elaboration:
1. the willingness of Diniarchus to allow his baby to be used in Phronesium’s scheme (just after its grandfather has instructed him to take care of it!) demonstrates the absurdity of his foolish infatuation, i.e., as a stock comic adulescens;
2. Phronesium, the steretypically greedy prostitute, is similarly characterized here as over-the-top in her relentless pursuit of cash from her customers/dupes in this new baby scheme;
3. the “booty-buddy” reference points to a continued financial and sexual relationship between the pair after Diniarchus's marriage, in reality not inconsistent with Roman marriage mores, though New Comedy convention usually emphasizes that the young man will "grow up" with marriage in such situations.
Passage 7 (Plautus, Pseudolus 562-573a)
(a) Plautus, Pseudolus
(b) Pseudolus
(c) After his boastful encounter with his (older) master Simo, Pseudolus, alone onstage, again admits that he is clueless.
(d) some possible talking points for elaboration:
1. this is another monologue of cluelessness in which Pseudolus acknowledges to the audience (i.e., as a means of winning their admiration and support) that he is all bluster and so may be manipulating their expectations of how this comedy will play out;
2. Pseudolus again emphasizes the need for an actor to carry off fresh schemes, this time by creative improvisation (even when this is merely an illusion, as in a scripted play such as Pseudolus);
3. Pseudolus does not in fact marshal his “army of tricks” inside while the piper entertains the audience, but instead relies on luck and improvises anew when Hapax arrives immediately after the "short delay" described here, yet another bold (and metatheatrical) comic misdirection (here at the audience's expense).
Passage 8 (Plautus, Casina 64-86)
(a) Plautus, Casina
(b) speaker of prologue (head of acting troupe?)
(c)
the prologue speaker addresses important issues of this comedy, including Plautus's translation choices, the novel wedding, and the status of Casina.
(d) some possible talking points for elaboration:
1. through the metaphor of a broken bridge, Plautus lets his audience know that in his version of the Greek play the son of Lysidamus will not appear, and so the battle here shifts to husband/wife (versus father/son);
2. the prologue speaker in effect asks the audience to suspend their disbelief about slave-weddings (which didn't actually happen in Greece, etc., either), so as to prepare them for the surprising wedding with Chalinus-as-Casina;
3. to allay any possible audience fears, the prologue speaker reveals that Casina is freeborn and won't be corrupted in this play, but makes a grim joke about Roman actors and the reality of prostitution for them as slaves (a "lived experience" reference reflecting Plautus's possible servile background?).
Part III, Essay (50 points total)
Collectively, you made some excellent distinctions between the dramatic styles of Plautus and Terence, beginning with the overall assessment that Terence seems to have more closely adhered to the naturalistic tradition of Greek New Comedy (as we know it primarily from Menander), while Plautus forged his own more bositerous and idiosyncratic comedy within that same tradition. Here are some of these main contrasts, which one can illustrate—you should always cite specific examples from plays in your answers—with evidence from the various plays we've read:
treatment of stock characters: Plautus tends to take the inherited stereotypes way over the top, sometimes to the point of absurdity for humorous effects; Terence by contrast typically strives to invest these same stereotypes with psychologically motivated, nuanced, and sometimes surprising humanity (he also deploys more complex, often double plots with his stock characters).
degree of Romanization: Plautus frequently refers to very specific Roman customs, laws, social mores, institutions, etc., to drive home the fact that the Greek characters in his plays represent inhabitants of Rome and correspond to recognizable Roman figures (even if hyperbolically overblown); Terence, who sometimes Romanizes, tends to represent a more cosmoplitian city of the ancient Mediterranean world and characters as plausible human types, regardless of nationality or place.
metatheater: Plautus aggressively engages with spectators and exploits the reality (and their own awareness) that they are watching a play, a constructed, fictional representation of life (to suggest that their own society and lives are similarly artifically constructed?); Terence more infrequently & subtly employs metatheater, often to make a (literary) point about his own style of drama and his particular use/depiction of characters (especially in their tendency toward realism), sometimes in sharp contrast to his predecessor Plautus.
language: Plautus's language is more agressively "comic", i.e., full of puns, extended metaphors, imaginative jokes, etc., and his comedy overally is highly musical, especially in its frequent songs (both monodies and duets); Terence's characters use dialogue that is much more closely grounded in the norms of everyday speech and there is virtually no song, and relatively few attempts at verbal humor at all.
prologues: Plautus uses these to "warm up" his audience (often with jokes, etc.) to the play to follow and to address any plot particulars that potentially may confuse or discomfort spectators (thus divulging most or all the plot); Terence's prologues are peculiarly focused on matters of literary/dramatic criticism, such as translation and contaminatio, and he typically tells us nothing about the play's plot (to create a sense of suspense, discovery and surprise).